The rain struck at an angle.
It didn't fall — it slid through the air, shoved by the wind, turning the ground into an unstable mirror of thin mud and cold water.
The Pixys moved within it as if the terrain didn't exist.
They danced on it — long steps, useless spins, bodies tilted beyond what was necessary.
One twirled as if she were on a stage.
Another dragged herself backward through the mud, laughing, knife scraping the ground.
"Ohhh…" one of them crooned. "She doesn't even move."
"Old doll," another said, appearing on the right. "Think she sleeps with her eyes open?"
Brígida remained motionless.
The staff touched the ground lightly, as if it had no weight.
She watched the rhythm, not the bodies.
When the first Pixy advanced — a high, theatrical leap, blade coming down in an exaggerated arc — Brígida didn't dodge.
The strike stopped.
It found no resistance.
The air in front of her thickened, like invisible glass. The blade vibrated, trapped in nothing.
The Pixy's eyes widened — and she laughed.
"Ah! I caught something!"
Brígida tilted the staff slightly.
The pressure changed.
The Pixy's body was compressed, not thrown.
Bones cracked before she touched the ground.
The body broke at a wrong angle — and immediately began to re-form, flesh stitching itself together with wet snaps.
"That hurts," the Pixy sang from the ground. "But it's fun."
Two appeared behind her.
One slid low through the mud, blade ready.
The other came high, spinning, as if in a circus act.
Brígida took a step.
Just one.
The space behind her stretched.
The Pixys misjudged the distance.
The strike passed where she had been — and hit too much emptiness.
Brígida raised two fingers.
The air folded into invisible lines.
Cuts appeared on the Pixys' bodies as if blades had passed from the inside out. Not deep.
Precise.
Enough to interrupt movement.
They fell laughing.
"She cuts without touching!"
"Cheating!"
"I want to try again!"
Four bodies now.
Five.
Moving in irregular circles, attacking at wrong times, some pretending to miss just to provoke a response.
Brígida closed her eyes for a moment.
The staff sank slightly into the ground.
The rain stopped around her.
Not in the sky — only within a few meters.
The droplets hung suspended, trembling.
"Hm…" she murmured, her voice deep, tired, ancient. "You're persistent."
She lowered the staff.
The droplets fell all at once.
Each one carried weight.
The Pixys were slammed into the ground as if something invisible had decided the world now weighed more.
Mud surged up.
Bones gave way.
Bodies crushed — and rebuilt themselves moments later.
Laughter echoed.
"She's getting serious!"
"I liked that part!"
That was when Brígida felt it.
A deep displacement, like an ancient gear turning out of alignment.
It didn't come from the Pixys.
It came from beyond the plains.
She raised her gaze.
In the distance, the land gave way.
A section of structures collapsed inward, stones settling as if gravity had changed its mind for a second.
No explosion.
No flash.
Just structure failing.
Brígida breathed slowly.
"First… that obscure presence."
Pause.
"Now… this."
The Pixys hesitated. Looked.
Brief silence.
"Did someone else break the toy?" one of them asked, tilting her head.
Brígida planted the staff firmly.
The air around her stabilized — heavy, dense, implacable.
"It seems…" she said, unhurried, her voice low like ancient stone, "that I'll need to end this."
The Pixys smiled.
But none advanced immediately.
Because they understood.
The game still existed.
But Brígida… hadn't yet used even half of what she knew.
Brígida didn't advance.
She spun the staff.
Slow.
One complete turn.
The air responded before the light.
The space around her began to rotate — not like wind, but like organized pressure.
The rain lost direction.
Droplets were pulled into irregular orbits, tracing ever-tightening circles.
The Pixys tried to move.
They were pushed.
Not thrown — repositioned.
Bodies slid through the mud, dragged backward like leaves caught in an invisible whirlpool. They tried to advance laughing, but every step was returned with greater force.
"Oops…" one of them crooned, spinning unwillingly in place. "That wasn't in the rehearsal."
Brígida raised the staff.
Pointed it upward.
The sky did not respond.
The air did.
Spheres of fire began to form above her — small at first, unstable, spinning like embers caught in a current.
Then larger.
Dense. Silent.
There was no fury in them.
There was absolute control of temperature.
"You are not something that is killed…" Brígida said, her voice deep, ancient, unhurried. "You are something that is contained."
The Pixys laughed.
Some clapped.
"She speaks pretty!"
"Makes you almost want to die!"
"Or not die! Even better!"
The pressure increased.
Energy poured from Brígida's body in continuous waves, pushing everything around her.
The mud was swept away.
The Pixys were dragged farther out, feet losing contact with the ground, bodies spinning in the air like dolls caught in a current.
Brígida spoke again.
It was not a common tongue.
The words were Celtic, ancient, heavy with ritual weight — not a shout, not a command, a declaration:
"Anáil na tine, ceangal gan deireadh. Fan. Cas. Ná dóigh."
The spheres stabilized.
Brígida struck the staff against the ground.
Once.
The spheres began to fall.
Not like rain.
Like sentences.
The first hit the ground and opened into pure fire — not an explosion, not a flash.
Concentrated, absolute heat that bit into everything around it.
A Pixy was hit dead on.
The body was not thrown.
It was consumed.
The flame passed through flesh, bone, and shadow as if nothing there had enough density to resist.
The scream came mixed with laughter — distorted, broken, far too enthusiastic for someone being reduced to ash.
"AAAAH—!" she cackled. "NOW THAT'S HEAT!"
She came apart in the air, fragments burning before disappearing — and in the background, already beginning to re-form in another unstable shape.
Another sphere fell right behind.
Caught two at once.
One tried to leap.
Missed the timing.
Fire licked the legs, climbed the torso, tearing limbs away in the process.
The body spun in flames, still laughing, still clapping as it came apart.
"I'm melting!" she shouted. "Look at this!"
More spheres descended.
There was no pattern to escape.
Where they touched, the world lost permission to exist at that point.
The mud vitrified.
The air shimmered.
The rain evaporated before falling.
The Pixys ran, spun, slammed into one another — some trying to attack even as they burned, blades falling from hands that were no longer there.
One charged Brígida, half her body in flames, face melted into a smile far too wide.
"Let me hug you—"
The pressure increased.
She was crushed in the air before she could get close, the fire collapsing along with the body.
Brígida did not move.
Did not accelerate.
Did not change her rhythm.
The spheres kept falling until the field was filled with burning, rebuilding bodies, fire competing with regeneration, pain blending with pleasure.
Laughter.
Screams.
Applause.
"This is great!"
"Again!"
"Burn more!"
Brígida watched.
Not with coldness.
With evaluation.
Bodies burned, came apart, and returned.
Fire fought for space with regeneration, and the entire field pulsed like a wounded organism that refused to die.
Then she saw it.
Not the body.
The rhythm.
Between the overlapping laughter, between forms reassembling too quickly, there was a point where blood always fell first.
Where multiplication organized itself before becoming chaos.
Brígida lifted her gaze.
Amber eyes fixed on a Pixy who remained still for a second longer than normal, blade lowered, fingers still smeared with fresh blood.
"…finally," she said, low.
The Pixy tilted her head.
Smiled.
"Found me?"
"Took longer than I expected," Brígida said, without raising her voice.
She raised the staff.
Slowly.
The air above the Pixy contracted.
A sphere of fire began to form directly over her head — silent, dense, spinning in on itself like a contained sun.
The heat there did not waver.
Did not tremble.
Did not leak.
It was a suspended full stop.
The real Pixy opened her arms, theatrical.
"Hehehe…" she spun in place, kicking mud. "Is this for me? I'm flattered~"
Brígida brought the staff down.
One single gesture.
The sphere fell.
Not in explosion.
In weight.
The impact met fire and rain at the same time.
The Pixy was swallowed whole — the body taken in an instant, limbs dissolving, the smile melting without disappearing.
She laughed as she burned.
"Aaaah~!" her voice faltered, but not the tone. "You're learning how to play with me~"
Steam rose instantly — thick, white, violent — swallowing the Pixys, the ground, the air, erasing shape and sound.
Screams echoed inside the mist.
Laughter too.
Some stopped far too quickly.
Others continued, distorted.
The fire did not seek flesh.
It burned excess energy.
The vapor took everything.
For a brief moment, there was no plain.
No bodies.
No game.
Then—
A voice cut through the fog.
Sweet.
Low.
Venomously calm.
"I expected nothing less…" it said. "From a Celtic priestess."
The vapor began to dissipate.
Slowly.
The figure emerged first as presence.
Then as form.
The skin was too pale, too smooth — not alive, not dead.
The eyes, black and deep, did not reflect light. They absorbed it.
Long, dark hair fell heavy over the shoulders, as if night itself had chosen a body.
Behind her, fire still burned in isolated points.
"Big sis!" the voice chimed, cheerful, almost childish.
A Pixy reappeared, intact, throwing herself against the figure and wrapping her in an exaggerated hug, smeared with mud, dried blood, and joy.
"You ruined everything!" she complained, laughing. "Didn't even give me time to use that thing~"
The figure raised a hand.
Fingers slid through the Pixy's hair in a slow, almost maternal caress.
"That's enough," she said, sweetly. "It was dangerous enough already."
The Pixy pouted, theatrical.
"Aaaah…" she sighed. "Okay…"
She stepped back a little, still smiling, and looked at Brígida.
Neon-pink eyes gleamed.
"Hm~" she murmured, satisfied. "I liked that."
The smile widened, crooked, almost proud.
"We play again some other time, okay?"
Brígida didn't answer.
But the air around her grew a little heavier.
The mist fully cleared.
The devastated field remained.
For a moment, there was only the distant sound of rain resuming its natural course.
"It was always like this, wasn't it?" the voice said, far too sweet to be honest. "Women who listen to ancient things… end up meeting at the end."
Brígida did not change her stance.
She merely adjusted the staff's pressure against the ground.
"Funny to hear that from a being like you," she said, her voice deep, rough, dragging the words like stone against stone. "To me… it always sounded different."
The staff pressed into the ground a little more.
"Like a curse."
For a moment, the figure only stared at her.
Then a minimal smile appeared on her lips.
There was no humor in it.
Something in that smile made it clear this hadn't been an encounter.
It had been a recognition.