Perhaps, this was not as one-sided as Athemia first believed. Her arm swings, the heavy axe clutched in her fingers snapping through the air before she sees the attack coming. There is no other way to be about it.

She only catches the crash in the aftermath, her mind racing to keep up with the flow of combat. Metal crates at the side of the room groan, knocked back by the figure tumbling into them before falling still. Then, she registers what happened, that woman leaping at her from a dead standstill, the slightest shift of her foot the only indication of her attack. The woman's eyes dart sideways, the seemingly unbreakable nails on the ends of her hands cutting upward to intersect the axehead while her other hand lashes out. Then, she feels the pain, the shallow cut across her neck from where the nails nicked her, sees the three grooves cut into the head of her axe, joining the others.

The blade of the weapon groans with each movement, cracks spreading up from multiple spots, the metal almost cut into separate pieces now. The floor beneath her feet shudders as she drops the weapon. Keeping her eyes trained on the shifting shadow moving behind the boxes, Athemia retrieves a sword, something she can wield easily with one hand and that won't constrain her too much given the cramped quarters of the battle. A shield, a huge slab of tangled and scaled hide, squeezes onto her left arm.

Inside her gloves, her sweaty hands rub against the leather, her grip on her weapons still tight. The unknown woman pulls herself up, shoving one of the metal crates aside as she growls back to her feet. The commander had warned her before assigning her to guard this room that an attack would likely come, that those who came to destroy the crystal would appear to be people but were anything but.

Athemia has to admit that she hadn't lent that talk much credence. All of her life, she has heard people speak about others like they weren't real beings, like they were some kind of lower life. It had been her biggest anxiety about coming here, to the empire, that one day some prissy elf would confiscate her identification papers and turn her life into a nightmare. She knew those people existed, that had she been just a bit less powerful, a bit less useful, that thing might have well happened.

So, it surprises her a bit when she finds herself beginning to agree with Illigar's warning. This woman in front of her was faster than Athemia, far faster, likely stronger too. She has a power to her far too strange to be one of the endowed and far too narrow to be an essentia magician. Other realms of power existed out there, someone as travelled as Athemia knows that well, but that doesn't strike her as the answer either.

Because, despite all the speed, despite the ability to take multiple hits and keep getting back up, and despite having the advantage that Athemia couldn't move far from the gem, the woman wasn't winning. The pair has exchanged dozens of blows by now, and one thing stands out to Athemia: this woman has never truly been in a fight. Her attacks are overly simplistic, head-on, no thought to how her opponent might react. She merely jumped in, her eyes chining like crimson orbs, aiming to kill Athemia in a single blow.

It was not the way that that the woman quickly regenerated from her wounds, the way her eyes glowed with an otherworldly light, nor even how her skin seemed to become more and more sallow as the battle drug on that began to convince Athemia that this opponent might truly be a monster disguised as a person. It was Athemia's unwillingness to accept that someone could become as powerful as this creature without knowing how to handle themselves in a life-or-death struggle. Well, except for the empowered nobility, but this being was most definitely not one of those.

"What is your name?" Athemia asks, her fingers flexing on the pommel of her blade.

"Why would I give it to a dead woman?" the woman replies.

Athemia levels her blade, sliding the edge along the rim of her shield. "My name is Athemia, aspirant of Kelgee, champion of Hanafaedo. I stand before you, refusing to move. Tonight is the night that will be your last, your life ended by my blade."

The woman blinks, smiling with strange teeth. "My name, my name is Kessa. You will die down here, and I will eat your soul. No one will know about it, and your name will be forgotten. I've already forgotten it."

Athemia quirks an eyebrow at that, raising her heels from the floor a quarter of an inch, preparing for the next exchange. "Then come, Devil Kessa. You will live on past this night in memory, your death another cobblestone on the road that is my legend."

"You speak too much," Kessa says.

"Is it not…"

A fractional indication, just the slightest twitch in the calf. Danger screams in Athemia's mind, and for the first time since the battle began, she allows herself to slip into the battle fever. The world itself slows, the lights shifting through the room almost stopping as Athemia's mind accelerates to match the pace.

There the creature hangs, like a suspended marionette before her, fifteen feet in the air. Behind Kessa, a wave of force still ripples through the wall from where they jumped off ot it, attacking from a different angle this time.

Ever since completely discarding her mana when she allowed her teacher to insert the stint into her soul cage, the battle fever has become a double-edged sword. In some ways, it is too effective, seeming to stop time completely whenever Athemia does slip into it. She does not have the resources to maintain it for the interminable time between sword strokes, turning what had once been a great weapon into something unwieldy. That would pass one day, that is what her teacher promised anyway, and it had allowed her something that almost no first rank magicians can manage when moving to the second, the ability to control the evolution, to begin crafting her idealized form from the outset.

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The two combatants still frozen in the crystalline moment, a ghost of energy peels off of Athemia's body, a dark soul presence incapable of extending more than a hand's breadth from her body. Her muscles tense, the direction determined, her shoulder straining to rotate against the world where time had been made into stone. Athemia releases the battle fever, and the clash happens.

Kessa dives from the air, the claws extending from her fingers locked, trained on the sword that begins to swing. She has no way to avoid it while plummeting, the force of her jump off the wall sending her toward her target like a loosed arrow. She sees the magician before her having underestimated her strength, trading her larger weapon for a flimsy bar of steel. If the magician thought that she would be held off by a simple sword, she had another think coming.

Blind to the energy surrounding Athemia's arm, Kessa meets the swing of the sword in the air, her clawed hands touching perfectly with the side of the blade, intending to push it off target. Only, she can't. Surprise races through Kessa as she feels the downward stroke continue despite her immense strength pressing into its side. The image of a falling tree comes to her, an unimaginable weight falling straight down, impossible to divert. Kessa's left hand smashes into her chest, her claws stopping the sword from splitting her in two, but unable to stop the blade from biting across her as she is smashed into the ground.

For an instant, the world turns black, the crack of Kessa's skull ringing in her ears as her body bounces off the floor. She chokes in air, light returning for a bare instant, the glint of steel ringing warning bells in her ears. As if she were the same woman she was just a year ago, she flinches away, throwing her arms over her head as she leaps away. The pain is unimaginable, a bite of ringing cold that seems to reverberate through the chamber, the smell of dirty blood splashing into her nose.

Kessa hits the wall again, thrown there by her desperate jump away rather than the attack she just survived. Things are hazy more than ten feet away from her, but she spots the trail of blood in little dots across the floor, the armored woman a misty rust-colored form in the center of the room. Then, the burning starts to hit, and Kessa reaches for her right arm, wanting to constrict the wound, pressure it to stop bleeding. Only, her fingers grasp empty air.

Her eyes turn down, finding the torn sleeve on her right side hanging limp, her arm gone past her elbow. Kessa bites down on her anger, teeth cracking as she squeezes down on what is left of her arm, holding back tears that want to come.

Danger flashes in her mind, and she looks back up, finding the magician having taken four steps toward her. They both pause for a further moment, staring at one another.

"If you run away now, you might survive," Athemia says, sliding her back foot toward the crystal once more, never allowing her body to relax.

"Human," Kessa says it like a swear. "I am going to kill you now."

"You will try."

The next few minutes come in a furious exchange. The creature continues its mad diving, leaping forward at the magician, bounding off the walls and the ground like a madwoman, but the tempo has changed. Before, Athemia took blows, allowed her armor to be tagged, and suffered the minor strikes that might penetrate, but she feels that the measure of the creature has been taken. Lacking an arm, the strikes become even more predictable, and the method of attacking is narrowed.

Tens of marks accumulate on the shield, every few exchanges ending with a new score of blood decorating the chamber floor. Kessa never stays in close, never plants her feet to exchange melee with the armored warrior, always moving out again once her attacks fail to kill. Athemia sees it for the bait that it is; every dodge backward is an opportunity for her to press her advantage, to take a step away from protecting the crystal, to fail in her ultimate goal. As long as she remains vigilant, she knows that the outcome is inevitable.

Then, it comes, not in a mistake or a slip, but in the flicker of the eyes. With her lungs aching, the deep and steady breaths she forces herself to take playing counterpoint to the numbness stretching up her arm, Athemia catches a glance in the eyes of her opponent. For a moment, barely an instant, Kessa's eyes slide toward the crystal. Paths of attack, feints, and opportunities flash through Athemia's mind in the frozen moment. Her opponent opens herself up, throwing caution to the wind, but her positioning is wrong. She approaches from Athemia's guarded side, a lethal blow would be impossible with her shieldwork, but if the creature committed all of its power, it might manage to get through her to reach the crystal.

The warrior makes a choice, moving to the side to bring her shield up to intercept the attack, positioning her sword to skewer the monster. With her aura wrapping her form, her blows are made interminable; this will be the deciding moment.

As the world crawls forward, the light of the crystal behind her throws shadows across the room, she moves. Terror, primal fear, grabs hold of her heart like a vice in the moment she commits. In the fevered world, she tastes sweetgrass on her tongue, home, her life in peace.

Athemia's shield arm flies upward, the rim breaking into the wrist of the creature, but the resistance isn't there. With mounting horror, she sees her mistake as Kessa's body spins backward, its severed right arm pushing forward.

The entire right half of Kessa's body ripples, a transformation sliding over her side faster than even lightning can move. Her skin hardens, turning to the semi-transparent chitin of her claws, half her face disappearing beneath a sheet of the armor-like substance. From her severed arm, a new grows forth, the hand still coming into being concentrated to a point that aims toward Athemia's throat.

"Ah," she thinks, watching death approach a millisecond at a time, "My fault."

A weight like a wrathful god descends upon the chamber, a flood of crimson power clouding out all light in an instant. The revealed monster falters, its body being slapped into the metal floor like a gnat. Athemia barely keeps her feet, her knees slightly buckling beneath the sudden weight she has to carry. She refuses to lose her focus, even to this unforeseen circumstance, lashing out with her blade at the downed monster, nicking it in the side as it scurries away.

Kessa slides to a halt near the wall, her regrown arm cradling the new wound in her side. Both she and the warrior turn their eyes toward the entrance, while the entirety of the chamber groans beneath the weight of the presence that encompasses the room. A new magician stands there, flames dancing around her like a shroud, murder in her eyes.

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