Interlude SS [12.5] Let The Circle Witness Part 2

“I thought you wanted to end this quickly,” Ragnar called out. His voice was exhausted.

There was no smugness left in him now, only focus and resolve. That was something they both had. She would be foolish to not admit that she had underestimated him. He had already overcome where he should have been this early in his life. At the same time she was too weak in body to fully take advantage of her thousand life times of battle and magical experience.

She set her jaw tight, and with shaking breath she raised her wand and sword once more. All around her, starlight surged from the earth like divine thorns. Her blade caught the glow and shimmered with celestial fire, the edge of her magic gleaming like a comet’s tail. She had to end this now. Before her strength failed.

Above them, the sky began to darken unnaturally, the moonlight consumed by a false eclipse that gathered like a storm on the horizon. The battlefield was a ruin of brilliance and chaos. Red lightning screamed across the scorched ground, carving long glassy channels through the stone. Spikes of hard light jutted from the floor like jagged teeth, creating a forest of radiant death. The charred grass and shattered wards crackled beneath the pressure of magic far beyond what any present had expected to witness.

This was no longer a duel. No longer ceremony. It was war, and both of them were nearly spent and the blood rite had not taken its pound of flesh. Everyone was silently waiting for what would soon be the conclusion of the battle between the greatest generation of Salstars to date.

Eira’s heart beat like a war drum in her chest. Her breaths came fast and shallow. Her sword arm throbbed with pain, and her wand glowed too hot to touch comfortably. A fresh gash bled across her ribs, and the burn on her thigh from Ragnar’s earlier lightning strike flared with every movement, threatening to seize her steps. Her vision swam at the edges, but she kept her eyes fixed on him.

Ragnar didn’t look much better. His breaths were just as strained, his staff cracked near the middle, and the last of his lightning stakes had already been used or melted to slag. His left bled profusely from her last blast. But the fire in his eyes refused to dim.

Both of them knew there was no point holding back anymore. This fight would only end after one of them could no longer fight. Neither would forfeit; they would only leave if the other was beaten until they couldn’t rise again, or death. This was the cold truth of the Blood Rite.

Eira raised her wand. A dozen spheres of starlight spun into formation around her, humming with raw, focused power. With a sweep of her sword, they detonated, streaking toward Ragnar in thin beams of searing white light.

He vanished mid-dash, blinking once, then again, gliding between them like a phantom. His footwork was fluid and efficient, leading him directly into a skidding turn as he leveled his near broken staff skyward. He danced between not only the projectiles but also the spike of hard light spearing from the ground.

Eira’s blood chilled. Again she found that she had underestimated him.

He shouldn’t be able to use that spell this early!

A dense sphere of power formed at the tip of his staff, and in the next instant, the heavens answered. Red lightning lanced from the clouds in a blinding arc, drawn down into Ragnar’s waiting hands. He roared as the power tore through him and fired straight at her. 

She dove backward, summoning a dome of hard light above her with a sweep of her wand. The bolt struck just as it finished forming. The shield exploded in a thunderclap of shattered energy. The world went white for a moment as every one of her defences broke one by one. Leaving only her armer which flared life as the runes across it’s surface lit up to save her life burning out and blackening. She was thrown like a ragdoll, armor splitting across the cuirass as she skidded across the cracked stone.

Anyone else her age would be dead there were gasps from the audience as they believed she was just brutally executed in front of them. She laid on the ground for a moment as her aura had to push out the lingering effects of the electrocution.

Dust choked her lungs. Blood filled her mouth. She couldn’t see from her left eye. She coughed hard, struggling to her feet. Her body screamed at her, telling her this was already over. She didn’t accept it, she raised her sword again, she pulled on her magic to brace her and she ran towards her opponent.

Across the battlefield, Ragnar launched forward. The power he channeled was too much for his staff and the weapon split in the middle. Instead of discarding the weapon the both ends crackled with energy as dual blades of red lightning formed. 

He moved with ruthless speed, teleporting between the remaining stakes spread throughout the arena. She was familiar with this spell and had intended to keep him from using it by destroying the stakes as he launched them at her throughout the fight. He was one step ahead of her and managed to encircle her anyway. Teleporting between the stakes hid his blinks from her magic perception, each appearance marked by an explosion of sparks and shifting light. The air around him rippled with fury and voltage, the heat rising like a living thing.

She tried to track him, but he was too fast. Every time she blinked, he was somewhere else, striking at angles she hadn’t predicted. Her future sight was fogging, unraveling under stress. Her body wasn't keeping pace.

She gritted her teeth and forced her limbs into motion. She couldn’t afford to lose. Not here. Not like this. Then it happened, Ragnar did something she never expected. Something so crazy that even as precognition told her what was going on she barely believed what she was seeing.

In a brief lull, he raised his lightning forged blade and conjured a radiant construct. A small orb formed mid-air, flickering and unstable, but undeniably made of starlight. He was casting a Starlight spell, an actual starlight spell.

Eira froze for a moment too long.

That is impossible, he doesn’t have the aptitude for starlight! Never in any of my lives had he done this… how?

The orb was surrounded by his red lightning then they both shot out as one beam. It struck her chest directly in the crack in her cuirass the starlight hit her and the force from the lightning split the armor back as if pealing back the skin of an orange. Her breathing caught in her chest, heart hammering. Somewhere deep inside, a sliver of fear and confusion slithered loose.

Her defenses were completely destroyed, her magic nearly spent and now she was totally exposed. This was no time to hesitate, no time to think, no time to plan. It was time for action, action and instinct.

His final charge was brutal. One lightning blade swung high, the other low. She Blinked to her left, dodging the high arc, but the low strike sliced into her leg and nearly brought her down.

She snarled through the pain, clenching her jaw. Her leg buckled but didn’t collapse. She twisted her hips and stepped inside his guard before he could reset his stance. Starlight surrounded her wand turning it into a second blade as she deflected the next strike. Her she lunged into his guard sword parrying the next strike.

Pain screamed through her shoulder where his magic scorched her again, but she held fast. Her sword arm lifted, burning with the last dredges of strength she could muster.

Their eyes met.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and she meant it.

Then she rammed her blade into his side, under the ribs and between the gaps in his armor. The orichalcum edge slid deep, powered by will and momentum. She then lifted her wand and stabbed him in the shoulder as they both fell to the ground, her on top of him.

“No, Eira…” Ragnar said as his eyes rolled back.

Ragnar’s lightning sputtered and hissed out as the breath escaped his lungs in a shocked gasp. His body twitched in her grasp and then went still.

Her whole body ached, and she could feel fresh blood oozing into her boots. As she pulled the weapons from her brother's body. She stood upright back straight as she looked her father in the eye and raised her sword into the air high above her head in victory.

Ragnar groaned faintly, unconscious but alive.

The training ground, once filled with screams and cheers, was now silent. Even the wind had stilled. Everyone stared. No one moved.

Her sword arm dropped as she sheathed the blade. Moonlight cast her long shadow across the wreckage of the battlefield. Eira Salstar had won.

Lord Ulfar stepped forward. The Patriarch’s cloak whispered against the dust and cracked stone, the hem catching in the scorched earth as he passed between his two children, healers rushed forward taking Ragnar into their arms. Eira still stood though barely, her blood pooling at her feet. His face remained unreadable, carved from stone, eyes like cold steel.

He surveyed the ruin of the dueling grounds. Magic-burned stone, broken wards, charred banners, and blood, Salstar blood, marked the price of succession. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and steady, yet carried through the crowd with the weight of judgment.

“Salstars do not inherit power through the accident of birth. we do not wear crowns passed down by blood alone. The blood in our veins means nothing—it is the blood we bleed that shapes our legacy.” Ulfar said.

He turned slowly, taking in the faces of every noble and lesser house who had gathered to witness this reckoning. Some bore the Salstar name others did not. But all had come because they understood what was at stake.

“What you all have witnessed is not rebellion,” Ulfar continued, his voice growing colder with each word. “It is our law. It is our tradition. The Blóðrétt. A challenge answered not with arrogance, but with strength. Not with entitlement, but with will.”

He raised a hand toward the shattered dueling ground, blackened by lightning and still glowing with faint pulses of starlight.

“Every inch of our domain was earned. Every honor was bought in pain. Every heir—forged in fire, tested by steel. This is what it means to be Salstar. Do any of you believe yourself to be more worthy than this girl that stands before you now? Do you want to challenge as she has done? Do any of you believe you are more worthy than this?”

A pause followed—long and deliberate. His gaze landed on Eira then. There was no pride in his eyes. No warmth. No approval. Only recognition.

“Thin it is decided. And let none come forth. Let it be known here and now that Eira has paid the price in blood. Let her bleed, let this day be remembered, let the Forest Father witness.”

He pointed toward Ragnar, now being lifted by attending mages, his unconscious form limp. “Get him healed. Immediately.”

The healers obeyed without hesitation, guiding Ragnar’s broken body across the debris-laden ground with practiced care.

Ulfar turned again, this time fully facing his daughter. Eira was still blind in one eye. Her chest rose and fell with the sharp rhythm of pain, every breath an effort. She was barely holding herself together.

He stared at her with the same gaze he had used to assess commanders on the eve of war. No affection. No comfort. Only expectation.

“Follow me.” Ulfar said.

There was no hand offered. No healing spell cast. No words of praise. If she wanted to be heir, then she would walk forward under her own strength or not at all.