Chapter 775: Domain [Bonus - ]

Chapter 775: Domain [Bonus Chapter]

"I’m gonna break the rest of them before this morning’s over," Tasmin panted, flicking the blood out of her eye. "You look like a slaughtered pig, Brida..."

"You don’t look so pretty yourself, shadow rat," Brida grinned, her bloody teeth gleaming.

They were both already a mess.

Tasmin’s leathers were scuffed and torn at the shoulders, and blood dripped steadily from the deep cut on her forehead down her sharp jaw.

Her breathing was quick and shallow, and her ribs still ached from the counter, but the shadows pouring out of her eyes burned thicker than ever, and her Shadow Heart kept beating under her ribs.

THUMP!

Brida stood hunched slightly to protect her cracked rib, her tunic soaked in sweat and blood.

Her nose was broken, her left cheekbone was swelling purple, and the star-slate across her arms had gone dull and patchy, flickering between metal and skin as her Warrior’s Heart struggled to keep up with how often she was forcing it on and off.

Every time it locked, it took a little longer to let go, and every breath she dragged in through that tight hard chest came up a little shorter.

Neither of them looked even slightly interested in stopping as outside the dome, the stands lost their minds.

"WAAAAAAAHHHH!"

The women stamped their feet and screamed for their side at the top of their lungs.

The scouts and archers on the western benches shrieked for Tasmin to break Brida’s other side, and the dwarven smiths and heavy infantry on the east roared back for Brida to crush her, banging their mugs and shields against the railings.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Inside the dome, neither of them heard a word of it.

Tasmin moved first.

She stepped backward, raised her right foot and set it down on the empty air and the air held.

A slab of solid shadow formed under her boot, black and glassy, and when she shifted her weight onto it, another one formed under her other foot, a little higher.

...Then another and another, faster and faster, until she was running straight up into the air on a staircase of darkness that unfolded beneath her a heartbeat before every step.

TAK! TAK! TAK! TAK!

In seconds, she was fifty feet above the arena floor, then a hundred, climbing up through the falling snow inside the dome with the snow whirling around her in spirals as she ran and her shadow stretching long across the arena floor beneath her.

Brida tilted her head back and watched her go.

’Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be.’

She bent her knees, let her Warrior’s Heart drop her body loose and light, and then slammed it shut into slate the instant her feet pushed off.

KA-BOOOOOOM!

The floor under her blew out into a crater, and Brida shot straight up after Tasmin like a boulder fired out of a catapult.

Tasmin looked down and saw her coming.

She stepped sideways onto a new slab, and Brida’s fist went straight through the stair she’d been standing on a second earlier.

KRASSH!

The shadow step shattered into black glass.

Brida grabbed the next step as she flew past it, swung herself up onto it and lunged.

Tasmin blinked across the gap to a slab ten feet higher, and Brida’s hardened fingers closed on empty air and tore that step to pieces too.

KRAK! KRAK!

They went up like that through the snow, Tasmin building stairs as fast as Brida could smash them.

...Every time Brida’s boots touched one of the slabs to launch herself again, the step exploded under her feet, and every time Tasmin landed on one, Brida was already swinging at it.

Shards of broken shadow rained down on the arena floor below like black hail.

Halfway up, Brida stopped chasing the stairs and went through them.

She tucked her chin, locked herself into slate from head to toe and activated [Aegis Charge] in midair, launching herself off a step like a battering ram.

"Get back here!"

She smashed straight up through the middle of it, shattering five slabs in a row, and the steps under Tasmin’s feet came apart before she could even shift her weight.

KRASH-KRASH-KRASH-KRASH-KRASH!

Tasmin dropped.

She fell ten feet, twenty, with Brida rising straight at her from below, and she spun in the air and built a new step under her heel with a split second to spare.

Brida shot past her close enough that the wind of it tore at Tasmin’s hair.

WHOOOOSH!

Tasmin activated [Predator’s Mark] and watched the red lines flare across Brida’s back as she flew by... the soft spots between the shoulder blades where the slate had to bend.

She dropped onto Brida from above with both heels.

THOOOM!

The kick drove into the back of Brida’s shoulders and folded her in midair, and for a moment both of them were falling, with Tasmin standing on Brida’s back like a woman riding a falling rock.

Then Tasmin stepped off onto a new slab, and Brida kept falling.

Two hundred feet up, Tasmin stopped running.

She spun on the step, dropped into a crouch and met Brida’s next leap head on with a kick to the jaw.

KRAAAAK!

Brida’s head snapped back, and the force of it stopped her climb dead in midair.

For one long weightless second, she hung there in the snow with nothing under her then she fell.

WHOOOOOOSH!

She plummeted two hundred feet and hit the arena floor flat on her back.

KA-THOOOOOOOOM!

The impact punched a crater into the ground so deep that the roots underneath tore loose and whipped up into the air like snapped ropes.

The shockwave rolled out and hit the walls of the dome, and the whole bubble rang like a struck gong with a silver ripple racing from the floor all the way up to the top.

Then, as if someone outside had simply brushed a hand across it, the ripple smoothed out and vanished.

Inside, Tasmin stood at the top of her staircase with her chest heaving.

’Stay down,’ she thought. ’Please just stay down for once in your life.’

At the bottom of the crater, a hand gripped the edge.

Brida dragged herself out, spat a mouthful of dirt, looked up at the tiny dark figure standing in the falling snow two hundred feet above her and grinned.

...She didn’t jump this time.

’What a bitch, I have something for you...’

She drew her right fist back, let the slate on her arm lock tight all the way up to the shoulder and drove it straight down into the ground with [Earth-Shattering Cleave].

KA-THOOOOOOM!

A blinding vertical crescent of compressed earth energy tore up out of the floor and shot straight into the sky.

It went through the middle of Tasmin’s staircase like a knife through paper, splitting it in half from the bottom step to the top, and the whole tower of shadow slabs collapsed in a roaring cascade of black glass.

KRRRRAAAASSSSHHH!

The crescent kept going and slammed into the roof of the dome, and the whole bubble flashed silver.

Tasmin fell.

She tumbled through the falling shards for fifty feet before she managed to throw a single step out under her and catch herself on it, landing hard on one knee.

Her chest was burning and her Shadow Heart hammered so hard against her ribs she could feel it in her teeth.

THUMP! THUMP!

’She cut the whole damn thing in half,’ Tasmin thought, staring down at the brawler. ’With her fist...?’

Brida bent her knees.

BOOOOOOM!

She came up out of the crater even faster than the first time.

"Fuck fuck fuck..."

Tasmin swore and started building again, but she was slower now as each step took a fraction of a second longer to form.

The slabs came out thinner and cloudier, more like smoke than glass, and her Shadow Heart was beating harder and harder to keep up with how much darkness she was spending.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

Brida didn’t bother smashing the steps this time... She went straight for Tasmin and rose up right in front of her, close enough to touch.

"Hi."

Tasmin’s eyes went wide.

’She’s not even trying to dodge anymore.’

Tasmin stood her ground on the staircase and threw everything she had at her.

She split off two clones with [Phantom Blitz] and sent them leaping off the steps from either side, and the three of them hit Brida at the same time in midair... one kick to the ribs, one elbow to the temple and a doubled-strength [Shadow Strengthening] punch straight to the chest.

WHAM! KRAK! THOOOOM!

Brida took all three.

She locked her whole body into slate and took them without blocking a single one with her chest swallowing the impact with a sound like a hammer hitting a bell as the clones burst apart on contact and the punch stopped her climb dead.

Brida reached out and grabbed Tasmin by the ankle.

’No...!’

Brida’s fingers closed like a vise. Gravity took her, and it took Tasmin with her.

They fell together, spinning end over end through the snow, with the shattered remains of the staircase falling all around them.

Tasmin twisted and kicked at Brida’s face with her free leg.

Brida took it on the forehead, held on and pulled herself up Tasmin’s body as they plummeted, until she had both arms locked around Tasmin’s waist from behind.

"Let... GO...!" Tasmin snarled, driving her elbows back into Brida’s face over and over.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

Brida didn’t let go.

Blood was pouring from her nose again, and every elbow rattled her teeth, but she just squeezed tighter, crushing the air out of Tasmin’s lungs as they tumbled through the snow.

Tasmin dropped [Shadow Strengthening] into her legs and kicked backward into Brida’s knee, then her shin, then her knee again.

KRAK! KRAK!

’Let go, let go, LET GO!’

’Not a chance,’ Brida thought with her vision swimming. ’Not after all that... You’re coming down with me.’

She twisted them both in midair, turning so Tasmin was underneath her, and drove them straight down toward the ground with her full weight on top.

The floor rushed up.

Two hundred feet became fifty, then ten, and Tasmin could see the cracks in the crater floor rushing up at her face.

At the very last second, Tasmin turned to liquid shadow in Brida’s arms and slipped through them like water through fingers.

Brida hit the ground alone.

KA-KRA-THOOOOOOOOOM!

The entire arena floor caved in. A crater forty feet wide punched down into the earth, the cracked walls of Eluned’s arena split all the way to their foundations, and snow and dirt and splintered roots blasted up in a column that slammed into the roof of the dome a hundred feet overhead.

The dome rang again, louder than ever then, just as calmly as before, the silver ripple settled.

Tasmin rose out of the shadow at the crater’s edge and dropped to one knee, gasping with one hand pressed against her chest.

Her Shadow Heart was pounding so hard it hurt... Her shadows were thin and patchy around her ankles, flickering in and out, and her vision kept going gray at the edges.

’I can’t keep this up,’ she thought, dragging in air. ’Not like this.’

At the bottom of the crater, the dust began to settle.

Brida was on her feet.

She was swaying badly.

Her slate skin had gone patchy and dull, half metal and half bruised bronze, and every breath she took was a short wet rasp through her clenched teeth.

Blood ran from her nose and her mouth and the cut on her cheek, and her cracked rib had her bent slightly to one side but she was standing.

She climbed out of the crater one heavy step at a time, slipping twice on the loose dirt and catching herself with her hands both times, and finally stopped at the edge, facing Tasmin across the broken ground.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

The air in the dome was thick with dust and drifting snow.

Somewhere behind Tasmin, a chunk of the arena wall finally gave up and toppled over into the crater with a long groaning crash.

KRRRRAAAASSSH!

Neither of them looked at it.

Tasmin’s hands were shaking.

She clenched them into fists to make them stop, and they kept shaking anyway.

Across from her, Brida tried to let her Warrior’s Heart loosen so she could take a full breath, and the slate across her chest wouldn’t let go.

It stuck halfway with metal and skin grinding together, and she had to grit her teeth and force it open before her lungs could fill.

They were both done with this kind of fighting... Neither of them was going to give an inch, and both of them knew it, Regular punches weren’t going to finish this anymore.

Brida’s amber eyes flared with a terrifying new resolve.

The crimson pouring from them darkened into a deep heavy burgundy, and it felt like she was dragging the whole mountain valley up into her chest through the soles of her feet.

"Enough dancing, Tas," Brida growled, her voice dropping into a low rumble that ran through the cracked floor. "Let’s see how your little shadow tricks do inside my house..."

She dropped low and slammed both fists into the ground.

BOOOOOOOOM!

She poured every bit of earth mana she had left down into the bedrock under the valley and took a deep breath.

"Welcome to my own Domain! Bastion Ground!"

RUMBLE! RUMBLE! RUMBLE!

Huge jagged slabs of ancient bedrock tore up through the crater in a roaring circle, ripping up the earth all the way down to the mountain’s roots, and climbed thirty feet into the air.

They curved inward and slammed together over the two of them like colliding mountains.

KRA-THOOOOOOM!

The last slab locked into place, sealing them inside a solid dome of stone and plunging everything into total darkness.