My Second Life Is A Heroic Power Fantasy 203 The Showdown Continues

Rawgh'faz shoved the tips of a dozen of his tentacles into the fabric of s.p.a.ce around him before rending spheres of energy from the aether with them and hurling them in Eleanor's direction. Eleanor dove to avoid the blasts, jumping this way and that until finally one collided with her as she attempted to avoid another. The sphere burst in a purple-black detonation and knocked her flying through the air a dozen feet until she tumbled to a stop on the hard stone of the throne room floor.

Seeing this, he dashed to close the gap in a flurry of tendrils, trying to reach her before she could react. As soon as he got within three paces, however, she threw her hand up, shooting a dazzling ray of light that scorched his eyes, sending his world into darkness as he reeled from the intensity. He fought his eyes open just in time for a jet of freezing cold energy to slam into his torso and send him stumbling backwards. Several of his tentacles froze solid in the intense cold, snapping off with loud cracks and sending spasms of pain throughout his body as he struggled to regain his footing amidst the torrent.

"So, do you wanna keep going?" Eleanor asked, putting one of her hands out in front of her as she prepared herself. "I could do this all day."

Rawgh'faz looked her up and down for a moment, taking in her new appearance. She was wearing the same dress she'd been wearing when he'd taken her from the town square. And her hair, burnt short only moments before, was now back to its original length and tied into a long dark blue braid that fell gently over her shoulder.

Was this another illusion she was creating? But why waste the magic and the components to do something so superficial as to change your appearance in the middle of a fight? It made no sense.

Then it clicked with him, all at once.

The casual changes in how she looked, her seeming ease with confronting him despite all she had been through, the comments she had made before.

All of this was an illusion.

Somehow, she'd managed to find a way out of the confines of the mental prison he'd created for her, and now seen her way into the inside of his own head. Which meant that she wasn't actually standing in front of him right now. But the damage being done to the inside of the throne room in his attacks to take her down? That was probably real. And she'd done all of this without him having a single sensation that anything was amiss.

It was brilliant. But foolish. So very foolish. If she was inside his own mind, then he wrote the rules inside it. And if he wrote the rules, there was no game he could design that she could ever win.

The thought of it sent him into a fit of laughter, which reverberated throughout the stone chamber. As he did so, he willed his form back into its standard shape, and the tentacles and deformities began to fade and distort until he was back to his old self again.

He clapped his hands together several times as he slowly walked towards her.

"Very, very clever, devil girl.... Very clever indeed." He said, his applause ceasing as he came within a couple paces of her.

"Finally figured it out, huh?" She asked, smirking and raising an eyebrow. "Took you long enough, considering I pretty much told you what was happening the second I walked into the throne room."

The amus.e.m.e.nt faded from Rawgh'faz's face.

"You do realize the consequences of placing your spirit inside my head." He said. "Here I make the rules."

Eleanor tilted her head, her smirk widening.

"Oh? You so sure about that?" He asked, resting a figertip against the side of her face. On cue, her appearance s.h.i.+fted again, this time into some form of pale blue robes. Her hair was shorter now, with long bangs, but the rest cut page-boy trim. In her hand now rested a perfect copy of the staff she was wielding in the town square when they'd first encountered each other. She spun it in her hands in a tight arc, before bringing it down into a defensive position in front of her.

Rawgh'faz smiled sardonically.

"Yes."

All at once, the world around them seemed to distort. The throne warped, then vanished, followed by the room itself. The ceiling dissolved away into a starless void, then the walls, then the floor, until the two of them stood suspended in a black abyss, with nothing visible but each other. Then, as soon as the darkness came, it was replaced with a new interior, this one seemingly carved entirely from black and white marble.

To Eleanor, it looked a bit like the colosseum in Hawkport, with its giant flat s.p.a.ce surrounded on all sides by an oval of raised bench seats. At consistent points all the way around the central ring area, vast braziers burned brightly and smokelessly, filling the whole area with bright orange-yellow light. Looking around, Eleanor saw that every single seat in the arena was occupied by a gnoll. Every single size, shape, and fur color she'd ever seen and more were represented. There had to be thousands of them.

Rawgh'faz made a gesture in the air, and his staff appeared in his hand.

"Welcome to the arcane training grounds for my bloodline, devil girl." He said, before spinning his staff around towards her.

"Now, let's see just how clever you really are."