The black-haired woman stood amid the ruins, her laughter spreading with the drifting dust.
"What a surprise."
She flicked her wrists, the cuffs of her white shirt already caked with plaster. "I haven't seen many opponents these past few years who could hold out this long."
Jora did not answer.
All her attention was focused on blocking and dodging-with every parry, the vibrations traveling through her arms made her bones hum faintly.
"All that just now..."
The woman abruptly stopped attacking and stepped back half a pace. "Was only a warm-up."
A question had barely formed in Jora's mind before her opponent clenched her fist again.
The air suddenly turned cold.
Visible white frost coiled around that fist, fine ice crystals rapidly forming on the ground wherever it passed.
Without gathering strength, without warning, that fist came hurtling straight at her.
Sand and dirt swirled up into a murky vortex.
Its seemingly slow trajectory brought it close in the blink of an eye, the cold current it carried gathering before the fist into a storm of sharp icicles-as though it would bore through every obstacle ahead.
Elsewhere, armor clashed as densely as falling rain.
"Your master won't last much longer."
The one-armed man tipped his chin toward the center of the chaos. "Still hesitating?"
"Please forgive me... there is a limit to the power my poetry can carry."
The middle-aged man pressed his bleeding arm, his fingertips brushing the strings again. "But now-most of the knights have fallen. I will give you everything that remains."
A chant rose.
It was not a ringing proclamation, but low syllables that seemed squeezed from deep within his chest.
"Those who have yet to fall, grip your weapons tight."
"The warrior from afar shall take up the bloodstained banner-"
Heat.
As though molten