Arson and Sylvia were now face to face with the 12 elite fairy guards.
Unlike the earlier guards, these ones didn't rush Arson.
Instead, they moved as a unit — eyes locked on Sylvia.
"What—?" Arson started, confused, as the elite squad surged toward her like a storm.
Sylvia instinctively summoned her vines and shields, but they were too fast. Too synchronized. Her defenses faltered under the precise, coordinated strikes. Each one knew where she would dodge, where she'd counter, how her plants would react.
Arson charged in to help — but found himself blocked.
A single elite stepped in his path, and to Arson's shock, he was pushed back. Their power wasn't raw, but focused. Calculated. Arson couldn't bulldoze his way through them like before. Every time he swung, they dodged just enough. Every flame he cast was reflected or absorbed by their enchanted armor.
Meanwhile, Sylvia was being overwhelmed. Five, six, seven of them attacked her simultaneously — blades spinning, spells locking her in place. She was fast, but not faster than their strategy. She was strong, but not invincible.
And then she realized it.
Their movement — it wasn't just magic-enhanced reflexes. It was mimicry. They were mirroring her patterns from the earlier battle. They had studied her style, her flow, her pulse with nature. They were trained to dismantle her.
And their weakness?
They were too reliant on reading her patterns.
Sylvia closed her eyes, let go of precision — and embraced chaos.
She redirected her vines at random angles, twisted her roots in illogical spirals, and even let her thorns stab unpredictably. They faltered. Their perfect synchronicity broke momentarily.
She whispered, low enough for Arson to hear, "They are mimicking patterns."
Arson grinned wildly, understanding her hint. "Heh. Now that's more like it."
With that, he burst into erratic flame, abandoning form and charging with primal fury, his strikes no longer elegant but wild — forcing the elite blocking him to misstep.
Sylvia, regaining ground, spun with thorns flying in all directions. The elite fairies were powerful — but not adaptable. And now, they were beginning to fall.
The tide was shifting.
The castle trembled under the surge of unpredictable power.
Arson, now fully in his element, laughed like a man possessed. His flames no longer followed structure — they danced, spun, exploded in erratic bursts. One elite guard tried to counter with a spell, but Arson feinted left, twisted mid-air, and slammed a fire-coated fist into his chest, sending him flying into the stone wall with a flaming crash.
"Try mimicking this!" he shouted, voice crackling with heat.
Sylvia, blood pumping, shifted from defensive weaving to a wild dance of blooming vines and darting thorns. She didn't think — she flowed. A feint here, a surprise root from below, a snap of overgrowth blocking a blade to her side. The fairies targeting her began to falter, their movements losing rhythm. One misread her completely and was ensnared by a sudden whip of briars, thrown across the hall.
Arson burst through his final opponent, flames scorching the floor behind him, and dashed to Sylvia's side. She didn't need him — not now — but he fought beside her anyway, the two now fully in sync through chaos, not structure.
Slash, burn, entangle, bloom — they tore through the elite guards together, unpredictable and relentless.
Soon, only silence remained. The final fairy elite hit the floor, their black wings twitching before going still.
Arson huffed, his fists still ablaze, looking toward the next chamber. "If these were Thorn's guards... then that freak with the black wings must be something else."
Sylvia, catching her breath, wiped the sweat from her brow. "He underestimated us. Thought we'd fall to what we already overcame."
Arson glanced sideways, a flame flickering in his eyes. "Let's make sure he regrets it."
Side by side, destruction and restoration, they stepped toward Thorn's throne — unrelenting, and now fully unpredictable.