Sydney watched the match with tears almost constantly streaming down her cheeks. It was impossible for her to be here without weeping. Next to her, Neveah occasionally reached over and squeezed her shoulder, but Sydney didn’t really feel it. Her skin tingled, but her body felt numb.

It didn’t feel like hers. It was a terminal, from which she could distantly view Drake’s struggles. But that didn’t make it any easier to watch.

You fool, The tears screamed at Drake on the stage as he dodged the powerful strikes of his opponent. The punches of Charlotte Wick could demolish cities, and this man wanted to stand up against them with just his body. This is exactly why you should have just lived your life without fighting. So you didn’t need to experience this pain, this constant tension. You could have stayed with me.

These were words she couldn’t say out loud, but the tears had no such qualms in making their desires known. Sydney understood that her emotions swept around her in a storm, but it was a smaller storm present in a large catastrophe. So many thousands of people, millions at home, simply sat by and watched while Drake struggled before them. A thousand different reactions

Even if hers was more potent than most, she couldn’t help but be diluted amongst so many.

Drake’s pain became entertainment. The entire world leaned forward with anticipation as he bled for them all. It made Sydney sick. Her stomach twisted into knots and hung itself from the thin bones of her ribcage.

And she just sat there in the stands, crying and feeling her dead stomach slowly turning to rot and wiggling maggots. A part of her wanted to die.

“Sydney,” Neveah whispered around the time that Charlotte got her grip on Drake’s body with those impossibly powerful hands. Sydney shrugged off her hand. Watching him squirm within her grip-

Then the shadows came and thrust more spikes into Drake’s sides. He was being tortured in front of them all. Squeezed and squeezed, pressured and ripped and draped and bled across the entire stage. And suddenly Sydney was in the past, hearing rumors about how Drake had gone mad, about he was rampaging across the Great Sea. He was more monster than man. His elemental has assumed control of his body and was slaughtering anything it met. And Sydney-

“Why won’t he let me protect him,” Sydney whispered. Neveah sighed. The two women simply sat there until all of the possibilities that Drake’s image reached for popped in a surging wave of blood.

Sydney panted, releasing so many quick breaths that she became dizzy. The buzzing movements stopped. Drake’s body cracked open. A hole burst from the middle of his chest.

The bone plate around Drake’s jaw had cracked but remained largely intact. From his trembling corpse, a shadow rose. For the first time in a while, the air on the stage began to change.

“Protect…”

At first the edges of this unfolding silhouette were blurry, but soon they sharpened into a dark cut out of a woman with long and fluttering hair. Charlotte took a step back, her image dominance weakening as she weighed the threat posed by this emergent image. The purple mist Drake had released rapidly spun together and firmed up the edges of this projection even further.

It was darkness and possibility, made solid. It was a featureless demon of violent emotions and guilt.

Its hair fluttered, just a shadow drawn on the world, standing in front of the still body of Drake. It had no mouth to speak, but its voice once again boomed out across the arena, crackling with power.

“I will protect him…”

It was Sydney’s voice. In her seat in the stands, Sydney stiffened to hear it. To hear how casual and cruel this shadow sounded, using her voice. The only two spots of color on the body of this shadow projection were her two eyes, one cobalt blue and the other neon yellow. The shade raised a hand that ended in sharpened fingers.

“You…” Charlotte’s uncertainty vanished. Her gaze flicked from the rather inert body of Drake to the projection and determined that this was still her opponent. Her eyes hardened; Drake’s body was dropped and the brown tentacles twisted around to aim at the shadow.

Sydney straightened in her seat. She could no longer breathe, but if anything, that only made her dizziness worse. Yet suddenly she found purpose. On her shoulder, her two furry elementals appeared. Her eyes began to shift as their power coursed through her body. A strange resonance began as the projection drew her own power to manifest it on the stage. For a second the real Sydney wavered, unsure of what was happening, but the sight of Drake’s trying to push himself up on the floor of the arena united her resolve. Her eyes burned with every ounce of her rusty power. She threw everything she could manage along the tenuous connection between herself and the shade.

The shade waved a hand behind it, conjuring a massive wall of ice between itself and the pursuing tentacles. The Primal Force slammed against the impediment and created deep cracks, but it bought the shade enough time to flit forward with its opposite hand raised. Electricity crackled around its long fingers.

Charlotte settled into a fighting stance and the shade unleashed a palm strike. In the stands, Sydney conjured all of her crackling electrical power she could manage and prepared to will it across the intervening distance. Somehow, she knew that she could empower that shade to defeat this foe. Combined-

A heavy hand settled on her shoulder. The connection between herself and the stage abruptly snapped. The dizziness abated, leaving her gasping for air and disoriented. Sydney whipped around to see Randidly standing next to her. Realization dawned in her. “What do you think you are-”

“Keeping you from cheating,” Randidly grunted. Then his mouth quirked up at the edges. “Besides… I think you’ll find that Charlotte isn’t easily subdued by electricity.”

As if on cue, Charlotte balled her furred hand into a fist and drilled that powerful hand into the shade’s face. Its implacable blackness chipped, just slightly, before the raw force the bear woman unleashed.

“I’ll protect him,” The shade repeated. It pressed both hands together, creating a sizzling and misty combination of ice and electricity. That sphere of compressed power ticked ominously. Mist spun around the shade’s legs. “Because he is weak. I will handle the fights.”

Next to Sydney, Randidly glanced at her. He kept his hand on her shoulder. “Do you see? You really don’t want to support this.”

Ignoring the shade’s preparations, Charlotte landed another crunching blow, this time on the thing’s side. On the other side of the ice wall, Drake swayed to his feet. Noticing the movement, some of the brown tentacles whipped sideways and smashed him back to the ground. Then they focused forward and created a sizable fissure in the defenses. The Primal Force brought back its attacks to defeat the shade.

Despite the hard impact and the spreading cracks through the Sydney shade, Drake forced himself to his feet again and jittered out of the way of a few whips to reach the broken icewall. Blood oozed through the crack in the bone plate covering his jaw.

Hurt and confusion warred on Sydney’s face as she stared at the arena. “Is this… somehow my fault?”

“No,” Randidly shook his head solemnly. He jerked his chin at Drake vaulting over the ice. “It is his. But it is true that the demon of failure that sits in his heart wears your face. It is something he needs to overcome without your help.”

Charlotte’s image once more began to gather steam. The shroud of death fell heavy across the stage. She executed a sharp one-two punch to the shade, knocking aside its condensed energy blast. Then she whipped around and slammed her elbow against its temple. A large crack opened between the shade’s two glowing eyes.

A brown tentacle from the Primal Force lanced through Drake’s back and then tossed him to the side. The impact of hitting and sliding across the stage widened the crack on the bone locking his jaw in place. The shade Sydney seemed to realize the danger of its present situation and flicked out a half dozen small projectiles that froze Charlotte’s joints. These popped into small frost novas, slowing down her movements. Then it whirled around and unleashed and crackling slash of condensed energy at the Primal Force’s hunch over body.

The air became crowded and unruly with the power of the attack. But against that interconnected energy came the weight of death. In the end, Charlotte’s image extinguished the attack before it could inflict any damage.

In that space, Charlotte surged forward and seized upon the shade. In a single overwhelming movement, she ripped it into two pieces. The eyes of cobalt and neon yellow were separated permanently and then began to fade. Yet somehow, it continued to speak. Its voice weakened. “Because he failed me, I will never give up-”

Sydney shuddered. Drake’s response on stage was even more violent. He flung himself to his feet and then charged at Charlotte without any of his usual jitterings. The bear woman snorted and brought a backhanded blow around that cracked against his cheek. Drake was flung backward, but in the next moment time-reversed and he stood, his face pressed against Charlotte’s fist. His eyes burned with a horrible hatred.

The bone lock around his jaw split and clattered to the ground.

Drake wheezed out a breath and fell to his knees. He groped at the shattered stone and pebbles beneath him, as though he was trying to gather up the shadow silhouette in his arms. Charlotte narrowed her eyes and gathered her image. Brown leeches surged toward the two of them from every direction. Drake licked his lips, seemingly ignorant of the danger. He tried to speak and only managed a groan.

“Weakling.” At this point, the Sydney projection had settled onto the ground and faded. Yet the haughty imperiousness of its tone didn’t waver, even as the volume fell. “Without me-”

“Sorry…” Drake whispered. His voice sounded rough and choked. He began to buzz as his body wriggled sideways out of the way as a barrage of leech tentacles stabbed at him. They drilled into the ground around him, his body blurred and contorted to somehow avoid them all. He kept scrabbling at the ground, the speed of his hands increasing. He tried to scoop up the remnants of the shade. “Sorry.”

Sydney began to sob. The tears began to gush from her eyes with renowned sorrow. “There’s nothing to apologize for, you idiot. I’m just so glad you came home. That’s all you ever needed to do.”

*****

Randidly stiffened. There was no way that Drake had heard Sydney’s words, with both his image and Charlotte’s squeezing the space, but a change came over Drake. That shade, which had contained most of his impressive emotional affect, seeped back into his body. His movements stilled. Charlotte noticed the shift and opened her mouth. “Executioner’s Blow!”

Maroon energy gathered around her hammer blow toward the back of Drake’s head. But he ripped sideways, just shredding the leech tentacles as he made a beeline for his sword. In the past, he had definitely had the superior emotional affect, but it was a small thing. It was like possessing a gleaming switchblade as Charlotte sat within a sturdy log how with a mounted wooden ballista.

Sure, his material was theoretically superior. But her other advantages outweighed the difference. Yet suddenly, as he stopped above his discarded bastard sword and seized the handle, that emotional advantage began to gather some impactful momentum. On his left hand, a small bulging Aether construct appeared; Drake’s Fate.

Significance darkened Randidly’s awareness; the sky was alive with energy pushing itself into his every pour. Drake put both hands on the hilt of the blade. Inexplicably, Drake’s Fate began to morph and change. Randidly’s eyes widened. His Fate didn’t just go from its base form to its solidified form, but it became somehow part of the bastard sword. The protrusion became a bond and built a bridge.

Although he didn’t like doing it very often, Randidly changed his perspective in a different way; he went into the Aether constructs that he had created for the Pantheon. There, he found the Patron of Blades and the Ancient Weaver, both speaking very quickly as they tried to keep up with the shifts that came over Drake.

Randidly nodded to the two of them and checked the notifications that Drake was receiving.

Congratulations! Your Fate The Implacable Protector’s Gauntlet is evolving! Weaknesses in your Fate detected. Dangerous flaws have emerged! Warning, proceeding without sufficient energy will result in sickness and death. Please proceed to your closest village spirit-

Recalculating…

Congratulations! A new phenomenon is being born! Your Fate has morphed into a Chimeric Fate! A special trait available only within the Alpha Cosmos. Unable to generate a suitable description at the moment. Based on the context, your Fate has developed the ability to shift its physical form to match the situation!

Your Chimeric Fate has been renamed Chivalrous Vow!

Your Chimeric Fate has morphed into your weapon! Your Chimeric Fate has taken on the form of Dead Man’s Last Wish!

Chivalrous Vow: Dead Man’s Last Wish- A powerful form of the newly discovered Chimeric Fate! Only possible due to the presence of both Aether and Nether in the user. Upon the Path they had chosen, no one is willing to sacrifice more than a Dead Man. At this point, they have nothing left to lose. Dead Man’s Last Wish greatly increases the performance of the weapon in which it has morphed. Also serves as an image magnifier, increasing the strength of the user. Reaction and Perception are greatly boosted. Wounds heal abnormally quickly. The heavier the duty weighs upon the user, the higher the benefits will be.

On the stage, Drake pulled his sword from the stone. The blade hummed with gleaming waves of white power. Emotional force and the strange boost of his transformed Fate had left the weapon unrecognizable.

Again, Drake licked his lips as he pivoted on his heels and looked at Charlotte Wick. His sword had become incandescent, hosting his new Chimeric Fate. Randidly was torn between a sense of awe at how he had influenced Expira to a confusion of what this meant when Drake spoke again. “I… am her Knight. I can… fail. But I can never fail to come home. That is… my vow.”

Randidly’s expression became solemn, looking from one fighter to another. Drake stood proudly, his body still vaguely purple and muscled, but looking much more human than he had in the past. His features were thrown into stark relief by the light rolling off his sword. Opposite him, Charlotte Wick stood with a sea of wiggling brown tentacles behind her, the rotting combination of life and death churning at her back. Her Primal Force had almost latched onto the ground, becoming some sort of monstrous plant rather than an animal. Its ribcage continued to rise and fall, but otherwise, its main body was entirely still.

The crowd finally seemed to catch up with the action. From somewhere, a chant began to rise.

“Drake!”

“Drake! Drake! Drake!”

Comparing to the two foes, it was easy to spot which would be the crowd's favorite to win. With his gleaming sword, one looked like a hero. A hero who had been tortured by his foe, but now finally found his perfect weapon. That small metal switchblade had become a solid ax, which he could now use to demolish Charlotte’s wooden defenses.

Drake sprinted forward with his sword raised. A hundred tentacles lanced out in response, crashing through the remnants of the stage and attempting to impale Drake as they fell like rain. He continued to jitter, accelerating during his approach.

However, Randidly simply watched the significance, which had begun to flow back around Charlotte. A new possibility was being born. Her eyes began to redden as loss and frustration warred across her face.

In the end, Drake had made an inadvertent mistake.

He had used the word Knight.