by Harlon Banks
The eternal night drags on, forevermore...
When the next few fights passed, Dast cleared the ring again. His yellow-hued catlike eyes looking over the Nightborn as he cleared his throat.
"Next five-minute round will be Melissa Ylrah versus Wrain Winter."
Melissa cerulean blue eye flared up vibrantly when her name got called! A sly smirk etching across half-hidden gaze as she arched her back and parted her legs with arms locked skyward in a stretch, before walking towards the ring with that same relaxed, confidence she always exuded. Wrain stepping forward as well as the two made their way to the ring. Jonath paying much closer attention to this fight, recalling how Melissa refused to tell him how her powers worked on the bus, no doubt it had to do with that glowing eye of hers.
"Don't get punked snowflake." Delaren sneered, Wrain ignoring him entirely as icy blue eyes focused on the woman as his adversary. Melissa locking her arms behind her back as she leaned to both sides stretching her spine and doing rudimentary squats to loosen up her legs. Jonath eye-rolled when he heard a few randoms whistling at her and calling her 'so sexy' or something of the sort. She got off on people fueling her ego.
"Ready?" Dast said stepping out of the circle. Wrain exhaling frost from his throat as the air temperature dropped sharply around him, icing over the ground beneath his boots. The short cyan-blue haired cryomancer speaking in a calm, stalwart tone to Melissa as she continued to do stretches to loosen up.
"I'd prefer not hurting you, would you consider going down easy?" Wrain asked already knowing the answer. Melissa sneering at him as she bent over withdrawing a combat knife from within her black lace boot, another whistle from the crowd at her figure much to Jonath's annoyance. Twirling it through the fingers of her left hand, her flesh up to the elbow covered by the black arm warmer over it. A flare in the glow of her bright left eye, and Melissa responded in an alluring, relaxed voice of her own; her black dagger caught in a standard grip gleaming the glow off her eye over it in the dark of the moon, snuffed out again by clouds.
"Sorry love, if you think I'm anything short of your worst nightmare you're about to have a really bad time." She warned ominously, a chill running down Jonath's spine when he heard those words. Something about her felt darker, more ominous, unsettling now... A simple sigh with a shake of his head, Wrain exhaled more icy breath.
"So be it." He replied with gaze turning cold. "I'll make this quick."
"Same, don't want another time-out interrupting. Let's have a clear winner shall we? Come at me with everything you got, love." Melissa taunted tossing her dagger up into the air with a spiral and catching it by the hilt without looking. Jonath focusing more than ever...
"Begin!" Dast gave the green light!
Melissa versus Wrain!
The Challenger Chapter Thirty: Melissa versus Wrain! Shadow Stepping Ice Demon!
"Begin!" Dast swiped his left hand vertically down the air as the command were given. Jonath watching carefully the events to come, the rest of the group utterly silent. Time to see if Melissa and Wrain were as good as their attitudes implied they were.
"Ladies first, right?" Melissa cooed with a sly smirk, afterwards she gripped the spine of her dagger between her teeth, drawing confusion from the bystanders. Her cerulean blue eye pulsing with powerful, mystic energy brightening her Melissa coloration to its most vivid. Along with this glowing brilliance of her mystic eye, came her pupil beginning to swirl into itself, sucking in the sea of blue coloration within it like a black hole with spiral portrayal.
Wrain standing stalwart, noting the transformation of her left eye and bracing himself for what was to come as Melissa took a single, calming breath as her innate aura energy seemed to disappear. He made sure not to look at her eye.
"Go ahead." The Cryomancer replied curtly as the air temperature dropped around him further, the breeze that washed over the audience noticeably chillier than any before. Goosebumps forming across Jonath's pale flesh while Kayde shivered momentarily in discomfort while watching Melissa.
"Never seen an eye like that before..." Kayde muttered narrowing her own stormy grey orbs at Melissa. "It's like a black hole is sucking away an infinite wellspring of melanin out of her irides. Does her right eye look the same?" She tilted her head while brushing away spiky light-grey bangs that graced her brow. Did Melissa have her right eye covered for a reason or was it purely aesthetic?
Jonath listened to Kayde's rhetoric but never responded, simply focusing on that eerie glow emanating from Melissa' eye. The memory of Jeremy talking about how Jonath's own eyes glowed at times replaying in his psyche. Liariana had an eerie, supernatural glow to her bright red eyes too. Were they all connected, him, Liariana and Melissa? What evolved within them to have glowing, supernatural eyes that didn't manifest in other Nightborn? So far only the three of them ever had such mystic energy natural swirling within their optic nerves. It was intriguing.
Jonath focused back on the battle.
Melissa smirked, dagger still head firmly in her mouth as her eye upon blinking, discharged a streak of ghastly blue essence and she vanished from sight. Having left without a trace right in front of an entire audience with all their eyes focused directly on her and Wrain, even Dast looking a bit dumbstruck for a second! Jonath utterly confused, the glow in his own eyes flaring up with silver pale essence as he watched. He didn't seem aware he'd activated his powers yet.
Wrain hitched a breath in his throat, eyes wide with alertness and shock. Quickly spinning around with his arms (now frosted over with thick, dense ice patches) crossed over his face to guard a vicious kick to his head from an invisible force that soon materialized as Melissa' right leg; an audible 'crack' from the impact fracturing the ice covering his forearms, this girl hit hard. The woman smiling with teeth bared still clenching the dagger in her jaws as their eyes locked on one another. Wrain wasting no time throwing her leg off him and reaching out to grab her only for the young woman to melt away into wind again. The moon still hidden above by thick, white clouds; the facility lights illuminating the grounds alone.
"Is she using teleportation or space manipulation!? I can't figure out or sense how she's moving." A random in the group of bystanders voiced in confusion. Jonath trying to figure out what was going on as well in the silence of his mind, Wrain now on his toes looking here and there calmly with guard still raised. Delaren chuckling subtly as he crossed his arms and watched how quickly Wrain had suddenly been put on edge.
"Tch, of course a type like you would have powers very suited for assassinations and stealth." Wrain growled, his own icy aura expanding outwards around him further in a makeshift bounded field of stimuli for detection. If she stepped within it, hidden or not, he'd be able to sense her now and react every time she attacked. Dast watching with careful yellow hued eyes, paying attention to everything within the circle just like Jonath was now.
The bounded field reacted to an invisible force, Wrain pivoting half circled to lash out with his right foot a violent wave of ice energy that froze upon itself creating a jagged airborne wall of spikes across the barrier. The runes of the circle flaring up again and shredding apart any ending of the spikes that would have protruded beyond its radius with a distorted field, disappearing again as quick as it came. Sucking his teeth when he noticed he'd missed entirely, a pulse of cyan blue energy erupted from the sole of Wrain's left foot before the ground began to ice over beneath it and spray out in a circle of spikes to pierce the air all around. Realizing Melissa wasn't just going invisible, considering his ice didn't cut anything, Wrain growled and the icy stakes dematerialized back into aura.
"This is something more advanced than simple invisibility alright..." He muttered.
Melissa appeared again without warning at Wrain's backside, her dagger spit from her mouth and grabbed reversed by her right, a slashing motion downwards across his back, starting at the nape to draw blood. There was a scraping sound as black dagger harmlessly dug into dense ice that instantly thickened across
Wrain's blind spot across his clothes; when he stamped his foot and the ice covering his back erupted outwards into spears to stab Melissa she simply smirked, and vanished again with the darkness. Wrain flexing frost emanating fingers, he'd gotten closer to hitting her that time.
"She's like a ghost! A phantom!" Kayde said in begrudging awe. Dast narrowing his cat-like eyes, paying careful attention to how Melissa had just tried to slash the nape of Wrain's neck. Surely Melissa wasn't trying to kill the man was she? He decided not to intervene, Wrain seemed capable of handling her this long.
Meanwhile Jonath's eyes began to shift in their shape again the longer he focused on trying to decipher how Melissa was vanishing and appearing as she did. Slowly, his pupils would arc into crescent-shaped aesthetics and invert from black to glowing silver across a pale canvas of Melissaes. Kayde catching the sudden if barely noticeable luminescence from his eyes as she turned to look at him in quiet surprise momentarily, although the amnesic didn't notice her. He was too focused on the fight and what he suddenly were noticing about it.
"What... is that?" Jonath asked himself as pale eyes narrowed analytically. He suddenly were able to see a vibrant icy blue dome-shaped 'haze' of color surrounding Wrain. He could see his bounded field of energy despite it being barely noticeable moments before. In fact, everything looked different. His entire sight grey-scaled with aura energies highlighted bright colors and standing out. He could see Wrain's aura as the man several more times effectively dodged sudden attacks by Melissa and tried to counter only for her to vanish again. He could also see the 'shades' of Melissa figure moving around in the grey-scale as she moved stalking about Wrain like a predator in hiding. These shades black, utter feminine shadows that mimicked the last step Melissa herself had taken before the next.
Melissa wasn't teleporting, she was moving through an unseen veil from the looks of it. Jonath recalled reading something about this back at the library after that incident with the The Challenger. A mirror veil as close as it was far from the dimension they all inhabited now. His eyes widening, amazed by the sheer discovery that came upon his mind.
Melissa was moving through Limbo, this girl had visual powers that literally gave her the capacity to traverse between the physical world and the Limbo realm. She can't be detected until she moves in to attack, where she has to shift back into the physical world to do so. That was how Wrain were managing to combat her. Jonath continuing to watch Melissa repeatedly toy with Wrain by attacking him and vanishing as quick as she came, Wrain getting more and more irritable by the second as he staved off every attempt to draw blood. While fundamentally being able to simply step between the two realms was viewed as an extremely powerful ability, actually using it was a different beast. Melissa didn't seem capable of doing anything too wild so far, she was still learning. Wrain didn't seem like he'd mastered controlling his own aura either, the fluctuations in the field around him a clear indication.
A sharp pain shocked Jonath out of his discovery and his eyes shut tightly, grunting as his gloved right hand lurched upwards to clutch his face. Kayde turning to look at him again in slight surprise and twisted her body to where she were peering upwards at him with concern in her features.
"Hey, are you okay?" She asked in a motherly voice, Jonath blinking away the pain as he continued to hear Melissa now aggressively assaulting Wrain. The amnesic turning to meet Kayde's gentle gaze with his now normal stare again and nodding away any concern.
"Yeah, I'm fine, just a headache." He assured blinking again. Kayde tilting her head curiously at him with a soft stare, finger raising to point at his face. Her next words making Jonath freeze up in his tracks...
"Your left eye is bleeding." She whispered trying to keep the both of them from drawing attention. Jonath quickly tracing a finger under his eye and along his left cheek to wipe away the blood, a fine red now staining his thumb. Damn it, why did that always happen? Why can't he willingly turn on and off whatever his eyes did every time his vision changed? It was frustrating...
"Thanks for not freaking out and drawing attention, Kayda." Jonath said quiet and sincere, eyes showing hesitation and he corrected himself. "I mean um, it's Kayda right, not Kayde?" He asked. Kayde nodding at his gratitude and chuckling at his follow-up question as she turned back to the fight.
"It's Kayda, but people call me Kayde and I sometimes even write my name as Kayde." She turned back to Jonath with another warm, closed eyed smile and a giggle. "Either is fine by me. We should probably pay attention to the fight though." She opened her eyes again and turned to watch, Jonath nodding and doing the same.
Melissa, after failing her last attack on Wrain via being repelled by an upwards rush of ice spears from the ground at her, hopping backwards gaining distance as the two squared off. The entire battle had been a stalemate with Wrain playing the watch and wait approach and Melissa trying to ambush him. The two seemed completely even, Delaren snorting like a bull in annoyance.
"You guys have one minute left." Dast said arms crossed and nonchalant. The ice that had protected Wrain's body sloughing off him and shattering as it hit the ground, frost leaving his throat.
"Guess we're going to stalemate much to your dismay. Maybe you should try a different approach, assassin." Wrain scoffed exasperate as hands went back into his pockets. Melissa shrugging at him as she twirled her dagger between her fingers. The full moon above peeking out beyond the clouds finally and washing the landscape over in its ominous light.
"I have to admit, you got some on point reaction times and perception despite not having eyes like mine or pretty boys over there." Melissa snickered thumbing with her free hand over to Jonath. The amnesic glaring at her in irritation as everyone briefly glanced at him, even Wrain. Why would she go and put him on the spot like that!?
Forty seconds left...
"Just because you have enchanted eyes that can let you pull off vanishing acts doesn't mean you can beat my ice. Your powers can't stack up to frontal assaults. Once you're figured out it's only a matter of time before you get countered. You stopped attacking because with every failure I got incrementally closer to hitting you." Wrain snorted unimpressed with Melissa so far. The girl feigning offense momentarily before she tossed her dagger in the air with a spiral once again, higher than normal as spoke as it fell back down.
Thirty seconds left...
"True, your responses grew sharper with every failure I'll give you that love. I took you for granted. However who said anything about me trying to take you down with that?" Melissa furrowed a brow as she caught the dagger from behind her by the hilt without even looking. "I don't ever recall telling you anything of the sort?" She sneered. The audience murmuring to themselves, Wrain raising a questioning brow of his own as Melissa lips curved into a smirk. The vibe around her shifting.
Twenty seconds left...
"I also noticed you've deliberately avoided looking into my eyes the entire time we've talked so I couldn't snag you in whatever my eyes can do right? Funny how you assume that just not looking into my eyes can save you. You're assuming my eyes need eye contact to be effective, you're right in some regards." The young woman shrugged again, this time much more vaguely. Wrain's icy blue gaze now furrowing at her. Kelgard panning his deep red hues over to the woman suddenly after daydreaming most of the fight. Melissa tossing the dagger up again casually with another spiraling ascent and descent.
Ten seconds left... Melissa caught the dagger as her eye glowed brightly. Wrain and everyone else showing various signs of incoming surprise either subtle or profound at what came next!
"Truth be told I failed all my earlier attacks to lull you into a false sense of security for what's about to happen next. Think fast!"
Five seconds left...
Melissa slung the dagger at Wrain like a dart directly for his face. Wrain batting away the blade with the back of his now ice-covered left hand before preparing to blast ice towards Melissa only to see she had vanished to the awe and shock of the bystanders. Melissa
appearing directly behind Wrain, hand moving to attack but his quick reactions allowed him to blast ice from his back in the form of spikes to stop her. The icy staves piercing thin air, an illusionary image of the woman who faded instantly to his shock. Wait, did he move in anticipation too fast and fall right into her trap!?
Wrain gasped abruptly when a knee slammed into his exposed abdomen at the solar plexus, saliva forced from his mouth as Melissa struck a decisive blow with such refined accuracy and momentum, it knocked Wrain clear on his back. The Cryomancer hitting the ground with a loud thud, gasping for air as he held his chest in agony. Loud exclaims from the bystanders as Dast called time and the match ended with Melissa swiping her dagger off the ground with a victorious, cocky smirk. Tossing the blade up in her grasp repeatedly in a spiral as she won applause from the Nightborn watching her.
"I call that little move of mine Illusion Dance. Plays right on the bounded field you made to combat me." She stuck her tongue out as she waved him off and walked back to the audience beside Kayde and Jonath. Delaren laughing hysterically at how Wrain just got embarrassed by trickery. Dast stepping back in the ring, Wrain getting up with severe frustration in his features as he grit his teeth and dragging himself back into the group embarrassed and frustrated. Jonath looking at the dark-haired woman in reserved awe...
