Chapter 74: Chapter 73: Elemental vs. Dissonant.

The corridor opened into a circular room with a high ceiling and no windows.

Nyx stopped first, and Takeshi halted behind her.

At the center of the room stood a woman. Three fox tails were visible behind her, dark brown in colour, with ears of the same colour atop her hair. Her eyes were yellow, with no round pupils.

’A kitsune.’

She said nothing, but raised one hand.

What happened next was neither a projectile nor a recognisable element. It was a change in space. The air around Takeshi and Nyx closed inward as though the walls of the room had decided to shrink, but they were not the actual walls, only something superimposed over them. The available space went from a large room to a chamber approximately four metres by four in less than a second.

’Is this a domain?’

Immediately, the interior of the domain began to heat up. It was not a gradual increase. It was direct, concentrated heat coming from every direction at the same time.

Takeshi felt the heat on the skin of his arms before he could fully process what was happening.

Nyx was already acting.

She extended both hands to the sides, and water appeared, accumulating in volume, more than seemed possible to contain within that space. It was not a stream, but a continuous presence that filled the inner perimeter of the domain and absorbed the heat before it could reach the centre where the two of them stood.

The steam was immediate and dense.

Takeshi could not see clearly. The heat was still present, but it no longer reached him directly.

Then the domain vanished.

The space returned to being the circular room, and the steam lingered for a few seconds before dispersing.

Nyx still had her hands extended. She slowly lowered her arms.

The kitsune watched them from the centre of the room without having moved.

"Keep going..."

Nyx ordered.

Takeshi looked at her.

"What?"

"Keep moving forward. I’ll handle this."

Nyx did not turn her head towards him. Her eyes remained fixed on the kitsune.

"Go find Ophélia."

"You can’t handle her alone..."

"Takeshi."

Her voice did not rise in volume, but something in her tone ended the discussion.

"Go."

Takeshi looked at the kitsune and at Nyx for a few seconds.

He decided to continue towards the corridor at the far end.

The kitsune did not attempt to stop him.

That was information. Nyx registered it as she listened to Takeshi’s footsteps receding down the corridor.

They looked at each other.

"Do you want to start, or should I?"

Nyx said.

The kitsune did not answer and raised her hand again.

Nyx moved sideways.

The domain activated at the point where she had been a fraction of a second earlier. The reduced chamber appeared and disappeared within seconds.

Nyx noted that.

The domain lasted only briefly. No more than five or six seconds before the kitsune had to release it, and it required something trapped inside for the heat to have a target. An empty domain was an expenditure of energy with no result.

She created a compact sphere of water and launched it directly at the kitsune.

The sphere travelled half the distance between them and vanished.

Nyx remained still.

The sphere had not struck anything visible. There was no barrier physically blocking the attack. It had disappeared at a specific point in the space between them.

She launched it again with greater force and got the same result.

A third time, from a different angle. This time the sphere travelled along a diagonal trajectory.

It vanished before reaching the same central point, but at a slightly different position relative to the kitsune.

Nyx calculated.

It was not a shield. It was another domain, smaller, permanently active around the kitsune’s body, absorbing attacks that reached her. But if that inner domain was active, the large area domain could not be active at the same time.

Even so, the kitsune had not needed to move at any point. She had been standing in the same spot since they entered the room.

Nyx observed the kitsune’s foot placement. Then she observed the approximate radius where the large domain had appeared with each activation. Always centred on the same axis. Always covering a space that began less than two metres from where the kitsune stood.

She had not moved because she could not activate the large domain if she left its activation point. The ability had a fixed range limit, predetermined before the fight began. If the kitsune moved from that point, the large domain would not function.

And the inner domain that absorbed attacks prevented her from activating the large one simultaneously.

That explained why, when she had trapped Takeshi and Nyx together at the beginning, she had included both of them within the same domain. Not because she wanted to. Because she could not activate two separate domains for two people standing far enough apart. It was a single activation for the available radius or nothing.

Nyx processed all of that.

She had two specific problems. The first was that direct attacks disappeared before reaching their target.

The second was that if she entered the two-metre radius, the large domain would trap her, and the large domain with concentrated heat was difficult to endure indefinitely, even if she had enough water to counter it for a time.

She needed an attack the kitsune could not avoid.

Something that would force her to choose between two options, neither of which was completely safe.

Nyx looked at the floor of the room.

The floor was smooth, continuous stone.

She extended a hand towards the floor and applied pressure with magic at a specific point. The stone responded—not perfectly, since it was not her primary element, but enough to extract a solid formation the size of a human fist, irregular and with unpolished edges.

She held it in the air.

Then she held the stone for quite some time.

She was in no hurry because the kitsune could not attack her from that distance without activating the large domain, and the large domain required Nyx to be within the two-metre radius.

When she finished, she hurled it directly at the kitsune and ran behind it.

The kitsune processed the situation in fractions of a second.

A stone was flying towards her, and Nyx was running behind that same stone.

The first option was to activate the inner domain so the rock would disappear before reaching her. That would leave the large domain inactive. Nyx would enter the two-metre radius without the large domain being able to activate, which meant direct physical or magical combat within that space.

The second option was to activate the large domain to trap Nyx. The rock would reach her without disappearing because the inner domain would be inactive.

The kitsune calculated a third interpretation of the situation. Nyx was not using the rock to strike her. She was using it to force exactly that choice. If the kitsune dodged by moving away from the activation point, she would lose the large domain ability. Nyx knew that and had built the attack around that premise.

What Nyx wanted was either for the kitsune to dodge and leave her range, or to activate the inner domain for the rock and allow Nyx to arrive unprotected.

The kitsune chose neither.

She took the hit.

The stone struck her right side. The pain was real, but manageable. Even though it connected, Nyx was not a specialist in earth magic, and the projectile’s speed was not sufficient to cause serious structural damage. A hard blow or a deep bruise, but nothing that would force her from the activation point.

She activated the large domain.

Nyx was trapped inside the reduced chamber.

The heat came from every direction.

Nyx immediately generated water and saturated the interior of the domain. The steam was instant. She kept her body at the centre and focused on maintaining a constant volume of water.

She could endure this. She had already proven that when she was with Takeshi. The problem was time. The water offset the heat, but it consumed energy. The kitsune could reactivate the domain every time it was released, and Nyx would have to respond every time.

It was a matter of endurance.

The kitsune knew that.

The domain released after five seconds. Nyx emerged from the reduced chamber with her uniform damp and her hair stuck to her face from the steam. She repositioned herself and prepared for the next activation.

The kitsune activated nothing.

Nyx looked at her.

The kitsune had one hand pressed against the side where she had taken the impact. Her posture had changed. She was slightly hunched towards that side. There was something in her yellow eyes that was not the same quality of attention as thirty seconds earlier.

Then the kitsune coughed.

It was not a normal cough. It was a wet sound that ended with blood on her fingers when she lowered her hand from her mouth.

She looked at it and then at Nyx.

"What did you do!?"

Her voice had lost its steadiness.

Nyx did not answer immediately.

The kitsune coughed again. More blood. Her legs partially gave out, and she had to brace one hand against the floor to avoid collapsing completely.

"The rock barely grazed me, so it’s not from the impact."

"No."

Nyx replied.

The kitsune looked up.

"What did you put in the rock?"

"Blood."

Nyx said.

"Mine, distributed through the internal cracks of the formation."

She paused.

"I can manipulate my own blood outside my body, so I turned it into a contact poison inside the stone. When the rock struck you and the pressure opened those cracks against your body, the contact was enough."

The kitsune processed that, and her arms were trembling.

"You knew I would take the hit."

"Not with certainty, but it was the most likely option given that the other two left you in a worse position."

The kitsune tried to stand, but could not complete the movement. Her arms gave out, and she ended up with one knee on the floor, then the other, before finally falling onto her side.

Her yellow eyes remained open for a few more seconds, staring at the ceiling of the room.

Then they closed, and the room fell silent.

Nyx remained standing in the same spot for three seconds, confirming there was no movement. Then she looked at the cut on the palm of her left hand, which had stopped bleeding, and wrapped it with a strip of cloth torn from her uniform pocket.

She looked towards the corridor where Takeshi had gone and walked in that direction.