cnatrainingtips Chapter 350: Ordin wins
Chapter 350: Ordin wins
Two feet.
He kicked—scooping fire from the trail beneath his own feet, the flame compacting into a fireball that launched from his foot toward Ordin’s torso at point-blank range.
Ordin’s hands came up—not to clap, to intercept, the elastic palms absorbing some of the fireball’s impact the way a glove might absorb a thrown object, the flame spreading across his palms and forearms on contact.
He took the hit.
The fire spread across his hands—not damaging immediately, the flame from a kicked fireball less intense than a sustained burn, but present, the heat transferring to his palms directly.
He clapped.
The clap with fire on both palms produced something different from a standard shot—the compressed air carrying the flame with it, the needle-blast emerging not as a clean projectile of air but as a burning projectile, fire and compressed air combined.
It hit Drake’s shoulder.
The combined impact—force and heat simultaneously—staggered him, the hit different in character from anything either ability had produced independently.
Drake stepped back—one step, the close-range exchange having produced something neither fighter had planned for.
Ordin looked at his palms—the fire still present on the surface, the elastic tissue carrying flame in a way it hadn’t carried anything before.
He clapped again.
Another fire-infused shot—the flame still on his palms feeding into the compression, the projectile burning as it traveled.
It hit Drake’s chest.
Real damage—the combined force and heat landing directly, Drake absorbing it but the hit registering differently than the pure-air shots had registered.
Drake understood what was happening.
His own fire—transferred to Ordin’s palms through the kicked fireball—was now being weaponized against him through Ordin’s claps. The interaction he had been managing all fight—fire disrupting air, air disrupting fire—had produced a third state neither of them had anticipated.
He needed to remove the fire from Ordin’s palms.
He couldn’t extinguish it directly—he had no water, no smothering technique, nothing in Wildfire Step that put fire out rather than created it.
He kicked another fireball.
Aimed not at Ordin’s body—at his hands directly, adding more fire to the palms that already carried flame.
Ordin’s hands took the second fireball.
More fire on the palms.
He clapped.
The shot that emerged carried even more heat than the previous two—the accumulated flame from two fireball impacts feeding into the compression, the projectile burning hotter and more visibly than anything either ability had produced.
It hit Drake directly in the chest at point-blank range.
The combined force and heat at maximum accumulation—Drake took it fully, the impact driving him back four steps, the heat of the projectile leaving a visible mark across his chest where it had connected.
He went to one knee.
Ordin looked at his own palms—the fire still burning across them, the elastic tissue showing the strain of two fireball impacts and two fire-infused claps in succession.
He felt the cost.
The recovery debt from the fire-infused claps was compounding faster than the standard claps had compounded—the additional energy of the combined force-and-heat projectiles drawing more from his palms than pure air compression alone.
He had one more fire-infused shot available before the recovery debt became significant.
Drake was on one knee.
His fire trail—the continuous line he had built during the approach—was still present around them, the flames from his approach still burning, the heat turbulence still disrupting the air.
Ordin pulled his palms apart for a final clap.
The fire on his palms was burning down—the flame from the two fireball impacts consuming itself, the heat decreasing as the fuel that had transferred to his skin diminished.
He clapped before it extinguished completely.
The shot that emerged carried the last of the accumulated fire—weaker than the previous two combined shots but still carrying both force and heat, the projectile traveling toward Drake’s kneeling position.
Drake looked up.
He had one option.
He drove both hands into the fire trail beneath him—not kicking, grabbing, pulling flame directly from the trail and holding it in his palms the way Ordin had been holding it, the fire transferring to Drake’s own hands the way it had transferred to Ordin’s.
He raised both hands as the shot arrived.
The fire-infused shot hit Drake’s fire-covered palms.
Fire against fire—the projectile’s flame meeting the flame on Drake’s hands, the compressed air component of the shot still carrying force, the heat components from both sources interacting in a way that produced neither pure absorption nor pure impact.
The force pushed through.
It hit Drake’s chest—the air compression component unaffected by the flame interaction, the impact landing with the force the shot had carried regardless of what happened to its heat.
But Drake’s hands—covered in his own fire—hadn’t taken additional heat damage from the projectile’s flame. The fire-on-fire interaction had neutralized the thermal component while leaving the force component to land.
Drake took the hit—real, significant, but without the compounding heat that the previous two combined shots had carried.
He stayed on one knee.
Didn’t go further down.
Ordin’s palms were empty of fire now—both shots and both fireball transfers having spent the flame entirely, his hands returning to their normal elastic appearance without the burning surface.
The recovery debt from three rapid claps—two fire-infused and one standard at the fight’s start, plus the Vacuum Spear earlier—was significant.
He needed time to recover before another shot at meaningful strength.
Drake was on one knee with his hands still covered in fire from his own trail.
He looked at Ordin.
At the empty palms. At the recovery debt visible in how Ordin was holding his arms—lower than they had been, the elastic tissue showing the accumulated strain of everything the fight had asked of it.
Drake pushed up from the knee.
Both fire-covered hands extended—not toward Ordin’s body, toward the air between them, the specific gesture of someone about to do something with the fire he was holding.
He compressed it.
Not a kick, not a thrown fireball—he pressed both flaming palms together the way Ordin pressed his palms together, mimicking the clap motion with fire instead of air.
The flame compressed between his hands.
He drove it forward—a concentrated burst of fire, denser than a kicked fireball, the compression behind it giving it more force than Wildfire Step had produced at any previous point in the fight.
It traveled toward Ordin.
Ordin’s recovery wasn’t complete.
He raised his hands—not to clap, to block, the elastic palms presenting themselves as a barrier the way they had absorbed the kicked fireball earlier.
The compressed fire hit his palms.
It was denser than the kicked fireball had been—the compression Drake had applied giving it more concentrated force, the impact against Ordin’s palms carrying more than absorption could fully manage.
The fire spread across his palms again—more than before, the concentration meaning more flame transferred on contact, both palms now carrying significantly more fire than the earlier transfers had produced.
Ordin’s recovery debt was already significant.
Now his palms carried fire that needed to go somewhere.
He had two options—clap with the fire, producing another combined shot at the cost of his already-strained recovery, or try to shed the fire some other way.
He had no other way.
He clapped.
The shot that emerged was the most heat-laden projectile of the entire fight—both palms carrying significant flame, the compression behind it drawing on a recovery debt that hadn’t cleared from the previous exchanges.
It traveled toward Drake.
Drake raised his own fire-covered hands—the same fire-against-fire interaction, the thermal components meeting and neutralizing, the force component continuing through.
But this shot carried more force than the previous combined shots—Ordin’s full clap strength behind it despite the recovery debt, the fire concentration adding to rather than replacing the air compression’s output.
It hit Drake’s chest.
The force was significant—more than the previous hits, the impact driving him backward, his feet sliding across the stone.
His feet crossed sections of his own fire trail as he slid.
The trail flames brushed against his legs—not damaging, his own fire didn’t burn him, but the contact disrupted his footing, the slide becoming a stumble.
He went down.
Both knees.
Ordin stood across the arena floor with both palms still carrying the residue of the spent fire, his arms at the lowest position they had been throughout the fight, the recovery debt from the entire sequence sitting in the elastic tissue as something that would need real time to address.
He looked at Drake on both knees.
At his own palms.
He had nothing left for another shot—not at any strength, the recovery debt complete, the elastic tissue at its limit for the fight’s duration.
Drake tried to stand.
His legs—disrupted by the stumble through his own trail, the accumulated impacts from the entire fight sitting in his body—produced a partial rise before giving out.
He went back to both knees.
The referee moved.
He crossed the floor and arrived at Drake’s position. Assessed—both knees on the stone, the failed rise, the accumulated impacts visible in how Drake was holding himself. Asked. Waited.
Drake looked at the arena floor—at his own fire trail, burning down now, the flames from the approach phase reaching the end of their natural duration.
At Ordin across the floor with empty depleted palms.
He exhaled.
Nodded.
The referee raised a hand.
The Solmara sections gave Ordin everything—the full release of a support base that had watched their fighter manage turbulence and recovery debt and an unexpected fire-infusion problem and find enough in the final exchange to land the shot that mattered.
The Virex sections gave Drake their acknowledgment—the sound of people watching their fighter turn his own fire into a defense against a weaponized version of itself and nearly survive an exchange that had gone in directions neither ability had been designed for.
"Ordin of Solmara Institute," the announcer said. "Both of them found ways to use fire that neither ability was built for. In the end—the recovery debt from everything that came before caught up with Drake’s footing at the exact moment it mattered." He paused. "Your winner—Ordin of Solmara Institute."