Elisa was merely standing back, a few steps away, watching the two of them. There was fear in her eyes, and she seemed to be regarding both D'Arden and Khaine with the same amount of fear. That only enraged him more. He was supposed to help this girl, now that he'd inadvertently cursed her with the heartblade. This was supposed to be her chance for a better life. He'd be lucky if she would ever let him near her again after an experience like this.

  "You're wrong, Tal." Khaine said this in such a way that brooked no argument; it was not a counter to D'Arden's statement, but simply a statement of fact. "The heartblade is a special enchantment. It does not contain manna, but instead an agent that at once both lends resistance to the deadly energy of raw manna and forms an instant addiction that cannot be broken. It draws you back to it with its own energy, requiring you to take sustenance from it. The manna from those fonts is killing you as surely as time is killing you. It dissolves your being, a tiny mote at a time, relieving you of your humanity until one day your soul is swept away in the font, and you are gone forever from this place.

  "Don't you see, Tal? The manna is not pure or corrupted. All of it is deadly. Every exposed font in this gods-forsaken world is deadly. All of it is corruption, and we are all a part of that corruption. Humans are not meant to live in a world like this, we are not meant to exist in a place with this kind of energy. The Arbiters simply fight to keep the balance tipped towards the side that they have chosen, so that they can more easily control the power of the land to their own ends. Once my power spreads and all of your 'pure' manna is driven from it, new things will grow in the shadow of the Red.

  "Men will adapt, just as they always have."

  D'Arden fell back a step, thunderstruck. He could not believe the words that were flowing from the mouth of the visage of his old mentor, and yet somehow, everything seemed true. His head was reeling. If any of this were true, it would invalidate his entire existence. Everything he had fought for, bled for, nearly died for would be completely gone.

  "What about Calessa Heights?" D'Arden demanded. "That is not adaptation! That's nothing but madness!"

  "An unfortunate side effect of a cleansing fire is that some things get burned," Khaine replied patiently. "There were some there who did not respond to the power of the Red, and it spread like a sickness. The good Captain Mor was good enough to board up the place to keep it from spreading further – after, of course, he spoke with me."

  Damn it! D'Arden cursed himself inwardly. Even Mor is in the pocket of this monster! How did I not see it?

  A broad smile spread over Khaine's face, revealing wickedly sharpened teeth. "I see you realize the depths of your plight now, Tal. Yes, I have been watching you since the moment you stepped foot in my city. At first I was amazed that they had sent you, so naïve and so unwitting into this place. Then, as you began to realize just what was going on here, I began to get angry. I had Mor plant that boy with you, all the while intending that he would die, to see if I could break your resolve." The smile darkened into a dangerous frown. "I see now that it was pointless. Instead, somehow, you found one of the few who my power had not touched at all, and somehow cast her dice in your favor, though it is supposed to be impossible."

  So even Khaine hadn't known about the heartblade's secret; that it could even change someone later in their life and give them the power of the Arbiter. That helped D'Arden to feel slightly better, and he was able to pull back his blinding rage from the edge of a foolhardy attack on his enemy. He stole a glance at Elisa, who was still watching the both of them fearfully, and shook his head.

  "Words are words, Khaine," D'Arden said at last. "You stand here before me and speak of things of which you have no way of proving. It matters little how much your words ring of truth. Even if they were lies but you believed them fully it would change the manna in your favor, and the both of us know it."

  "Would you then like a taste of my power, Tal?" Khaine grinned wickedly once more. "I would be happy to demonstrate it for you."

  D'Arden lowered himself into a combat crouch, gripping the handle of his manna blade tightly in both fists. "Show me."

  Khaine reached to his back and pulled free a sword that was unlike any manna weapon D'Arden had even seen. The blade was twice as wide as his own, and curved wickedly near the end, glowing brightly with the red light of the corruption. It shone on both himself and on Elisa, and he did his best not to flinch as he felt the twisted power rain down upon him. Instead he focused his own energy into his manna blade, brightening the glow of the pure blue power that he wielded in order to fend it off, and took a step closer to Elisa so that she might benefit from its protective shield as well.

  "Not so fast," Khaine said with a smirk, throwing out one hand. A burst of crimson light shot forth from his fingertips, rocketing toward Elisa with incredible speed. She let out a shriek that was cut short as the light surrounded her.

  D'Arden whirled around, but she appeared unharmed – simply immobilized in a glowing cage of red power. "What have you done, Khaine?"

  "Simply removed an element from the equation," said the monster which had replaced the man he'd once known. "Her soul now hangs in the balance, Tal. Do you have the strength to save her?"

  "My power is stronger than yours," D'Arden said evenly.

  "I will show you my power!" Khaine bellowed. His strange blade shone brightly, almost white-hot at the center, and his eyes did the same. He drew back with both hands and struck forth at D'Arden wielding that strange and terrible blade. It was a slow and clumsy attack, and D'Arden knew that his opponent was capable of better. He brought up an almost disinterested parry to easily deflect the oncoming stroke.

  When the blades met, D'Arden felt a shock run through his bones that he'd never felt before. The two sides of the manna were warring within him. He nearly cried out in agony as pain filled him like never before. He wondered if his opponent felt the same, but when he looked upon the face of his former mentor, twisted and changed by the corrupted manna, he saw there only malice and no signs of weakness in the unnaturally-stretched grin.

  D'Arden shoved the other blade away from him, and as they disengaged, the feeling of the war inside him dimmed but did not vanish. He had no time to recover, though, as Khaine began to press the attack in earnest. No longer were the strokes slow and cumbersome – that had obviously been a ploy to show D'Arden the exact extent of the power that he was up against. Now they were rapid, blows flying in quick succession, and it was all D'Arden could do to get his blade up in time to defend each one. He tried to take the moment of defense to analyze his opponent, to find some sort of weakness in his defense, but the pain that lanced through him every time he parried a strike made it difficult to concentrate on anything but each successive attack and counter.

  Khaine's attacks were each a deadly stroke, and there were some that D'Arden only parried just in time to save from his chest being pierced or his neck from being severed. He managed to get in a few counterattacks, but they were weak and Khaine easily batted them away. D'Arden quickly realized that no matter what his prowess with the blade was, Khaine's corrupted energy was assisting him in a way that the pure manna never could. D'Arden did everything he could to draw on his reserves, but the corruption that filled the very air around him prevented him from drawing any more from anywhere. Khaine had a limitless supply of his own power, and D'Arden had to carefully manage his own so as not to expend too much of it, lest he be left completely powerless before this madman.

  With each step backward he took, a realization became more and more clear to him. He was losing this fight, and he stood no chance on this uneven ground where his opponent wielded so much more power than he.

  "Khaine!" he shouted, his own voice echoing in the chamber, though not so much as his opponent's manna-assisted bellows did. "You coward! You would never be fighting me if you weren't in your own, self-appointed kingdom! You know that my power is stronger than yours, and that's why you fight here, on this uneven and biased ground! You're not fit to be any sort of king – you're nothing but a wretch who can't stand the thought of being beaten!"

  "Fool!" Khaine roared, pressing his attack even harder. D'Arden felt his arms weakening – if he could not get his opponent to stop this assault he would be dead in seconds, not minutes. "You think that since you cannot best me with the sword, that you will best me with words! Ridiculous!"

  “Come on, Khaine,” D’Arden sneered, trying not to let the weakness in his voice show through. “It’s not even a contest, here in your palace. You know you’re going to win. Wouldn’t you rather prove your power in a place where I actually stand a chance?”

  Abruptly, the relentless assault simply stopped. Khaine took a step backward, lowering his blade and staring into D’Arden’s manna-blue eyes. “Ridiculous as it sounds, Tal, you’re right. It is pointless to fight you here. Perhaps if you see the truth of my power, I will not have to kill you. Perhaps once you see the truth, you’ll join me instead of fighting me.”

  We’ll see about that, D’Arden thought, but said nothing aloud.

  “You propose an Ether battle, then?” Khaine asked.

  D’Arden nodded. “There’s no other way to truly prove it. On the ground we’re either firmly in your territory or mine. If you really believe that your Red is stronger, then prove it in the only place where neither one of us has an advantage.”

  “You’re going to die, Tal,” Khaine said, once again sporting that terrifying grin. “Once you die, or decide that the proper place is with me, the Arbiters won’t be able to stand against my power any longer.”

  “Then so be it,” D’Arden shrugged, acting disimpassioned. “If that’s the will of the land, then that is what is shall be.”

  “The land knows nothing but what it is told,” Khaine said angrily.

  “We shall see,” D’Arden answered.

  They stepped back from each other, and for a moment, simply regarded the other, as if expecting some sort of treachery. At last, they each sheathed their respective weapons. D’Arden glanced at Elisa, and she met his eyes with less fear now, and nodded, still holding her manna blade. It was clear that Khaine regarded her as no kind of a threat, and had simply ignored her so far in the battle.

  Despite what Khaine had said previously, D’Arden did not believe that their power was simply two sides of the same coin. He had seen the death and the destruction that the corrupted manna had caused. The angry red glow did not speak simply of a different kind of purity. The madness that seemed to engulf all that the corruption touched – the living corpses, the rising dead, the insane fel creatures that walked the world – did not speak of purity of any kind, but only of evil and of danger. Though he was saddened by the loss of his mentor to this terrible power, he knew that he could not waver in his resolve simply because he now fought against someone that he had once known.

  Havox Khaine was gone. In his place was a monster, nothing more than a fel beast.

  D’Arden hoped that he could continue to believe that.

  They lifted out their arms together. The Ether battle was an ancient tradition, a duel between Arbiters who could not settle their differences. Battling in the Ether meant that neither side had direct access to the power that drove them; they had to summon it, to draw it to themselves and wield it. Their physical bodies would be left behind; there would be no blades, no strength – only energy. It was the final rite of passage to be fully ordained as a Master Arbiter. D’Arden thought that he must be the first Arbiter in many centuries, and possibly in time, to fight the Ether battle against a corrupted Arbiter.

  The world began to fade around him as his spirit rushed towards the Ether. He felt Khaine’s presence following him, only a second behind. They would meet in the Ether, and D’Arden would wield the power of the pure manna against his foe. If he could not win here, then the world was truly lost.

  They arrived in the Ether; a nebulous place that appeared as though they existed in a cloud. It was grey, ever-shifting and never the same for more than a moment. Looking into it was like looking into a thick fog; one could see a short distance and then everything simply faded to gray.

  D’Arden saw himself in the Ether as an azure beacon of light and purity, and this is how he appeared. Every movement left a trail behind him, and he appeared like a shining star, blazing as brightly as the sun.

  Khaine appeared in the Ether a moment later, and appeared to D’Arden as a bright red fireball, full of anger and hatred. He burned even brighter, blindingly white at the center and fading to orange and red flames toward the outside.

  There were no words in the Ether, no taunts could be exchanged, no strategies revealed. There were only feelings and flashes of light exchanged between the two parties, and somehow there always seemed to be a kind of implicit understanding.

  The battle was begun.

  D’Arden summoned up the power from the land beneath him, drinking and drawing in the purity that he could feel from wherever he could feel it. It mattered little where the power came from, and he shaped it into a shield that he held before him. Only seconds later, Khaine’s first attack slammed into the shield and exploded in white and red around him. He was driven backwards from the force of it, but the shield held firm.

  He drew in another stream of power from the land below, and shaped it into a lance that he hurled with one hand at his opponent. It flew straight and true like an arrow sent sailing from the finest bow, but the red energy leapt up and devoured it before it ever reached its target.

  To any spectator who could have witnessed the event, it would have appeared that two stars had decided simply to battle it out in the heavens. The Ether was invisible from the world and could not be viewed by normal means, but D’Arden was certain that the Arbiter’s Tower was aware of the conflict. He made many of his attacks as spectacular as possible, hoping to draw the attention of his fellow arbiters so that even if he fell, that they would know of his valiant efforts to stop this corruption before it spread further, and so they might also be aware of the danger that faced them if he should fail.

  As the battle raged on, D’Arden became aware of the fact that he was winning. Explosions rattled the Ether where the two of them fought, but it became clear to D’Arden that he was slowly winning victory over his opponent. Khaine’s attacks began to lose power – not all at once, but each attack seemed to be progressively weaker, while D’Arden felt himself growing stronger each time he tapped the land for its energy. He could not fathom how exactly that he was winning, only that he was, and he rejoiced in the victory. If he could truly defeat Khaine’s corrupted energy here in the Ether, he would be severely weakened back on the mortal plane, and D’Arden would be able to extinguish the corruption in Calessa once and for all.

  He continued to throw attacks at Khaine, drawing more and more energy from the land to beat down his former mentor’s corruption. He’d lost all hope of purifying the man, to bring him back from the insanity – if D’Arden had come here years ago, he might have had a chance to save Khaine from the depths of the corruption, but alas, he knew that it was now too late.

  Suddenly, D’Arden could no longer feel Khaine’s presence.

  Had he won?

  He rushed back down to the mortal world, relinquishing his hold on his spiritual form and racing back towards his body at alarming speeds. He crashed back into his body just in time to see a grinning Khaine driving the wickedly curved manna weapon towards his heart.

  He hadn’t won.

  Khaine had resorted to treachery.

  The world seemed to slow to a crawl. Khaine’s death grin face bore down upon him, the glowing red blade coming closer with every second that ticked by. It was at critical mass – there was no way that D’Arden would be able to draw his sword and block the attack. In the face of his power, his former mentor – the most honorable man that he’d once known – had opted out of losing in the Ether battle and had come back here to drive the sword through D’Arden’s unwitting heart.

  There was no honor, no power in Khaine’s desperate attack.

  It pained D’Arden deeply to be defeated by it.

  He could not be defeated by it.

  Drawing on every ounce of strength he possessed, D'Arden twisted aside and the blade merely sliced along the flesh of his collar and the base of his neck, drawing blood and cobalt flames from the wound. It was no fatal blow like Khaine had intended, but the pain that flared in his chest disrupted his concentration. He stumbled away, rolling along the ground before regaining his feet, somewhat unsteadily.

  They circled each other for a moment, and then D’Arden stepped in with his manna blade and cut downward at Khaine. It looked like a simple downward cut, and Khaine gave a horrible grin as he moved to parry. Instead, D'Arden changed his sword's trajectory at the last moment, slicing under his opponent's guard. Khaine tried to block, but could not bring his sword to intercept in time. The blade sank deep into the flesh of Khaine’s shoulder and alit with the azure flames. The larger man stumbled backward with a shriek of agony that rumbled the very foundations of the building as blood flowed and the blue fire consumed the droplets.

  He pressed his attack then, aware of his growing advantage. Short one arm, which now hung limply by his side, Khaine’s parries were slower and his attacks less effective. D’Arden was as clearly winning the sword battle as he had been winning the Ether battle.

  A perfectly-timed swing by D’Arden disarmed his opponent. The red manna blade skittered across the floor to rest several feet away, and D’Arden planted one heavy boot in his opponent’s chest, sending him to land backward on the marble floor. Blood was flowing now both from the deep wound in his shoulder and from multiple other shallow wounds that D’Arden had inflicted.

  He stepped up then to stand over his former mentor, whose eyes still blazed with the red flames of the corrupted manna. “I’m sure you’re very proud of yourself, Tal. That was quite the tricky attack with your sword. Where did you learn something like that?"