With the appearance of Stormrend Kingdom's true defenses, the sky above the burned supply lines had been warped into a living furnace of golden-black flames that roared so fiercely the very clouds caught fire and burned like parchment.
Sylvara rose to meet Captain Riven barefoot, the backless crimson silk of her battle dress snapping in the updraft of her own inferno, with her long black hair whipping wild around her face. Golden-black flames spiraled across her exposed skin in loving, possessive coils, drinking every stray arc of lightning that bled from Riven's blades and growing visibly brighter, greedier, more ravenous with each stolen spark.
Across from her, Captain Riven Stormrend held his screaming twin swords in a high guard, white hair crackling with static fury, armor shedding white-blue lightning that carved glowing scars across the burning heavens.
He was beautiful the way a storm is beautiful right before it destroys everything beneath it.
"Tell me, little bug," Riven called, voice carrying perfectly over the roar of flames and thunder, "did your master send you up here to die pretty, or just to warm my blades?"
Sylvara laughed... it was low and delighted like the sound of a woman who had been waiting her entire life for someone worth burning.
"Pretty?" She flicked her wrist and the whip uncoiled, nine tails splitting into ninety, each one a serpent of golden-black flame that tasted the air. "Only my master is allowed to compliment me."
The flames lunged.
FWOOSH
Riven met them head on.
CRACKLEE!
|Tempest Cascade|
A hundred spears of lightning that punched clean through the first wave of serpents.... only for the fire to drink the electricity and birth a hundred more, that burned even hotter.
He snarled, as he moved again himself. He flew directly at her and carved a path straight at her throat.
Sylvara however.... she didn't move; she didn't retreat.
She was still smiling when his blades were a finger's length from her neck.
----
With the arrival of General Dren, a floating slab of storm-glass the size of a city block became the private arena against Rhea.
She stood dead center, crimson plate scorched black in places, her spear planted point-down while she rolled her shoulders and let momentum stack in perfect silence. Each breath was heavier than the last; each heartbeat added another layer of crushing force.
General Dren circled her slowly, thunder-armor groaning like a mountain about to erupt, every footstep leaving craters of burnt ozone even in mid-air.
His talent, Thunderforge Body, turned every impact into stored lightning; the longer she waited, the more catastrophic his counter would be.
"You're just going to stand there?" Dren rumbled, voice like tectonic plates grinding. "I expected the spear girl to have more spine than a statue."
Rhea's answer was a slow, predatory grin. "Statues don't break people.... old man. I do."
She took her first step.
CRACK!
The slab cracked in a perfect circle around her boot.
BOOM!
Second step (sonic boom).
Third step (the air in front of her ignited from friction).
FWOOM!
By the sixth, Dren's eyes had widened because the pressure alone was already buckling his armor. Seeing this he didn't falter he activated a skill.
|Thunder Deity's Descent (A)| - 35% MP|
BOOOM!
CRACKLE!!!!
His body exploded into a living thunderstorm thirty meters tall, lightning fists the size of houses descending.
Rhea took her seventh step and met the first fist head-on with the butt of her spear.
BOOOOOOM!!!!!!!
The impact flashed white.
When vision returned, Dren's lightning arm was gone, and Rhea was still accelerating.
----
Above the ruins that once held ten thousand strong.
Seyra drifted through the sky like a bronze-skinned goddess of dusk, violet-streaked hair floating in zero gravity, the shadow was stretching beneath her feet endlessly like a black lake.
Marshal Sasha faced her wrapped in a cloak of razor-sleet fog, soft voice carrying the chill of high-altitude graves.
Every time Sasha tried to close the gap, Seyra simply folded space and stepped out of her own shadow somewhere else entirely.
"You fight like a coward," Sasha observed, voice gentle as falling snow. "Always running."
Seyra tilted her head, calm smile never wavering. "Coward? No, darling. It's efficient. Why walk when the world is willing to fold for me?"
She raised one finger as she activated a talent given by her physique. A circle bloomed in front of her.....
|Void Garden|
The circle became a hole.
Then in the next moment, the hole swallowed Sasha's entire fog domain
A heartbeat later the same fog reappeared behind Sasha, now perfectly mirrored and under new management.
Sasha's soft voice cracked for the first time. "That's… impossible."
Seyra's smile widened, almost kind. "Welcome to my garden."
----
While Seyra had literally stole Sasha's domain, Lyrin found herself entangled with Marshal Vale.
Lyrin danced across floating debris, as the bells in her hair chimed soft death knells, thirty-seven identical copies giggling in perfect unison.
Marshal Vale flickered between lightning strikes, he had already activated a Talent from his bloodline, Lightning Conduit which tuned him into pure electricity that could cross one hundred kilometers in a blink... However, the ability only last for thirty minutes, which made it an A rank.
Every time he reappeared, a different Lyrin was already there, finger pressed to his lips.
"Pick one," all thirty-seven Lyrins sang together, voices overlapping into a chord that made Vale's ears bleed.
"Tsk," He scoffed as he activated a skill.
|Chain of Judgement (B)| - 24% MP|
CRACKLE!
His body transformed into a living web of chained lightning that struck at every copy of Lyrin at once.
Thirty-six popped like soap bubbles.
"Hehe" The sound of a little giggle sounded moments after it.
The real Lyrin stepped out of the shadow inside his own lightning, cheek pressed to his cheek, lips brushing his ear.
"Wrong one," she whispered, and the sound alone turned the air inside his lungs to glass.
Vale coughed blood that flash-boiled before it left his mouth.
Lyrin tapped the corner of his jaw and smiled. "Let's dance some more."
----
Far below, the forty-thousand-versus-forty-thousand war had become a slaughterhouse lit by stray skills and falling bodies.
Every time Rhea took another step, the shockwave flattened entire regiments like wheat beneath a scythe.
Every time Seyra folded space, entire companies vanished into her shadow and reappeared fighting for the wrong side.
Every time Vale teleported, stray lightning chains struck the ground.... it vaporized hundreds on both sides.
Four separate skies burned brighter with every heartbeat.
Four women who had not yet shown their final cards.
Four Elites who were all happy that they could finally stretch their legs.
And high above them all, the three S-ranks of Stormrend Kingdom watched the scrying mirrors in perfect silence.....