For a moment, I float there at the apex of the chamber, trying to understand exactly what it is that the woman below said. The crowd loses its mind at her words. This man is the previous champion? Luckily for me, Galla is quick to give further context.

  “Since losing his position to the Doomlance, our poor Mace has not been in the best of form. Does today bode differently, ladies and gentlemen? Can the Rider of Storms conquer his inner demons and put an end to this challenger's dream of conquering the arena?”

  Judging by the sound the audience makes and the way they shake the chamber, they certainly hope so.

  So, this man was the previous champion of the arena, and I just happened to draw him on a day he was sober, which sounds like my luck.

  As I hover at the top of the arena, looking down and trying to catch up with the last few seconds, the lanky elf watches me from below. Other than smirking up at me and revealing that he is a gifted actor, he does nothing else.

  My hand falls to my mindsection where it felt like the man nearly put his fist through my body. He hit me hard enough to launch me nearly sixty feet into the air so that I hit the top of the arena. No, that wasn't right. Hitting me that hard would have broken something, even given my increased durability.

  I only caught a glimpse of it in the second he materialized from lightning, but wind had been whipping about him. The air had propelled me far more than the strength of the blow did.

  A smile crosses my features, and I mirror the man's self-assuredness as I gaze down at him. Of course, a priest of Glis'Merinda would be endowed with the strength of storms. I’ve never fought a priest before. Hells, I only spotted a few on rare occasions in Danfalla when they came to see to the refugees choking the city streets, and then again after the battle. My understanding of their powers is rudimentary at best. What better way to learn than with hands-on experience?

  For the first time since I stepped foot into this arena, I feel the need to spread out my soul presence. A wave of red and gold roils away from my skin, spreading over the inner chamber of the arena in a tide that paints the world red. I am vaguely aware that the multiple barriers separating the inner chamber from the audience is able to stop my presence from seeping through.

  The effect is reminiscent of how some of the architecture of the gang who robbed me worked, the way that some of their walls were capable of entirely rebuffing my aura. it would be more accurate to say they are exactly the same. I focus on the fight. There will be time to contemplate that later.

  I see the moment that the weight of my magic settles on Mace. His legs buckle for a moment before he gains control of himself. Such a simple thing, an aura that increases the weight of anything inside it. Like many of my abilities, I didn't appreciate just how powerful it was when I first obtained it. At this distance, I can double the weight of anything inside the presence of my soul, not bad for something so far away. The strength of suppression rapidly increases the closer something is to me. At the boundaries of my presence, the increase in weight is something like fifty percent. When close enough to touch, I can make something weigh easily ten times as much.

  Six orbs of black sand revolve into being around me and begin to light with steely dragonfire as I look down at my opponent. For a minute, I consider using true, burning dragonfire, but it would feel awful to expect too much out of this man only to find him lacking.

  “Our challenger appears to be taking the former champion more seriously than her previous opponents!” Galla calls from inside her bubble of force down below. “Perhaps she is worried that her boast will go unfulfilled."

  Rather than reply, I demonstrate. Just as Mace begins to open his mouth to start some kind of dialogue, all six orbs begin to rain destruction down. Bolts of dragonfire arc down in a fiery fullisade. Mace's eyes grow wide for a moment as the projectiles scream down through the air, a second volley following before the first can even cross half the distance. The elf throws his hand out, and the air around him ripples.

  I couldn't catch what exactly happened before when my first blasts of dragonfire failed to hit their target, but now that he is inside my aura, I sense it. Mace comes alive with magic, and a whipping shield of wind surrounds him in a protective sphere of rotating force. Even with the incredible speed of my dragonfire bolts, even with the steel-affix giving the balls of explosive magic more weight than any of my other affixes, they are still mostly insubstantial. The most powerful of the blasts barely manages to pierce a few inches into the swirling wind before being thrown off course. The twelve blasts of concussive force elicit a high-pitched whistle as they are swept away by the wind, but with my high angle of attack, they still manage to do their job.

  Even directed off-target, the bolts of dragonfire still detonate against the ground around Mace's feet. The kinetic force imparted shakes the arena floor enough to unsettle the man and disturb his footing. It is only at the last second, as I pour mana into the fist-sized ball of black sand I sent behind one of the blasts of dragonfire, that he sees the true attack. What I call black sand is really gold bound to a magical particle that is under my full control, and given that it is gold, it is far too heavy to be blown away by some goddesses’ petty wind, especially when I am amplifying how heavy it is with my soul presence. Mace stares wide-eyed as the orb of black sand burning with dragonfire taps against his chest.

  In the moment of detonation, I see something inside the wind. The orb of air shatters as Mace is sent rocketing away as if a giant had backhanded him. I track him as he is thrown across the arena to roll to a stop on the far side, but my attention is still on the collapse of his barrier. There had been something there, some destructive interplay between the steel of my mana and the wind inside his. The taste of it, a bitter citrus, sticks to the back of my tongue and pushes me to think. I am on the edge of something, but I don't know exactly what.

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  Mace groans as he rolls over and pushes himself to his knees. I don't give him an easy time of it, floating downward until I am hovering just above the floor of the arena, increasing the strain of my oppressive presence as I draw nearer to him.

  “Looking a little hurt there,” I say as he pushes himself to his feet. It isn't just talk. The shirt the man was wearing is torn open, and there is a black stain on his chest from the detonation. I have no doubt that, given a few hours, a very nasty bruise will begin to stand out there.

  I flex my power, trying to see if the soot stains on his skin might have some black dust in their residue. There is, but something about the man prevents my black dust from wiggling its way into his body. Were I able to do that, this fight would be over very quickly. Perhaps his goddess is protecting him from the black sand. I can't really say. I still have no idea how priests are supposed to work, other than receiving power from a god or goddess.

  “I could say the same about you,” he comments, forcing his back to straighten.

  “I really don't think you can.” I pat my stomach where he hit me before. Without a full complement of obsidianate armor inside my hidden armory, the man's punch likely would have shattered ribs. With the incredible boost to my defenses, it did nothing more than bruise a bit, and that was healed in the first five seconds by my incredible recovery. “Can I ask you something before I put you down? Why have none of my opponents worn any significant pieces of equipment? It seems like a bit of an oversight for people whose job it is to fight in an arena.”

  Mace laughs a bit at that, but the laugh quickly turns into a sneer. “Winning a match due to daddy giving you a fancy sword is not honorable in the least. Only losers and reprobates need count on such things to prove their value in this place. We demonstrate skill and valor here, not who has the most money to throw around.”

  “Ooooh,” Galla adds to the audience. “I wonder who our scorned champion might be talking about.” Given the audience's reaction, there is very little guessing actually going on.

  “Console yourself with your honor and valor tonight, then,” I say. “All I care about is winning.”

  With a flick of my wrist, the six balls of black sand I left near the ceiling streak down like meteors. As I thought, the man across from me doesn't fall for the same trick twice. He whispers a word and becomes a bolt of lightning once more, streaking away as the balls of burning dragonfire explode against the ground where he just stood. He reappears in an instant near the wall of the arena.

  “Lady of Storms, send me a gale,” he prays.

  I wouldn't call the power that explodes away from the man a soul presence, but it does a good job of mimicking one. In a flash of magic, a swirling force of gray spreads around the arena, carrying with it a torrent of wind that begins to spiral. In an instant, the inside of the cylindrical arena becomes a maelstrom as the wind whips along in a counter-clockwise direction. The drag rips at the wings growing from my back. Despite pouring magic into them, they cannot fight against the incredible strain of the wind, and I am carried off into the spiraling storm.

  As this happens, I do not sit idle. The six balls of black sand I have conjured already elongate, their dark material flowing into complex geometric patterns as they are arranged into six short spears of the darkest color. The spears race away with the direction of the wind, picking up speed as they seek out their target, the man leaping into the pull of the storm.

  Mace demonstrates a significant skill with hand-to-hand combat as he batters the spears away with fists empowered by the wind. Soon, the two of us are in a dance, being thrown around the center of the arena on opposite sides like two bugs circling a drain. I throw more blasts of fire at my opponent as I am carried away, but every bolt of dragonfire is swallowed by the storm. Despite my accosting him with spears of black sand, Mace finds an opportunity to point two fingers in my direction.

  Intuition pushes me to act, and I call more black sand from my vault as I try to erect a barrier in front of myself. I am too slow.

  An arc of lightning leaps from the man's fingers and crosses the distance between us in an instant, just as my shield of black sand is solidifying. Magical lightning penetrates my chest, racing through my insides and leaving long lines of scorched flesh. The pain is intense, but what is worse is the way my muscles contract against my will. The sudden shock causes my attacks to falter, giving the man the opportunity to throw another lightning bolt in my direction. I bite down hard as the electricity arcs through my leg. Since becoming a magician, I have experienced more brands of pain than I care to note, but lightning is a new and singularly unpleasant one.

  Something rattles inside my head as the electricity surges through me. It feels like my brain itself is on fire. My control over the black sand flees as all of my concentration turns toward recovery.

  Then, Mace is just above me after having flashed to my side in a third bolt of lightning. Were it not for my soul being spread through the room, I wouldn’t have been able to notice him. In fact, my soul is the only thing I can react with.

  The man lets out a startled cry as his body is suddenly ten times as heavy as it should be. Despite the swirling wind, he is thrown toward the ground, but not before I reach out with a hand and grab his wrist. As my grip tightens on his arm, he plants a kick into my armpit, trying to separate himself from me, but he doesn't put his full weight into the strike. His mistake

  The two of us hit the ground like a bundle of bricks. Were the floor not made of stone, likely we would have made ourselves a nice little divet. I straddle the man, one of my knees shattered from the impact with the stone. His left arm is unfortunately trapped under his body, probably not in the best state. No medical back-clad members have appeared, and we are both deeply aware of that.

  Mace opens his mouth to say something, but I clamp my hand over his lips before he can utter a word. Stopping the priest from praying only seems like the right thing to do. As he starts to bite into the meat of my hand, finding my flesh far too tough to get through, I open my own mouth. A torrent of steel flames pours from between my lips and washes over the man, bathing him in an opaque wave of color.

  His remaining good hand reaches up through the wash of flames, and his fingers twist into my hair. He tries to rip me off of time as arcs of electricity spring up from his fingers and dig into my skull, but I refuse to move. Flashes of random light penetrate my vision as the lightning burrows into my face, blinding me. In the space of ten seconds, I begin to lose the ability to think, to move, to do anything other than press on with what I am doing. Then, the pain recedes, and my incredible ability to heal starts to bring me back.

  The moment that I register Mace's hand is no longer bound up in my hair, I stop pouring fire over him. The last of the steel dragonfire flows away, revealing a man marked with bruises and lacerations beneath me. I pull my hand back, standing and limping backward a step. The only unharmed part of the man is where my hand was held over his mouth. The rest of him, every inch of skin on his naked body, is red and swelling, like he was beaten into the ground by a thousand fists.

  A part of me his horrified by what I just did, but a greater part of me takes satisfaction in it. This man might not have been a true blood elf, but he is a priest of Glis'Merinda. Maybe it is petty of me to take satisfaction in that, but I do anyway.

  Turning, I find four black-clad figures standing a bit away, looking at me warily as I stand in front of the injured man.

  “Get him out of here,” I say to them as I take another few steps away from Mace. “I have more fights.

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