[center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/62/8e/f6/628ef680a5cfa8a2971a2e88b40483fa.jpg[/img][hr][h2][color=crimson]The Showdown[/color][/h2][hr][hr][/center]

It began with a drumline, and then flags, trumpets blaring, and tulip petals falling from the sky. First marched the champions of Tosatsu, and then the champions of the Darhannics, the Angics, the Femrigr, and the Chosen Creed. Finally came the Quentic Greats. Each group was led by its current champion: those who made up the Elite Six. They filed in and raised their weapons. The arena thundered with applause, cheers, and the stomping of feet. 

It continued like this for a little bit longer, a few of the newest arrivals not quite sure what to make of it until they noticed the others looking up the sky with an anticipatory reverence. Suddenly, two towering beams of pure light leapt down from above and, from them appeared two colossal six-winged angels. 

Valenand, archangel of Vigor, and Forticand, archangel of Bravery, alighted on a platform in the stands. They glanced over at each other, smiled and nodded. The path of champions parted and the combatants entered to thunderous cheers and salutes: two friends who'd trained for this, who shared both a goal and a burning desire to win, but only one could...

[center][h1][color=000000]"L[/color][color=FFFFFF]E[/color][color=000000]T[/color]  [color=FFFFFF]T[/color][color=000000]H[/color][color=FFFFFF]E[/color]  [color=000000]F[/color][color=FFFFFF]I[/color][color=000000]N[/color][color=FFFFFF]A[/color][color=000000]L[/color]  [color=FFFFFF]B[/color][color=000000]E[/color][color=FFFFFF]G[/color][color=000000]I[/color][color=FFFFFF]N[/color][color=000000]![/color][color=FFFFFF]!"[/color][/h1][/center]

Desmond knew this would come, and he was filled with both excitement and wariness. He made his way to the arena as there he would see Edyta once more. He smiled as lightly leaned on a spear and said, [color=gold]"Seems we've finally made it"[/color].

He kicked the bottom of the spear and flared it for a moment before taking it into both of his hands, [color=gold]"Let's dance!"[/color]

Edyta smiled sidelong at Desmond. The crowds had liked her for her clever ruthlessness and panache just as they'd admired him for his innovation and doggedness. The cheering was about evenly split. [color=6ecff6]"Ballroom, ballet, or square?"[/color] She grinned, extracting two wicked-looking sickles - Zamrazenie and Palenie - from her robes and her face became serious. [color=6ecff6]"Eshiran empower you, Desmond."[/color] She marched towards the platform where the two archangels watched, surrounded by pentangels, and bowed deeply before them. Taking her cue, Desmond did the same. For a moment, as both bent low, their eyes met. Then, Edyta straightened. 

Then, Edyta disappeared.

Desmond stretched as he began to walk forward. He looked around as he thought about the different areas that she would come. He spun his weapon around as he began strike the ground with his spear tip.

The strikes kicked up the dirt and created dust in the air. Desmond magnetized the dust to give himself a buffer for his sensing when Edyta does try to appear.

[color=gold]"Already trying to end this?"[/color], Desmond called out to the wind.

[color=f26522]"I'm here, Desmond,"[/color] came her voice from somewhere to the north-northeast. There was a fantastic wave of heat and force and the dust crystallized into swirling shards of glass. [color=f26522]"I'm not always in greyspace."[/color]

Desmond chuckled, [color=gold]"Oh~! spooky~!"[/color]

Desmond began to leap back, taking a few moments as he needed to leave the dusty area he created before it was turned into glass as well.

A smile came to his face as he dug his hand into his bag. Out it came with a glove on it and holding a dagger. He reeled back as he launched the dagger at Laska with Kinetic and Magnetic energy.

Edyta called upon her maelstrom to intercept the dagger, not yet quite willing to give away her full arsenal of tricks. At the end of the day, if it came down to a contest of magical strength, it worked to her benefit. If she could get Desmond into a tug-of-war instead of playing into his cunning, she could win.

As the dagger neared Laska's maelstrom of energy, it was melted within moments. Desmond chuckled to himself as he realized he needed to get more cleaver. He couldn't rely soley on just tricks as she was going to use her absurd power against him.

She already knew a good portion of what he could do. Tricks alone would not be enough. He needed to get either more cleaver or get more power.

So why not pull a trick out of the bag?

Desmond reached into his bag and pulled out a pistol much different that they would know from their time.

As he began to fire multiple rounds each one magnetically charged to fly in different ways to try and find an opening.

Edyta tried to move the maelstrom into the bullets' path, but there were too many for it to cover all of them. Instead, she used her skills as a binder and as a kineticist. She conjured a gas that she called 'deadening air' but that people of later times might know as sulfur hexaflouride. It was thick and would slow the bullets. It was thick and easy to manipulate with her kinetic prowess. It was thick and utterly inert to chemical reactions. It was thick and absolutely deadened magnetism. She grinned wickedly.

Desmond laughed as he continued to fire, [color=gold]"Love to see the creativity!"[/color]

In the midst of the firing he began to jog and try to circle around. As before he finished firing he flicked his hand. Out from his bag came 3 cleavers he would send around the other side trying to pincer Edyta.

Edyta's deadening air continued to do its work but, instead of dodging Desmond's attack, she darted forward, right at him, as quickly as she could, and leaped. A massive wave of kinetic force spread out from her in a ring shape, aiming to blast the incoming projectiles off-course and hammer Desmond in advance of her arrival in melee range or force him to focus all of his meager capacity on drawing it away.

Desmond smiled, [color=gold]"Real [i]cleaver[/i]!"[/color]

Desmond had to not allow her take an advantage. He dropped his gun to prepare for Laska to come into melee range.

 He allowed the cleavers to be thrown around as he drew in the kinetic energy Laska produced and sent it back out to try and put up a meager defense.

It was enough not to be thrown on his ass or flattened, yet he still felt the impact like a cudgel to the stomach.

Desmond planted his feet as he began to chemically dope himself and meet Laska in melee with his spear, [color=gold]"Now we're talking!"[/color]

She'd added small hooks to her sickles to catch his spear. Otherwise, she relied on her nimbleness to dodge instead of blocking, and her ability to overwhelm his magic with her own to prevent tricks. She moved to catch his spear with one sickle, twist, and keep in motion, either cracking it, wrenching it away, or forcing him to retreat, while aggressively zeroing in with the other. All the while, she tried backing him towards one of the arena walls, a whirling dervish of fire and ice, threatening his weapon with one of hers and his body with the other.

As the sickles came down onto Desmond's weapon and then up it, he realized that she was either going to disarm him or kill him. 

Neither option was a good one, yet he needed to make a choice. And a weapon is just a weapon. A tool is just a tool.

Desmond let his weapon go as he lunged and dipped back to dodge the sickle. As his hand slid across the shaft of his spear, he coated it in an invisible fire before he let it fully go.

He moved to put his back against the wall as he put up both his hands, beginning to to enhance them with kinetic magic to prepare to deflect.

[color=gold]"Man, do I love a woman who can kick my ass"[/color].

Her sickle slid down the spear's shaft, but Edyta did not grin. She did not lose focus. She slashed at Desmond, expecting him to push back, but then she felt it - a sudden heat - and realized what he'd done: the same trick from his earlier match. If the deadening air she'd filled the arena with made it burn less, it still burned. 

She had been trained to deal with pain, however. The skin reddened and bubbled and cried out in silent pain, but she grit her teeth and, without stopping, plowed right through it, drawing the coldfire away and hammering Desmond with a slash that he could...

not

quite

stop.

The sickle missed his head. Desmond was too quick to get caught like that and he managed to partially deflect it, but it sunk deep into his shoulder and Edyta's pupils dilated instinctually at the sight of blood. She flung the spear free and spun on the spot, hoping to rip the sickle out for maximum damage, fling him, and plough her other one in. [color=f26522]"Man, do I love a man whose ass I can kick."[/color]

Desmond gritted his teeth as he was slashed deeply in the shoulder by one of her sickles and was just barely able to defend himself from the other. As the moment when Laska tried to rip it out and fling him, Desmond went with it. He used his own physical abilities plus a further kinetic boost to launch himself and flip himself over Edyta.

His face winced for a moment before he was upside down and smiling at Edyta, [color=gold]"Glad we're a good match then"[/color].

Desmond pulled his hand up as in that moment 5 thin wires of crimson and gold light ignited. Leading from his hand swinging around from where he was and past somewhat around Edyta. 

He pulled on the heated and electrified wires to try and wrap them around her further as an attempt to slice her.

The deadening air continued to blunt Desmond's attacks, but it didn't stop them. He had the same pain tolerance that she did and had turned desperate defense into offense *so* quickly. One of the wires scored her across the shoulder, leaving a bloody slash, and her muscles seized up for a moment, but she boosted herself free with kinetic magic, scrambling away just before they could wrap around her. She needed something new. She needed to put him away without using the ability that nobody knew she possessed, despite what Manfred might've said at the start.

She reached with her magics for the blood bubbling out of Desmond's shoulder and started to pull it from his body and his manas' grasp. She pulled, now, with [i]*everything*[/i] that she had. She pulled, and began to cast her most powerful spell.

Desmond's face began to wince and his eyes bulged as he could feel the blood be pulled from him.

He couldn't even conceive the thought of him winning a contest of strength of manas between himself and Laska.

He couldn't win like this. Not without doing something *crazy*.

This had to be all or nothing. 

In this moment of pain and desperation, Desmond uses her dulled awareness and sense of pain to began to use chemical magic to begin to dull her thoughts further, to [i]skew[/i] what she sees.

When Desmond landed, he came down sliding as he used his magic to try and fight the pull of blood Laska was doing, he couldn't let himself be blood drawn.

[hider=What he did]In the midst of his fall, Desmond is using chemical magic and primordial magic: {Skew Subjective} to make Laska not be aware of when Desmond did his pull of the wires and when he landed, the cleavers that were attached at the ends were coming her way[/hider]

One moment, she was on the precipice of victory. The next, a cleaver was slicing through her trailing hair as she leapt into greyspace. Only a preternatural danger sense honed over years of combat and training had warned her. It was purely instinctual. She hadn't thought. 

[color=6ecff6][i]*Desmond, you magnificent bastard.*[/i][/color] He always had irons in the fire. He did and she loved it, but... she'd made a critical error. The cat was out of the bag, now. She was a greyborn. She'd outed herself, and there was no un-revealing her trump card. Even if she won this match, she'd go into her matched against the Elite Six with no real bullets left in her proverbial gun, and combatants that experienced definitely [i]*would*[/i] have fought a greyborn before. 

Desmond hadn't revealed his trump card yet. What they'd discussed during their training, what they'd worked out, what they'd agreed on: he still had it. She'd blown it. She'd blown it when she was the stronger one! She'd blown it when she had the better chance. They needed to win to get to that hell and get Tommy back from it. She'd move mountains if she needed to.

Edyta Laska smiled. [color=6ecff6][i]*And that's it, really: you're smarter than me.*[/i][/color] She didn't have much energy to work with, so she waited. She waited just long enough that Desmond might momentarily let his guard down - that he might try to set something bigger up. Then, she'd leap out and catch him mid-cast and one of them would win or one would lose. She served the God of Death, after all, and how [i]*glorious*[/i] it would be to experience that for herself without truly dying!

[color=6ecff6][i]*Three*[/i][/color]

[color=FFFFFF][i]*Two*[/i][/color]

[color=f26522][i]*One.*[/i][/color]

Into the breach!

Desmond laughed and smiled as he said, [color=gold]"Looks like it's my win"[/color].

Desmond flared his hand as the cleavers were let loose and were sent flying in different directions. He chuckled to himself as he waltzed his way over to the center of the arena, binding up his shoulder wound as he prepared for the finale. 

He began to waltz and stamp, kicking up dust as he magnetized it. As he moved he placed his hand into his bag as he pulled out another glove wire and put it on. He began to hum to himself as he raised his hands into the air and launched the wires high. They shimmered and shined as they streamed up and fell down gently. He twirled and spun around as he hummed. Twining and binding the wires together, forming a net around himself, like flowers in across a meadow.

Then he dropped the gloves as he pulled out 4 daggers and 2 more gloves. He threw the daggers high as he let them float there with his magic. As once more he produced the wires, twining and whirling around and other wires already set to bind the net and then finished by binding them with the daggers.

And then, he bowed.

Edyta and Desmond had trained together and, just in case they were ever to meet, she'd built up an expectation in him: that she'd do the typical greyborn thing and show up right behind him to stab him in the kidneys. 

Desmond bowed and his net - deadly and intricate and exhausting to have constructed - drew inward. Edyta appeared just a split second after it cleared where she now stood: firmly outside of it. Instead of a melee attack, she did something simple: an arcane lance with all of the power she could draw on short notice. Desmond, forced to adjust his trap lest it close on [i]*him*[/i], did not have enough mobility or energy to stop it and the deadly beam punched clean through his abdomen. 

His eyes widened. [i]*Her*[/i] eyes widened. [color=6ecff6][i]I've killed Desmond,[/i][/color] she realized, and she didn't know how to feel about it. They stood there and stared at each other for an endless moment, and it occurred to her that she should probably finish him off because that wound was a slow and painful way to die. 

Then, he smirked. He just smirked at her. For a moment, Edyta thought she felt unfathomable pain. The world disappeared.

Desmond leaned his head back as once more he laughed. He looked to Edyta as he said, [color=gold]"Sorry about that, I had to make sure you didn't feel any pain from the wires"[/color].

As there was one thin set of wire that came. Heated and electrified it was meant to cut through the center of the net after a few moments, making sure Edyta didn't have to suffer within it. However, now it had saved Desmond by cutting Laska before she could finish him.

As he tried to laugh once more he felt a pain streak through him as he looked around. 

And realized, that was it. He now needed to face off against the Elite 6. Strangely, he was not nervous one bit.