Chapter 777: And The Battle Ends With A...?

Chapter 777: And The Battle Ends With A...? [Bonus Chapter]

The steam burst into the dark with the endless shriek of a cracked boiler.

HSSSSSSSSSSSHHH!

Scalding white clouds rolled off every inch of Brida’s battered body and spread across the black lake in churning swells.

The blood on her arms and neck boiled away in an instant, leaving her skin dry and flushed and so hot that the air around her rippled like a mirage.

The cold of Tasmin’s domain shrank back from her, pushed away by a blast of furnace heat that smelled like scorched stone.

Deep in Brida’s chest, her Warrior’s Heart was pounding harder than it ever had.

All this time, she’d been using it the same way... Tighten the mana when a hit came in... Let it go so she could move... Harden, loosen, harden, loosen, until her body had started to seize up from doing it too many times but kneeling there in the black water with her ribs shattered and her strength gone, she stopped letting go.

She tightened it, and then she kept tightening it, due to that... inside the steam, Brida didn’t get bigger.

...She got smaller?

The thick bands of muscle across her shoulders, arms, torso and thighs began to pull in.

They drew tight against her bones with a terrible slow precision, like red-hot steel cable being cranked taut.

Her broad shoulders narrowed... The heavy bulk of her arms compressed down until her limbs looked lean and smooth and almost whip-like, and the dull patchy slate across her skin sealed over into a single seamless shell of dark metal that swallowed the light.

Every scrap of her strength and every bit of mana sleeping in her bones was being squeezed into a smaller and every ounce of it was multiplying as it went.

She was honing all of it to a single point as the pressure around her got heavier.

KRRRRRK!

The stone under the black water cracked under the sheer weight of her.

The shaking ran up through the whole bedrock dome, and the keystone at the very top burst into powder and blew a jagged hole through the roof.

KA-BOOOM!

Cold daylight and snowflakes speared down through the darkness and lit up the boiling steam.

Outside, all the women rose to their feet at once, staring down through Aeliana’s Dome and the broken roof of the bedrock in stunned silence.

Thora’s jaw dropped, Morwenna gripped the railing so hard the wood creaked and even Morrighan’s tail had gone completely still.

Inside, Tasmin stayed frozen in her crouch on the black water.

’What the hell is that...?’ An icy jolt of pure animal danger shot down her spine. ’All that muscle just vanished... but the air around her feels heavy enough to crush a breastplate.’

She didn’t wait to find out.

Ten shadow arms lunged through the steam and wrapped around Brida’s ankles, knees, waist and throat, then clenched with crushing force.

GRAB!

Brida stood up and she didn’t struggle this time... She just straightened her back and pressed her feet down into the stone.

PSHHHHHK!

The shadow hands cracked like frozen glass under a press and crumbled into black smoke.

Brida stepped out of the steam.

Her breathing had gone quiet and steady, her shattered ribs were still shattered, but the compressed muscle had clamped around them like a brace.

The wild crimson smoke was gone from her eyes, and in its place was a deep steady ruby glow, like the molten heart of the world.

"You really made me work for this one, Tas," Brida said calmly enough that the water around her feet rippled in rings. "But I have a lot of things to do so you see, I have to win."

Why did a calm Brida feel so scary...?

"Then I’ll make you bleed for it too, you stubborn ox," Tasmin hissed, as her Shadow Heart hammered against her ribs.

BA-DUMP!

The last round began.

KA-BOOOOOOOM!

Both of them launched forward at the peak of everything they had.

Tasmin held nothing back.

She dragged every drop of darkness her heart could make and forced it through every channel she had... She split into six solid clones with [Phantom Leap], each one dense enough now to hit like the real thing, and all of them tore across the lake from every direction while the water under Brida erupted into a towering cage of grasping, striking arms.

Brida charged straight into the middle of it.

Her compressed body moved like a fired bolt as the black water flashed to steam wherever her boots touched it, and she ran through the storm of darkness without slowing down once.

WHOOSH!

A clone dropped on her from above with an axe kick.

Brida raised her forearm, and the heel hit her sealed metal skin with a sound like two anvils colliding.

CLANG!

The clone shattered from the recoil alone.

Brida drove her fist through the chest of the next one, then dropped and spun into a low sweeping kick that cut two more clean in half at the waist and sent a wave of black water rolling across the dome.

BANG! WHOOOOSH!

The shadow hands kept coming... She tore through them two and three at a time, and every arm she broke burst against her skin like smoke against a wall.

The real Tasmin wasn’t any of them.

She dropped from the hole in the roof like a black falcon falling through the shaft of light with her hands locked together over her head in a spinning drill of shadow.

[Predator’s Mark] blazed in her eyes and found one tiny glowing line on Brida’s sealed shell, right along the hinge of her jaw.

’There.’

She brought both fists down on it with everything her heart could give her.

KRRRAAAAAACK!

The drill punched through Brida’s compressed shell and snapped her head violently to the side.

Brida’s boots plowed two trenches through the stone floor as she was shoved back four full paces.

Blood welled in Brida’s mouth, and her eyes lit up with joy.

She caught the force in her bones, twisted, clamped Tasmin’s wrists between her forearms and activated [Full Counter].

"Mine now!"

BWOOOOOOOOOOM!

A ring of red force exploded from Brida’s chest and threw Tasmin’s own strike straight back into her body, multiplied by everything the Warrior’s Heart had packed into Brida’s frame.

Tasmin’s sternum creaked, and she was flung thirty feet straight up through the hole in the roof and out into the open air of Aeliana’s Dome.

WHOOOOOOOSH!

’She threw it all right back at me...!’ Tasmin thought, as blood sprayed from her lips. ’Her bones are like springs!’

She refused to let it end like this.

She forced her heart to pump one more wave of darkness up her spine, twisted in midair and called four shadow arms down out of nothing.

They caught her by the boots and shoulders, stopped her dead and hurled her straight back down through the roof at Brida like an arrow off a war bow.

Behind her, the entire black lake rose up into a towering wave of liquid midnight.

"Drown in it, cow!" Tasmin screamed.

Brida planted her feet in the cracked stone and pulled her right fist back, tightening her Warrior’s Heart until the sealed metal along her arm glowed white-hot.

"You drown first, rat!" Brida bellowed, and drove her fist into the floor with [Earth-Shattering Cleave].

KA-THOOOOOOOOOM!

The ground split open as a vertical crescent of compressed earth tore up out of the stone, ripped a chasm across the entire floor and smashed head on into the falling wave of shadow.

KRA-KOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Light and dark collided, and nothing inside could hold.

What was left of Bastion Ground bowed outward and exploded into a million pieces of stone... The last anchors of Tasmin’s domain snapped at the same instant, and the black sphere caved in and dissolved into nothing.

SHHHHKKKRAAAAAASSSH!

The blast hit the inside of Aeliana’s Dome with the force of a landslide as the whole shimmering bubble flashed blinding silver from the ground to the sky, and it held, without so much as a ripple.

When the dust began to clear, the arena floor was gone... All that was left was a smoking crater of shattered rock that had swallowed the ring from wall to wall.

And in the middle of it, neither of them had fallen.

Tasmin was on her feet, barely.

Her leathers hung in shreds, blood from her forehead ran into both of her eyes, and every breath tore through her lungs like broken glass.

Her Shadow Heart was still beating, but it had started to stutter with the darkness coming in thin and uneven.

BA... DUMP...

Ten paces away, Brida stood in the rubble with the whole left side of her ribs bruised black.

Steam still hissed off her in thin wisps, but the seamless shell had started to crack with thin red lines splitting open along her arms where the compression was tearing her apart from the inside.

Her swollen jaw was leaking blood down her chest.

She spat a tooth into the dirt and let out a broken wheezing laugh.

"You look like roadkill, Tas," Brida rasped. "Lord Silas is gonna have to carry you out of here in a bucket..."

"I’ll walk out on my own two feet over your fat corpse," Tasmin panted. "You sound like a broken bellows.."

"At least I’m still breathing, you slippery snake."

"Not for much longer..."

"Can’t even see straight, can you?"

"I can see you fine, You’re the ugly one."

Brida took one step forward.

Her knee buckled, and she caught herself and forced it straight again while fresh steam hissed out of the cracks in her arms.

Tasmin took one step forward, and her vision went white.

Her shadow flickered under her boots and nearly went out... She bit down on her tongue until the pain dragged her back and grabbed onto it with everything she had left.

’Don’t fall,’ Tasmin begged her own body. ’Not now... Not in front of Lord Silas, Just give me one more... I have to win.’

’Stay up,’ Brida snarled at her legs. ’I’m not losing to that skinny little bat. Not today... besides if I put up a g-g-good peformance, maybe me and my Lord will go at it tonight...’

Brida’s knee hit the stone however she shoved herself back up with a roar.

Tasmin’s legs went out from under her but she dragged herself back up by sheer spite.

They closed the distance anyway with one dragging step at a time, until they were close enough to swing.

Brida threw a right hook... It missed Tasmin’s head by a foot, because Brida couldn’t see straight anymore.

WHUUUM!

Tasmin threw a straight left. It clipped Brida’s shoulder and slid off, because Tasmin’s arm didn’t have the strength left to stay on target.

THUP!

They stumbled into each other and caught hold, Brida’s fist bunched in the front of Tasmin’s torn leathers while Tasmin’s fingers knotted in Brida’s soaked auburn hair.

For a moment they just hung there with their foreheads pressed together, both of them gasping, both of them shaking, holding each other up out of refusal to be the one who fell first.

Blood dripped off both of their chins and pattered onto the stone between their boots.

Then, at the same time, they shoved each other away.

Both of them staggered back three steps and somehow, impossibly, stayed standing.

’She took everything I had,’ Tasmin thought, staring at the brawler swaying across the crater. ’My heart, my clones, my hands, my whole domain... and she’s still standing there like a mountain.’

’She didn’t run,’ Brida thought. ’She broke my house and ate my counter, and she’s still looking at me like she wants to rip my throat out... There’s nobody I’d rather be bleeding next to.’

"Last round, Brida," Tasmin whispered.

"Last round, Tas," Brida agreed, dropping her hips.

They ran.

BOOOOOOM!

There were no clones left, no shadow arms, no cleaves, no counters and no domains... There was nothing left but two broken women charging across a crater with one punch each.

Tasmin poured every last stuttering beat of her heart into her right fist and aimed it at the one red line [Predator’s Mark] could still find on Brida’s jaw.

BA-DUMP!

Brida poured everything her cracking Warrior’s Heart could still hold into hers and swung it at Tasmin’s temple.

HSSSSSSSHH!

The ground broke under their last steps, and both fists landed at the same instant.

KRA-KOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A blinding flash of black and red burst from between them, and the shockwave hit Aeliana’s Dome so hard that the whole valley rang.

For one long moment, they stood there with their fists buried in each other’s faces with neither of them moving and neither of them breathing either, as if their bodies hadn’t been told yet.

...Then the light went out of their eyes.

The shadows faded off Tasmin’s skin, and the last of the steam hissed away from Brida’s arms.

THUD!

They hit the broken stone at the exact same moment and lay side by side in the rubble, out cold.

Up on the platform, Aeliana lowered her hand, and the Dome dissolved into drifting motes of light.

Silas sat back in his chair, and a broad proud smile spread across his face.

’A draw,’ he thought. ’Just like I said.’

He stood, stepped to the edge of the platform and vanished.

FWIP!

He reappeared in the middle of the crater, right between them.

For a moment he just looked down at the two of them lying side by side in the rubble, and his eyes went soft then he knelt and lifted them both easily, one held up against each side of him.

Their blood dripped onto his robes, and he didn’t care in the slightest.

He turned toward the stands, where over a hundred pairs of wide eyes were watching him, and held them both up high.

"They both did really well!" Silas announced, his voice carrying across the whole valley. "Neither of them gave an inch, and neither of them lost... So I’m moving both of them into the Keep!"

Then the arena exploded.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"