Princess Fiona watched her summoner, the dark divinity known to mortals as Fohion Ironheart, lunge at her at a speed that was too fast to be seen by ordinary mortals. The young adventurer was a blur and a deadly one at that.
His movements had a predatory grace to them that enabled him to hurl himself into the range at which Fiona could strike without fear. The deadly deity moved towards her with a casual ease that made her feel weak and small, despite the inches of height she had on him. As he moved towards her he began to smile, savagely. He was a warrior, one fully unafraid of combat, and it seemed that he was determined to master the use of his fists in combat.
Fiona gritted her teeth as the dark being responsible for calling her to this world closed his fists and lashed out at her. The god's fists were not soft things untempered by the horrors of war, they were heavy objects filled with both his own raw power and tempered by the knowledge of millions of martial artists from throughout dozens of worlds.
His fists hit with a weight that exceeded even the heaviest of blunt objects. Fiona felt the raw power contained in the fists of her summoner wail against her armor and the ogress dropped her sword, the thing clattering to the floor beneath her as she did her best to endure her foe's impossibly fast barrage of attacks.
Onlookers watched, fascinated, as Fohion's chi-covered fists heavily impacted Fiona's armor. He was no unskilled fool whose main tactic was to overwhelm with raw speed, despite how his unseemly barrage might have looked to those watching the fight. Each of his blows was precisely aimed, carefully intended to hit a new spot of Fiona's armor. As he struck one of his brides he carefully and subtly empowered her armor, granting it greater toughness and filling it with the mighty power it'd need to endure something like a dragon's fire.
Fohion was not the only martial artist in the room, or even the party, either. In another one of the diminutive arenas, Master Tigress stood across from a quiet, short archer who pointed his bow and arrow in her direction. The young long-ranged fighter was an elf and he studied her with abject interest.
Tigress wore the robes of a martial arts master from her homeland, and she had the striking appearance of a beautiful tiger that had somehow become bipedal. She had razor-sharp claws and a stunning face with deep amber eyes. She was studying her opponent while her ears were distantly focused on the battle Fohion was fighting.
The elf facing Tigress took a deep breath and held it for a moment. As he did he targeted the mighty beast woman he was facing and used a bit of mana to activate "Hunter's Mark", a powerful ability that Merida could wield with the same ease as the elf. Tigress felt the strange feeling of the stranger's magic wash over her and hissed in annoyance. The elf smirked at her an instant before he released the arrow and sent it rocketing towards the martial artist.
Tigress focused on the projectile and relaxed as it sailed through the air towards her. The weapon was aimed precisely and the elf's technique was impeccable, and so had it not been for Tigress's own skill and ability as a martial artist it would have struck true. Unfortunately for the elf, Tigress was one of the most skilled martial artists in her Earth's China, and when the arrow was just a few inches from her face she plucked it out of the air and tossed it out of the arena. The, now harmless, object effortlessly bypassed the walls of arcane force that kept onlookers safe from the battles happening within.
In other theaters of combat, everyone from Mulan to Megara was currently engaged in one on one battles of some sort. Ariel bounced around a battlefield of her own, playing a handheld harp of her own making against a raging berserker, while Merida roared and felt her body beginning to shift and grow as she shapeshifted into a wild bear to face off against the mighty warrior, Aurora.
Princess Diana of the Amazons wielded her mythic blade against a heavily armored warrior who grew increasingly impressed with her as he felt each of her strikes massively impact his own blade. Azula showed off various sorts of bending techniques as she fought a dastardly foe; Ashton, a much-feared assassin and well-known adventurer.
Once Fohion had struck every corner of Fiona's armor he grinned at her. The warrior had revealed himself to be kept adept in hand-to-hand combat, something many enemies of his had already known about him but that some of his newest followers hadn't gotten a chance to learn just yet. The ogress was exhausted and breathing heavily but she wasn't out of the fight just yet.
Her eyes filled with frustration and rage and she sucked in a deep breath, right as Fohion did something new; he unleashed a perk. The powerful being launched a powerful palm strike at the ogress, but at first, it looked like it'd fall short of reaching her. When his palm was fully extended Fiona smiled, wondering if the god had somehow miscalculated his range. And then his palm began to turn white, filling with concentrated chi.
"Is that it?" Fiona asked, smirking, as she focused on the face of her summoner. A split second after she attempted to taunt Fohion, the light filling her master's palm expanded, and a surge of energy exploded out of the creature's limb and sent Fiona flying backward.
The surge of energy began to change in shape as it forcibly hurled Fiona away from Fohion, eventually slamming her into the barrier on the other side of the arena in the shape of an open palm. The projectile continued to surge until all of it was stretching out across the back end of the barrier, much like how Azula's blue flames had done a few minutes ago in her own arena.
"Sorry, Fiona... This wasn't your time to shine." The dark god muttered, even as his chi-palm-projectile continued to nail Fiona against the nearly invisible arcane barrier. She was thoroughly pinned to it, and he could see the angry tears forming in her eyes. The malevolent divinity stared at her, apologetically, before deciding to do something to placate her.
"Hey! I was the wrong match for Fiona. You should let her fight someone else." The god uttered, causing one of the observers to nod at him, as she studied the ogress and noted the fact that she was still conscious. The ogress continued to feel thoroughly humiliated by her utter defeat at the hands of her summoner, but she was grateful that she'd get the chance to show off her power and skill in battle.
The thing about power, true power, was that it was always detectable by those who knew how to recognize it. That simple truth was one known by the very strongest beings, and by those who had met and survived encounters with them. One creature who did not possess true power himself but had survived a harrowing encounter with someone who had was the demonic chieftain of the tribe of demons who lurked beside the oasis.
The very moment that demon laid eyes on the hulking hellhound wandering through his camp, the demon recognized power exceeding even that of Lethice, not in the hellhound but in the floating eye that accompanied the two-headed beast. The far-sighted demon chieftain spotted the pair of strangers even when they were far away and when the demonic canine accompanying the floating eye hadn't spotted him yet.
The demonic leader focused on the eye. He cared not for the pet of the orb, as the pet only carried the smallest sliver of its master's power. He focused on the orb, on the strange, floating, avatar of some otherworldly entity. What the demon didn't know was that to even stare at true power, to peer into the abyss of unfettered and immense power, was to reveal yourself to me. And, in response to the demon's curious gaze, the scarlet eye turned and faced him. The tiniest manifestation of the god of demons stared as openly at him as he was at it.
The hellhound that was even now obeying the strange god continued to make his way towards the center of the encampment, even as the demonic leader of the camp stared at the god who was already manipulating more people than the demon could even imagine. The eldritch entity whose eye was floating in the air around the mighty wolf-like beast exploring the camp began to focus on the strange scene, and the eye began to glow.
The eye began to widen and change in shape, a process that surprised even the hellhound that the eye was constantly orbiting. After a few moments, the eye was now in the shape of a door, one which opened almost immediately. The other side of the door was a swirling miasma of hypnotic colors, and two figures stepped through it; a fully manifested avatar of Fohion Ironheart and the very first figure he summoned, the fanatical witch Bellatrix Lestrange.
Elsewhere a number of observers watched the battles occurring with an almost unprofessional level of interest. The newcomers were all fiercely intense warriors, each of whom was quite skilled in one manner of combat or another, though a few truly stood out even among their peers.
One of the warriors who stood out among the small legion of newcomers was the strange foreign woman who was battling a lightly armored berserker. She was slight of figure and had little as far as visible muscle went but she was able to stand her ground against the stranger fighting her with ease.
She was a blur whenever her foe attempted to strike her. She was also weirdly conservative with her strikes and movement as if she were focused on conserving her energy whenever possible. The warrior, Mulan, had a bizarre-looking blade that seemed to fuse mix the functions of a key with a sword. Her blade... almost appeared to be a part of her, as if somehow tethered to her soul in some real and powerful way.
The beautiful woman smiled at her enemy as he moved around her, studying her for any sign of weakness that he could exploit to gain an advantage over her. He was annoyed when he found none, which amplified his already bad mood. Mulan smirked at him when she saw that he knew that she lacked any discernible weaknesses.
The swirling desert air was a good deal warmer than the air of the forest. As I breathed it in Bellatrix clung close to my side and laid her eyes on our surroundings.
We were at the edge of the camp, and all around us laid exhausted and lewd-smelling demons. Most of them were fully asleep still drained from the previous night's festivities.
Off in the distance, I could see the leader of the demons gazing at me. His eyes were wide saucers as he studied my form. Bellatrix was defensive at the moment, frantically shifting her focus from side to side as she studied various demons around us. She didn't believe they were all sleeping, and so she was currently having a paranoid fit as she kept one of her fingers pointed in front of her at all times. The mighty witch was still not used to utilizing her new magical abilities.
I nodded at the distant demon and began to walk towards him. As I did I rose my hand and utilized an essence power to conjure a potent staff out of nowhere. As I made my way towards the demon I also casually flicked one of my hands down the length of my shirt and with a simple spell altered my clothes, transforming them from the outfit I wore in my main base of operations and into a flowing but comfortable robe seemingly made of starlight.
At the same time, as I strode deeper and deeper into the camp of demons I felt the phoenix that resided within me beginning to forcibly manifest itself for the first time. I felt its heat beginning to build within my body and even begin to slowly seep into the air around me, causing the air to distort and begin to shimmer.
I sensed the creature's impossibly warm claws settle on one half of my body. The weight of the beast was significant but not beyond my ability to handle. The fierce phoenix glared at the demons that surrounded me and began to radiate a mighty aura of holy energy, causing there to be a white layer that surrounded me as I moved closer and closer to the demonic chieftain of the tribe and the oasis.
At the same time as I was doing that I began to see one of the reasons why I had decided to approach the camp at all. Tied to the demon's "throne", or rather his slightly elevated seat, was a strange creature.
The creature was just under a meter and a half tall, had dark brown chitin covering parts of her form, and she had the dark brown eyes of a scared teenager. The being was some sort of ant-morph, a hybrid of a giant, humanoid-like, insectoid-like creature that the head of the oasis's unofficial caretakers had managed to capture and restrain.
She studied her surroundings as readily as the demon's leader did. Her bright eyes were fully awake and her skin, as well as her carapace, were covered in sweat. Her name was Princess Phylla, and I had come here to become friends with the locals, to gain new allies, and to rescue Princess Phylla, the princess of one of the few ant-tribes on Mareth who weren't already actively serving and worshipping some sort of representation of the corruption ravaging the very planet itself.
