They met in the open battlefield, a hundred paces from the wall, as stipulated by Yuriko. The woman, who called herself Zagara of the Manifold Blades, readily agreed. Zagara came alone, and even with Yuriko’s Chaos Sight, she didn’t see any attempts at subterfuge.

Zagara had her helm in hand, leaving her face exposed. She had an arming cap on, a conical steel cap with mail curtains for the back of her head. But the cap had six holes on top, about an inch across, evenly spaced on either side. The woman’s features were sharp. A crooked nose that had been broken and set improperly in the past, thick eyebrows, and slanted eyes. Her lips were pale and narrow, and she had a strong jaw. Right now, as the two of them stood nearly ten paces apart, Zagara had a wide smirk of anticipation.

“Do you care to put forth a wager?” Zagara asked.

Yuriko’s eyes narrowed. “To what end? I will certainly try my best to defeat you, and ensure that you will no longer be a threat to Faron’s Crossing.”

“Ah, ah, ah.” She laughed. “So hostile and fierce for such a beautiful woman,” Zagara smirked. “I understand your point, but do you honestly think you can kill me?”

“Yes.”

“So confident,” she crooned. “Very well, there is little else to speak of, but,” her grin widened, “should you fall by my hand, worry not, I won’t kill you. I’ll keep you, instead.”

Another shiver ran up Yuriko’s spine. She recognised that light behind the other woman’s eyes now, but she also knew that the Mien didn’t fully influence the other. Zagara was merely going with the flow. She gulped down her nervousness. While she’d fought others who were a level above her in Anima strength, this was the first time she would do so in a formal duel.

Yuriko summoned Fri’Avgi to her hand, then held her upright, with the pommel pointing to the ground. Zagara put on her helm and drew a couple of daggers from her waist, but there were a dozen more sheathed there. She tossed them in the air, spinning and reflecting the sun’s morning light. When the daggers reached the apex of the throw, chains of light erupted from the woman’s head and entangled the daggers.

It was her hair, Yuriko realised. In quick succession, four more daggers were secured as such, while the remaining two were held in the other warrior’s hands in a reverse grip.

“Toss the coin,” Zagara said.

Yuriko retrieved a silver mark from her pouch with her kinesis, then flung it up in the air. It spun as it rose and fell, and the moment it hit the ground…

Whoosh!

Before she could take a step, Zagara had already moved. The chains entangling the daggers extended, reaching lengths up to five paces away. The weapons were covered in a whitish glow, with streaks of other colours at the edges.

Yuriko braced herself and swung Fri’Avgi to fend the woman off. Zagara ducked under the blade, then abruptly sidestepped when she altered the artefact’s momentum and changed her horizontal slash into a vertical smash. Zagara’s sidestep allowed her to barely avoid the attack, then she took the chance to strike. Her hair daggers thrust at Yuriko’s arms and chest.

She couldn’t say she was surprised by the attack, but she was by the dodge. It caused her reaction speed to lower by a smidgen, and a couple of daggers struck her wrist and the back of her hand.

Ptang! Ptang!

Both skidded off her condensed Anima, however, they left a large crack behind and she knew a second blow at the same point would pierce her defences. Yuriko spun Fri’Avgi to deflect the rest of the daggers, then kicked at Zagara, who reached over and attempted to grab her other hand. Instead, she twisted aside and her arm grabbed Yuriko’s leg.

Ptang! Ptang!

Both daggers that were held with her hand stabbed down on Yuriko’s leg and cracked her Anima. With a hiss, she slammed Fri’Avgi at Zagara. The shorter woman ducked but kept Yuriko’s leg captive. She used her flexibility to keep upright, but Yuriko had to twist her body lest Zagara lock her knee.

She funnelled Radiant energy and Animus into Fri’Avgi which spat out a dozen sunshards. At this point, Zagara’s hair daggers danced to deflect the shards. Each movement tainted the ambient Chaos around the daggers, and a moment later, ice crystals formed and parried the shards. They boiled into steam as soon as they touched, but it vented the heat away from the Manifold Blades.

Yuriko expanded her Anima and used her kinesis to slam into Zagara’s arm, but the woman stubbornly kept hold of her leg. A moment later, she twisted and body and slammed towards the ground, the leverage swept Yuriko off her foot, and both of them wound up in the mud. Fri’Avgi spun out of Yuriko’s grasp, and she punched at the other woman, encasing her fist with hardened Anima. The blow struck the helm and knocked her head back. With the same movement, she kicked at Zagara’s knee with her free foot, similarly encased in hardened aura.

Thonk!

She flared the condensed aura around her captured leg and pried Zagara’s arm off it. Then she used her kinesis to push herself out of reach. Her thigh throbbed with pain, and she could feel a bruise form on her inner thigh. The condensed aura there had shattered, but she quickly reformed it. As for the Animus Armour, a tenth of its reserve had gone to protect her thigh but was ultimately bypassed.

Yuriko slid back in the mud, but her aura kept her immaculate. She rolled back over her head and managed to get back upright. She drew the arming sword, the Arclight blade, from her waist, and activated its ability. A crescent of Radiant arclight flew from the blade and sped at Zagara’s prone form.

But before she was struck, the hair daggers formed a complex array and projected a hexagonal shield. It caught and deflected the arclight, while the woman pushed herself back to her feet. The helm hid her expression, but Yuriko felt that the other woman was giggling.

The handheld daggers had been flung from her hands, but a simple gesture saw them flying back. Yuriko called Fri’Avgi to her hand, and the artefact materialised there. She sent her sunshards to harry the woman while channelling more Radiant energy into the artefact. Another dozen shards emerged, and she spun them around the hair daggers, attempting to sever the connection to Zagara’s helm.

While that happened, Yuriko held Fri’Avgi and the Arclight blade in either hand. The pattern to blast arclight was actually present in the artefact, just that she hadn’t noticed it before she took possession of the Arclight blade. She charged both patterns with Radiant energy and swung the smaller blade out first. The crescent-shaped arclight careened towards Zagara, who was preoccupied with preventing Yuriko’s sunshards from shearing her hair.

Zagara dodged out of the way at the last moment, letting the crescent come within a fraction of an inch of harming her, but ultimately, she avoided it. That was when Yuriko chopped down with Fri’Avgi and unleashed an arclight crescent ten times bigger than the one before.

Her opponent shook, then flung herself over to the side, scrambling and rolling to get out of the way. But the edge of the arclight crescent still hit her. The golden crescent cut into Zagara’s armour after dispersing her Protective Field.

“Ahhh!” the other woman screamed.

Yuriko dropped the Arclight blade, caught it with her kinesis, and pounced towards Zagara, with Fri’Avgi held up high. She slammed the greatsword down at the other, aiming to catch her with the blade’s tip. The third dance in ascendance meant that the Animus blade coating the artefact’s physical form was wide and jagged.

But before she could hit, Zagara rolled to her feet and deflected the downwards smash with her daggers, and redirected the force to her right and down into the ground. Then, she pinned the weapon with her foot and launched herself off it. The hair daggers ignored the harrying sunshards and formed another array. The next moment, windblades flew from the array and swarmed towards Yuriko.

Yuriko calmly redirected some of her sunshards to intercept and deflect, channelling the second dance on them. At the same time, she took the Arclight blade in her left hand and stabbed at a gap in Zagara’s armour, while at the same time she recovered Fri’Avgi and slammed it towards Zagara’s side.

This time, she connected with both swords, but it was an even exchange at best. The daggers in her hand slammed into Yuriko’s shoulders but were stopped by her condensed aura and Animus Armour. The windblades were deflected by the sunshards but a single blade managed to strike Yuriko’s side.

Fri’Avgi struck Zagara’s side, and at the same time, the other woman received the Arclight blade’s point with her breastplate. The kinetic force knocked her to her right and back, and she tumbled in the air, backflipping a couple of times before she landed on her feet, which dug furrows into the mud as the remnant momentum pushed her back.

Pausing to take stock of herself, Yuriko watched as cracks on her Anima sealed over.

“Wait, stop,” She protested as Fri’Avgi used up what she’d built up over the past ten days. The artefact reluctantly reduced the flow of distilled Chaos but the damage was done. “Burning Moon,” Yuriko muttered.

Zagara of the Manifold Blades got back to her feet. Her armour was slightly dented and there was smoke rising out of her hair. She chuckled and spun her daggers around her fingers.

“That was a nice fight,” Zagara said as she flexed her shoulders and arms. “Now, ready for the next round?”

Yuriko snorted derisively. Zagara fared better than any of her other opponents save for Firehead and Weaver, but she knew that by herself, Zagara couldn’t hope to defeat her. Er, as long as she had a ready supply of distilled Chaos.

Overconfidence would be her undoing, so Yuriko took a deep breath and held Fri’Avgi at the ready. “If you wish, come.”

They exchanged several more blows. It was clear that Zagara was a master with her weapons, and was also the equivalent of a Chaos viscount in Anima strength. Damien and her experience told her that she could punch above her level, but that defeating them would be difficult.

Zagara’s strikes were like a snake, lightning quick and coming from unusual angles. If not for Yuriko’s flexibility and her skill with using her sunshards independently of her limbs, she would have had her defences penetrated more easily. As it were, she mostly kept to the first or second dance. Using the third often left her with gaps in her defence that Zagara was quick to take advantage of.

She used the fourth dance once, but even as the world slowed down around her, Zagara’s Animus flared and she sped up to match Yuriko’s pace. Which only meant that it was a waste of lumens.

At some point, Yuriko received a flash of inspiration. When she was thirteen, she managed to use a different dance with her left and right swords. What difference did it make now, when she controlled Fri’Avgi, the Arclight blade, her sunshards, and sunblade? Couldn’t she express any of the dances through any of the weapons?

She already managed to express the second dance through her sunshards, why not do so while using the first or third with Fri’Avgi or her other handheld weapons at the same time?

She’d already trained to divide her attention, and she could do so as many ways as she had sunshards active. That didn’t mean that each strand of attention was as powerful as when she focused only on one task, but being able to control each sunshard independently, and perceived through them, was something of a gift with her.

Radiant Body, Mind, and Anima. Damien whispered but didn’t elaborate. And since she was in the midst of battle, she didn’t bother to prod him.

And so, she did just that. She had her sunshards express the second dance, while she used the third with Fri’Avgi.

Zagara seemed surprised at Yuriko’s sudden movement, but she easily adapted to the attacks. Instead, her hair daggers formed different arrays to counter Yuriko’s attacks. However, the previous tension Yuriko had against the other woman had lightened.

She shifted the sunshards to the first dance, prodding at Zagara’s defences and acting on the exposed weaknesses. At the same time, she controlled the Arclight blade with her kinesis and used it to express the second. Fri’Avgi’s edge flared as she used the third dance with the artefact.

And then…

A miraculous feeling overcame Yuriko. Suddenly, she saw images all around her. If she moved the sunshard over here, Zagara would act like this. If she used the Arclight blade like this, her opponent would dodge this way. And if she stabbed with Fri’Avgi, the other would try to deflect it. And when she chained it all together…

Pchi!

A sunshard threaded through all of Zagara’s defences and punctured into her side, melting her armour in the process. The odour of burning flesh and vaporizing blood covered the two of them while the warrior’s shocked eyes locked with Yuriko’s.

That attack…had been perfect.