Revival Arena Finals

The greater heights of the mighty tree saw the daylight turned in phase towards that of night. Sarah thought for sure that she was nearing the top; but the thickening of the branches around her would not allow a fair glance to its upper reaches. For all she knew, there were miles below her that she might have climbed. And at that, there may have been miles further that she had to climb in order to reach the top. It almost seemed futile to her. Why should I keep climbing when all of my opponents are probably way below me? That Goddess needs a better sense of what a fight is. This is starting to bore me.

Upon a branch just wide enough to accommodate her stance, she ceased to climb higher. She wasn’t tired, for that didn’t come so easily to her. If anything, she wanted to wait and bide her time. The others, or at least one or two of them, would make it up the tree before long. She knelt down on the branch, with her back up against the trunk of the tree. The brush and branches around her were thickly gathered, such that it all provided a curtain of sorts, which hid her from the eyesight of her opponents, and this was certainly a space in which the guards wouldn’t be dispatched, not with a ruckus further down to draw their focus. She looked around, and took note that there were no crystals in her vicinity. If the battling neared her, she’d have the elements of surprise, and a legitimate rest going for her.

It was just a matter of patience….

 

With the change in environment, Sarah saw her spirits changed as well. And this time, that change was all for the better. No longer did she see a fruitless climb up an infinitely tall tree. No longer was she separated from her opponents by the multitudes of branches and the heights of that annoying tree. To the contrary, she was now on perfectly level grounds, with little to no obstructions blocking her path to any of her foes. The open hallways would of course prove a challenge for defending herself from attacks; but they would allow her to utilize her mobility and swift actions without much worry.*

Her positioning in the corridor couldn't have been any more ideal either. The furiously desperate pyro stood in front of her, his body poised in the preparation of his next move. Beyond him, in his initial line of fire, stood the other two. The both of them lingered just a moment before running off towards to opposite end of the hall. Whatever the pyro was plotting, it wouldn't bring him victory. If anything he was leaving his defeat a certainty at that point by throwing everything on the table. This was where Sarah saw her opportunity.*

With an infernal stream of flames billowing down the hall, and thus, restricting access from one end, Sarah was more or less free to bide her time to prepare an attack. In the time it took, she had focused her energy to her hands. Though it was not as bright concentrations giving off an aura, but a silent, unseen force ready to be expelled at a second's notice, a host of several possible attacks and defenses at the ready. It was then that moment came, where the fire began to recede. The caster of the attack was clearly exhausted by an ultimately fruitless attempt to end the battle.*

No patience, Sarah thought. She dashed down the hall, only a short way before arriving at he kneeling figure that was the fire user. She went to place a gentle set of fingers upon the back of his neck. With a portion of her concentrated energy acting as a catalyst, made to give him a non-deadly jolt, like a punch, save that it would be more like her energy punching through the surface of his skin, disrupting his nerve signals. If it all went well, he would be rendered unconscious, possibly even well to the end of the battle.​

 

“Rest well,” Sarah whispered to Sean as she felt his body go limp at her side. “It was for the better. You’d have been beaten to a pulp in your state.” Her focus shifted, following down the grand corridor towards the other end where the remaining competition lied to be engaged. Inida was the first to reveal herself in the aftermath of the firestorm, the first to offer herself as the new opponent. In the face of the obvious power before her, Sarah suppressed her fears and worries. Her facial expressions held a placid look of awareness. The flow of energy to her hands was still in abundance, and even that was not her full capacity. Perhaps about a quarter of what she had.

The flow itself commenced a gentle exertion as her intentions swayed from attacking to defending. A dull light surrounded her hands from the tips of her fingers to the wrist. Giving no reply to her opponent’s words, she moved in response to the attack that was mounted. She placed her hand before her, palms out. The energy released in a more finite and visible mass. The portion of it released converged and molded into a dome pushing its way forward in the corridor, expanding as it moved. The end product was a blanketing shield, one that took the impact of Inida’s orbs. The shield itself, the energy that formed it, dispersed as it took the impacts, and even as it moved forward, it grew thinner, and thus, less useful in its state.

It wasn’t to be rendered completely useless though. Seeing herself within the clear of the assault, Sarah took what control she could of the released matter. The fragments that remained in tact enough to be formed into something else changed direction and reconfigured as condensed beams that honed in on Inida. Damage from any single beam would be unaffecting; but if she failed to protect herself, failed to dodge somehow, or the beams penetrated what defenses she could muster, the damage would pool and certainly leave a substantial dent. But the point of it was not to land damage, but rather to make a distraction. Using her attack as a cover, Sarah ran down the corridor, making closer the gap between her and her opponents.​

 

Sarah’s dash down the corridor fell to a grinding (more like sliding) stop when she realized her intended opponent was no longer there. Vanished, ran away, or even torched by her last attack. It was a bittersweet thought to believe that such a worthy-looking adversary would have succumbed so easily before such a trifling assault; but then, it wasn’t all too easy to believe that as the case.

All there was to greet her at the other end of the corridor was the unruly wrench-wielder. Instead of a wrench, the woman brandished a scrapped looking device, a makeshift ranged weapon, like a bow and arrow, forged from shards of whatever she could find. Sarah had little time to reposition herself though. The sharp splinter of wood made contact with her left shoulder.

She was spared excruciating pain by two facts: that her leather top proved to be padded enough to shield some damage, and the fact that, for all the genius behind the woman’s improvised weapon, it was still no substitute for the real thing, and a few splinters of wood were no stand-in for a real arrow. Pulling the splinter out from the stinging spot on her skin beneath her vest she took the moment’s pause to stand herself properly.

Then… she waited for the woman to come at her.​