The final day of the Great Rainhorn Hunt began explosively, with almost all groups using floating vehicles of some kind. As Theo's group was left behind, it seemed like they were at an insurmountable disadvantage, but as they passed several wrecked sleds, the benefit of holding off on their purchase became obvious.

Since they already had sufficient money for their purchase, Theo's goal was maximum profit without getting involved in any conflicts. It seemed that several groups of rainhorns were pinned down, essentially just a prize as different groups warred around them. Several of those had Rulers involved, so they steered clear. Once again, they focused on the outskirts, hoping to track down rainhorns that were too fast for other groups.

Unfortunately, they'd only found a single rainhorn after several hours. Just as Theo was starting to think they'd chosen the wrong flank, he heard a disruption ahead... but he doubted it was a rainhorn.

A brief fight had begun in a small clearing, already finished by the time they arrived within Fiyu's sphere. Theo didn't recognize the robe style of one side and could only note that their badges suggested they were a noble family, just not a large one. The other side only had a few members, but they were standing uninjured, while the first side fell back.

"How dare you?" Delarde seethed at the front of the group, lifting a man off his feet by the front of his robes. "You can't beat us in a straight fight, so you sabotage us?"

It didn't make sense to Theo until he spotted the sled from earlier: this time, a massive hole had been torn through it and the shattered sublime materials released ripples of force as they broke down. That damage wasn't getting fixed, and he presumed that the other side had struck Delarde's vehicle to impede his hunting efforts.

"What do you expect?" The soulcrafter in Delarde's grip weakly struck at his arm, but the blow was ineffectual. "The Armeau family is strong, do you really think we won't target your weaknesses?"

"This is too far." Delarde threw him to the ground and glowered at the entire group. "That sled was worth more than your life... in fact... it really was."

Delarde glanced around, looking directly at Theo's group... but his gaze passed on, oblivious. Apparently stronger observation skills or techniques were among the things he'd sacrificed for his infinite stamina blueprint.

Then he turned back to the beaten group, a new cruelty in his eyes. Fiyu's gasp was caught in the sphere of stealth, the defeated soulcrafters flinched, and Nauda took a step forward too late. The pike tore directly through the chest of the fallen man, an overwhelming surge of cantae destroying his soulhome as well. As the body collapsed, everyone looked back to Delarde.

"Eradicating such filth from Anguedan is worth the bloodprice." He reached into his cloak and tossed a bag of coins onto the ground, hard enough that it spilled. The opposing soulcrafters watched him with fear and hatred, but they had no choice but to scramble to pick up the coins. While they did, Delarde weighed another bag of similar size in his hand. "Is that lesson enough for you? I have enough here for a lot more, and the Armeau family could purchase the lives of your entire little clan."

As the group gathered up the bloodprice, Delarde occasionally knocked one over with a non-lethal blow, while his supporters jeered at them. Though the act might have been a deterrent, Theo thought he saw cruelty in Delarde's expression that went beyond what would be expected for Deuxan. He could easily have intimidated his opponents less expensively, so the fact that he could act freely meant he had some real authority in the family.

"He doesn't have many allies." Nauda gripped her staff tighter, gaze set on him. "If I recall your list, there's no bloodprice for any injury I deal to him, right?"

"No, but this isn't our fight." Theo kept his voice down, just in case, but there didn't seem to be any risk of the others piercing the technique. "Getting involved will only make our departure more complicated."

"You're going to just watch this happen?"

"The time to intervene would have been before he killed someone. What happens now is just Deuxan politics, and fighting him won't stop it. Even if we killed him, there would only be someone else in his position doing the same thing."

Nauda's knuckles tightened even more, but she didn't argue. Theo himself had felt simultaneous impulses to act and to leave, which had canceled each other out and left him hesitating when he could have acted. But he did believe what he said, and fighting wouldn't earn them any rainhorns.

"Bartolo aina Fithe!" Esaire's voice suddenly rang out over the clearing and Theo realized that retreat was impossible. The familiar grand sleigh floated to a halt and Esaire sprang from the top. "It wouldn't be fair of me to challenge you to a duel, but what do you say to an informal little scrap?"

"Now?" Theo gestured to Fiyu to drop the sphere, then gave an overly humble bow. "But your servant was doing his best to hunt rainhorns for you."

"The hunt is nearly over, and the Armeau family has won again. No, I'd like to have a little contest." Esaire removed the gauntlets from where they hung on his chest and slipped them onto his hands - definitely Archcrafter armaments. "Just for our mutual edification, of course. No bloodprices, eh Delarde?"

"Accidents happen." Delarde hefted his pike with undue eagerness.

"Well, that would be a pity. So... why don't you try your best to make this interesting?" Esaire and his followers went to walk alongside Delarde and the others, leaving them sorely outnumbered.

However, when Theo looked more carefully, the odds were different than his first impression. Many of the soulcrafters didn't have particularly large soulhomes, and other than Esaire and Delarde, the one other Archcrafter was only nominal. Of course, if she got near him with that knife, her more intense cantae would tear right through him. On the other hand, she had no defenses...

Theo glanced at Fiyu and then acted first, before Esaire could take control of the fight. He hit the entire clearing with a gravitational field, sending most of the group into the air. Before they even reversed direction, Fiyu unleashed a hail of bolts, knocking them backward into the forest.

She immediately swept her hands down to catch Esaire and Delarde in the blast, but both had manifested their cantae cloaks. Theo didn't even waste his time trying to use gravity against them, he needed a direct strike.

Unfortunately, Esaire was every bit as fast as he'd feared. He leapt for them, and only Nauda's reflexes allowed her to intercept him.

Nauda started by trying to bind him, thrusting her fork out, but Esaire ducked underneath the movement and closed the distance. She immediately swung her staff at his head, only for him to contemptuously turn it aside with one gauntlet, so forcefully that the staff nearly left her hands.

His other gauntlet swept up to strike her... and was bound in place by her cantae. Yet though the technique should have frozen his entire body, Esaire managed to twist, keeping his arm in place and instead kicking Nauda in the face. She hurtled backward, weapons flying from her hands as she slammed into one of the trees.

That left Theo facing a sprinting Esaire, with no way to assist Nauda. He saw Delarde closing on her, and Fiyu tried to stop him with a hail of bolts, but he waded through them, focusing on his target.

Then one of those gauntlets was coming for him and there was no time to help anyone else. Theo reversed gravity beneath himself, falling into the sky before Esaire could reach him. He had lost Navim's spear, leaving him with something simpler: rocks. Though he couldn't fly, Theo could change his momentum to keep himself high in the air.

So he threw the rocks down at Esaire, casting a gravitational field that sent each plummeting to the earth at many times normal acceleration.

Fast as they were, Esaire danced between them. Worse, he realized that the rocks were just pure force, not a cantae trick. Theo knew that throwing the last one was a mistake, but his body couldn't keep up with his experience and the last rock left his fingers toward his opponent.

This one, Esaire met with a flat palm, and somehow the velocity of the rock reversed in an instant. Theo couldn't manipulate gravity well enough to dodge, so it was only his position that meant the rock struck his arm instead of slamming into his body.

His focus weakened and he pitched downward. Theo wanted to stand calmly in the sky, but it was hard to control his momentum when he was pitching back and forth between gravitational fields and now wincing from the impact. Worse, Esaire was eyeing him carefully, and it would be entirely within the Archcrafter's power to reach him with a leap.

So he only had one choice: his new torsion technique. To prevent an aerial battle, Theo let himself drop back to the ground... and then suddenly thrust forward, casting a bolt of cantae at his opponent.

It flickered between them with more speed than he'd expected, concentrated force of gravity pulling in opposite directions, filtered through the sharpness of the rainhorn antlers. Despite its speed, Esaire nearly managed to dodge, the bolt hitting him in the shoulder.

Where it tore through his robes, but that was all. Theo saw his opponent take a step back, and it looked like a bruise was beginning to form, but he knew instantly that it hadn't been enough. And now he was far too close...

Theo threw himself to the side on old instincts and was still clipped by the blow, which felt like a wall of bricks rushing past him. He spun, bouncing painfully over the ground before landing some distance away. Half his body was numb and his other arm still ached from the stone that had struck him, while Esaire merely tore off his sleeve and prepared to advance again.

As he rose to his feet, Theo investigated the rest of the field. Nauda had apparently kept Delarde at bay, but he saw several bleeding wounds along her arms and legs, while her opponent still burned with cantae. Many of Esaire's other followers had stayed down, but others were getting back to their feet and forming a group, preparing to enter the battle. Fiyu... he didn't see Fiyu anywhere.

"I knew you weren't an Archcrafter." Esaire smiled and began wiping his gauntlets against one another. "I was sure enough of it before, but I still wanted to fight you. It's a good trick, but it's just a trick, isn't it?"

"Happy to have proved it to yourself?" Theo did his best to ignore his injuries and just met his gaze. "It's obvious that we're not your equal."

Delarde stepped forward and slammed the butt of his pike against the ground. "Then these worms have wasted your time! And my time, and the time of the entire Armeau family! They deserve to be punished!"

Troublingly, Esaire actually seemed to be listening. Theo took a deep breath and prepared to try another gamble. "I only have tricks now, but I haven't had very long to soulcraft. If you can endure my 'tricks' in a year, I'll bare my neck willingly."

"Proposing a scheduled duel?" Esaire regarded him with surprise, considering the offer as Delarde shouted at him to ignore it. He didn't seem to listen, but that didn't stop him from smiling coldly. "I refuse. I'll spare your lives, because you've been an interesting diversion, but you do need a lesson about challenging your betters."

With Esaire, Delarde, and the regrouping soulcrafters, the odds weren't good. Theo wasn't sure about the range of his gravitational fields, but he wondered if he could potentially launch himself and Nauda high into the air and refuse to come down. Nothing but a stalling tactic, but it was all he had that would be fast enough to avoid Esaire's strike.

Across the clearing, Esaire's sleigh began to move without any apparent cause. Theo couldn't keep himself from staring, and the others noticed, but it was too late.

The sleigh plowed through the group of soulcrafters, sending them tumbling over the clearing, and struck Delarde hard enough to knock him to the ground. Esaire barely dodged aside and started to strike back at the front seat, but Nauda managed to land her staff directly into his face, making him stumble back despite his defensive aura.

When the sleigh skidded sideways, briefly slowing, Theo hopped into the second seat along the way. As soon as he got near enough, he passed inside Fiyu's bubble, finally seeing her sitting at the controls. Nauda leapt to join them, then the sleigh began to speed up again, blasting through the forest canopy and shooting into the air.

"Fiyu, you did it!" Nauda very nearly embraced her and settled for grabbing Theo instead. "We're out!"

"And they don't have any way to follow us." Theo looked back to the clearing and the surrounding region. He saw Esaire and Delarde staring up at them in fury, but the simple fact was that they were standing in a mostly empty region, far from any other vehicles.

"Umm." Fiyu had smiled broadly when they arrived, but now flailed her hands in front of the controls. "I... don't really understand this. I could barely figure out how to make it go. I think... we're going to fall."

Theo scrambled over into the front seat, desperately grasping the controls as they began to plummet. Beneath the silvery hood, there were a number of metal spheres set against a wooden panel. They'd no doubt be linked to the primary sublime materials by thin lines, though he hadn't ever explored the art of crafting such things.

Fortunately, the spheres weren't so different from the old Deuxan vehicles he remembered, and they were designed to be idiot-friendly for lazy nobles. The sublime materials built into the floor couldn't keep the sleigh this high for long, but if he slowed their fall with gravitational fields and increased the buffer as much as possible when they landed...

The sleigh scraped against the ground, but other than a falling piece of gilding, the impact didn't do any damage. Above all, it continued to slide forward above the ground, its primary function uninhibited. Theo grinned and turned it around, heading toward the Tatian gate at full speed.

"Is this fair play?" Nauda asked. "If you can 'hunt' anything during the event, is this ours now?"

"That might be the letter of the law, but would you count on them to follow it?" Theo glanced behind them, checking for any pursuit, but there was no sign and even if Esaire acted immediately, he would be severely delayed. "No, the game is over. Our goal now is to get beyond his reach."

"But our sleigh..." Fiyu abruptly smiled. "Oh, we're just going to use his sleigh."

"That's right. No weapons, but the defenses aren't bad, and it's very fast. This is better than anything we could have afforded."

"But all the Silver Crowns we worked so hard for..."

Nauda shook her head with a smile. "We'll need to buy other things. It will be nice not to be so poor for once."

Theo nodded his agreement, and he couldn't help but smile along with the others. For a time, they simply raced forward, enjoying the ride as the sleigh shielded much of the air rushing past them. Fiyu confirmed that she had retrieved Nauda's fallen weapon, so they hadn't lost anything during the fight except their last rainhorn, which they no longer needed.

For now, they had time to breathe. But once they got back to the city of Nlukoko, they would need a plan.