The blood-red lightning came down like a verdict.

Ken moved on instinct, throwing himself sideways as the leader’s blade carved through the space he had been standing in. The ground where he had been split open, a clean gash in the earth that smoked at the edges. Ken landed in a roll, came up on one knee and assessed fast.

The leader was already moving again.

He was big, bigger than the demonic humans Ken had been cutting through like paper, and he moved with a completely different weight to him, like every step he took was a declaration. The blood-red lightning coiled around his blade like something alive, restless, hungry. He swung again and the lightning cracked off the blade in a wide arc, forcing Ken to dive back again.

’Too much range.’

Ken’s back foot hit a corpse and he staggered, just slightly, but the leader caught it. He was on Ken in an instant, bringing the blade down in an overhead that had the full commitment of his body behind it. Ken raised his sword to block and the impact drove him straight into the ground, both feet sinking into the dirt. The shock ran up his arms hard.

’Heavy. Far too heavy.’

He disengaged fast, sliding back and creating distance. The leader did not chase immediately. He stood and looked at Ken the way a man looks at something that had briefly interested him.

"You killed many of my soldiers," the leader said. His voice was low and even. "I wanted to see what you were."

"And?" Ken said.

"Still deciding."

He came forward again, and this time he was faster, the lightning trailing behind him like a comet’s tail. Ken read the angle of his shoulder, the tilt of his wrist, and moved accordingly, but the leader adjusted mid-swing with a fluidity that had no right being in a body that size. The blade caught Ken across the side, not deep, but enough. Ken felt the burn of the lightning before he felt the cut. He hit the ground rolling, came up breathing harder than he wanted to admit.

’Okay. Strength will not work. Speed alone will not work. He adjusts too well.’

Ken reset his footing and went still. He closed his eyes for exactly one second.

He listened. The weight distribution in the leader’s steps. The rhythm of his breathing. The way the lightning hummed slightly louder right before a swing, feeding off intent.

There.

The leader came again, and this time Ken did not retreat. He stepped inside the swing, inside the range where the blade had no power, and drove his elbow hard into the leader’s jaw. The impact surprised him, he could feel it in the way the big body stiffened. Ken followed immediately, low and fast, cutting across the back of the leader’s knee, not deep enough to drop him but enough to register. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The leader stepped back for the first time.

Ken pressed. He had found the rhythm now and he moved within it, not trying to match the leader’s power but working around it, striking the joints, the transitions between movements, the half-second gaps when a swing had finished and the next had not yet started. Each hit was precise and deliberate. The leader’s expression shifted, the casual assessment leaving his face and something harder replacing it.

The blood-red lightning intensified around the blade.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better, Ken thought, and he settled deeper into his stance. ’Good.’

[...]

Sierra’s invisible thrust tore through the air and the mage threw herself sideways barely in time, the attack grazing her shoulder and shredding her robe at the sleeve. She hit the ground, caught herself on one hand and looked up with wide eyes.

Sierra was already closing the distance.

The mage scrambled upright and swung her staff in a wide desperate arc, unleashing a burst of compressed wind that detonated outward in every direction. Sierra dropped low, let it pass over her and kept moving. The mage backpedalled, genuine panic entering her movements for the first time, and began layering spells fast, fire and wind combined, a spiralling column of superheated air that screamed as it came down.

Sierra read the centre of the spiral and drove straight through it, her blade carving the column apart, heat washing over her face as she emerged from the other side still running.

The mage was breathing hard.

"What are you," she said, and it came out less like a question and more like a complaint.

"Your end," Sierra said simply.

The mage’s expression cracked. The panic collapsed inward and what replaced it was something uglier, a wounded pride curdling into fury. Her grip on her staff tightened until her knuckles changed colour. The air around her began to change, the temperature dropping sharply, frost crawling along the grass at her feet in spreading white fingers.

"Fine," the mage said quietly, and her voice had gone very flat. "Fine."

The sky above her darkened in a concentrated circle, clouds pulling together like something was dragging them. Lightning, not blood-red like the leader’s but a deep electric violet, began threading between them.

Sierra felt it before she saw it. A pressure, like the atmosphere itself was being wrung out. She planted her feet and brought her mana up fast, feeling it surge through her limbs, her grip tightening on her blade.

The mage raised her staff above her head with both hands, the violet lightning cascading down and wrapping her entirely, her robes and hair whipping violently in the charged wind. When she looked at Sierra again her eyes had gone completely white.

"I will level this entire field if I have to," she said.

Sierra’s jaw set. She exhaled slowly through her nose.

"Then come."

Both sides of the battle had now taken a different turn, it was barely about the armies again, but rather Ken and Sierra versus the mage and the leader in one on one battles