Maya didn’t move. Neither did Tanax.

“On my command ‘draw,’ you will draw and ignite your weapons,” the old Kyriliarch went on. “On my command ‘fight,’ the duel will commence. It will continue until one of you surrenders or is unable to continue. On my command ‘stop,’ you will cease fighting immediately.”

Sweat prickled across Maya’s forehead. Tanax’s hand clenched into a fist, then loosened.

“Very well,” Prodominus boomed. “Draw.”

Maya took hold of her haken, opening herself to deiat. The power ran through her, first in pinpricks of energy throughout her body, then as a steady flow. It felt like a mug of water after a week of thirst. In the years since Jaedia had given her her haken, Maya had never gone without touching its power for this long, and as it flooded into her she realized how hollow she’d felt without it.

She pushed a thread of the burgeoning energy into her panoply belt and felt its field activate, tinting her vision with the usual hint of blue. Raising her haken, she let deiat flow into it, and its flaming blade materialized with a whoomph. Across the circle, Tanax lifted his own blade, and a narrow line of space twisted and writhed, distorting everything behind it. It emitted a faint drone, like a swarm of bees.

“Fight!” Prodominus shouted.

Maya flung out her free hand before the Kyriliarch’s voice had faded, and a burst of fire slammed across the space between them. It hit Tanax hard enough to knock him off his feet, sending him sliding across the sand, and she saw the sparking blue aura of his panoply flare.

But her opponent recovered impressively quickly. He rolled onto his knees, throwing up a shield of warped space around himself that deflected the flames like a breakwater. Maya closed her hand, and the stream of fire vanished. Tanax got to his feet behind his aura of paradoxical geometry, breathing hard.

“Feel free to yield,” Maya said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He growled a curse, and the real battle began.

Tendrils of deiat reached out, slicing through the space all around her like a blooming flower with Tanax at the center. She could see them as shimmers in the air, bits of twisted space like the ripples rising from a hot stone, but it was easier to feel them resonating with her connection to deiat. She channeled power through her haken and slammed her own energy against them. Fire bloomed all around her, motes of energy devouring one another and being devoured in turn.

Bit by bit, Maya’s grin faded. He’s plaguing good. Not as good as Jaedia, who made the whole affair look effortless, but he wove deiat with speed and efficiency, sending little dust devils of twisted space spinning across the floor, then sweeping a broad wave of distortion that forced her to block in a wide arc. When she struck back, he withdrew, leaving her wasting her energy against emptiness while he attacked elsewhere. Within a few moments, she was focused entirely on defense, and she could tell it wasn’t going to work for long. Waves of ripping, twisting space came closer and closer.