The sword stood at the centre of the arena, planted firmly into the frozen ground. It was immense, surely too large for anyone to wield. dark grey Iron etched with intricate designs, worn and bent from hard use. And despite her hopes, Weiss knew they where about to meet its owner.
A howl of pain echoed through the arena, like that of a dying animal. Weiss heard Clement back up with a curse. Her teammates where frozen, rigid and still as sentinels. Leon and Augen moved in step to face the shadows as they rose, the fine black mist coagulating into an almost human form.
The thing rolled its shoulders, pulling the sword free with the dexterity of a drunk butcher, before falling into a strange fighting stance, left foot forward, right foot back, standing completely straight. Its head crooked at an angle with a sound like a burbling stream, then its back knee bent and it disappeared.
Weiss' heart almost burst out her chest as Leon met the blade head on with a terrible screech of iron, expertly twisting it aside and twirling around to deliver his own strike to kins back, only for an armoured boot to connect with his neck. An instant later augen appeared behind it and grabbed it by the neck, twisting to slam it down into the snow with a grunt. Then it was over.
They say that seeing is believing, but Weiss could hardly believe it could be over so quickly. Though her own coach had said the same thing about skilled Duelists, they never had long bouts. In their world, that quick burst of speed and strength, that quick flurry of blades, was everything. No tricks, no delays, no rules. Kill or be killed, so far away from the drawn out garish clashes of hunters.
With a dull stab of dread, she realised the Thing was moving again, rising from the ground like a puppet on strings. The darkness that formed it began to swirl and ripple strangely, as if trying to break its own surface tension. The violent writing had caused it to begin to drip, and soon the shadow was pooling at the Things feet, sloughing off ridges of grey armour and dripping from sodden grey rags that wrapped around it.
Weiss hadn't been one for idols, she had dreamed only of surpassing them, SHE would be the Idol. But she knew their faces, their fighting styles, their notable victories, their semblances, anything she would need to know if she ever had to face them in a Tournament.
At the time the notion that she would ever fight living legends had seemed perfectly natural to her, surpassing them meant besting them, after all.
The Exile had been the only one to worry her. She had seen his teams' disappearance as a blessing in disguise, even then with her ceaseless beliefs in her own destined spot as the greatest hunter that ever lived, she had been more than a little intimidated by the beast that lurked beneath that hood.
But that hadn't mattered, MIA was just a soft way of saying they where some Grimm's supper. She wouldn't have to trouble herself with them anymore. Of course then she had gone to beacon and learnt not to be such a cold bitch, but the point remained that she no longer had to fear fighting him, although it seems fate had other plans.
The darkness sprayed across the arena as he shook himself free. A droplet burst on her cheek, and Weiss' head was filled with noise, thousands of tiny voices drowning her mind with their whispered nothings.
Kins gaze settled on Augen, and the voices became frenzied. Weiss groaned as streaks of pain shot trough her skull, whispers like Razor blades rattling around in her head.
Kin charged with another inhuman screech, but Augen dodged his wild swings, flickering from place to place like a shoddy stop-motion. Kins both writhed in mid air as Augens hammer struck him from a hundred different direction. Augen was picking up speed, and he began to blur much like a bulwarks rotor. His hammer blows had settled into a steady drum, if she strained her ears she could almost hear a beat through the noise, she almost laughed, the saying "like Music to my ears" seemed rather fitting at this point. Then the beat was replaced by a long warbled note from the quivering steel, and Weiss' laugh caught in her throat.
Kins held the hammer in one hand, but the veins bulging in Augens neck told her that there was a lot more force there than the exiles stance suggested. Kins savagely twisted the hammer and augen cried out in pain, his grip loosening enough for kin to wrench the hammer free and toss it across the arena. Far out of reach, his pain clouded mind unable to harness his semblance.
No whispers now, just silence, a cold overbearing silence that weighed on Weiss' mind, a physical nothingness.
Kin stared at him, his hands shaking slightly.
The silence tightened, and kin erupted in a gout of black flames as augen dove away from him. A fiery whip lashed across his back and he was knocked down into the snow.
The fire formed long claws, which kin rammed into Augens stomach. He let out a choked gasp of pain as kin slowly rose, lifting him up until he dangled almost a meter above the floor. At his full height kin towered above them, a pillar of fire and iron.
Augens mouth twisted in silent screams, but the fire was spreading quickly, scorching his lungs and erupting from his opened maw. Droplets of gold dripped from his chin as his teeth melted, dropping into the Snowmelt with a hiss of steam. He beat at kins arm, clawing and battering on the thick iron, but his strength soon failed him, and he spent the last moments of his life in agony as his eyes popped and his brain broiled.
The voices laughed.