"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.