Ocene silently stood at the entrance to the teleportation room, dreading what was to come. The heat was getting to her and she felt suddenly so very, very tired of all this; fighting, the approaching battle and the tension inside her body.

But it was not like she had a choice. She caressed her hairpin with her gloved hands, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and gathered herself, shoving back every emotion and every shred of feeling. She couldn’t afford to lose. Not this time. She had something to return to, something to protect, and that was what she would do.

No matter the cost, no matter the stains to her honor, no matter the questions to her loyalty, no matter the blows to her pride; she would defeat her opponent without mercy, stamp them into the ground and devour them alive, even swallow them whole if it meant her children and home were safe.

Souls of my fallen comrades, forgive me for what I am about to do.

Reopening her eyes, she stepped into the teleportation ring. Her opponent would be waiting for her.

The air was dry and stifling, the sky a pure, spotless blue, not a cloud in sight. The sun glared down without resistance and carried with it an oppressive heat. Her eyes needed a second to adjust to the intense light, but her ears caught the rustling of leaves not far away, a soft but equally hot breeze caressing her skin. Trees and bushes clung to the dusty ground, offering cover from watching eyes and enemies.

But Ocene wasn’t thinking about the cover or shadow the dried-out husks of plants provided. Greenery meant water. She stretched her senses to the limit, catching the faint familiar scent of freshwater and the soft hiss of a river.

Turning left she dashed toward the sound, ignoring most of the surrounding area for the sake of getting to her goal faster. She barreled downhill, her feet barely touching the ground, glancing from side to side, taking in only the barest of information. She was probably running down a large hill, maybe a small mountain, and the land was barren, uncultivated, untamed.  She guessed it was probably a hilly forested region of Ibinia, but all this was stuffed into a corner of her mind as she dedicated herself to getting to water as fast as possible.

With a small wave of her hand, a small bit of water left her storage earrings and tiny balls of water formed, floated above her hand.  Barely the size of her pinky nail, they were the perfect spying tools.  More and more of them danced around her as she sent them around the forest, marking locations that her opponent would likely pass through.

Ocene allowed a small smile to emerge before it disappeared into a look of confusion.  To the northeast, she had lost control of dozens of her droplets in less than a second of time. They were just….

Gone.

She shook off the bad feeling deep in her gut and raced even faster to get to the water. The drops would tell her the opponent's position upon touch, but it would also give them information that she was a mage, particularly a water mage.

The river was getting closer. She could hear the sounds of water getting more pronounced. Stopping at the edge of the tree line she saw it, a river with enough water to make this one hell of a fight.

The shore was a flat sandy beach, and looking back she saw for the first time what her first battlefield in the competition would look like.

The vegetation, though sparse, offered a few good hiding spots unfortunately enough, if her opponent was an adept sniper she would make a good target out there.

I’ll take my chances, it’s quite a distance this far south. Once I am in the water, I have more possibilities.

Abandoning cover she bolted into the water, her bare feet enjoying the feel of the cool wetness. Spreading her mana into the water she made a turn, and up rose pearl-like chains of water around her, invisible except for small glitters of reflected light. With another wave of her hands, she spread them out on the shore, focusing to the northwest where her opponent likely was coming from.

Ocene scanned the creek, looking for its deepest point. This isn’t deep enough to swim in.

She bit her lip and walked as deep into the water as possible. At its deepest point, the water only reached up to about her stomach.  She knelt, bringing her entire body under the water, and gripped some of the larger rocks on the riverbed to keep herself anchored in place.  Now all she needed to do was wait, her opponent knew as little of her as she did of them. The chances of guessing she was a mermaid was low, her kind only rarely left the seas and attacks from underneath a river were not something most would expect.

All I need now is patience.

Ocene felt the dark feeling creeping up closer and closer to her, slithering down her spine as more and more of her droplets fell to the ground, vanishing from her radar. From the many dozens of dozens of droplets she had lost, she figured out that whatever it was, it had a several-meter radius that the droplets couldn’t get into. She gulped and calmed her heartbeat. The river was her shield, her skin was nearly invisible and the shore quite a bit away from the direction her foe was coming from.

Either my opponent is the size of a mountain orc, or they’re using magic, but there is also the possibility of my opponent having an anti-magic tool - which would be a pain.

She poured even more mana into the river, creating more droplets to create a denser net. If it was a tool, she needed to figure out the upper limit of its abilities as fast as possible. The more droplets there were, the more accurately she could guess the size and area from the vanishing droplets, but she also needed to change positions or the number of droplets she created would reveal her position; as the opponent got closer, the droplets would get denser and more numerous.

Keeping herself close to the riverbed she started to swim against the current since it was less likely for them to guess her moving upriver. As she swam, she left behind hundreds of droplets in a twenty-meter radius from the river.

Considering they are heading straight here, they probably already figured out I am a water mage, now let's make a pretty little trap.

Leaving behind the droplet field she swam even further north, the depth of the river remaining the same. She came to a slight bend in the river and saw a tree that had fallen over into the river, providing some cover from where she had just come from.  She climbed out of the deep part of the river and scurried behind the tree, keeping her feet in the water. She peeked over the trunk, giving her a good view of the rest of the river and, more importantly, the water drop field.

Readying one of her hands, she prepared to drag her opponent into the river as soon as they appeared from the treeline. With her other hand, she sent more droplets into the forest to surround whoever was coming, keeping the number fairly even but making more and more droplets the closer one got to the river.

Even if they suspect it is a trap, they have to walk into it.

Her feet stayed in the water ready to jump into the water at any moment and transform to dash further north through the river. Placing a few droplets behind her in the unlikely case of an ambush from behind, Ocene waited patiently while her mysterious opponent approached.

Her opponent steadily moved closer to her, and whenever they changed direction, she had her drops move as well to keep up the illusion that they were getting closer, using the knowledge of her enemy against them to lead them directly into her ambush.

An anti-magic tool or that guy is very, very good at dispelling magic. It feels creepy, dark, something is off.

Her eyes widened and shivered at the mere thought of an anti-magic weapon or dispeller,  but she had an unnatural feeling that it was something different. He was initially heading downstream, but then he turned and started heading upstream. Ocene shivered once again, and waited patiently for her opponent to come within eyesight.

The young man was no older than his mid-twenties, with light studded leather armor and wielding a massive tower shield with both hands. As Ocene was viewing him from the side, she could see the sword he had sheathed on his back. A scar ran down the side of his face and told her that this was a young man with more experience than a human his age should have.

A warrior in the purest sense of the word.

Think, think, something that he cannot cancel, the range of five meters.

She was watching the river; the current was flowing equally and calmly as he walked upstream. She removed her enchanted earrings, glanced at them, and put them into the pocket of her shirt. If she couldn’t fight with magic, then she had to fight physically, but as a human, she was not strong enough.

But as a mermaid…as a mermaid she had a chance, if she moved fast enough and played her cards right.

Either I win or I lose, but I only have one shot.

She rushed into the water, and as she moved the human man spotted her. She smiled while swirling her hands around herself, drawing as much water around herself as she could. The loud crack of a revolver split the air, and she darted around in a zig-zag motion to make herself a more difficult target.  She drew so much water to herself, the riverbed underneath her feet was exposed to open air.

More, more, more, more, before he gets in range.

Running further upstream, she gathered more and more water, draining the river in front of her almost dry. Another gunshot, but this time she felt a searing pain in her shoulder.  She hissed in pain and checked for an exit wound, and quickly found it.

He is almost here.

His tower shield was propped against the ground, supported by his left hand, while his right hand held a revolver with a smoking barrel. She turned with a smile when she saw him holster the gun, drop the shield, and draw his sword, rushing toward her at a dead sprint. They were roughly eight meters apart now. Behind her, a giant mass of water was kept at bay by her outstretched arm, ready to be let loose at any moment.

“I am sorry.”, she said and shoved her other hand into her pocket. “But I have to win.”

With a fluid motion, she first threw her earrings in his direction and then lowered both hands, initializing the shift into her mermaid form. Her thin black trousers ripped apart and her teeth lengthened, while the fingers of her gloves were shredded by the claws that grew from her nails.

As soon as she got into that five-meter radius, she felt as if her magic was swallowed by a deep, empty void.  The chilling feeling increased, and all of her magic was deactivated. The water stored in her earrings exploded out, the pressure it experienced for the microsecond the water was trapped in the earrings turning the liquid into steam, which barely obscured the swordsman’s view.

The rest was gravity and nature. A giant wall of water thundered towards the human, bringing the now fully-transformed Ocene with it.

She pumped her tail up and down as she rushed forward with the wave she created. The human man was desperately trying to stay on his feet, ramming his blade into the ground to give himself a little more leverage. Now right in front of him, her arm whipped out towards him and grabbed his sword arm with her claws as she tried to rip into his neck with her fangs. He held her face away from him with his right hand. His left hand released the sword and they rolled around in the mud.

She curled her tail around his legs, wailing in pain as he managed to free his right hand from her grip and grab his short sword, stabbing it into her tail. She hissed and almost let his legs go forcing herself through tears to keep the lock intact. Releasing it would mean she would lose.

Keep going.

The water was gone now but he couldn't run, and she had the upper hand, for now.

Tighter.

She coiled around him tighter, like a snake applying bone-breaking pressure, and felt how the first bones cracked and splintered underneath her scaled tail, the sand underneath them coloring red. He roared in pain as he pulled another blade from somewhere and fended off her fangs yet again before trying to stab her neck. She barely deflected it but felt the blade dig into her uninjured left shoulder. To lock his sword arm she stabbed herself deeper, burying the blade further into the muscle, and drove her claws into his right wrist till she felt them scrape hard bone.

She tried to use her magic by reflex, but there was nothing, it felt as if it was being smothered by an impossibly thick and heavy blanket. Something was seriously off with this human warrior.

Now it was simply a competition of strength, one she was uncertain she was capable of winning. He kept her fangs away with the blade in her shoulder, and with his free hand he kept her right arm at a safe distance as she continued to bleed out, staining both of them crimson.

Ocene’s claws dug deeper into his leather vambrace to keep his right hand under her control, but he was stronger and fought her off, the injury making her weaker. She knew that if she wanted to win, she had to finish this quickly.

“Surrender,” she hissed.

They were rolling in the mud now, and even though Ocene kept the man’s legs locked, doing much more was impossible. She tried to dig her right hand into his neck, but blood loss was making her far weaker.

“No.”

She hissed again and coiled her tail even harder around his legs.

“I don’t want to cripple you,” she whispered, and both of them stilled. A tense, eerie silence settled over the area, and she felt him relax underneath her, loosening his grasp on the hilt of the blade inside her shoulder and letting it go. She slowly did the same, releasing her claws from his wrist, both of them panting and their clothes drenched red.

“I don’t want to lose,” he said and she smiled a toothy grin, almost feeling the irony of the situation as a strand of hair escaped her ponytail and a dark voice without tone murmured in the back of her mind.

It was so much fainter than usual.

“And I cannot lose, but … I don’t want to kill.” She answered and they simply stared at each other.

“I win if we simply stay like this, you’ll bleed to death before I do,” he told her straightforwardly and she started laughing like a madman at his words.

“True, but is it worth the price?” She whipped her head forward to his neck faster than he could react. “Will you surrender?” she asked, her fangs hovering above the exposed and vulnerable skin of his neck. The tantalizing anticipation of a kill entered her mind, the thrill of her demon to the fresh soul of the spell breaker in front of them.

“I surrender, I joined this competition just to do something, I’m not planning on dying here,” he said and finally relaxed fully. Slowly she moved her head away, wary of a trap, but as soon as she saw the sincerity in his eyes she believed him.

“Thank you,” Ocene bowed her head. “DO YOU HEAR THAT?! HE SURRENDERS!” She screamed as loud as she could before uncoiling from his legs that were a broken, bloody, dislocated mess.

“I want my stuff back,” he said and gestured towards her shoulder, she nodded at him and he drew out the blade in her shoulder with a quick movement. She bit her lip to prevent herself from screaming before groaning in pain. 

“Are you satisfied with this?” she asked, and one of the observers she’d been told about appeared behind a tree along with a face she hoped to forget. “Father?”

“Of course I am, you won. Good work, I expected nothing less. You may go home now. We have witnessed your victory, and you and the boy will be well again,” he said, and the warrior next to her eyed her Father with suspicion. 

She sneered at his words as she was teleported to the teleportation room in the Sage Coalition base.

She transformed back into her human form and stood up. Battered from the brief wrestling match with the human boy, pantless, gloves ripped, bleeding from the deep wounds in her shoulder and one of her legs, she limped forward, her sight going fuzzy as she felt herself getting weaker. 

The next fighter came, but she didn’t register who it was. She wanted to go home and take her kids into her arms and forget about this fight. The only good thing was that she had managed to avoid killing anyone this time.
Finally, her legs buckled as the adrenaline in her system wore off, and she idly noted how the ground seemed to rush towards her head just before her consciousness faded. The last thing that entered her sight was a white-blue navy uniform and a flash of brown hair. 

“Tsk, what a failure.”

ArantChronicles

That's all for today folks, you've seen both sides. Now, would you rather root for Emil's slashing success, or he be crushed under the pressure of Ocene's waters? Voting is now open!

(Also Anon here, I caught wind of a particularly interesting line of conversatio, and it turns out both Ocene AND Emil are far weaker than they were at their prime. Geez.)

 

Voting ends on the 30th.