The Extra's Rise

Arthur's azure eyes tracked Tiamat the way a swordsman checks ranges and angles. Then his lips curved. The glint in his gaze said he'd found what he expected.

'As expected.'

He couldn't read her exact rank, but he didn't need to. The weight of her presence put her near the same shelf as Alyssara and his mother. Months ago, Alyssara had shut him down in seconds during the banquet. Tiamat felt at least that strong—and likely far beyond.

"How daring," Tiamat said, smiling. "To try and measure me like blade length."

'Good. Then I don't have to hold back.'

He moved.

Space tightened around his arm. Time thinned. Gravity tipped forward so nothing leaked to the floor. His "punch" was a blade—Sword Unity wrapped from shoulder to knuckle, his sword's edge bound to his fist. The strike arrived as a needlepoint collapse of distance.

Tiamat caught it.

No boom. No crack. The force went into her palm and did not come back out.

"Get serious," she murmured, eyes narrowing a shade.

The Crown of Twilight formed above Arthur's brow: a quiet ring of Grey, the sign that Mythweaver, Lucent Harmony, Soul Resonance, and Sword Unity were moving as one. His breath leveled. His thoughts clicked into gear.

Hollow Eclipse came down through Valeria—pure power. All elements braided tight, with Deepdark as weight in the core, now sharpened with a thread of Grey to keep the line clean. The cut fell like a horizon.

Tiamat met it with a simple fist. The astral sheath of Hollow Eclipse unraveled on contact. The edge touched scale and found no purchase.

'Alright. Power alone won't do it.'

He slipped into Tempest Dance Technique. Wind cushioned his steps, lightning primed his tendons, water gave glide, fire sharpened lines, ice locked angles at the finish. Spectral Sword painted after-blades around his real one—shadows anchored to good angles so the mind had to respect them.

He flowed into CQC.

Arc Hook Spiral drew a guard by a hair; Ground Reversal Stomp twisted the local pull so his follow-up arrived from the "wrong" side; Phantom Step Knee appeared in a pocket people don't catalog as forward; Flicker Palm reset inertia; the one-inch punch snapped momentum through bone and steel as one; the zero-inch punch detonated that momentum without travel.

A fingertip from Tiamat met his knuckles and turned the argument off like a switch.

'She's deciding the frame, not just meeting it.'

"Not bad," Tiamat said. Her tone was teacher-warm, not mocking. "Show me your new language."

He obliged.

God Flash—pure speed in Purelight—cut frames out of the world. He didn't shout the name; he enacted it. Absolute refined it so every slice was a single correct answer. Singularity narrowed it to a single line.

The sword whispered. Spectral Sword laid believable futures over his real path. Lucent Harmony filled the cuts with truth—wind to carry, fire to eat resistance, water to slip around guards, lightning to force terminal speed, ice to hold the gain. Mythweaver wrote small notes at the edges: this claw passes where I was; this scale turns into an angle that favors my inside line.

Tiamat breathed once. Not a beam, not a roar. Just a shift that told the room to stand firm. The God Flash line, "inevitable" a second ago, found polite resistance. Arthur slid off it by choice, stitched along her shadow, and stabbed for the hinge a lesser dragon would raise late.

She didn't raise it late.

A wrist moved. His blade rang against an axis he hadn't known he'd made. He let the data teach him and adjusted.

'See more.'

Soul Resonance answered. He didn't need to steal from Luna; he was bonded to her. Qilinification rose like a remembered blessing—Soul Vision opened at once, layering the world with intent and depth; Mythic Body set his motion ideas into motion facts with less cost. Over it, he added dragonification, the permission he took from Tiamat herself. Horn-shadow shimmered at his temples. A thin net of spectral scales slid under the skin. His senses stepped up a rung: motion had weight; sound had shape.

Pond of Tranquility touched the floor—the tip of his sword kissed crystal—and a calm circle spread. In that ring, incoming force lost bite. A tail sweep that would have folded a fortress turned to a heavy breeze at the edge of his coat. The Pond did not last long; it did not have to. It bought him a breath of perfect balance.

He spent it.

Stellar Cascade lit the sky of the lair with a barrage of cuts like falling stars. He placed them with God Flash speed, not to overwhelm Tiamat, but to load the field—deny the best counters, force footwork choices, create one clean thread.

Tiamat moved through the storm without hurry. A wrist here, a shoulder there, a step that canceled three threats at once.

"Better," she said, and now there was a thin line of respect in her voice.

Arthur called help.

Erebus stepped from the quiet corner of the world. The Lich King wore a crown of alien bone and robes that seemed to drink light. He lifted a scepter covered in old letters.

"Lord," he intoned, voice like dry parchment ripped slowly.

"The dead here are not to be touched," Arthur said, sliding under a claw and answering with a short hook to shift balance. "Use memory."

The Necropolis of Forbidden Wisdom: Unity unfolded. No corpses. No theft. An ossuary of thought took shape—rib-pillars of bone script, vaulted runes singing in low harmony. Choirs assembled: skulls full of letters and music, jawbones clicking counterpoint. The Oblivion Choir began the Null-Cant, a song that lowered available ambient energy by a careful margin without defying the lair. Cenotaph Engines—bone machines—spun up to convert waste motion into stored force he could call back. A Phylactery Meridian traced itself over Arthur's sternum, a symbolic organ to catch one fatal failure and hand it back as heat.

"Unity," Erebus said, approving his own evolution. Grey punctuation flickered at the domain's edges, binding it to Arthur's Crown rather than fighting it.

Tiamat watched the Domain with interest. The lair did not reject it; it negotiated it down a hair. The Null-Cant stayed, just softer.

Arthur pressed. Tempest Dance turned feet into runes on the floor. Spectral Sword stopped faking and started collating: whichever after-image Tiamat chose, the real edge met her there. CQC stitched inside the swordwork. The Pond's calm circle rose and fell on cue.

For a brief window, he made her move rather than simply stand.

She gave him that much and no more.

A light backhand came through two times at once. Arthur inverted gravity near his shoulder, let the force slide along him, and fed it into a Cenotaph Engine. He answered with a zero-inch punch that hid a slice inside the touch. Scales met edge; a tiny red thread appeared on her wrist. Not a wound. A suggestion.

"Creative," Tiamat said, glancing at Erebus's city of bone and back to Arthur. "Again."

They traded a hundred choices in a dozen seconds. Arthur's lungs stayed steady. His mind stayed quiet. He felt the limit of this line of attacks gathering.

'Power won't break her. Speed won't either. Then… something new.'

He let the Crown hum. Grey stirred somewhere deeper than muscle or mana.

It was time to try.