Chapter 288: Arena Two [Bonus]
Chapter 288: Arena Two
Bex Arno stared at his breakfast until an instructor set a second plate in front of him and told him to start with the toast.
Across the hall, Nessa Yun read something on her phone with one hand around an untouched cup. Corin, who had made half their table laugh the night before, answered a question with a nod and went back to chewing.
Jin finished his own food and checked the time. They had enough room in the schedule if he didn’t spend twenty minutes watching Glitch eat.
He spent fifteen.
The foreleg was moving comfortably, and Glitch objected to the carrier straps beside his feed rather than to anything Jin touched during the check. Flicker stepped into her frame without a fuss. Jin secured it, collected the care folder, and joined the others downstairs.
"You’re not fighting today," he told Glitch as they reached the transport.
The lizard climbed aboard with considerable enthusiasm anyway.
The Coliseum approach was full of people.
Spectators queued behind barriers while vendors opened their stalls. Announcements directed teams toward the side entrances. Above the public doors, a display showed the morning fixtures beside photographs of several Rank-2 freshmen.
Lucian’s was among them.
Jin found the actual Lucian near the west approach, waiting with his falcon while an official answered questions from a small knot of spectators. He looked over, spotted Jin, and lifted a hand.
Jin waved back before Meridian’s handler guided them toward the east entrance.
At check-in, the staff confirmed their order and inspected the starters’ beasts. Jin followed a steward to Glitch’s assigned holding bay, number eleven. There was room for him to turn, fresh water, and a handler stationed within sight of the gates.
Glitch watched as Jin checked the latch.
"I’ll come back between bouts if there’s time."
He waited until the beast settled before leaving. The walk to Arena 2 took several minutes. Jin wished it were shorter, but he knew where to go and who was watching him.
Flicker’s secured carrier was permitted in the team area. He set it on the designated shelf beside his seat, with the viewing side facing the floor.
She turned her head toward the crowd noise.
"Lots to look at," he murmured. "You have to stay in there, though."
The opening address was brief. A council official welcomed the teams, named the groups, and reminded everyone that medical stoppages were final. The public screens switched to arena assignments as the delegations moved into position.
Jin opened a fresh file on his tablet.
Across the floor, Cassel Ridge’s coach spoke to Cobb while the bristleback beside him scraped a forefoot over the grit. Nessa stood near Meridian’s mark with her long-limbed grasslands runner, one hand resting against its neck.
Both beasts were nine-Star. The difference was in how they were built to fight.
Nessa kept her runner moving. It slipped around the bristleback, scored a quick strike along its side, and escaped before the heavier animal could turn. Jin wrote down the defender’s delayed pivot.
Then he watched Cobb adjust its position so it didn’t need to turn as far.
The bristleback began advancing along a shallow angle, denying the runner an easy route back toward the middle. Nessa sent her beast wider. It landed another hit, but the damage wasn’t enough to stop that steady pressure.
"Reset through the center," Marris called.
Nessa tried. The runner feinted right and cut across the bristleback’s front. This time Cobb had kept it short of the lunge she expected. It braced, caught the runner shoulder to shoulder, and drove sideways.
The runner recovered its feet beyond the boundary.
"Ring-out!"
Jin stopped writing.
[Meridian 0 — Cassel Ridge 1]
Nessa returned with her jaw tight. An instructor met her at the entrance and asked about the runner’s shoulder before saying anything about the bout.
Jin added the angle change to his notes. The bristleback hadn’t simply endured everything. Its tamer had steadily removed the space Nessa needed.
Corin knelt beside his crested lizard before the second bout and checked its face with both hands. Whatever he said was too quiet for Jin to hear.
His opponent’s beast was taller, with a longer reach through the neck and forelimbs. Corin gave ground at first, keeping his lizard just beyond the ends of its attacks.
Jin glanced at the boundary. After the previous bout, every retreat made him uneasy.
Corin’s path curved instead of running straight back. He kept an open route to the center while encouraging the opposing beast to follow. Twice his lizard began to gather for its lunging strike, and twice Corin held it.
The third time, Sarr called for a longer advance.
Corin’s lizard stopped retreating.
Its burst struck beneath the taller beast’s chest as its forefeet came down. The impact lifted it off balance, and Corin immediately directed a second drive toward the nearby boundary. It tried to turn, found no room to recover its stance, and stepped outside under pressure.
The referee’s arm rose.
[Meridian 1 — Cassel Ridge 1]
Jin stood with the others, grinning before Corin even reached their side.
"You kept room behind you," he said when the boy passed.
Corin let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. "I kept checking."
Marris touched his shoulder and sent him toward the waiting medic with his beast.
Jin wrote the sequence down while it was still clear. He wanted to remember how long Corin had waited before using the attack everybody knew he had.
Lowe’s beast emerged for the third bout low to the floor, grey-green markings shifting across its hide.
Once it moved into the arena, Jin understood why the older recordings had been so little help.
Its outline blurred against the broken colors of the grit. It didn’t disappear completely, but Bex Arno’s tusked beast kept turning toward places it had just left.
"Listen for it," an instructor called.
Arno shortened his commands and held his beast nearer the center. Twice it found the stalker by sound. The first time, it turned too late. The second, Arno called the attack after the opening had already closed.
Lowe kept circling, forcing more turns. When the tusked beast finally charged a moving shape, the stalker slipped aside and struck the exposed rear leg. It went down awkwardly, struggled to rise, and Arno yielded before Lowe could follow.
[Meridian 1 — Cassel Ridge 2]
Arno came back angry enough that Jin moved his tablet out of the way before he sat down.
"I heard it," Arno said to the instructor. "I knew where it was."
"We’ll look at the timing after they’ve checked him."
Jin kept his eyes on his notes. He recorded when the outline sharpened, the visible grit kicked up during a hard turn, and the two moments Arno had located it correctly. Those details wouldn’t make this loss feel better, but they might be useful later.
Dray was already standing when the fourth bout was called.
𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞
One more loss would end the tie.
She rested both hands against Argent’s neck, spoke to him, and walked onto the floor without looking toward the spectators. Emery brought Wren out from the opposite entrance.
Emery noticed Jin in the team area and gave a small, rueful wave. He lifted his hand back.
Then the referee started them.
Wren crossed on a diagonal, changed her approach, and hooked down toward Argent’s shoulder. Dray moved him outside the worst of it, but the claw scraped plating before Wren broke left.
Jin leaned forward. Faster in person. He had known she would be, and it still caught him by surprise.
Argent reset at Dray’s command. She watched Wren come again, waiting until the shoulder loaded and the chest began its committed twist.
"Across."
The spinehound moved outside the strike and into the left recovery lane. Wren landed in his path. Argent struck her side-on, knocking her off balance, then ran his recovery wide enough to look briefly untidy.
Dray snapped a correction that sounded more annoyed than Jin believed she was.
He almost smiled. They had kept the contact and disguised what followed it.
Wren recovered. On the next hook, Argent caught the left escape again.
This time Emery called the change immediately.
"Wren—right! Break right!"
Jin’s hand tightened around the tablet. They had earned the opening. Now Dray had to win what came after it.
[Author: I appreciate all the support; thank you.]