The Colosseum's air was a living thing—hot, gritty, charged with breath and thunder. Dust hung in pale shafts of sun; banners snapped like whips. The crowd wouldn't sit. They surged and shouted as two figures squared off again in the center of chipped stone and scorched sand: Tempest, spear held at a low prowling angle, and Circe, hair wild now, eyes bright as cut glass, fingers dripping with light.
Circe's wrist turned—a ballet cue—and a corona of ice shards whirled into being around her like a jeweled crown. At the same breath, she traced a sigil with the other hand; fire licked across her nails, heat shimmering. She clapped, and the ring of ice fired outward in a staggered wheel while tongues of flame chased the gaps.
Tempest planted, exhaled once, and made the spear sing.
She spun it at her hips, then her shoulders, then above her head—three planes, a cyclone of polished wood and iron. Flame splashed and parted, heat skimming off in sheets that made the nearest spectators flinch.
She lunged.
Circe had Reflect waiting—thin as blown glass. Tempest's spear struck sparks off the dome; the rebound slammed through her bones. She rolled with it, letting the bounce sling her past Circe's flank. The spear reversed in her hands; the butt cracked at Circe's knee. The enchantress swore, spun, hair whipping, and thrust her palm into Tempest's ribs—
A Thundaga spell detonated point-blank.
The blast carried sound more than light, a bone-deep clap. Tempest staggered, boots sliding; the spear's shaft hummed as if it had been struck by a bell. She let herself slide three steps, then drove the tip into the sand to bleed the jolt. The earth drank the charge with a hiss.
The stands screamed. Zack's whoop cut through. Skuld's hands were knotted at her chest. Helga observed the fight with great interest. Helios watched with an assumed grin while Kurai's mouth curved, pleased to see such brutality.
Circe pressed, delight widening her eyes when Tempest's tempo stuttered. She sketched a circle in the air and crushed it in her fist. Gray sigils peeled off her knuckles and unfurled around Tempest like a net.
Slow.
Weight filled Tempest's limbs. The world dragged its feet. She felt her heartbeat in the joints of her fingers.
The spear didn't care. The spear moved when she told it to.
Tempest shortened her grip and cut her gait to half-beats—small steps, small angles. Circe's follow-up volley of ice came as knives; Tempest answered with quarter-turns, turning each thrust aside with the last inch of the iron shod tip. She lost the big moves; she took the small. When Circe surged in to gloat, Tempest used the tiny distance she'd purchased: a low pivot, shin to shin, and the spear's butt bounced off Circe's ankle bone with a crack that stole breath.
Circe hissed, ego flaring hot. "Annoying gnat—"
"Come swat me then," Tempest said, teeth bared, and drove forward.
They traded inches. Circe wove flame into long ribbons intended to herd; Tempest ducked and cut them at the hilt with quick, disrespectful jabs. A glancing lash burned a stripe across her forearm; the scent of singed leather and skin drifted. She changed hands without thinking.
Circe parried with Reflect again—smaller this time, plates instead of domes, thrown into the path of thrusts with airy flicks. The spear rang off the first, skimmed the second, shattered the third like brittle sugar—just in time for a wind-slap to catch Tempest in the ribs and shove her three paces sideways.
Tempest stabbed the spear into the dirt to hold her footing. The shaft creaked. A hairline crack deepened near the base—an old wound widening. She felt it in her palms.
"Yield," Circe purred, charming and vicious. She spread her hands. Fire gathered in the left; ice glittered in the right; wind and thunder braided around her arms in bright veils. "Break for me."
The crowd sucked in a breath as the four elements met.
Tempest didn't wait to be painted. She sprinted.
The first blast was a fork of yellow lightning. She jammed the spear iron-first into the earth and let the charge take the fastest path downward. The second was a fan of slicing wind; she tilted the shaft and let the gale peel around it, body tucked behind like a soldier behind a pavise. The third and fourth—ice and fire—she split with a hip-turn and a scything sweep. Heat flashed her skin into prickles; cold bit her bicep. She drove through the seam, spear leveled, and thrust for Circe's ribs.
Circe pirouetted, laughter bright and thin. The point grazed crimson silk; skin bloomed pale beneath and then flushed as blood sprang. Circe's eyes went wide—not with pain, but offense. "My robe."
Tempest grinned, feral. "You'll live."
Circe's hand snapped up, and Aero bloomed. It caught Tempest under the sternum and threw her backward into a roll that left furrows. She came up spitting sand, braid torn half free, arms a map of cuts.
Circe's poise frayed. She gathered Reflect into a blossom around her, petals overlapping. Tempest slashed, and the petals flared, each repelling force back into her wrists. Her fingers numbed; her knuckles bled through their wraps. She changed her approach—no big chops, just taps. She rapped the same petal three, four, five times, watching the glow thin, then burst, then leave a gap the size of a coin.
Circe sealed it—of course she did—wind knitting light. Tempest's spear skated off the patch and tapped Circe on the temple anyway. Not enough to hurt. Enough to insult. The crowd loved it.
"Little savage," Circe breathed, cheeks flushed now, hair loosening from its gold band.
"Keep talking," Tempest said. It kept her from thinking about the slow, about the crack in the wood, about the way her lungs burned as if she'd breathed fire.
Circe planted her feet and drew power up from the sand like water from a spring. The arena floor answered—granules lifted, spun, became a grinding halo around her. She snapped her fingers and thunder threaded the grit; it became a cutting wheel of glass, a storm of sparks.
Tempest ran at it.
She angled the spear diagonally and stepped into the storm shoulder-first, weapon a slanted roof over her skull. Sand flayed her braced forearm, cut her cheek anew, scored the lacquer from the shaft—but the roof held. She slid up under Circe's elbows and yanked. The sorceress slipped, delicate sandals skidding on her own grinding wind. Tempest scythed her ankles.
Circe fell—no grace, just flesh on stone. She slapped a hand to the ground as she hit, and Reflect detonated like a thrown plate, a hard concussive pop that knocked Tempest off her feet and set the world ringing.
They both rose wrong.
Tempest's left leg trembled. Circe's right arm hung straighter than it should, shoulder stiff. Blood-wet Circe's lip. Tempest's grip left sweat prints on the wood. For a heartbeat, they only stared, swaying, the crowd's roar blurring into a long ocean.
Then they laughed. Not friendly. Not cruel. Warrior and witch, two animals surprised to find the other still there.
"Again," Tempest said.
"Ugh," Circe sighed, rolling her eyes, and flung her hand out.
Ice lances sprang from nothing. Tempest batted the first two, split the third, and vaulted the fourth. She landed inside Circe's reach and drove the butt of her spear into her diaphragm. Wind left the enchantress with a shocked gasp. Tempest raised the spear, intending to bring the iron down—
—and saw the flicker.
Circe's left hand, lazy as a cat's paw, had framed a tiny ball of Aero no bigger than a dinner plate right at Tempest's ribs. The spear came down; the plate popped; the force ricocheted straight back into Tempest's sternum. Pain bloomed bright. She went to one knee, breath a locked door.
Lightning cracked for her skull. Reflexively, she threw the spear up, and the iron ate the bolt with a hungry hum.
They reset. Again.
Tempest's spear was a fence now, jagged near the base where the crack had crawled, smooth near the head where sweat and blood had polished it. Her arms shook. Circe's spells had lost that effortless silk; she still painted, but the brush dragged.
"Yield!" a pocket of the crowd screamed at Circe.
"Finish it!" another pocket screamed at Tempest.
Phil's voice tried to rise over both and failed, devolving into ecstatic commentary about technique and stubbornness and how he'd "never seen two fighters in the Beginner Cup trade this many adjustments this fast."
Circe tried the Slow spell again, almost petulant. Tempest felt it and cursed it. She stopped sprinting and started stalking. Her feints shortened; her guard rose; her jabs turned to a metronome. Circe hated it. Every time she moved to the side to find a pretty angle, Tempest's point was there, unglamorous, tapping wrist, touching thigh, nicking hip.
"Stop that," Circe snapped, batting the spear away with a fan of wind.
"Make me," Tempest said.
The next exchange could have ended either way. Circe wrapped flame around a lunging Thundaga and sent it low for Tempest's legs. Tempest vaulted, but the lightning grazed her boot and set the sole on fire. She landed hard, stamping, smoke curling from leather. Circe rushed in to capitalize, Reflect up, wind lashing—
—and Tempest threw her spear like a javelin.
Not at Circe. Past her, at the arena floor beyond. The point bit stone and stuck. Distracted, the Slow spell wore off, and Tempest lunged at Circe, ready to attack.
Circe stepped over it easily.
That was the trap. Tempest, already moving. She ripped the spear free on the way by and caught Circe across the back with the butt-end. Circe pitched forward and saved herself with a palm-on-stone flare of Reflect that rattled Tempest's teeth when she chased in.
They separated, both bent, both glaring with blood on their teeth now.
Enough, Circe thought, and knew Tempest could see it in her eyes.
The arena changed tone; a hush threaded the roar as the fighters closed for what looked like The One. Circe lifted both hands, palms together, drew them apart. Fire gathered between like molten silk. Tempest lifted the spear in a high guard, point forward, left hand on splintered wood, right hand slick with her own blood.
They moved.
The fire became a blade wrapped in heat; the spear became a line. Heat-washed; iron bit. Circe's hair sizzled; Tempest's forearm blistered. Circe's Reflect flickered up in a strobe of defense—pop, pop, pop—each a fraction too late, each taking the worst of a thrust and sending a ghost of it back. The last pop left them almost chest to chest: Tempest with the spear tip nestled under Circe's jaw, not piercing, but there; Circe with a pulsing bead of lightning pressed under Tempest's ribs, humming, eager.
Everything stopped.
The crowd forgot how to breathe. A feather would have sounded like thunder.
Sweat streaked Circe's cheek; blood dripped from Tempest's elbow. Their chests sawed. Their eyes held.
Tempest didn't blink.
Circe did—slowly. She looked down at the bead of lightning she'd conjured. She looked at the spear. She looked back up and made a face like someone confronted with a chipped nail at the end of a long party.
"Ugh," she said again, louder this time. She let the lightning dissipate, let her wrists fall, and raised one hand in a lazy arc. "I yield."
The stadium sounded like a net. Gasps. Boos. Cheers. Phil half-shouted, half-laughed, "You heard her! Circe surrenders! By the gods, Tempest takes the Beginner's Cup!"
Tempest held the pin for one heartbeat more—safety, not spite—then eased the spear away and took two steps back on legs that wanted to buckle. Her lungs dragged air that tasted of smoke and bronze. She stared, incredulous. "…You surrendered because—?"
"Because this was becoming unspeakably tedious," Circe said, regaining her breath and her haughtiness in the same exhale. She tugged at her torn robe, smoothing a slash that wouldn't smooth. "You don't break. I don't break. You're competent and infuriating. I refuse to ruin my complexion to prove a point to an Amazon. Besides, I broke a nail and need it healed as soon as possible."
Despite herself, Tempest barked a laugh. "I'll take 'competent.'"
"Don't let it go to your head," Circe said, but the curl at her mouth held something like respect. She dipped in a mocking curtsey to the crowd, soaking the mix of adoration and outrage like wine. "Another day, darling. Preferably in the shade. Alas, I at least managed to find a worthwhile toy in all this mess."
She sashayed away, wounded dignity and all.
The gong boomed the official note. The stands blew apart in noise—Zack leaping onto a bench, Helga clapping with a wince but eyes bright, Skuld beaming, Sephiroth unreadable as marble. Helios watched Tempest's shaking arms, the cracked spear, the way she refused to lean on it as she raised it overhead.
"You're the winner—Tempest!" Phil bellowed, nearly swallowing the megaphone in his excitement. "By surrender—by sheer stubborn, surgical, spear-spinning excellence—Tempest is your Beginner's Cup Champion!"
Tempest lowered the spear and let herself breathe. For a few beats, it was about a fight that everyone asked for and got. She looked to the waiting archway. Helga stood there, patched and proud. Circe walked past her and winked before disappearing into the shadows, leaving behind a lingering perfume.