Chapter 23 Sneak Peek! - Stormweaver II

New chapter coming! It may be tomorrow afternoon or Saturday, but it's coooooming. And... Catcher is getting some "action" ;)

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“Yes! YES!” Viv was shouting beside Aria, and she glanced sidelong to find the others jumping up and down in excitement, with even Grant having cupped both hands around his mouth to shout encouragements. On the field before them, the tide of the battle had steadily given way to Rei’s superior combat ability, with Martin having been driven back more than a half-dozen steps from their point of initial clash. As fast as both of them were, neither had bothered trying to disengage from the fight to try a different approaching, knowing the other would be able to keep pace with any retreat and take advantage of any backpedalling or turned back. As a result, the fight—while not as vicious as some of the second- and third-year battles, maybe—was an acute example of the destructive power of even the youngest generation of Users, with weapons and limbs moving faster and faster and faster as Rei or Martin struck, block, countered, punched, kicked, ducked, or dodged more than dozen times in quarter that many seconds. It was an awesome sight—one that Aria was a little jealous of given her and Hippolyta’s lagging Speed spec by comparison—and she could imagine the awe being tenfold among the civilian spectators who were watching zoomed-in feeds from higher in the stands.

And then, as was so often the case, the end came in a blink.

While Martin might match Rei for Speed—a rare thing even among the Galens cadets—she didn’t match him for cunning. As he’d pressed her steadily back, Aria had watched with a familiar eye as Rei had grown more and more confident in the patterns of the Duelist’s attacks and defense, so she was only mildly surprised when a wide cross-swipe of Martin’s right blade came around low and quick, only to stop dead as Rei outright caught her by the wrist. From Viv’s other side Catcher gave a whoop of success that was immediately lost to the pitch in the cheering of the crowd as Rei proceeded to catch Martin’s other wrist when the girl seemed to panic and cleaved at him with a wild slash at his face that was telegraph long before the blow came. For a fraction of a second the two of them were locked like that, Rei fighting to keep his hold while Martin hauled back and twisted, trying to break loose.

She didn’t manage it before he seemed to find the proper footing, crouched, then rocketed upward in a jump that should probably would have shot Rei fifteen feet



 if his knee hadn’t caught her in chin on the way up, of course.

There was a collective “OOOOOOH!” of sympathy from the stands as Martin’s head snapped back, Rei letting go of both of Duelist’s wrist just as the blow landed. She was lifted several feet off the ground under the impact of the hit, and Aria thought it like the match was already over. Rei, however, clearly wouldn’t be holding back against such a dangerous opponent until the moment the Arena called the match, because he was twisting even as he landed again, bring his body around and one leg whipping up.

The kick caught Martin full in the side just as she, too, started to drop back to the ground, the power behind it sending the poor girl rocketing sideways to careen over the Grasslands, literally skip over the bubbling surface of the stream, then come to a crashing, tumbling halt of the far bank of the flowing water. It said something to the girl’s fighting spirit that she’d somehow managed to hold onto both her swords despite the hit.

Especially when she didn’t move from where the spot she lay crumbled at the stream’s edge, the stillness of her body echoed in the relative quite of the stands for a full breath before the Arena spoke up.

“Fatal Damaged Accrued,” said the Arena on cue. “Victor: Reidon Ward, the Galens Institute.”