"No buildings to hide behind now," she said, her voice cold and controlled despite her earlier rage.
"No civilians to use as shields. Just you, , and the question of whether your arrogance is backed by actual skill."
Jolthar rolled his shoulders, feeling his body settle into combat readiness.
"You really want to do this?"
"You mocked ," Tamnarasi replied flatly.
"You challenged the authority of the empire and the Dreadmarchen. And worst of all, you were stupid enough to do it to my face."
She shifted into a combat stance, her blade held with perfect form.
"Now I’m going to teach you the consequences of disrespecting those stronger than you."
"Stronger?"
Jolthar’s hand went to the sword at his hip.
"We’ll see about that."
He drew his blade in one smooth motion.
The sword was Knashii, a weapon that seed to drink in light rather than reflect it. The tal was impossibly dark, like a piece of the void itself had been forged into steel. Along its length, faint patterns swirled and shifted, never quite the sa from one mont to the next. It radiated a presence that made the air around it feel heavier and colder, as if reality itself bent slightly away from the blade.
After the last upgrade, the blade had changed, giving off an eerie glow.
Tamnarasi’s eyes narrowed as she recognized the nature of the weapon.
"Void affinity. Rare and dangerous."
"You know about the skill?"
"I am not so country bumpkin like you."
She raised her own blade, and frost began to form along its edge. Ice crystals spread from the hilt to the tip, and the temperature around her dropped sharply.
"Let show you what real mastery looks like."
Neither spoke another word.
They moved.
Tamnarasi crossed the distance between them in an instant, her blade coming down in a vertical slash that would have split a man from skull to groin. Ice trailed behind the strike, the air itself freezing in the blade’s wake.
Jolthar t it with Knashii, and the two swords collided with a sound like reality tearing. The shockwave from the impact flattened grass for fifty feet in every direction.
The ground beneath their feet cracked and cratered.
They separated, circled, and struck again.
This ti it was a flurry of exchanges, blade eting blade dozens of tis in the span of seconds. Each collision sent out pulses of force that tore up the earth.
Tamnarasi’s ice spread across the ground wherever she stepped, creating a frozen battlefield. Jolthar’s void energy consud that ice wherever his sword passed, leaving patches of absolute darkness that seed to be holes in the world itself.
Tamnarasi was phenonally skilled.
Her technique was flawless, refined through decades of training and countless battles.
Every strike ca from the optimal angle, every defense perfectly tid. She fought like flowing water—adaptive and relentless—finding the gaps in her opponent’s guard with instinctive precision.
But Jolthar was faster.
Not by much.
Not overwhelmingly so.
But enough that he could match her superior technique with raw speed and power. His style was less refined but more direct, striking with devastating force that made Tamnarasi’s arms go numb from blocking.
She leaped back, creating distance, and thrust her sword toward him.
"Glacial Impalent!"
Massive spikes of ice erupted from the ground in a line straight toward Jolthar, each one as thick as a tree trunk and sharp as a spear point. They burst upward in rapid succession, turning the battlefield into a forest of deadly frozen pillars.
Jolthar’s response was to raise his free hand.
The ice spikes stopped in mid-air, frozen not by cold but by an invisible force. His telekinesis gripped them all simultaneously, holding tons of ice suspended through pure ntal power.
Then he clenched his fist.
The ice spikes shattered into millions of fragnts, and with a gesture, Jolthar sent those fragnts screaming back toward Tamnarasi like a blizzard of knives.
She spun her blade in a defensive pattern, creating a barrier of rapidly moving steel that deflected the ice shards.
But she had to take several steps back under the onslaught, her perfect technique forced into pure defense.
The mont the barrage ended, she counterattacked.
"Frozen Ruler’s Domain!"
Her aura exploded outward, and the temperature plumted.
Everything within a hundred-foot radius flash-froze—the ground, the air, even particles of dust suspended in space. It was like a miniature winter had been compressed into a single mont and released all at once.
Jolthar felt the cold trying to invade his body, trying to slow his movents and freeze his blood. But his void energy responded instinctively, creating a barrier of emptiness around him where nothing—not heat, not cold, not even matter—could fully penetrate.
He stood in the center of the frozen domain, untouched, his breath not even misting in the frigid air.
Tamnarasi’s eyes widened.
"Impossible. No one resists the Domain without—"
She didn’t finish the sentence because Jolthar was already moving, closing the distance between them at blinding speed. His sword ca up in a rising slash that forced her to parry desperately.
The exchange that followed was brutal.
They moved across the frozen battlefield like dancers in a deadly performance, each strike powerful enough to shatter stone, each defense precise enough to turn aside attacks that could cleave steel.
The sound of their swords eting rang out like a demonic bell, echoing across the plains.
Tamnarasi created distance again and changed tactics.
She began to move differently, not attacking directly, but circling, creating patterns with her movents. Everywhere her feet touched, ice spread outward in geotric designs.
"You’re skilled," she admitted, her breath coming slightly faster now.
"More skilled than I anticipated. But skill alone won’t defeat centuries of accumulated technique and battle wisdom."
The ice patterns on the ground began to glow. Jolthar realized too late what she was doing—creating a ritual formation, using her movent to inscribe a massive spell array across the battlefield.
"Winter’s Execution!"
Tamnarasi shouted and stabbed her sword into the center of the formation.
The entire array activated. Hundreds of ice blades materialized in the air, each one perfectly ford and aid at Jolthar from every conceivable angle. Then they launched simultaneously, converging on his position from all directions at once.
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