Chapter 57: SETTLING SCORES
The crystal displays flickered above the arena. The crowd was still buzzing from Lysandra’s victory, but on the platform below, the stage crew was working fast. Four men were hauling her rods toward the edge of the stone. Two on each rod, their faces red, their steps careful. The black steel with the gold patterns caught the light as they moved. One of the men stumbled on a crack Baines’s axe had left. The rod dipped. Two more crew members rushed to steady it.
The crowd watched them struggle with the weight of the weapons Lysandra had been swinging one-handed. The implication settled over the arena like a held breath.
Now the next match appeared. Trent versus Seira.
Dorian Hale’s voice carried across the stands. "Trent, B-rank Lightning Mage, versus Seira, B-rank Healer. A combat class against a support class. A fighter born for this arena against a woman who was never supposed to be here. Let’s see if today changes that."
***
Trent walked into the arena with his copper rod focus in one hand and his lightning bomb clipped to his belt. His insulation charms were freshly recharged. He’d watched Seira’s matches. He’d seen her barrier hold. He’d seen her keep Greer alive through fights that should have ended them both. She was a healer. Support class. Not supposed to be dangerous on her own. But he wasn’t going to underestimate her.
Seira walked into the arena with her healer’s robes over light chain, her barrier bracelet on her wrist, and a long dagger sheathed at her hip. She’d never drawn it in a match before. No one in the arena had seen her use anything but barrier and healing. The dagger was new. The offensive healing was new.
Her hands were steady. She’d studied Trent’s patterns from the stands. She knew his weaknesses. She’d built her strategy around them. She just had to survive long enough to execute it.
Trent raised his focus. "You’ve done well to get this far. A healer in the individual phase. That’s rare."
"I know," Seira said. "I aim to at least get passed this round."
"Too bad, I’ll have to ruin your dream."
The match began.
Trent opened with chain lightning. Bolts arced from his focus in a web of crackling energy, spreading wide to cut off her movement. He wanted to herd her, limit her options, force her into a corner where he could overwhelm her. Seira raised her barrier. The lightning hit the curved surface and scattered, grounding into the stone around her. She advanced behind the shield, step by step, closing the distance.
He switched to sustained bolts. A continuous stream of electricity hammered her barrier, forcing her to reinforce, slowing her advance. The barrier flickered. She flesh-warded, her skin hardening against the residual energy that leaked through, and kept walking. Her arms shook from the strain. She didn’t stop.
She was reading him. The pause between volleys. The way his breathing changed when he was about to escalate. He was already tiring. Sustained bolts burned mana fast, and she was forcing him to keep firing. Every step she took was a step he had to spend energy to stop.
He saw what she was doing. "You’re trying to drain me," he said. "Make me burn through my reserves."
"Is it working?"
He stopped the sustained bolts. Switched tactics. And brought out the storm-cage. Arcs of lightning surrounded her in a web of crackling energy, constricting inward. It was his most draining technique, if it trapped her, the fight was over. If it didn’t, he’d be nearly empty.
She stepped through it.
The electricity burned over her flesh-warded skin, raising blisters on her arms, her neck, her face. The pain was immense. Her robes smoked. Her hair crackled with static. She kept walking. One step. Another. She emerged from the storm-cage with her skin red and raw and her dagger drawn, and Trent’s eyes went wide.
He threw the lightning bomb. A desperation move. She’d seen him reach for his belt, seen the shift in his stance, and she was already angling her barrier upward. The bomb detonated against the curved surface and shot into the arena ceiling, showering the platform with harmless sparks. Trent stumbled back, his focus wavering. He was out of tricks, out of mana, and out of time.
She was three steps away and closing in.
She grabbed his wrist. Her unique created technique, a form of offensive healing flooded into him. His nerves fired all at once, every pain receptor, every muscle fiber, every synapse lighting up simultaneously. He screamed. A raw, desperate sound that echoed through the silent arena. His muscles locked. His lightning sputtered and died. He dropped to his knees, convulsing, his focus clattering to the stone.
She pressed the dagger against his throat. The blade was cold. Her hand was steady.
"Surrender," she said.
And he did.
The crowd erupted. Seira released his wrist and stepped back, breathing hard. Her arms were blistered. Her face was burned. Her barrier bracelet was cracked from the sustained assault. But she was standing. Trent was on his knees. The healer had beaten the mage in a straight fight.
She walked out of the arena with her dagger still in her hand and her head held high. She’d just revealed abilities no one expected a healer to have. The offensive healing. The dagger. The tactical patience to drain a mage dry before striking. The individual phase had its first true upset.
***
The crystal displays flickered. The final match of the round. Dominic Kane versus Reyes.
The first name on his list.
The crowd stirred. They’d heard the rumors. The dungeon floor. The betrayal. The false death report filed. They’d watched him stall Victor and make him bleed. Now they were going to watch him face the man who’d left him to die.
Dominic walked into the arena with Wobbly on his shoulder. His enchanted fighting clothes were black and gold, the Kane colors, the fabric shimmering faintly with Theresa’s wards. He didn’t draw his sword. He walked to the center of the platform and waited. His hands were empty. His expression was calm.
Reyes walked out with his spear and his buckler. His face was tight.
"Kane," Reyes said. His voice was steady, but his knuckles were white on the spear. "I presume you’ve been waiting for this."
"Two months," Dominic said. "Since the you left on third floor."
"It wasn’t personal."
"It was personal to me."
Reyes shifted his grip on the spear. "Then let’s get this over with."
The match began.
Reyes didn’t charge. He was too smart for that. He circled instead, spear tip tracking Dominic’s chest, measuring distance. He’d studied Dominic’s reach. He’d watched the footwork patterns against Merek, against Victor. He probed with quick thrusts, testing, retreating before Dominic could close. Each thrust aimed at a different target, throat, chest, thigh, shoulder, looking for a pattern, a weakness, a gap in the defense he thought he understood.
Dominic let him probe. He sidestepped what he could, deflected what he couldn’t with the flat of his palm. Reyes was fast. His spear was a blur of feints and strikes, each one flowing into the next. He was confident. He’d prepared for this. He thought he understood the fight he was in.
He feinted high, dropped low, and thrust at Dominic’s knee a crippling strike meant to end it fast.
Dominic didn’t dodge. He hardened his forearm and caught the spear tip on his bare skin.
The steel shrieked. Reyes’s eyes went wide. He stared at his spear, at the tip stopped dead against Dominic’s arm, at the faint blue shimmer that hadn’t been there a second ago. He tried to pull back. Dominic’s hand closed around the shaft and held it.
"What—" Reyes started. He didn’t finish. Dominic yanked the spear forward. Reyes stumbled toward him, off-balance, and Dominic’s fist was already moving. A straight right to the jaw. Bone cracked. Blood sprayed. Reyes reeled backward, his buckler coming up too slow.
He reset, breathing hard, blood running from his mouth. His eyes were still wide. He didn’t understand what had just happened. The hardening. The spear stopping on bare skin. None of his preparation had accounted for this. He raised the buckler, spear leveled behind it, and fought defensively, trying to buy time, trying to think.
Dominic walked forward. Reyes thrust from behind the buckler. Dominic caught the spear tip on his hardened palm, the steel stopping dead against his skin. He twisted. The spear wrenched from Reyes’s grip and clattered across the stone. Reyes raised the buckler with both hands, his last defense.
Dominic punched through it.
His hardened fist crumpled the metal like paper. The buckler split. Reyes’s arm broke with a sound that echoed through the silent arena. He screamed. Dropped to his knees. His left arm hung at a wrong angle, the bone pressing against the skin from inside.
He raised his right hand to surrender. Dominic grabbed his wrist and forced it down.
"No."
The crowd was silent. Not a breath. Not a whisper. Dominic hit him again and again and again. A left hook to the ribs that cracked bone. Reyes folded. He crawled. Blood dripped from his mouth, his nose, his broken arm. He was crying. The tears mixed with the blood on his face.
"I’m sorry," he gasped. His voice cracked. "I was paid. Victor told me to. He said you were a loose end. He said no one would miss you. I didn’t have a choice." He was sobbing now, the words tumbling out between ragged breaths. "Please. I’m sorry. Forgive me."
Dominic stood over him. His knuckles were red. His expression was calm.
"Say it again," he said. "Louder."
Reyes said it again. Louder. The whole arena heard him apologize. The whole arena heard him admit he was paid. The whole arena heard him name Victor Harwick as the man who’d ordered the hit.
Dominic stepped back. He looked down at Reyes, broken, bleeding, sobbing on the stone and felt nothing.
Reyes raised his broken hand one final time. The match ended.
Dominic turned and walked toward the tunnel. He didn’t look back. Wobbly was on his shoulder, its glow steady and calm. The crowd was silent. Then, slowly, they started to chant.
Kane. Kane. Kane.