Callie's match, the last one, wasn't ready right after Benny's. We  had a little while to digest the battles and think over what had  happened, as well as strategize for her match. From what Alden had said,  this one was going to be the toughest for any of us to manage. Benny  and I were in at this point, if a single fight was enough. We'd proven  ourselves, but more importantly, we'd learned. These had been huge  growth opportunities for both Benny and me, and Callie was excitedly  trying to figure out how to get the most of her own match now.

"So  how do I beat up the wind?" She said, not bothering to sugar coat her  intentions at all. At my loud snicker she just rolled her eyes. "Don't  laugh at me. It's a totally reasonable question, this guy can turn into  air, that's going to be damn hard to counter. Any ideas would be  appreciated so I don't make an entire damn fool of myself. I don't want  to be the only one of us who can't hack it in one of these fights. Based  on how impressed Alden has seemed we have a solid chance of making it  into the inner circle if we can prove ourselves."

I  exhaled loudly. "Yeah, but I don't have any real ideas. I think that's  kind of the point. You need to have whatever epiphany Alden was hoping  for on your own. Learning is part of what impresses him. He's looking at  potential not just combat ability. I can't give you an answer or I  might blow it for you. But if you want to talk it out for us we'd be  happy to listen and let you bounce ideas off us." I looked at Benny  speculatively. "Well, I would. Benny had the attention span of a  goldfish, it's even odds he doesn't even remember what the beginning of  this sentence was about."

Benny flipped me off, his hands  having been healed up by Jessie, who was now trying hard not to giggle  at his put out expression as she spectated our sniping like a sports  match. He growled out. "Ok first off, fuck you very much, secondly, I  have a higher Focus than you shit for brains, which means I have a  better memory, though I wouldn't have expected you to have remembered  even that much you muscle brained baboon."

I gave a  malicious grin that was so obvious in my voice I didn't need to let him  see it to know he knew what the look on my face was. "Sorry, that just  sounds like sour grapes. I think you're holding grudges because you're  so scrawny. Even your enemies are commenting on it. It's ok though  little man. I don't hold it against you. I think it's admirable that  you've dedicated yourself to intellectual enlightenment to make up for  your shrimpy underdeveloped body. Only forty Might? Your Focus is like  twelve higher than mine, but I've got more than double your Might. Do  you even lift?"

His face was a picture of righteous  indignation as he gaped at me offendedly. "Alright, we don't have time  for this. If you aren't going to help at least don't waste my damn  time." Callie said in exasperation. Benny and I broke off our back and  forth with a pair of matching unrepentant grins. Alden called Callie  down in the background, ready to start the last of our matches. She  leaned up and planted a kiss on my mask. "Alright babe, looks like I'm  up. I was going to try to bounce a plan off you but it was pretty bare  bones anyway. Just watch how I do this."

I smiled down at  her, glad for my mask so she couldn't see the embarrassed flush on my  face from burning her strategizing time bickering with Benny. She didn't  seem mad though, just fondly exasperated as she hopped gracefully down  from the seats to stroll across the dirt ring to fight her opponent. As  she did, I thought over the Pavilion as a whole. This place was a blast.  Constant training and combat, constant improvement. Despite that  everyone seemed pretty nice, the sole requirement was dedication to  getting stronger.

It just highlighted how complex people  could be. I hadn't expected everyone to be so friendly and accepting in  what was essentially a giant pit fighting club. Callie reached the  center of the circle, turning to smile at Alden in concern. "So any  extra notes for me? I think I have a grasp on the rules, but our fight  is going to be a bit less restrained I think, so I wanted to check out  what we need to keep in my for energy attacks and things like that.  Don't want to hurt the audience by mistake."

"Not  something to worry about." The bearded man laughed. "It may not be  obvious but we have protections in place to stop the fights from  spilling out of the ring by accident. That's what this place is for  after all. Go wild, you don't need to worry about us. For fights like  this I want you both to keep in mind that giving up is better done  sooner than later. I can't and won't force you, but it's extremely  difficult to predict the outcome of overpowered blasts. If you feel  you're in danger you should stop, because as with any fight we can't  assure you of safety."

Callie nodded, and her costume  began to activate, making her harder to see or pay attention to. The  other man, a five foot six inch man with a mostly blank green mask and a  hooded green robe, also gave a solemn nod, piercing eyes never leaving  Callie through the only two holes in the jade surface of his face  covering. With the out of the way, Alden gestured for them to begin and  stepped back out of the way.

Callie had been refining her  new shadow manipulation technique every possible chance, and she'd shown  me some of it. I expected her to use her snowflakes, but she didn't  start off with those. Her costume made her hard to see and focus on, and  the effect was ultimately based on shadows, so she was able to somewhat  recreate it with pure constructs. Callie raised a hand, blanketing the  area with darkness, and then letting it fall away to reveal thirteen  identical copies of her, all with that exact same effect.

I  blinked. I hadn't know her fine control was that good. Snowflakes were  one thing, but people had lots of details, it was impressive she could  make those copies. Then I realized she wasn't. She was using the  difficult to see nature of the costume as a crutch to allow her copies  to be less complete. She'd clothed both them and herself in a shroud of  nearly smoke like shadows, and the insubstantial configuration managed  to cover the lack of details. She wasn't capable of making perfect  copies of herself, but she didn't need to be.

Gust didn't  speak, just lashed out with a hand, sending a series of cutting  windblades toward her. Windblades that were jerked aside  as he was  forced to turn insubstantial and avoid the spears of darkness stretching  up from the shadow beneath him. Callie had shifted the shadows cast by  her insubstantial clones to crisscross the areas around where he was  standing just subtly enough that it had been easy to miss when  distracted by her copies.

Her stab didn't hit him though,  and even thrown off the wind blades managed to disperse two of the  shadows, leaving her with only eleven. Still, I was damn impressed.  Callie had used that burst of dark at the beginning to lay down several  concurrent traps. Shadow manipulation had clearly given her the control  to truly start taking advantage of her experience and tactical acumen.

The  wind whipped around the ring, circling, and Callie watched calmly as  her opponent failed to appear. Suddenly she whipped out both hands, as  did the copies, and shadows darted between their fingers, thin as razor  wire. They wrapped and connected the lines, creating a tapestry of  sharpened shadow thread that spread through the ring like a spider web.  It was impossible to tell from looking which one was the real one, all  of them acting on concert. Callie's ability to put her stats to use now  was staggering. That one Skill had qualitatively improved her combat  ability by leaps and bounds.

With no place to reform in  the ring itself, Gust was forced to manifest as an insubstantial  wraithlike entity above the field of shadows lines. I was guessing he  couldn't actually remain as wind for more than a few seconds based on  the timing. It would have been much better to wait for an opening, but  being made of air was probably a trump card more than a normal part of  his toolkit. That at least showed he was taking Callie seriously.

Sadly,  that meant the next move was a wave of raining wind blades. I'd have  expected that tactic to be frowned on in a place so dedicated to combat  mastery, but then again, Alden had said that Gust leaned on his powers  too heavily. Still, I was in awe at the control and fluidity he was  showing with the attacks. Every wind blade was carefully aimed and  calculated to hit exactly where it would to the most damage, and I even  saw several of them adjust midair. Whatever this guy's Focus was, it was  damn sure higher than mine was.

The  rain of wind cutters smashed down on the ring. I saw several of them  cleaved in half when they hit the razor wire shadows, but the shadows  shattered when they hit as well. Several of them managed to avoid the  defensive net that Callie's shadow doubles had thrown up into the air at  the start of the attack, managing to submerge themselves more  completely in the hanging strands to prevent them from getting sniped  from above the netting. The ones that managed to get through tore holes  in the shadows, dispersing most of them.

By  the time the attack was done there were only three doubles left, and  the spiderweb of shadows had been mostly torn apart in the attack. The  three Callie's darted into the center, each of them flicking their hands  in a weaving gesture to pull the strings into a powerful dome shield  over top of them, blocking them all from sight under a half sphere of  pure darkness. There was no movement from the shield for a minute or  two, and Gust just waited for a while, clearly expecting her to come out  or attack or something similar so he could find an opening to exploit.

Nothing  of the sort happened. Callie just stayed under there, taking shelter in  the shield, and Gust eventually began to descend. His translucent form  had become more substantial as he lowered himself down, his shadow  growing as he approached the solid earth, until his feet eventually  touched down on the hard packed dirt. That wind form was probably pretty  energy intensive, and keeping it up during such an obvious lull would  be a waste of energy. Callie wasn't giving in, that much was clear.

Gust  stalked forward, raising his arms, and began hammering blast of  compressed air like hammers into the shadow dome. It creaked, then began  to buckle, eventually being torn apart. As soon as it breached though  there was a massive explosion of shadow energy as a pressurized blast of  the stuff poured out of the hole like a waterfall and smashed Gust  longways across the ring, smashing him into the barrier at the edge. The  rest of the dome dissolved, leaving behind...nothing. It was empty.

None  of the Callie's who had been inside were remaining which could only  mean that she'd never really been there. There was a disturbance on the  ground near where he'd touched down, and Callie stood up. She brushed  the dirt off her coat as the visibility returned and the smoky veil of  shadow making her identical to her doubles flaked off. She'd used his  growing shadow during the descent as cover to burrow out under the  shield using her shadow construct to dig through the dirt, completely  covered in a layer of shadow to obscure her, then she must have  dispersed the doubles and used the energy to create a high pressure  environment. She turned and gave me a wave and I laughed loudly. That  girl definitely had style.