Eleanor moved like a phantom. Sliding beneath a hamr arc, she drove her fingers crackling with Lightning Touch into the strained joint. The electricity did nothing, but the focused physical force, guided by Killing Precision, struck true. There was a sharp pop and a grunt of genuine pain from Barrock. His left arm went montarily slack, the hamr dipping.
She pressed her advantage... unrelenting, thodical. A flurry of brutal, exacting kicks crashed into his leading leg, each aid at the knee. His dragon scales flared to defend, holding firm, yet the concussive impact left microfractures spidering through the surface. He was being worn down; the immovable fortress chipped away piece by piece.
Frustration and pain finally broke his disciplined guard. His eyes flared with psionic light... Petrifying Gaze!
A wave of crushing psychic weight slamd into Eleanor’s mind. It wasn’t illusion but domination: a direct command from a primordial creature to stop... to beco stone. Her muscles seized, her body freezing mid-strike.
But her mind, shielded by Clarity Veil, remained her own. It howled against the imprisonnt of her flesh. She fought back with the will of an Alpha and the will of a Mind Reaver. The psychic feedback was imnse. Veins bulged across Barrock’s temple; blood trickled from Eleanor’s nose.
With a gasp that felt like tearing her own lungs apart, she shattered the effect and stumbled back.
They stood panting, a dozen paces apart, the platform between them a wasteland of craters and fissures. Both were bleeding from multiple wounds. Eleanor’s regeneration faltered, her body a map of bruises and shallow cuts. Barrock moved with a pronounced limp, his left arm hanging at an awkward angle, his face a mask of blood and grim resolve.
She no longer had the strength for subtlety. Her eyes widened, and sothing within them shifted. The brilliance of her intellect remained, but it was now eclipsed by a vast, terrifying emptiness. Eye of Wisdom.
For a heartbeat, Barrock felt as though a predator beyond comprehension was gazing upon him. A hollow infinity yawned before him, threatening to devour his spirit whole. His will was his pride, but he felt it was being wavered.
It was the opening Eleanor needed. Gathering the final reserves of her strength, every last spark her body could muster, she lunged. This was her perfect strike... the culmination of every motion, every calculation. Her hand, charged with a Lightning Projectile at point-blank range, shot towards the centre of his chest, seeking the heart that beat beneath his unyielding defence.
But in imposing her will upon him in showing him the void... she had, for a fraction of a second, broken her own ntal Lock. She no longer saw as a predator, but with the detached clarity of the Eye.
It was a mistake Barrock’s primal instincts would never allow.
The void she revealed awakened sothing deeper... an ancestral terror, the dread of extinction. It triggered a survival response beyond thought or strategy. As her hand flashed towards his heart, his own instinct took command. Granite Fist.
His attacking arm encased itself in stone, swelling into a boulder-sized construct of solid rock. He didn’t aim to strike her... he struck the space she occupied. No precision, no restraint. Just pure, concussive force.
Her lightning-wreathed hand was re centitres from his chest when the Granite Fist collided with her torso.
The sound wasn’t loud. It was a deep, sickening thud... an impact that reverberated through the coliseum, heavy and final.
Eleanor’s eyes widened in shock. All the air in her lungs was driven out in a soundless gasp. She felt her ribs, her sternum and everything in her upper body simply break. The force lifted her off her feet and hurled her backwards like a discarded doll.
She struck the ground twenty feet away, skidding to a stop against the cracked boundary post. She didn’t rise.
Barrock stood where he was, swaying slightly from the recoil of his own strike. The Granite Fist crumbled into dust and pebbles, raining down around him. The backlash of pushing a bloodline art beyond its limit... combined with the psychic feedback from Petrifying Gaze and the accumulated damage finally took its toll. His arms fell to his sides, the twin hamrs dangling limply from his hands.
He looked at Eleanor’s broken form. There was no triumph in his eyes, only a heavy, exhausted respect. He took a staggering step, then another... not towards her, but towards the edge of the platform. He needed to hold on to sothing, to prove he was still on his feet.
He reached the boundary rope and wrapped his bloodied fingers around it, his knuckles turning white. Leaning heavily, he drew ragged, painful breaths. His body was a ruin... bruised, bleeding, one arm dislocated, his leg trembling beneath him. The platform was a monunt to their battle, and they were its shattered relics.
Eleanor lay among the broken stones. A faint tremor rippled through her body, the backlash of overusing her bloodline powers... the Mind Reaver’s insight and the Thunderbolt’s speed collapsing in on her shattered fra. Her regeneration had slowed to a crawl, her body drained of every last scrap of energy.
She was conscious only of the pain... a vast, all-consuming sea of it. She couldn’t move. She could only lie there, staring up at the artificial sky, the taste of copper and defeat thick on her tongue.
The victor stood clutching the rope, unable to let go. The vanquished lay broken, unable to rise. Between them sprawled the wreckage and a silent understanding that neither had truly lost, for both had given everything they possessed.
Eleanor knew what she had to do to end the pain. Her lips parted, her voice a rasping whisper.
"I accept defeat."
Eleanor opened her eyes inside the space capsule, as usual. Despite the splitting headache and a lingering weakness, there was no trace of the near-death experience she had endured in the duelling ring. It was the first ti she had gone all out and still lost. Though she had known it was a possibility, the reality of defeat left a bitter taste in her mind.
The capsule’s overhead cover slid open with its familiar hiss, but she didn’t move right away. She closed her eyes again, waiting for the pounding in her skull to ease. When the pain dulled to sothing tolerable, she climbed out... only to sense soone approaching.
Turning, she saw Barrock Deepdelver Ironhide walking towards her with a broad smile.
"It was a good fight," he said as he ca closer. "I never thought a werewolf could match in strength."
He extended a massive hand for a shake. "If not for my ability to nullify lightning, I’d have been roasted in the ring. Thank you for fighting to the end... it was a great experience."
Eleanor clasped his hand firmly. "Sa to you. It was a good fight. We can have a spar again when we both have ti."
"Sure," Barrock agreed readily. "My grandfather always says a serious fight reveals a person’s true character. I liked yours. Don’t get wrong," he added with a laugh, "I’ve no interest in mating with you. Besides, my clan forbids intraspecies marriage."
He chuckled, then went on, "I’ve never visited the surface world. Once I beco an Ascendant, I’ll be allowed to travel for a few years. I hope you’ll spare so ti for then... and show your domain as a friend."
Eleanor smiled politely and nodded. "All right. Let’s be friends. Contact when you’re free to roam the secular world."
Ophelia had already finished her fight and joined them, so Eleanor ended the conversation and walked over to her other friends.
Phoebe had won four matches, like Eleanor, but had lost to Ignatius Emberfall... the tournant’s top contender. Fire-school professors and combat instructors had praised him beforehand; his classmates called him a genius. Phoebe’s defeat, then, felt justified.
Marsha had won all her matches. Ophelia had lost two and won three. Izumi had the sa record as Ophelia, while Maíra had lost three and drawn one; she felt sowhat down about it, and the others tried to cheer her up.
When they left the academic building, the group t Jaciara and Kiara, who had been waiting for them after watching the fights in the auditorium. Together they headed to the dining hall with the rest of the students.
That evening the videos of all the matches were published, and the group gathered in Maíra’s room to devise counterasures for their opponents. Everyone wanted Eleanor’s take... she had a knack for deducting an opponent’s style piece by piece, and they valued her analysis. What they didn’t know was that it was really Nora doing the heavy lifting. She could analyse the footage fra by fra, spot minute flaws in each fighter’s technique, and suggest ways to exploit those weaknesses using their own styles.
The girls knew nothing about Nora, and Eleanor would never reveal her. Nora was her ultimate secret. To them, all the battle analysis ca solely from Eleanor, the prodigy who could dissect any opponent’s technique at a glance, no matter how subtle the flaw. It fit perfectly with what they already believed of her... that her bloodline granted her extraordinary perception and combat insight.
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