Callie's match, the last one, wasn't ready right after Benny's. We had a little while to digest the battles and think over what had happened, as well as strategize for her match. From what Alden had said, this one was going to be the toughest for any of us to manage. Benny and I were in at this point, if a single fight was enough. We'd proven ourselves, but more importantly, we'd learned. These had been huge growth opportunities for both Benny and me, and Callie was excitedly trying to figure out how to get the most of her own match now.

"So how do I beat up the wind?" She said, not bothering to sugar coat her intentions at all. At my loud snicker she just rolled her eyes. "Don't laugh at me. It's a totally reasonable question, this guy can turn into air, that's going to be damn hard to counter. Any ideas would be appreciated so I don't make an entire damn fool of myself. I don't want to be the only one of us who can't hack it in one of these fights. Based on how impressed Alden has seemed we have a solid chance of making it into the inner circle if we can prove ourselves."

I exhaled loudly. "Yeah, but I don't have any real ideas. I think that's kind of the point. You need to have whatever epiphany Alden was hoping for on your own. Learning is part of what impresses him. He's looking at potential not just combat ability. I can't give you an answer or I might blow it for you. But if you want to talk it out for us we'd be happy to listen and let you bounce ideas off us." I looked at Benny speculatively. "Well, I would. Benny has the attention span of a goldfish, it's even odds he doesn't even remember what the beginning of this sentence was about."

Benny flipped me off, his hands having been healed up by Jessie, who was now trying hard not to giggle at his put out expression as she spectated our sniping like a sports match. He growled out. "Ok first off, fuck you very much, secondly, I have a higher Focus than you shit for brains, which means I have a better memory, though I wouldn't have expected you to have remembered even that much you muscle brained baboon."

I gave a malicious grin that was so obvious in my voice I didn't need to let him see it to know he knew what the look on my face was. "Sorry, that just sounds like sour grapes. I think you're holding grudges because you're so scrawny. Even your enemies are commenting on it. It's ok though little man. I don't hold it against you. I think it's admirable that you've dedicated yourself to intellectual enlightenment to make up for your shrimpy underdeveloped body. Only forty Might? Your Focus is like twelve higher than mine, but I've got more than double your Might. Do you even lift?"

His face was a picture of righteous indignation as he gaped at me offendedly. "Alright, we don't have time for this. If you aren't going to help at least don't waste my damn time." Callie said in exasperation. Benny and I broke off our back and forth with a pair of matching unrepentant grins. Alden called Callie down in the background, ready to start the last of our matches. She leaned up and planted a kiss on my mask. "Alright babe, looks like I'm up. I was going to try to bounce a plan off you but it was pretty bare bones anyway. Just watch how I do this."

I smiled down at her, glad for my mask so she couldn't see the embarrassed flush on my face from burning her strategizing time bickering with Benny. She didn't seem mad though, just fondly exasperated as she hopped gracefully down from the seats to stroll across the dirt ring to fight her opponent. As she did, I thought over the Pavilion as a whole. This place was a blast. Constant training and combat, constant improvement. Despite that everyone seemed pretty nice, the sole requirement was dedication to getting stronger.

It just highlighted how complex people could be. I hadn't expected everyone to be so friendly and accepting in what was essentially a giant pit fighting club. Callie reached the center of the circle, turning to smile at Alden in concern. "So any extra notes for me? I think I have a grasp on the rules, but our fight is going to be a bit less restrained I think, so I wanted to check out what we need to keep in my for energy attacks and things like that. Don't want to hurt the audience by mistake."

"Not something to worry about." The bearded man laughed. "It may not be obvious but we have protections in place to stop the fights from spilling out of the ring by accident. That's what this place is for after all. Go wild, you don't need to worry about us. For fights like this I want you both to keep in mind that giving up is better done sooner than later. I can't and won't force you, but it's extremely difficult to predict the outcome of overpowered blasts. If you feel you're in danger you should stop, because as with any fight we can't assure you of safety."

Callie nodded, and her costume began to activate, making her harder to see or pay attention to. The other man, a five foot six inch man with a mostly blank green mask and a hooded green robe, also gave a solemn nod, piercing eyes never leaving Callie through the only two holes in the jade surface of his face covering. With the out of the way, Alden gestured for them to begin and stepped back out of the way.

Callie had been refining her new shadow manipulation technique every possible chance, and she'd shown me some of it. I expected her to use her snowflakes, but she didn't start off with those. Her costume made her hard to see and focus on, and the effect was ultimately based on shadows, so she was able to somewhat recreate it with pure constructs. Callie raised a hand, blanketing the area with darkness, and then letting it fall away to reveal thirteen identical copies of her, all with that exact same effect.

I blinked. I hadn't know her fine control was that good. Snowflakes were one thing, but people had lots of details, it was impressive she could make those copies. Then I realized she wasn't. She was using the difficult to see nature of the costume as a crutch to allow her copies to be less complete. She'd clothed both them and herself in a shroud of nearly smoke like shadows, and the insubstantial configuration managed to cover the lack of details. She wasn't capable of making perfect copies of herself, but she didn't need to be.

Gust didn't speak, just lashed out with a hand, sending a series of cutting windblades toward her. Windblades that were jerked aside as he was forced to turn insubstantial and avoid the spears of darkness stretching up from the shadow beneath him. Callie had shifted the shadows cast by her insubstantial clones to crisscross the areas around where he was standing just subtly enough that it had been easy to miss when distracted by her copies.

Her stab didn't hit him though, and even thrown off the wind blades managed to disperse two of the shadows, leaving her with only eleven. Still, I was damn impressed. Callie had used that burst of dark at the beginning to lay down several concurrent traps. Shadow manipulation had clearly given her the control to truly start taking advantage of her experience and tactical acumen.

The wind whipped around the ring, circling, and Callie watched calmly as her opponent failed to appear. Suddenly she whipped out both hands, as did the copies, and shadows darted between their fingers, thin as razor wire. They wrapped and connected the lines, creating a tapestry of sharpened shadow thread that spread through the ring like a spider web. It was impossible to tell from looking which one was the real one, all of them acting on concert. Callie's ability to put her stats to use now was staggering. That one Skill had qualitatively improved her combat ability by leaps and bounds.

With no place to reform in the ring itself, Gust was forced to manifest as an insubstantial wraithlike entity above the field of shadows lines. I was guessing he couldn't actually remain as wind for more than a few seconds based on the timing. It would have been much better to wait for an opening, but being made of air was probably a trump card more than a normal part of his toolkit. That at least showed he was taking Callie seriously.

Sadly, that meant the next move was a wave of raining wind blades. I'd have expected that tactic to be frowned on in a place so dedicated to combat mastery, but then again, Alden had said that Gust leaned on his powers too heavily. Still, I was in awe at the control and fluidity he was showing with the attacks. Every wind blade was carefully aimed and calculated to hit exactly where it would to the most damage, and I even saw several of them adjust midair. Whatever this guy's Focus was, it was damn sure higher than mine was.

The rain of wind cutters smashed down on the ring. I saw several of them cleaved in half when they hit the razor wire shadows, but the shadows shattered when they hit as well. Several of them managed to avoid the defensive net that Callie's shadow doubles had thrown up into the air at the start of the attack, managing to submerge themselves more completely in the hanging strands to prevent them from getting sniped from above the netting. The ones that managed to get through tore holes in the shadows, dispersing most of them.

By the time the attack was done there were only three doubles left, and the spiderweb of shadows had been mostly torn apart in the attack. The three Callie's darted into the center, each of them flicking their hands in a weaving gesture to pull the strings into a powerful dome shield over top of them, blocking them all from sight under a half sphere of pure darkness. There was no movement from the shield for a minute or two, and Gust just waited for a while, clearly expecting her to come out or attack or something similar so he could find an opening to exploit.

Nothing of the sort happened. Callie just stayed under there, taking shelter in the shield, and Gust eventually began to descend. His translucent form had become more substantial as he lowered himself down, his shadow growing as he approached the solid earth, until his feet eventually touched down on the hard packed dirt. That wind form was probably pretty energy intensive, and keeping it up during such an obvious lull would be a waste of energy. Callie wasn't giving in, that much was clear.

Gust stalked forward, raising his arms, and began hammering blast of compressed air like hammers into the shadow dome. It creaked, then began to buckle, eventually being torn apart. As soon as it breached though there was a massive explosion of shadow energy as a pressurized blast of the stuff poured out of the hole like a waterfall and smashed Gust longways across the ring, smashing him into the barrier at the edge. The rest of the dome dissolved, leaving behind...nothing. It was empty.

None of the Callie's who had been inside were remaining which could only mean that she'd never really been there. There was a disturbance on the ground near where he'd touched down, and Callie stood up. She brushed the dirt off her coat as the visibility returned and the smoky veil of shadow making her identical to her doubles flaked off. She'd used his growing shadow during the descent as cover to burrow out under the shield using her shadow construct to dig through the dirt, completely covered in a layer of shadow to obscure her, then she must have dispersed the doubles and used the energy to create a high pressure environment. She turned and gave me a wave and I laughed loudly. That girl definitely had style.