She turned towards the viewers and raised her fists in victory. The stadium erupted in cheers. Seriously? Apparently, this world was as barbaric as it was magical. It should have made him sick to his stomach.
But when Valeria turned back to the competitor on the floor, he had stopped clutching his throat. The man still lay on the floor, coughing up blood, but a glow emanated from the wound as his flesh appeared to knit together. Valeria reached out to the man, and once he stopped coughing, he took her hand, and she pulled him up. The man’s hand was shaking. What the hell was happening? Were these people immortal?
“That was ruthless,” the man said and smiled, though his eyes were still wide.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t waste any opportunity to stand out this year.” She was squirming, and Lucian felt the tightness in her chest.
“The third round of the semifinal’s winner, following in the Snowfall Executioner’s steps as a cold-blooded beauty, Valeria!” the announcer said. “The next and last round will start in 15 minutes!”
Valeria looked back at her opponent. “Good luck with the scouts.”
He scratched his neck. “Thanks,” he said, then turned around and walked to a block of the stadium that appeared to have VIP seating. So those were the scouts?
[You say ruthlessness is desirable, but to me it seems you feel pretty guilty.] He needed to find out what she was thinking somehow.
[So, you care about the prospects of your competitor?]
They watched as her competitor reached the scouts, and many jumped at the chance to talk to him. But her focus went to the judges sitting higher, unbothered to move. They had a distinct air about them, and he felt her nervousness upon looking at a couple of them. Or perhaps it was admiration; difficult to tell for emotions that weren’t his, that he’d never experienced.
They left the arena’s battlegrounds to go to a private lounge provided for her, and warmth returned to her body. Ice magic was a strange sensation; all the warmth had drained from her body in seconds, but there were no appropriate reactions. No shivering, no anxiety spike, no inability to think. Instead, everything became focused, and movements not rigid but sharp; a state of being that no human on Earth could ever experience.
He still appreciated the warmth and the accompanying relaxation setting into the muscles. She sank into a recliner and stared at the ceiling. Apparently, Valeria had no intention of talking to her family before the final; she just breathed.
A weird sensation moved through her right arm, starting at the shoulder and rippling through it like waves. Magic again?
He closed his eyes and was shocked to find the orb of fire replaced by a blocky, vaguely humanoid shape, still burning but in an icy blue, and with no intensity. He saw the ripples move through the shape's right arm, like waves of light along the surface, while feeling them distantly in his own right arm as well. What a strange sensation.
Moving close, he saw that every wave of light chiselled away the tiniest bit at the right arm, shaping it to be more humanoid. At the speed of a snail licking ice. He continued watching her work away at the arm, then switching towards the other side, leaving it the tiniest bit closer to human form. He wanted to know what she was doing, but assumed it would be an obvious tell he didn’t know the first thing about magic.
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Valeria continued her process limb by limb, and by the time she arrived at her legs, Lucian’s mind had wandered to other questions. Her usage of ice magic dumbfounded him. Did the element of her soul have no relation to the element she was using? Her grandfather's soul appeared icy, and considering the nickname of Snowfall Executioner, Lucian assumed he was using ice magic as well.
Reaching out towards her soul once more, he noticed the intensity of emotions he had felt earlier was missing. Did they play a role in magic too?
Seeing her soul move as if to get up, he opened his eyes. Someone came in to inform her it was time for the finale, so she walked to the same room as before, and the mage performed the ritual on her again. It was shorter than before, but the warmth felt the same.
Sitting down in the changing room, she repeated the process from before. Her body drained all warmth, and the cold seeped in, penetrating even deeper than last time. Her breath crystalized. And she stepped out into the arena.
Everything felt the same as the last time, except when she saw her last opponent. She looked back to the first, then the second, then snapped back to the first, and her heart rate increased. She didn’t panic, but something made her nervous.
[What’s wrong?]
[Are they going to team up on you?]
The announcer counted down, and as it hit zero, no one moved. The man opposite her beckoned her forward with his hand. She looked to the left and right, but the twins didn’t move.
[Looks like they have decided to be gentlemen.]
She walked towards the middle, glancing to the sides, but only the opponent in front moved. They both stopped about 20 feet away from the centre, and the man raised his fists and put one leg in front, shuffling in the snow. Lucian couldn’t make out anything elemental about him, and when he closed his eyes, he realized the man’s soul was too far away for him to see. How far did this ability of his go?
Valeria formed ice daggers in both her hands and sped up the circulation of elemental energy in her body. Was it just called mana? Whatever it was, it seemed to supercharge every muscle fibre, itching to move. She checked the other two one more time, but they were still.
At a speed more than twice as fast as Lucian had ever run, she burst forth and stabbed at her opponent, but he twisted his body away. Slicing with the other hand, then with her first one again, she let out a flurry of attacks, but not one of them connected. Her opponent stepped back for every wide attack and pushed her arm away for every fast one, reacting to every attempt with superhuman speed.
Lucian didn’t need to close his eyes to understand that this one had an affinity for air; every move of his generated wind and kicked up snow. It was also why she couldn’t close the gap; her opponent's steps seemed featherlight, and he kicked a blast of air towards the ground with every single one. Lucian lost all orientation; it felt as if they were caught in a snowstorm, not in the middle of an arena. The man was dodging left and right, jumping up, but never countering.
Valeria stopped, narrowing her eyes at him. Was he better than her? No, the steam from his laboured breaths betrayed his exhaustion, while they felt more than energized. Was she conserving energy for the other fights?
With a deep breath, Valeria removed the buildup of warmth in her body before she dropped her daggers and looked at her opponent. He raised his eyebrow at her at first, then squinted as she continued staring at him.
His fists exploded forward at a distance, and Valeria stepped to the side to dodge as a blast of wind whipped past. How were those visible? He continued a barrage of wind blows, adding kicks, but didn’t move closer even though nothing connected. Lucian felt their lips draw into a smirk. What is going on?
Valeria put her hands together, shaped a hilt of ice in her right and drew it away from the other, forming the blade of a sword with her left until it emerged completely. She changed her stance, grabbing the long ice sword with both hands and holding it in front of her.
Then she dove forward and slid low on a thin sheet of ice she shaped in front of her foot, bursting through the snowstorm with an acceleration that placed butterflies in her stomach. She spun her body along with her sword, aiming low— and cut into rock. What?
Using the momentum of her spin, she transformed it into a kick and struck something hard. As their eyes turned towards what she had hit, she was already placing her next attack, a kick to the stomach. Her new opponent groaned, and she followed up with a hook to his chin, and— something ripped into their side, sending them tumbling through the snow. It hurt. They clutched their side. It hurt so badly.
Lucian was glad his sensations of her body were dulled; he couldn’t imagine what pain she was in. He wanted to stay down, but she jumped forward, and snow exploded where they had just laid. Another fighter emerged. Her opponents were ganging up on her.