Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users

"You've gotten faster," Elowen said.

"You've gotten heavier," Lilith answered, and there was no tease in it now, only clean approval.

They stood close enough that the light running through Elowen's veins touched the edge of Lilith's veil and made a small patch clear.

Through that clear window, each woman saw the other with nothing in the way—no tricks, no cover. The small smiles were still there.

"Enough warm-ups," Lilith said.

"Agreed," Elowen replied.

Together, without counting, they drew deep.

Lilith called every mirror in the sky, the ground, and the undersides of things and made them align into a single blade shaped like a horizon.

It spanned edge to edge and slid sideways with no sound at all.

Elowen called every root from the trunk, platform, river knots, and bones of the arena, twisting them into a single spear shaped like a question asked of the world.

It rose from the floor with the crack of spring ice breaking.

Blade met spear. The touch was gentle and still the floor tore. The platform peeled like bark. Space folded and refolded.

The arena shrieked. A crack ran past the seal and the void outside felt it, a small tremor like thunder far away.

The life tree caught Elowen as the ground gave under her toes, and the veil caught Lilith as the mirrors tried to slide apart.

The rivers went wild, then steadied, looping around trunk and cloak, holding where they could. The edges of the arena pulsed a warning—hold back or be expelled.

Neither held back. The warning dimmed, as if the place understood this was why it existed.

They hit again.

The mirrored armies rushed with the blade, part of the cut now. The roots rushed with the spear, part of the thrust.

The collision filled everything. Light and shadow ground together. Splinters of reflection lodged in bark and were swallowed.

Strands of living fiber threaded through Lilith's veil and did not come back out the same color. The arena bent into a bowl, then a ridge, then a bowl again.

When the brightness cleared, both still stood. Breathing steadier now, eyes brighter than before, smiles a little bigger. They had reached a place that mattered.

"Again," Lilith said, because she wanted to hear it.

"Again," Elowen said, because she liked the sound.

They pressed on, and the sealed world began to behave like a living thing in pain. Shards of mirror sky fell and did not fade this time.

They cut grooves into the root floor. Rivers of light crashed and left spray that turned into seeds, then short-lived vines, then ash.

The illusions Lilith birthed stopped being clean edges and became grit. They dragged across bark and left scars that healed slowly.

Elowen's growth stopped being only light and began to carry weight. Branches dropped like hammers. Their ends dented space itself before the dents smoothed out.

Lilith's laugh slid through the noise. "If you let those roots spread any farther, you'll drown the whole sector."

Elowen's hair shone brighter, caught up in a breeze that did not exist until she willed it. "And if you crack one more horizon, the void will fold in on itself. Tell me, Lilith—how far do you want to push this?"

Lilith's veil rippled. "Far enough to see what we are now," she said, and her voice was soft but honest. "Far enough that we do not lie to ourselves about it."

"Then do not lie," Elowen replied, and she lifted her hand.

The trunk behind her thickened. Bark split and healed in slow waves—new rings formed in a heartbeat.

Roots shot outward and no longer respected the platform's borders. They slid through the seams in the seal, not to break it but to test its edge.

The arena shuddered. Far below, one of the mountain roots shifted again. The rivers looped tighter, as if trying to hold the space shut.

Lilith answered by narrowing the fight to a single point and then exploding it outward like a star.

She braided mirrors into a knot so dense it looked like a bead of obsidian floating in the air, and then she let it unwind.

It unspooled into a corridor that had never existed. Step through, it promised, and you will reach me.

Every turn in the corridor showed a view of Elowen's tree, but each view was a half-second out of time with the one before it. A walk through it would pull any mind a little loose.

Elowen did not walk into it. She split one root point into a thousand filaments and sent them through the corridor like a sieve.

The corridor tried to slip, but the filaments did not chase. They filled every space until there was no space left to hold a trick, and the corridor collapsed into flakes like soot.

The flakes hit the floor and became ants of light, then crawled together into a coin. Lilith pinched the coin between two fingers and flicked it back into the sky, which swallowed it.

"Careful," Lilith said. "If you keep drawing like that, you will bruise the border."

"Bruises heal," Elowen said. "Sometimes they heal stronger."

The sealed world answered both by buckling. The mirrors stopped acting like a ceiling and started acting like loose water.

Sheets of reflection slid over each other. Where they overlapped, they birthed new scenes—the Director's office with its red web, the academy's gates, a courtyard where torches burned without smoke, a dorm room where the twins had fallen asleep in the wrong direction across a bed and left no space for anyone else.

Each scene carried a sound: pen on paper, boots on stone, soft breathing, laughter. Those sounds tried to sit on the fight like blankets thrown over a fire.

Elowen did not swat them away. She gave them places to sit that were not the fight. She grew shelves out of nothing and put the sounds there. This is yours, she told them, without words. Not here. Wait.

Lilith tilted her head, amused. "You organize even in war."

"Someone must," Elowen said.

The ground bucked again. Cracks raced out under their feet and lifted into ridges. The ridges slumped like dough and then hardened.