Lewd broke through the ice before Celica and Blight reached them.
The last frozen rib gave beneath her shield. Poison ran over its broken edge and spread across the ash, carrying fragments of black ice toward Derpy’s feet.
He stepped clear and returned to his upright form. His eyes stayed on the gunblade in her hand.
Mia barked once.
Sphinx had flattened her ears. She watched the weapon too, tail lashing as Lewd raised it again.
“Stay close,” Derpy told them.
Lewd advanced behind the shield. Her cheeks were wet, but her grip had tightened into something far removed from the uncertainty of the lesson. She knew where she wanted the blade now. The problem was that it was aimed at him.
Derpy used magic step to shift sideways.
She turned with him and pulled the trigger. Mist burst from the vents, spreading across the place where he had been. He planted his heel beyond it and drove his palm into the ash.
Black ice raced outward.
Spines rose in a ring around Lewd, their bases joined by curved ribs that formed faster than the earlier containment. She checked her advance, watching the shape close around her.
Fire ran through the gaps.
It remained narrow, concentrated along the seams rather than spreading into a blaze. The ice vibrated under the sudden contrast. Derpy held the two elements together and felt the strain run from his hand into his shoulder.
He needed the structure to hold this time.
Something else answered.
Pressure tightened behind his breastbone. His fingers curled against the ground, and white-blue electricity snapped between them.
Derpy almost pulled away.
Then he directed it toward the ring.
The new power spread through the spaces between ice and fire, connecting one rib to the next. It did not move like Celica’s storm. It followed the shape he was trying to impose, building a lattice that brightened each time another connection formed.
Mia circled one side. Sphinx moved along the other, following his attention as he looked between them.
Their positions gave him two points to hold in mind. He fixed the boundary around those points and drew the last electric bars into place.
Lewd stood inside the cage.
She looked from its bright seams to his face.
“Enough,” Derpy said.
The word came out rough with effort. He wanted the distance fixed. He wanted her to stop moving long enough for him to stop answering.
The lattice surged.
A white-blue arc snapped sideways and struck the shore beyond Mia. Ash scorched in a curling line. Derpy’s arm jerked, and pain flashed behind his eyes strongly enough to blur the cage.
He had shaped the electricity without understanding how to hold it.
Lewd saw the flare. Her expression hardened as she looked through the bars at him.
“You are doing it again.”
She leveled the gunblade toward the ground.
“Sludge Wave.”
The discharge came out thick and low. Dark poison rolled across the ash inside the ring, gathering into a heavy wave that struck the base of the ice.
Electricity scattered through it.
The bars lost their steady spacing, flickering as the sludge spread between the foundations. Fire hissed beneath the wet mass. Black ice softened around the places where the elements met, and one side of the cage began to lean.
Derpy felt the failure before the first rib fell.
He let go.
Mia was still near the ring. Sphinx turned toward him as the poison pushed through a widening gap.
Derpy stepped through space, caught Mia and Sphinx, and pulled them with him in a second movement before the wave reached their paws.
He set them down beyond the spreading sludge.
Mia shook herself. Sphinx moved close against his leg, watching the ground they had just left.
Thin arcs crawled up Derpy’s forearm.
He clenched his hand, trying to stop them. One jumped between his knuckles and disappeared with a sharp sting.
Across the ruined containment, Lewd came through her own poison.
Her blade met Frostburn before Derpy had steadied his arm.
The impact drove cold through the metal. Sludge clinging to the sword thickened against it, and the two powers caught along the edge instead of forcing one another back.
Derpy turned his wrist to break contact.
Lewd followed, shield pressing forward, poison running down the skull’s face. The ground beneath them had become slick enough that both adjusted their footing without looking down.
“Stop acting like you are alone!” she shouted.
“I am not—”
He saw the hearts beginning to form in her eyes again.
The sight pushed him toward panic. He stepped into her guard too hard, striking the shield with his shoulder and forcing her backward through the ash.
She shoved back.
Derpy started to raise his arm again.
Celica hit him from the side.
The tackle took him off his feet before he could redirect the movement. Ash burst around them. His uncontrolled electricity snapped outward and died against the scales along her body as she caught his wrist.
At the same moment, Blight struck Lewd.
The gunblade went wide. Lewd cried out and landed on her back with Blight pinning her down, the sword arm held away from both their bodies.
“Let go!”
Blight increased the pressure only enough to stop her struggling arm.
“You are finished swinging that.”
Lewd tried to twist beneath her. The heart-shapes brightened, then wavered under Blight’s fixed stare.
Derpy pushed against Celica.
He had enough strength left to move her. His back lifted from the ash, one knee coming beneath him as he tried to rise with her still holding on.
Celica’s eyes narrowed.
Her body expanded.
Wings unfolded and drew in again above him. Scales spread across a larger frame, storm-colored and bright along their edges. The shape filling his view carried a weight he could feel before it settled against him.
His arms shook.
Celica forced him back into a seated position, her mass braced to prevent him rising rather than crush him beneath it. The ash compacted around his legs. He tried once more to move and discovered how little room remained.
“Enough.”
Her voice carried across the shore.
Mia stopped moving. Sphinx stayed beside her, both clear of the poison.
Celica lowered her head until one eye filled much of Derpy’s vision.
“Both of you.”
He stared back, chest working. Electricity stirred beneath his skin, seeking an escape he no longer had space to give it.
Blight looked from him to Lewd.
“You may not have intended to kill each other,” she said. “Do not use that to pretend this was still a lesson.”
Celica kept Derpy’s gaze.
“You wanted your strikes to hurt. You stopped checking whether the other person could take them.”
Lewd’s next attempt to pull free weakened halfway through.
The shapes in her eyes faded.
She looked toward the collapsed cage, then at the poison that had reached the places where Mia and Sphinx had stood. Her face crumpled before she could turn away.
“You are such a dummy,” she sobbed.
Derpy closed his eyes briefly.
“I hate you,” she said, and the words broke under the crying before they could sound convincing.
No one answered them.
Celica held Derpy in place while his breathing slowed. The small electric discharges became less frequent. He stopped fighting the weight above him and looked instead at the hand she had restrained.
His fingers were trembling.
Only then did Celica reduce her size.
She remained in dragon form, close enough to stop him if he tried to rise too quickly. Her head lowered beside his shoulder as she inspected the arm.
“Can you feel your hand?”
He flexed his fingers.
“Yes.”
“Does it still want to discharge?”
Derpy watched a faint light move beneath his skin and fade.
“Not the way it did.”
“Are you hurt?”
He looked toward the scorched spiral in the ash.
“I can move.”
Celica waited.
“I am all right enough to sit here,” he said at last.
She accepted the smaller answer and stayed beside him.
Blight released Lewd’s sword arm first.
Lewd let the weapon dissolve. The shield followed, its last poisonous drops falling into the ash before its face disappeared.
When Blight moved away, Lewd sat up and wrapped her arms around herself. She kept her eyes down, crying more quietly now but without much control over when the next breath caught.
Derpy did not look at her.
Mia approached him carefully and pressed her head against his leg. He rested a hand on her only after checking that no electricity remained around his fingers.
Sphinx sat beside them with her tail drawn close. Her attention stayed on the damaged training ground.
The silence lasted long enough for the poison to stop spreading.
Celica and Blight withdrew a short distance and spoke too quietly for either trainee to hear. When they returned, they had the composed expressions of people who had reached a decision that would not make anyone feel better.
“We are ready to end this session,” Celica said.
Derpy stared beyond the broken ice.
Blight studied Lewd, then him.
“I still think joint ownership of my grimoire could be useful. Both of you have work to do with it.” She paused. “If Derpy wants that arrangement.”
Lewd’s head lifted slightly.
Derpy did not turn.
“It does not matter.”
“That is not a decision,” Celica said.
“Then do not use it as one.”
He moved through space before she could continue, appearing beyond the edge of her shadow. Mia rose at once. He looked back long enough to make sure she and Sphinx were clear of the damaged ground, then began walking.
Celica reduced her size further and followed.
Lewd remained seated with Blight. She watched Derpy’s back until looking at the ash became easier.
“She cannot leave until you wake,” Celica told him.
His pace slowed, but he did not stop.
“A little longer.”
“How long?”
He had no answer ready.
Celica kept beside him rather than forcing one. The shore thinned beneath their feet. The ruined ice and poison fell behind them, and the air became clearer as they approached the place where the waking room showed through.
Derpy could make out shapes beyond it: furniture, light, people who would want him to explain.
He stopped before the threshold.
Sinister separated from the shadow beside it.
He looked at Derpy’s hand first, then his face.
“Come here. We are switching.”
Derpy’s jaw tightened.
“You make it sound simple.”
“The movement is simple.”
The distinction stayed with him while the warmth around his wrists changed.
He felt the restraints that had anchored him there, including the ones he had stopped noticing because he could move within the shore. They loosened all at once.
Nothing shattered. No victory broke them.
The hold simply ended.
Derpy looked down at his hands, then back at Sinister. Knowing that release could happen so quietly made the time inside feel different in a way he was not ready to examine.
Celica stopped behind him.
He stepped toward the view of the room.
Sinister moved aside, and the ash shore receded.
Vaeloria’s room came back to him through sound before sight.
A chair shifted. Someone drew breath as though about to speak. Fabric moved near the bed.
For a moment, he could not separate those small noises from the pressure inside his skull.
Then he opened his eyes.
His hand rose because he wanted it to. He caught the side of his head and held on, the relief of the movement nearly lost beneath a sharp electric pain behind his eyes.
He was back.
Ace stood quietly nearby. Lenora and Lieam were within reach. Mk1 watched from her place across the room.
There was no second body for Sinister to step into. The face everyone had been watching was Derpy’s, and the attention behind it was his again.
He pushed himself upright.
Lieam flinched at the sudden movement. Lenora lifted a hand toward him, then stopped before making contact.
“Derpy?”
He looked at her.
Questions waited in her expression. Concern too. He could recognize both and still feel unable to bear either.
His fingers twitched against his temple.
If he began speaking now, he did not trust what would come out. He could still hear Lewd crying. He could see the poisoned ground around the pets. Beyond those memories waited the confession he had made and the orders he had given before it.
“Derpy,” Lenora said again, more gently.
He used magic step.
The room folded away before he answered.
Cold stone met his feet.
Derpy knew the courtyard immediately. He had first taken his wolf form here, beneath the same open sky and within walls that had seemed different before he understood how many people inside them would have opinions about what he was.
He moved away from the place where he had appeared and sat.
The stone held his weight without changing shape. That alone was enough to keep his attention for several breaths.
He rested his forearms on his knees and watched his hands.
A thin white-blue arc jumped between two fingers.
Pain followed it into his wrist.
Derpy hissed and nearly clenched his fist. He stopped before the movement was complete, remembering the way force had worsened the cage when its shape began to fail.
He let his fingers open instead.
The light died.
This electricity had followed him out. It belonged to more than an exercise Celica had arranged inside her own space.
He did not yet know what that meant.
For now, he kept his hands still and his breathing slow. The courtyard gave him enough room to do that without someone standing directly in front of him, waiting for an answer.
It did not make the answers unnecessary.
Beyond the walls, the capital continued moving. Boots crossed stone. A distant door struck its frame. Somewhere, a voice called for another person who would either answer or leave a silence behind.
Derpy remained seated.
He had imagined destroying this place. He had admitted that much to Lewd. Sitting beneath its sky now, he could not turn it back into a thought that belonged only to anger.
Another faint current stirred beneath his skin.
He waited for it to pass before moving his hand.
Vespera descended in front of the gate with her wings spread wide enough to draw every guard’s attention.
The landing drove dust and old road grit across the stone. She folded her wings slowly, allowing the last gust to settle around her boots. Her repaired third ring caught the light as she lifted her head toward the walls.
The contract’s pull remained steady beneath her ribs.
Derpy was inside.
She studied the gate, the guards beside it, and the space above them. After the distance she had traveled, the remaining barrier looked offensively small.
One guard moved forward while another reached for a signal.
Vespera took the first step toward them.
The guard opened his mouth to stop her.