Death, Devotion, Dissonance

But just before the string could reach her, it met some kind of wall. After blocking Endra\'s Qanatohm energies, the invisible wall then ground it down to dust. Focusing his attention, Evin realized that the wall was made of Tenarak energies, meaning that Daishan was responsible for disrupting Endra\'s spell. 

The weight nullifying spell could not work if the string of energy could not reach her. And either Daishan was much better than Evin at feeling these energies and blocking them, or…

\'She can probably just see them…\' Evin realized with a sigh. 

Evin learned that when a mage got old enough, they could start seeing the World energies with their eyes. It was definitely a huge advantage for her. With this, she could quickly realize that Evin\'s about to use a spell and stop it in its tracks, if she deemed it something dangerous.

<Ugh, what a pain,> Endra cursed, but quickly changed his tactics. <Well, in that case, there\'s only one thing we can do. Evin, you take care of her stones. I\'ll give control of the Hard Air barrier to you.>

As for himself, Endra created two pairs of Hard Air swords and sent them towards Bella\'s fight. 

<Isn\'t it better for us to shoot at him?>

<It worked last time because he didn\'t expect it, and also because they were practically standing still. I am confident in my aim, but looking at those two tangling messes of mud, I really can\'t be confident I won\'t hit Bella accidentally. It\'s best if I just focus on cutting him up.>

<Okay,> Evin agreed and focused his attention on Daishan. 

One by one, he started creating clumps of air in front of him, planning to detonate them if his enemy shot stones at him. He couldn\'t completely rely on the barrier, as he was somehow sure that it would be penetrated by Daishan\'s spell.

Evin\'s fight from then on, took a rather dull turn. He became engrossed in a defensive battle, focused destroying waves of stones flying towards him like large, crystalline bees. Evin was mostly successful in defending himself using his airfield of explosive air, but of course, he wasn\'t the technical perfectionist that Endra was. 

Some of the stones survived the blasts with Daishan\'s influence intact on them and still managed to hit Evin\'s barrier (the stones also tried to penetrate it from different angles so Evin had to move the barrier around himself to properly block). After hitting the stone would start either vibrating or spinning, in an attempt to shatter the barrier. 

To prevent this, Evin needed to accumulate a bunch of Seyethe energies around the stones, so Daishan\'s connection to them would be cut off. It took some time, because Daishan\'s control over her stones were quite firm, but Evin was mostly successful in keeping himself safe. 

But in the end, Evin couldn\'t help having his barrier getting broken once. Thankfully, Endra was generous enough to make a new one for him. This seemed to frustrate Daishan a lot, and the woman almost tried to jump out of the circle herself to get close enough to Evin. Well, if she wasn\'t going to let Evin\'s spells through her blockade of World energies, Evin also wasn\'t going to croak over so easily.

\'But… It\'s still kind of scary…\' Evin thought with a sigh.

Although Daishan could attack from a distance, judging from her appearance and her spell, she still looked like someone who preferred to fight close to her enemies. 

Evin definitely would\'ve had problems if the two of them could walk around freely, even if his foot functioned perfectly. And it wouldn\'t be because of her not-yet seen close combat abilities, it would be because of iron-like grip on her spells. 

It was easier for him now, as the further a spell went away from the caster, the harder it was for them to control it. In fact, this was evident with how Daishan\'s stones slowed down the further it got from her. In her immediate surroundings, the stones seemed to be able to move as fast as someone was able to move their limbs.

Evin imagined himself being locked in a fist-fight with the woman, worrying about flying chunks of rock threatening to penetrate him from the blindside at all times… It definitely wouldn\'t be anything pleasant. 

But even with Evin\'s fight being much easier than it might\'ve been, hopes of actually winning still seemed distant. 

"Ga-ha-ha," a loud laugh exploded in the area. "That all you can do?" 

When Endra sent the two swords to support Bella, Evin expected the fight to get better for them… but unexpectedly, they started losing. The reason for that was Parsh\'s current appearance.

Parsh\'s mud armor had grown two extra pairs of hands, turning him into some six-armed monster. His natural arms held a saber and a buckler; two mud-hands above it were holding the same weapons, but with changed sides; and the two hands above it were holding a long two-handed spear. 

The shields on his two sides allowed him to defend himself quite easily from Bella\'s attacks, while the two swords made him a very threatening opponent to face. But as far as Evin could tell, the long spear seemed to be the trickiest thing for Bella to deal with, as it constantly threatened to pin her to the ground from difficult to see angles. 

The man was obviously practiced in this form, as these new hands moved practically the same as his original ones. Evin expected them to move in unnatural angles to throw his enemies off even further, but so far he didn\'t see anything like that.

Due to this, Evin expected Endra\'s swords to be able to deal much more damage, attacking Parsh from his blind angles, but the mud-armor really wasn\'t taking any damage from the strikes. In the first place, Hard Air really wasn\'t the best thing to hack at enemies, so the best that Endra could do was to distract Parsh by threatening his exposed sides (which were his hands and face), and hopefully creating some kind of chance for Bella.

But Bella herself was having trouble keeping up with the change. It wasn\'t because she was weak, from how she was moving during this fight, Evin knew that she would wipe the floor with him in a serious fight.

Although Bella greatly focused on the mud armor, in Evin\'s opinion, her biggest advantage was her large arsenal of spells she could use to deal with any situation. But the fight wasn\'t allowing her the opportunities to use these various spells, as it was taking all of her concentration just to avoid Parsh\'s attacks. Her opponent this time was simply too strong and she didn\'t have any hard-hitting methods to deal with him.

<Do we use the metal bullets?> Evin asked.

<Hmm… Let\'s just give up,> the Voice offered. <Bella\'s holding on pretty well, but she\'s reaching her limits. I don\'t want to use metal bullets in Daishan\'s presence… Hmm, maybe stronger explosions might work, but it feels kind of overkill for a mock fight.>

<Alright, I\'ll walk out of the circle after Bella has her fill of the fight. She seems to be enjoying herself quite a bit,> Evin said and resumed observing the heated fight. 

He was careful of Daishan, but the woman seemed to have reached a similar conclusion. She bowed towards Evin, and although he didn\'t know what exactly the gesture meant, bowed back.

Endra seemed to have taken the gesture as \'Do whatever you want,\' and sent two more swords to fight against Parsh. He didn\'t do more than that, perhaps guessing that Daishan would interfere if things got too out of hand. 

Regardless, ten minutes of sparring later, Bella\'s tired body was flung across the field, and Evin flew over to catch her in his arms.