Time seemed to slow for the spectators, sitting in anticipation of the first move.

Blueblood threw a couple of spells, hoping to make her flinch. The ground around Aphrodite exploded, but she never moved.

She didn’t even blink.

He was mildly surprised, since even other duelists usually reacted to the explosions. He decided to go the quick route, and teleported behind her while swinging his sword down.

To meet absolutely nothing.

His blade dug into the earth, and his eyes opened wide in surprise. She had jumped forward, twisting in mid-air to land a few feet away.

“I thought you were going to fight. That wasn’t even close enough to hit me.” Aphrodite said, landing lightly on her feet.

“I could say the same to you.” He replied, pulling his blade out of the ground.

“We’re allowed to use whatever we have on our person to fight.” She said, pointing downward.

Blueblood looked down, and noticed a little orb. As he leaned closer, it exploded in a flash of blinding light. He stumbled backwards, blinded.

At the same time Aphrodite had jumped towards him, her right arm pulled back to hit. As she landed within arms reach, she swung and caught him in the ribs.

Blueblood heard the cracking, and felt the pain in his left side. His magic pulled up a teleportation spell, getting him out of harms reach before it went to work healing his broken ribs.

“I thought you were putting me in my place, not getting your ass whipped. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I was fighting a recruit fresh from basic training instead of a famed duelist.” Aphrodite called,wiping the blood off her gloves.

Blueblood’s sight slowly returned as his magic finished fixing his ribs and got to work on his eyes. His blood was boiling with rage.

“I will show you that I earned my title you harlot.” He shouted back, tightening his grip on Scalebreaker. As his magic finished fixing his eyes, he pulled up another teleport spell. This time, he dropped in from straight above.

He was unprepared for her to grab the blade of his sword with one of her hands, deflecting the striking edge as sparks flew from her palm. Once he was close enough, she reached up with the other and grabbed his chain mail vest. She twisted her upper body, pulling Blueblood along as she spun and tossed him into the walls on the far side of the arena.

“That’s two attempts I’ve given you, and you’ve failed on both. If you get to three, I’m going to quit going easy on you.” Aphrodite called, watching Blueblood pull himself out of the wall.

“This should not be this difficult. She is just one fighter, and a woman at that.” He said to himself, his magic working to fix the broken bones and cuts across his back. His thoughts went back to how she deflected his blade. Only metal on metal created sparks like that, but her gloves flowed and felt like cloth. It didn’t make any sense.

He was not going to lose this fight. Not to a woman.

He gathered up as much magic as he could, and put it all into creating an exact likeness of himself.

Aphrodite watched with amusement as another one of her opponents started growing from the dirt.

“So I get to fight another you, while you recover and watch? How interesting.” She said, as the second Blueblood took a step forward.

“Anything goes after all.” Blueblood replied, as he fell to the ground exhausted. He could take a small breather, while she gets tired.

“I know, I’m just waiting for you to pull out the big guns.” She smirked, dropping back into her martial stance.

The second Blueblood teleported across the arena, planning to impale her. Unfortunately for him she had jumped up a half second before, dodging the blade and putting her in the perfect position to kick him in the head.

The real Blueblood had closed his eyes for a second before a shockwave from right next to him knocked him over. He scrambled to get back up as his eyes traveled to the wall next to where he had been sitting.

The copy he had sent to fight her was now occupying a rather deep crater that it had flown into headfirst. It crawled out, the bones in its arms snapping back into position and its face reforming as it moved.

“Durable. A useful thing, although it seems to have drained all of your energy to make just one.” Aphrodite said, walking over. The Blueblood clone raised its sword and charged her, getting within swinging distance before it was launched back into the same crater by a punch.

“But very stupid. Or is that just how smart you are?” She asked, watching the clone reform again as it pulled itself out of the crater.

“It is a useful skill, since pure magic is near impossible to destroy. It will keep reforming and fighting until either you die or I dispel it.” Blueblood said, pride in his work evident as he spoke.

“Near impossible huh? So if I keep beating the shit out of it, it’ll eventually dissipate?” Aphrodite asked, picking the clone up by its head and smashing it into the ground. She raised her right hand, forming a fist as she pulled it all the way back.

When she swung, the impact cratered the ground under the clone. She then proceeded to do this a good dozen or so more times. By the time she finished, she was at the bottom of a waist deep hole in the ground

“Huh, this thing is more durable than I thought.” Aphrodite said, standing up to stretch a bit. She looked over at Blueblood, who had realized during the severe beating his clone was taking that once she finished with it, he was royally fucked.

“Guess I have to get serious about this now.” Aphrodite said, as her gloves started glowing. She raised her right fist, and swung down as hard as she could.

A blinding flash of light shot out of the crater, along with an explosion of pure magic.

Blueblood was blinded and instantly felt the connection to his clone disappear, making him cry out in pain as it was forcefully severed.

His magic rushed to fix his eyes again, just in time for him to see Aphrodite climbing out of the crater.

“Oh Celestia, what have I gotten myself into?” He asked himself, scrambling to his hooves as Aphrodite approached him. He swung his blade at her, hoping to distract her, but she deflects the blade with an open palm and swings for his face.

He dodges backwards, letting go of Scalebreaker to get out of her reach. As he landed, his magic concentrated on a teleportation spell that moved him to the other side of the arena.

“Ok, so she has ungodly strength and her gloves are made of some unknown material that is uncuttable.” He said to himself, listing the facts he knew to himself.

First, he had agreed to a duel with a monster.

Second, said monster wanted nothing more than to beat his face in repeatedly.

Third, his sword was absolutely useless.

Finally, he had spent most of his magic on a cloning spell that she had pummelled into nonexistence.

“I am so royally bucked.”

“Yes. Yes you are.” Aphrodite said, grabbing his sword by the handle. “Nicely balanced, high quality metal and powerful rune inscription. I’d say this was a present to you for completing some trade.”

“Yes, I got it for helping to create a peace pact between Griffonia and Equestria. Their king gave it to me because I bested his champion in a fight.” Blueblood said, drawing in as much magic from the air as he could while he had the chance.

Aphrodite tossed the blade at him, the blade landing in the dirt between his hooves.

“If that’s your only weapon, then you need it back obviously. It wouldn’t be fair to beat you without it.” She said, walking towards him.

Blueblood quickly drew the blade from the ground and dropped into a defensive stance. If she landed another hit, he was as good as dead.

“Are you ready now Blue, because I’m done going easy on you.” Aphrodite said, dropping her stance a bit and sprinting towards him.

The transition was so fast Blueblood barely had the time to pull his blade up to block her first punch, the impact of which knocked him off balance from the force of it. As he stumbled back, Aphrodite took the chance to swing again.

Blueblood twisted his upper body to the side, barely avoiding her punch as he rolled away. As he rolled out of the dodge, he lobbed a fireball straight at her.

Aphrodite rolled through her strike, moving out of the range of the explosion. As she got back to her feet, she noticed several more spells flying straight at her.

She smiled.

Blueblood noticed this at the last second, as all of his spells exploded on their target.

“Well, I thought she would be harder to deal with than that.” He said, leaning over to catch his breath.

“Oh, I am much harder to kill.” Aphrodite responded.

Blueblood looked up to notice her jumping towards him from the smoke cloud. He raised his sword in time to catch the strike, the impact of which knocked him back several feet. As he moved the blade out from in front of him, he noticed that there were spiderweb cracks through the part that she had hit.

“If you keep blocking with your weapon it’ll break. If you don’t block with your weapon, I’ll break your body.” Aphrodite explained, popping her knuckles.

“You’re a monstrosity.” Blueblood said, bringing his blade back up into his defensive stance.

“Wrong thing to say. I’m a soldier, not a monster.” Aphrodite said, before suddenly appearing in front of Blueblood in midswing. Before he could even react, she landed a hit in the center of his ribcage.

Blueblood could hear his ribcage shattering as he was launched backwards. He hit the arena wall much harder than he did earlier.

“Oh buck that hurts.” He said, falling out of the pony shaped hole. His magic rushed to fix his ribcage, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.

“Oh, I think I might have overdone it already. I wasn’t expecting that to shatter your ribcage.” Aphrodite said.

“Go buck yourself.” Blueblood said, using his sword as a cane to stand. His magic had placed all his ribs back in the right spots and were now fixing the shattered bones.

“That mouth of yours got you into this. Don’t you think you ought to be more careful about what you say?” Aphrodite asked, before blinking right in front of Blueblood again. As he tried to raise his blade to guard she jumped up and delivered a roundhouse to his head, knocking him into another of the arena walls.

The crowd was silent as they watched their champion get the shit beaten out of him. The more creative of them might have compared the fight to a single pegasus trying to stop a hurricane. The less creative ones would have just thought that he was receiving one hell of an asswhipping for running his mouth.

She walked over to Blueblood, who was still stuck in the wall.

“Aren’t you just a pitiful sight. The supposed champion, and here you are getting your ass kicked like a fresh recruit being used for a demonstration.” She said, grabbing his vest and pulling him out of the wall.

He tried to take advantage of her proximity, and tried swinging his blade to hurt her. She simply grabbed the blade and tossed it away from them both. Once he was disarmed she reached down and crushed his blade arm, shattering both of the bones in his forearm.

“There we go, you’re completely disarmed for now.” She said, wiping the blood that had leaked onto her glove on his face. The red easily contrasted against his white fur, although it was only slightly darker than the bruises that were forming underneath it.

“You have won. I am defeated, and you have your honor back. I learned my lesson.” Blueblood said, surrendering.

“Oh no, it isn’t that easy. You agreed to Aetherian rules. That means the loser dies.” She said, her open hand coming up to eye level. His eyes flickered back and forth between her face and her hand, watching it slowly ball into a fist and start glowing.

He watched in slow motion as she drew her fist back, and started swinging for him.

Author's Note

I know, I know.

Another cliffhanger.

Before you sharpen your pitchforks and light your torches, if I had posted the entire thing in one chapter it would have been much too long compared to the rest of the chapters.

I'm trying to keep them under three thousand words each, for readability sake.