Death, Devotion, Dissonance

"3… 2… 1…" Elune finished, and the mock fight began.

Immediately, Daishan chanted something in Northern and pulled out a large slab of earth from the ground and sent it at Evin at the speed of a dashing horse.

'I guess you could do that and shove me away from the circle,' Evin thought, but wasn't very worried.

As he expected, Endra began shooting stone bullets towards the slab of earth, raising dust with each impact and creating cracks on it. The wall of earth wasn't made of stone, so it couldn't resist Endra's stone bullets that effectively. It cracked onto the ground, becoming too split for Daishan to control properly.

Most of the time, large, singular objects escaped the control of World energies when they became too scattered.

But the Northerner woman's attacks did not stop there, as smaller pieces of stone appeared right behind the big one, practically oozing with Tenarak's energies. In spellcasting, will/energy infused objects meant that a mage was most likely controlling them directly. It was the same as Endra controlling a Hard Air sword to hack at enemies from a distance. It needed a bit of mana to maintain, but it was quite deadly.

And from what Evin knew, the only way to deal with this connection was to use ketricite, or cut off the mage's connection to it. Sadly, the only way Evin knew how to perform the latter, was by shoving World energies between the mage and the object, one that's large and messy enough to interrupt or cut off the original string of energies that connected the two.

Evin wasn't confident in being able to pull this off that quicklyl so this left Evin with one, rather brutish, option: to shoot them and destroy the objects themselves… which, Endra was doing already. The stones tried to dodge away from the Voice's bullets, but they were having a hard time, considering how fast the bullets flew. Now that Evin noticed, the bullets were becoming faster and faster each day.

Anyhow, Daishan seemed surprised by Evin's prowess, and for whatever reason, stopped chanting. Evin wondered if Endra was going to use this chance to attack, but he also seemed willing to take a pause.

The battle between the Heavy Mages briefly turned still, so Evin found some time to look at Bella, who was fighting on his left side.

Two figures covered in mud, one small and one even smaller, were entangled in what Evin could only describe as a flurry of jabs and sweeps. From a glance, Evin found it hard to discern what really was happening between them and was about to pull away his attention, but the two broke off away from each other briefly, giving Evin a chance to follow what exactly was happening.

Ducking low, Bella dashed at Parsh, practically gliding right over the ground, with two makeshift mud-bucklers on her hand. Parsh met the attack with a vertical sweep of his makeshift mud-saber, though that was deflected to rightwards by Bella's right buckler. She then hooked her right leg around Parsh's left, and with a surge of strength, pulled it towards herself, intending to topple the man over.

But a piece of Parsh's mud armor hardened around his left leg, preventing Bella from moving it. Parsh then forcefully swung his mud-saber downwards, seemingly swiping at air, but Bella's back appeared on its trajectory. The force of Bella's sweep pulled the girl's body even nearer to Parsh's body, putting her right where the saber was falling towards.

Bang!

A shot from Endra' accelerator went off, hitting the piece of mud-armor that was protecting Parsh's hand. The bullet lodged itself into the swirling mud protecting the man, but alas, wasn't able to penetrate it completely. Though the force of the hit did manage to make Parsh miss the swing on Bella's back.

"What th-" Parsh began, but had to shut up, as Bella's buckler hit him at the back of his head.

Then, Evin heard a loud noise coming from just next to him. Cursing his carelessness, he looked towards Daishan, and saw a piece of stone stuck inside a barrier of Hard Air, shaking, as if trying to free itself.

'When did he even manage to create this?'

The barrier was at least three fingers thick, but judging by the thin lines that had appeared on it due to the impact, Evin could tell that Daishan's attack was nothing to scoff at. Beyond it, Evin could see the woman's frowning face, as she raised another array of stones and sent them towards Evin. There was nothing different to this attack, so Evin could only guess she was attacking to keep him busy.

Evin stole a glance at Bella, and found that the two of them were back to dancing around each other. A small wound appeared on Parsh's lower lip, and Evin guessed that perhaps the hit to the back of the head made him bite it by accident. The close call with the saber also seemed to have calmed Bella down a bit, as Evin could tell that her movements had gotten much tamer, with no reckless dashes towards Parsh and no powerful, wide-arced swings of her buckler.

'They don't seem like they're going to settle the fight anytime soon, but that's fine."

Evin put Bella out of his mind and focused on Daishan. The woman's face had changed from the previous frown to one of determination, so Evin put up his guards, expecting something new.

Daishan recreated her array of stones and sent them towards Evin, but this time, with only half the number. Endra did not care, and loaded his accelerator and diligently shot at the stones. But just before it made contact, Endra's stone bullets stopped in mid-air, and became engulfed in a thick layer of Tenarak energy… and flying towards Evin alongside the original ones.

'Daishan took control of the Endra's bullets!'

Hurriedly, Evin created an overload of air ten steps in front of himself and set it on fire. Thankfully, his timing wasn't too bad, and he managed to either destroy or change the direction of all the stones that were coming towards him.

He heard a loud wail of pain from the direction of the onlookers. Evin noticed one of the guards clutching his legs. Hopefully, Elune would take care of it.

<I guess it's time for us to counterattack,> Endra commented.

Evin agreed, but there was a problem. <But even if you do that, wouldn't she just take control of the bullets? Or are we going to use metal ones?>

<Metal's kinda…> Endra sounded reluctant.

<I guess you're right, sorry for mentioning it,> Of course, Evin didn't want to harm his enemies badly.

But Endra wasn't hesitant because of that. <Yeah, if she takes control of them, we're kinda screwed. I'm sure she can use metals, but choosing not to, because she doesn't want to take the fight too seriously.>

'Ah, I guess there's that too.'

<Then what are we going to do?>

Endra answered, by sending a string of Qanatohm energies towards Daishan. Of course, if they could make Daishan weigh the same as air, they could just blow here away from the circle.