“Good to know Rainshear pushed for equal ground.” Metea/Irric muttered as the world stilled. They stood in an arena made of glass, with banners all around depicting what Elach assumed were the strongest patrons in the glacier; Glasrime’s inner circle. The floor under them was still glass, but it squished under Elach’s shoes like it was grass. A bizarre mixture of visual and kinetic feedback, but Elach was relieved he wouldn’t be sliced to ribbons if he tripped and fell. Not by the turf.

The enemy’s representative made a gesture in the air, and a smaller section of the arena was cut off by deep black and red gouges along the turf. Benches appeared a few feet away and in mirrored positions on either side, and three people Elach could actually get a slightly better look at moved to sit at the further one. They wore what he thought was the same style of shirt as the others, but on closer inspection they were loose-fitting uniforms made for combat that just looked like standard short sleeve shirts and mid-calf length pants.

“I can’t see any manifestations on them.” Sechen said as she leaned forward to get a better look. “That’s good, right?”

Metea/Irric sat down on the bench and crossed her legs. “That means they’ve toned down the obscurity technique a little for us. So we don’t call foul afterwards since we can’t identify our opponents.”

“At least they’re disincentivized from killing us.” Elach said, taking a seat on one side of Metea/Irric. Sechen took the other side.

“That rule isn’t there to help us. None of them are.” Metea/Irric grumbled. “All the ones they aren’t telling us, since they don’t technically have to, will be there to screw us over. And the death one in specific? That’s to stop me.”

“Stop you from killing them?” Elach asked.

“To stop me at killing one of them.” Metea/Irric growled, her mouth set in a grim line.

Before Elach could say anything else, the enemy’s representative spoke up.

“Send forth your first contender.”

Metea/Irric abruptly stood, smiling sadly at Elach before turning to do the same to Sechen. “I’ll try to do as much damage as I can before they knock me out. If I get destroyed out there before I weaken the bastards… just surrender. It’s not worth all of us throwing our lives away when I’m already doomed.”

Elach looked at Sechen, and was relieved to see his resolve mirrored in her expression. She solemnly nodded to him, then they both wordlessly watched Metea/Irric walk into the arena. To fight for life, freedom, and the futures of one manifestation and one half-manifestation.

“You have any tricks up your sleeves?” Sechen asked, her hands clenched together so tightly Elach could see them shaking.

“I have one thing.” Elach admitted. “But it’s a last resort. I’d tell you what it was, but…”

“Yeah, don’t want our hosts eavesdropping.” Sechen muttered. “What happened to that bird that ate breakfast with us?”

“I’m not taking my bird to a fight to the almost-death.” Elach said, pretending to be taken aback. “They’re in the safest place they could be right now.”

Sechen raised an eyebrow, then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth fighting to get the information out of Elach. She sighed and turned to watch as Metea/Irric and her opponent, someone that Elach could only describe as the most nondescript man in bright pink and raspberry red clothes he’d ever seen. He couldn’t so much as feel the man’s Issi, but he realized he couldn’t feel anyone’s Issi aside from Sechen’s. Everyone else emitted next to nothing, their signatures lost in a haze he couldn’t make heads or tails of.

“You have five minutes. Begin.”

Metea/Irric’s opponent didn’t hesitate, blurring out of view and reappearing not a moment later to Metea/Irric’s right. He lashed out with a fist aimed right at her ribs, a technique that rippled with bright yellow Issi and jagged orange lines shooting through it.

In an equally short time, Metea/Irric kicked up a whirl of wind and water that spun outwards, biting into the man’s hand and forcing him to zip away with a yelp of pain and surprise. He shook his hand, his skin peeling and blood running between his knuckles, looking at Metea/Irric with something like a mixture of disdain and grudging respect as she stared directly back at him, her face an unreadable mask.

Metea/Irric moved her head just a tad to the right as her opponent blurred again, three lines of yellow and orange speeding from where he was standing to converge on Metea/Irric. A blast of wind shredded the incoming Issi without so much as a wave of Metea/Irric’s hand, then her head snapped to the left as she came face to face with her opponent. His shock at being matched in speed was obvious, but his adrenaline-filled retreat at his left leg being smashed from a single kick from Metea/Irric that carried an absurd weight behind it overwhelmed the shock as he reappeared once more on the other side of the arena, the damage Metea/Irric had done somehow already mostly healed.

“He’s done for.” Sechen said, her voice tinged with just a little hope. “He had to use a lot of Issi to fix himself, and she barely used any.”

“I’m guessing he’s got a speed Issi seed?” Elach said as Metea/Irric’s nameless opponent tried a different approach, this time coming at her from above with a blow that Elach expected would have made a sizable dent in the glass turf. Instead Metea/Irric met the blow head on with an open palm, letting her arm be pushed back for a moment before slamming the practitioner down to the ground with an impact that had Elach wincing in sympathy.

“Yup. And since he’s not fast or skilled enough to still the air around himself, Metea/Irric has an unbeatable advantage.” Sechen put her fists up to her head, thumbs to her temples, and stretched out her index fingers to mimic horns. “Her horns are so sensitive to vibrations in the air that she can hear you clearly during a tornado.”

“Wouldn’t that mess something that sensitive up?”

“Not when you supplement it with near mastery over wind Issi. Which, when you think about it, is really just air Issi with a touch of movement Issi added to it. Makes you wonder if that’s how all Issi types are made; someone combined two other types and got a third, then passed that down to their apprentices.” Sechen mused, then shook her head and laughed a little too loudly. “Damned nervous rambling. What I meant is that Metea/Irric could hear a pin drop in a nail storm.”

Metea/Irric’s opponent tried multiple more attacks without success, the most damage he managed to get in being from a shard of glass that got kicked up by his attack that sliced across Metea/Irric’s upper arm. He stood at the other side of the arena breathing short, terrified breaths, and looked to the other two people on his bench before nodding to and readying himself for whatever he was about to do.

“Five minutes are up. The thirty second relief period begins now.”

Metea/Irric looked back at Elach and Sechen, shot them a nervous smile then turned back without moving an inch. She wasn’t leaving that arena until she was forced to, Elach realized, and it was all to protect him and Sechen. Even when it was her life on the line.

Fifty minutes later, Metea/Irric was running on fumes. Her opponents weren’t faring much better, all three of them sporting various injuries ranging from skinned knees and stubbed toes to a lack of leg skin and having all their arm bones shattered to dust. Someone that Elach thought was a rather tall woman was cradling her jaw with her good hand, what few teeth remained in her mouth cracked and bloody while the rest littered the floor around Metea/Irric.

Metea/Irric let out a long, shaky breath, her previously solid cloud-like horns looking more and more like wispy clouds on a sunny day. The blue line running down her neck was so light it had almost faded to white, and Metea/Irric wobbled unsteadily on her feet like a drunk kicked to the curb after a particularly hard night. And that wasn’t even touching on her actual injuries, the likes of which Elach couldn’t even begin to describe without wincing in sympathy.

The same things Elach didn’t bat an eye at on Metea/Irric’s opponents bothered him immensely on Metea/Irric, and all he wanted to do was jump in there and take over for her. But even after an hour of harsh combat, Elach didn’t think he could win against the guy with two broken legs and more blood running down his forehead than in his head.

The guy who’d started all this off limped back into the arena with a grim determination set on his face, coughing up blood as he took his place across from Metea/Irric and tried to call on his Issi. Elach felt the nails on a chalkboard sensation of someone scraping the last of their Issi from their container, and a yellow and orange aura engulfed the man’s legs to help keep him standing. He took in a deep breath, locked eyes with Metea/Irric, and at the exclamation from the enemy’s representative, blurred forward until he was standing right in front of Metea/Irric. She swiped downward with her hand, a blade of wet wind lancing down just in front of her to meet her opponent’s advance, just like she’d done so many times before.

But this time, something was different. Metea/Irric seemed to notice it at the same time Elach did, her posture twisting to try and divert her attack to somewhere, anywhere, else as it fell directly onto, and through, the man. It split him from shoulder to rib without any resistance. His body slammed into Metea/Irric as it continued forward postmortem, his Issi dissipating into the air as his blood soaked into the ground below. Metea/Irric’s pendant died out under the spray of Issi-rich blood, and her mannerisms instantly switched to what she was like under Rainshear’s control.

“Contestant Metea/Irric has slain contestant Jerem.” The representative said in a mournful voice. “For the crime of killing one of our own, contestant Metea/Irric forfeits her right to compete and we send forth another to take his place, unbound by the power restrictions placed on this contest.”

Sechen muttered a terrified curse that Elach only heard part of, as he was already dipping into his headspace to get ready for his turn. No matter what, this would be the last time he saw Sechen and Metea/Irric, and he didn’t want his last memories of them to be in chains or caskets.

Flow let out a few noises that sounded like the low rumblings of a crocodile as he appeared in his headspace, the anger rolling off of them as they ruffled their feathers and spread their wings in an attempt at intimidation.

“I know. Things went sideways.” Elach said as he bent down under the fountain, grabbing a bottle of existential bleed and standing back up. “I’m going to need all the help I can get. Do you think any of your songs will make me stronger out there?”

Flow nodded, paused, then vigorously shook their head.

“They would help, but not when I have no idea how to use them?” Elach interpreted, surprised as usual at how much he derived from Flow’s actions. “Then let’s hope the bleed and the nectars are enough.”

Flow rumbled in agreement, and Elach took as long a drink from the two halves of the fountain as he could, until he physically couldn’t force any more down his throat. Coughing as he undid the bottle, Elach looked at Flow and sighed.

“We had fun here, didn’t we?”

Flow shook their head and grumbled.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Elach chuckled. “It was pretty terrible. But hey, at least we made a few sort-of-friends we’ll never see again. Bottoms up.”

Elach chugged the bottle of existential bleed, and almost instantly it tried to rip him away from reality. But he forced it down, the effects somewhat lessened thanks to the fact that he’d already done this once. He didn’t know where the confidence that he could suppress the dissociative effects of the bleed came from, but Elach now knew he could hold on for a little bit. An hour, maybe ninety minutes if he never lost control.

It would have to be enough.