“Yes! She has expended all of her power, she must be barely able to move! Now, get back up and finish the job!” Asgeir cheered on inside his own head, deluding himself into the idea that victory was still within grasp. He was right that Rikke could get up, but that was where his rightness ended.

She had, after all, ritualistically consumed the flesh and Azoth Stones of both a cultivator-Razorflayer and a cultivator-Springspitter. Not only that, she had also hunted and done the same to a cultivator-Brambleback with her clan’s backing. Thus, Rikke possessed the abilities of all these beasts, and this was also the reason for the immense power of her transformation despite her lack of control over her own Beast Selves. It was an advanced spiritwalking technique that the Ramdalls and several other clans had passed down through the generations. Among these powers was the Springspitter’s near-perfect ability to regenerate itself, developed to complement its ability to shed segments of its body to escape the Crescent Jungle’s apex predators. Combined with the Immortal Brambleback’s truly grotesque resilience, Rikke could walk off anything so long as she had enough Vitae and biomass.

Unfortunately for Asgeir, even Rikke couldn’t get back up from the strike she’d just received.

Not in under ten seconds.

Rikke’s transformation rotted away by the time the count reached nine, or most of it. Instead of going back to normal, her hair had returned to a mane of porcupine-like quills. Her face retained a slight animalistic quality, being framed by coarse fur that transitioned into her quills, and her ears retained pointed tips with fur bristles. She had also lost most of her body fat and a fair bit of muscle, looking borderline underweight from her previous, somewhat stocky build. It only served to accentuate her mane of quills.

“TEN! ZELSYS NEWMAN STANDS VICTORIOUS AND VINDICATED BENEATH THE REVENANT KING’S GAZE!” a voice bellowed.

The arena erupted in such an overpowering ruckus that the ground shook underfoot. Such was the noise that the protective barrier separating the fighters from the audience came alive, litanies of protection writ large in ancient runes and suspended amidst pale-blue light as the noise died.

Zel’s gaze met that one-eyed man’s. On the surface his face was devoid of emotion, his eye blank, like he’d just completely dissociated from reality. As she stared at him, however, she felt a sudden malicious intent, directed not just at herself, but Rikke as well.

Now was the time to wait. Soon, druids affiliated with no clan would come to assess Rikke’s state and see to it that their agreement would be fulfilled.

Jorfr couldn’t tear his eyes away from the fight. He had a hell of a time trying to keep up, but somehow, he felt like he could re-enact some of what Zelsys had done, if only he could ask Zefaris for a detailed account of the battle… And so he would, once everything calmed down a bit.

By the ancestors, the reassuring coolness of Runar’s Ring made him feel like he could even replicate Rikke’s spiked armor… Sans the massive body mass loss emblematic of a spiritwalker pushing themselves to the utter limit of their powers.

Zel had sat down in the circle, seemingly waiting for her opponent to move or be removed from the arena. Exhaustion had clearly taken root in her after the downright insane feats she’d displayed, and so Zefaris tried to bring the White Marble Tablet through the barrier only to be stopped by one of the Ginnungagap’s druid stewards. Indeed, druids they were - Borean priests, and the Ginnungagap their temple, meant to honor the spirits of battle and honor, the Revenant King watching over every battle. The druid asked her to give him whatever she wanted handed off, so she did; the Witch’s Vitae Elixir and a bottle of DDLV.

The druid did as promised. Seconds later, a dozen more druids flooded in, all gathering ‘round Rikke. One of them, a man covered head-to-toe in tattoos, made a gesture and the barrier suddenly turned opaque.

Several minutes passed in silence.

Once more the barrier became translucent, and Rikke stood in the arena’s center, supported by a druid on either side. All the other druids surrounded them. Zel had moved up to face her, and the two of them had their right hands in a handshake.

Zef could clearly see them speaking, and she would’ve been shocked at what she read from their lips, had Zel not shared the suggested change to the holmgang conditions and Rikke’s agreement to it. Knotwork patterns of blood stretched between both their arms.

The blood boiled, burned, and vanished.

Something felt terribly wrong. As far as Asgeir knew, the condition for Rikke losing was no more than a somewhat drastic grooming regime. A humiliation, but not much else.

Asgeir’s gut feeling was affirmed when a druid came to him and called him to the ring’s center. The mood in the arena shifted. There were only a few situations which could lead to this, and in all of them, one’s parents would be called first… But they weren’t here.

The clan’s highest elder, Asgeir’s sister Kristina, had quietly disposed of them when they opposed the plan that had landed the Ramdalls where they were now. Since Kristina was busy in the Crescent Jungle, the duty fell to Asgeir.

There was the possibility that Rikke had changed the agreement to something more severe.

“Yes, that’s it… She finally decided to put her own worthless hide on the line for the clan by weighing her own life against that foreigner’s, and now she’s paying the price for coming up short! Ah, what a shame dear Rikke, what a shame, how much work wasted on you,” he told himself as he got up and walked into the circle.

He’d always hated those druids. Mystics who were as pretentious as they were powerful, venerating the Revenant King and nature-spirits above all else, coercing every ranked clan into giving over either the firstborn child of every generation or a portion of all loot as tithe for their “protection” and “services”. Certainly, the children were given the opportunity to just return to their clans after an initial tenure, but what did that matter if they rarely did?