Rikilda appeared in front of him and Clone 1 reacted without thought.

There was no gap to exploit and no angle for him to dodge, as she had closed the distance in the space between one breath and the next.

Clone 1 brought both forearms up, layered his telekinetic field over them in the fraction of a second available, and caught the blade on the reinforced surface.

The clang was loud enough to silence the nearest rings.

The shockwave from the impact rolled outward in a visible ring, pressing the air flat in every direction, sending a ripple through the barrier at the edge that made it shimmer briefly.

Clone 1’s feet carved two short furrows into the floor as he was pushed back, but he didn’t go down.

Rikilda was already moving. She didn’t reset after the blocked strike as she flowed from it, rotating her wrist, redirecting the sword’s momentum into a horizontal sweep at his midsection.

Clone 1 dropped down, his knees hitting the floor, the blade passing through the space his torso had occupied. He drove his palm upward into her forearm from below, deflecting the return arc, and then she did something he hadn’t expected.

She let the deflection happen, releasing the sword from her grip and it spun upward from her hand, but she was already moving without it, her body rotating into a kick that connected with his chest before he could process the weapon leaving her grip.

The impact sent him skidding backward across the ring floor, one knee down, the other foot barely catching him before he went flat.

He looked up and saw the sword was still spinning above them, slowing, beginning its descent.

Rikilda caught it without looking, her hand rising at exactly the right moment, her eyes already on Clone 1.

He was back on his feet.

She came forward again, this time keeping the sword close to her body rather than extending it, attacking in shorter arcs, allowing her faster recovery, while she sacrificed reach for speed.

The strikes came in tight combinations, each one aimed at a different target, the pattern shifting every third attack so he couldn’t lock onto a rhythm.

Clone 1 moved laterally, refusing to give ground straight back, forcing her to track him rather than drive him. He blocked what he had to and let his momentum carry him around the ones he could avoid, keeping his field active on his forearms, accepting the cost of maintaining it.

On the fifth combination she broke the pattern.

Instead of the expected third strike she stopped short, planted her back foot, and threw the sword at him. It spun horizontally at chest height, aimed to pass through him or force him to deal with it rather than her.

Clone 1 caught it with his telekinesis and the sword stopped in the air two feet from his chest, vibrating with the force he’d applied to arrest it, hanging suspended.

For a half second, neither of them moved.

Then Rikilda was already airborne, having used the moment he spent on the sword to close the distance. Her knee drove into his midsection before he could redirect his attention, and the air left him completely.

He went down on one knee. His grip on the suspended sword broke and it clattered to the floor.

She landed in front of him, rolled her wrist, and the sword slid back across the floor into her waiting hand.

Clone 1 looked up at her from the kneeling position, his lungs pulling air back in, and did the only calculation available. She was faster when he used the telekinesis for defense, because the moment his attention split she exploited the gap.

He had to stop splitting it. He immediately rose and charged, with no field on his forearms and no defensive layer. He went straight at her, inside the sword’s effective range before she could set her stance, and threw everything into close combat where the blade was a liability rather than an advantage.

She read it and stepped sideways, trying to create the distance she needed to use the sword properly.

He matched the step and stayed inside her reach.

What followed was brief and brutal. Without the sword’s range she was working elbows and knees and short grabs, and he was doing the same, and the gap between their raw strength made itself felt immediately — every time they locked up she moved him, and every time he broke the lock he had to spend momentum to do it.

He took an elbow across the jaw that rattled his teeth and tasted blood again.

He took a knee to his thigh that went deep enough to make the leg unreliable for a stride.

But he stayed inside her reach and he kept her from resetting, and twice he landed clean attacks enough that she acknowledged it.

They broke apart at the same moment, both stepping back, and stood breathing.

Clone 1’s jaw ached. His thigh ached. His forearms ached from the first block.

Rikilda looked at him steadily.

The red light returned to the sword’s edge, building slowly this time. And the next moment, she planted the sword point-down in the ring floor and left it there.

Then she raised both hands.

Clone 1 understood immediately. She was giving him the same terms he had taken — no weapon, close range, raw output.

He raised his hands.

She moved and the ring shook when they met.

Rikilda’s first punch came straight and fast. Clone 1 caught it on his forearm, felt the impact travel through his shoulder and into his spine, and answered with a right hook that she rolled away from, the strike grazing her jaw rather than landing cleanly.

She didn’t pause, as she drove her elbow into his chest, stepped through, and threw him by the collar.

He hit the floor hard, rolled, came up before she crossed the distance, and met her with a rising knee that caught her in the midsection. She absorbed it, locked her arms around his raised leg, and twisted.

Clone 1 went down sideways, hit the floor on his shoulder, and pushed off it immediately, but she was already above him, both hands driving downward toward his chest.

He rolled clear and her fists hit the ring floor where he had been and the impact left two clean craters.

He was on his feet and she was already standing, shaking her hands once, and coming again.

She threw combinations that arrived before they should have been possible — elbow, knee, elbow, straight punch, the sequence broken by sudden grabs that she converted into throws whenever he tried to create distance. He took three of them.

The first put him on the floor. The second put him into the barrier at the ring’s edge, the shimmer flaring against his back. The third he converted mid-fall, twisting out of her grip before the impact, landing on one hand and pushing back to his feet.

His lip was split. His ribs complained with every deep breath. The thigh she had kneed earlier had stiffened.

But she wasn’t unmarked — he had landed enough clean hits that her jaw had reddened and her left side moved slightly carefully, but she wasn’t slowing. If anything she was accelerating, finding a rhythm in the exchange that was pulling away from him.

He blocked a hook, took the follow-up elbow on his ear, felt the world tilt briefly, and stepped back.

She pressed with a straight punch that drove into his guard and pushed him back a step. Another. He was giving ground in a straight line and she was dictating it, and he understood that if he kept absorbing at this rate the end was already written.

He stopped retreating and took her next punch flush on his forearm, planted his feet, and did not move.

She read his action as an opening and came forward with everything, launching a straight punch driving toward his face with her full weight behind it.

He slashed out, his hand moved in a single arc, cutting through the air to meet her incoming fist, and the Severance Sword Intent erupted from him completely without warning.

It coated his hand in an instant, extending outward from his palm and fingers, forming the shape of a sword that had no physical blade but cut the air around it in a way that left visible lines in the ring floor beneath him. Eight of them, then sixteen, radiating outward from where he stood in every direction as the intent spread beyond his hand and filled the space around him.

Then dozens of formless swords appeared throughout the air around him without sound. They were shapeless and edgeless to the eye, and they floated in loose formation around his body.

Rikilda’s fist stopped immediately as she sensed danger, and she stepped back.

It was the first time in the entire fight she had stepped back from anything.

Her eyes moved from his hand to his face to the formless swords suspended in the air around him, and then to the hairline fractures running across the ring floor in every direction from where he stood, cut cleanly into the dense material without impact, without contact.

The arena had gone completely silent.

She looked at him and a wide grin spread across her face — the kind that would have put fear in any ordinary person.

"So," she said. "You were hiding more interesting things. How beautiful. This just got even more fun."

Right at that moment, small scales appeared along the sides of her jaw and cheekbones, the color of deep red embers.

Her fingers elongated, the nails thickening and curving into something between a hand and a claw, each tip coming to a point that was clearly capable of opening stone.

Her legs shifted beneath her, the proportions changing slightly, the stance dropping lower as the musculature underneath altered into something denser and more stable than any human frame.

Then a long, scaled, deeply red tail emerged. It moved behind her slowly.

Two black horns rose from her head, curving back and slightly upward.

She looked at him through the changed face, the grin still on it.

"What a battle junkie," Bethan sighed and shook her head, when she saw Rikilda’s transformation.

"I should also return the favour," Rikilda said.

Clone 1 looked at her. At the scales, the claws, and the tail still moving slowly behind her.

He smiled and moved first.