*Ttring*

The pure and clear bell chime resonated softly in Rune’s ears. It wasn’t an incredibly distracting sound, just seemingly ever present.

What could Rune do, the heat distorted his vision making his eyes unreliable. At this point Vera had naturally used her power to bend light and hide her body making it impossible for Rune to catch sight of her regardless of the heat.

Vera smirked mischievously as she directed her powers to increasing the sound of the bell’s ring, her plan was simple, she would overpower each of Rune’s senses before finishing him off in a single quick action.

This is the way that a true fox-kin fights. Deception and treachery are natural, after all foxes are not the same as wolves who attack their enemy in groups. A fox-kin’s battle is one with style, a scene with a certain mystifying substance. Not only does a fox rob one of their senses and alter their perceptions a fox also terrifies with their presence. They inspire fear.

This was the first time Rune had truly fought a member of the fox tribe, and naturally he was unprepared for it. While Tera’s lessons on survival were useful they hadn’t included many methods of how to break apart illusions. That of course is something to be expected considering the harshness of Rune’s upbringing, it was no stretch of the mind to assume if taught how to break out of illusions, the specialty of Fox-kin, that Rune may have attempted to run away.

*Ttring*

The gentle chime carried a hint of malevolence as its pitch ceaselessly increased. It was time for the next stage in Vera’s plan. The young miss effortlessly opened her fan once again displaying the illustrious moon illustration, however now the image seemed to have changed, instead of an all encompassing silvery figure a thread of darkness began to encroach upon the image’s innate perfection. Like tiny threads of spider silk the darkness congealed in the moon’s center in a shape that Vera herself couldn’t read, yet if Rune could see it he’d have recognized it to be the symbol for water in a certain eastern dialect (水).

Rain began to fall, quelling the wrath of the spears. Thick layers of mist flooded the arena. From the time he avoided the blazing spears till now Rune had not taken a single step from where he stood. There wasn’t much that he could do within the heat haze but mist was different.

While stuck in the heat haze Rune was forced to suffer through distortions of his perception of vision, he couldn’t trust himself to identify anything correctly but now with the mist existing instead of the heat waves Rune found that his vision was completely unhindered.

Now that his vision was secured it was time for Rune to take action. In an instant Rune gathered senki into his legs and made an enormous leap into the air far higher than the mist could cover.

He had gotten away from the mist but was now confronted with the fact that he was still unable to locate Vera. He knew instinctively that if he were to be trapped within the mist again that he wouldn’t be able to get out again. What could he do then? There was only one option left to him, to disperse the mist somehow.

For someone like Rune whose training was mostly centered around physical strength there weren’t very many options available for him to exploit. The young man knew that the only way to clear out the mist would be to use an attack with a large area of effect.

Seeing her prey escape her trap, even if only momentarily, only served to annoy the young fox princess. Without a moment’s delay Vera once again called up prana from her Astral haven, this time channeling it to her free hand to create a second fan. Vera hastily opened the two fans, the fan in her dominant hand displayed the symbol for water (水) and the non-dominant the symbol for light (光). Using the two fans as a medium Vera began bending the elements, in less than a second she had created two clones of herself by manipulating the mist to create a basic body and the bending the light around them in order to mimic her form.

The young girl flicked her wrist, closing the fan in her dominant hand. The two clones jumped high in pursuit of Rune

Rune tensed as he saw what appeared to be two Veras flying out from within the mist. Immediately he firmed his resolve and decided to try out an ability that he had recently acquired. With a mighty huff the young man breathed a large gulp of air into his lungs before processing it using his senki and releasing it as waves of billowing fire in a manner reminiscent of the final attack of the final desperate attack of the Hellfire Grizzly, dispersing the now apparent clones. This however had no effect on the mist. He tries again this time with the intention to condense the waves of combustion into a singular blast to make a fireball, even with his clumsy control of senki and last minute adjustments he somehow manages to create the correct effect and the explosion caused by the fireball was enough to disperse the rolling mist.

Vera, was inwardly shocked to see that Rune could breathe fire, an ability which by all rights shouldn’t have been possible for him considering the fact that he still had no tails and simply shouldn’t have been possible for him otherwise. This astonishment however was short lived as she simply did not have the time to worry about something that she wouldn’t be able to make sense of.

Rune, seeing his fireball disperse the mist lands, and begins to scan the scene for traces of Vera. In his ears the familiar sound of a bell chimes.

*Ttring*

It was a clear sound, with no obstructions and under normal circumstances may even have been considered calming like the lull of a snowflake’s descent, but to Rune the sound was a warning of an unavoidable doom.

*Ttring*

The bell sounded once more, but this time Rune was not conscious to hear it.