The two participants charging at Caen were Body-enhancers, though one of them had a Fire magic affinity cluster suddenly grow prominent in his soul. A fire whip erupted out of a rod he was holding.

Caen had brought spores with him in his spatial bag, but he held off on using them.

“Decisiveness,” Stormsong said.

Caen, with sped-up mental processing, darted for the lither and significantly faster Body-enhancer. The man lashed out with his fire whip. Caen made to dodge, but the geas hindered his movements. Dodging was not ‘decisiveness’. He adapted quickly, letting the whip wrap around his Chasma-covered breastplate as he delivered a vicious swing of his own to the man’s helmet. The man staggered to the side, pulling his whip back with great force.

Just as Caen was following up, the other Body-enhancer arrived, already swinging a bulky hammer with glowing engravings. He was a large, armored man with a shield on his other hand.

Yards away, the Earth practician caused a five-foot-tall fence of compact sand to form around Caen and the Body-enhancers.

Caen attempted to abort his attack on the fire whip user and dodge, but the geas prevented him from doing so. Gritting his teeth, he continued his follow-up, thrusting his sword at the face of the staggering fire whip user. At the same time, he sent out a bunch of vines to completely enwrap the hammer wielder’s head. He flickered Soul-sense at both of them.

The fire whip user vanished in a pillar of light. Caen could only slightly adjust his body as the other Body-enhancer’s hammer crashed into his left shoulder, dislocating it. Chasma bore the brunt of the attack, but Caen was still shoved into the fence of magically reinforced sand behind him. He dampened the pain with a Blood-healing spell as he—with preternatural speed—lunged at the hammer wielder who had let go of his shield to tear off the vines on his face.

Flickering Soul-sense, Caen thrust for the man’s head, Kinesis spells lending force to his attack. He parted the vines around the man’s left eye. Just as Stormsong punctured flesh, the man vanished in a pillar of light. The vines returned to Caen’s torso. They were slightly scorched from the fire whip attack.

He felt a faint surge of Ardor. Stormsong let out a low purr of satisfaction that sounded like the distant rumbling of thunder.

The sand fence around Caen constricted in an instant, but he escaped the trap with an empowered jump. He somersaulted once in the air and landed on the ground. The Earth practician from the Blood Birds faction shot another flare into the sky. Caen was already turning away to flee, but the geas resented that.

“Finality,”

the awakened weapon rumbled.

He couldn’t leave an attacker behind. Caen hurtled around the constricted earth fence. Soul-sense disrupted the Earth practician’s next spell. Caen reached him, sword poised. The man vanished in a pillar of light.

The growing labyrinth broke through the ground near Caen—rough and uneven walls of crystal disturbing the surrounding terrain and rising quickly. He turned and made for the dome, which had shrunk even more and increased in speed.

Letting go of Stormsong allowed the sword to slide smoothly into its scabbard while it followed him. As he ran, he placed a hand on his dislocated shoulder and popped it back in place while casting Blood-healing spells to handle the rest.

Around him, participants were fighting off monsters or each other. Many worked in groups or pairs. Several others vanished in pillars of light.

A large bear with scales on its face and arms bounded towards Caen. When it swiped at him, he chopped off its arm.

“More power,” Stormsong said.

Caen cast more spells to empower himself as he made to tear off the bear’s remaining arm. The geas stopped him.

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He rolled with it and plunged the sword through the creature’s head instead. More monsters attacked, as did the occasional participant. Caen couldn’t leave them unattended, and so he used them to determine what exactly Stormsong meant by ‘more power’.

It turned out that Stormsong’s real issue was with Caen whittling down his opponents. Power, in this context, meant quick dispatches. Or just… ‘power’. Though at times it also meant being unpredictable, which was frankly confusing. Context was everything.

All that mattered was Stormsong’s contentment. Caen could feel their connection growing stronger and weightier. There was something passed on and received in equal measure between them. And if Stormsong’s ramping rumbles were anything to go by, then their synergy was getting better.

The shrinking dome was translucent and blurred over, which meant that no one could clearly see what creatures lurked beyond it or when there was a terrain obstacle or trap. Caen had been keeping a respectful distance between himself and the dome due to these. The dome picked up speed, shrinking faster, and the labyrinth formed out of the ground at an equivalent pace, trapping slower participants within its rising walls. This forced the more ambitious participants to hasten towards the dome and into danger.

There were about twenty yards between the dome and the budding labyrinth. Caen wanted to stay as close to the dome as possible to improve his chances of reaching the center. He wouldn't have to worry about being attacked from behind due to how quickly the frequency of obstacles increased the further in they went.

He began casting the basic divination spell he’d attempted at the start of the trial. His abysmally low affinities in Divination caused the spell to keep collapsing. He’d tried to Mimic someone else’s affinity, but Stormsong had complained about fluctuation, and the geas had further restricted him.

The spell collapsed again and again, and Caen halted his casting a few times to dispatch some hostile creatures or evade the tricky terrain.

When the Divination spell finally took, his speculon tingled, and the dome slowly grew less and less blurred till he could vaguely see what lay beyond. The spell was designed to enhance scrying focuses, which his speculon qualified as.

Being able to see what lay within the ever-retreating dome meant that he could run closer to it, merely a couple of steps behind. The monsters never took him by surprise, and he didn’t have to dodge as many pillars and structures if he could furtively move away from their path ahead of time. The connection between him and Stormsong continued to grow. He could feel the sword’s keenness.

Caen, too, was excited. But deep down, he hoped he wouldn’t need the sword’s primary enchantments. The statue standing at the center of the arena loomed over him. He was two-thirds of the way to the zone of mercy.

Through the gaps between a row of stone monuments, Caen saw another member of the Blood Birds faction shoot a flare into the sky. Two other flares nearby breached the sky as if in response.

The participant from the Blood Birds faction began orienting himself nimbly towards Caen, a Lightning affinity thread cluster growing prominent in his soul. Caen flickered Soul-sense, but the man still stretched out a hand and hurled a thick beam of lightning at him.

Against his better judgment, Caen did not dodge. Still running, he caught the attack on Stormsong’s white blade. The awakened weapon hummed loudly, drawing much of the lightning into itself. The remaining lightning crawled up Caen’s Chasma-covered arm and torso but was completely absorbed by the fragment. The man turned and ran.

A few more flares breached the sky above. A duo of spear-wielding participants curved around the dome, headed in Caen’s direction. Body-enhancers.

Caen felt Stormsong’s eagerness for brutality. It was hungry, starved of it. Ardor resonated with this. There was a need, and Caen could meet it. He charged at them, flickering Soul-sense. Stormsong hummed and rumbled with verve.

No whittling down, Caen reminded himself.

A spear jabbed towards his mask with great speed, while the other jabbed at his abdomen. Caen ignored the second. The geas only allowed him to tilt his head a fraction to the side. As the first spear scraped his helmet, an empowered flick of his sword took off the Body-enhancer’s unarmored hand at the wrist.

The second spear skidded off Chasma, gouging a shallow groove across the fragment. With a pivot, Caen swung his sword into the neck of the other Body-enhancer, cleaving through his armor. They both bowed out.

The dome had retreated further from his current position, and the labyrinth was catching up. Its loud rumbling was indistinguishable from Stormsong at this point. Their connection was stronger than ever. Up ahead, seven other participants from the Blood Birds faction rushed to block Caen’s path towards the dome.

More people raced in from the sides.

They meant him harm, these people. He could feel it through Ardor.

They weren’t all from the Blood Birds faction. A few participants here were of the Serpent Eaters and the Faithful Descent factions. Caen counted forty-three assailants. They were already fanning out to surround him, though the terrain and its obstacles would certainly make that difficult for them.

The spores within Caen’s bag of holding burst out in a large, dense cloud that hindered vision.