Sepra waited in the dark, cubic sand chamber that she was sent to in between rounds. That last fight had been rough. She had been focused on one thing since she came here, and that was growing stronger. Her whole life she had always been the strongest person she knew.
"Well… Kaos isn't really strong on his own, so he doesn't count I guess." she thought to herself.
Counting or not counting Kaos, she had always been the biggest fish in the pond, but the first day here she got beaten by someone in the arena. She was still the top of the first-years, but only that. There were so many people stronger than her in the Dek class, and most of them had weaker wishes than her too.
"I got all kinds of power, but some of these guys I can barely land a hit on!" She groaned to herself, flopping onto the dark, sandy ground.
She tilted her head up to see if there had been a change in the glowing sand on the wall, but it remained the same.
[AWAITING NEXT ROUND]
[BEST YOUR OPPONENT]
[TAKE THE THRONE]
"I'm good, but I'm not that good." She scoffed at the golden sand's last line of text, "I guess I never got kicked off the throne of first place until I came here."
[NEXT ROUND BEGINNING]
"But I'll have the throne back soon." She smiled to herself, gripping her skeletal hand, "I'm gonna get even stronger."
Then the sand catapulted her up to the surface of the arena.
She landed in a crouched position, quickly surveying her surroundings. She didn't immediately see her opponent, which worried her, but also made her realize the dueling ring was at least twice the size of the ones from rounds one and two. The ring looked like a forest of leafless trees. She took cover behind one cautiously, and noticed that it too was made of sandstone.
"Why can't it make everything out of candy or something?" She whispered to herself, letting her nerves slightly get the better of her before gritting her teeth and chanting to herself, "Focus! Focus! Focus! All I need is to grab em' once, and then I win."
She was back to her normal self, aside from being uncharacteristically cautious and tactical. She had always been down to try and brawl it out with her opponents, but she had been learning to respect the strength of the higher level students at Wondant.
She halted her breath, trying to hear something, but all she could hear was the cheers and noise from the arena crowd. "Kaos is probably watching." she thought to herself, darting from sandstone-tree to sandstone-tree, "If I'm not able to beat all these people, then there's no chance he could stay in the class."
She felt a little responsible for him making such a fruitless effort, after all, she was the one who first suggested it. Sure he had a bit of good combat sense, and enjoyed it, but the Dek class was different than anything either of them had experienced before. She realized how pessimistic her thinking was about Kaos's abilities, and whether it was truthful or untruthful, decided to try and view it in a more optimistic light.
"He may not have the wish for it," she thought, "but he's always had the brains for it… Who knows, he never tried this hard at anything before, so maybe he'll figure something out."
The idea of Kaos "figuring something out" seemed improbable, but she needed to focus on the moment right now. There it was. Her intent listening finally paid off, as she heard footsteps in the sand, leading up to a sand tree nearby.
She waited. It was dark out, and the few circles of glowing sand had been casting an eerie and ominous glow over everything in the small forest of sand. Her opponent stepped a little into view. He was wearing black pants and a black long sleeve shirt, which would have easily blended into the darkness if it wasn't for his pale skin.
He was still looking around, seeming to not notice her. Then he made the mistake of turning his back. While Sepra could have attempted to creep up behind him, she only had so much patience. He was still about fifteen feet away, and heard her coming, but she had closed the gap quite a bit. She lunged with her skeletal arm outstretched. He tried to twist out of reach, but she was still in range of his arm, and grasped at it.
She must have missed though, her grab seemed to go right through his arm. She rolled out of the fruitless dive, onto one knee, and eyed her opponent, hesitant to make the next move. Something wasn't right about this, he wasn't attacking and had assumed a defensive stance, even backing up a few feet. That would have been the perfect time to attack, and yet it was almost like he couldn't for some reason.
She didn't hear, see, or feel anything, but she instinctively spun around and swiped her skeletal arm behind her, causing another opponent to jump backwards slightly. No, she realized this was the same student she had just swiped at. The other one must have been fake somehow. There were even more of the clones, aimlessly wandering around the forest, having not been given any new instructions.
"These guys were all bait and I fell for it!" She grumbled under her breath, "But I got you now!"
She took a few more swings, and the way he reacted seemed quicker than the clones had been. This was definitely the real one. He was attempting to slash at her from a distance with his short sword, but they were fruitless, some she dodged, and others she completely blocked with her steel-like skeletal arm.
She was so busy pushing him back, she hadn't noticed the mob of clones closing in on her. They had ceased their zombie-like wandering, and had all begun walking directly towards the fighting.
It wasn't until there were five clones she saw closing in on her that she looked around and noticed many more. She took her focus off of the real one for a moment, and hopped towards a clone that was out of range of the others, quickly swiping at him to make sure it couldn't do anything to her.
Her opponent used this time to rush at her with his short sword raised overhead, ready to strike downwards. A blink of light came from his eyes as he swung down at her head, but her skeletal arm flashed up to meet his swing just in time, and managed to stop the blade by gripping him on the wrist.
No, she had been gripping his wrist, but only for a tenth of a second. Her grip tightened and she realized she was merely making a fist, and not holding onto an arm at all.
"You're fake!" she yelled at the clone, as if she expected a response from its lifeless eyes.
Then a short sword pierced her from behind. It was definitely a fatal hit, but she grabbed her opponent's wrist in a last ditch effort to save the fight. She fell to her knees, but so did he.
"You're pretty good." She coughed, trying to maintain her grip on his wrist, "You should've pulled the sword back out faster though. At this rate I might win this."
The student behind her collapsed onto the ground as well. She lost her grip on him, but then she realized that it was because her arm had turned to sand.
"Well… crap." she wheezed, right before her body disintegrated back into the arena floor.