The difference between overwhelming victory and crushing defeat when facing someone stronger than you could be chalked up to two primary factors— anticipation and imagination.

The first was a more generic thing, and more often than not, often a deciding factor in a fight. It didn’t matter how badass you were. If you didn’t see it coming, you couldn’t do anything about it.

The second was more distinct when facing spiritists, or any being capable of pulling the elemental power of Creation itself. They could bring forth damned near anything they could imagine with which to attack you. If you didn’t keep an eye open for surprises or constantly prepare for ways to counter them, you’d lose.

Plain and simple.

Fully three-fourths of his training with Inanna had been about facing someone stronger than him, faster than him, and way more experienced than him. Sure, the goddess had been grooming him to become her attack dog, and she had not hesitated to hardball when it mattered. Which it always did. Tanya, when completely under the influence of the Other, could probably hand him his ass, but even she would know that she had been in a fight, even so.

But Tanya was different.

Tanya had the opposite problem to deal with. She had too much power. She was always on the predator side of the playing board. The one that always had to deal with precision and restraint to keep herself hidden. She was used to shying away from power, which was what subconsciously allowed the Frost persona to gain a dominant edge over her personality. She was used to channeling as little as possible to gain maximum efficiency.

A sniper.

So when she faced someone that had power on the same level as her, plus a bag of tricks under his sleeve, she was found wanting.

And it was starting to show.

“The ax is very good,” Lukas heard her say, casually sauntering towards him, her entire body oozing with power. Had she been a little more conscious, she’d have realized that she was fighting someone that went out of his way to avoid using his kami’s power and was instead battling her using alternative methods. Had she thought about it a bit more deeply, she’d have remembered the possible avenues of attack that Lukas had surprised her with time and time around.

“But,” She went on, “if you cannot cut me in half with it, it’s little more than a sharp implement.”

Lukas grinned, watching the Screen display the transition he was undergoing inside. Had this been the old Lukas, he would have felt extreme disorientation and complete loss of voluntary control. Now? It was almost like he was drawing on the skills and the instincts of another, which could catch him off-guard if he allowed them a window of opportunity.

Whatever Inanna had done to him during the resurrection, it had worked.

He turned inward and focussed on separating the energies. Positive and negative. Cations and Anions. Yin and Yang. The trick was to create an imbalance between them. The natural order of things would want the energy to restore balance, and in a moment, the two energies come crashing into each other. All he needed to do was to carefully adjust the source and the destination, and the rest would follow.

Lukas didn’t need to look up to feel the sudden shift around him. He could feel the growing mandala of power above them, kept at bay by nothing save his powers.

“I suppose you are right,” He replied with a sly grin, “Allow me to make that up for you.”

And then a bolt of lightning came streaking down the heavens like the hammer of God.

Right at Tanya.

There was a flare of light so intense that even Lukas staggered back, dropping to one knee, while everything in the vicinity was blown away. Blinking his eyes against the dazzling leftover image of the lightning bolt, he saw Tanya’s slender body arch into a bow, curling around the spot where the lightning had struck her, her long, thin-fingered hands clenched around a ball of white-hot vacuum, the edges of her nails blackening and smoking with the heat. Then, with a wail of pure, terrifying scorn, she straightened again and sent that ball of intense nothingness raging back at the lightning, devouring its power while pushing it backward, resulting in an apocalyptic detonation.

Shit.

Lukas gave himself a stern reminder not to piss her off.

When the gale of dust and fire had dissipated, Lukas found Tanya standing, her face splattered with deep, maroon blood, twisted in a scornful snarl. Her eyes were glacial white, and even her hair had undergone a change, now appearing white as snow.

“You do that one more time,” She snarled, “and I’ll kill you.”

Lukas swallowed. “Noted.”

“...Heh!” Her lips broke into a soft chuckle before her eyes closed.

Tanya fell down to the ground.

Ezzeron dissipated.

The battle was over.

The next two days remained a montage in his head.

He vaguely remembered standing by and gazing at the crowd of soldiers standing at the edge of the gallery, at Banksi and Bergott’s faces who stared at him with awe and a healthy bout of fear, at Tanya who was down upon the ground, completely spent and unconscious. He remembered Arah dissipating away and returning to him, while the Monster Prototype he had activated returned control back to him and hid back into the deepest recesses of his mind. He vaguely remembered grinning at Banksi and asking if it was a fun show, before dropping face-first on the ground, after which several people had pulled him up and taken him somewhere.

And then he had woken up and found himself sleeping on a rather large and comfortable bed in the Banksi Mansion.

“Ah, you’re awake,” came a voice from the doorway.

Lukas rubbed his eyes and glanced further, and found himself staring into Elena’s face. She looked… well, not cadaverous, but well enough to count as one. Her face was almost sunken to inhuman proportions. Her bright eyes had gained a sort of… darkness in them, and her teeth looked unnaturally sharp. Her arm looked nothing but bone and sinew with skin stretched over them, and her elbows were swollen.

It probably helped that she wasn’t looking at him like he was food, or else he’d have concluded that he had met his first zombie in this world.

“Eh…” He began, his speech halting, “what the hell happened to you?”

Elena tilted her head back and chuckled. Or cackled. He wasn’t sure which. It was a dull, brittle sound, like the edge of a rusted knife. “You did.”

Lukas stared at her dully. “I don’t understand.”

She grunted. “I’m a changeling. That means I’m incredibly sensitive to shifts in energy. Add in my delay in morphing, and… Joey, I suppose, makes things a little complicated for me. When you, and I suppose Tanya, radiated out all that power, something—” she paused, “Joey reacted to it. This… is the result.”

Lukas had no clue what or who this Joey was, but he assumed it had something to do with the swirling, alien energy that seemed ever present around her. Now that he noticed it, the energy was no longer there. No, it was still there, only far more… mixed into Elena’s being.

Corrupting her.

Making her… different.

More. Less. Maybe both.

“And what is happening to you?”

Elena shrugged. “No clue. Maybe it’s the morphing. Maybe it's Joey. Maybe…. Something else. It started with the match and has been going on ever since. I can feel the changes in me twisting things. Whatever happens to me at the end of it, we’ll just have to wait and watch.”

“And you’re just— and Banksi—”

Elena laughed. “Zuken is a bit busy with everything that is going on. Plus, there is nothing he can do. A changeling’s morphing is a personal thing. Any alterations from outside can have severe effects. Besides, Zuken has a ton of things to take care of, especially with how the match turned out.”

Lukas swallowed. “And… Tanya?”

The half-smile dropped from Elena’s face. “She’s living here. But she’s changed. Become…. Colder. Like she was when I first met you in that cavern. I think using all that power had an adverse effect on her.”

Lukas frowned. “Is she going to be in trouble?”

“Not physical trouble,” Elena confirmed, “the battle was shocking on multiple levels, and several nobles were agitated at the thought of seeing an unbound kami in action. But everyone noticed that even unbound, Ezzeron was well restrained within Tanya’s hold. So I suppose that speaks well of her. No, the real problem is something else.”

And then Elena looked, like really looked at him.

“You know who she is, right? Who she really is?”

“She—” Lukas gasped.

“Don’t bother lying,” Elena snapped. The area in her immediate vicinity darkened as if the light falling on it had suddenly become less. Lukas could feel a sudden tilt of gravity around her. It made him wonder exactly what it was Elena was becoming.

“I have sensed you on her. A mark that I cannot comprehend but sense. A blessing, if I believe in Olfric’s ramblings about you being a demigod, though I’d call it a curse. But whatever it is, it keeps her, herself. Or it did. But now… Now—”

“Is she awake?”

Elena stared at him for several precious seconds before nodding. “Yes. But only just. She is not responding to anyone, not that anyone can get any close to her. The entire room is as cold as a glacier.”

Shit.

“I need to see her.”

Elena met his eyes. “I thought you might. Follow me.”

She turned around and left the room, with Lukas sprinting after her.