The stage itself was a polished black square a hundred yards to a side, and the Akura family emblem glowed at the center. One large star and two small stars, all over three mountains. The stars and the mountains glowed purple.
The star on the left represented Charity. Fury was the star on the right, and Malice the largest star in the center. The one that rose over them all.
He tilted his head back, swallowing a bowl of soup bigger than his head. When he finished, he let out a long, satisfied breath, then picked up a loaf of bread. “Intuition,” he said between bites. “I feel like something interesting is going to happen.”
Two Underladies stepped up, saluting one another. One of them, Akura Grace, had a real shot at winning. She looked more like Malice than most of the Akura descendants, full-figured and beautiful, with long raven hair. While she had failed to bond with any of the Books of Seven Pages, she had developed considerable mastery of her sword and shadow Path and carried a long, curved saber on her back.
Grace's opponent was sadly unremarkable. She had made it this far by sheer luck.
At the end of the fight, the two bowed to one another, Grace unharmed and her challenger bleeding from the arm. There had been no tension there.
“And here comes something interesting now.” Fury tossed the uneaten half of his bread over his shoulder.
At first, Charity assumed he was talking about Grace's match, and she wondered if her father was feeling all right. Then she paid more attention to her spiritual sense.
Another young Underlord had removed his veil and walked toward the stage. He was tall and strapping, with a stern expression and a build that reminded her of Fury. He wore the black-and-white robes that the Akura family used for many of their disciples, with a glittering halfsilver hammer badge hanging from a ribbon around his neck.
When he stepped onto the stage, he pressed the fist of his white Remnant arm against his human left, bowing toward their viewing tower.
The Overlord demanded to know what he was doing there, but Charity sent a quick pulse of her madra, signaling him to stop. Pride and several of the others shouted angrily for him to stop, and a few other young Underlords began to climb onto the stage, ready to attack him.
Lindon straightened from his bow, ignoring the others and looking up at Fury and Charity. “Pardon the interruption,” he said, his voice echoing throughout the arena. “Since the winner here is going to be my teammate, I thought I would check their abilities for myself. One last time.”
Audacious of him to try something like this. He was leaning too hard on Charity’s favor. She was inclined to remind him of his disrespect...but only if she had been supervising this contest alone.
She knew what her father was going to say.
“Granted!” Fury shouted happily. “The winner fights Lindon!”
“Apologies, but I had something else in mind.” For the first time, he turned to look at his peers around him.
Charity detected disdain in him, along with more confidence than she had ever seen in him before. Suddenly, even she was intrigued.
“I challenge every Underlord here.”
They all reacted. Some shouted out of wounded pride, some prepared techniques, others laughed or called insults.
Fury turned to Charity eagerly, his red eyes flashing with excitement. “Where's Mercy?”
“The sixth island.”
“She'll want to see this.” He rose from his chair and started cycling his madra, but she stopped him.
“I'll get her.” Fury would fly over there faster than sound, snatch up Mercy, and leap away with no warning. Charity’s way was faster. With a moment of concentration, she stretched her spiritual awareness all the way out to the sixth of the thirteen Phantom Islands.
Mercy was tempering her concentration, pulling her four techniques from the Book of Eternal Night while nightmare beasts assaulted her mind. Charity seized her in the middle of her trial, pulling her through a fold in the Way.
Teleporting so quickly and precisely was the limit of Charity's ability, and she had always been skilled with spatial transport. Mercy tumbled onto the platform, her training outfit muddied and gray, her hair tangled and messy. She shoved herself up using Eclipse as support, and the sacred bow hissed.
Mercy looked around in a panic, disoriented. “Ah! What? Where am I? What? ...what?”
Charity used one pulse of her madra to soothe Mercy's thoughts, and another to command the Underlords below not to form into an angry mob and beat Lindon to death. “Your friend has just done something interesting. We thought you might want to watch.”
Mercy perked up. She leaned her weapon up against the wall and peered over the edge of the platform at the other Underlords below.
“What did he do? Wow, Pride does not look happy.” She pulled her hair back into a rough tail, tying it in place with a string of Forged madra.
“He challenged everyone to a duel,” Fury said, moving up to stand next to her. “I was just about to let it happen.”
By their relative ages, Fury should have been Mercy’s ancestor many generations removed. Instead, they were half-siblings separated by centuries.
Such was the reality of life in a Monarch’s family.
Mercy waved down to Lindon, who looked surprised to see her. “Does he know how strong they are?”
“Everyone down there has fought him at least once,” Charity responded. “Most of them multiple times. They did not enjoy seeing him placed above them, so they took out their frustrations on him.”
Without looking, Mercy extended a String of Shadow and pulled up a chair. “As long as he knows what he's getting into, then we're about to see a show.”
Fury slapped the railing in excitement. His red eyes gleamed, and his voice boomed out over the field. “First fight: Akura Shiria! Wei Shi Lindon! Let's see it!”
~~~
The others cleared off the stage, leaving Lindon and the girl with the hammer and pigtails. Shiria was a distant enough descendant that she had a normal name, and her force Path had been selected for her by her outsider father. But she still had the black hair and purple eyes.
Lindon had fought her five times in total, losing every time.
In his head, he'd trained against her two hundred and sixteen times.
As soon as the stage cleared, she loosened her hammer from its strap on her back, cycling force madra. Her Goldsign, a silver ring around her neck, began to hum. A pair of golden anklets started to activate, drawing a movement technique to her feet.
She couldn't use the Akura bloodline armor, but she hit hard and was surprisingly adaptable.
“Begin,” called the Overlord in charge of the stage.
Lindon slammed an Empty Palm into the air on his left. Rather than many echoes, like Akura Fury had created, he Forged one huge echo at the moment of impact and superimposed it over an Enforced palm strike.
As a result, when Akura Shiria finished her movement technique and appeared suddenly to Lindon's left, an Empty Palm the size of her entire torso caught her in the chest. The blue-white hand that struck her was ten times bigger than Lindon's and disappeared immediately.
Pure madra rushed through her core and her entire madra system, sending her spirit into chaos. The construct in her boots failed, her Goldsign dimmed, and her cycling jammed to a sudden halt.
The physical strike hit her with full force, driving all the air from her lungs, and her eyes bugged out. Without her spirit Enforcing her body, she lost her grip on the hammer, which tumbled from her limp hands.
She fell to her knees, wheezing for a breath.
“You favor attacking from the left side,” Lindon said, “and your movements are too wide when you use your boots.” She also tended to cycle her madra too far in advance of her attack, so it was simple to follow her with his spiritual perception.
“Victory: Wei Shi Lindon Arelius.” The Overlord glanced up at the viewing tower.
Akura Fury nodded and stroked his chin, and Charity looked as impassive as ever. Mercy cheered.