Mimi visited Karlyle in the waiting room for a few minutes but now he was alone in it; he inspected his opponents and located his enemy for this round. Emma Ford. Her blonde hair was tied back into a loose braid which rested on her shoulder. She wore a simple outfit: jeans and a t-shirt. In fact, almost everyone had casual clothes on. Karlyle continued to stare closely at her until she noticed him looking; being caught caused him to snap out of it and turn away.
"Hey! What are you looking at?"
Her confrontation grabbed the attention of the other participants and she walked over to Karlyle. The steps she took thundered throughout the room.
"Uh nothing, sorry. I was just zoned out."
"You better have been. Aren't you Karlyle?"
"Yeah, I am."
"Then I'll make sure you suffer in this round, even if you manage to win."
Ending off with that threat, Emma walked away back to the area that she designated for herself. In fact, every tourney member in this waiting room occupied a spot each time they were gathered there. Karlyle always sat on the same bench that came out from the wall or stood somewhere around it.
Her threat wasn't a bluff either. Earlier during their training session, Mimi told Karlyle how Emma, like him, still hasn't lost a round. But, unlike Karlyle, she didn't struggle to win a single one. Then again, her opponents didn't have things that could counter her but neither did Karlyle.
'She's harsh...'
Karlyle spoke to himself in his head, unwilling to get caught up in another verbal confrontation with Emma; otherwise, the battle would be settled before it even started. There's nothing he hated more than direct confrontation with someone like Emma, with someone like Mimi or Foster it'd be alright but otherwise...
The beginning sequence started and every participant was placed in their respective arena. Karlyle, placed facing Emma, looked up at the scoreboard and saw their 2-point tie. Apart from the other person Karlyle still hasn't fought yet, it was guaranteed that this fight would be a major deciding point for the judges. After all, the winner would have 3/4 won fights.
"Five."
The announcer started the countdown and, as a result, Emma and Karlye readied their stances. Deciding not to use the sword, Karlyle's set his hands aflame after wrapping the bandanna around his mouth and nose. Emma's fingertips darkened and the smoke became apparent.
"Go!"
The smoke on each fingertip shot towards Karlyle like a bullet but its movement pattern resembled that of a tentacle or a serpent. Karlyle's fires mimicked the tendrils and clasped against them. It was like watching two squids fight over a piece of food. Sometimes, the black and starry smoke cut through its fiery opponent but other times it succumbed to the high temperatures.
"Damn, is this how it's gonna go?"
Karlyle spoke to himself as the rumble of the fight for dominion made it hard for Emma to hear him or vice versa. Pouring out every bit of fire he could, Karlyle's fiery tentacles started to overpower Emma's tendrils.
However, he missed one thing.
"AHHHH- mgmhmgmhgm."
His neck and mouth were covered by one of Emma's tendrils that snuck its way around without Karlyle noticing. The gas mask's effect instantly kicked in and cleansed the air that entered Karlyle's system, but it was still hard to breathe with the dense smoke in the way.
"What's that? I don't understand you."
Karlyle was left thunderstruck by Emma's unappreciated remark.
Breathing weakly diminished his energy and the fires thinned, leading to Emma's tendrils winning their battle. Karlyle released fires randomly and the tentacles reacted as if they could feel the burn. One tried to pierce through the mask so it charged directly at it, but the mask filtered it out of the air and also allowed Karlyle to come back with a counterattack: he breathed fire out of his mouth like the wyvern he fought previously.
Once the flames coming from his mouth ceased, Karlyle summoned his fiery sword and it cut through the main tendril that wrapped around his body. Emma reacted to the cut as if she felt it herself. Karlyle promptly took the sword back into its ring.
"Is that a limitation?"
To test his theory, Karlyle doused an entire tendril in flames and saw Emma shriek in pain. Although not a giant reaction, it was still a significant advantage. Jumping into the air and spinning his leg, Karlyle released a vertical crescent of fire that flew towards Emma.
To protect herself, Emma forced a pair of tendrils to take the hit for her. The slash pierced through them but extinguished before it could reach her. Again, she felt a minimal version of the pain the tendrils felt.
"Blunt force only, pain, unable to do anything if I wear a gas mask... my collection of advantages is rising."
For the first part, Karlyle forgot he couldn't achieve sharpness with his fires either, nor could he use as much blunt force. All he could do was burn things or push them around. Nevertheless, he used that to his advantaged and matched the movements of Emma's tendrils.
The mixture of orange and black in the area gave a mesmerising illumination to the bland arena. Faint orange hues, darkened in some areas by the black smoke, simulated the colours of golden hour.
Like two dancers performing a sacred routine, Karlyle's flames and Emma's starry smoke move in sync as if perfectly mirrored. When one moved up, so did the other; when one moved to the left, the opposite moved to the left; the two sides remained equal on the playing field.
"What is this..."
Both participants spoke the same phrase at the same time. Karlyle could only spew out his fires while Emma focused her control over the tentacles. Any time one tried to overpower the other, the one being overpowered rose as well and tried to overpower the previous one. The endless loop continued on with the two humans moving around the arena.
The aggressiveness of the movements increased over time until the clashes between the two sides generated minor shockwaves that echoed through the arena. Speeding up, it was now about who had the shortest reaction time. The first to not catch just one attack would be the one losing.
One of Emma's tentacles tried to sneak behind Karlyle once more, but this time Karlyle caught it and set it aflame. After that, Karlyle tried to force a merged tentacle of fire through the dense crowd of smokey tendrils, but it failed as they wrapped around the large fiery tentacle and cut off its oxygen supply.
"How long is this going to go on for?"
Karlyle was lucky enough to be blessed with a minor limitation, unlike Emma. His ability to summon high amounts of fires while consuming an unnoticeable amount of energy gave him a significant advantage, even if not in this fight particularly - but it did help him keep up with Emma, otherwise, he'd run out of fire by now.
"Hey, can you give up already before I burn you alive!?"
"NO! Didn't you already try this on that forcefield guy?!"
Karlyle was surprised to find out that Emma knew about that fight, then again why wouldn't she? He knew about her fights... somewhat.
"Yeah, and it worked!"
"Fair enough."
Emma spoke her last words at a normal volume meaning Karlyle didn't hear them, but he didn't care either way. He commanded his flames to rise and so they did, forming a magnificent wall that soon turned into a raging tsunami.
The powerful wave of fire moved towards Emma, burning all the tentacles in its way. To protect herself, she encircled her body in dozens of tendrils; the flames, however, almost burnt through her covering.
"Damn!"
Some sparks managed to land on Emma's skin, causing her to faintly shout in pain.
Once the wave dispersed and its flames extinguished, the covering burst out into a swarm of tendrils that shot towards Karlyle. With barely any time to react, he managed to fend off a few but the rest grabbed his body.
Trying to break out by releasing fire from his body didn't work as the tendrils kept wrapping around him and one another. There were most likely around 5 layers wrapped tightly against his body.
"I have had enough."
Emma spoke as she walked towards Karlyle who was unable to respond with a tendril covering his mouth, gnawing at his gas mask.
"You've been the most annoying... time-wasting... untrained... copycat of an opponent."
Between each remark, the tendrils tightened and Karlyle felt like his body was being crushed like an empty can. His limbs felt weak and he had little control over his movements anymore, sending him into a panicking frenzy.
The lack of oxygen, the covering of his ears and eyes, and the tightening of the tendrils sort of started to comfort Karlyle until it all disappeared into an endless void of darkness.