Unholy Player

Lightning cracked across the void while the serpent's horrifying hiss climbed between the rolling booms, and the spectators, caught between terror and exhilaration, held their breath as the raw clash of power lit their faces and set every nerve on edge; the smell of hot ozone hung around them, and the light strobed hard enough to leave pale ghosts in their eyes.

"Hahaha, look at our Lady fighting a Rank 4 Spark alone," the Lunari Practitioners shouted, triumph swelling as they flaunted their pride before the other races. A Rank 3 Practitioner challenging a Rank 4 and seeming to hold the upper hand was the kind of story they would repeat for generations, polished a little brighter each time.

Across from them, the Gorathim did not answer. Astonishment was plain, yet pride kept them steady, and every gaze fixed on Brakhtar's second head, which now sat beside the first as if it had always belonged there.

Reverence and worship replaced shock; when he began to rise, they went to their knees one by one to honor the ancestral bloodline, fists pressed to chests and eyes lowered.

Thalira drew her focus from the serpent, still hammered by the lightning soldiers while its hiss rattled the void, and she turned to the two-headed ogre.

"Brakhtar, how do you feel?" Curiosity edged her tone; she sensed no obvious swell in his presence, no clean surge of power rolling off him, yet the fact of that second head told her he had gained something immense, perhaps a deeper change in structure rather than a flare she could read.

"How…" one head said at last, the word hanging until the other completed it, "do I feel?" Both faces frowned together, as if one thought had split and could not find its seam.

From the flank, Loudbark leaned closer and whispered, surprise and curiosity tangled in his voice, "Does he have two brains, or two heads sharing one?" The question might have landed like an insult if not for the unguarded honesty on his face; even his ears seemed to tilt, caught between wonder and worry.

Thalira raised a brow, meeting the same concern with a cool, narrow look. "Are you with us? Can you fight?"

Brakhtar paused again, both heads turning as if mapping the world anew, the way a newborn tests light and distance. "Can I…" one began, and the other finished, "fight?"

A heavy quiet spread; only the crack of detonations from the lightning soldiers and the Serpent's relentless hiss moved through the emptiness.

"Be ready to run on my signal," Maruun told the mixed-race fighters beside him, voice low and tight, eyes never leaving the field.

They had waited because they believed Brakhtar's new power might turn the course, but watching him drift in that vacant hesitation made the gamble look thin, the kind of bet that cost lives and returned nothing but regret. Hands tightened on grips and straps, and a few shoulders angled subtly toward retreat without taking a single step.

Then, in the next second, he changed his mind as Brakhtar spoke again.

''I am Brakhtar Gorat, the future Chief of the Gorathim." Both mouths spoke in perfect sync as focus returned to his eyes and confusion fell away like a shed skin, and a steady, resolved confidence settled over both faces.

"Thalira of the Lunari," one head said, fixing on her with a direct, unblinking attention, while the other held the Serpent's coiled mass in its gaze, measuring angles and distance with a hunter's patience. "I will pin it down, so you strike." The promise had weight, not because it was shouted, but because it arrived already tied to a plan.

"Okay," Thalira answered, the single word carrying a quiet calculus of risk and possibility.

She was not entirely convinced, yet she chose to see what he would do, because he had not said he would try; he had spoken in the plain language of certainty, and that alone made her want to witness the power he was about to show.

Brakhtar moved, yet it was not his body that moved. The void itself seemed to stir around him, as if the empty air had woken and taken his side.

From that stirring, two translucent extensions unfurled and reached for the Rank 4 Serpent. They lengthened like slow-growing glass, faint at first, then sharpening into clear contours until their shape was undeniable.

"Hands," someone whispered, and the word rippled through the watching ranks.

They were not truly physical, yet they were not a trick of sight either.

They hovered at the edge of reality, as if drawn from a deeper layer of the world and pressed against the surface.

When those colossal fingers closed around the Serpent, every breath on the field seemed to pause. The creature that had been writhing in violent spasms went rigid within the grip. Its tongue, moments ago lashing with a knife-edged hiss, sagged and fell still.

The restraint resembled Brakhtar's earlier attempt, but the difference in force was immediate. There was no tremor in his stance now, no visible strain in his shoulders or jaw. He guided the unseen ligaments with quiet precision, and the Serpent shuddered as if caught between millstones.

CRACK!

A sharp report broke the silence.

Crack upon crack ran across the metallic black scales. The translucent hands tightened with invisible weight, and the armored plates began to split, the serpent's length bowing under pressure that the eye could not measure.

Gasps once again scattered through the Practitioners like thrown pebbles.

"It's unbelievable," someone managed. "He is damaging a Rank 4 Spark."

Even Thalira, escalating far beyond the limits of a Rank 3, had not scored a visible wound before this moment. Under Brakhtar's hold, the difference in power became plain. The Serpent was pinned, its motion smothered, and its armor was failing.

Thalira didn't sit still; she seized the opening.

She turned, reading the stillness as an invitation, and called to the storm. Electric currents peeled out of the air and gathered around her like returning soldiers, a hundred, then hundreds more, each a thread of living thunder.

This time, she did not cast them forward. At her command, "Gather," the legion broke formation and flowed into her, a flood of light drawn into a single vessel.

Power rose through her frame in waves. Her body was lit with a harsh, clean glare, the kind that burns at the edge of vision. Silver hair rose under the buildup, each strand buzzing with static. In her eyes, narrow rivers of light began to course outward, sparks biting the air.

The watchers felt the shift and held themselves still, as if sudden movement might trigger the strike.

She moved the instant the charge reached its peak.

The void where she stood released a deep thunderclap, and she became a line of quicksilver cutting through the space between heartbeats.

Her path kinked and zigzagged with predatory precision, each angle a decision made at the speed of light, each turn bringing her closer to the Serpent's skull clamped within those unseen hands.

Only a single silver trace marked the moment of contact. Then the line resolved into consequence.

A deep cut opened across the Serpent's massive head, clean and unforgiving, its edges sparking as residual currents crawled along broken scale. Dark blood surged upward in a fountain and scattered through the void in heavy drops, each one haloed by fading arcs.

In that moment, for the first time since this began, everyone felt a new possibility: these two might actually subdue a Rank 4 Spark.