Sivir had always enjoyed a difficult hunt.
She enjoyed measuring an opponent, finding the flaw they thought they had hidden, then driving a blade through it.
This was different, the pleasure rushing through her now was too intense. Every time the Chalicar cut through Xerath's golden body, something inside her surged with savage satisfaction. Her pulse thundered in her ears. Her sharpened senses tracked every shift in his power, every movement of his hands, every flicker that announced where his next attack would appear.
She did not merely want to defeat him.
She wanted to chase him down, tear him apart, and feel him break beneath her claws.
Sivir smiled.
Xerath raised both arms. Golden energy gathered between his palms before splitting into a dozen burning spheres.
"Come, Setaka," he said. "Show me whether you still deserve your old reputation."
The name struck harder than any spell.
"I'm not Setaka."
Xerath hurled the spheres.
Sivir moved before she had consciously decided how.
Her body twisted sideways in the air. The first blast passed beneath her ribs. She planted one clawed foot against the second sphere as though it were solid ground, pushed off it, and spun over a third.
That was not one of her moves.
No mercenary had taught her to leap like that. No battlefield had forced her to develop such an instinct. She had moved like a great cat springing between falling stones, perfectly balanced, entirely certain of where every limb belonged.
The Chalicar turned in her hand.
She threw it.
The crossblade sliced through three spheres in quick succession. Each one burst behind it, and the resulting explosions sent waves of golden fire rolling across the sky.
Xerath vanished before the weapon reached him.
Sivir's head snapped toward the right.
Again, she knew where he would appear before she saw him.
Xerath emerged from a flash of light with one arm already extended. A beam struck Sivir across the shoulder and sent her tumbling through the smoke. Pain tore through her, but her body corrected itself in midair. She landed on all fours atop a broken tower, claws digging through stone.
Her lips pulled back from longer, sharper teeth.
Xerath looked down at her.
Sivir caught the returning Chalicar without looking.
She launched herself from the tower.
Xerath met her head-on.
The Chalicar collided with his arm, and the impact flattened what remained of the structure below them. Sivir struck again, forcing him backward, but Xerath caught the weapon's outer ring and released a surge of energy through it.
The blast threw Sivir across the sky.
She recovered quickly, but Xerath was already there. His fist struck her stomach, and a second discharge exploded at point-blank range. Sivir crashed through the side of a ruined building, tore through several floors, and emerged from the opposite wall in a storm of shattered stone.
She threw the Chalicar while still falling.
Xerath tilted his body, allowing the weapon to pass beside him, but Sivir pulled one hand sharply backward.
The Chalicar changed direction.
Its edge struck Xerath between the shoulders and carved a glowing line across his back.
He turned with a roar, seized the weapon, and tried to wrench it away from her control.
Sivir felt the Chalicar resist him.
Not physically. The weapon itself rejected his grip. Its power flowed toward Sivir, and for a moment she could sense every engraved line along its surface, every weight shift, every possible angle of attack.
The Chalicar had never felt so natural in her hand.
It no longer seemed like a weapon she carried.
It felt like part of her.
Sivir pulled, and the crossblade tore free from Xerath's grasp. She caught it and slashed across his chest.
Golden fragments flew from his body.
Xerath answered by driving both palms against the center of the Chalicar. Power erupted between them.
They were thrown apart.
For several seconds, neither gained ground.
Sivir rushed him from below, moving too quickly for the human eye to follow. Xerath covered the sky with bolts of golden lightning. She slipped between them, deflected one with the Chalicar, then hurled the weapon through his waist.
Xerath split into streams of energy and reformed behind her.
His attack struck the back of her head.
Sivir fell, recovered, and climbed again.
She cut him.
He blasted her.
She forced him across the city, and he buried her beneath a collapsing archway. She emerged before he could finish charging his next spell and drove both feet into his chest.
The fight remained balanced, but only for a while.
Xerath stopped trying to follow Sivir's movements and began attacking the places she would need to pass through. He filled the open sky with intersecting lines of energy, limiting her paths. When she descended, he destroyed the ground beneath her. When she moved higher, he created spheres of golden power above her and forced her back down.
Sivir felt the pattern closing around her.
She threw the Chalicar, but Xerath struck it aside with a beam.
Before it could return, another blast hit Sivir's thigh.
Her leg went numb.
Xerath appeared above her and brought both hands down. A column of power drove her into the street. The impact opened a crater beneath her and blasted sand through every nearby alley.
Sivir pushed herself up.
Xerath fired again.
She crossed her arms, and the blast carried her through the remains of a stone wall.
The golden power covering his body had grown brighter. Cracks that Sivir had carved into him closed almost immediately, filled by the energy pouring through him from whatever bargain he had made with Xineos.
Her own strength, meanwhile, did not feel endless.
The strange Ascended power inside her still burned fiercely, but it had begun to fluctuate. For one heartbeat it flooded every muscle. In the next, it withdrew, leaving her limbs heavier.
Xerath noticed.
"Setaka failed against the Void," he said. "Now she fails against me."
Sivir rose from the rubble with blood on her lips.
"Call me that again."
Xerath spread his arms.
The sky above him turned gold.
Energy gathered from every direction, flowing into a single point between his hands. The light became so intense that Sivir could barely see his shape behind it. Broken stones rose from the ground. The remaining walls around them cracked beneath the pressure.
"You are Setaka," Xerath said. "A weaker shadow of her, perhaps, but hers all the same."
He fired.
The beam was wider than the street.
Sivir could not dodge it. There was no safe direction, no opening to exploit. The attack consumed everything between them, erasing buildings and melting the ground as it approached.
She raised one hand.
A translucent barrier formed around her.
The golden beam struck the Spell Shield and stopped.
For a moment, Sivir felt the full power of the attack pressing against her. It should have crushed her. Instead, the barrier drank it in. Golden energy spread across its curved surface, flowed toward her arm, and entered her body.
The pain in her shoulder disappeared.
Strength rushed back into her numb leg.
Her eyes widened as Xerath's power became hers.
Then Sivir roared.
The sound was not entirely human. It carried across the destroyed city like the cry of a hunting beast, sharp enough to make the air tremble.
Power surged outward from her body.
Sivir moved.
Xerath barely raised an arm before the Chalicar struck him. The blade opened his chest, returned, and cut through his side. Sivir caught it, crossed behind him, and attacked again before the first golden fragments had begun to fall.
Xerath tried to retreat.
She stayed with him.
He vanished into light. Sivir followed the trail of energy and reached his destination first.
Her clawed hand closed around his throat the instant he reappeared.
She drove him through a tower.
Xerath blasted her away, but she twisted through the explosion and threw the Chalicar. It struck his arm, ricocheted from a broken column, then returned from another angle and sliced through his shoulder.
Xerath released a wave of power in every direction.
Sivir leaped over it, folded her body forward, and landed on his chest with both feet. Her claws dug into the golden surface. She tore them downward as she jumped away.
For the first time since his transformation, Xerath looked overwhelmed.
Sivir pursued him through the air. The Chalicar moved so quickly between them that its separate rotations became a continuous ring of light. Every time Xerath tried to gather energy, Sivir struck his hands. When he attempted to create distance, she appeared beside him and forced him back.
The hunt filled her with exhilaration.
She could hear his power weakening.
She could smell the scorched magic leaking from the cracks in his body.
She knew where to strike next.
That knowledge did not belong to her, but she used it anyway.
The Chalicar cut through Xerath's chest and sent him spinning. Sivir caught the weapon, accelerated past him, then turned in the air and placed its edge against his neck.
"Stop calling me Setaka!"
Sivir pressed the blade deeper.
She pulled the Chalicar back to deliver the final strike.
The strength left her arm.
Sivir froze.
The golden markings across her skin began to fade. Her sharpened hearing dulled. The city's distant sounds vanished one after another, and the world suddenly seemed slow, quiet, and painfully limited.
Her claws shortened.
Her tail disappeared.
Her balance shifted.
The Chalicar became heavy.
Xerath grabbed it.
Sivir tried to pull back, but her human strength had returned too quickly. Xerath tore the weapon from her hands and struck her across the chest with its flat edge.
She flew backward.
The last of her feline features disappeared as she fell, except for the claws on one hand. Her body refused to correct itself this time. She turned helplessly through the air, the ruined city spinning beneath her.
Xerath watched from above, holding the Chalicar.
Sivir was still falling when a ribbon of stone rose from a distant rooftop. Taliyah rode it into the air, but she was too far away to reach Sivir in time.
The swordsman beside her jumped.
He crossed the distance with impossible speed, caught Sivir around the waist, then landed on the moving stone as Taliyah guided it back toward the ground.
The landing drove pain through Sivir's ribs.
She pushed the swordsman's arm away and forced herself upright.
Above them, Xerath examined the Chalicar.
"You were right," he said. "You are not Setaka. You are worse."
His fingers tightened around the weapon.
"The bitch is not merely the successor to Setaka's blade. She is also descended from Azir's wretched bloodline."
Sivir spat blood onto the sand.
...
A familiar voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere.
"Xerath. You possess the Chalicar. Proceed to Mount Targon."
Xineos.
Xerath turned his gaze toward Sivir.
"Not yet. These worthless creatures still require punishment."
He rose higher into the sky and lifted one hand. Golden power gathered above his palm, growing into a blazing mass that cast long shadows across the ruins.
Sivir looked at Taliyah and the swordsman.
"Move away from me," she said. "Or he'll erase you with me."
The swordsman drew his blade.
"My honor does not permit that."
Sivir stared at him.
"Then your honor is going to get you killed."
Taliyah did not answer. She was looking at the ground with a confused expression. Her fingers moved, but the sand around them remained still.
"I can't control it," she murmured.
"What?"
"The earth. The sand nearby. Something else is holding it."
Sivir felt it then.
A strange pressure moved beneath them. It was not the wild shifting of ordinary desert sand. This had direction. Discipline. Thousands of grains pressed together with a single purpose.
Above them, Xerath released the attack.
The golden beam descended.
The ground erupted.
...
Rows of shield-bearing warriors rose from the sand in front of Sivir. More appeared behind the first line, then more behind them, forming a deep wall of bodies, shields, and raised spears.
The beam struck.
The first row shattered.
The second held for half a heartbeat before breaking apart.
More warriors replaced them as quickly as they fell. Sand rushed upward, rebuilding shields and bodies while the beam burned through them. The air filled with glowing dust, but the wall remained between Sivir and the attack.
When the light finally faded, dozens of warriors still stood.
Sivir could only stare.
Xerath shook with fury.
"AZIR!"
His voice rolled across the city.
"I will kill you!"
"Withdraw," Xineos repeated. "You have what is required."
"I have nothing I want until Azir is dead," Xerath snarled, "and his whore descendant dies with him!"
The golden power surrounding Xerath flickered.
He looked down at his hands.
The light began to drain from his body.
Xineos spoke again, his tone almost amused.
"Do you believe you can defeat Azir and his allies without my power?"
...
Xerath remained motionless for several seconds.
His blazing eyes fixed on Sivir, and the air around him trembled with hatred. His fingers closed around the Chalicar so violently that golden sparks burst from its edges. Sivir could see that he wanted to descend, tear through every sand warrior between them, and finish her with Setaka's own weapon. The thought of Azir protecting her seemed to enrage him even more than his fading power.
"Azir's blood has always mistaken stolen protection for strength."
The warriors below raised their shields, ready for another attack. Xerath lifted one hand, but the golden light around his fingers sputtered and vanished. His arm shook.
His gaze shifted toward the river, where more sand was beginning to rise.
Azir was coming.
Xerath's entire body flared with furious blue light.
"I should have exterminated your entire bloodline when I had the chance!" he roared. "Every worthless remnant that still carries his name!"
He looked at the Chalicar in his hands, then back at Sivir. The weapon was his prize, but there was no satisfaction in his expression. Taking it was not enough. Escaping with it was not victory, not while Sivir still breathed and Azir still stood against him.
For one final moment, Xerath hovered there, trapped between his hatred and the humiliating certainty that he could no longer act on it.
Then the approaching sand warriors hurled their spears.
Xerath released a furious blast that shattered the first volley, turned away, and became a streak of blue and fading gold. He fled from the city with the Chalicar pressed tightly against his body, moving quickly not from fear, but from the unbearable frustration of being forced to leave both Sivir and Azir alive.
...
Several of the sand warriors immediately broke from the defensive formation and raced after him.
Sivir watched them go, furious at how easily Xerath had taken her weapon, but another movement caught her attention.
Figures were crossing the river in the distance.
More warriors marched over the water as sand rose beneath their feet, creating a moving path from the opposite bank. At their center walked Azir, his staff in one hand and his gaze fixed on Xerath's retreating form.
He sent another group after the fleeing Magus, then continued toward the ruins.
The remaining warriors parted for him.
...
Azir stopped in front of Sivir.
Taliyah lowered her head respectfully. The swordsman watched in silence.
Sivir did neither.
She was exhausted, bleeding, and still trying to understand why one of her hands had not fully returned to normal. Short feline claws remained at the tips of her fingers.
Azir saw them.
Without asking permission, he took Sivir by the arm and raised her hand. He turned it slightly, examining the claws and the fading traces of gold beneath her skin.
Sivir almost pulled away, but something in his expression stopped her.
It was recognition.
"So you nearly Ascended," Azir said, "though not in the proper way."
His eyes met hers.
"Do you still doubt your destiny, Sivir?"