Hevana scanned the surrounding landscape slowly, her winter-blue eyes darting through the thick haze. The columns of choking smoke and pulverized dust rose high up into the sky, reducing visibility to a point where regular vision was almost entirely irrelevant. The localized wind was currently blowing hard toward the south, and she couldn't even determine her opponent's direction by smell anymore; the entire atmosphere tasted of charred earth, melted minerals, and heavy charcoal.
She turned slowly within her dented plate armor, the heavy dust pressing against her from all sides. Despite the emptiness of the clearing, she firmly refused to believe that her desperate breath attack earlier had actually defeated the girl.
A loud, incredibly relaxed yawn suddenly echoed deep from within the jagged, melted canyon they had just created.
A massive, abrupt gust of wind violently blew apart the thick layers of smoke and ash surrounding the area, completely clearing the view. Areia was sitting casually on a large, protruding stone slab, completely cross-legged. She was passively brushing the caked dirt and soot out of her long white hair with her slender, gloved fingers.
"My master would always get incredibly annoyed and lecture me for hours whenever I got my hair this dirty," she said. Her calm, smooth voice was effortlessly carried across the expanse of the canyon by the whistling wind.
She stopped mid-groom, her hand dropping into her lap as her deep purple eyes locked onto Hevana with absolute, razor-sharp focus.
"I am really not one to complain... but if you are finally done with your little test, draw your blade and let us finish this properly." Her eyes narrowed slightly into dangerous, glittering slits. "I am sure you already know this by now, but you can't exactly beat me in a pure fist fight."
Areia got up slowly from the stone slab and stretched her limbs, the tight black leather wrapping her slender body straining against her curves. In the next microsecond, she completely displaced herself from the stone—vanishing from sight and instantly materializing face-to-face with the Paladin, the distance between their noses barely an inch.
"You might win when it comes to pure, raw brute strength, but you are clearly losing this exchange," Areia yawned, staring directly into the Saintess's eyes without a single hint of fear. "So drop the tired act already and draw that massive blade of yours."
Hevana's face remained stone-cold, her piercing blue eyes not flinching in the slightest despite the sudden, terrifying proximity. "You are awfully cocky," she spat, her voice tight.
"Attack me with your bare fists one more time, and I will personally break your arm in three different places," Areia said firmly, her tone completely deadpan.
Hevana closed her eyes for a brief moment and let out a heavy, defeated sigh. "So... you knew exactly what I was trying to do, yet you willingly chose to just play along with it?"
Areia looked down, casually inspecting her own knuckles for any signs of damage. "Well, it has always been in my nature to humor a capable opponent. Except, of course, if it is a strict fight to the death."
"You are awfully cocky," Hevana repeated, her voice dropping an octave as a stray lock of matted golden hair fell over her eyes, casting a dark shadow across her face. "What exactly makes you so incredibly certain that you can beat me the moment I draw my blade?"
"Simple," Areia laughed, a cold, dangerous sound that echoed off the canyon walls. "You're just weaker than me."
"I think—" Hevana began, her voice cutting off abruptly.
Before the syllable could fully leave her lips, Areia's blade hummed through the air with such an impossible, blinding velocity that it didn't even register as a blur. The steel cracked a flawless horizontal arc through space, coming to a dead stop as it rested cleanly against the skin of the Paladin's neck.
A millisecond later, the delayed shockwave of the swing violently caught up. The sheer atmospheric pressure tore through the landscape, splitting absolutely everything standing in a straight line as far as the eye could see—shattering jagged rock formations, cleaving fallen trees, and slicing the literal clouds above into a perfect, severed line.
The weapon itself was entirely unremarkable—a regular steel blade of no magical properties or noteworthy blacksmithing. Yet, resting in Areia's grip, it hummed with a terrifying, silent hostility.
A thin line of crimson blood trickled down Hevana's throat, tasting the cold metal pressed hard against her flesh. The casual, chatty Areia from a moment ago had completely vanished. Her deep purple eyes seemed to glow with a dark, primal hostility under the shadow of the valley. A single, visible vein twitched aggressively on her forehead, making the reality of the situation entirely evident to the trembling Saintess:
Areia was absolutely furious.
"I don't particularly like getting worked up. It's really not my style," Areia growled, her voice dropping into a low, animalistic register as hot steam literally hissed from between her clenched teeth. "But after seeing what your damn people did to Antrea... well, let's just say I am incredibly pissed off."
The steel didn't waver a single millimeter against Hevana's skin.
"Well, of course, you weren't directly involved in the chase down there," Areia continued, her glare boring holes into the Paladin's soul. "But a commander must always take the absolute blame for his or her soldiers' colossal fuck-ups."
Above them, the sky began to transform. The bright afternoon sun was violently swallowed whole as a localized, swirling vortex of pitch-black storm clouds rapidly formed over the canyon. Jagged, violent streaks of purple lightning crackled and boomed within the darkness, desperately struggling to break free from the atmosphere and tear the ruined ground apart.
Areia's fingers tightened on the leather hilt of her regular sword.
"I've got absolutely no time left to be playing around with you," Areia said simply, the final trace of emotion leaving her face as the purple lightning flashed against her white hair. "Draw your blade. Let's get this over with right now."
"Alright," Hevana said simply, her voice slipping out like a soft, breathy whistle in the face of death.
With her heavy silver gauntlet, she reached up and calmly shoved the edge of the steel sword off her neck, starting to pace backward. Areia just stood her ground, her purple eyes tracking the movement, entirely unmoving and deadpan.
The Paladin wrestled with the straps of her armor for a moment, unbuckling the damaged neck guard. She tossed it aside, and it tore into the shattered bedrock with a heavy, metallic crunch from the sheer, dense weight of the divine metal. Next, she unstrapped her massive chest plate. The second the heavy torso armor struck the earth, the impact vibrated through the valley, sounding like a localized earthquake. She dismantled her armor piece by piece, tossing aside the pauldrons and vambraces until nothing remained except the armored pieces covering her lower half.
Her long black cape tried to flutter away as the violent wind took its claim on it. But because of the immense weight her discarded shoulder guard held over its hem, the fabric remained firmly anchored to the ground, snapping fiercely upward toward the darkening sky.
Finally, she pulled off her gauntlets. Devoid of the bulky armor plates, her arms were revealed to be incredibly fair, slender, and entirely devoid of blemish. Stripped down to her undergarments, she possessed a surprisingly lean, athletic build strikingly similar to Areia's—a graceful, lethal physique that her massive armor had hidden exceptionally well.
Hevana shifted her back with an audible, deep crack, then stretched her neck and fingers. She hopped lightly from foot to foot, loosening her bare shoulders. "Damn it," she muttered under her breath, her sleepy expression returning. "I absolutely hate fighting strong opponents."
Slowly, her hand wrapped around the hilt of her massive broadblade. She pulled it from its scabbard.
The exact millisecond the blade cleared the sheath, the atmosphere's pressure increased exponentially and without a single warning. The gravity in the ravine violently spiked, instantly flattening the surrounding dust, crushing the loose rocks into powder, and forcing the ambient air down into a dead, heavy calm. The colossal weapon hummed with a deep, terrifyingly immense divine power. But Areia, having witnessed the cosmic weight of Cyra's blade at full work in the past, didn't even flinch at the crushing pressure or the blinding holy energy. After all, compared to what she is seeing, Cyra's blade was simply out of this world.
The Paladin executed a single, blinding upward swing with her bare arms.
The sheer localized kinetic displacement was so massive that the swirling vortex of dark storm clouds split wide open. The afternoon sun violently struck the soil with a absolute vengeance, bathing the two women in harsh, bright light. Hevana clamped both of her fair hands tightly around the leather-wrapped hilt of her massive sword. Her face was perfectly calm, but her winter-blue eyes shone brighter than they ever had before, glowing with the raw, concentrated willpower of a Holy Saintess.
She opened her lips, her voice barely a whisper against the rushing wind.
"Aegis of the iron will."