Gerhard stood on the tip of my broom, and he looked… different. His hair was gone, burnt off in the lightning strikes, and his clothes were little more than tattered ruins. His skin was healed, though, and his veins glowed with the same bright white of his fire, as if they were burning him apart from the inside. His heart was lit up so vibrantly that it was like a beacon, and scales covered his fists, running all the way up to his bicep. His mouth was filled with fangs, rather than teeth.

I had never seen anything like this before. I knew it was possible to partially shift between human and dragon forms. It wasn't the greatest talent of our bloodline, that being our physical might, but it was possible.

This… wasn't that.

His scent was still gone, but his power seemed even more intense than it had before. I could feel my curses crashing into him, but he seemed almost unaffected, the air and magic alike warping under the heat of his mere presence.

I only had a moment to take in his strange transformation before he moved again. His fists flew faster than I could follow, and within a moment, my shields had been shredded and his claws were impacting against my greater arcane armor.

I was launched backwards, thrown through the air until I smacked into the force dome keeping us locked into the arena. I felt the magic of holy healing start to take effect, even as my greater arcane armor began to flicker.

I fell and crashed into the sands, and Gerhard was suddenly in front of me, his foot descending at my head.

I vanished, and his fist met the sand of the arena floor.

My Etherius step hadn't taken me far. With how dazed I was, I hadn't been able to hold the construct together for the full thirty feet that I could travel. I appeared in the sand about fifteen feet behind Gerhard, and he pivoted in seconds, rushing over.

Orla interposed herself, releasing waves of bright blue barks that pushed him back. The other gadhar hounds shot in, alongside the remainder of my other summoned beings, interposing their attacks and bodies between Gerhard's deadly fists and my wounded body.

I started pulling myself to my feet, ordering my body back together, and letting the holy healing repair some of the damage that the stunning blow had done to me.

I felt my tether to Orla snap, and a portion of my ether pool was suddenly freed. Even though I knew that her body was fine, returned to the plane of light that I'd originally called her from, I couldn't help but thank her for her sacrifice.

I reached into my Etherius locker and pulled out a feather.

Gerhard forced his way through my army. He hadn't killed all of them, but there were less than a dozen left, mostly air elementals that had been able to retreat from him.

"You burnt down a temple to Effervesce."

At my words, Gerhard tilted his head, looking almost like a dog who had found a new sound. He dismissed them and punched his fist out at my throat in what I knew to be a killing blow.

I crushed the feather, sacrificing it to the god Jackson worshiped, and my one and only divine boon activated.

Power shot through the link that I had to the god, scouring from the crown of my head all the way down to the base of my spine, where the embers of my empty fire sat. The instant they connected, fire exploded upwards, returning it to the very peak of my strength. Gerhard's eyes widened, and I ducked the blow, then teleported into the air behind him.

I kicked out, slamming into the side of his head with all my might, and he staggered. I kept up the assault, bringing the lightning down on his form, releasing a dragonfire empowered arcane missile, and letting the slicing winds of the air elementals crash into him.

He staggered back, his body shaking with the force of our relentless assault, but I couldn't stop putting pressure on him. I was dancing along the edge of a cliff, and the only thing that stopped me from falling off the edge was the momentum that I had already built. More lightning came down, even as I conjured a pair of wadjetktt to spew their sunvenom at his face.

Gerhard's vibrant form was dulling slightly, the light twitching oddly within him, like his veins were trying to tear themselves out of his body.

Gerhard let out a roar, sounding more like a beast than a humanoid, and ripped through the force of the combined attacks. I pulled up a shield, and his fist crashed through it, but it bought me half a second, just what I needed to teleport again. He spun around, expecting me to have teleported behind him again, but I'd actually thrown myself thirty feet straight back.

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I used his moment of confusion to launch a flurry of fire empowered arcane missiles. Gerhard spun, but whatever was going on with his twisted form and flickering power, he wasn't quite able to burn off all of my curses this time. He stumbled, and the bolts impacted him, leaving long but shallow wounds over his body. They were immediately soaked in the venom of the wadjetktt, even as the air elementals released waves of slicing wind at his neck, and I brought down more lightning on his head.

He stepped through it and rushed me again, forcing me to cast Etherius step again, this time teleporting far to his left. He spun on his heel, letting another wave of attacks crash down on him, and for a second, the light from his heart went out.

Then he was rushing me again, his claws going for my eyes. I whipped my wand down, but before I could say the single word required for my teleportation, skewers of glowing white rushed from the tips of his fingers and over my face.

Energy barrier dampened the effect, but once again, my eyes were exposed to the burning bright pain of his fire. I could hear my summons lashing out with their attacks, and it bought me the instant to spit out the word of power.

I vanished, but I wasn't able to move as far this time, and I stumbled out of the blue light of the spell only a few feet to his side. He whipped around, the lights in his chest flickering in and out of life as he rushed toward me again.

I had used five teleports, consuming all of teleporter's alloy that I'd purchased for use with Etherius step.

But I'd purchased one more nugget of the metal, for use in Arcane Passage, the spell that didn't consume the metal. My ether pool was a bit too low for me to be able to cast such a high circle spell right now, but I could still use the metal.

Even as his fist struck my greater arcane armor again, I cast another Etherius step.

Gerhard spun wildly, unsure where I had gone.

This time, I hadn't teleported forward, backwards, or sideways.

I'd teleported upwards, right onto my broom. When he'd leapt aboard to strike me, he hadn't destroyed it. Between that and his confused reaction to my brief words about Effervesce's temple, I'd guessed that this form – whatever it was – was somehow inhibiting his intelligence in order to grant him more power.

I used the time to shoot into the clouds, taking cover in the crackling of my storm. It was dangerous, given the arcs of lightning that shot all around me, but I'd rather take the dragonfire backed bolt of storm magic than a blow from Gerhard right now.

I took in a breath, letting the regenerative magic of holy healing rush through me, and checked my reserves. My dragonfire was about half gone, and Seren wasn't able to donate any more. My ether pool was down to the dregs. I thought I might have one more second circle spell left in me, but little more.

Seren reached out then, his mind, undeveloped as it may be, still able to feel my distress and lack of ether. I got a sense of sadness, and hope. He wanted me to summon him again.

Then he cut off the bond, and the ether flooded back into me. It wasn't a huge amount, but it was enough.

I pulled out my staff and began to rush through a chant, doing everything I could to hide it in the crackling of lightning.

Gerhard ripped through the storm then, his instinct-driven brain having finally put together there I was. He punched at me, and I shoved my broom back into my locker, letting gravity assist my fall, then pulling it back out to slow my fall. A tiny part of the back of my mind noticed that all of my summons were gone, probably killed by him while I'd taken a moment in the cloud.

Gerhard landed with a cloud of smoke and sand, his burning veins flickering on and off a dozen times in the blink of an eye. He was heaving and panting, nearing the end of his rope.

We locked eyes, and I realized that his had transformed into the triangular pupils of a Dreki dragon, while mine were still human.

He shot toward me, and I lifted my wand, still chanting, and fired off an arcane missile. He tried to dodge, but it found its target, even as I could feel my curse entering the final seconds. I rushed my chant.

Three seconds left.

I spun to the side, leaping back with a drgonfire enhanced jump, words flowing from my mouth. I kept pouring lightning down on Gerhard's form.

Two seconds.

Gerhard rushed me, moving impossibly fast, and I conjured an ordinary shield over myself. It only lasted a moment before his glowing fist broke through.

One second left on my curse.

The last syllable of my spell fell from my lips, and I poured every bit of dragonfire, every bit of ether, and all of my will into the spell.

When I'd first heard of affinity magic, I'd hoped for a water affinity. It was the perfect balance to me, a rejection of my family and what they stood for. When I'd escaped my family, it had not been through the skies, but through water.

I hadn't gotten a water affinity, but I had learned a water spell.

As the knot of aquatic torrent formed in the air, I compressed the water down, forcing it into a beam almost as thin as thread. With the dragonfire powering it, the spell moved with a speed unlike anything I'd seen before, and the concentration of water punched into Gerhard's throat a split second before his fist cracked against my greater arcane armor.

Gerhard's body was flickering with light, and as the beam struck him, it vanished completely. The water kept drilling into him, blood erupting from his veins and coating the sands, the force dome, and me.

Syn's contingency spell activated.

There was a flash of green light, and Gerhard was pulled away.

The force dome fell, as the challenge completed, and I was met with the resounding sound of silence. The crowd seemed stunned, and in truth, so was I. I still wasn't sure that I'd actually won. A part of me still expected Gerhard to explode out of the sand and snap my neck.

As it sunk in, the crowd started to clap. Syn lifted his wand to his throat to project his voice.

"A stunning victory by our newest citizen, Emrys of Wh—"

Syn's announcement was cut off by a voice.

It was as strong as the heavens, as deep as the earth, as smooth as water, and as crackling as flame.

"No."

My eyes turned to the box where the woman who had once been my mother was now standing. Then, in the space it took me to blink, she flashed toward me.

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