“Out of the frying pan…,” the bard quipped.

He tried to break free of Sei’s grip but the man’s strength outmatched his own. Expecting a fiery end if he did not call on his friends for guidance, Duffy pictured his siblings. Ruby’s now dull hair. Lillith’s porcelain skin and wicked smile. Arden’s vampire wings. Pete’s coal black eyes. He chose the companion who could best bring their talents to bare. His voice began to sound like the spell singer he looked at as a mother figure.

“…into the fire.”

Duffy’s piercings caught fire first, and then his hair. The heat from Sei’s contempt and talents aside, the bard ignited. Every inch of his body appeared to be ablaze, flames licking and lashing and roiling and rolling. Using the momentary distraction, blue tell-tale ribbons combined with the flame and allowed Duffy-Ruby to escape Sei’s grip. He re-appeared and stepped back, fire spreading across his body anew.

“Cold hearts and colder skies, winter’s come and summer dies,” Duffy-Ruby sang on. She-he spread their arms and when face-down palms turned upwards, fingers curled like a crown’s prongs, the flames turned from red, orange, and gold to blue, green, and turquoise. Fire to ice. Song to requiem. A counterpoise to the heat from the Mystic’s eyes.

The arena shook in defiance of the wellsprings of power that surrounded the duo. They had spoken, out of turn and in, and now it was time to spring to action. The fire from Sei faded, leaving Duffy-Ruby neutral, radiant, and ready to fight on. He-she conjured a katana from nothingness, a relic of a past almost forgotten, and stood as tool as they could.

“Let us dance and duel and die, to welcome spring’s eternal cry!” The ancient folk-tale, from Scara Brae of old, made grass blades dance and skies churn with colour. Seasons cycled in the atmosphere, leaving a strange sensation of life and living and wonder prickling over skin. Duffy-Ruby charged, a final gung-ho attempt at gulling Sei Orlouge into a single, final act of defiance against the beings that had all but ruined the Tantalum troupe’s lives.