Chapter 54: A Show Of Spirit

  The spirits spread out, Leviathan fleeing past Erik and bit down on the Titan’s arm, pulling Erik away with him. The only spirits left in the lake moments later were Cross and Sovereign. Both faced each other, standing on top of the riled-up water.

  “What the fuck? How did this escalate so fast?” Erik asked, panicked as a golden lance appeared in Sovereign’s hand.

  “I am surprised it has taken them this long, to be honest. Being forced together must have shaken things loose, so to speak,” Leviathan said.

  “What? What’s happening?” Erik asked as both spirits released auras so powerful and crushing that he couldn’t hear whether Leviathan answered.

  Sovereign blinked out of existence only to reappear a fraction of a second later, three metres above Cross. He swung his lance down with a heavy over-head strike, and the point of the lance split the air as it fell. It traced a black line in space like a gold-tipped pen spilling ink.

  Cross blocked the awesome strike with her own blade, unmoving as the mass and force tried to force a reaction out of her. A metre or so away from her in all directions, the lake erupted into steam from the very pressure of the air squeezing down on it. A pillar of water remained—still as ever, where Cross stood—unaffected by the applied force.

  Cross’ sword flashed for an instant and dark bars appeared from nothing, surrounding Sovereign and growing ever closer. The cage shrunk around him, but in the most powerful showing of aura strength Erik had seen yet, the magical metal rods each broke into hundreds of tiny pieces as Sovereign’s aura applied pressure to each of them from all sides.

  Sovereign countered with an aura attack, turning parts of his aura into sharp projectiles that shot forth with enormous speed. Cross evaded several of them and deflected even more with her blade, though some got through her defences.

  Parts of her armour cracked and blew away, showing momentary glimpses of the blackness underneath her armour. The armour grew back in almost an instant, though, and Cross retaliated with phantom daggers, each black as the void except for their crimson-touched edges.

  The daggers seemed to vanish as Sovereign’s aura formed a shield around him. It blocked none of the daggers, but all were pushed aside, diverting them from their intended target.

  A rod of lightning slammed into Sovereign’s aura, which didn’t even slow it. The blast exploded into Sovereign at near full strength, and the blast wave of sound and moisture likewise crashed into Erik all the way out of the lake. A thick mist was all that the eye could see after these quick seconds of fighting.

  As the mist settled, Erik sensed more than saw Sovereign and Cross in the middle of the lake. They were facing each other, but neither moved nor spoke. It wasn’t until the mist had turned to dripping rain that one of them made their move.

  “I suggest the Show of Spirit,” Cross said, pointing her weapon outwards rather than toward Sovereign.

  “We have an accord,” answered Sovereign, his own golden lance crumbling into tiny flecks of light that soon disappeared.

  In response, Cross’ weapon disappeared as well, and the two stood there, staring at each other… waiting.

  “Why are they fighting? What’s a ‘show of spirit’?” Erik asked Leviathan.

  “Wah,” popped a bubble from Gloom behind the man.

  “Indeed. Do not be offended by this fight, Master Erik. They are fighting over you, after all,” Leviathan said, somehow answering Gloom before answering Erik.

  “Why?”

  “Things have been rather… complicated between them for a while. At first, I thought it to be because the Ancestor tried helping you in his trial, though later I found that to only be a small part of the whole.”

  “Wah-wah.”

  “Yes. Later, as we all had communed together for some time, I realised the Ancestor was…jealous. She would not commune about it and bringing it up seemed to only annoy her more.”

  “Jealous of what, though?” Erik asked.

  “You might not know this, but we spirits are now part of you. It runs so deep, we might as well be one. We all feel what you feel, at least to some extent. This includes how you regard all of us…or our powers.”

  Erik finally understood. “And she thinks I don’t appreciate her power?” he guessed.

  Leviathan rumbled. “Appreciate? I don’t think that is the right word, but it’s close enough.”

  “I might not be the biggest fan of carrying around all that stuff, especially considering they break or can’t be used anymore, forcing me to bring a lot of what I need. Then there are the rules that decide which kinds of things I can use, rules which I don’t even understand. It’s all a bit…”

  “Wah?”

  “Tedious?” asked Leviathan. And Gloom?

  “Yeah. I can do so many things, don’t get me wrong, but the limitations are plentiful. There are only so many things I can do with an invisible wall and a stationary lightning cage. Sure, it works well on the Hellbeasts I’m fighting out there, but that’s only until they get smarter or bigger. I’m not feeling a sense of scale, you know?”

  “I am not the one you should talk about this with. Let her show you what her power is all about first, then talk to her,” Leviathan said, nodding towards the spirits on the moist remains of the lake.

  “I will. So, this ‘show of spirit’?” Erik asked again.

  “An agreement between two spirits to duel only with their wielder’s part of their power.”

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  “So…Sovereign will fight only with his aura? And Cross with Unexpected Arsenal?”

  “Quite so. No better way to show you what you can evolve to be, is there?”

  “I guess. I thought you guys’ powers were what I got, but you have more of them?”

  “Of course. There is little you yet know of us spirits, but we are not much unlike you Titans. Did you see their weapons earlier? Those were not part of your power, either of them,” Leviathan explained.

  “I thought Sovereign’s was made from his aura. He can make solid objects, right?”

  “He can, though his lance is more powerful a weapon. Aura is versatile, but an expertly made and wielded weapon will almost always be more powerful.”

  “So that was a magically crafted lance? What about Cross’?”

  “The same, though ‘crafted’ isn’t quite right. We don’t create things; they are created with us. They were born with them. Like me and my fangs,” the beast responded. Erik didn’t have time to get his head around that before the spirits on the lake started fighting again.

  Sovereign made the first move, slamming his thick, near-solid aura into Cross Vigor. Cross used her arms to block the hit, but it still pushed her away from her previous position.

  Sovereign kept whipping the aura into his opponent, switching between one or two large arm-like appendages and several smaller tentacles hitting more rapidly with ease. The beating continued for several seconds, but Erik found it impossible to see anything near where Cross was.

  Soon, a few tentacles didn’t retract themselves to slam back down again. More tentacles stopped moving until most of Sovereign’s aura-appendages were stuck—Sovereign himself being unable to pull them back, as made obvious by the strain visible on his face and body. He cut the limbs’ far ends off, struggling as he did so, and looking ragged from doing it.

  “What did he do?” Erik asked.

  “He split parts of his aura off. It is not something anyone should do, as your aura is as much a part of you as your arms or legs. It will take him a while to recuperate, no matter how little of his aura he parted with.”

  Erik cast a glance at Leviathan, rather keeping his focus on the fight in front of him.

  The cloud of debris settled, and Sovereign’s dissipating aura cut-offs were pinched between two glowing walls of nothing. With a wave of her arms, the walls moved as well, each one following the motions of a different arm. Cross leapt forward towards Sovereign, who blocked with both his arms and his aura.

  The invisible-yet-glowing planes smashed into their opponent’s guard, thudding against the defences. Cross slammed them into the aura again, this time at an angle. Her invisible walls—empowered with Cross’ own aura, Erik now realised—started cutting into her opponent’s aura shield.

  “How is she doing that? I mean, both moving them like that and using them with her aura? Is that even allowed?”

  “It is accepted using aura in this way during a Show of Spirit, as some powers’ real potential can only be reached this way. Bear in mind, she is using the aura that is innate to her being, not any specific traits or effects she might have. She is using it as a simple tool, like hammering a nail with a rock—her aura, of course, being the rock in this instance.”

  “A bit like me using my aura without using the Authority effect?”

  “Quite. Sadly, I am not privy to minute details about the power you have from the Ancestor, but she seems to have linked the shield’s movement to that of her own arms.”

  Erik watched with intent to learn, and Leviathan had been right; the invisible shields moved along with her arms. But that wasn’t all. Erik saw no sign of a medium; nothing to trigger the effects of his Unexpected Arsenal with.

  Cross dug deeper into Sovereign’s shield until the golden spirit focused all his aura into two points, clamping down on one of Cross’ blade-like invisible shields. He eluded the second with nimble grace as it flew towards him. He released the second from his aura to strike against Cross with a massive aura spear, the point glowing bright as his golden aura condensed into a hard, sharp mass.

  Cross stomped her foot into the water below her, a wall of water shooting up in response to the immense physical strength she possessed. The wall covered the immediate area around Cross and Sovereign’s spear, making the fight impossible to see yet again. A second explosion-like collision with the water followed, its cause and effect hidden from the Titan and the rest of the audience.

  Cross—having blasted water away from beneath her to lower herself further down to evade the spear—burst out of the water beneath Sovereign. She lashed a whip-like blade of electrical power at him, its flexible nature taking the experienced fighter by surprise.

  She swung once, twice, and the length of the blade seemed to choose its own path rather than following the motion it should have. The electric weapon hit its target on the third swing just as Cross Vigor had ascended from the water.

  With a loud crackle and a bright flash, Sovereign flew away. He crashed into the water a distance away, electricity arcing around him as the charge dissipated into the air. His body convulsed the moment he landed, but he regained control of his own body again in seconds.

  Erik watched the cloud of water and steam as a bright light darted and flashed inside the debris. The light was quick, so quick that Erik couldn’t count how many times it darted back and forth before it burst—and along with a glowing Sovereign flying backwards out of the cloud—several small bursts of electricity spread out in every direction from inside the cloud.

  Cross Vigor, with a bright and limp sword of electricity, also flew out of the cloud with intent. Sovereign was quick to get up to his feet, his golden aura like a wall of spears stabbing at his opponent in a repeated fashion. The Ancestor crashed into the wall, blade first, knocking away several sharp tips before once again getting slammed by a gigantic mass of aura.

  Losing grip of the weapon in her hand, the crimson-armoured spirit hurtled towards the edge of the lake. Like rainfall, thousands of gold spears descended upon her as soon as her momentum had dropped.

  The battle taking place in front of him mesmerised Erik. He forgot about Leviathan and Gloom beside him. When Cross had revealed herself with a limp blade of electricity, he didn’t have time to think about what part of his Unexpected Arsenal that had been before Sovereign once again took the upper hand, giving the ‘Ancestor’ quite the wallop.

  The fight was all but done when Sovereign followed the grand slam with an aura-assisted jump high into the air before pelting the area with a barrage of spears Erik hadn’t earlier seen the likes of. The waterfall of spears had no end as he kept the attack up for almost an entire minute. After that, Sovereign was lowered towards the surface of the water, panting and struggling to keep upright.

  Cross Vigor emerged from the shallow of the water she had landed in. Above her was one of her invisible shields, though this one differed from any Erik had ever seen before. All over the ‘invisible’ shield wall were holes, visible only as cracks and punctures where light bent just a tad differently than the rest of the shield, making it look almost like a mirage.

  Noticing this, Erik saw his Ancestor spirit likewise riddled with holes, black smoke both rising from the holes in her armour and trickling down it like blood, getting washed away with the water. Despite her ragged form and obvious level of injury, Cross stood firm. She smashed her hand into the water in front of her, creating giant waves and towering spouts of water, though nothing on the level of what she had done earlier.

  Sovereign prepared for one last attack. He lifted his aura high into the air, preparing another flurry of descending spears. Without hesitation, he let loose the second barrage.

  Cross raised her hand from the water, several pieces of rock in her grasp. She threw the rocks with one hand whilst grabbing more from the broken ground beneath her feet with the other. As the rocks she threw collided with the golden aura spears, reverberating explosions filled the air.

  Each concussive blast of a rock was enough to blow away three to five spears, changing the trajectory of several more. Boom. Boom. Boom.

  One explosion proved decisive as the blast radius of a concussive wave pushed Sovereign off-kilter. A fraction of a second with sub-par focus was all Cross needed to throw one last rock straight into Sovereign’s unshielded head, penetrating the slight aura that was surrounding him. The rest of the aura spears vanished after the final, resounding boom.