Feather-plucking bastard!
Jassiel’s cheap shot at the start of the match was infuriating. So was the fact he was using interchange collars on his Elevated.
Ugh... I completely forgot to warn them. But Ozzy and Rain can take care of themselves.
The pair of interchange collars basically let Jassiel control the mana of his Elevated, which ant he could feed them his own mana or draw on theirs as needed.
Such a thing required a high degree of similarity in mana, to begin with. Cassie wouldn’t have put it past Jassiel to modify his own squad’s mana aspects, just so he could use them like batteries. The odds of three people coming together with instantly compatible mana were vanishingly small.
Just like the odds of Jassiel letting her get a spell in edge-wise.
Most angelic mages were expected to act in a support role to less magically gifted fighters, but Jassiel’s teams seed to be all warriors. It wasn’t that such squads weren’t useful, but more that the particulars of Jassiel’s war form were antithetical to Cassie’s magiform.
His speed ant she had to constantly be on her guard for his attacks. His strength ant that she couldn’t put too much into offense when she needed her shields up. And his weapon was exactly the sort of annoyance that kept Cassiel constantly interdicting his strikes against her team.
Not that her team was doing too badly.
Ozzy’s performance was actually quite admirable. There was an extra spring in his step and a bit more flutter to his wings.
Rain, however...
He fought chanically, almost by rote as he tried to fend off an Elevated who was literally foaming at the mouth as he struck again and again. Instead of combining his offense and defense, Rain was sticking to defense, and even then he was taking scratches and the odd strike on his godflesh body.
She caught sight of a wound that would have been gushing in a normal body, but which simply stead its way back to wholeness.
But even godflesh had its limits, and Cassiel was bound to keep those limits secret. Which didn’t help when Rain blocked low, eting his opponent’s club near the handle-part, only to have the top half of the spiked club suddenly leveraged into his shoulder.
Instead of forcing the Elevated back, Rain punched him in the chest, and a small shock of lightning passed from him into the Elevated... and did nothing.
Is it because I disciplined him? Cassiel wondered as she dodged a manifested morningstar strike from Jassiel, only to wind up putting up another shield as he magically forced its trajectory to try for her back.
She hadn’t wanted to discipline Rain, but he’d left her no choice. He had no idea how many eyes were on her to do everything right if she wanted to beco an Executioner. How just by gaining her magiform, she’d drawn the sort of uncomfortable questions that had been hard to deflect on her own. If Malz hadn’t lied for her...
"Grrah!" Cassie growled as she tried to cast a spell at Jassiel, finally breaking his manifested version, only to have him close with the real deal. Cassiel blocked, but the star-pointed head of the morning star wound up wrapped around her staff.
"What’s the matter, Cassiel? Did your little toys fuck the fight out of you last night or sothing?" His cocky smile looked even worse now that his skin tone was war form-white, especially with the green lip gloss he favored.
"Coming from you, that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day!" Cassiel maneuvered into a twist, using the montum of Jassiel pulling his weapon back to land a solid blow on his face. It was a trick she’d learned from Rain, ant more for dealing with soone grabbing her staff, but against the morningstar it had taken only a minor modification.
"You’re going to pay for that," Jassiel said, a minor bruise showing grey over his right eye. He thrust out with his morningstar but when Cassie blocked, he fluttered in, backhanding her across the cheek with his fist.
Stars burst into Cassie’s vision, and she was barely able to dodge his followup strikes as she forced her wings down hard, gaining altitude right as the morningstar passed where her torso would have been.
"Two can play at that ga!" Cassie shouted, sending her floating hands punching for Jassiel’s face before she brought her staff down heavily at him. He dodged the fists and blocked with the handle of his morningstar, but a mont later Cassiel brought both fists back, simultaneously driving both into his privates... which unfortunately did not have quite the effect she hoped.
Fucking war form.
She might as well have punched a bag of gel.
Jassiel squeezed his thighs together, and Cassie felt a mont of pain before her magiform hands shattered into motes of mana.
"That was childish of you," he snarled.
"Consider it the only way anyone will ever touch your ’tiny little angel,’" Cassie spat back.
"You rotten bitch," Jassiel’s face grew enraged. "Always thinking you were better than , just because you could get away with spreading your legs for anyone with a pulse."
"Anyone but you," Cassiel replied.
Jassiel was the worst kind of person in her book. He was the sort of man who thought he was entitled to have whatever and whoever he wanted, just because he had talent and so of the best connections in the Choir of Love.
And anything or anyone he couldn’t have, he made every effort to denigrate, damage, or take... And he’d attempted all three with Cassiel in the past. And after the last ti... he’d gotten away without consequences thanks to his father. "Boys will be boys" after all.
It had been so satisfying, taking the role of Pri from him; and then managing to keep it until the race. It would be so satisfying to beco the Choir’s Pri...
For a few more monts, they continued their fight, until suddenly Jassiel pushed away, maximizing his distance.
Sothing shifted in the mood of those watching from outside. And looking down, it was obvious what had happened...
Rain’s opponent had stopped in his tracks, his club fallen at his feet and his mouth foaming for a completely different reason than rage as Rain approached.
Lifting his sword to the Elevated, Rain called out "Yield!", only to be stared at.
"I can’t," the giant Elevated rasped.
Rain sighed. Instead of using his sword, he charged his free arm with more lightning, before delivering what seed to be an exceedingly light blow to the Elevated’s chest.
The man started to convulse where he stood until his legs gave out, and Rain knelt.
"You fought well. Please yield," Rain said in a low voice.
From across the field, Ozzy’s opponent tried to rush for his fallen teammate, but was blocked at every turn by a combination of Ozzy’s flares and bladework.
"Weaklings!" Jassiel suddenly shouted, gathering his morningstar as he feinted a manifested strike for Cassie, only to turn it suddenly towards Rain before it could contact her shield.
"Rain look out!"
A shattering sound broke over Rain’s head as both his and Jassiel’s Manifest Arms collided, rendered temporarily visible to all by the shockwave of air generated in the collision.
How?
Sohow Rain had figured out how to make his Manifest Arms invisible, just like Jassiel, and he’d used that ability to hide a blade that was the equal of the morningstar. One that did not shatter on impact.
The entire ti, Rain kept his eyes locked on the Elevated’s.
"I... yield..." the giant finally said. The look on his face was resigned, speaking to self-disappointnt and hatred of his own body’s limits.
It was a look Cassie saw often amongst the Elevated, and as with all the other tis he’d seen it, the Elevated he’d felled looked to his angel, eyes begging forgiveness for his weakness.
"Thank you," Rain said. "I would not have enjoyed stopping your heart."
Only then did Rain turn to look up at Jassiel, who was fuming.
"Enough of this!" Jassiel shouted, reaching up into his halo and extracting from it a black anti-magic blade. "I don’t need those two to win."
Cassiel’s eyes widened. A black blade could ruin soone’s mana permanently if they couldn’t maintain a dense enough defense.
Where the Hell are the referees? This can’t be allowed!
And yet no call to end the match ca.
A sudden cry from the arena floor signaled the start of sothing awful. Cassiel felt the mana in Jassiel’s elevated spike as he forced open their mana gates, drawing on the power as he did so in order to multiply his output.
"I’ll show you, you fucking whore!" Jassiel cackled as he let his warform quadruple his original size.
Having lost their opponents, Rain and Ozzy flew up to rejoin Cassie, with the latter tossing a blinding flare into Jassiel’s eyes, only to have it absorbed by the anti-magic blade as Jassiel swung it into the flare.
"What do we do, angel?" Ozzy asked.
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