Tala cursed internally as she fought with the bear-man, Ogi.

They were almost perfectly evenly matched in prowess, and he didn’t even need to expend power to call upon the plant life around them anymore. Though, that was mostly because Tala had her aura extended and hardened against his magics. He might have been able to do a working through her authority, but it would have taken a great deal more power, and he seemed content to wait.

Instead, the candidate was using his power internally, in looping spell-forms that were incredibly efficient, amplifying himself to match her speed and power.

Not only that, but the benefit of the protian weapon was showing itself.

His every strike seemed to snake around her blocks, cutting at her defensive magics, and forcing her to pull more and more power through her gate.

If she’d been an arcane, she’d already have lost.

It felt like she was juggling greased electric eels, who were very unhappy by the mishandling.

-That is genuinely one of the oddest metaphors I’ve ever heard.-

I’m not exactly devoting brainpower to clever figures of speech.

Ogi was, without question, better at utilizing his magic efficiently than she was, by leagues. She was a child beside a master with decades spent honing his craft, in that regard.

-What do you expect? He’s treated magic as an incredibly rare resource his entire life. You’ve had virtually unlimited power for as long as you’ve been using magic.-

Alat was absolutely correct, and it grated on Tala.

She was using the Way of Flowing Blood, but it still felt alien to her, even as her body moved through it with ease. She wasn’t used to fighting this way, and that made her reactions just a hair slower than she otherwise could have been, her movements the smallest bit less fluid and precise.

There was still no doubt that the Way of Flowing Blood was superior to how she could have fought without that fighting style. Ogi would have overwhelmed her in the first few exchanges if she was fighting as she had been, before being captured.

That twisted at her, too.

There was only one way that she could win this fight.

-Well, you could turn things over to Tali.-

There were two ways Tala could win this fight, but she wanted to do it herself, leaving her with only one real option.

-This seems needlessly complicated. Why not let a version of us who’s a bit better, for now, do this?-

Because then it wouldn’t be me.

-I don’t mind too much.-

Tala didn’t hesitate at that, though it did surprise her; hesitating would have gotten her killed. However, she did grimace internally. Sorry, that was a bit insensitive.

Alat scoffed. -I don’t honestly care. The choice is up to you. I’m just here to help.-

Ogi brought a great sword down at her, and she parried with her tungsten rod, which was looking very worse for wear. We’ll need to get that fixed, maybe replaced?

The attacking weapon didn’t stop. Instead, a flicker of power ran through the greatsword as it was blocked, and a pivot point appeared in the long blade, just past where she’d blocked it. In fact, the block actually caused the attacking blade to speed up, whipping down at her.

Tala barely had time to shift, grunting as she took the hit as a glancing blow.

Enough of this. She had a plan, and it should work.

Tala forced extra power into the scripts enhancing the muscles in her legs and vaulted forward on quick, powerful steps. The inscriptions augmenting the surface area of her footing gave her good traction despite the thick clover beneath her feet.

She hadn’t closed the distance between them before, because she knew how it would end.

Tala flicked the discs towards the bear-man’s face and hands as distractions and slowing tactics.

As she took the two steps needed, Tala saw Ogi’s eyes widen just slightly. Even so, he didn’t hesitate.

His protian weapon contracted into a coil around his fist. That coil sprung outward, even as he punched forward, driving it towards her chest to push her back.

Instead of blocking or retreating, Tala just used her tungsten sphere to deflect herself slightly to the side, even as she whipped Flow forward.

Ogi saw what she was doing, too late.

He dumped his remaining power into two workings.

The first fought through her hardened aura, controlling the battlefield. He was able to rest just enough of a foothold to cause vines to shoot upward, moving faster than striking snakes to immediately wrap around her and hold her back.

The second added durability to his own neck, making it tougher than an old-growth, hardwood tree.

Neither worked.

Tala’s strength and momentum tore through the grasping vines, even though they were magically strengthened in the attempt to hamper her. She had her feet planted and was able to exert the strength of her entire body against their restriction, overcoming it with ease.

Ogi’s protian weapon struck her high on the right side of her chest. The magics within the weapon flashed in conflict with the defenses of her elk-leathers. The focused power of the protian weapon penetrated through the localized part of the elk-leathers’ protective magics.

Magically sharpened and strengthened metal broke through her skin as it lanced through her.

It couldn’t go through her bone, so it was pushed downward as it slid between her ribs, just missing her heart.

The point burst out through her back, sending a spurt of blood to paint the clover behind her.

Tala didn’t falter, despite the incredible pain. One puncture? I've endured millions.

Flow hit the bear-man’s neck cleanly and passed through in a blink, leaving cauterized flesh above and below.

Tala’s momentum carried her past Ogi.

Her enemy’s weapon was ripped from his hand as it was still sticking through her chest.

Tala staggered slightly but maintained her footing, despite the fact that she couldn’t seem to draw a proper breath.

Behind her, her opponent’s head fell free of his body, thudding to the ground. The bear-like torso following shortly after.

Tala grimaced as she reached up with her left hand and pulled the protian weapon from her chest.

With a wet cough, she spat out a good amount of blood. Then, a deep breath reinflated her previously punctured lung.

That rusting hurt.

-That is why I offered another option. You could have used the discs to help deflect his attack, if nothing else.-

Right…I’m still not used to having those.

Alat huffed a laugh within Tala’s mind. -We’re a bit out of our depth, here.-

I think we’re doing pretty well, all things considered.

After a chaotic miniature whirlwind of power, the protian weapon reshaped itself into a gauntlet around Tala’s left hand, sizing itself perfectly to her hand.

It was an odd feeling, having a glove form around her hand. The fount within the weapon was not attuned to her, so its magic was unavailable in its raw form.

Tala tried not to dwell on the literal human soul, trapped and now wrapped around her hand. First, survive.

As for the weapon itself? She had no idea how to use it. Tali hadn’t known. It was something that Be-thric had never deigned to teach her.

That’s two. She turned around, scanning the other combatants: those locked in battle, and those already dead.

Obviously, Blu-dine and Ogi were dead. Tala had killed them herself.

To her surprise, Tala saw that Rel was dead as well. His body was laid out, large chunks missing and the other parts smoldering. His protian weapon was laying beside him, where his hand would have been, were it not missing along with his shoulder and a good portion of his torso.

The dwarf, Thorn, was still fighting Girro, but Alop had joined that clash since the last time Tala had looked their way.

As expected from Alop’s surrender to Girro, the fox-man was viciously assaulting the dwarf, while not threatening the red-skinned man in the least.

Girro had sparks dancing along his skin, which made obvious a likely source of Rel’s burns and smoldering.

So, who eroded the missing parts of the bear-man. Was it Alop?

It had been less than five minutes since the brawl had begun. Though, Tala had no idea exactly how long it had been.

Three enemies, and I have three rocks. She’d been charging those three rocks since the beginning of the fight, but even so, the power built up within them wasn’t sufficient. Well, someone else is paying for my inscriptions.

She channeled power through some of the rings of inscriptions scattered across her body, meant to allow her to use crush as well as other more powerful, burst-like effects. In this case, she used them to amplify the gravitational forces building up on the stones. She burned four sets of those inscriptions per stone, while still amplifying the magics with her regular scripts.

With quick motions, she pulled out the three stones in question.

One to each of their heads. The spell-workings instantly had their targets locked, and the rocks shot off, accelerating quickly until the very air cracked, just before they reached their targets.

The stone targeting Thorn simply vanished as it came within an inch of his head.

A thin stream of fire lanced out from Girro, causing the stone targeting him to explode, breaking Tala’s magical hold on it and dispersing the projectile into the air around him. The small fragments vaporized against a thin barrier of extreme heat, protecting the candidate.

Alop simply ducked.

There was no way he should have been able to react that fast, but the fox-man did it anyways.

Is all his magic focused on self-enhancement?

That third stone tried to drop too, tracking its target, but it was past the fox-man before it could correct sufficiently. It slammed into the cliff wall just beyond the beast-man, turning itself into powder.

Well…that was a waste. Even so, she immediately began building power within another stone. Just one this time, as she had the feeling that she’d need most of her focus very soon.

Girro growled. “Alop, take the human.” He followed up the words with a thin lance of fire, which shot across the battlefield towards Tala like an arrow.

Tala extended her aura towards the oncoming attack. There was an instantaneous clash for mastery over the fire as it breached her aura.

She threw her full weight behind that breaking action. The miniature beam of fire was being tightly contained with active magic, so a breaking of that hold would cause the heat to disperse before it could reach her.

To her shock, Tala lost the clash.

It wasn’t because she was outweighed magically speaking, not at all.

Instead, Girro somehow bucked her greater magical weight for just long enough to close the distance with his attack.

Her discs snapped into place between her and the attack, but once again, they were driven back by the force behind the strike.

When the foremost part of the spell-working was less than two feet from her, it exploded into a blast of flame and power that threw Tala back against the cliff-face, some twenty feet behind her.

She was a bit dazed by the hit.

The explosion had been dampened by her discs and still it had been among the heaviest blows she’d taken. Well, maybe in the top ten?

-Focus, Tala. Enemy incoming.-

She slid down the cliff, slightly dazed, but Tala was already shaking her head to clear it when her feet hit the ground once more.

-I lost you for an instant, there. Hey, that would have woken us up, too! You really do get hit in the head a lot…-

Not helpful, Alat!

An arrow streaked out of the haze left behind by the explosion, skewering Tala through the upper chest, near her left shoulder.

-Hey, now you’re perfectly balanced, as all things should be.-

What?

-You’ve received one penetration through each side.-

Rust you.

A chain trailed behind the barbed arrow, and Tala could clearly see that it was a manifestation of one of her opponent’s protian weapons.

With a jerk, the chain pulled taut, and Tala had to brace herself.

Thankfully, she was both heavier and stronger than her opponent.

With a growl, Tala mirrored her full magical weight into Flow, behind its attacking magics, and slammed her sword down on the chain.

That link shattered.

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean her enemy’s protian weapon was destroyed. Instead, it simply ended at the last unbroken link and was quickly retracted back into the dissipating smoke.

The arrow and chain on Tala’s side of the break dissolved into power as Tala healed.

The wound had just pulled closed when Alop came into view, close to the ground, practically running on all fours.

The fox-man growled as he tried to tackle Tala.

She punched him in the face with her off hand, the protian gauntlet adding weight to the strike.

Alop’s weapon flickered into the form of a shield in front of the man’s face fast enough to catch the blow, though it still caused the beast-man to flip through the air, under her arm.

He landed feet first on the cliff behind Tala before launching off of it, lips pulled back in a snarl.

Alop was fast.

Not only that, but he was better than Ogi had been.

The fox’s use of the Way of Flowing Blood chilled Tala to the core.

He was a predator, acting on instinct, and those instincts were lethal.

-Tala.-

Not now!

Tala fended off attack after attack, constantly on the defensive.

Alop drove her around the circumference of the arena in a fighting retreat.

-Tala! Switch to Tali.-

Tala growled, barely ducking her head to the side as Alop rocketed past her once more.

He should be easy to predict and counter, with how much he’s in the air. How is he doing that?

On his next leap, Tala caught a glimpse of the fox’s protian weapon forming a winglike shape that seemed to somehow exert downward pressure on the beast-man, altering his trajectory mid-flight.

She was able to jerk her head to the side once more, avoiding the killing blow, but he’d taken a part of her ear with him. Worse still, that was far from the first of her blood that he’d shed.

She was utterly outmatched.

-Switch.-

Fine!

* * *

Tali ducked and rolled to avoid Alop’s returning attack, even as she used her discs to deflect and ward.

As she rolled, she quickly transitioned her weapon between sword and knife and back repeatedly, flicking her weapon upward in three licking attacks.

Each one struck home, drawing blood and gasps of surprise from her opponent.

Finally. It’s time to show my true skill. She briefly shook her head to clear the last vestiges of whatever that had been. It had felt like she was fighting through a fog before, and now the world was clearly laid out before her.

Alop staggered even as he landed, shallow, cauterized wounds in his shoulder, stomach, and left leg.

The fox growled, his protian weapon shifting to a javelin on a rope, which he threw at her while holding the other end of that rope.

She smacked the attack from the air with one of her discs. The motion held all the contempt that she felt for this pitiful creature.

He’d thought to match her? Pathetic.

Even so, a small part of her was jumping for joy, at least internally. She reveled in the feeling of the gauntlet on her left fist. She still couldn’t believe that she finally had a protian weapon. It was hers by right of conquest.

She had no idea how to use it, but that could come later.

Now that Alop was hurt, he couldn’t continue his harrying tactics. That left him with one option, and he took it, closing into melee range.

He thought he understood her abilities from their earlier clashes.

He was very, very much mistaken.

+Oh…wow.+

After the first exchange of blows, Alop retreated, wide-eyed and missing his right hand.

-She is way better than we realized.-

+You aren’t lying.+

The fox tried to continue that retreat, but Tali pursued, a predator’s grin pulling at her features.

The next exchange left the fox without his left leg, below the knee.

Alop’s eyes held clear confusion. He had lost, and he didn’t understand how it had happened.

You challenged me; that’s how.

Even as he fell, Tali cleaved the beast-man’s head in half.

That’s four dead, three by my hand. She was a little disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to kill all of her opponents as one had already died to others, but that had been unreasonable to hope for, given her plan. She had needed to give the impression of being significantly less skilled in order to draw in opponents to one-on-one conflict.

If she’d shown her true abilities from the beginning, the others would have swarmed her, and that might have ended badly.

+Wow. That actually hurts. Is that really how she’s reconciling my fighting abilities in the first part of the conflict?+

-She has to have a coherent internal narrative and given the gulf between your skill levels that’s really all that makes sense.-

+I…I don’t know how to take that, actually.+

-You have a lot to learn, and a skilled teacher to help you get there?-

+So it would seem...+

Tali turned to the last two combatants: The dwarf and the hue folk male.

Let’s end this. There hadn’t been enough time for the Join amplification to ramp up on its own. She only had one choice.

As she continued building power in one of her remaining rocks, she burned through all of her remaining, powerful-burst-style inscriptions to amplify the working faster than it would otherwise have grown. She needed the weapon ready as soon as possible.

That done, she charged forwards, both other candidates seeing her coming even as they clashed.

Thorn didn’t really react to her approach. His magics seemed closer range than the red-man’s fire.

Girro did turn half way to face her.

Tali grinned, pulling out the stone.

Revered Sanguis had purposely left a hole in the rules, a test to see if any candidate was clever enough to notice.

+Oh…I completely missed that.+

-…I did too…what the rust?-

+That’s maniacal.+

Tali grinned. This is exactly what Eskau Pallaun would do.

She supplied her working, the built up power, with a target and the rock shot off, almost immediately cracking the air.

Girro threw up a barrier of fire, with Tai being too close for him to trust in his fire lance’s ability to disrupt the attack, but the rock wasn’t aimed towards him.

Thorn wasn’t looking at her at all, his defenses didn’t require him to. Instead, he pulled back, transforming his protian weapon into something reminiscent of a giant cleaver.

The rock struck home, a precision strike that wouldn’t harm any bystander, and potential Pillar Derag’s head turned to mist, spraying the area around him with blood, bone fragments, and brain matter.

Tali remembered Revered Sanguis’s words, her grin spreading:

‘No outside interference will be acceptable, from the potential Pillars or other watchers.’

So, there was nothing blocking magic entering or leaving the pit, and he explicitly stated that those outside would not be allowed to interfere.

‘The cliff walls are impervious to anything you are capable of but keep your magics contained. I’d hate for one of the bystanders to be killed.’

Potential Pillars aren’t bystanders. They are participating through their candidates, and even if they could be considered bystanders, there was no forbiddance against targeting them, just an expression that he’d dislike it.

Girro’s head jerked up even as his potential Pillar’s lifeless body slumped to the ground, his mouth falling open. “Brother!”

Thorn struck, bisecting the candidate in a single blow, hip to shoulder.

As the dwarf spun with the attack, he glanced up, his own eyes widening.

Pillars were powerful, but they weren’t intended to be front-line fighters. They had Eskau for that role.

They could clash with armies, but were not oriented towards direct conflict, certainly not while still only a potential Pillar. If given more than an instant, the attack could probably have been foiled, but Tali hadn’t given him that.

Nor did she give that time to her next target.

Tali pulled out another rock, making the motion obvious, and pointed towards potential Pillar Gallop, the one whom Thorn was fighting for.

The gray-skinned man stepped backwards, his eyes widening in horror. Magics began to build around him, but they would take more time to form than Tali’s attack had seemed to need.

Thorn immediately dropped to one knee. “I surrender.”

And that was it.

The battle was over, and Tali was victorious.

+I can’t…How did that actually work? She just bluffed him into surrendering?+