Full posting of Chapter 5 as of 19/3/2016. It needs a polish but that will come later.

Chapter 5.

(Serenity)

#

There’s an old saying: no pain, no gain.

I was in pain, and not making any gains.

In other words, I needed to turn things around.

Karissa charged at me, her twin-bladed spear aimed true for my heart.

I waited for her to come closer. In my Overclocked state, my heart appeared to beat extraordinarily slow.

Every breath, every beat, every subtle contraction and relaxation of my muscles was poised for the one moment when Karissa’s attack reached the point of no return.

However, I also needed to anticipate the moment she thrust the spear-tip toward my heart.

A fraction of a second went by.

Then another.

Finally, the bladed weapon lunged toward me, and I made my move.

I chose not to meet her challenge…at least not yet.

With the Valkyrie-skin augmenting my physical abilities, I leaned forward, and then leapt past Karissa at an acute angle, and practically parallel to the ground.

To the Regulars and Aventis spectating in the near distance, I must have moved as fast as a cross-bow bolt.

No doubt they were excitedly recording what their eyes and minds had trouble following, intending to watch the playback in slow motion to revel in what they would never be able to achieve.

No doubt these recordings would be shared from person to person, since anything posted online had a tendency to vanish.

That was fine with me, since I had no intention of showing them my best, just enough to make things interesting, and ensure my victory. However, I did wonder at the rumored treasure trove that was supposedly a collection of every unofficial match held in Pharos between Familiars.

If it did, then that was of interest to me.

Not expecting such an odd evasion, Karissa was unable to compensate and the blade of her spear, wrapped in a piercer-field, plunged through the space I’d occupied a heartbeat ago.

I literally passed a hairsbreadth below the spear as it lunged for my heart.

My body was low to the ground like those popular animated characters that run with their arms trailing behind them. One slip and I’d face plant into the permacrete ground. However, it was a necessary risk. Before I dealt with the flat chested girl, I needed to finish things off with Farolina.

Like an arrow released, I ran low and fast toward the busty goddess, who was preoccupied testing out her jaw.

I had intended to tackle her with my well-protected right shoulder, but a sudden pang from my broken rib, courtesy of avoiding Karissa’s spear, threw off my timing.

Instead of tackling Farolina, I crashed headlong into her trim, taut midriff.

“Oof!”

All the air in her lungs expelled in a hurry, and she folded over me like a deflated sex doll.

Her enormous breasts clubbed the back of my head, pummeling me like large, heavy cushions.

A second later, we both collided into a support pillar.

Farolina struck it first, her back crashing into it. She wheezed loudly, struggling for air, and I could see she was turning blue. However, I didn’t have the time to wait for her to recover.

I spoke in a hurry, which sounded slow to my ears.

“Give up and win a date with Derek.”

Blue as she was, Derek’s name appeared to register in her mind. She gulped air and stared at me wide-eyed.

Then I slammed my knee into her belly, and Farolina slumped to the ground like a marionette with its string cut.

I had but a heartbeat to toss her aside, then duck under a sweeping spearhead that very nearly cleaved my head from my neck. The weapon’s blade cut some of the barrier-fields protecting my body, but it also carved a thin surgical path through the permacrete support pillar. Fortunately, the pillar was a stout permacrete and rock combination around twenty feet thick, so the spear cut was little more than a nick to it.

I forward rolled, came up on my feet, and snarled in pain as my mending rib broke loose again.

I really had to stop being so gymnastic with my evasions.

However, with Farolina out of the picture, I could concentrate on my next opponent.

So what part of this is five-on-one?

Truthfully, it was better if they came at me one at a time, so I’d better not complain.

I turned around to face the prepubescent high schooler.

Her spear whirling in a flashy display that was utterly pointless in combat, Karissa ran after me.

Unlike when I fought Farolina, I now had my Skin-Regalia – my Valkyrie-skin – so I could met Karissa’s weapon with blades of my own. I hadn’t summoned the complete Valkyrie Maiden armor, only the armored, tapered legs that ended in pointy feet, and the bladed gauntlets. Those gauntlets sported a three-foot blade that I could sweep forward and back, thus able to guard and attack, and like Karissa’s spear they could manifest both a barrier and a piercer-field.

So when Karissa’s weapon sliced the air horizontally, her intention being to cut my body in half, I met her spear’s blade with my right gauntlet-blade in its swept back position where it guarded the length of my right arm.

Our weapons clashed, and piercer-field collided with piercer-field.

This was the equivalent of two swords meeting with their cutting edges, something to make a swordsman cringe in dismay. In contrast, barrier-field to barrier-field was like two heavy shields banging forcefully against each other.

However, adding to my newfound means to attack and defend, I was also wearing Sigrún’s Valkyrie Legs that added another two and a half feet to my overall height of five foot six inches. In short, I towered over the girl.

Deflecting her spear with my right blade, I smiled at Karissa who wore a disgruntled expression. “I agree. Warm up’s over.”

#

The girl watched from the within the crowd, neither too deep, nor too far from the front, such that she had an unencumbered view of the open space between the pillars that now served as an arena for the combatants of Calista Academy.

Unlike those around her, she fielded no means to record the encounter, for unlike many of the spectators she had no trouble observing the fight. As quickly as the Familiars of Calista moved, they were still well within her ability to observe them. She wasn’t the only spectator not using a recording device like a palm-slate or camera. A number of young men and women watched the match with keen eyes, undoubtedly overclocked so that their minds could keep pace with the action.

She folded her arms and narrowed her eyes.

It had been a risk to come here, but someone had to verify the nature of the gathering in the old docks, and report back. So she had blended in with the crowd, dressed as casually as they were, and wearing a baseball cap on her head. She chose not to pull the visor down since a lame attempt to hide her face risked drawing attention to her. A few people had noticed her, but they were soon distracted by the start of battle. Her only worry was that she be recorded on one of the spectators’ devices, so she purposefully hung back from the leading edge of the crowd.

The girl frowned as she sensed a change in the atmosphere.

The young girl with faded lavender hair had summoned her Valkyrie-skin, and quickly gone on the offensive. Now the stakes had risen. The possibility of serious injury had become a near certain probability. If the remaining four opponents didn’t raise their game, the lavender Valkyrie maiden would make a meal out of them.

Having found the match uninteresting thus far, the girl involuntarily released a sigh that was quickly lost in the ambient noise billowing from the crowd.

Then someone brought out a boom box and loud music began to fill the air.

The girl sighed again, and wondered if the match could get any more boring than it already was.

#

(Serenity)

#

Karissa jumped back, twirled the spear once, and then vanished into a thick black mist.

Simultaneously, I switched my gauntlet-blades from defense to offense, snapping them both forward, and widening my stance to accommodate my greater height.

Standing taller against a spear wielder was both a blessing and a curse. I would need to be wary of strikes and thrusts aimed at my lower body, and that meant layering more barrier-fields around my legs to keep them protected.

Unlike Farolina who’d limited herself to using barrier-fields, Karissa had no qualms using piercer-fields.

She wasn’t going to pummel me into defeat.

She was aiming to turn me into shivering, quivering sushi.

The black mist faded away, but the air remained chilled.

Having realized I had the measure of her, Karissa had called upon her Fragment’s Sarcophagus to upgrade her Skin-Regalia. She stood taller, and her armor was now a sharper and less child-friendly. In other words, she had fewer rounded corners…if one counted the small bumps on her chest.

Karissa had swapped out her bladed spear for a twin headed halberd that she wielded as lightly as a quarterstaff. The weapon looked enormous in her hands, despite the fact she now stood a good seven feet tall, courtesy of the armor encasing her legs. When she spun it, the twin-halberd acted like a windmill.

I had little time to regard the weapon and its owner.

A heartbeat after the mist faded and she became visible, Karissa launched herself at me with more speed than she’d previously demonstrated.

I greeted the attack by rushing forward to meet her, but found myself at a loss when she swung the halberd at me with enough strength to chop down a tree with a single swipe.

The piercer-fields around my gauntlet-blades held, but the clash translated into a tremendous weight that swamped my arms. Caught off guard by her strength, I willed barrier-fields around my arms, but the fields couldn’t form properly because they were disrupted by the halberd.

I had to admit, she had me at a disadvantage.

Darting back, I put a little room between Karissa and I, then lowered my stance once more.

Like before, she chose not to wait. Impatiently, she charged toward me again, swinging the weapon at waist height from my left.

However, this time I was prepared for it.

Rather than parry it with my gauntlet-blades, I chose to kick it with enough force to knock the halberd back. As expected, Karissa used the momentum to spin round the other way, and swing the other end of the halberd at me from the right.

Again, I was prepared for the move, and kicked the axe-shaped blade upwards this time.

Karissa used the impact to rotate the weapon like a spinning saw, but I was ready for that too. Before it could complete a full revolution, I directed my third kick at the middle of the staff, and the blow sent the girl sliding backwards several meters along the rock ground. I could tell she had braced for the strike, but the wince that crossed her face told me she wasn’t ready for the sheer force behind the kick.

I struck at her before the wince could fade from her face.

My fourth kick was aimed directly at her midriff.

Wrapped in barrier-fields, my tapered foot struck her with the force of a speeding locomotive.

If you thought Farolina could hit hard, I could hit much, much harder.

I landed on the ground, and skidded to a halt, my gaze never leaving Karissa.

She flew backwards through the air about fifty feet, and crashed into a permacrete and rock support column. The only thing keeping her from going ‘splat’ against the grey column was the barrier-field protecting her body. It shattered like glass, and the pieces faded into the air. The impact was strong enough to crater and fracture the permacrete rendering around the rock middle of the column. For a moment, she lay plastered against it, then she peeled off the column, and fell forward onto her belly.

When her arms pushed down against the ground, I thought she might get up, but a moment later she collapsed and the black mist surrounded her as her Fragment’s Sarcophagus emerged to retrieve her armor.

I didn’t get time to watch.

A warning from Sigrún had me leaping aside, and then executing a rather graceful cartwheel, before landing on my feet several meters away from where I started.

The ground I’d been standing upon was cratered by the tip of an enormous sword that would have been impossible for a Regular or Aventis to lift let alone swing in battle.

My gaze followed the sword up to the wielder who was clad in his Skin-Regalia and the armor of a Cavalier Fragment.

Hefting the sword up and then resting it against his right shoulder, Mikhail gave me an evil grin.

“Just what do you have against small chests?”

#

In terms of sheer brute strength, Mikhail had the edge on me.

Having summoned his Cavalier, his speed and strength were comparable to Karissa and Farolina combined.

That presented a serious challenge for me.

So I decided to even the playing field.

*Sigrún, I need you. Valkyrie configuration two.

[CONFIRMED]

I jumped back with all the strength I could pour into my legs, and put a score meters between Mikhail and I.

That would give me about a second or two.

The black mist of a breach from Pocket Space into real-space swirled around me, and I felt the Sarcophagus reach out to me.

I hadn’t summoned all of Sigrún’s Valkyrie Armor, just enough to help me defeat Mikhail.

When the extra armor such as the Vector Core and two Vector Wings had attached, I felt Sigrún’s power flow through me, and I quickly leapt to my right, soaring through the black mist that began to fade away now that the breach between realms had closed.

Mikhail made a sour expression as he cut the air I’d occupied a quarter second ago.

My tapered feet touched ground, and I overclocked, then watched him change the grip on his sword. A heartbeat later, he kicked off the ground, leaping low and fast toward me.

I chose to end this fast.

Like Karissa had attempted before him, Mikhail swung the sword horizontally with sufficient strength and energy to cut through a support pillar from side to side.

I knew there was no way in high heaven that I could block that, so I chose not to make the effort.

Instead, I leapt high, bending my legs underneath me, and flew over the blade as it skimmed millimeters below my tapered feet.

Then I kicked him with the tip of my right foot…in the head.

The barrier-field surrounding his head was strong.

It almost held against the force of a kick hard enough to knock an inter-Island bus onto its side. But it shattered a quarter second later, and my foot smacked his forehead. By then, much of the energy behind the kick had been expended shattering the barrier-field, so it struck his unprotected head with the equivalent power of a heavyweight punch.

Mikhail’s head snapped back, and his body bent backwards.

With the sword swing carrying enormous momentum, it made his body pirouette, and come crashing to the ground.

That was fortunate for him, as my body had continued sailing forward through the air.

If he hadn’t fallen, I would have struck him with my left armored knee, and probably snapped his neck in the process.

My heart jumped into my stomach as I realized just how close I’d come to killing him.

I touched ground as gently as I could, and turned around as I slid to a stop.

Mikhail was lying unconscious on his back.

It didn’t take long for his Sarcophagus to emerge and retrieve the Cavalier Fragment’s armor.

Considering how tough Farolina and Karissa had been, I found my battle with Mikhail to be utterly anti-climactic.

However, I was soon about to realize that I was wrong.

It was going to get worse.

#

With only Sonia and Derek remaining to fight, I chose to attack first.

My target was Sonia.

However, before I could land a hit on her, Sonia surprised me.

“I forfeit,” she declared.

I skidded and slid to a halt, my tapered feet cutting furrows into the rock floor of the old docks.

“What?” I yelled at her.

Sonia wasn’t looking at me.

Instead, her attention was riveted on the handheld gaming console she was using.

It was an archaic device, but in recent years the design had become the rage again. It was just like how fashion had a tendency to cycle and come around full circle every few decades. For example, flared pants had come and gone a number of times in the last two centuries. Right now we were back to the skin tight low rider fashion. I had modelled a few for magazine spreads, and owned a snug pair myself that made them look like they were painted onto my skin. An excellent choice for showing off slender toned legs and a firm ass.

Her fingers flew over the buttons of her console, and her eyes didn’t even blink.

However, while ninety-nine percent of her conscious brain was focused on the game, the remaining one percent was employed to deal with me.

“My Guild has reached the final level,” she said. “We’re facing the final boss.”

“You’re playing an Em Em Oh at this time?”

“Yes. My Guild has to win in order to claim the final prize.” Her tongue poked out between her lips. “The final prize is an all-expenses paid weekend stay at the Fabriola Resort in Island Five.”

I straightened and dropped my weight onto a hip. “Yes, I’ve heard of that resort. It’s a six star establishment. A very good choice.”

Her eyes appeared to be looking through the console rather than at it. “Yes, it includes a stay for six people. Enough for the members of my Guild.”

“I see. Well, carry on then, and best of luck.”

“Thank you. We’ll fight some other time.”

I nodded, and gave her a mock salute with my left gauntlet-blade.

Then I turned to face Derek who leaning against a support column, armored arms folded across his chest.

He had summoned his Fragment’s armor, the Grand Chevalier. Two long swords were carried on his back, forming an X-shaped cross behind him.

The smile on his face looked sincere yet I felt a strange intensity in his gaze.

“Time to get serious, my love,” he called out to me.

“Derek, how many times to do I have to tell you—?”

“If I win, you agree to one date with me.”

I sighed and let my shoulders sag…but only for a moment. “And if I win, you agree to one date with Farolina.”

His smile vanished in a heartbeat and his expression darkened. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No,” he repeated.

“Yes,” I snapped at him.

He pushed away from the support column and strode over to me with an angry look on his face.

“I said, no,” he declared adamantly.

“And why not? What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” he stated as he walked up to me.

“Oh? I think you’re afraid that you might actually return her feelings.”

He came to a stop, arms at his sides. “That’s wishful thinking.”

I rolled my eyes and groaned at him in frustration. “Derek, for the love of the gods, we both know that you like her.”

“On the contrary. There’s nothing about her that I like. She’s annoying, persistent, self-centered, egotistical, and shameless. Qualities utterly unbefitting a lady. And she persists on calling herself a goddess, which she clearly is not.”

I half frowned at him. “Then you hate her?”

“I do not.”

“You seem to know her quite well.”

“Serenity don’t play dumb. You know quite well that she and I have known each other since childhood. You are well acquainted with our childhood travails.”

“Yes, but—”

“She went from a noisy, flat chested little brat who chased me around incessantly, to a noisy buxom blonde bimbette who chases me around incessantly. She was annoying back then. She is equally annoying now. Nothing much has changed except for her chest that has ballooned out to the point where it’s hard to take her seriously. She flaunts herself without abandon and makes a mockery of the boys at our Academy, wrapping them around her fingers like twine, using them to make my life a living Hell. As a man, I do not see her as a woman but as a succubus. She is in short shameless.”

I felt a twinge of anger and my voice grew flat. “You are an asshole, Derek.”

“My answer stands. No.”

“I’m going to kick your ass. I’m going to make you pay for what you said about my friend.”

“Very well. However, my answer will not change.”

I took a couple of deep breaths. “I will never date you. Not even if you were the last man in the entire universe. I’d rather die a virgin and end the human race. But you will never, ever lay a hand on me.”

Derek’s expression grew complicated.

Then I heard the sound of quiet sobbing from somewhere in the distance off to my right.

It was then that I realized the blaring music had stopped blasting out of the boom box. Someone had read the mood and killed the pounding beat.

I looked in the direction of the sobbing, and saw Farolina kneeling on the ground. She had tried tucking her body into a ball, but her bountiful chest got in the way. Yet it didn’t stop her from trying. Her blonde hair hung in curtains around her head, veiling her face as the goddess sobbed quietly on the ground, her body trembling as her heart broke into tiny pieces.

I turned back to Derek. “Get out of my sight.”

He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

I screamed at him from the depths of my soul. “Get out of my sight!”

Derek didn’t move.

It was as though he couldn’t move.

He was caught between conflicted emotions, desires, beliefs, and resolute stubbornness.

My heart beat fast, and my breathing grew shallow as anger consumed me. “If you don’t leave now, I swear I will cut you into pieces.” Then I aimed my left gauntlet-blade at him. “And you know I can do it.”

Derek’s expression grew cloudy, but he refused to move.

*Sigrún, give me your all.

[AFFIRMATIVE]

The black mist surrounded me, and my Valkyrie’s Sarcophagus delivered the remaining components that would turn my Valkyrie Armor into that of a Valkyrie Maiden.

Seconds later, the Sarcophagus retreated into its bubble of space, and I stood tall and waited for the icy black mist to fade.

I dipped my head as I glared at him.

Derek too had equipped his Grand Chevalier with everything he could draw out of his Fragment. However, he understood he wasn’t facing a Valkyrie Armor. He was facing a full Valkyrie Maiden, and I knew how to wield Sigrún very, very well.

I swallowed the saliva in my mouth or it would have spat out when I cursed him.

“I will tear you apart the way you tore Farolina’s heart.”

Cutting the air with my gauntlet-blades, I crouched my armored body.

Floating on either side of me, the triumvirate of Vector Wings thrummed with power, as they readied piercer-fields that would shatter through anything Derek’s Fragment could summon. They also generated inertial-fields that would warp and twist the surrounding space, allowing me to maneuver like lightning without tearing my body apart from the resultant gee-forces.

“It’s time to suffer, Derek.”

Then I overclocked, crouched a couple of inches lower, and charged at Derek clad in his Grand Chevalier who waited with his two long swords at the ready.

To his credit, and his misfortune, he chose not to run away.

#

My rib broke loose again.

I ignored the pain as I slashed and stabbed at Derek.

As the Seal-Regalia inside me fumbled around for the rib, I chased Derek Pitt afil Avenir between the support columns.

Though I was pushing him back, to my disdain, I had to admit he’d improved since the last time we fought.

Derek’s Chevalier increased his size to that of a hulking giant, yet he moved with nimbleness of a ballet dancer.

His footwork was remarkable, and his swordplay was even more accurate than before.

He was also a natural swordsman, and I wasn’t. After all, he had shamed the Aventis of Calista Academy’s Kendo club many times. The sadist took particular pleasure in answering any challenge the Kendo club threw at him, and beating his opponents to the ground without fail.

As a dual wielder, he was especially lethal.

Throughout the ages there have been arguments against the merits of wielding two swords at once. A dual wielder could not deliver as much force behind a strike; a duel wielder lacked a shield or buckler to protect themselves with; or a duel wielder needed to train his left side as well as his right side, and that included his body and not just his arms; a dual wielder lacked the precision to strike at joints or weak points in armor.

However, those arguments held when applied to normal weapons and normal Regulars or Aventis. I did not feel they applied to us Familiars wielding Artifacts or Fragments.

To begin with, our Skin-Regalia amplified our strength considerably. Wielding a normal sword with a single hand, I could easily shatter the blade against permacrete.

Secondly, our blades felt as light as paper and their true power was the piercer-field that sheathed them, increasing their effective range and ability to cut through solid objects.

Thirdly, our ability to overclock and the input of the Awareness-field into our sensorium – our consciousness – allowed us to perceive our surroundings with a clarity unmatched in nature, and to use said clarity to help deliver our strikes with surgical precision.

Lastly but not least, we were trained relentlessly to master the Artifact that had chosen us as its wielder. In Derek’s case, he was ambidextrous yet had spent a thousand hours training his left side to move as well as his right side. His movements were fluid and graceful, like those of a dancer, with no sudden stops and no harsh, reckless swings. This worked well with his Grand Chevalier that resembled a knight in cataphract armor. It looked heavy, and it was heavy, but its mobility was amplified by its enormous strength, and the maneuver-fields and inertial-fields it could manifest.

The Prides spent considerable resources training us to master our gifts. In the process, they trained us to kill – to kill their enemies and to kill each other.

Calming myself was the first step, but I found that a tall order.

My heart contorted in anger when I remembered Farolina kneeling on the ground, sobbing softly.

I wanted to hurt Derek.

I was going to hurt Derek.

However, the bastard was proving to be a tough opponent.

He parried my swings deftly, yielding every so often which threatened to overbalance me, then smoothly counterstriking with either of his long swords.

I had to avoid overstretching, and focus on maintaining an even balance at all times. I felt this limited how much power I could deliver with each strike, but it was either that or lose an arm whenever he yielded to my blades and then countered. Additionally, my gauntlet-blades could not be swung around like his swords. In that respect, their mobility was limited. To compensate for this restriction, the blades could be swung forwards and back along the length of my arms, allowing me to use them to block and guard without the need to change my grip or move my arms.

There was no barrier-field wrapped around our weapons. Instead, piercer-fields emanated from my blades, and from his slender long swords. However, our bodies were protected by layered barrier-fields that shifted around us like sliding scales, shattering whenever a piercer-field clashed with them, usually reforming a second later. They made the air surrounding us shimmer, and at times it appear like smoked glass.

Derek yielded to me again, and swung his blade under my arm.

I had to hastily swing the gauntlet-blade in pursuit of his sword, and succeeded in parrying it away or I would have lost my right arm when he swung it upwards. Simultaneously, I pivoted my body away from him, spinning out of the reach of his sword and the piercer-field enveloping it. However, as I spun away, I slashed at him with my outstretched left arm, my gauntlet-blade’s piercer-field extended a couple of feet while narrowed down to the width of a scalpel.

The field struck the armor adorning his right forearm, and cut through all the way to the bone.

I had guessed correctly.

My Awareness-field had been disrupted by his Awareness-field, akin to two electronic warfare suites clashing with each other. As a result, I wasn’t certain if his arms were protected by barrier-fields, but something about the way he moved made believe his forearms were unguarded.

Barrier-fields shouldn’t limit our range of movement, but in practice they could collide with our own weapons. To avoid this, we would sometimes restrict the areas a barrier-field could cover, and there were two types of barrier-fields we could employ.

The first type was like a hexagonal pane that was either invisible, or appeared like a smoky shimmer that shattered like glass when struck by a piercer-field or other weapon.

The second type resembled hardened air that flowed like water over our Skin-Regalia, mostly invisible though at times it made the air ripple over our limbs. It didn’t impede our movements, yet lacked the defensive capability of the smoked glass barrier-fields.

Since unlocking Sigrún a year ago, I could summon both types of barrier-fields. However, Derek had not fully unlocked his Grand Chevalier, though amongst my five opponents he was the closest to releasing the chains around his Artifact’s Core Awareness.

Not only had I guess correctly, but my strike had been extremely fortunate.

In short, it was a lucky hit, but I’d managed to make it count.

Derek’s cry cut the air as my blade’s scalpel thin piercer-field sliced through his gauntlet armor, and much of his forearm. The long sword he held slipped free of his limp fingers, and clattered to the ground several feet away.

Nothing more than luck. It was nothing more than luck!

I screamed inwardly at myself, hating myself for talking big and failing to deliver.

I broke through Sigrún’s seals in a year!

After ten minutes of chasing Derek around, this one strike was the best I could achieve.

What the Hell have I been doing since then?

He wasn’t even using a fully-fledged Grand Chevalier, while I was employing an unlocked Valkyrie Maiden, and yet I was barely able to overcome him.

Have I grown soft? Have I grown weak? Have I stopped moving forward?

The shortcoming wasn’t with my Valkyrie…it was with me.

[CAUTION.]

*What?

I continued spinning away from Derek, then slid to a stop and faced him with my gauntlet-blades at the ready.

The armored gauntlet protecting Derek’s right forearm reconfigured over the cut, sealing it a heartbeat later.

Derek roared and spun his whole body, spinning like a bladed top, and cut the air with his one remaining sword.

[CAUTION.]

The piercer-field around his longsword extended more than a meter. As it cut the air, it slashed through the barrier-fields Sigrún had manifested to protect me. They broke apart like shattered pieces of a glass window, fading quickly out of sight. At the same time, I leapt back four meters, and sent a thought pulse to the Vector Wings floating a couple of feet away to my four and eight o’clock.

Derek huffed and puffed yet remained where he was, glaring at me.

After a long moment, he turned and calmly walked up to his discarded longsword, picking it up off the ground with his right hand.

Then he turned around and faced me.

“Did you think that would be enough to stop me?”

For a heartbeat, I felt a twinge of doubt flicker across my chest.

Then I grinned at him with malice. “I’ll cut you up one piece at a time.”

[WARNING.]

Derek started to laugh, his large armored body shaking visibly.

He reminded me of those cartoon villains children watched, laughing defiantly as though they held a trump card the hero knew nothing about.

Then his Grand Chevalier reconfigured, and the coiled bulges on its armored back unfurled into an extra set of arms.

My mouth grew dry and my heart sat up in my chest.

“You did it,” I whispered. “You broke the last seal chaining its Core Awareness.”

The armor around his neck also reconfigured and helmet formed over his head. In classic villain style, the helmet had two swept back horns.

“Cut me up, will you?” he laughed, his voice almost thundering down the old docks. “Did you think you were the only Familiar at Calista with an Artifact?”

The two longswords split, becoming thinner yet of equal length, and now each of his hands gripped a weapon.

“Do you know how many times I could have cut you up already?” he asked.

I sighed in disappointment, and shook my head. “None.”

“What?”

“I said, none. You couldn’t cut me up even once. You were never close to cutting me up.”

Derek’s armored shoulders trembled as he laughed. “All this time I was playing with you, and you never realized it.”

“All this time, I’ve been holding Sigrún back. And you never knew.”

“Oh really. Well, let’s see you come at me in full force.”

I turned my head in Farolina’s direction where she rested about two hundred feet away against a support pillar. “Hey, Goddess, can I kick his ass?”

She wiped her nose ungracefully, even for her, before casting a hateful look upon Derek.

“Make him suffer, Serenity.”

I grinned cruelly at him. “You heard the Goddess. Time to pay the price for breaking her heart.”

Derek laughed curtly, and smiled at us in pity. “Women never change. Always the victims. Never understanding the hurt they cause.”

I clicked my tongue at him. “Men are always so oblivious.”

He slashed the air with his four arms. “Well, time for a little payback.”

Sigrún’s eight Vector Wings scissored open, and I assumed a guarded stance with one gauntlet-blade held high and pointed down at Derek, the other held low and pointed up at him.

“My sentiments exactly.”

#

She travelled with the moving crowd seeking a better vantage point.

The open expanse of the old docks offered the combatants a great deal of space, but it meant the crowd had to move about and follow them.

She jogged with the ranks of Familiars, Aventis, and Regulars, yet refused to jostle for a better position.

The sound of piercer-fields shattering barrier-fields filled the air – the sharp zing of bladed weapons colliding with each other.

The encounter had finally become serious.

Both remaining combatants were out for blood, and so both had revealed their trump cards.

She wanted to see them at their best.

She wanted to see what the Valkyrie Maiden could do.

Knowing your enemy was the first step toward defeating them, and that girl was indeed her enemy.

She didn’t know when they would cross paths and blades, however it was wise to learn as much as she could about the Alpha Bitch of Calista Academy.

The crowd came to a messy, uneven stop.

“There they are!” someone shouted, and people began fanning out for a better view.

“Damn, they’re moving so fast!”

“Record it! Record it!”

A loud boom preceded a rumbling crash, and the crowd cheered.

Cursing her short stature, she pushed her way forward and then looked out into the old docks, where two fast moving objects blurred every so often as they darted around support pillars then clashed violently for several seconds before drawing apart, and repeating the cycle a number of times.

Even to the untrained eye, it was clear who would be the victory.

Sometimes it wasn’t size that mattered…but speed and numbers.