With Iris backing him up, Arthur felt a lot more confident facing the rest of Rhysen’s group. It was still three on two, though, and their enemies hadn’t revealed much of their capabilities.“Haru’s down,” Iris said. “The crash broke his legs, right arm and cracked his skull open. I’ve stabilised his condition for now, but he isn’t waking up.”“Is there a chance he’ll die?”Iris shrugged. “I can’t really say, but the sooner you can look at him, the better.” Her voice was detached and cold, a symptom of using her hellfire in a realm wholly unsuited to it. Unfortunately, these weren't the kinds of enemies they could hold back against. Arthur didn’t waste the time their opponents were giving them. Since Iris’ arrival, he’d been busy carving three control runes across the length of his blade. While he couldn’t input ether of any other affinity into them, he could think of several novel applications he could try with his armament alone.“What exactly are we up against, Art?” Iris asked.“Rhysen’s an ice-mage. The woman with him has lightning. Not sure about the other guy, but someone on their squad uses some kind of white metal. They can infuse it with a law of some kind, but I have no idea what it is.”Iris’ eyes darted around the forest, lingering on the splintered white shrapnel on the ground. “That’s a crystal, Arthur, not metal.”Even through the detachment, he could hear the amusement in Iris’ voice.“It’s been enhanced with a generic toughness law, so I understand the confusion. A little bit.” That was all the time they got for talking. A bolt of ice-tipped crystal flew at Iris’ face and was intercepted by a wave of black hellfire. At least that answered one question. Rhysen was a dual-affinity mage, which left their final opponent as the only unknown. The attack signalled the restart of their battle, and a massive orb of lightning flashed towards Arthur.He tried to intercept it with his blade, (...)