Chapter -100: Ezekiel of the Stone Ravine
Ezekiel stood there taking in the savage roars of his people. They demanded blood from the Arctic Knight and all expectations lied on him to fill their pans.
He cared more about the Knight and how they would fight. The armor hid a deceptively fast warrior, but now they were forced into a smaller arena.
And yet they didn't hesitate to draw their twin blades and prepare for battle.
"No mercy, eh...?" He whispered to himself and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, "Yah, guess I can't pull me punches either."
He steeled himself with the vow to give this fight everything he got, but not to kill the Knight. He was serious about exposing their true nature.
"And the first way to doing that..." Ezekiel watched as the Knight whipped their blades down gracefully and launched forward across the ground.
His eyes widened as the Knight's grip tightened and they prepared to swing upward, "Is to crack that armor wide open!"
He put his all into a swing aimed for the Knight's helm. The Knight fell on their back and slid along the ground while still in the middle of swinging their swords.
Ezekiel tensed up with a mild state of panic as the sword almost bit his arm.
He then noticed the Knight go flying right off the edge of the arena, creating extra floor out of ice so they'd go sliding into the back wall.
There they stood up and flipped around, stabbing their swords into the wall and then jettisoning back with a burst of cold air.
They then expertly reversed the grip on their blades and leaped at Ezekiel with them get swung down. Ezekiel flipped around and swung his right arm up.
The blades hit his guard and the Knight pushed him away. Ezekiel dug his heels into the dirt and then swung his hammer against the ground, raising a ten tall spike from stone.
The Knight flung one blade out and Ezekiel dodged to the side just narrowly. The Knight then did an acrobatic flip downright to grab the spike on the palm of their gauntlet and freeze it over, using it to then vault over to Ezekiel.
It then whirled around with frost gathering into their remaining blade to double its length, making it appear like a sharpened feather, and whipping it against the blunt side of Ezekiel's hammer as he tried to counterattack.
Ezekiel was sent tumbling back with his heel hitting the handle of the thrown blade, which caused him to trip back.
The Knight landed and thrust it's other blade straight through the air, slicing Ezekiel straight across the center of his chest and missing the tip of his nose.
"Woo!" Ezekiel grunted in surprise.
The Knight then whipped their hand back to recall the blade, the chill being the only thing warning Ezekiel to hit the ground NOW.
The Knight then skated along and scooped their other blade off the ground and jumped at their foe ready to slice him up with a whirlwind dance.
Ezekiel swiped his hand over his chest and summoned cylindrical stone from the ground to bash the Knight on the side and send them away.
He then stood up and placed a hand over his chest. It was a thin wound but enough to make him crack a smile and wiggle his shoulders to get the bones a vigorous cracking, "Good! Glad yer not all talk!"
The Knight bounced off the ground and then stabbed their swords down on second impact, keeping their toes just on the edge.
They raised their head and for a brief moment Ezekiel felt a spark being tossed his way from their gaze. He smiled a little wider and then spread his feet, slamming them hard into the ground while gripping his hammer in both hands.
"Let's kick it up a magnitude!" Ezekiel then clubbed the ground from the side to send a rupturing wave of stone spikes at the Knight.
They responded in kind by twisting their swords and causing ice spikes of equal measure to clash, the two forces meeting in the middle and smashing together to form a higher pillar of spikes.
A light fog seeped off the pillar to mask the Knight's presence, causing Ezekiel to cautiously step around to see where they had gone.
And once he caught wind of their disappearance he was seconds away from being ambushed from the right by them.
Ezekiel spun around and smashed his hammer against their twin blades, the two forces cancelling each other out as a shockwave ricocheted off them and into the audience.
The audience kicked up their excitement as the two warriors stood their ground and started swinging their weapons at one another.
The Knight was relentless with their speed and every blow had them repositioning slightly to try and target one of Ezekiel's limbs.
But where his attacks lacked finesse he more than made up with the berth of his swings shielding him from harm.
They both knew what he was after and the Knight was adamant about guarding their identity at all, even if it meant sacrificing a chance to hurt their enemy.
Ezekiel, however, found himself troubled as their attacks clashed multiple times.
"Either I'm doin' this wrong or...I just ain't feelin' nothin' coming from the Knight's attacks." No soul. No feelings. It was as though either the Knight was merely a weapon to be pointed at their enemies, or they were so incredibly guarded that they refused to let anything get through.
Eventually his negligence caused by this misguided focus allowed the Knight to strike his hammer near his grip and force him to release it.
Then they ducked down and prepared to stab their blades up into his chest.
Ezekiel grit his teeth and smashed his forehead into the Knight's helm with a roar containing most of his strength.
The Knight's blades diverted into the sides of his gut and they were pushed away, splinters of cold steel falling to the ground off their helm.
"Ghhh...!" Ezekiel felt shivers radiating from his wound as he bent down to pick up his hammer and look towards the Knight.
There were a few cracks, but with a quick glide of their hand the Knight sealed them up and then swung their blades down by their side.
Ezekiel stabbed the pickaxe part of their weapon into the ground beside them and gestured the Knight towards him, "C'mon...!"
The Knight iced their blades and lashed them down with the grace of a swan, sending huge waves of ice hurtling his way.
They curved away from the center and prepared to collide at Ezekiel's sides.
Ezekiel then ripped up a huge boulder from the ground and flung it at the Knight.
The Knight hurtled themselves between the ice left behind and ducked under the boulder as it flew overhead.
"Gotcha!" Ezekiel sneered as he pulled his hand back and then immediately ran at the Knight. The boulder froze in mid-air then threw itself at the Knight's back.
The Knight glanced over its shoulder right as the boulder opened up like a hand and secured them in its grasp.
The hand then rose into the air while Ezekiel wound up the blunt side of his hammer with a few rotations of his arm.
"Time to bust that armor wide-open!"
The hand then dropped straight down into the hammer's both as it was swung up. However, the moment the two forces were to collide, the hand was encased in a thick layer of ice that easily shattered upon Ezekiel's weapon.
The shards turned into a flurrious ice storm around Ezekiel and held him down. He tried to take another swing ahead but hit empty air, causing him to pull back and look around wildly.
"Where'd they go?" He'd receive an answer from the pain coming from his right thigh. A quick but precise slice cut his tendons and made him drop to his knee.
"Ghh...!" It would be a difficult struggle but he could fight through the pain. But then the Knight attacked him from behind, leaving before his swing could connect.
They were so quick on the draw that the blades' presence was only felt in the pain that came afterwards.
Ezekiel chuckled and dug his knuckles into the dirt, enduring two more attacks to his arms and back before lifting his fist and punching the ground with all his might.
Rings of rock spires erupted out around his body to dispel the flurries and hopefully, hold the Knight back long enough for him to stand up.
But this was in how the Knight anticipated it, as Ezekiel saw their shadow lingering overhead as they leaped up, ready to throw a massive icicle into his head.
"Oh ya gotta be kiddin' me..." Ezekiel gripped his hammer in one hand and performed a mighty overhead swing into the icicle's tip, causing cracks to quickly spread out before it broke into more icy fog.
"Not this time." He grit his teeth and swung again, blowing all the ice high out of the arena and suspending the Knight in mid-air.
Ezekiel then smiled and threw his hammer up high where the Knight knocked it back down into the arena with a slash.
But he was right behind it, and grabbed the Knight by their neck and flipped them right around prepared to drag them down to the ground.
Ezekiel squeezed his fist and started pounding on the Knight's helm to crack it. The Knight didn't flinch as they threw their swords down into the arena below and threw their hands up to grab Ezekiel's wrists, freezing his arm bands solid and binding the two of them together.
Ezekiel grunted hard but couldn't break free with brute strength alone.
Thus the Knight had the upper hand to reposition him below them, where the swords had been impaled on their handles.
"Surrender your Tribe and live in shame, or die knowing you lose it anyways." The Knight said to them.
Ezekiel was panicking a little but still reveled in the excitement of the moment, curling his bottom lip before remarking in a playful and defiant tone, "How about I show you a third option?"
Ezekiel then grit his teeth and with one powerful grunt, caused his arms to start vibrating like an earthly tremor, shattering the ice and causing the Knight to briefly pause and go "What?"
Ezekiel then pulled up with all their strength to send the Knight hurtling all the way over to the arena wall.
That left him a few seconds to create a slide out of stone to roll him away from the Knight's blades. His body broke up the spires in the ground to slow him down and eventually, he stopped laying down on his stomach.
"Whew..." He planted his hands on the ground and barring a little shakiness in his elbows, was able to push himself back onto his feet and catch his breath.
He then retracted the rocks into the ground and walked on over to his hammer, noticing how the Knight was remaining glued to their indent in the wall.
As he bent down to pick up the hammer the Knight's swords suddenly went flying over him and caused him to spring up, watching as the Knight firmly grasped them in his hand and pulled away onto an ice platform they created out of the wall.
They then spun their blades around and stabbed the wall, causing ice to spread out the entire width in a flash.
Ezekiel gripped his hammer in both hands and guarded himself while looking around. Spikes were growing out of the ice and that'd become trouble, especially when the Knight re-entered the fray.
They fired themselves back onto the arena and immediately slid over to try and slice through Ezekiel's defenses.
Ezekiel had no choice but to play along with their dance to defend himself while the spikes fired off and into his body. They broke upon his dense muscles but their sub zero chill was enough to make him wince and lose focus.
The Knight sliced and slashed in all directions. It was remarkable just how elegantly their power was being put on display. Every strike was precise and left streaks of glittering snow in the air. Yet this also felt...empty.
Ezekiel had no time to muse about unimportant affairs but he couldn't stop himself. This was bothering him way more than this stupid authority dispute.
He ironed his determination up once again and swung at the Knight with all his strength, managing to give himself some breathing room in spite of the icicle hammering all over his body, dozens per second.
He then grabbed hold of his hammer and swung it behind his head, breathing cold and vaporous pants before clenching his teeth and letting out a roar.
He then began to spin around and around, becoming a lethal whirlwind that would decimate the Knight's armor just like it were all the icicles coming his way.
The Knight lashed their blades down and lengthened them with ice, keeping their distance while swinging at Ezekiel's raging cyclone. The ice broke off and reformed but the man of stone kept to his namesake and was unyielding to any force but his own.
The Knight brandished their blades down and hopped away. Ezekiel then concentrated on the ground and ripped up multiple boulders, smashing into them to send them hurtling into the ice wall.
All except for the segment behind the Knight, as they held their ground and let the boulder crash upon them and be broken.
The Knight then pointed their sword forward and walked clockwise. The remaining ice thrust out as a massive pillar that rammed right into Ezekiel. He smashed against it repeatedly, slowing down but managing to bust half it down in the process.
He then dug his feet deep into the ground and let go of his hammer, causing it to go barreling down the rest of the pillar and forcing the Knight to turn aside to dodge it.
Ezekiel then came stampeding after them like a herd of angry Argent Heavers with their fist drawn back. His footsteps ruptured the air like lightning and when he took a swing at the Knight the air collapsed upon his location and burst like an explosion.
The Knight's chest plate cracked, even having dodged, and they were forced to slash quickly to hold the man's monstrous strength at bay.
But when they did Ezekiel was there to grab their gauntlets and squeeze down on them. When they cracked Ezekiel could almost make out the person's skin, but they quickly sealed it back up.
"No more hidin'!" Ezekiel pulled his hands away before they were frozen over and whipped his hand out, calling his hammer back.
The Knight spun around and readied their blades, one for the weapon and the other for the master. But Ezekiel quickly threw his punch into the back of the Knight's helm to disorient them and then threw his arms past their shoulders to grab the handle and press it against the Knight's neck.
He then dragged the Knight to the ground and rammed the handle up against the bottom of their helm to try and pry it off.
It's resistance was cracking in a matter of seconds, "J-Just a little more...!"
But then he remembered the blades, and had he not his knees would've been stabbed through just now. But instead he pulled away, his heart legitimately racing out of fear.
"Ya won't give up easily, will ya...?"
The Knight's response was a silent swing of their blades and Ezekiel, taking a deep breath to focus, closed his eyes and chuckled.
"Yeah well..." He raised his head with a gritty smile and announced, "Neither will I!"
The ground started cracking around the Knight's feet and stony hands rose up to snare them by the limbs and hold them down tight. Every limb could be easily frozen and shattered but as long as Ezekiel kept it up the Knight couldn't do anything to move away except leap backwards over the abyss.
And eventually the amount of broken limbs piled up enough that they were getting encased in the ice they left behind...save for their head.
And by the time they noticed what was up Ezekiel had already taken a fifty foot leap into the air with his hammer swung far behind his shoulder.
The Knight tried to pull their swords up but they were stuck, and by the time they could break free they'd simply be making a futile effort to swing.
Yet they tried regardless, seconds before the blunt side of Ezekiel's hammer came crashing down upon their helm.
With all the force applied Ezekiel shattered the Knight's helm to microscopic pieces and a heavy ice fog flushed out across the arena, carried by the shockwave of his attack.
The audience braced themselves against the cold, with Lianne in particular standing tall with a look of pride on her face towards her son.
"Atta boy!" She cheered to herself.
Ezekiel jumped away but was confident he had succeeded. He then dropped on one knee as a sharp pain radiated out from above his thigh. He saw that the Knight had gotten one clean hit in at the very last second, which surprised him.
"D-Didn't think they'd be fast enough...! Heh...!" As the fog began to subside, chunks of the Knight's armor scattered across the ground.
The anticipation was dire for everyone here as they were finally going to see the true face behind their thieving nemesis.
As time slowed to a crawl, Ezekiel could only hear his heart beat pounding against his chest, and he refused to budge from this spot...
Finally, the fog subsided enough that the shadow of a figure could be made out at the edge of the arena.
"You aren't the disappointment I took you for, Son of Johnathan. But this battle..." The remainder of the fog was sent spiraling away by the thrust of a sharp lance made entirely out of black frost, "Is far from over!"
"W-What in the...?" The surprise from Ezekiel and nay, the rest of the audience was quite warranted. For the Knight's appearance and voice was the last thing they expected...
Standing in the middle of where the armor once lay was a woman of above-average stature and frigid, electric-blue hair that stopped below her chin. Her skin was peerless and only somewhat pale, but the true steel laid in her toned and mildly dense muscles, which her sleeveless icy blue dress kept exposed.
The dress came equipped with black support for her chest with gold trimmings. Behind the bottom of her dress were black and lacy short shorts while her legs were equipped with icy blue clogs and stockings covered in black, flowery decals, with thin wiring extending further up to criss-cross around the rest of her bare legs.
Her gaze projected the focus and determination that had come to be expected of her mission, but her eyes had this scintillating icy glow to them that Ezekiel found himself drawn to the most...
The audience were all abuzz with this revelation: "T-The Knight was a girl...?!" "Ain't there no lady warriors in Cryofloe?" "What the hell?!"
But Ezekiel kept focused on her and couldn't look away. Despite the maturity present in her posture she couldn't have been more than a couple years younger than him and yet, he totally believed that this girl was the real deal.
The girl turned a smile and swung her lance down to her side and brandished her other hand before her chest in a defensive manner before asking in a captivatingly commanding tone of voice, "Well? Are your expectations satisfied?"
"Heh...!" Ezekiel wanted to crack up laughing from how blown away he was, but knew there was no way it'd come off as anything but disrespectful.
He thus pulled himself up onto his feet and swung his hammer over his sore shoulder, gritting his teeth and hunching over to face her head-on, "I'm definitely gettin' a lot more than I bargained for!"
The girl's smile rose subtly and she turned a little to the right, wiggling her fingers towards the armor pieces on the ground.
They began to pull back together and reformed the original armor sans the helm in a matter of seconds, proceeding to wield both swords still in pristine condition just like she had moments ago.
Ezekiel's heart skipped a beat and then started fluttering quick enough to leave him gawking with a blush. He then cracked a smile and remarked, "Ah, so that's how ya got away with it all."
He then held his hammer in front of him and forced a chuckle through, "Two against one? Fine. Guess' about time you made me work up a sweat."
The girl nudged her head and the armor mobilized quickly in a curved zigzag pattern towards Ezekiel, with them going for a straightforward approach between the trails left in their wake.
Ezekiel pulled away and then swung along the ground to drag rocks up in front of him. This diverted the armor's path to his right where he'd try to smash it again with a punch.
But the girl's lance suddenly speared through the rocks with ease and struck his hip, sticking deep into his skin before another thrust sent him hurtling through the air.
The armor kept running ahead and leaped up with a quick slash down to bounce Ezekiel off the ground and keep his momentum going.
The armor broke ahead of him and slashed upward at his shoulders to knock him higher into the air and bring great pain throughout his backside.
The girl was readily descending from the sky with their lance primed back. They then pummeled Ezekiel repeatedly from the front with thrusts, with the armor slashing ice waves at his backside.
Ezekiel could steel his front with the hammer but if this kept up they would be able to make him let go of his weapon.
He focused his concentration on the armor and raised the ground to flip them away towards the arena wall, thus allowing the girl's thrust to drag him back down.
But they were in full pursuit and delivered one mighty thrust to the center of his mass that released a spiral of ice outward on impact.
The ground cracked and held Ezekiel down under a layer of crumbled rock, which he didn't mind in the slightest!
He mentally tossed the rocks at her face and she backed away, swinging her lance around to break them. When the largest rock was flung she backflipped away gracefully and then slashed her lance to leave a thick curve of ice to fall upon Ezekiel.
Ezekiel was a little encumbered with awe at how delicately she moved along the battlefield, expressing full confidence in her control over the battle and looking like quite the captivating sight as she did.
But he did get up and punched the ice out of the way, forced to use his hammer to stand up and face his enemy as she landed.
Her subtle smile was entrancing but not entirely bewitching enough to hold him down. He glanced to the left and timed his swing to deflect the armor before it successfully swung it's sword at him.
The girl then ran at him and tried to puncture his body, retreating before her commitment led to her receiving the blunt force of the back of his hand.
She was as slippery as she was nimble, with none of her strength lost shedding that armor. In fact, the wind off her attacks felt stronger than before.
As her armor kept Ezekiel distracted she twirled and then plunged her lance into the ground, creating a line of icicles straight towards him.
He had a chance to break the line with his hammer before resuming his clash with the armor. Then the girl created a second line to break through the first that was bigger and stronger.
Ezekiel backed away and the armor cleaved through the icicles with pure slicing force, making him duck back as a few hairs were shaved off his chin.
He stood and rubbed his chin with surprise before harrowly stepping away to avoid the armor's swings.
Ezekiel barely saw the girl speeding by out of the corner of his eye as he began raising his hammer back. With a quick roll of the eyes and exasperated sigh he smashed the ground at the armor's feet and raised a disorganized ring of rock spires to hold both sides off.
He then kicked the rock directly behind them to slide it at the girl, who swung to her side to dodge and then increased the smugness on her expression for a moment.
Ezekiel vaulted skyward and began ripping up parts of the arena to hammer down at the girl. The girl stood her ground and thrust her lance up. Ice spears formed out of nothing and fired off, piercing through every stone and pushing Ezekiel on contact with his hammer.
Ezekiel grit his teeth and the next boulder he launched would be a little spicier, as he coated it in steel the moment his hammer made contact.
The girl's eyes froze and she quickly slid away on a sheet of ice before the steel ball's impact spread cracks all atop the arena.
Her glance turned to her armor and it let itself be propelled off the rippling of the ground to quickly reach Ezekiel.
Ezekiel was starting to sweat and his lessened reflexes allowed the armor to easily get the jump on him. It swung up to force the hammer out of the way and then slashed down on his chest to send him hurtling back to the ground.
Worse than that he went tumbling towards the edge, with the girl using her lance to add a little ice to the floor to help him slide off the rest of the way.
The audience gasped as Ezekiel looked like he would plummet into the abyss.
Ezekiel, however, grabbed hold of the ledge and held on tight, but the culmination of all the damage he had tanked was leaving his arm in a bad shape to hold on for long.
The girl calmly approached the edge and pressed the tip of her lance into his thumb so the pain would cause it to let go. Then she went for his pointer finger and Ezekiel flailed around full of worry.
But in the heat of the moment he took advantage of this to swing back and then kick the side of the arena as hard as he could.
This caught the girl off-balance and allowed him to throw his hammer straight up, clobbering her in the chin and sending her hurtling many feet through the air.
He was then free to pull himself just in the nick of time to swing his hand out and catch his hammer, slamming the blunt end upon the ground and grinning.
The armor collapsed on its knees and the girl seemed to be trembling a little on the ground. Ezekiel's expression eyed her with concern but it was unwarranted, for she began to prop herself up and at worst, would have a bruise under her chin later today.
She rubbed under her chin with a tiny smile and a little blood dripping out between her teeth.
"Fine, I will allow you to tell me your name, Son of Johnathan." She said so nonchalantly it came off more like a demand than a show of respect.
Ezekiel cracked a smile and took a couple steps forward cause he honestly wasn't sure she should be able to hear him right now, "The name's Ezekiel Gaia."
"Ezekiel?" She nodded and closed her eyes with a look of pride on her face, "A powerful and fitting name for the future general of MY Oreore forces."
Ezekiel brushed his hand up in disbelief and said, "Oi vey, quit gettin' ahead of yerself."
"Victory is my right. It's my destiny!" The girl let her voice be heard by all who witnessed her and even in this land where everyone saw her as the enemy, she WAS heard.
"Victory. Destiny. Whatever..." Ezekiel shrugged and grasped his hammer tightly in both hands, "All I know is I'm havin' the time of my life fightin' ya, and that ain't somethin' I say lightly."
The girl slowly creaked her eyes open and her smile seemed to grow just that little bit wider, "Well, flattery will get you nowhere. For me, this battle has been what I've sought...the chance to further push my body's limits!"
She swung her lance at the ground and a cold wave swept through the arena, stirring the armor back to life.
"Heh." Ezekiel grinned wide and then performed a short hop through the air, smashing his hammer down to further crack the arena and cause the elevation to rise up differently across it.
The girl eyed him narrowly before she was hidden behind the rock, while the armor was sent down to fight him head-on.
Ezekiel hopped up to higher elevation and swung his hand out to command the rocks to crush the armor between it.
The armor held on using their blades as support and Ezekiel breathed a sigh of relief, which was then overwhelmed by a massive shadow covering the arena.
He looked up and saw the girl had jumped high into the air and summoned an icicle for every elevated rock in the arena, with her dead center above him.
She pointed her lance down and the icicles rained down, spearing the middle of the formations and pushing them back into place, while she centered her efforts on Ezekiel himself.
He braced himself into the ground and threw his arm guard up to block her lance, but it was brittle and shattered easily.
He then squeezed his fist to tighten his muscle and bone against her unrelenting determination to breakthrough. The ground ruptured at his feet and he saw the armor now free to tackle him off-balance.
He swung his hammer at it but it blocked with both blades to get repelled a few feet and then run back again. Ezekiel was clocked in the gut and sent staggering back, where the girl then threw their lance into the sky and swung down to kick him in the face.
Two simultaneous attacks threatened to put him on his back but a little dizziness didn't mean much for the man who regularly had boulders fall on his head.
He grit his teeth and smashed his feet down, wobbling but not yet out of the thick of things quite yet.
He then headbutted the girl in the gut to knock her into her armor. The two went sliding away and with a sly smile she pulled the armor apart and slipped inside with Ezekiel in heavy pursuit.
He reared his fist back with vibrations shaking from his knuckles and punched the armor square in the chest. In that exact moment the girl slipped out the back and jumped over her armor to catch her lance's handle in both hands, pointing it down towards Ezekiel's head.
Ezekiel threw his hammer aside and wrapped his hands around the lance's tip tightly. The girl thrust down harder and almost made him go down on one knee.
He fought back against the pressure and lifted her while there was still grip in his hands, then threw her to the right.
She bounced off her back then flipped and landed on her feet, thrusting her lance forward to summon icicle spears to fire off after him.
Ezekiel ran after her and recalled his hammer so he could swing through the icicles. She then tried to call forth a gigantic icicle in front of her but he backed off at the last second and then smashed through it using a diagonal swing.
He then leaped over the remains as the icicle went crashing tip-first into the audience, hammer armed to swing down on top of her. She had proven already that she can take whatever he threw at her so he had no qualms giving her 100%.
The girl waited until the last moment then thrust her lance up at the blunt end with the perfect amount of force to counter him and send the weapon hurtling up and out of his grasp.
Ezekiel staggered back and watched as the girl marched forward, thrusting the tip of her spear all over his body.
Her hair was getting disheveled and the sweat across her skin just made it glisten brighter.
Two warriors. Two ideals. But there could be only one winner and quite frankly, Ezekiel had almost forgotten just why he had started this fight to begin with.
He was grinning from cheek-to-cheek through the pain when he saw that her smile was coming a little more into view as well.
This was a fight worth fighting, not just for him, but also for her. And no matter how cold her exterior was he was going to reach down deep and show her just how hot the fire in his soul truly was.
He suddenly smashed his feet into the ground and grabbed hold of the lance under his left arm to drag her in closer.
Her eyes widened and she was quick to try and pull away, only to be ensnared around the wrist and legs by rock bindings that turned to steel.
"Caught ya slippin', didn't I?" As Ezekiel cheerfully said that the whole arena started to pulse with a mighty tremor, then struggled through a series of increasingly stronger aftershocks radiating out of his feet.
The girl met Ezekiel's eyes and took his unwavering confidence seriously for the first time this battle as he coiled his fist back so hard each knuckle cracked individually.
Lianne stood right up from her seat in utter disbelief and shouted, "Boy! Ya better not unleash that attack!"
Ezekiel grit his teeth and his eyes flared open with the intensity of a thousand iron forges working in unison. And as this power flared, he could feel his father's visage standing behind him, matching his power and intensity 1-to-1.
"This is everythin' I got left! Now or never!"
"This 'ere...is the roar of every hard-working soul in my Tribe!" All the tremors collapsed inside of Ezekiel's fist as he thrust it out hard enough to shake the very air itself.
"MAGNITUDE TEN!"
The girl stood there with her eyes showing mild worry and at the very last possible moment, she was able to call her armor to stand between her and his fist.
The impact caused a massive burst of ice flakes to plume out of the arena and covered the audience in a thin layer of frost. The pillars cracked and most people fell onto their faces or nearly tumbled into the abyss outright.
It was lucky none of them were deafened by the noise, given the Argent Heavers heard and felt it miles away.
In the aftermath of the attack Ezekiel was thrown back to the edge of the arena with his shoulders blades pressed down and his body in incredible pain.
He was quivering all over, mostly in the arm, and even holding down his wrist didn't stop his bones from feeling like they wanted to break.
He planted his head down against the ground and let the ice flakes fall upon him as he breathed in heavily and had a jolly good laugh about it all.
"M-Maybe I oughta have dialed it down a little...Ha ha ha!"
There was a lot of silence as the ice flakes settled down and it became clear enough to see what had happened to his opponent.
But he was too tired to lift his head and thus had to fire off a question to the wind, "Oi! Ya alive out there?!"
Of course she was, her strength was ridiculous even by Oreore standards let alone that of her people! But it was more done out of curiosity over how she'd responded.
And as it turned out, it'd be by coming up to him and stabbing her lance into the ground beside his hip.
His eyes widened with a gasp and his heart started to race. She hung over him panting and sweating like mad but managing to keep her cool and collected exterior. Her hair was a mess and it was taking her lance's strength just to keep her on her feet as she trembled at the knees.
There was a good amount of blood dripping out of her mouth and onto his abs. She looked absolutely exhausted and yet somehow, that just made Ezekiel's heart flutter faster than he's ever felt before.
"Don't you...think it's time you gave up...?" She said to him.
And maybe she was right. He was on his back and couldn't even stand up let alone throw a punch. Yet, something had been stirring inside of his heart ever since he first laid eyes on her true face and his people's prejudice be damned, he wasn't going to ignore it anymore...
With a brief and satisfied sigh he closed his eyes and chuckled, "B-Before I do that...Could ya do me the honor of tellin' me your name?"
The girl quietly wiped her blood onto her arm and then said, "...Cecilia Frost."
"Cecilia...?" Ezekiel's smile was that of a man who had seemingly found paradise, "Heh heh heh, that's a perfect name for ya."
"Is that all?" She wondered, sounding a little annoyed
"One more thing, if ya don't mind..." He replied.
"Fine. Hurry up..." She said.
He stared straight into her eyes and refused to blink or look away even as his vision was struggling to maintain focus, not until he laid his heart bare.
"Watchin' ya fight was like seein' a gem in motion. Everythin' from the graceful way ya moved to the precision of your attacks...Beautiful. I ain't ever seen a lady with yer strength and grit in all my years of livin' here and I'd be a damned fool if I tried an' find another diamond like ya in the rough."
"Yer truly a one-of-a-kind beauty. And if ya'd have me, I swear on my heart and soul I'd do everythin' in my power to make ya happy."
With one tight gulp, Ezekiel weakly raised his hand an inch off the ground and whispered, "Cecilia Frost...Would ya marry me?"
Dead silence filled the entire arena.
Cecilia's expression, despite staying the same, slowly grew redder and redder until she eventually put her hand atop her chest and her heart could be heard pounding hard within.
"What...what...?" Her bewildered voice trailed off as she closed her eyes and collapsed flat on her stomach beside Ezekiel, her lance clanging against the ground a moment after.
Now all eyes were on him and everyone, especially his mother, were glaring hard.
Next Time: What The Heart Wants