Here it comes, the painful pulse, the sensation of his blood racing through his body. He feels it, feels it all, the movements of the world turning around him, the shift of each blade of grass blown into chaos by the power flying about, the way that each strand of hair on his head catches the wind in its unique way. The sensation could drive a man mad, has driven him mad before, but decades have given Illigar the fortitude to withstand it.

The blood on his hand coalesces into seventeen streams, drops running down his arm to pool at the end of his fingers. These creatures, these molded atrocities, are sturdy creatures. It might take a little more work than he is used to to take them apart.

The one in front of him, the monster wearing the guise of a dull-eyed boy, stares back, its eyes never leaving him, even when he tosses away the head of its comrade. A commendable instinct. Illigar steps forward, the earth trembling beneath the weight of his magic. He spares a glance toward the tree stretching into the crimson sky, considering. He could leave now, head to where the most powerful is, deal with that creature first, and allow his subordinates to handle things here.

It is what a smart man might do, but it felt like the wrong move to him all the same. The monster still stands there when he turns his attention back, a crude sword held in its hands.

"Why are you here?" he asks. "What is your goal?"

It squints, eyes flicking with thought. In the moment, the confusion of the battlefield falls silent around them, only a few present enough to watch the exchange.

"My goal?" Ferro says, keeping his blade levelled at the newcomer. "How strange, I don't think I ever considered that."

Such a strange sensation. Ferro sees Illigar dip slightly, his foot inching sideways. The world seems to slow, time freezing as his mind races to keep up with the stranger's movement, but it isn't enough. Illigar is before him before he can move his sword, the magician's hand reaching out, grabbing hold of his face. He feels weightlessness come over him as his body snaps with sudden motion, his limbs dragged backward by inertia as the magician flies forward twenty feet before smashing his head into the ground.

Shattering, the grounds themselves can't hold onto the force released by Illigar's slam. Ferro lashes out, flying stones turning to blades midair around him, catching air as the magician is no longer there. Pain explodes in Ferro's side as Illigar's boot meets his ribs. The air rushes past once more as he leaves the ground, his body crashing through the rim of the crater he was put into, spinning in the air before blowing through a stone wall.

He feels every bounce against the earth, feels bones inside his body crack as he rolls across the lawn. Finally, when he stops, sliding over the torn-up tiles of a footpath, he drags in a breath. Blood, his blood, falls from his lips as he pushes to his knees. His hands shake, snatching at the grass. When he looks up, he sees the dark figure walking closer, a lack of expression on his face.

"What is your goal here?" Illigar asks once again. He runs a finger across his cheek, finding a smear of crimson on his thumb from a shallow cut. The monster's summoned blades are wicked things.

Ferro smiles up from the ground, his teeth painted red. "You want to kill me," he says. There is a creaking in the way that he moves, his body pulling itself back together as he rises to stand. "I feel it. You want me dead, and I won't let you."

Sturdy, but Illigar already knew that. He considers unleashing his abilities for a moment, but there are too many weak people nearby. The collateral would be catastrophic. The guild told him that they thought these monsters were made somehow, that they could have been people at one time. If that is true, he could break it, turn its desire to live into his advantage. Yes, he sees it in the way the creature pulls itself to its feet, in the set of its shoulders. Luckily, he has experience in breaking the wills of people. It is a dangerous game, but it might be worth playing.

Ferro is the first to move, flinging his hand forward, the grass he pulled from the lawn changing to swords mid-flight. Illigar meets the attack head-on, punching forward, the air rippling and gaining momentum enough to break the flight of the blades, flinging them in all directions as he ducks into the opening made. His soul presence catches sight of it, bits of enchanted clay hiding in the shadow of the thrown swords. Thoughts turn, lightning racing through his mind in an instant–the stolen munitions.

Illigar thrusts out his hands, the air growing impossibly dense around him as the tiles detonate. A half dozen explosions blow the ground apart around him, small bits of shrapnel cutting through the bubble of air around him like it were made of molasses, their destructive power sapped until they hang limply in the air. The heat is far worse, a blossom of scorching force infecting the bubble of air and singing his bare face and hands. He turns, finding the monster just in front of him, its hand plunging forward into the hard air.

Air distorts around Ferro's hand, made so dense in the moment that the atmosphere itself begins to morph into shards of iron, like ice fractals growing from the monster's arm. Illigar sees the magic around its hand, feels the potency of Ferro's touch as his control over the space is contested and overwhelmed. But he is not impeded by the space. Illigar's foot collides with Ferro's stomach with the full weight of a house behind it. The heavy air explodes away as the monster's body soars upward as if shot from a catapult, spinning over itself as it sails.

Ferro's vision goes black for a moment, the world fading away to the rush of the wind around him. The pain never comes, never breaks the trance over him. Then, he is in the sky, looking down at the burning city below, a sea of red spreading out around him.

He reaches, reaches for the power inside of him. He is so close, he knows it as much as he knows anything. This was supposed to be his moment, when he claimed his life, when he became a person. He needed a fire, something to temper his soul against. He felt it first against that red-headed woman, something stirring in his heart like desire, pushing back against someone wanting to steal his life from him. These people, these mortals, were supposed to give that to him again. But this sage, its fire burns too hot. It turns his cooling steel to slag, tears away at the weapon he tries to make himself into.

As Ferro stares at the moon, his flight into the sky reaching its apex, Illigar appears there, a dark shadow against the moon. Ferro feels terror enter his heart then, feels as if he is a mouse caught in the gaze of a hawk. He flails out, reaching with his lethal touch for the magician, but manages to clutch only air. Illigar's hand crunches around his ankle, the bone shattering, as the man turns in the air, throwing Ferro back toward the ground.

Illigar watches from above, hovering in place in the red sky as the monster crashes once more to the ground, breaking through a fountain garden that sits relatively secluded from the combat. He waits, watching until he sees the creature's body begin to stir. When at last it opens its eyes, looking around from inside the gash of dirt cut through the stone, he begins to descend.

Illigar does not need to guess if he has succeeded when his feet alight on the broken brick of the garden. Ferro stares up at him with large eyes, his left arm bent in an awful direction, trying to push himself back away from Illigar.

"What…" Illigar begins.

"Stop!" Ferro cries out, his feet kicking at the dirt, trying to push himself away.

Illigar advances, the tension in his hands relaxing just the barest bit. He has seen this look before, the cornered rat, willing to chew off even its tail to survive. "What is your goal here?" he asks again.

"Stop! Stay back!" Ferro drags himself back from the ditch his body created in the garden, kicking away bricks as he tries to move. A snap from his knee forces him to stop as he falls back against the broken bricks littering the ground around him.

Illigar continues to advance upon the creature, a soft smile coming to his face. "Tell me," he demands. "Tell me your goal! Do it now!"

"Stay away!" Ferro finds little purchase with his feet, but he manages to drag himself one final step back, landing among the bricks, his chest heaving. "Stop."

"Then, you will die." Illigar's hand flicks out into the air, a spear appearing in his grip from the storage ring he keeps on his finger. The weapon appears with a burst of thunder, the air unable to withstand the potency of the magic contained in the blade. He raises the weapon, allowing a trickle of its power to emanate, aiming for the monster before him.

"You don't have to do this," Ferro babbles, his eyes glued to the spear. The weapon begins to sink forward. "My name is Dido Malz! You don't have to do this!"

Illigar pauses, his weapon stopping for a moment, mind taking the information, putting it into the tapestry that forms the mystery of the beast tide. Is this a name that changes things? Why would…

Pain. The spear falls, tumbling from fingers that have suddenly gone limp. Illigar's eyes widen, looking at his hand as he stumbles backward a step, finding the fingers writhing. There is a scraping sound with his step, the cut of iron across stone. Then, he feels the source of the pain, looks down to see the blade stabbing into his chest from below. It looks so strange, a sword of iron emerging from a random brick on the ground. The brick completes its transformation, the rectangle of stone forming the hilt of the iron sword, the tip pushed upward until it stabs out of his back. The blood no longer moves through his veins, his heart cut in two.

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Illigar sags, a last spark of life reaching for his ring. He falls back, body clattering to the broken floor of the garden, unmoving.

Ferro pulls himself away, weakness fading into the figment it was born from. He breathes, using a fountain to climb to his feet. The red light hovering above changes the water in the garden to blood, trickling red that runs through the broken ground. A grunt escapes him as his leg snaps together, a wave of nausea washing over him. He spares the magician a glance. There is hate, hate for the man who made him feel so small and weak again, a feeling he thought had been shed, a feeling he thought impossible. There it was, the trembling child within, wanting to cry and curl into a ball as it is beaten. Only this time, he had triumphed over the one with overwhelming superiority.

As Ferro seizes the fallen spear of the magician, he feels an unfathomable power running through the weapon. The metal groans beneath his touch, changing, reshaping into a blade of dark iron that crackles with lightning. When he looks down once more at the magician, he sees a young man there with a blade stabbing into his heart, his face constricted into a sneer that promises years of torment.

"Now, you die," Ferro promises his old bully, raising the blade that thrums with power.

He swings, but the sword catches on the air, sticking as if it cuts into stone. An attack from the side comes, a stab from a lighter weapon, one in the hand of that man with the blue coat. Ferro sways back, his body reaching to touch the magic within him, listening to its instruction, but his eyes turn toward the red woman, the lizardkin. She stands near the fallen magician, his hands raised, sweat on her brow. He can almost see it, almost see the faint shimmer in the air, some shroud of magic rippling off of her, stopping his blade short. He cuts against it, grinding the edge of the new weapon on the ephemeral cloud of energy, and watches as she winces in pain.

There is something in that, something in the pain she shows, that reminds him of fighting the redhead in the sewers. He had felt her will settle on him, try to crush him to the ground, as if she projected her very spirit. Ferro recognizes it in that moment, sees with his own eyes the power of the soul projected, and it is as if a door opens in his mind. He is within a shroud, he recognizes, the man in the coat snapping quick stabs at him with his blades projects one as well around the both of them.

He retreats, taking to the defensive as the pair approach and pressure him, their overlapping presences putting him on the backfoot. When he swings back, his blade knocks against a wall, the silvery aura of the woman an impossible obstacle. The man moves freely within the field he manifests, each strike a feint, each feint becoming an attack from an impossible direction as he vanishes and reappears. But, he does not despair, not in the same way he had when Illigar overwhelmed him. This is a heat he can withstand, a heat that can temper him.

Dovik flashes forward, his left hand swinging toward the monster's face, while his right chops to the side. The creature catches the saber on his blade, and a jolt of electric power shakes through Dovik's weapon, trying and failing to penetrate his magical defenses. Still, the overwhelming might of the monster numbs his hands with each collision, but he presses on.

He vanishes, reappearing just behind the monster, his right hand already in motion to take its head off. Yet, it sways just enough to avoid the lethal blow, trading a cut in its neck for the chance to counter with the massive sword it created. Jess is there, darting in with her weapon as it tries to lift its sword, her soul presence entangling the blade. No matter how the monster strains, the blade remains stuck.

Jess slips forward like a snake, her chakram slicing upward and cutting across the chest of the creature as it fights against her power. It falls back, dodging an attack from above as Dovik tries to impale it with his swords. The dance continues, but unlike the time in the hive, the couple seize the advantage. The monster's attacks are turned back upon it, Jess making her control of blades chaotic, impossible to predict, frustrating the monster to the point that it abandons its newly created weapon.

Cuts appear on its arms and legs as it continues to move, pushing itself to the limit to avoid anything truly threatening, shedding blood freely as it moves. Then, in the moment they move to claim victory, the monster shows speed it hadn't before.

Jess extends just a little too far forward, looking to hook her chakram over one of the creature's arms to bind it. It sacrifices its hand, letting her blade loop over its wrist and bite. Her excitement at success fades as she feels its boot planted in her stomach, the armor she wears buckling beneath the incredible strength of the thing. Her weapon flies from her hand as she bends forward, her body sailing away to land among the rubble of the destroyed fountain garden.

Dovik pauses for only a moment, watching Jess tumble away to land amid the wreckage. He can't stop, not in this battle, and pushes himself to keep the pressure on the monster. It retreats from him further, its left hand hanging from the sinew of its wrist, a grin on its face as it moves between the strokes of his weapons.

He feels the thrum, his magic building in a beat within himself, but there is something wrong about it. His growing momentum feels awkward, like the pace is off, like he is moving to a rhythm not his own. Dovik dances with the creature, the garden made into a stage of slicing blades and whistling wind, the fighter's bodies moving with a grace unnatural to either of them. They exist inside the dance, in the exchange of near-misses and potentially lethal blows.

Then, Dovik recognizes the feeling, the strange pace-setting. As he moves, his feet cracking the tiles, his hands blurring, his mind moving seconds ahead of his body as he weaves cuts and stabs between returned kicks and punches, he feels himself drift in time. This is what it feels like to fight his father, he recognizes.

In no world could the monster before him have matched the Dancing Blade, but that spike of fear, that moment of questioning, makes Dovik's footwork slip just a fraction. The loss of tempo is impossible to recover from. The exchange continues, but it is clear to both that the outcome nears, and the smile on the monster's face only grows as the end approaches.

It happens as it always does, with one combatant breaking the dance, taking the risk to capitalize on opportunity. The monster's fist cracks against Dovik's wrist. His numb fingers spasm, his sword falling from his hand. Had he just a bit more strength in his hand, the monster would lose the dance, committing to an impossible maneuver, but as the sword falls away from Dovik, the light of the crimson moon turning the steel red, he realizes that in this moment, the creature hears the song of the weapons more clearly than he does.

He doesn't feel the pain, just a sense of vertigo and dizziness as his leg refuses to move. Dovik stumbles forward, his second step bringing him to the ground as his leg gives out. He tries to fall to a knee, to keep a somewhat defendable position as he turns to look at the monster moving past him, but his leg can't manage even that much. The ground is unforgiving as his hip collides with it. The sword in his right hand shakes, the tip extended toward the monster walking away from him, his other blade stuck in his thigh to the hilt.

The pain tries to come then, but he heads it off, clenching his teeth so hard together he fears that they might crack. Dovik reaches down, touching the hilt of the sword sticking through his leg. A lance of lightning turns his vision dark at his light touch. Breath heaving, Dovik props himself up as best he is able, keeping his sword pointing at the monster as it retrieves the sword it was forced to discard earlier.

"You really want to kill me, don't you?" it says, turning back toward him. The dark blade in its hand cuts a line across the ground as he paces back toward Dovik. "I can tell. I can feel it in your spirit. Thank you for that."

"You will die here," Dovik says through his clenched teeth.

"Maybe," Ferro replies, leveling his sword to match Dovik's. "But, it won't be at your hand, I reckon."

The grin on the monster's face turns sour as the blade sticks in the air. He turns in time to let go of the weapon's hilt, avoiding the cut of the chakram aimed at his good hand. Jess moves in, interposing herself between Dovik and the monster, her weapon spinning in her hand, her steely aura expanded around her.

When the monster moves in once more, she feints backward. Its fist crashes into her shoulder, but she bends with the blow, letting the power direct her downward while her blade hooks its leg. A flash of surprise crosses the creature's eyes as it tumbles forward, Jess' feet planting firmly on its chest as she launches it over her head with the momentum of its blow.

The creature sails more than thirty feet away, cracking into a fountain, splashing into the crimson water.

Jess groans as she flips to her feet, turning to face the monster who still lingers in the dark water. She gets a good look at Dovik then, seeing the blade rammed through his leg to the hilt, smelling the iron of his blood as it runs from the wound. He smiles up at her, trying to allay the worries in her, but all she sees is the sweat plastering his hair to his brow, the way his face is going white from blood loss.

"That was stupid," he says, reaching toward the sword in his leg once more, flinching at the pain it causes him.

She rolls her shoulder, feeling the incredible bruise beginning to form beneath her skin. "I knew I could take it," she says.

"Help me take this sword out of my leg," Dovik says, trying to move, failing to rise.

"There's no time," she says, sparing him only one more glance before gluing her eyes to the figure emerging from the fountain. Fury replaces all other emotion on Ferro's face as he climbs from the water. A lull falls for half a second, a moment where Jess sees into the future of the battle. Someone is going to die here, she realizes. There is no way around it.

Jess' aura fades away, the crackling blade of lightning falling from the air, the hilt landing in her hand. She clutches it for a moment, feels the incredible weight of the weapon, and tosses it away toward the monster. The sword cuts through the air, stabbing into the ground just before the fountain, sticking.

"What are you doing?" Dovik tries to rise again, dread washing over him.

Jess watches as the monster retrieves its weapon.

It pauses after pulling the sword from the stone, looking at her, watching as her steely aura retreats from her, fades back into her skin.

"Whatever you are doing, stop it!" Dovik demands. "We can kill it. We have to."

As flippant as the wind, the scowl on Ferro's face is replaced by a wide grin. He offers the couple no time for further consideration, the tiles beneath his feet disintegrating as he closes the distance. When he swings, pure and utter power guides his blow, space seeming to warp around the cut of his blade.

But Jess intercepts, her spinning weapon wheeling into motion in a flash of impossible speed. The two blades meet, and despite Ferro's overwhelming power and strength, his sword slides sideways, ripping the air apart just next to his opponent. The ground erupts like a meteor collides with it, dust exploding around his descending sword, but the woman is no longer there.

Jess moves inside the distorted time, feeling the exhilaration of the moment just after her perfect parry. How such magic works, she has no idea, but she is thankful for it all the same. Her chakram falls to the ground, the ring blade cracked by the collision of the weapons as she moves around the back of the monster, grabbing onto the monster like she might her lover.

"I'm sorry," she says, the distortion of time warbling her voice.

Dovik barely hears her words as the two vanish into a streak of light as Jess takes them both away. The streak sails away, disappearing miles away into the city, lost amid the confusion of fire and smoke. The broken chakram rattles against the stone, its rim circling for a moment before falling still with a rattle. Dovik sits, frozen, watching as the light over the city slowly vanishes, Jess and Ferro gone. Then, he is left with just the wind, a hot gale that whispers through the broken garden beneath the red sky, alone.

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