If there was one thing Riven had learned from his time spent with Viriya, it was that the last thing he ought to do was piss her off enough to get into a fight with her. He’d done so well to prevent something like that from ever happening. Hadn’t he been the greatest of friends, tried his utmost to preserve the trust they had going on between them? But what did she answer it with? Why, a fight of course.

And to Viriya, fights were not something to go easy about.

He really should have written his will. There wasn’t much he had to bequeath, and he wasn’t sure who he’d give it to, but at least it would’ve afforded him some peace of mind before his passing.

She was going to eviscerate him at this rate. Viriya had been pummelling him for only a handful of minutes at best, but it felt like an overstretched eternity. His shoulders sagged, his legs trembled if he stayed still, and his arms jerked in panic at the slightest movement from her. It couldn’t go on like this. Better for him to surrender now and call it a day. She wouldn’t really kill him, would she? Not too much.

“How long has it been, Riven?” Viriya asked.

She had asked him to keep track of the time, so she could surmise how long his Essence took to use up the Sept bullets. Riven had replenished his stock of Sept bullets by borrowing most of Viriya’s. Half his own cartridges had been empty, the Sept bullets in them dead as ash. So he had replaced them with Viriya’s, still glowing and ready to be fired from her Essence-infused gun.

Riven paused to remember his count. It had been hard, but it was a good exercise in concentration while still in the middle of a fight. “Two minutes and forty seconds.”

“All right, we’ve wasted enough time. Let’s get back into it.”

She didn’t give him time to respond. A glowing fist flew at him, and Riven barely blocked it with a raised forearm, but then got caught in his side as her other fist jabbed him there. That one wasn’t glowing, but the impact was still tremendously strong. Enough to push him back a few steps.

More blows rained in, Riven trying his best to repel them back. He caught one punch but suffered another in his face. Thank the Scions his shield still held. A kick nearly floored him, but he stumbled backward and stayed upright. He caught another punch on his shoulder, and summoned momentary courage to throw a jab with his own fist.

Viriya neatly danced away from it, offering a tiny grin. No encouragement though. “That the best you have?”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Riven panted.

Viriya charged forwards. Her next blow hammered into his guts, and she was suddenly far faster than before. All hope of repelling those hits fled, and it was all Riven could do to cower and stumble back. His Essence was definitely cracking, tiny fracturing sounds lancing into his ears.

“Fight back, Riven,” Viriya demanded. “If I was your enemy, would you just give up and let yourself die?”

“We’re not fighting,” Riven said through gritted teeth. “You might have forgotten that.”

She kneed him in the kidney area again. He tried to shove her away, but she was falling back on her own, so it was little more than a glancing hit. Then she punched him, hitting him right in the temple. His Essence helm cracked, white fractures spiderwebbing over his line of sight. Riven staggered back. Damn it.

“Forget silly semantics, Riven.” Viriya didn’t look winded or tired, didn’t look like she had expended any effort at all. Maybe Rive was just such an easy opponent. But whether he deserved any physical effort or not, her face held a certain weight. A challenging look, like he had offered a test unknowingly and she was determined to pass it with flying colours. “You need to think of me as an opponent. As someone you need to win against, not just cower and hope to survive with your Essence. Show me what you did with Tam. How you almost lost to him.”

“I didn’t lose.”

“Oh really? You can’t blame me if I don’t believe that, given how pathetic you are.”

Riven’s temple throbbed where Viriya would have struck if his Essence shield hadn’t been there. She wanted to see his strength? To see him beat her damn arse? Fine.

For just a heartbeat, Riven closed his eyes to focus. He halted the pressure still flowing out from him. He opened his eyes in the next second, smiling at the sight he beheld. Viriya had charged at him, just as he had expected.

He let go of the tidal wave of pent-up pressure and aimed it into the ground around his feet. Even as she rushed at him, golden lines sank into the ground faster than she could even acknowledge the fact much less stop her headlong rush. In the next breathless moment, the earth glowed gold and shot up, forming a cocoon around Riven.

Viriya crashed right into it. There was a tiny gap in the twisted earth right in front of Riven and he smiled as he watched her stumble back clutching her arm, face twisted in pain. She had tried to block her crash with her arm at the last second, and it had gone about as well as expected.

She looked straight at him through the hole in his earthly shield. There was no defeat in her eyes, just the faintest hint of surprise.

The earth cracked. Dust rained around Riven, and he looked up, heart rate climbing higher with every breath. A green glow had infected the cocoon, slowly covering the whole structure. Damn it, Viriya’s hand. She had never intended to stop her crash, only to hit his shield with her Essence.

In the next moment, the now-glittering green earth carapace broke apart, shooting away to some point far behind Riven.

Viriya looked haughty, her head tilted up a little as though she had given up trying to hide her smugness.

Riven laughed. She really thought that was all he had. Another moment’s focus, and more golden lines shot out from Riven, poking into the ground like lightning rods. Viriya decided not to be a sitting duck and dashed away, pulling her gun out as she ran. Damn it. It was a lot more difficult if she kept moving around like that.

What in the Chasm? Riven ran as well.

Her shot missed him, but he had to be wary about it anyway. It hit the ground somewhere behind him, forming another point where she could Lock him or anything else to. Viriya ran towards him in a huge circle, firing her gun all the while, but still. Riven was heading straight for another round of pummelling.

Or another chance to lock her down instead.

Her aim was off for the movement, but she was still a good shot. One glowing golden-green bullet lodged near his waist, another on his left arm, one more at his shoulder. He ran straight at her anyway, disregarding the fact that it only made it easier for her to hit him.

Viriya paused all of a sudden. They were very close, and Riven forced himself to a halt as well. She took a just a moment to focus, a second to concentrate, and that was all he needed. Even as Riven started to fly back, dragged by the pull of Viriya’s Essence, he focused too. Essence blasted out from him and into the ground, too fast for Viriya to react. The next moment, earth erupted all around her and encased her in a solid, dark brown sphere.

Riven fell to the ground, legs quaking at the repeated strain. His armour had disappeared, and the bullets lodged in it flew to join the ones Viriya had shot before.

Loud thumps were coming from the irregularly shaped sphere of earth. Viriya was pounding and hammering on it, trying to break herself out.

For just moment, Riven’s heart panged, and he faltered to a stop. What had he done? She was all alone inside the darkness, suffocating, breathing in as much dust as air, overwhelmed with fear and panic. Scions damn him, but when had he turned so heartless?

Then it cracked. Green light bled out like a clam shell had fractured to reveal its glittering interior. Stupid. He was so stupid. Viriya the fearless didn’t have time to panic and be frightened when she was too busy breaking herself out. Riven charged forward, unwilling to let this chance slip by, and hardening his heart to make the most of it.

The crack widened at another hit from Viriya, and then the shell of earth fell apart. She emerged from the dust and crumbling earth all around her, the emerald glow in her fist now bright enough to light up the whole area.

Riven had attempted to use the shell of earth as a distraction, where she would burst her way out only to be met by his fist, but he’d baulked too long. Damn his weak heart. Even as he raised a fist to strike, yelling out his intent as he brought back his Essence armour, he was too far. The element of surprise was gone.

Viriya blocked his punch with her palm, hitting her own too fast for Riven to block. The impact nearly threw him backwards.

Unlike Riven, Viriya didn’t waste her opportunity. He lashed out with a kick as she charged in, but she dodged and weaved away, striking at him from one side. The blow landed on his shoulder, and he fell to the ground.

He wasn’t down for long. Riven surged up with his own strikes and jabs, each blow slower and more sluggish than the last as Exhaustion made its presence felt. Viriya blocked and dodged with impunity, a twist working onto her face.

Then she struck back. Her elbow smashed into his face out of nowhere and he reeled back, and her boot crunched down on his knee. Riven fell to the ground as her fist clocked him on the jaw, and even as he forced himself up, his hands covering his oh so precious head, she lashed out with more jabs. Each strike left cracks on his armour, every follow-up hit making the fracture propagate like ocean waves. All the while, Riven was blinded by her starry, emerald light.

“At least you tried,” Viriya muttered.

“It’s not… over… Viriya,” Riven said.

Her punch to his chest indicated that it was. Riven staggered back. Where had all his thinking gone?

When the next blow came, Riven jumped back. Viriya tried to come after him, but he turned tail and ran.

“Hey!” she shouted from behind. “The Chasm are you running away like that?”

A shot rang from behind, but of course, Riven felt nothing. His armour shielded him after all. Every step made his legs tremble worse than the last, and his whole body was on the verge of collapsing any moment now. He’d been so foolish to think he could take Viriya head-on. Impossible. She was unbeatable in a direct confrontation.

“Riven, stop!”

He didn’t stop. There wasn’t any way he could. Not even if his shield and a bullet pierced through.

No.  Armour, not shield. Unless… that was it. The idea had barely begun to germinate before Riven felt the now-familiar tug. Viriya’s inescapable Essence had tethered him again, reeling him in like a fish caught on a hook. As ever, Riven was flying, feet flinging around in the air as he sailed back towards Viriya and her brilliant, glittering star. Her star, and the gun pointed straight at him.

Shield. He needed a shield. Closing his eyes, he focused on the surroundings, where the world was the only thing keeping him from survival. Golden Essence shot out as his armour broke into fading flakes, line after line falling into the ground and drawing up the earth around him again. Another cocoon to hold him back.

The pull was powerful though. He was pressed right up against the rock, his armour cracking under the stress as he was squished forwards.

This was insane. How strong was her Essence?

There was a muffled shot. The earth itself began to crack, fractures snaking all over the shell, only visible in the gloom because of the light glow of Riven’s Essence. With a tremendous crack, the ball from the ground shattered and he flew forwards, propelled by all the pent-up momentum that his temporary rampart of earth had provided.

He shot towards Viriya as his armour reformed, too fast for her to think of dodging. And it wouldn’t have helped anyway, not when her star was pulling him right to her.

Instead, Viriya aimed her gun over his shoulder and got off a quick shot. Despite how fast Riven had shot towards, he froze in the air, the inertia making his whole body try to jerk itself apart. He worked through the pain, aware of the first millisecond of a moment where the pull of the bullet begun to affect him. No matter.

Riven focused and dropped his Essence and his armour. They disappeared, leaving him enveloped in Viriya’s green glow, the bullets lodged in the compressed air surrounding him clattering to the ground.

Viriya’s eyes widened. That was all the response she could manage as Riven touched the ground with his feet, then propelled himself forward, diving at Viriya for all he was worth. There was no chance in the high Chasm for her to run anywhere, to dive, or duck, or dodge, or avoid Riven in any other way.

Surprise tasted so sweet. Riven struck her straight on, ramming her guts with his shoulder as they bother crashed to the ground, Viriya crying out as she took the brunt of the impact. Her gun flew from her hand as her wrist slammed into the earth. Not exactly as Riven had planned, but he had to have luck working for him once or twice.

He wasted no time, using the moments she was still dealing with the shock of the landing to manoeuvre himself over her so that she no longer posed a threat. One of his hands was at her neck, while the other was raised over her head and balled to fist.

“Make one move, and I’ll turn your face to pulp.” Scions, his voice sounded like he’d swallowed a boiling frog whole.

Viriya stared up at him, distaste flooding her features. Her eyes had turned to hard garnets, every inch of her face so set and tight, she might have been a statue carved straight out of marble. “You idiot!”

“You lost, Viriya. If anything, you’re the idiot here.”

“No, you moron. This was supposed to be an exercise to see how long you could use your Essence from your supply of Sept bullets. Now that you’re up so close, you might as well be using mine, and that’s botched up the whole point of this.”

Riven blinked, too taken aback to resist Viriya from pushing him off her. He would’ve attempted to rise, but the fatigue came crashing down on him now that he was no longer trying to stay alive. The adrenaline was evacuating fast. “Are we done?”

“You’re done, obviously.” Viriya sighed. She definitely didn’t look done, stretching her neck and arms and clearly itching to continue. Her every motion was brimming with restless energy, and no doubt if he touched her, he’d find her buzzing like an upended beehive. “We can pick it up tomorrow, but only because I don’t want to have to pick you up today. Let’s go.”

Riven cursed at her departing back once she’d gone far enough that there was no danger of her overhearing. He did his best to follow, bent over in exhaustion as though someone had turned his spine into a sickle.

“Do you think you learned anything today?” Viriya asked.

“I did.” His voice came out as a rasp, and it was best not to force himself to continue. He had learned things, though. Would have been handy to learn how long he could keep up his Essence with just the bullets in his pocket as a Sept supply, but at least it was confirmed now that the amount of Sept he had near him determined how strong his shield was. All that Sept back with the Cataclysm had to be the only reason he had survived against it. The only reason his Essence shield had held. “Need to drink some water first, though.”

“Soon.”

There was no back gate in the facility that they could conveniently use to get back inside, so they had to travel around it again to the front. Wasn’t Viriya’s brilliant foresight a wondrous thing to behold?

“You really think this research can help?” Viriya asked.

Riven didn’t need to question her with help with what exactly. It was too obvious. “I hope so.”

“Hope… isn’t always good enough, Riven. You need an idea. A solid plan. Grasping for straws in desperation, even deluding yourself into thinking it might actually help, can be dangerous in the long run.”

He cleared his throat. Damn, but he was parched. “It’s not grasping at straws. I really do think the Scion piece should be able to do something to help.”

Viriya shook her head. “Isn’t all we’ve seen it do is turn people into Deathless, and make those who are already Deathless even stronger? Or have you been hiding something from me?”

“Er, not hiding intentionally. I only just remembered it after talking with Nivi. Back when we were fighting the Deadmage in Welmark, I was able to help Glaven stay alive with my Essence. His heart had stopped beating, but I helped him survive that.”

“You think that can be extrapolated into the crystal helping your mother somehow?”

The scepticism in her voice made Riven wince, but he was too tired to be annoyed. And it was hard to talk too, given his throat clamped up with every word he got out. “I think that Scion piece might be stealing Essence, storing it somewhere inside. If we could bring it out, I think we might be able to do something miraculous with it, some kind of enhancement for our own Essence and whatnot.”

Viriya was silent for a while, considering the implications. “And have you told Nivi about your suspicions?”

“Not yet.”

They were halfway to the front of the research facility. On its side, the buildings had nothing but small windows to give glimpses of the world beyond. Riven had to keep an eye out for cracks on the ground, but he didn’t spot a single piece of Sept anywhere despite the fact there had been a Septstorm hardly two days ago. Not surprising. Sept was the most valuable commodity in the entire Severance Frontier, if not the whole world. The people of the facility must have scrounged up every tiny sprinkle of it.

“You never told me what happened to your mother,” Viriya said. She had slowed her punishing pace so that they were now walking side by side, though that forced Riven to at least try to walk straight instead of bent over like an old man.

“It never came up.”

“It has now.”

Riven sighed. He might accuse Viriya of hiding things and being too mum, but honestly, he had no idea how to explain anything about Mother. More importantly, he didn’t want to. But the idea of hypocrisy tasted worse that ash mixed with scummy dishwater. “She’s suffering from internal organ failure, and a degenerative condition, like Nivi said. They have her hooked to an infusion of medicinal Sept and other things to keep her going, but in all honesty, she’s dying. No one has found anything that can cure her and reverse the degenerative process. She’s… falling apart.”

“I heard most of that in your talk Nivi, Riven. I meant to ask how, and why.”

Riven was quiet for a moment. He tried to talk, but the words caught in his throat. “Mother was attacked by a Deathless about six years ago. I wasn’t sure what it was, and I still am not since no one wants to talk about the specifics, least of all Mother herself, but she was protecting me. There… there was an accident and—”

The memories coming back in a haze, and Riven paused. Flickering lights, gusts making everything in the room shake like an earthquake, Mother arguing with their strange guest and standing tall in defiance. And then the end. When Mother had stood covered in glittering dust, the only source of light in the room, before she had collapsed. The rest was a blur of screams, of people he didn’t know, of movement that was foggy and misted.

All coming back into sharp focus that time he woke up, holding Mother’s hand in his own, tears making everything in the world look like they had doubled.

“Are you all right?” Viriya had come up too close, her voice quiet and soothing as she stared at him in concern.

Riven blinked, taking a step back. “F—fine.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Viriya said. “I understand. Some things are too hard to process, and never get easier to talk about.”

Riven swallowed as they started walking again. He was trying to form coherent thoughts to express what he’d intended to about Mother and everything that had happened to lead to her current condition. Maybe Viriya was right about it never getting any easier, but that didn’t mean he intended to hide.

“I’m thinking of going on a tour,” Viriya said.

The thoughts Riven had been trying to give shape slipped out of his grasp and disappeared. “What?”

“This is where the demon came, Riven. Remember? All those weeks back, when we first met, I was fighting a demon that I never caught afterwards.”

“Oh!”

Holy Scions, so much had happened after that first meeting with Viriya and Rio. Maybe that was why Viriya didn’t sound much annoyed that he hadn’t recalled. But then, how long had Viriya kept it in her head, letting it simmer just underneath her sense of obligation and duty? She had let Riven run amok with whatever had come up, shunting aside her own wish to get to the bottom of the mystery of her missing demon.

Riven sighed. Viriya had told him what happened to her family, and now it all fell in place. Her need to get that demon before it enacted the same horror that had been inflicted on her own life had to be burning brighter than any conflagration. How had she kept it stored away like that?

“Let’s go look for the demon,” Riven said, voice tight. “I’ll come with you.”

Viriya nodded as though she’d expected as much, and walked faster. “Let’s get going then. I’ll drive.”