A Challenging Fight

A/N: This chapter was written for the Arena Battles. To find out more about them visit Halfbloodlycan and her forum Elements. You can also find in Elements the full explanation of Lady Ayrrs and Pandaros.

Also I would like to ask readers to vote for either LADY LYSSANDRIANA ARRYS or PANDAROS VIATOS in the poll that is on my profile. This will determine who wins and is allowed another battle.

S/N: VIATOS, another authors on this site is repsonisble for Pandaros Viatos and all the paragrahs in italics. Thank you.

Pandaros walks into the arena with a bounce in his step, a faint half-smile

playing about his lips as he listens to the roar of the crowd. He closes his

eyes blissfully for a moment, soaking it in...and when he opens them again,

the Lady Lyssandriana Arrys is centered in his view, accompanied by her wolves. The

smile fades and he blinks - three on one? - but then it flickers back into

life full-force, lighting up his face.

"Alright, then," he roars, "COME ON!"

The ensuing thunder of the crowd's response is lost in the sudden cacophony

of very real thunder splitting the sky, as dark clouds roll in and a heavy rain falls like a blanket across the arena. It's almost like

silence in its totality...and it serves to disguise Pandaros from sight, sound,

and scent for a crucial moment, as he flickers behind the leftmost wolf,

riding a bolt of lightning, and swings a supercharged kick at the back of the

monster's head.

Lady Arrys closes her eyes for a brief moment. The rain doesn’t bother her as much as the splitting headache that has just begun in her head. When she opens her eyes they glow a pale blue.

She lifts an eyebrow as if to say ‘you really shouldn’t have done that.’ Instead of speaking, she signals to Brazil and she jumps backwards. Following her wolf ‘s trajectory, Lyssa draws Calhoun, her sai of lightning, and she uses it to gather the boiling electricity of the storm. Suddenly, from behind her, Brazil opens his mouth to howl. Instead of a sound, a gale force wind erupts from him. Lyssa’s coat tails blow out behind her as she rises on the wind.

Focusing on Viatos’ shirt she draws Strife, the sai of fire. Raising Calhoun above her head she swishes the blade in tandum with Brazil’s tale and the lightening Viatos rode down to attack Ghost turns on him, slicing a gash in his shirt. This doesn’t harm him just serves as a slight shock, but since he too controls lightening it doesn’t have its full effect.

While he’s distracted by the lightening, she launches herself towards him, spinning on the wind. Flames curl around Strife gathering into a tight ball at the tip of the sai. At the last moment, she thrusts forward and the ball of fire melts through Viato’s chest soaking into his bloodstream. As his temperature begins to rise at an alarming rate Ayrrs moves down the field and kneels by Ghost. Her hand is encased in flames and she presses it to the wolf’s neck healing the animals wounds.

Behind her Brazil breaths in directing the winds towards the clouds. He lets out a sigh and the clouds blow away to reveal the arena to the spectators. A few of them are standing now trying to get a better look at the field.

As Lyssa strikes the Black Cloud, she feels his armored hand clamp around her own wrist, hard enough to break bone, before releasing her and allowing her to continue her flight. Kneeling beside her wolf and looking up at him, she realizes things haven't gone quite according to plan - the lightning she twisted to distract him now wreathes his body in an incandescent aura of power, and his eyes burn with the power of it - her magic, added to his, and now under his control. The flames worming their way inside him find their progress blocked and their existence purged by the purifying electricity now running through him, leaving his chest seared but his life unthreatened. The swirling electricity, she has time to realize, isn't just around him - it extends in a long, thin, flickering thread all the way to her wrist, where he touched her.

He exhales a puff of sparkling thundercloud and cocks an eyebrow, as if to ask her which of them had made the greater error.

Then he surges.

Raw power floods through him, his body rising off the ground as lightning - from the clear sky - strikes him over and over and then in one long, continuous stream of energy - and all of it, he channels through himself in an unstoppable torrent, straight through their connection and into the Lady Arrys. And through her...her sai. He's been watching closely, and realizes her use of multiple elements has made her cocky - she might have greater versatility, but she'll never win an elemental slugfest against the Black Cloud of House Viatos in his own element. Whatever power she has to blunt and control, he can simply overload - and if she doesn't find a way to break her connection with Calhoun, she's in serious danger of frying where she stands.

The pressure of his hand startles her for a moment, but only momentarily. She scans the field. Finding her spot she communicates silently with her wolves. They become invisible and only she knows where they are. The thread of lightening encircling her wrist doesn’t phase her. If her fire attack didn’t work there’ s more she’s got. She closes her eyes building up her power. When her eyes open they glow brightly. Their color is so dark that it’s almost black. She reaches up pulling her hair ribbon out. As her hair falls to her shoulders it sparkles, crackles, flickers, and lifts gently as if there is a breeze blowing through it.

She rises to Viatos’s level. A small smile crosses her face. She wispers, “So, you think I’m cocky, huh?” Her voice is quiet, yet the spectators, who up until this moment were having mini conversations about the battle, fall silent. There is something in her voice to hint that she is not one to mess with.

She tilts her head to the side and slowly Viatos’ lightening drains. In a split second Lady Arrys levitates the bracelet of electricity off her wrist gently flicking it away. As soon as it hits the charged air around her it dissapates with a hiss and a pop. While Viatos tries to figure out how she did this she releases Calhoun and it begins to change shape into a long sword.

She summons both wolves forward and in a matter of seconds Viatos is surrounded. She begins to twist Strife. Once the flames turn purple and yellow she releases the spinning mass and Calhoun is sheathed at her side. She gently lifts the new long sword, created from Calhoun's remains, and Sereg, her sai of wind, from its sheath and begins weaving a figure eight.

At his feet Ghost runs in circles building up the fire power of the oncoming cyclcone. From behind her Brazil charges entering the spinning mass, which inverts to a horizontal level. The wind picks up and as Brazil hits he opens his mouth blasting Viatos with a wind so strong he knocks him 50 feet to the ground, where he hits the ground with enough impact to make a small Viatos-crater. As she lands on the ground she spears him combining wind with ice. The blade shimmers with an odd green tinge, and when she withdraws it Viatos feels a constricting of his elements and he begins to fade into unconsciousness. Before he falls into it, she ends the attack and waits, her wolves sinking back into hiding. However, she isn’t stupid enough to think this is over just yet, so she remains the way she is waiting for him to make the mistake of attempting a counterattack.

Pandaros doesn't move from where he lays.

Then, there is a short crackle.

Then another. And another. Within a few heartbeats, his entire body is wreathed in spidery blue lines of electricity, which begin arcing out all around him with vicious charged lashes, forcing Lyssandriana and her wolves away from his crash site. The intensity and radius of the effect only grow, until it's a blinding incandescence, too bright to look at directly - and then five serpentine bolts of lightning explode out of his body into the sky. Once they reach a certain height, they change direction a full ninety degrees, traveling horizontally - forming a rough circle of lightning above the arena. They thicken and start to pulse, until with a flash and a bang, the Black Cloud's body dissappears and the circle slams together into a single point of burning plasma.

And that single point unleashes the full fury of the storm.

Endless thunderclouds begin rolling out across the arena's airspace, dark as night and pouring heavy sheets of rain. Thunder booms like the laughter of a mad god, and gale-force winds kick up, forcing the Lady Arrys to call on her sais just to keep from being blown into a wall. Lightning strikes, a mere yard from her landing spot...and Pandaros is there, grinning, cracking his neck.

"Congratulations, missie. You've changed my opinion completely - you don't seem cocky at all. It's not your overconfidence in your abilities - it's your incomprehension of mine. Lady Arrys...you are a fool." As he speaks, his eyes darken completely to a soulless black lit only by flickering sparks of golden fury. His hair starts to stand on end, wreathed in spiraling coils of the same power - not the white-blue of Nature's skyfire, but a shining gold energy that responds to his will almost as if it's a part of his thoughts. Lyssa can feel it, echoing through her long sword - this is power on a new level. A storm the likes of which few have ever seen.

The Black Cloud cometh.

"Lady Lyssandriana of House Arrys...let me show you the difference between us. A taste of the true power of my House, of the boundless strength that makes us who we are. Compassion, Wisdom, Honor - to know, to understand, to walk a righteous path - are our Words. And this is their meaning!"

"TO KNOW - SKYFIRE ALLEGRO!" he breathes deeply, and then exhales an enormous black fog, swirling across the pockmarked sand, flashing and rumbling ominously. He then begins calling trios of lightning strikes, targeting the Lady and her wolves - watching their evasions, their counters, and especially using his connection to elemental lightning to sense the way she twists his use of the element. As his strikes come in faster combination, he smiles.

"TO UNDERSTAND - ANDANTE FULMINATION!" A shift in rhythm is Lyssa's only warning before the next wave comes - from below. Now attacks flash out from the fog as well as from above, in carefully measured strikes - and the sorceress finds that while her use of her long sword and her lightning-wolf are enough to keep the worst of it off them, Ghost is not so lucky. A series of flashes, a yelp, and the wolf disappears beneath the slowly rising thunderfog.

"And to walk the righteous path, in honor of this great House - A MINUET, IN THE HOUSE OF ZEUS!" And now the strikes meet. Skyfire fallen and risen conjoins, forming a huge pillar of lightning in the center of the arena. Pandaros steps into it, and it bursts into a line across the midway point. And then advances - fast. Columns of electricity whirl and dance, cutting a complex and ever-tightening figure around Brazil and the Lady. They converge in a rush...but when Lyssandriana catches the first pillar on her long sword, she discovers the true nature of the attack.

A feint. Pandaros reappears as a levincrafted ghost, riding the lightning up from the thunder fog, half-elemental himself by this point...and nimbly snatches the weapon from her hand, breaking her channel to the elemental power of lightning and vanishing back into the currents...until his reappearance a moment later, rushing down the electric columns occupying Brazil, and slamming the stolen sword through the back of the creature's neck even as he crushes its spine with his adamantine boots. He rises, still holding the blade - and tosses it into the nearest column, sending it flickering up into the storm. At his signal, the columns retreat to form a loose circle all around the arena, pressing uncomfortably close to the spectators and the wall of power that separates them from death. He smashes his fists together, then lets his arms swing out to his sides - and cuts an elegant, flourishing bow.

"Your move, my lady."

From high above the storm, in clouds so high the water has frozen, allowing the wolf to become a part of the rain. While he was sucked down into the plasma he swallowed it allowing it to replenish his heart and blood flow. He now becomes one with the plasma and water. While Viatos is concentrating on the Lady Ayrrs the head comes out of the rain and sinks its teeth, coated in venom into his neck.

Arrys stands, her legs shaking beneath her, but she ignores the pain. Swishing her hand, as if she were swatting a fly, she remakes her long sword out of Viatos’ lightening. As she wraps her hand around the hilt it bonds to her and a spark ignites in her eyes. A smile crosses her face and she says, “And you underestimate me. Did you honestly think my weapons were made of pure metals? No, you would be ignorant enough to assume that the House of Ayrrs wouldn’t have its own secrets.”

A smile crosses her face as the sheath at her side seems to freeze. Just visible beneath the overlap of her shirt is the hilt of the ice sword. She gathers her energy and inwardly chuckles. ‘You are the fool’ she thinks undoing her hair completely. Before long the elements in the arena, wind, water and plasma/fire begin to sink into her hair, the natural color of the strands matching the elements. She rocks backwards on her feet lunging forward. From the elemental cage Brazil breaks free and together the Lady and the wolf are guarded by a twinkling armor that sheens green. When she hits Viatos the poison sinks into his open skin and he falls to the ground.

But the price she paid for the draw was deep. She trembles falling to her knees in the center of the arena the elements swiftly catching in her hair as the braids began to re-weave themselves. Her bangs float above her face and she looks up at him through pain filled eyes.

“It seems,” she gritted out, “that we are both great adversaries for the other. I’d like another chance to fight you once I’ve brushed up on more techniques. I don’t mind losing to a great fighter, if that is the case.” She bows her head and stands shaking, until her wolves join her and she walks away. She looks over her shoulder a ghost of a smile crossing her lips and she says “ Hope to see you around good luck in the future.”