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The man did not dodge. He did not move, but rather shifted almost imperceptibly so that when Dion’s lance struck, it merely grazed him, dragging across fabric and skin leaving a trail of blood akin to a papercut.

Dion immediately brought his halberd before him again defensively, the man’s taunt ringing in his ears. ’Not so easily?’ His opponent was a hulking monster of a man, more akin to a charging beast, and yet he seemed more perceptive, more evasive, than could reasonably be expected. The expected counter-blow never came. Instead, the man simply…

Disappeared.

And Dion was left blinking, mouth slightly open in surprise. He did not have time to linger, however, as a voice sounded from behind him. ”Dodge.”

Instinct guided him – half at the warning and half at the voice itself, so close it sent a shiver of danger down his spine. He moved instantly, ducking and rolling away as he heard the sound of displaced air where his neck had been only a moment before, coming to his feet in motion with the somersault, spinning to face his opponent and pacing back to make distance between them.

The man had teleported. His mind reeled as he processed what had happened in the blink of an eye. He had teleported which was a skill known only to…

The dominant of Odin. Warden of Darkness. Had the man not already demonstrated his mastery of dark magic? His opponent then wielded the strength of Titan, the magic of Odin, and the bloodlust of a wild beast. And Dion himself was without his usual advantages. Bahamut’s light had forsaken him for his sins, and now he had only his own strength to guide him – his own ability against this impossible monster of a man.

”You are toying with me,” he stated – not a question, but a fact. Why else would he give warning to his attack? He thought Dion beneath him, his skills no match for his own. Perhaps he was right.

Still, his mind was racing, his training guiding him even where his doubts would give him reason to pause. Dion could not rely on lightness of foot. No speed or dexterity could outmatch magical teleportation. He could not overpower the man. Nor could he outmaneuver him. If he could not rely on strength or speed then he had but one option remaining – agility.

Instantly, Dion took to the air. He launched himself over his opponent, twisting in the air as though to thrust himself back to earth, but instead he simply landed in the branches of the opposite tree.

For all his advantages, the man was still – as far as Dion was aware – confined to the ground. Dion had been allowed to choose their battlefield and so he had chosen one to his advantage. The treetops would provide the perfect cover for a dragoon hoping to capitalize on his airborne maneuvers. While Dion’s skills were no match for his opponent’s in hand to hand combat, he still had this. He would use this one advantage to its fullest.

The moment that he struck, he would be left defenseless until he managed to wrench his spear from the earth and make distance between them again, and so he would make his movements unpredictable. He’d hardly heard the tree branch groan beneath his weight before he launched himself again, once more acting as though he were to strike and once more simply landing in the cover of the treetops. He performed this feint several more times in rapid succession, each time acting as though he were strike before, finally, he did.

Unfortunately, it was near impossible to skewer a man from above nonlethally, and he was bound by his word to honor their agreement. Instead, Dion aimed for a position directly behind his opponent, hoping that the shockwave of his strike would deliver the damage that his spear was honorbound to avoid.

This shockwave had been known to send even armored enemies flying, sometimes to their deaths. But he had no doubt that this opponent would survive. He hoped that the force would stagger him if not leave him entirely exposed. He hoped as he wrenched his spear free in his own moment of vulnerability and tried to bring it up before him, either defensively or offensively depending on the outcome.

In that moment, it was all he could do to hope.

[attr=class,ooc-notes]I don't know how a fight post got this long but oh well

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His opponent was a madman.

Dion’s blow struck as intended, the aftershock of his strike hurling the man off his feet blasting him through the trees as though he were made of nothing more than cloth and cotton. With every blow the man took, with every crack of shattered tree trunk and heavy branches, Dion feared that he had reneged on his promise of nonlethality.

And yet over the sounds of destruction, he heard something far more chilling. Laughter.

Was that right? Surely it couldn’t be. As Dion wrenched his spear from the earth and raised it cautiously, he felt an ominous dread rise within him. This was not finished, it seemed to say. Though his eyes, his ears, his mind all spoke to the contrary, his soldier’s sense did not waver.

From the cloud of dust and wooden debris came a swing of scythe and the reflection of his own shockwave, and Dion jumped on instinct, barely clearing the blow with catlike agility. When he once more landed, he looked up to see the man shrouded in broken leaves and splintered wood, his hair disheveled and his eyes burning. They did not burn with fear or hatred, but with something much more savage like a dominant awakening to his frenzied eikon.

’This is madness,’ Dion thought, horrified as he stared in the face of something so utterly inhuman. ’He has gone mad.’

He did not know if it was fear or panic which spurred him on, but he hesitated no further, twisting his spear into an offensive position as he launched himself past the treetops, heart thundering within him. This time, there were no feints. No clever trickery. He would end this swiftly and so, once cleared from the confines of the trees, he twisted himself around, angling his spear, and thrust himself earthbound with a dragon’s ferocity.

He would aim for a limb, he told himself. An upper thigh, preferably, angled away from the major arteries so as not to break his promise. He would pin the man with his spear and thus quell whatever he’d seen burning in the man’s eyes.

As he reached his maximum velocity, shooting like an arrow downwards towards his target, he prayed for a swift end to this battle before he saw what those eyes could do.

[attr=class,ooc-notes]This won't backfire at all. Nope.

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The madman moved faster than Dion’s descent, faster than a freefall, faster than a dragon’s wings. It took only that time for the man to rise to his feet, and though Dion’s spear struck its target, scraping down his opponent’s leg, the wound was light enough to draw blood but little else. A soft moan escaped the man, almost in pleasure as Dion’s lance was driven into the earth and he realized, a moment too late, that he had made a grievous mistake.

For those brief seconds that it took to wrench his lance free, he was left vulnerable, nearly kneeling before this madman whose scythe was already raised.

He barely deflected the first blow, gritting his teeth with the effort of repelling the blade, nearly losing his grip in the process, but the blows kept coming. For every successful block, there was no time to parry. Each time he proved unsuccessful, he felt a sting of pain along his arm, his cheek, the side of his torso, each time followed by the warm chill of blood. Then there were the shockwaves of magic which he had no means of blocking and no space to dodge. These stuck him head on, knocking him back each time as the icy darkness struck his heart and battered his body with the force of charging behemoth.

He kept himself on his feet, but only barely. His soldier’s training kept him moving, kept his lance twirling faster than he could process, blocking, deflecting, scraping the scythe down its edge with a metallic screech to somewhere less vital for the blow to land. Once more, he was back on the battlefield, his feet moving with the rehearsed steps of a dancer being led in a waltz, always reacting, never taking the lead himself.

There wasn’t time. And still, he fought.

He was on the backfoot, trapped in a corner of his own making. His opponent was stronger, faster, and wielded that accursed magic.

A particularly strong burst of darkness sent him staggering, gasping for air, as his grip loosened, his spear lowered, and finally the scythe met flesh.

Dion’s gasping turned into a strangled yell as the tip of the blade sank into his left shoulder and sliced down in one clean cut. On instinct, Dion grabbed the shaft of the spear, yanked the blade from his arm, and then shoved his palm outward towards the man as pain blinded him and his heart deafened him and inside him came a familiar whisper that ripped through him until it screamed.

Light burst from his palm. White, searing, holy. The light of Bahamut. His light.

It sought its target in missile projections like arrows curving inward toward the kill. Once it had left him, Dion was left standing there, shocked and numbed as he gazed at his own hand, still glowing with magic.

”What in Greagor’s name…?”

This magic was meant to be lost to him. It was meant to have been taken. Why then could he still…?

He didn’t have time to think. This was still very much a battlefield and one on which he was badly injured. His other hand still held his lance – just barely – as his own blood slipped down his arm and dampened his grip. He didn’t know if he could still raise it, but with this new development, he had an entirely new (or perhaps old?) weapon in his arsenal.

Dion called upon that power again, and it came to him easily, gathering in his chest where he had always felt it strongest. Dion placed his hand to his chest, focused that magic, and then set it loose in a great beam of brilliant white light, an imitation of Bahamut’s divine flare.

”Your darkness shall not take me!”

[attr=class,ooc-notes]Okay so I might be in a Dion mood

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He had gone too far.

As the beam of light faded, sparking in the air like static before a thunderstorm, Dion was left panting, his head spinning from the heavy use of magic. There was a time when he could channel his power at will, calling it to his fingertips as simply as breathing. Now, he was out of practice from the sensation. Aether, overflowing in his blood. Bahamut’s will, whispering within his heart. He felt as he had as a child, practicing his drills again and again until his knees collapsed beneath him. This was power not meant for mortal men, and…

And…

Dion’s eyes flicked across the clearing to see the results of his actions. Singed grass. A tree burned through, oozing sap like blood. And in the center of it all, a human form sprawled upon his back.

Dion let out a soft, pained noise and looked away. In his desperation, his light had awoken. The power had flooded his better judgment, and just as he always knew it could, it had taken over and blood had been spilled for his weakness.

He had broken his own promise, it seemed. A promise of non-lethality at his own insistence. Now a man lay dead. This was undoubtedly a blow to his honor, and one that would haunt him for some time to come, but in the end, he could not say that it was not for the best. The madman would have fought again. He would have taken the lives of those less suited for combat than a dominant of Bahamut. In the end, it was but another burden to weigh heavily upon his shoulders, but one for the greater good.

Or it would have been if the man had not stirred.

Dion snapped to attention once more, uncertain whether to rush to the man’s aid or back away from potential danger. That decision was quickly made for him. The enemy combatant took a deep breath and slowly, delicately, rose to his feet. And Dion was left staring.

The man before him – it felt wrong to even call him a man. He had transformed in a single instant, his blonde hair shortening with streaks of neon red, thick glowing tendrils sprouting from his head like a marlboro’s tentacles. One of his arms had grown swollen with angry red flesh, over-elongated with clawed talons. And then there were his eyes.

Red. They were alight with red. Dion knew well the power of the aether. He knew the piercing blue of a dominant’s eyes. He knew the dangerous yellow of an eikon, feral and frenzied. He knew nothing of red, and yet, it chilled him all the same.

”You are a dominant?” he muttered, utterly aghast at the creature before him. He’d thought the rules different here in this unfamiliar world, yet what could he call the power before him but a semi-prime? The man was bound to an eikon of darkness. There was once a time when he would have thought it absurd for there was but one warden of each element, but had he not seen Ifrit? Fought alongside him and his brother, twin eikons of fire?

Dion did not have time to ponder these implications. He didn’t have time for anything at all before this strange new dominant threw himself forward with a speed hitherto unseen. Dion’s eyes widened and he launched himself skyward, hoping that this change in his opponent would not give him the benefits of flight.

The madman declared his intentions to tear down the heavens themselves, and what could Dion do against him? He was a dragoon, too terribly injured to so much as raise his spear. He was a dominant so unused to the feel of aether in his blood to use his magic freely. He was a useless prince who had thrown himself into danger needlessly, too careless with his own life to guard against the consequences.

And below him was a maniacal creature, half eikon and half man, radiating power with every flick of his dreadful eyes.

’Greagor fill my wings.’

He landed in the treetops once more, aware than he was slower than before from bloodloss and his own general weakness. He grit his teeth and forced himself to jump again, twisting around so that he could fire off a few more missiles of holy light as his momentum carried him across the clearing and he landed dexterously in an opposing tree.

What was he to do? Even his mind had grown heavy. The blood from his injured arm streamed carelessly down his fingertips, down his lance, and dripped in heavy splotches from the speartip.

What was he to do?

His enemy was mad with bloodlust. He would not listen even if Dion were to yield. He could try to make his escape through the treetops, but that would only lead his feral creature back towards the city, towards the civilians, towards their hopes and their dreams and their lives which he was sworn to protect. He could prime, but that…

With the shattered state of his mind, that was out of the question.

He would have to semi-prime himself, but did he have the strength for it? He was no prince here. No warden of light, protector of his people, bound by birth to guide them. Bahamut was the king of dragons, a king, tall and proud. Dion had learned to merge his will with Bahamut’s own – his draconic form would not come to him otherwise – but how could he? How could he a failure of a prince and a dominant, he who had turned his wrath upon his own people, who had delivered the deathblow to Sanbreque himself, how could he stand tall enough to fit in Bahamut’s shadow?

His vision darkened. His balance slipped, and he was sent plummeting into the underbrush below, crashing through twigs and brambled leaves until he used the last of his strength to twist himself into a proper landing, taking the force of the earth on bending knees, his good arm buckling as he kept his head aloft. He tried to stand, but found that he couldn’t. His breaths came heavy and slow. His lance was useless in the grasp of his wounded arm.

Was this how it would end? So senseless with nothing left to fight for?

’Apologies, Healer Yuna. It seems your work may have been in vain.’

[attr=class,ooc-notes]LOL HOPE HE DOESN'T DIE