Emmanuel stared at the projection of himself, ensuring that everything was perfectly in place. The three dimensional reflection turned, cycling through multiple poses as he studied every fold, every wrinkle of the outfit with the best senses in the Realm. It all had to be perfect. He had to be perfect.

    Well, in truth, perfection to the degree he was demanding of himself wasn’t required, but there were few things as official as a full war summit with all eight Great Rulers present. He wasn’t just the representative of the entire Empire in such affairs, but the Empire itself. And he would be doing it a disservice by presenting anything less than his very best in all things.

    Eventually he was satisfied, and he stepped away from the mirror. Changing his Talents away from the hyper-sense set he had been using, he teleported down to the entryway of his private kitchen where Carissa was just preparing to eat a meal. He could have walked, but doing so would have deprived him of time with his wife. It didn’t matter how small of a time; every moment was precious, and the bit of mundanity helped settle his nerves.

    The two of them enjoyed a wonderful breakfast together, only lightly spoiled by the tension Emmanuel felt. No matter how well he managed to hide it, his wife could always sense it.

    “He’s going to be okay,” was the first thing she said on the topic, once their lighter fare had been exhausted. “You know that. We’re going to be okay. It’s just a war, we’ve been through worse, no matter what happens today. You have plans in place in case it’s a loss. That was always the likeliest option. Deep breath.”

    Emmanuel took a deep, steadying breath. “I know. I know. I just...”

    “You wish it could be you.”

    He nodded, his hand absently making its way to his wrist, letting it rest upon the Anchor wrapped around it. “Things are so much easier when it’s my life on the line.”

    And not the fate of trillions of others, whose futures hung so precariously in the balance.

    It had also been easier when the war was clearly going to end in failure. Planned failure felt far different than chance. Assuming the kids turned around the Tier 25 bracket? If Aiden could win here, they might just win the war outright. The odds were abysmal, but he had hope, and that made everything so much harder.

    “Let the battle maniacs be battle maniacs. You know Aiden would be scolding you if he knew your concern was about anything other than how incredible he’ll look today, live or die. Focus on the future you can see, the future you can affect. That’s what matters.”

    Emmanuel sighed. His wife was right, of course, and he placed a hand on her stomach and kissed her forehead. “I love you.”

    “I love you, too.”

    He strode out to the entryway of the imperial palace, making sure he greeted each of the myriad staff bustling about, be it for paperwork, maintenance, ‘security,’ or far more trivial things. He still had time, and the impact which a few seconds of politeness would have upon a Tier 4 far outweighed the supposed cost of the interaction.

    He flickered his Talents, getting a clearer picture of the other seven Tier 50s. None of them had arrived at the summit yet, but they had all entered Empire space at this point. Good. It would make his entrance more impressive.

    Allie’s talent being revealed meant that he could stop being circumspect about the ability. He had ways to mitigate the innate ability for all Tier 50s to sense the direction and distance to other high-Tiers, though they could be inconvenient at times. But today, he didn’t need to concern himself with it whatsoever.

    Between the space of one breath to another, Emmanuel vanished from the Capital and reappeared upon the Citadel.

    The sudden jump of him traversing nearly a quarter-way across the entire Empire would not go unnoticed, and that was entirely intentional. He was the representative of each and every citizen, and he would present their best. Their strongest shield. And, if necessary, their sharpest blade. In fact, he had a Tier 25 blade ready to be Tiered up to Tier 51 which, with a bit of surprise, should almost ensure a serious wound on any single other leader. But he was hoping he wouldn''t have to use it this early. That would kick off a true war just as surely as Matt’s Talent would, and they weren''t ready for that yet.

    Rusty had already prepared him a briefing on the situation, and Manny quickly parsed and digested all of the information within an instant of his arrival. He attempted to reach out to Aiden, but the Ascender unsurprisingly refused his call.

    Well, the man was the star of today. He wouldn’t push his messages through if he didn’t wish to talk.

    Things looked good, though.

    The local economy was starting to stagnate with how brutal the war had been, but that was to be expected, and Rusty was managing everything well on his end. There were seven elite Tier 35 armies in place on the fortress world- Aiden having refused their assistance- and ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice either to help Aiden or help the en-route Guild Tier 35 armies which would help dislodge the captured Tier 35 armies. The planetary defenses were fully charged, and if worst came to worst... Well, if the worst happened, and Aiden wasn’t able to so much as take Maya or Yun Me out of commission, they would be in trouble. But more reasonably, they could withstand the more normal armies for a while yet.

    Specifically, they could withstand the more normal armies long enough for their Guild reinforcements, en route through some less-traveled Chaotic Space paths, to arrive and help them rout the assembled forces. To help maintain the element of surprise, even Rusty and Emmanuel didn’t know when they’d arrive, but it could be anywhere from a day to a month out.

    Naturally, there were a whole host of hidden and not-so-hidden stations scattered throughout the Citadel, most of which were clearly set up as viewing houses for what promised to be the most climactic battle of the millennia. The only one he cared about, though, and one of the hardest to find, was Lila, who would soon be hosting... nearly every Ascender in the Realm not actively fighting in this war. Lovely. He already saw Cosmind slipping away from near the Republic convoy, and the others were due to arrive fairly soon.

    Still, it was nothing to concern himself with. He was uncertain how many of his fellow leaders knew the degree to which all of their Ascenders associated with one another, but it had proved a stable situation. And Lila, being the highest Tier of them all, could easily keep the rest in line if it came down to it. It wasn’t like their little meetups prevented them from fighting to the death the moment the means and motive arose, so none of the Tier 50s historically cared to intervene.

    Instead, he relocated himself to a specially-prepared planetoid where the war summit would convene. It wasn’t officially the end of the war yet, but when Virgil had proposed that the summit ought to occur alongside the Citadel fight, it was clear what she had been thinking. With Winter Hornet’s immediate seconding of the proposal, Emmanuel suspected it to be primarily fueled by a desire to watch the fight in person.

    Unsurprisingly, the somewhat upbeat mood he had been feeling was spoiled the moment Virgil opened her mouth, which she did the moment the other Tier 50s arrived next to him.

    “We can accept your unconditional surrender now and save you the trouble of losing your final trump card.”

    As if.

    “I daresay that Aiden would never forgive me if I deprived him of this fight, Virgil. He’s been looking forward to it for quite some time, and I have faith that he might yet pull through. Ascenders are... so unpredictable, yet I have faith in mine.”

    He looked out at the soon-to-be battlefield. “It is not my duty to be a parent to my citizens. I give them what I can, and they return what they can out of gratitude. It’s a degree of loyalty, I’ve found, which no amount of lies and torture can quite replicate.”

    It was perhaps a fair bit closer to a breach of decorum than he would normally have gone for, but his ability to actually feel what she’d done to her “children” had irritated him.

    Janet’s eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion, but Virgil’s eyes glowed slightly brighter in anger. “I retract my offer of surrender. You clearly must be taught a lesson in humility. We shall see whose faith in their children is warranted.”

    “Yes, I suppose we shall.”

    ***

    Camilla held Medea’s hand as they watched the armada near Aiden. Her pseudo father figure had told them not to worry, and Medea was putting up a good front, projecting pride and only a hint of nervousness, but Camilla could practically feel the worry radiating off the much, much higher-Tier. Or... maybe it was just reflecting off her?

    She sure as shit was nervous for Aiden no matter how he tried to placate her.

    Camilla tried to return the comfort as best she could, but she didn’t think she was doing a good job. Aiden was strong, but the forces arrayed against him seemed insurmountable.

    Medea took a long drink of water, then laid a tentacle reassuringly over Camilla’s shoulders. “It will be ok. It will all be ok. He’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.”

    Camilla could only hope she was right.

    ***

    Lila uncoiled as she felt a massive armada appear in Chaotic Space, doing her best to not betray the intense eagerness she felt. Instead, she kept her body language casual as she buried her true lair and created a much less magnificent, but still quite luxurious sandstone cavern to prepare for guests. She hadn’t played host for the full group for millennia, before anyone here had graduated, but she still knew the proper way to do things.

    Unsurprisingly, Max was the first to arrive. The Corporations woman opened her exit gate in Lila’s entry hall, miming a knock on the wall as she stepped through.

    “Maxine,” Lila purred in greeting, not bothering to hide her amusement. “It’s been too long. Come in, make yourself comfortable. I’m sure you’ll love what I’ve done with the place.”

    Max blasted Lila with a playful [Firebolt], the flames splashing off her scales, then broke out in a smile. “I’m the first to arrive, then.”

    “Unless Sien felt like being tricksy, but I think she’s still on her way.”

    “She is,” Max confirmed as the pair returned to Lila’s main hall. She picked her chair out trivially and sank into it with the perfect blend of obvious relaxation and perfect poise, accepting a drink from one of Lila’s summons and sipping at it appreciatively. “Well, you’re right. This is much nicer than my last visit was.”

    Lila grinned. “I could show you the ‘room’ you stayed in last time, if you’re feeling nostalgic.”

    “I’ll pass.”

    “Oh!” a new voice sounded. “Are we teasing Max about the time you absolutely trounced her and she had to go begging to daddy for a bailout?”

    Max chuckled, “Personally, I was just thinking about the first time you saw me and you tripped all over your own feet, Ollie. Biggest compliment you’ve ever given me, finding me so stunning that the great One Step Behind forgot how to run.”

    Olivier blurred to a stop in his own chair, propping his feet up on a nearby table and somehow already on his third drink. “Memory tricks are cheating. ‘Course I’d forget how to walk when you’re involved.”

    He frowned as he processed his own words. “Wait. Not like that.”

    Max shot Lila a triumphant glance. “So, anyone want to bet on who’s next to show up?”

    “No,” Lila and Olivier said in unison.

    “Spoilsports,” Max said over her drink. “It’s going to be the quartet.”

    “Really? How? Are they hitching a ride with their boss? I figured they were fifty-fifty on outright missing this entirely,” Olivier noted.

    “Ask them yourselves,” Max waved towards the entryway, and Lila went to check on their newest arrivals. She made it a few moments before a black bird skeleton swooped in, its eyes alit with ghastly blue flames. It chirped at her, and Lila welcomed it in.

    The bird swooped in and perched on a railing on the second floor, overlooking the main foyer. A moment later, Brian sent her a message asking if she had a few extra corpses around, “preferably humanoid and preferably Tier 40 or less.”

    A minute later, On The Last Line was settling into their four temporary bodies, all of them the skeletal remains of the tallest orcs Lila still had in her repertoire. Sometimes, it was the pettiest little things that counted.

    “Did you sign Maya up for a bunch of spam?” Ellen accused Max as soon as her mouth was working. The skeleton’s voice was a bit tinny and rattly, but considering they were probably all bodily still in Clan space, it was still an impressive feat of magic, especially for a Tier 35. Brian had really outdone himself with his latest trick.

    “Whyever would you think I did?” Max responded, perfectly innocently.

    “Because Maya’s convinced that I did it, and I’ve been dealing with actual bugs coming in through my AI for years now. Like, I open a message and suddenly I’m covered in spiders. If I’m going to be the one taking the penalty for messing with her, I at least want to know that it’s worth it!”

    “Oh, my dear Ellen. Do you really think I’d do something like that?” the Chosen asked, her face a perfectly-sculpted picture of innocence.

    “Yes!”

    “Well, you’d be right.”

    Ellen threw up a skeletal hand. “I knew it!”

    “But this time it wasn’t me.”

    “Then who-”

    “It was Brian,” Max cut off the Legend.

    Ellen whirled around so fast that her arm fell off, its finger now pointing accusingly at Lila. A few motes of sand pushed the skeletal appendage a bit further such that it was aimed at Olivier, currently polishing off his seventeenth drink, instead of her. She wanted no part in this.

    Ellen tried and failed to berate her teammate for his deception, but the necromancer was laughing too hard for any of it to stick. The literally bone-rattling laughter was rather contagious, and Lila found herself unable to hold back a grin at the pair of skeletons bickering.

    Lila’s good mood only lasted so long, before the next two arrivals spoiled it. A streak of red and blue resolved itself into a red dragon just outside Lila’s lair before she parted the veil around the entrance and let Gideon and Eclavorn inside. Immediately, Eclavorn started blasting his bloodline presence all over the place, but with Sien still en route and Brian necromantically projecting his teammates, Lila was the only one to feel it.

    She didn’t let it affect her, though. Even a full rank on her bloodline wasn’t enough to overcome the four Tier gap that she had on the Monster Collective’s pride and joy. Not acknowledging him was the best way to keep Max from ribbing her about it, though. Probably. Maybe. Instead, she focused on the comparatively tiny man disengaging himself from between two of the dragon’s spines and leaping down to the ground. “Gideon. Excellent to see you. I trust your flight was satisfactory?”

    “Aye, ‘E’s a good flier,” Gideon patted Eclavorn’s side with a wink. “Are we the last to arrive?”

    “We’re still waiting on Sien. She should be here any minute.”

    Eclavorn redoubled the pressure of his bloodline, hardening the full might of his elder dragon status in an attempt to get Lila to acknowledge him, yet unwilling to simply talk first and admit he so desperately wanted her attention. In response, she hardened her own bloodline into a spike, newly refined and reinforced thanks to the steady supply of dragon’s blood she’d been receiving, and shot back, piercing her fellow dragon’s bloodline presence like a balloon and prompting him to withdraw it... politely.

    Eclavorn stumbled slightly and snorted a flare of bright blue plasma. “You’ve been refining your bloodline! Are you finally acknowledging my path was the superior one?”

    “Someone needs to show you how to use a dragon’s presence properly,” she shot back.

    “I ship it!” Max yelled from the other room. Lila turned her chair to sand, but the woman formed a replacement out of her Domain, never moving even a hair.

    The three of them rejoined the rest of the Ascenders in the main hall. Eclavorn must have been feeling particularly testy, as he didn’t change into his humanoid form but instead kept his shape as a... large dragon. Lila narrowed her eyes at him, then swatted him with the tip of her tail, staggering him and dispelling the subtle size-increasing skill he’d cast upon himself, scattering the extra mass like so much sand that sank into the invisible seams of the polished floor and vanished.

    He grunted, but didn’t protest. Max nearly said something, but Lila cut her off, “Don’t you dare. I stayed out of the mess with you and Charl.”

    Olivier blew a raspberry. “Please, Charl was so much worse. Went out like a punk, too.”

    “Hear, hear!”

    “I’ll drink to that!” Krodag chimed in.

    “Bottle, you’d drink to anything.”

    “I’ll drink to not going out like a punk.” Gideon raised the glass Olivier handed him. “Speaking of punks, actually, no Wun today?”

    Ellen shook her head. “He’s delving.”

    “Still? Man, he’s gonna be peeved he’s missing this. What, did he take a nap or something in the middle of the rift?”

    “It would be entirely in keeping with his character,” Sien added.

    “Bloody hell!” Olivier jumped out of his chair, bouncing off the ceiling but still managing a graceful landing before he took his seat, relocating such that he was on the far side of the room from the newest arrival, taking a deep drink from his thirty-ninth refill. “Warn a guy before you give him a heart attack, would you!”

    “‘Sup, Sien,” Max smiled warmly. “It’s good to see you, or at least a clone. How are the twins?”

    “Most marvelous. They have been having an excellent time whetting themselves against the youngest Masters, and have learned many new tricks for their own use. One of them is so inventive, I imagine I might begin to use it myself.” The Sect woman’s shadow returned to her, carrying with it a drink from the other room, before returning to being two-dimensional.

    “Oh yeah! The new kids. Whaddya all think of them?” Krodag pitched in, “Haven’t been able to check em out myself yet.”

    “They’re full of fire and passion, brilliant little embers fresh from the forge,” Sien responded after a moment. “Though Titan remains somewhat over-focused on victory, and quite protective of his team.”

    “Psshh. Their first loss was to a sniper, of course he’s gonna be tetchy about it.”

    “Sniping is an entirely valid branch of combat. It requires tremendous skill and patience” Eclavorn countered. “Disdaining the strengths of another due to personal preference is unbecoming of an Alpha.”

    “But it’s not a fun one, on either end of the arrow.”

    “Gun, in this case.” Sien conceded.

    “Even worse! Doesn’t even take strength to send the projectile. So impersonal.”

    “Hmph,” Eclavorn conceded. “Though the boy remains far too concerned with the wellbeing of flicker-lives. He has been far too coddled if that alone was sufficient for his current temperament.”

    “Ah, it’s not that bad,” Krodag waved him off, “That guy... Stone, yeah? He was his... mentor or something?”

    “Sponsor and mentor, yes.” Lila confirmed.

    “Exactly! Kid was an orphan, that practically made that guy family. I don''t see an issue. Not unless we want to hold Olivier’s rampage against him?”

    “It says you either need to get better material or laid. One or the other. Maybe both.” He gritted his teeth. Yun Me was surrounded by a fan of spears, each one a skill conjuration tipped by a razor-sharp golden leaf, and [Abyssal Ablation] could barely deflect most of them as she thrust them in a well-practiced dance, landing more attacks than he wanted. An array of water whips surrounded him, snaking out between attacks to keep throwing the rune soldiers around. He wasn’t able to hurt Yun Me at the same time, but he could just about keep his other enemies occupied. But he saw an opening as she directed her spears, and a spinning [Water Chakram] promised to strike Yun Me in the throat.

    “All the World is a Stage!” Maya vocalized, and the fight twisted oddly.

    Aiden felt himself vibrate for a moment as his attack turned from a real deadly strike into a prop. The circlet of water simply bounced off Yun Me and she fell to the floor, covering her head with the back of her hand in a dramatic tumble.

    He wanted to press his advantage, but he felt a danger loom as he started going off script. As he hadn’t found the weak point of Maya’s working yet, he dodged back and started monologuing.

    “For I am undefeatable, and your petty tricks can not stop me!”

    He didn’t know the story Maya had envisioned, but from his implanted impulses, he suspected he was the lead of a tragedy or the villian of a hero''s story. Either way, he was going to end up dead if he didn’t break out.

    Maya was stacking the deck, or rather script, in their favor, but he could do the same.

    “My minions and I will defeat all of you revolutionaries.” There was a twinge as he created two water guards at his side, but he wasn’t truly breaking the script, not yet at least, so it allowed him to proceed.

    Unfortunately, he couldn’t interfere with the wand wielding rune soldier twirling around as if taking part in a ballet, gently tapping the others and healing many of their worse wounds with small star effects.

    Aiden tried to call out the blatantly off-script medical aid, but an invisible something closed around his throat and Domain, preventing the words from forming. The Yun Me on the ground had, at some point, been replaced by a wooden dummy, and the real her bounded out of the shadows, rubber spear in hand.

    Aiden felt his body sway to dodge even without his direct effort, and he let himself be puppetered along to the director’s whims. He could use this ‘play’ as a slight break in the battle to prepare himself, just as the other side could.

    Once the rune soldiers were healed up, they jumped forward in matching soldier uniforms, not dissimilar to their actual armor, and in unison shouted, “Halt, thou wicked dragon! Allow yourself to be slain and the world to be cleansed of your blight.”

    “Pound sand, assholes!” The stinging pain was worth the rebuttal.

    As he was surrounded, his water minions went down to the lightest of pokes and he cursed whatever story this was meant to be.

    Maya bounded out of the shadows and stood at his back, proclaiming, “It is I, your dear wife who you thought had died in the fire, but I come to your rescue at your greatest time of peril!”

    Aiden felt the will of the director trying to get him to lower his guard, but he threw his will into resisting.

    He had noticed the long dagger Maya was turning around, which gleamed in the stage light as the play was coming to its forgone conclusion.

    “Yet here you are, once again within arms reach, for what harm will you come to, my... dear Waters?” Her voice trailed off, then she stabbed him.

    “Hey!” Aiden buckled over, realizing too late that the Stage law had been dropped as the story ended. “What kind of play allows real knives?”

    “The fun kind.”

    “Fair point,” Aiden groaned through the pain, then burst into water, reforming on the other side of Maya. She in turn blinked out of existence, but Aiden managed to hitch a ride on her illusionary swap in the form of a few droplets of water, pulling him away from the absolutely massive attack the rune soldiers had set up.

    Maya dropped him off as soon as she realized he’d tagged along, of course, but his goal had been achieved. Unfortunately, he noticed that while he’d been locked in a play, even Yun Me and Maya had gotten touch-ups from dedicated magical healing, undoing much of the damage he’d inflicted thus far.

    Aiden swatted out with a [Water Whip], wincing as the knife wound was inflamed from the motion, but allowing the ostensibly five-foot long tendril of water to cover the multi-mile distance between him and the rune soldiers. It slammed into the mage responsible for the purple flames, but was dispersed into a thousand smaller pieces before it could manage much else.The droplets of water drifting through space would prove helpful later, he was sure.

    He managed to reappear right next to the pyromancer, at least, and he formed a garrote of water and ice, spun it like a saw, and locked it around the neck of the soldier. Then, he created kelp bindings to keep him from breaking free...

    And Yun Me arrived before he could finish off the soldier.

    He narrowly leaned to the side enough for Yun Me’s spear to only take him in the arm, but before he could properly get distance, a new Law slammed into the battlefield. “We Are Here.”

    Maya had used this Law a few times in previous fights. It hindered all movement intended to, well, move the person. The greater the movement, the greater the hindrance, and it handily shut down his ability to displace his location.

    He summoned a bar of water around his hand and hardened it with the full pressure of the deepest abyss, layering a host of spells onto the impromptu staff.

    Yun Me’s spear thrust aimed for his head, but Aiden deflected it downward while using the momentum to twist and twirl. His stab brought an involuntary grunt, and he frowned. It was only a knife stab.

    He didn’t have enough time to ponder it, as his spin brought him right into the path of a flurry of golden ribbons from Maya, passing through his armor as though it was nothing but an illusion, but slicing his left leg clean off. It stayed in place thanks to his armor, and water reached out to reattach it to the rest of his body, but it felt jittery and partially illusionary.

    The rune soldier with an oversized sword had managed to get in range as well, but his attack didn’t break through Aiden’s armor. It did still... break his arm, maybe? No, that was a dislocation.

    Water snaked up the sword’s blade, delivering a concentrated blast of rusting magic to try and weaken the weapon, and then reached the man’s arm, slipping underneath the man’s armor and trying to break his limb.

    The bone held. There was maybe a slight amount of deformation, as though he was bending a steel bar instead of breaking a bone, but it held stubbornly.

    Aiden turned the water tether into a blender and pulped the man’s flesh instead. He brought a waterfall down on the entire group, trying to give him a bit of breathing room, but Maya and Yun Me swiftly put a stop to that.

    [The Arm Of Ten Thousand Forests] had once been a simple wood aligned control spell, but over the ages and countless fights, she had turned the spell into a pseudo realm that created a semi-real forest around them.

    Once trapped within the spell, one would be attacked by the trees and Yun Me alike, but with Maya’s help, the pseudo illusion turned into a real, true realm focused on Aiden. Combined with the earlier law, he wasn’t able to just transpose himself out of the spell and his mind started to churn as he looked for the weak spot he knew the spell had.

    He didn’t see one, but with Maya assisting, that wasn’t a surprise.

    The coruscating water still fell upon all of them, and Aiden focused on bending the forest around him, ideally making an ocean, or a lake, or...

    He got a pond.

    He still managed to dive in, using the water to protect him as the trees around him animated and began stabbing downwards. But in here, he was-

    A living lightning bolt slammed into him, the spear leaving a massive dent in his breastplate and causing his limbs to involuntarily lock up. It vanished in a peal of thunder loud enough to cause actual damage, and then a pair of whips snapped in from nowhere to carve a furrow into his vambraces.

    He couldn’t tell where the attacks came from, but wherever that was would be his ticket out.

    He’d need to act quickly, though. The stab wound was just getting worse, none of his healing spells doing anything to it. A quick [Scrying Pool] later, he understood the nature of the curse on it. The wound was destined to be lethal. He wasn’t fated to survive it. That put a bit of a time limit on this, but he at least had some ideas as to how he could deny his fate.

    Letting his body move on autopilot and mostly dodge the plethora of incoming attacks, Aiden turned his focus towards the realm Maya was making real.

    If she was working with someone else, she’d have to make sure that the forest behaved normally, as trying to do a cooperative working with someone wouldn’t work if they were pushing for different realities.

    And he could use that.

    His pond connected to the water in the ground, which seeped through the soil until it met the roots of the trees. From there, they formed a vast network of entwined roots, and Aiden forced open a small channel of pure water connecting his pond into that network.

    He vanished from his little puddle and started tree-walking.

    He managed his exit right before a sword and spear nearly struck him, with reality twisting such that he didn’t move too far from where his soon-to-be prey was, and he reached out with his hand in a claw, nails covered in small daggers of water. [Water Claws] was a personally modified spell and it tore through the illusion and into reality, where he grabbed an arm just below the shoulder.

    Pulling back into the illusion that was trying so hard to keep him locked down, Aiden took the arm with him.

    He could almost hear the scream of pain and rage as he dropped a drained limb on the forest floor.

    With his connection to the trees, he made their leaves rustle in a haunting laughing sound. He was waiting for another strike, wanting to lash out and take another pound of flesh, but instead, he found Yun Me and Maya trying to pull their own spells apart.

    Aiden briefly debated fighting them, but instead twisted from inside and accelerated the collapse.

    His rod came down square on the back of Yun Me’s head, but she blurred and was facing him, her shield upraised, ready for the attack while her spear lashed out and cut into his abdomen, exacerbating his existing fatal wound.

    [A Finger To Cut a Hole in The Sky] blasted through and out of her spear, cutting through armor, flesh, and spirit alike. It broke what containment measures he had on the cursed stab, and Aiden felt his limbs begin to grow weak as his life bled from the deadly knife-wound.

    Aiden growled and flexed his Domain, pushing Yun Me away.

    She didn’t budge, and the pressure built.

    Yun Me withdrew her spear in time for Aiden to be set upon by two new rune soldiers, a glowing glaive and eerily black whip lashing down and being deflected to the side from the turbulence of space around himself and Yun Me.

    He pushed, and pushed, and pushed.... Then the pressure released.

    Aiden was sent flying, his attempts to move Yun Me reflecting entirely onto himself and slamming him with the force of a raging river. He was sent skipping across the battlefield, his every attempt at conjuring water merely resulting in him bouncing off.

    Then he impacted the far wall of the battlefield, and stopped utterly.

    His armor dented, and while it began to flow back into place, it still managed to crush part of Aiden’s spine and had a few shards of metal poking into his torso. He groaned, his body protesting the immense pressure, and now, the multiple broken bones and fractured limbs. The only good thing that had come out of that was that somewhere along the way, he’d managed to take a pound of flesh from Maya. His [Water Claws] had been gripped around a bloody hunk of meat he knew was from his fellow Ascender, even if he didn’t know exactly how he’d gotten it. He tried to move, then promptly abandoned that course of action for the moment. His every movement just brought him closer to death.

    But his [Water Spirit] was still mobile, and Aiden took on the approximate form of a small, watery leviathan. Even though it was technically un-stabbed, it didn’t have terribly long to live... but Aiden knew a lot about living water, and he could keep it in good shape for quite some time yet.

    A tentacle traced the shape of the battlefield shield, feeling for weaknesses but finding none. It would hold until the people on the other side let it fall.

    Aiden shook his elemental form out, not needing to truly limber up, but the association felt right. Then he darted to the side as one of the rune soldiers, riding an arrow of light, slammed into the wall with a cloud of glittering dust.

    An instant later, the woman dashed at him again, spinning a staff and shooting a continuous barrage of luminescent projectiles. Aiden dodged a few of them, then called upon his Anchor and let them sink away into the inky depths of the ocean.

    He had practically no time before Yun Me arrived, but that was still more than enough to strike back.

    A tentacle snaked out, grabbed an arrow, and flung it back at the soldier who released it. She waved her hand to dispel it, but the mana she released was instantly consumed by Aiden’s own spell and turned into a shark made of abyssal waters. With another tentacle springing from nothing to coil around her torso and another locking her ankle in place, she was unable to dodge and the shark feasted.

    First blood.

    Yun Me barreled into him at such high speed that his watery form discorporated, reforming behind her as she appeared, only to find himself reforming inside a fishbowl. Off to the side, he felt the essence of the rune soldier he’d managed to kill return to her fellow soldiers. Whether they could return mid-battle was unknown, but he hoped they couldn’t.

    That was a long term problem though, and right now Aiden was trapped inside a fishbowl. On the bright side, that also was protecting him from everyone other than Maya, and he took the opportunity to layer a few more healing spells on himself.

    He tapped on the glass a few times, found a fragment he could exploit, and with a deep breath, broke free. As he did so, he threw his Aspect into reinforcing a particular skill he didn’t often get to use.

    [Turbulence].

    Left became down, down became up, right became down, up became backwards, forwards became left, left became right. The full chaos and confusion of being side-swiped by a particularly rowdy bit of water when you were a mile and a half below the surface swept over the entire group, and while it affected him just as much, he knew how to work it.

    Aiden moved to rip Maya''s head off, but he stopped as she smirked just before he arrived, and instead let his watery body turn into seafoam, which saved him from the spear that erupted from her chest.

    A spasm through his spirit collapsed his watery form, and he instinctively doubled over, putting his hand to his torso. It came away red.

    Not much longer, then. Aiden almost caught a longsword through the head, but he blocked it with his [Water Claws]. He lost his thumbs, but who really needed them?

    Cats did just fine without them, and he was definitely better than a cat.

    Slashing out with only eight digits, he cut deep furrows in the water, sneaking behind Yun Me’s shield and screeching against her [The Heart of the Firmament Made Manifest Upon The Flesh], or [Metal Body] if you wanted to be boring.

    Turning back to water and opening a hole in his chest, he let a blast of purple fire- that same pyromancer still not giving up- blow into the Sect woman’s [The Legendary Shield Which Cannot Be Broken], but was forced to reform and drift off to the side to dodge Maya’s pincer attack with herself.

    He still snuck in a quick attack-redirection to get Yun Me’s counter to take the Federation kid in the head, filled the hole in his skull up with pressurized water, then froze it.

    Finally, a second pulse of essence.

    Maya tried to double-team him, but he felt her coming from behind and to the left, and he nudged his [Turbulence] to make it his front and below. Her swinging an illusionary sword didn’t change that, and he flicked his hand like a conductor’s baton to coat it in ice. The ice was yanked away by the currents, then broken apart by an ice specialist from the Federation.

    Tragically, the ice was based on The Ninth Frozen Droplet, an ice that would freeze your mana if you weren’t careful. The cryomancer wasn’t careful enough, and a brief pulse of [Flotsam] shattered his body, dispersing his essence among his peers.

    Already, the essence seemed to be doing something... interesting. It wasn’t just hanging around keeping the people he’d killed “alive” so to speak, but actually slipping into the crevasses of the machine that was the other soldier’s Domains, accelerating and enhancing their spirits. How very interesting.

    Aiden really wanted to see just how far they and their connections could be pushed. Currently, the rune soldiers had begun to glow blue very subtly, in the depths of their irises, and their raw cultivation might was already above what a standard Tier 35 could manage. But what would happen when that boost was stronger, and spread across fewer people?

    Could the final few push fully into Tier 36 speed and strength?

    Now that- a spasm from his cursed wound caused his body to flinch- that would be a challenge!

    Aiden wasn’t able to think on it too much more as he was nearly caught off guard by a law change from Maya. “Freeze!”

    Aiden felt himself and all his water turn to ice, but that hardly bothered him. Maya had long since tried this trick on him, and knew he had no issue with the mental leap that frozen water was still water. With [Turbulence] up, the water around him was already below nominal freezing temperature, so he looked for what the trick was that he’d been missing.

    The physical lockdown was obvious, but he only casually looked at it and instead searched for a deeper meaning.

    And didn’t find one. Realizing the trap he had fallen for, Aiden moved his icy form to the side but caught another spear through the chest, this one almost punching through his heart and instead going through a lung. Worse yet, it broke through the last of Aiden’s carefully-constructed dams, holding back the cursed stab’s fatal destiny.

    Aiden coughed out a mouthful of blood before putting up a hand and gesturing for a pause, even as he retreated.

    Maya was the only good sport and stopped her barrage of attacks, but that was all the space he needed.

    “Little lesson for you all, from Old Master Waters! Did you knoooww,” he had to dodge as Yun Me threw her spear then recalled it to her hand, “That interrupting someone during a monologue is rude? Come on!”

    The soldier armed with a glaive was the next to attack, and Aiden, despite his limbs not quite working, grabbed him by the throat and the legs with a pair of tentacles and pulled.

    The man stayed stubbornly in one piece.

    Or he did, but maybe only until he was used to block another attack from one of his countrymen? Nope, that one didn’t do it either. Yun Me’s next attack gave just the push he needed, and he tore the soldier’s body in half, letting the essence spill out. Most of it went to his fellow soldiers, of course, increasing the light in their eyes. But he reached out with his finger and tapped a glowing droplet of water. It was purely theatrics, of course, but it looked so cool.

    “Did you know, with the proper technique, you can refill your entire mana pool mid-fight with a Tier up?”

    Destiny shattered as his spirit started to glow as he gave his spirit the final push he needed to settle into Tier 32.

    A trio of attacks shot at him, but Aiden used up a bunch of his remaining mana pool deflecting them right back at their casters. Yun Me simply counter-reflected her attack back at him, so he sent that one into the body of a rune soldier, who instantly died from the thrice-reflected and thus thrice-enhanced attack. That emptied his mana, but it didn’t matter.

    Essence swirled, the world went blue, and, when it subsided, Aiden grinned a manic grin. The cursed stab was completely gone, alongside most of his other wounds, and his mana was back up to full. He was a Tier closer to their own Tier now, and best of all, he’d just recovered a bunch of willpower from that stunt.

    Water coiled around him, lifting him up on a waterspout, and Aiden cracked his knuckles and took a fighting stance. “Round two! Begin!”