Above us, the Saints of the Radiant Axis gather at the edge of their elevated stage, eyes sweeping the surrounding area. The one with the sword steps forward once more.

  "You’ve all done well in passing the first trial. Whether it was due to your own power, or the mercy of the Goddess, the resolve of your spirits has been proven." His words sound closer to scripture than they do compliments. "Please, allow me to introduce my brother, Cirelian, the proctor of the second trial!"

  It’s only now that I’m closer, that I can see the shimmer around his mouth. The way mana ripples from his lips in visible, refracted arcs. Their leader is using magic to carry his voice.

  Then Cirelian steps forward. He is bigger than I previously thought. His silver hair is cut short, and all of his features are sharp. He holds his arms behind his back and, without the assistance of magic, he simply shouts loud enough to be heard by all.

  "The second trial will not be one of the soul, but one of the body! Test your mettle against one other individual of your choosing. Kill your opponent, or beat them into submission, it matters not to me. The victors will go on to the next trial, but the losers…" He smiles, and the ground beneath our feet begins to rumble. "The defeated will meet their end by my hand.”

  For one instant, the field is completely silent apart from a gentle breeze overhead.

  That peace is broken by the first adventurer to move.

  He’s a short ways away, but I watch him push through another party, getting their healer in a chokehold. Some people take off into a dead sprint to avoid being caught in an unsavory fight, but most simply hold their ground, searching for the weakest link in their own groups.

  I look at Terra, and he is still unmoving. "Fine, if you want to take part in this dungeon so badly, then I’ll just leave you here! Clarence, Sen, we’re le-"

  Just as Clarence takes a step towards me, a bald brute with a neck as thick as my waist, clamps a meaty hand around my cousin's throat. He pulls him away and lets out a laugh.

  "You look like a weak one! I’ll kill you to death in the second trial and move on to the next one!"

  I watch Clarence choke and kick, eyes wide and with fear.

  Sen launches off my shoulder and into the fray, the wind carrying him. But no sooner does he reach Clarence than another hand, far more dainty than the last, snatches Sen out of the air and stuffs him into a velvet bag. The owner is a girl that’s barely older than I am. She ties it off and I see her beaming from ear to ear.

  "Sweet! I can just kill this thing and it’ll count, right?"

  I’m stuck between the two. The girl who grabbed a hold of Sen is going left, but the man who grabbed Clarence is heading right. My feet make the decision for me, and I run after the brute with an Aetheric Needle already forming in the palm of my hand.

  I don’t make it more than five steps before Terra’s hand closes around my wrist. His grip is absolute; I try to pull away from him, but I damn near dislocate my shoulder in the process.

  "What are you doing?!" I snarl, spinning to face Terra.

  Terra says nothing, he just keeps looking at me with my brother's eyes.

  "What the fuck are you-" I start, but my words are drowned out by Cirelian’s roar. He’s loud enough that my eardrums shake.

  "You have been given ample time. May the fights begin! For glory, for the Lightbringer!"

  With this, he brings both fists down onto the stone platform, and a shockwave of magic surges down the pillar and radiates out, cracking the field into perfectly cut, rectangular arenas. The earth rolls and buckles in place, swallowing some adventurers whole, and ejecting others.

  I too am thrown about by the moving rocks, and when I come to a halt, I find myself in an arena. Opposite me, a single opponent.

  Terra.

  His hand rests on the hilt of his blade, eyes locked not on me, but on some distant point past me. I already know what he’s focused on, it's those damned Saints. I’ve never seen Terra act out like this before, is it possible he has some personal vendetta against them?

  Surrounding us are hundreds of similar arenas, and adventurers are already at each other's throats. My throat tightens at the sight.

  "Terra, Clarence and Sen are in danger, they need-"

  "Do you really have time to be worrying about others right now?"

  He doesn’t let me finish. He’s already cleared the length of the arena, and his Blade of the Shadewell is coming down on me.

  I narrowly avoid it, conjuring up an Aetheric blade. I just manage to parry his attack, and our blades slice out a perfect crescent in the arena’s floor. Terra follows up with another attack, unrelenting as he aims for my body this time.

  I twist, summoning a clumsily made Aetheric shield. At the last moment he changes its trajectory, aiming for my thigh.

  I swear I see a future where he cuts clean through my leg.

  "Zephyr’s Burst!"

  The wind answers my call, lifting me up and out of reach for one precious second. I land hard, knees buckling, but I’m still in one piece.

  Terra’s upon me once again though.

  I just barely block his next attack, and the shield is shattered in the process as I’m sent skidding backwards.

  I scramble for my footing, conjuring another Aetheric blade, but Terra’s movements are precise, mathematical even. He presses the advantage, and once again, I barely manage to parry his next strike, the vibration of our blades clashing travels up my arms and into my teeth.

  "Terra, stop!" I scream, more of a plea than command. "We need to help-"

  "Worry about yourself right now!" His words are a command, and his next attack clips my thigh, tearing through fabric and skin alike. Blood sprays through the arena, and I stagger back, more shocked than wounded.

  "Terra?..."

  He doesn’t pause, doesn’t even acknowledge the strike. He delivers another blow, and another, and I am driven back, step by step, until my heel meets the edge of the arena.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  "You’re the worst master I’ve ever had!" he shouts, his voice cracking for the first time in the millenia that I’ve known him. "You’re weak and assume that things will be okay just because you give it your all. You’re not brave, Clara. You throw yourself at danger like it proves something, like dying on your feet makes up for all those poor, unfortunate souls you lost along the way! You…You’re just creepy."

  "What?! That’s not true! I’m just…this body is weak! Sure, the odds are stacked against me, but I really am trying my best!"

  He advances, sword raised, and I realize that the next strike will be fatal. "Your best is meaningless. Your clan is dead, and the only one you managed to save is an immature thief. Mentally, you’re unwell, and you give up too easily. The worst part is? You mistake strength for ego. Nothing you do benefits anyone. It’s all for you, it always has been. It’s like you…you just want to die!"

  His words hit harder than any blow possibly could.

  I release a barrage of Aetheric Needles, dozens of them. They’re small, but they hone in on every nerve, every artery, every opening they can find. They reach Terra’s body, peppering him along his arms and chest, but the wounds are shallow. He continues unfazed.

  When he’s on me again, I conjure up another blade that I pour all my mana into. The blade of the Shadewell blade meets my Aetheric blade, and the pain is instant, not from any cut, but from the force of the hit itself. My arms tremble, my wrists buckle, and my sword shatters into a spray of loose mana. Terra kicks me in the gut, hard, and the breath leaves me gasping for air.

  He pulls back, and with one definitive thrust, the blade of the Shadewell sinks cleanly into the soft flesh of my shoulder, and it stays there. Pain erupts from the wound, and blood pours down my sleeve, falling to the arena floor.

  Terra doesn’t stop here though. He conjures up a blade of ice and unleashes a flurry of strikes, each more brutal and precise than the last, and I am powerless to block them. Wounds open along my torso, shoulder, thighs, ribs, face. None are immediately fatal, but they aren’t meant to be.

  If Terra wanted to kill me, he could have done so in the first swing.

  He’s holding back, and that is somehow worse.

  I can’t allow this fight to go on any longer though. I need to find Clarence and Sen, and escape with them. My eyes scan the other arenas quickly. I don’t want to do this, but Terra is a lost cause now.

  "Terra, release," I whisper, shoving my hand flat against his chest.

  His soul would be banished from Elias’s body, but this was the only way to assure victory now.

  My gaze falls to the ground as I stand there for several long moments, already mourning the loss of a friend.

  Except I don’t feel a change. I don’t feel his body grow any cooler, I don’t feel it so much as budge, I sense no change in him of any kind. Slowly, I look up, and Terra is looking down at me with those cold eyes of his.

  "I don’t understand. I can’t release your soul…"

  "No, you can’t."

  "That only leaves one possibility then, doesn’t it? I was never the one who summoned you to begin with."

  Terra doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to.

  A millenia together, and it was all a lie. Lifetimes I called upon him, and he answered. Except the call had already been made. He was simply waiting for me all this time.

  "To think, I’m still learning things about you. You were always a strange soul. You still possess your innate magic from life, along with your strength. Deep down, I think I always knew, but I didn’t want to accept that you weren’t mine…"

  "I would never belong to something like you. Clara Crowsong, you are sin incarnate."

  I can’t help but let out a laugh. Death said the same thing to me just a few short days ago, and I swear I see his visage over Terra’s now. There was someone else who was always staring at me like that too though, wasn’t there?...

  That’s right, it was my father. He was never happy to see me.

  "You know, my father used to give me that same look," I laugh, and squint through the tears that begin to fall as I read the prompt before me.

  Ethel’s Karmic Grimoire has copied the maximum number of allotted spells.

  Please use some to make room for more

  "Since we’re finally being honest with one another, I must know. Just what is it that you’re always looking at with those eyes of yours?" Terra demands, and takes a step closer.

  My back is against the edge of the arena, and I sense a barrier there. It’s likely the same barrier as they had in the first trial, meaning I couldn’t get through it. If I were knocked back a few more inches then I’d be done for, but I’m not going to let that happen.

  I lay my hand against Terra’s chest as gently as I can as I watch his grip on his blades loosen.

  "Use spells 7 through 30, excluding 13 through 16,” I whisper.

  A cacophony of spells are forced out of my hand all at once. Point blank into Terra’s sternum. I’m unable to see the damage it causes due to a mixture of heat, and blinding lights. When my vision returns, I see that at least half of our arena has been destroyed, along with the barrier.

  Terra is standing with his icy blade dug deep into the ground to stop himself from being thrown from what remains of the arena. As the dust settles, I see that a handful of the arenas behind him were destroyed too. Thankfully, it looks like most of the contestants were able to survive.

  The attack must have diminished quickly as it traveled.

  19 spells have been exhausted,

  19 new slots have become available in Ethel’s Karmic Grimoire!

  Terra has a small, palm sized hole in his chest, but blood is pooling out of his back in thick, wet splashes of red. He struggles to stand, leaning heavily on his icy blade. I pull the blade of the Shadewell out of my shoulder, and toss it aside.

  "This whole time, you thought I was just looking for Clarence and Sen, did you? I was copying all the useful spells I could find. I knew the only time I’d be able to land a solid blow was when you got close.”

  Terra grunts, and reaches for his chest as a golden light leaves his hand.

  He was finally using his innate magic, then again, he’d have to if he wanted to survive such an attack.

  His entire frame begins to glow a golden hue as he draws a shaky breath. His bleeding immediately stops, and the hole in his chest is replaced by a scar. Holy magic…

  Ethel’s Karmic Grimoire has memorized the spell

  Eloria’s Embrace

  "Eloria’s Embrace, huh? A nice spell. Those Saints were talking about Eloria earlier, weren’t they? I guess it makes sense why you’re acting out now," I announce, and use the spell on myself.

  It’s peculiar, I’ve never heard of an Eloria, but I do feel something enveloping me in its embrace. My wounds quickly scab over, and then are replaced with scars. I look at my shoulder in awe as it fully heals.

  <

  Ethel’s Karmic Grimoire has forgotten the spell

  Eloria’s Embrace

  "Now, for the 13th spell!" I press both of my palms into the ground, and Terra nearly loses his footings as the ground beneath us shoots skyward. We stand atop a large tower of earth, the same as the Saints across from us do.

  Ethel’s Karmic Grimoire has forgotten the spell

  Gaia’s Pillar

  "We didn’t have any strong adventurers around us. With a birds-eye view, I should be able to snatch up a few good spells though.” I hold a hand against my brow to protect my eyes from the sunlight as I survey the battlefields below.

  "Oh that one will do nicely!" I shout, and another spell is copied to the grimoire.

  I turn back to Terra who’s given up on his blade of ice, opting to throw it away as he conjures up a blade made entirely of light.

  Ethel’s Karmic Grimoire has memorized the spell

  Eloria’s Vow

  "That’s a nice one too… Come on then, I’m not going to wait around all day to exorcise you, we’ve got to put on a show for these Saints of yours!" Eloria’s Vow appears in my hand too, and I raise it towards Terra.

  With this, Terra charges me once more.