A perfect hexagonal snow crystal melted as soon as it landed on Astra's palm. Its exact replicas mirrored the storm, twisting and spiralling in uncanny tandem.

This man might have a thing for symmetry, favour psychological horror, or perhaps have a cryptic motive. Or, when in doubt, picked D: all of the above.

Wrong, flawed things made everything in Astra's head sit right. Leaves browned by pests. Petals bitten by insects.

She'd once stayed up late reading about organic pest control for her plants, only to feel genuine guilt when the ladybirds died off without aphids to sustain them.

Chaos made life… well, it made life. And she'd never had a single dull moment with the embodiment of chaos herself.

Astra pictured that infuriating woman, Eydis, with her smug, ridiculously attractive lopsided grin. The smirk Astra wanted to wipe off her face with—

"Your distraction is quite insulting," a voice said calmly over the storm's roar. "Let us finish this."

Oh right, still in the middle of a battle.

Huka, the weatherman Taika had called for help, flickered in and out as vapour while countless spears of ice rained upon her curved shield with a muffled glassy cry.

Astra stood unshaken, even as the wind tore violently at her silver hair and cobalt jacket.

But if she overwhelmed him now, he could pivot to pick off the easier, already injured targets and take them hostage, especially with his apparent teleport ability.

At least it wasn't portal teleportation. She'd heard his trip from Aoraki took about seven minutes, so he either vapor-hopped or rode the weather. This storm's edge might be his range limit.

For now, Astra would have to be the bait long enough for Melissa to get away.

Fog thickened at her ankle, rising until the cliff edge and lake vanished into its murk. She glanced up discreetly. A black raven perched on the high streetlamp, head cocked.

Huka's voice came again. "Why are you just standing there and acting like I do not exist?"

"That might be because I literally cannot see you," Astra finally said, and thickened her barrier when his spears intensified.

"I expected rudimentary competence, but even that was too optimistic."

He sounded like Indigo. She groaned to herself.

The pressure shifted as ice slammed and cracked against the barrier, the sound flattening out like it did on mountaintops. Oxygen drop, then. Should she pretend it was getting to her? A normal person would already be gasping, surely.

Astra stepped sideways on the ice-slick road, keeping her palm pressed to the barrier, noting that the pocket was smaller than she'd expected. He was clearly conserving mana.

Then the barrier flashed faintly, her palm tingling before numbing as cold bit into her skin. Cold? She never felt it unless it was below zero.

For Water Affinity, changing water's structure and pulling heat out of its atoms was costly. She remembered watching Theo try it once, how his face had gone gray, drained of stamina in seconds.

Yet Huka remained fully energised. Something didn't add up. Or they added up perfectly.

She narrowed her eyes on the incoming pikes. They were not pristine ice but compacted slush and wind‑whipped rime, shaped by the storm.

Ah.

He changed tactics and directed the spears to strike one exact spot repeatedly.

"Brain freeze? Should I wait for you to catch up?" Huka taunted and unleashed a scorching blast anyway. He aimed at the same vulnerable spot, determined to break her shield.

Astra didn't bother to reply as she folded that heat into the shield's lattice, strengthening the bonds.

The spears accelerated. Apparently, he did not appreciate the reply.

"That shield should at least crack," he said from nowhere and everywhere. "Just what are you, exactly?"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Astra sensed cold pooling behind her. She slashed through the air and cut into forming vapour. A human outline, still knitting itself from mist, shattered into flying frost. The tattoo on his chin broke apart into tiny shards.

She wondered if she should go a little harder. If Huka saw what she really was and lived to report it, Ares would know. She still couldn't understand why this man felt the need to constantly chat while they were fighting.

Eydis certainly enjoyed that, and the thought made Astra smile almost subconsciously.

Guess that wasn't actually a bad idea.

Several paces away, mist began to gather and coalesce, reconstructing him.

"You're the last I'd expect to forget science," said Astra as she threw her blade. He vanished before it struck. The sword arced back neatly into her grip.

He appeared behind her. "Interesting deduction. Guess not all is lost."

"I have some ideas."

"Care to elaborate?" Huka grabbed her forearm, his palm searing her skin.

"You're a min-maxer. I'd take a wild stab"—she smiled politely and stabbed through his chest—"and say you're the architect of Queenstown's winterless season."

Huka's body burst into vapour. His floating head reformed in the fog, the tattoo lines crawled back into their exact pattern.

He chuckled. "Architecting seasonal patterns over months? Laughable."

"Appears so at first. But it's not truly about creating or stopping them, correct?"

"Fancy yourself a climatologist?" he mocked.

Astra shrugged. "More like a Renaissance face with a taste for quantum journals."

Huka glared at her. "Cut the riddles, child."

"Want the full explanation? Alright." Astra exhaled. "You're no ordinary Water user. You direct the patterns and let natural laws take over. Explaining why the temperature dropped below zero."

He took a step back, eyes widening.

"You brought the blizzard with you. Maybe from the same place you sent Queenstown's snow clouds." She met his gaze unflinchingly and stepped closer. "How close am I?"

Huka was not just Gifted. He studied his Gift, treating the rationing of mana as its own maths. Perhaps he hadn't diverted those clouds far at all.

Maybe straight to Aoraki, right where he was.

His eyes narrowed. "What more have you figured out?"

Oh, an admission? Either he was careless or…

He would make sure she didn't live to tell.

Perfect. Astra's lips quirked. "We're doing twenty questions? I expect at least rudimentary logical thinking."

Huka went silent. Snow still slashed across the road, but around Astra, the flakes drifted slow.

Then he tried to incinerate her.

Heat surged in from all sides, crushing against her. Her skin prickled. Her chest clenched, scalding air burning its way in.

She sealed an invisible shield around herself, forced its structure into a diamond lattice, letting him think that was her limit, and pushed it outward.

The snow boiled. Droplets transitioned through solid, liquid, vapour so fast that human eyes couldn't track them.

"Since you're so cozy behind that shield, why not make it permanent?" Huka called as he forced his energy straight into the water, into its bonds, into every vibration he could touch. Infrared frequencies. The whole field brightened with heat.

Brute force, finally. Raw, wasteful.

Anger.

She channelled the heat to stabilise the shield. A gentle caw touched her ear.

A raven formed from the fog and landed on her shoulder, its outline almost translucent save for the weight of it. Astra muted her shield.

"Red and Blue are clear of the blizzard," the raven said dryly near her ear. "My loud, constantly quacking twins just told me. Repeatedly. Why must I…"

While it continued its complaints, Astra let her knees dip just enough to look strained, feigning a ragged breath.

There. That should please him.

The raven blinked. "Do you need help, milady?"

"Depends. Where is Eydis?"

The raven angled its head, black eyes glinting innocently, and shut its beak.

Oh, it understood alright. It simply didn't want to answer, or wasn't allowed to.

Eydis. What are you doing?

Astra sighed. "Go. Tell her Taika and Huka are both Electromagnetic Gifted, from visible spectrum down, and sunrise will recharge them."

It stepped off her shoulder and turned to vapour.

"Understood, Mistress." The bird sounded faintly amused even as the heat tore it apart.

Astra rolled her eyes.

"I wonder whether you are brave or just plain stupid," Huka said from somewhere above. "Even in this situation you insist on being distracted."

Astra noticed blood on her chin. She wiped it off and pushed her shield outward just a little. The outer skin of the cage tore at it, heat so dense it reached straight through the diamond lattice and picked at every flaw.

Crossing that boundary would shatter the shield.

"I thought you wanted to know where Taika is," she said. "Yet the moment I call you out, he stops mattering. What are you hiding, Huka, and why is it worth more than whānau?"

"You–You even know my name? What would an outsider like you know about whānau?" He growled and threw more energy in without thinking.

Astra bit back a smirk and opened her vision. She rarely did, since it warped the world, and she liked pretending she was mostly human. But knowing she was from a Celestial Empire made it easier to accept the occasional eldritch moment.

As colour and outlines faded, the pattern underneath became visible.

Red lines for heat, dull gold for light, bent into a geodesic cage around her, the arcs crisscrossing and anchoring to three bright, burning points high above. Those points must be his anchors, where he focused his mana, vibrating as a single resonant pitch.

Efficient and cruel in a clinical, academic way.

Perfect. But only if perfectly tuned.

"You really are a nerd."

Astra channeled her power and slammed her blades into the ground, breaking the tarmac. A shockwave rippled along the road, up her boots, and into the storm.

The ripple hit the resonant shell, striking the anchor points, knocking the frequency out of phase and collapsing the note.

The shell jerked. Gold and red lines whipped out of their loops, recoiled and snapped back towards the point that held them all together—Huka.

He grunted and withdrew his power from the nodes, but Astra twisted her blades and sent hers instead. The cage trapped him like a spider in its web, holding him back from turning to vapor.

"How did you even…" Huka choked, sweat slicking his skin. His blistered face contorted in naked fear as she leapt to face him.

"That's the problem with perfection," Astra said, angling her blade. "It only takes a little chaos to break it."

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