Kiri stared at her falling body as she stood within her Soul Sanctuary. Two Soul Twins waited behind her, a third fading as she spent the contained soul energy within it to restore herself. Back in her body, completely restored, she was still falling towards the sand, but her focus was elsewhere. The feeling of connectedness, of being the only real thing in a sea of illusions was flowing through her body and just like Nate had told her, she tried to direct it before it could bleed away. A fraction of a fraction heeded her demand and flowed into her Empowered Soul Sanctuary Skill.

  Time around her seemed to slow as notifications flashed in the corner of her vision. But even with the feeling of slowed time, she knew she only had seconds to use this gift before it would leave her. Two seconds, she judged. It was all the time in the world and no time at all. The Blood Duelist had been fast, but even with the Blood Mage empowering her, she had only been marginally faster than Kiri when she was imbued. Burning soul energy for Imbuement had been bleeding her dry and she was almost spent, but she had enough for a little more. Just a little more. It was that Imbuement the Divine Energy had latched onto.

  She moved, and the arena exploded from the force of her single step, unable to handle the force of her foot upon its surface. Burning light in the shape of a serpent surrounded Allais. A Familiar. Kiri could sense the soul energy contained within. Her hand touched the snake and Soul Rebirth devoured it. Its light was still fading as Kiri’s second hand reached her real target and with an almost casual slice, the Legendary dagger, gifted to her by her beloved brother, passed through Allais neck like a hot knife through butter. With time still slowed to her perception, there was no sign of blood, as though the blade had phased through the woman. Then Kiri was past her and the feeling of slowed time evaporated. Behind her, the headless corpse of Allais crashed into the sand as her head rolled free, a look of surprise in her dead eyes.

  The shock on everyone’s faces was interrupted as Kiri followed a moment later, crashing into the dirt of the Guild arena as she finally understood a truth behind her Imbuement that she had never considered. The bonuses to Endurance and Constitution were not meant to make her more durable. Or they were, but not to protect her from others. They were to protect her from the damage she would do to herself. With almost all of her soul energy expended, she collapsed onto the sand as she felt the processed mana of two Platinums flowing towards her. Helen and Allais were dead. With that thought, she passed out.

  *************

  Nate felt blood dripping into his eyes as he lay uncomfortably upon shards of rock. It was hard to see with sand and dirt falling towards his eyes but there was a weight on top of him. As the dust slowly settled, he could finally take in his surroundings, limited though they were. He was surrounded by rubble and pieces of rock, with Britt lying protectively over the top of him. Her projected armour was covering them but he could see it flickering and a moment later it collapsed.

  Leaning up he could see they were on the outer edge of a crater. Everyone was scattered around them in various states of bleeding and shock. Deverell had been closest to the blast and appeared to have multiple broken bones. Null had been flung into the wall of the Guildhouse and looked unconscious. At least, Nate hoped he was just unconscious. Coralie was dripping blood from small cuts on her arms and legs but had somehow weathered most of the explosion. Luc was the only one unharmed, a rotating shield of metal in front of him, pitted and dusty but unbroken. As for the two remaining Jamisons, they had caught most of the explosion and landed in a pile together, but were already climbing to their feet as their wounds slowly knitted back together. Frick was gone. Nate could sense he’d been forced back into the Spiritual Realm due to the damage to his form.

  As for Kiri, he couldn’t see her. His heart clenched in fear and Nate grunted as he forced himself to climb to his feet, ready to find his sister and continue the battle against the Jamison siblings, when he heard a whisper carry on the wind to all their ears.

  “Spear of the Storm.”

  A pillar of lightning dropped from the sky above thick enough to cover the remaining Jamisons. As it made groundfall, the explosion of sound blew out Nate’s ears and blinded him even through closed eyelids. But he didn’t need to see. His sphere of awareness would have been enough to tell him what had happened, but the processed mana that flowed into his core like a flood was a secondary source of proof. Instead, he searched for Kiri, his heart clenched in worry. The pressure in his chest only released when he found her on the other side of the Guildhouse, Jorge kneeling over her. With a relieved sigh, he started to collapse and instead found himself held up by Britt. He gave her a tired smile which she matched as everyone slowly gathered back together.

  Using his sphere of awareness he assessed everyone else. Aisling floated towards them on drafts of wind, still looking like slightly warmed-up death. Evindal was forced to jog to catch up and immediately moved towards Deverell. Jorge was carrying Kiri back to them while Luc had moved to pick up Null. Britt helped Nate hobble closer as he realised one of the rocks had broken his ankle, the pain masked by the adrenaline and his own worry.

  His teeth were grinding together as he tried to suppress the pain, a Feather of Renewal clasped in his hand as it slowly repaired the damage to his ankle, eyes and ears. As his vision returned, he realised repairing the Guild was going to take more work than repairing the damage to their bodies. There was a crater where Kiri had moved from, the damage evident on the training grounds as she had shattered the stones around them with the force of her movement. The damage to the ground had killed the two surviving Golds he had buried, the shattering stones finishing what he had started. A second crater lay nearby with the corpses of Portos and Kartier Jamison, burned flesh surrounded by cracked glass as the energy from the lightning bolt had burned the ground, fusing the sand.

  Coralie kept her distance from them, and Nate didn’t blame her. She had earned some small reprieve from him for saving him from her mother, but that didn’t mean he forgave her. In the end though, it wasn’t his forgiveness she wanted, and if he knew his sister, which he did, Coralie was not going to get what she wanted. Kiri was emotional, but she was also fiercely loyal. Her past left her with basically no tolerance for betrayal. Would she kill her ex-girlfriend? Unlikely. But she wouldn’t take her back either. With his ankle working again, he shuffled over to Kiri as Jorge laid her down on the broken ground. Nate’s sphere of awareness told him what was wrong with his sister. She’d overdrawn on her soul energy and was running on the dregs. Her regeneration was hard at work, but Nate could assist with that. Jorge looked on worriedly as Nate began to create a Soul Drain rune, targeting himself and directing the drained energies into his sister. It felt like dumping a cup of water into a lake but after a minute, and what Nate suspected was a third of his Soul Energy, Kiri’s eyes opened.

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  “Did we win?” she asked, looking from her Father to Nate.

  Jorge laughed and hugged his daughter to his chest while Nate politely ignored the tears in the corner of the man’s eyes.

  Instead, Nate muttered an answer to Kiri’s question.

  “We won. Though, you kind of trashed the place.”

  “Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, Nate,” she replied, a smirk on her lips as her eyes drifted around the arena, finally alighting on Coralie who continued to wait in the wings.

  With a tired groan, and the help of her father, Kiri climbed to her feet and started trudging towards her ex-girlfriend, waving off her father who moved to help her.

  With his eyes still on his daughter, Jorge spoke, “What did she do?”

  “Who?” Nate asked with a smile, playing dumb, right up until Jorge gave him a gentle smack to the back of his head.

  “You know who. That speed. I couldn’t have matched it…not even close. One step and she blew the place apart. What happened?”

  Nate smiled again, this one pleased rather than teasing, “She took a step. The next step.”

  Jorge looked like he was about to hit him again, but when they locked eyes Nate saw the realisation in the man's eyes, followed by a mixture of pride and worry. As a parent, you never stopped worrying about your children, Nate guessed. Or at least that was true for good parents. Nate withdrew his farsight sphere of awareness so as not to pry into the words Kiri was sharing with Coralie. Instead, he moved away from Jorge to join Aisling.

  His mentor had seen better days. The skin on the right side of her body was red and burned, climbing from her bare feet all the way to her scalp. The light had even burned off her eyebrow and hair on the same side, making her look like two people of similar size and features cut in half and shoved together.

  “What now?” he asked her.

  “We only just won this victory and you’re already asking what comes next?” Aisling replied with a tired smile. “I will try to undo the damage Allais has done. The Guild may have already dispatched an investigator, but if they haven’t, they will after this. The Guild will be fine, as for Etrua, I am not sure. The Guild will likely attempt to levy punishment against them for this, regardless of the outcome of the war. I do not know how hard they will come down on them. It will depend on who wins the war of succession, and what Asmuisil does in response. I…I just don’t know. What I do know is, if there is anything left in the Guild Vaults, you will all be entitled to as much of it as you want. You, as Golds, fought against Platinums to undo the evil they had done in the Guild’s name. You have earned whatever rewards you desire.”

  Nate nodded and looked around for a seat to recover and go over his notifications. There were quite a few of them. Stumbling over to sit down on a block of rock that was mostly flat, he noticed Kiri approaching him. His sister flopped down next to him. Coralie was nowhere in sight.

  “Want to talk about it?” he asked quietly as Jorge joined them.

  “Not much to talk about,” muttered Kiri. “She betrayed me. But she fought her mother and protected you. I told her that balanced the scales, but that she had killed whatever was between us when she used me like that. That we were over and that the poison she used may have not killed me, but it had killed my love for her.”

  Tears were dripping down her cheeks and Nate put an arm around her, matched by Jorge on the other side.

  “I told her to go. I…when she saved you, any hate I held for her died. I don’t want to see her dead. I told her that just because I didn’t want her dead, didn’t mean Princess Morgane or the rest of you would feel the same way. She left. She’s gone.”

  Kiri cried freely then, pouring out all the emotions she had pent up within her as Nate sat beside her, letting her rely on him and Jorge as she cleansed herself. In less than a minute, Kiri was shoving them off.

  “Okay. I’m good. I’m good!”

  Her eyes flicked to Nate then and she smiled, like a ray of sunshine coming out from behind a storm cloud. “I did it!”

  “I saw,” Nate remarked in amusement. “Or should I say, I didn’t see, but I definitely felt it.”

  “Quadruples my Imbuement for five seconds,” Kiri gloated. Jorge was looking confused, but Nate’s eyebrows climbed to the top of his forehead. For two seconds, Kiri had a total Agility that exceeded four thousand. That was absolutely ridiculous. It also explained why her step had destroyed the place. While her body might have been able to handle the force, common dirt, sand and stone certainly could not.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kiri continued, waving a hand. “What matters is, I didn’t fall behind. Together?”

  “Always,” Nate replied and noted Jorge’s smile through the man’s dark beard.

  “You’ll tell me later and stop talking in riddles?” asked her father.

  Kiri agreed, “Yep, just not here. Don’t think anyone is listening, but who knows.”

  Jorge nodded his understanding.

  Everyone was finally starting to look normal due to Evindal’s ministrations. Normal, but dusty and tired, wearing torn and bloody clothes, with dented and marred armour. Normal, Nate thought, with an amused smile, was a relative term.

  With the calm starting to flow, Nate noted that there were yells and the sounds of clashing weapons in the distance. His farsight sphere of awareness flicked in that same direction and he found over a hundred men and women, armoured and armed, beating back a smaller force of guards. In the lead was Cutter, laying about himself with a spear, the man flowing like water from one form to another as his eyes glowed in the night. The old man was coming, just as he promised. The city was in revolt.

  Nate laughed as Aisling floated into the sky to see for herself. Everyone looked on, tired faces hardening as they prepared to continue the fight. Except for Luc, who had taken to collecting the Orbs from the fallen Golds and Platinums, piling them next to Deverell.

  Nate figured they had a short amount of time before he would need to potentially get back into the fight. One part of his mind was still drawing mana from the gems in his Runic Gallery back into his Mana Reserve. Another part was using his Conceptual Material Shaping, with mana gems as the source, as he continued to work on Luc’s gift. It was almost done and given the state of the night, he expected they would need it sooner rather than later. While one part kept an eye on his surroundings, he finally reached for his notifications.

  Before he could read the first notification everything vanished and he found himself hovering in a sea of grey. Kiri was next to him, looking around in confusion. Conceptual Insight hummed but it was unnecessary. Nate could recognise the Concept of Space as easily as breathing. They were in a small bubble of separated space, and though he couldn’t sense him, he could see the purple being with four arms standing before them very clearly.

  “You’re finally qualified for us to have a discussion. I have an offer for the pair of you,” said Arikanvil.

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