"By consistently evolving your approach, you will minimize risks associated with prolonged confrontations.* Just when they feel they know you, never settle for old habits that could cost you battles."

  — Zeddrex's Codex of Conquest

  Loa's illusions bled into the swamp, psionic talismans seeding the marshwater like ink dispersing in a bowl. Every ripple, every curl of mist, every distorted reflection became hers to alter. The battlefield was her parchment.

  And if Mina refused to read her words, then Loa would write them into the ground itself. While she stationed herself, hidden within the fog from Whirlkool's view, she reached out with thought.

  'Mina.'

  Frustratingly again, she didn't answer. Mina's focus was all fists and bone-crunch, Loa could feel it vehemently through the link. Loa tried again, sharper this time. 'Mina, adjust your rhythm. She's baiting you with feints on the third step. Counter on the—'

  Mina's response wasn't words, but a wall of roaring defiance. She shut Loa out. Loa bristled despite herself. Mina always did this—always traded precision for fury. Loa's wings tightened reflexively, every instinct screaming to seize control of the field, but strategy meant knowing when control was impossible.

  Below, Biscuit lashed forward with her twin tails, sweeping Mina's legs from under her. The Oni caught herself mid-fall, slamming her kanabo into the muck for leverage and spinning back with a strike that failed to shatter more of Biscuit's ceramic face. The crowd adored it. Of course bloodthirst never cared for discipline. Yet Mina's laughter rolled across the marsh, manic and reckless. Her vendetta was burning brighter than her voice in her head.

  Loa closed her eyes, and memory struck like lightning—not only hers: Mina years ago, younger, rougher, with scars fresh and pride thinner. Biscuit had stalked her and Loa through the barracks of Jalkra's Clan, batting them both across the floor like a kitten with a toy mouse. Mina would spit, swing, rage and always lose. Her strength had been raw but unfocused, her heart bigger than her fists.

  Biscuit never let her forget it. "Little Mina," she'd call her. "The chew toy." And here Mina was again, fighting as though the years hadn't passed; ignoring Loa; drowning herself in personal war.

  Loa exhaled, slow and deliberate, forcing the bristled feathers around her to settle.

  Then let me weaponize it, she mused.

  She dipped into the psionic link again, not to command Mina—but to amplify her fury. Loa wove images of the past: Biscuit's smirk, Biscuit's claws digging into Mina's shoulders, the sound of jeering laughter from the clan's barracks. Not illusions in the world—illusions in Mina's memory.

  Mina snarled aloud, Loa heard it echo across the battlefield. Her kanabo flared with spikes before she even swung. Good. Rage made her stronger. But unchecked, rage was just fire in the wind.

  So Loa set the rhythm beneath it. A tactician's hand beneath the berserker's howl. She whispered calculations into her thoughts, hidden under the weight of memory: Now. Left hip. Knee. Feint high, strike low. Don't let her reset.

  Mina didn't realize she was listening. She thought it was all instinct, all vengeance. But Loa guided her tempo, shaping her vendetta into a weapon.

  Below, Biscuit staggered again, shards of ceramic splintering from her thigh where Mina's spike struck true. Another life peeled away in shards, dissolving into the swamp. Seven left.

  Loa's attention snapped when Whirlkool snarled from the river, trying to prime her ruined cannon, but Loa kept her wings spread, barring her sightline, psionics weaving false doubles across the marsh to keep her second-guessing.

  The fight was turning not because Mina had stopped ignoring her, but because she didn't realize she'd started obeying Loa all over again.

  Yes, Loa thought coldly, ignoring the stab in her ribs as she moved to intercept Whirlkool's next blast. 'Dance, Mina. Rage all you like. Just let me conduct the music.'

  'You can forgive me later,' she whispered through the link. 'Or curse me. But you will obey the battlefield even if you refuse me.' Her wings snapped wide. The talismans dove into the mud and reeds, pulsing with disruption.

  Mina, meanwhile, was in full frenzy. Her kanabo roared in her grip, spikes shifting like teeth, and Biscuit's third shell cracked under a shoulder-smash that sent ceramic shards spinning. The Oni's laughter rang across the marsh, wild, intoxicating.

  Loa's eyes sharpened. She twisted a feather, and reality tilted. Mina lunged for Biscuit's flank and suddenly the mud beneath her boots hardened, as though a stone path had been waiting all along. The footing steadied her swing, amplifying its momentum. Biscuit hissed as another fracture spread down her side. The Oni didn't even notice the manipulation.

  Good. Better you think it your strength, Loa thought.

  Whirlkool, however, noticed. Her cracked cannon whirred as she adjusted, eyes narrowing on Loa's exact position. "Huh. Didn't think you'd start puppeteering your own teammate, crow."

  "I mold the board. The pieces move whether they realize it or not."

  Another talisman flared. Biscuit darted to Mina's blind side, twin tails snapping for her neck, but Loa warped the swamp's reflection. For a blink, Mina saw Biscuit's movement a half-second sooner, as if the water betrayed her. Mina reacted with a brutal backhand swing that tore through the cat's fourth layer.

  The crowd roared at Mina's apparent instinct. Mina bellowed back, "Four down, birdie! Six to go!"

  Five you fool! Loa's hands trembled, feathers dripping with sweat and pain. She was burning through reserves to keep the illusions woven around Mina. Her ribs screamed with every wingbeat, her defenses thin from previous trauma.

  Indeed. Whirlkool wasn't idle. The kappa had stopped firing directly. Instead, she aimed into the swamp itself, launching orb after orb to churn the water into unpredictable whirlpools. Her voice carried, calm as ever. "Let's see how well your puppet dances when the stage itself bucks her off."

  The marsh convulsed, eddies spinning, currents dragging. Loa clenched her teeth, countering with talismans that steadied the mud beneath Mina's feet—but every counter drained her more. Mina, oblivious, was reveling in it. She slammed her kanabo down on Biscuit again, her bloodied grin stretching wider. "Five! Ha! Don't blink, Loa, or you'll miss me wrecking this cat!"

  Loa's reply was silent, only the hiss of breath through her teeth. She was keeping Mina afloat, even as her own defenses frayed thin, even as Whirlkool circled her like a shark. Every move Mina made was a feast of power, paid for in Loa's pain.

  Yet still Mina thought it all hers. Loa's feathers quivered, talismans flickering as her vision blurred. Yet she did not stop. She could not.

  Because if she let go, Mina would sink.

  Nonetheless…

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  Her illusions were perfect. Her misdirections sharp. The crowd even screamed in disbelief at her maneuver. She had Whirlkool's cannon rupturing, the swampwater turning into steam as her trap turned the kappa's own pressure against her.

  Victory was in reach, until pain burned white-hot through her shoulder. The world tilted. She blinked, mouth parting wordlessly as her body jolted backward in the air. A stream of water—narrow, focused, viciously fast—drilled straight through flesh like a needle.

  A scream clawed at her throat, but only a choked hiss left her lips. She staggered, wings spasming, talismans scattering from her control.

  What…?

  Then she saw it. Not the bazooka. Not the ruptured cannon. But Whirlkool crouched in the mire, one arm forward, a compact pistol made from the polished half of a turtle shell glinting at her side. Steam hissed from its barrel.

  Her voice came through the rising mist, low, almost mournful. "I hate this."

  Another shot blazed through the air. Loa barely flared her feathers in time, the water-laser skimming her thigh. Flesh split open, a scream tearing past her lips. The crowd howled at the sight of particles misting into the swamp air.

  Loa faltered. She wasn't supposed to bleed like this. Her illusions weren't meant to be punctured. But Whirlkool was no longer aiming at where Loa was.

  No. She was aiming at where Loa would dodge. Precision. The kind only a sharpshooter possessed.

  The kappa shifted, pistols twirling in her webbed fingers before she holstered one and snapped up a crossbow made of coral and shells. It shimmered, water condensing into crystalline bolts that loaded themselves. The string thrummed, firing a shot faster than thought.

  Loa dropped, feathers flaring downward to decoy. The bolt shredded the copy, whistling so close past her real cheek she felt her skin sting from the sheer force. She hit the mud hard, teeth rattling. Her shoulder screamed. Her ribs still ached from before. Tears begun to flow from her eyes. She cursed at the pain. And Whirlkool was reloading with a fluid, almost bored grace, water-weapons appearing and vanishing from the currents around her like extensions of her own limbs.

  "Don't make me hate this more than I do," Whirlkool said again, softer this time. "But… I have to win. For her."

  Loa's vision blurred for a moment. Her? The words echoed oddly in her head until realization pierced through her fog. Diantha. Jalkra's wife.

  Whirlkool wasn't fighting for glory. She wasn't even fighting for her clan. She was fighting for freedom. For someone bound.

  The strategist in Loa should have used that information as leverage. Twist it, exploit the weakness, break her enemy from the inside. But as she crouched, particles dripping into the swamp, her illusions flickering uncertainly around her, she hesitated.

  Her hand trembled as she drew talismans back to orbit. She hated pain, hated bleeding, hated how fragile her body felt compared to her will. Every nerve told her to retreat, to hide, to breathe. But she forced her lips into a grim smile, sharp as a broken fang. "You think that you're the only one who hates what this place forces us to do? Hah."

  Her psionics pulsed, feathers igniting again, but she didn't weave another simple trap. Instead, she spun the talismans into a spiral, her illusions folding inward rather than outward. A mirrored maze, blooming upward like a midnight flower.

  Every shot Whirlkool took next would ricochet, refract, split into falses.

  The crowd gasped as dozens of Loa's appeared across the marsh, some bleeding, some whole, some staggering, some flying steady. Each shimmered faintly, reflections of her battered form turned into a hall of ghosts.

  Whirlkool exhaled slowly, shoulders tense. She swapped weapons again—pistol, to spear, to trident, each one flowing into existence from the water's edge. Her voice barely rose above the noise.

  "…Diantha deserves her freedom. Even if I have to drown in blood for her."

  Loa clenched her wounded shoulder, panting, her illusions already flickering at the edges. She couldn't afford another hit. But she couldn't let Mina face both enemies at once.

  She forced her eyes sharp, even through the pain.

  "Then prove it, sharpshooter," she whispered, wings spreading against the haze of steam. "But I'll make sure you hit nothing but shadows."

  The arena roared again as the duel between tactician and marksman escalated; Loa's mirrored labyrinth against Whirlkool's arsenal of aquatic weapons, two philosophies colliding: deception versus precision. Yet with every second, Loa felt the weight of that whispered name—Diantha—pull at her focus like an undertow.

  ??? [Perspective: Mina]

  Mina spat swampwater from her mouth as she ripped her kanabo free from Biscuit's thigh. The ceramic shell there cracked and fell away in jagged shards, splashing into the muck. The crowd howled its approval, another "life" gone. Four left.

  Her chest heaved, breath coming hard but hot. She grinned like a beast uncaged. "What's the matter, Biscuit? Starting to feel your nine gettin' real short?"

  Biscuit's twin tails lashed violently, spraying mud in arcs. Her feline eyes glared, wide and sharp with fury, but Mina knew that look wasn't just the present… it was years deep.

  "You think this changes anything?" Biscuit spat, voice gravel thickened by a growl. "You're still the runt. Still the toy I knocked around every time you dared bark at me."

  Mina's grip tightened on the kanabo. The crowd's noise dimmed against the thunder in her ears. "Toy? Don't you dare—"

  "Oh, I dare," Biscuit sneered, stepping forward with that same careless, predatory sway Mina remembered all too well. "You'd come at me with that big club, horns blazing, and I'd send you squealing. You remember? I remember. Every time you hit the dirt, every time you thought you had me."

  Her claws flexed, dragging faint sparks against her own cracked cheek. "Pathetic. You were nothing but a mouse that thought it could bare fangs."

  The word mouse made Mina's blood boil so hot her horns steamed. She lunged without thinking, kanabo spinning into a spike-studded arc aimed square at Biscuit's head. Biscuit met it with both claws, sparks flying. Their strength rippled out in waves, mud and water spraying like a storm.

  "I'm no damn mouse!" Mina roared, twisting and shoving with every muscle, veins bulging.

  Biscuit snarled right back, fangs flashing. "You're the same as you were—angry, desperate, sloppy! You can swing harder, sure—but you'll never shake what you were!"

  Her tails snapped around Mina's leg, yanking her balance. Mina cursed, stumbling as Biscuit shoved her back with a brutal kick to the gut. Pain lanced through her, knocking the air from her chest.

  Mina doubled over, gasping, vision swimming. She hated how the memory of being toyed with clawed its way back in. She could almost feel the barracks floor, hear the laughter of the Clan.

  But she forced it out with a guttural scream, planting her horns into the mud to brace, then snapping upright. She swung her kanabo upward in a savage uppercut that sent Biscuit flying back across the marsh, splashing into the water.

  "Then I'll just smash you nine times harder than before!" Mina bellowed. "And every crack I make, I'll remember the runt you mocked!"

  Biscuit surfaced, ceramic shards floating around her like petals. She spat, coughing swampwater, then hissed through bared teeth. "Good. I want you angry, Mina. I want you sloppy. Because then I'll break you again—and this time, in front of everyone."

  Their eyes locked across the water, years of venom boiling between them. For the crowd, it was a spectacle. For Mina, it was no tournament match. It was a reckoning long overdue.

  Yet it was startling when Biscuit's mask cracked further, shards falling like teeth onto the wet stone. Mina expected her to shed another layer, reset fresh again.

  What she didn't expect was for the shards to transform. Each splinter of ceramic writhed in the muck like eggs hatching. They crawled back together with sickening snaps, re-forming into a half-size Biscuit, faceless but feral, its jagged edges glowing with ore-light.

  Mina's eyes widened just as the damn thing lunged.

  "—Tch!" Pain seared across her ribs. The dopplecat's claws raked her before she even raised her kanabo. She staggered back, clutching the sudden gash, hot particles mixing with swampwater. The wound wasn't shallow.

  It bit deep.

  The crowd exploded, their roars turning into a frenzy at the sight of her blood.

  Biscuit's grin spread, sharp and wild. Her tails lashed the air like banners of war. "Surprised, Mina? Thought my nine lives were just for defense, didn't ya? A neat little nesting doll to smash and smash again?" Her voice dripped satisfaction as the doppleganger crouched beside her, claws flexing in perfect mirror of its mistress.

  "Nyah," she maddeningly continued. "I've been training too. Each life I shed now? Becomes a body. A golem. A twin. And I've got plenty more where that came from. Thanks to you." Biscuit gestured to the other shards surrounding them. Mina's heart thundered when they twitched.

  So she grit her teeth, forcing her breathing steady, but her gut twisted. Nine layers. Which meant potentially nine of these things.

  Biscuit tilted her head, mockery in every flick of her whiskers. "You're not fighting just me anymore. You're fighting an army. And the best part? They don't feel pain. They don't get tired. But you…" her gaze lingered on the particles running down Mina's side, "…you—you're already leaking."

  She crouched, muscles taut, and the doppleganger hissed in sync beside her.

  Mina rolled her shoulder, ignoring the pain as much as she could. Her grip on the kanabo tightened, spikes pulsing as though hungry for payback.

  "Army, huh?" She spat particles into the mud, lips curling into a savage grin. "Good. That means more of you for me to break. I'll smash your fake faces one by one—then drag the real you out and finish the job."

  The doppleganger twitched, ready to spring. Biscuit chuckled low in her throat, all feline cruelty.

  "Let's see if that big talk holds up… when you're surrounded by your own failure." The next strike came without warning, two Biscuits leaping at Mina from opposite sides, claws flashing.