"No more embarrassment today, thanks," Solace said, his essence beginning to flare, invisible to the naked eye but palpable to the soul. "I think it's time we made this a little more... colorful."
Phoebe's smile widened, genuine excitement cracking her haughty mask. "Finally," she whispered, her eyes beginning to glow with a faint, chilling luminescence.
A moment of anticipation built between them, the air in the arena growing heavy and thin, both waiting for the other to make the first move.
When the stretched moment suddenly broke, Solace moved forward.
[Chains] slithered from his left arm while he held his sword in the right. The chains slithered down his hands and snapped at Phoebe, moving with the fluidity of vipers rather than the weight of iron.
But before they could make contact, Phoebe was already moving.
To Solace's normal vision, she was a blur of pale blue and arrogance. To Phoebe, the world had shifted.
She didn't dodge frantically; she simply leaned. The iron link whistled past her ear, missing by less than an inch. She pirouetted on her heel, her movement unnaturally graceful.
Solace didn't bite. He remained silent, his mind whirring like a clockwork engine. He yanked the chain back, the metal scraping against the concrete floor with a shower of sparks. She saw the trajectory, he noted. Thread of Eye. She's reading the flow, not just the physical object. That means feints won't work unless I mask the intent.
He pivoted, swinging the sword in a wide arc to force her back, while simultaneously sending the chain low to sweep her legs.
Phoebe laughed, a sound like tinkling glass.
She stomped her right foot. "Freeze."
The moisture in the air instantly condensed. A jagged ridge of ice erupted from the floor, intercepting the chain. The metal bit into the ice but was arrested instantly, the frost traveling up the links at a frightening speed, threatening to reach Solace's arm.
Solace immediately severed the connection to that length of chain, letting it drop dead to the floor before the cold could bite his skin. He stepped back, analyzing.
"Cold shoulder already?" Solace deadpanned, watching his breath mist in the sudden drop in temperature. "I thought we were just getting started."
"You're too slow, Solace," Phoebe said, raising a hand. The air around her shimmered. "And I'm getting bored."
Five spears of ice formed in the air behind her—Icicles. But these weren't the rough, slushy projectiles of a novice. They were crystalline, faceted like diamonds, and radiated a temperature that made the air groan. 0 degrees Celsius was a polite estimate; this felt like the heart of a glacier.
"Go," she commanded.
The icicles launched with the velocity of arrows.
Solace's eyes narrowed. He couldn't block those with a sword; they would shatter the blade, and the shrapnel would shred him. He couldn't dodge all five in an open space.
"Flash."
Solace's essence surged into the air in front of him. A sudden, blinding burst of concentrated light erupted between them, like a magnesium flare going off in a closet.
Phoebe hissed, throwing a hand up to shield her sensitive, enhanced eyes. The sudden overexposure blinded her momentarily, breaking her visual lock on him.
"Cheap trick!" she yelled.
Solace didn't answer. He was already moving. Under the cover of the blinding light, he activated Silent Step. His boots hit the concrete without a whisper, his breathing controlled and soundless. He flanked left, closing the distance while she blinked the spots from her vision.
He came in low, aiming a non-lethal strike to her midsection with the pommel of his sword.
But just as he entered her striking range, Phoebe's head snapped toward him. Her eyes were still watering, red-rimmed, but she was smiling.
To Solace, he was moving at full speed. To Phoebe, the world had taken a deep breath. The dust motes floating in the light beams slowed to a crawl. Solace's lunge, which should have been a blur, became a frame-by-frame film reel.
[Cognition]
She saw him. She saw the sweat on his brow, the grim set of his jaw, the precise angle of his sword pommel.
"Caught you," she whispered.
She didn't retreat. She stepped into his guard. Her hand, wreathed in a pale blue aura, reached out to touch his chest. Touch freeze.
Solace's instincts screamed at him. He couldn't stop his momentum in time. Her hand was inches from his sternum. If she touched him, he would freeze.
Thread of Stillness: Layer 2.
"Still."
He focused his will on her hand. For a split second, the universe rejected the concept of movement for Phoebe's right hand. It stopped dead in the air, absolute and immovable, defying inertia.
Phoebe gasped as her arm was jerked violently by her own body's momentum, moving past her frozen hand. The touch missed Solace by a hair's breadth.
Solace tumbled past her, rolling to his feet and spinning around, chest heaving. "That," he muttered, "was too close."
Phoebe massaged her wrist, the Still effect fading after its two-second duration. She looked at him with a mix of annoyance and impressed fury.
"You have a cooldown on that," Phoebe stated, her eyes narrowing. It wasn't a question. She had seen his essence dim slightly after the cast. "Two minutes? Maybe three?"
Solace's expression didn't change, but internally, he cursed. Sharp eyes. She sees the recharge rate of the threads. "Maybe I do. Maybe I don't. Want to flip a coin?"
She raised both hands this time. The temperature in the arena plummeted. Frost began to creep up the walls.
"Let's see you dodge this," she growled.
A dozen icicles formed. But she didn't fire them. She grabbed the empty air as if gripping a handle, and a long, serrated blade of ice formed in her grip—an ice sword to match his steel one.
She lunged.
The clash was instant and violent. Steel met ice, but the ice held. It was as hard as granite. Phoebe was relentless, swinging with the ferocity of a berserker but the precision of a fencer.
Solace was on the back foot. He parried, deflected, and side-stepped, his Chains darting out occasionally to try and snare her ankles, but she was too fast. Every time he tried to bind her, she used her Time perception to predict the chain and shatter the ice beneath her feet to slide out of the way.
"You're fighting like an old man, Solace!" she laughed, swinging the ice blade at his head.
He ducked, the cold wind of the blade slicing a few hairs from his head. "I am an old man, you brat!"
Technically, I was Old I mean, according to the system, my soul was trapped in a limbo for at least four thousand years.
He kicked out at her knee, but she hopped over it, bringing her blade down in a vertical chop.
Solace raised his sword to block, reinforcing his arms with essence. The impact was heavy, jarring his bones. But worse than the impact was the effect. The cold transferred instantly from her blade to his. Frost raced down his sword, numbing his fingers. He had to drop the weapon or lose his hand to frostbite.
Clattering metal echoed in the room as Solace disarmed himself, leaping backward.
"Disarmed," Phoebe smirked, pointing the tip of her ice blade at his throat. "Yield?"
Solace rubbed his numbed fingers, bringing feeling back into them. He looked at the sword, then at her. "Not yet. I still have hands."
"Stubborn." Phoebe dashed forward, thrusting the blade.
Thread of Chains: Restrict.
Solace's silhouette suddenly wavered. As Phoebe's blade pierced his chest, he dissolved into a spray of distorted light.
"What?" Phoebe stumbled forward, her blade passing through empty air.
Refraction Cloak. He hadn't just bent light; he had projected a false image five feet to the left of his actual position.
Solace appeared from the shadows on her right, no weapon, just his hands. He grabbed her wrist—the one holding the ice sword.
"Gotcha," he grunted.
Phoebe's eyes widened. She tried to freeze him, but he was holding the sleeve of her combat jacket, not her skin. He twisted his hips and used her own momentum against her, executing a perfect judo throw.
Phoebe hit the ground hard, the breath knocked out of her. The ice sword skittered away.
Solace didn't let up. He knew she was dangerous on the ground. He moved to pin her.
But Phoebe grinned. "You forgot something."
Solace frowned. "What?"
Phoebe's essence flared violently. The cooldown on her Icicles and Frost Touch resets instantly.
From the ground, without needing to gesture, she detonated a blast of frost directly from her body. An omnidirectional nova of ice.
Solace had zero time to dodge. He was on top of her. He was point-blank.
If I take this hit, I lose. Or I die.
The cold was biting into his skin before the ice even formed.
He had one card left. The card he hated using. He didn't want to use it, but he had no choice. He wanted to save it for the later matches when the fights will be more difficult.
'Shit'
CANCEL
A ripple of absolute whiteness pulsed from Solace. It wasn't a blast; it was an erasure. The frost nova, which had just begun to expand, simply ceased to exist. The kinetic energy, the thermal drop, the magical construct, it all hit a wall of Zero and vanished.
Phoebe blinked, lying on the floor, her ultimate defensive burst simply gone.
Solace, exhausted from the mana drain of Zero, stumbled back, gasping for air.
He was running on fumes. His Chains were restricted. Zero was used. Stillness was on cooldown.
Phoebe scrambled to her feet.
Phoebe looked at him, seeing the fatigue. She was tired too—the hunger thread was gnawing at her stomach, demanding food to replace the energy she'd burnt.
Seizing the moment, he quickly flickered his chains into existence with a last bit of essence, using a brilliant flash that blinded her. Giving him just enough time to finish the match.