by TR Cameron
The third person beamed at the success of her surprise. Empress Shenni stood in the center of the group wearing a broad smile as she waved at her people. Cali studied her as they all waited for the cheering to die down. The monarch was clad in a long blue robe but a glint of metal near her neck suggested she’d made the practical choice and worn armor beneath it. Her hands itched with the desire to attack her for her obvious bias and the public show of it, but the woman would doubtless be ready for that.
You’ll have more than enough time to be a thorn in her paw later, Fyre whispered in her mind. She doesn’t matter right now. She gritted her teeth and nodded.
Finally, the noise faded to a level that would permit the monarch to be heard. Her voice was incredibly well trained or magically amplified. “We are here today,” she intoned, “in this place that has seen the rise of champions and the fall of houses, to witness the resolution of the challenge from House Leblanc to House Malniet. The participants have agreed to allow this battle to decide the dispute at hand. I am required to ask the challenged if they will set this combat aside and provide what has been requested.”
She paused and Styrris shouted, “Malniet is not willing, Empress.”
Shenni nodded. “And now, will the challenger agree to set this combat and their challenge aside?”
Cali shook her head. She hadn’t been warned of this part—imagine that—but it didn’t matter. “Leblanc will not, Empress.”
A ripple of satisfaction passed through the crowd, who had come to see a fight, not a display of logical behavior.
“Very well,” the monarch replied. “The rules are simple. Three opponents on each side. The battles begin in the circles but once one falls, separation is no longer required. Whoever is still standing at the finish wins. Combatants, take your positions.”
She bowed toward the Empress she increasingly detested—only because it seemed like the smart thing to do—and turned on her heel. With quick movements, she pointed Tanyith to the circle most distant from the Malniet side of the arena, Fyre to the one in the center, and headed to the one farthest from where they’d entered. Hers and Tanyith’s were a greater distance away from the royal box than the Draksa’s in both directions, as the middle circle was set asymmetrically apart from the others.
As the six Malniet supporters and their patriarch faded to the back, their opponents entered the circles. Two wore armor consisting of leather and plates. A woman strode confidently toward Tanyith while a man focused on Cali. The two looked strikingly similar, right down to the way they moved, and carried sheaths that might contain swords and daggers. A figure in scale armor and a full helm carried a trident and stepped forward to oppose the Draksa.
That one probably has some experience with your kind based on the look, Cali sent to Fyre.
He’s a trainer, he replied. Some Draksa don’t take to instruction very well, so they wind up in the hands of people like him.
That doesn’t sound good.
Let’s simply say I’ll be more than happy to kill him for you. His mental voice radiated fierce anger.
“Don’t let your emotions get the better of you,” Cali cautioned.
A note of mirth broke through the aggression coming from the Draksa. “Who am I—you?”
She shook her head and stepped into the ring opposite her opponent. His strong face showed respect rather than condescension. He was probably a hireling, not a family member. They exchanged nods, and she drew Defender with her right hand and a magical dagger with her left. Her foe drew a sword as well, and it shocked her to see it was a twin to her own but with a scarlet gem in the pommel. Emalia’s voice floated in her memory. “Ruby is the stone of House Rivette.”
Empress Shenni had given her adversary a sword that could break hers. With grim certainty, she corrected herself. No, not one that could break mine. One that has broken mine in the past. Icy rage swept through her. Damn that woman. Whatever she’s up to, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen.
A translucent barrier snapped into place around the circumference of the circle, and she took a deep breath. The Empress’s voice, now definitely amplified as it echoed throughout the arena, shouted, “Begin!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Her opponent moved with an economy of effort and sharp, small steps brought him closer to her at a measured pace. His body language suggested this was a comfortable environment for him, which made sense. It was highly likely many of the people for hire in New Atlantis had thrown their hat into the ring of the champion’s contest that Usha had won. It was probable that the early rounds had been exactly like this—multiple bouts taking place at the same time before they’d been whittled down to the final few.
Cali released her magic to connect to Defender and the sword responded instantly to give her the sense of power at the ready. The voices returned, too inaudible to comprehend but engaged in some kind of discussion. She wondered if the inhabitants of the weapon talked among themselves constantly and whether that was what she heard, or if they slumbered and only awoke when called upon.
The idle thought flitted away as her enemy’s sword descended in a faster than expected diagonal chop. She skipped to the side to avoid it and launched a blast of lightning from her dagger that he caught on his shield, a translucent barrier of force that glowed briefly with the impact of her magic. She had tricks to play but would keep them in reserve since her opponent probably did too. No doubt the enemy was aware of her shield charm, at least.
She pushed energy into her muscles to increase her speed and strength. One of the voices from her blade increased in volume enough for her to hear it. Force against force might break the sword. She nodded at the warning. While she couldn’t know if Defender was weaker because of its first shattering, she had already planned to do her best to avoid direct application of maximum power against it.
Her opponent matched her increased speed, and they traded attacks and blocks punctuated by discharges of magic. Nothing connected, but she had the sense that he was completely comfortable in this particular battle scenario in a way she wasn’t. Which means he’s that much better than me—or he knows something I don’t. Or maybe both.
He deflected one of her swings with a spinning strike that knocked her blade aside. When he came out of it, his shield had been replaced by three knives that he flung at her face. With an undignified yelp, she threw herself onto her back to dodge them. She hurled her dagger blindly and cast a barrier of force over herself in time to catch the sword that stabbed down at her and managed to stop it a bare inch from her chest. Her foe put pressure on the weapon, so she pushed more magic into the shield. She swiped at him with Defender and he used his sword as a lever to jump up and over her.
The longer the stalemate continued, the worse for her. It was time for a trick. She whispered “Iubar,” and her light charm exploded into brilliance.
Fyre anticipated his opponent would expect him to take to the air immediately so instead, he charged as soon as the Empress’s voice stopped. His serpentine approach caused the first blasts from his foe’s trident to miss—or the trainer was faking it. Either way, it doesn’t matter. He came within breathing range and launched upward as he sprayed frost at his foe. A shield snapped into place to absorb the blast, and he banked abruptly to avoid a branched burst of lightning that emerged from the tip of the trident.
The man—he knew he was male from his scent, regardless of the helm—threw a small disc he’d produced from somewhere, and Fyre increased his speed to evade it as he curved to his right. The object followed and worse, gained on him. In the flashes he had of his foe while he swooped and dodged, he was able to discern the trainer’s movements guiding the projectile. He decided that a direct flight at his opponent might be worth a try and folded his wings to dive. After a few seconds, he pulled them out to level into a glide that would drag his claws against the man’s face.
He saw the smug smile an instant before his foe produced another of the disks and hurled it. This projectile immediately branched into a
lightning net. Fyre had expected one and was ready for it. He belched a wide fog of ice to intercept it and plowed through the frozen strands with barely a deceleration, but his attack missed as his opponent dove and rolled to avoid it.
A sudden pain in his wing heralded the onslaught of flame darts cast by his enemy. He growled at the injury, which immediately started to heal, and swooped in again. If he’d had Cali’s strength to draw on, he would have simply collided deliberately with the trainer and clawed him to pieces. But his foe was adept at dealing with Draksa, clearly, and would see that effort coming a mile away.
More objects were airborne now, and the man controlled six of them simultaneously. Fyre flapped to gain height before they could box him in and had to concentrate on avoiding them as they whipped in one after the other. These had spikes rather than nets, and he’d put every dollar Cali had on a bet that they were poisoned. He managed to ice one down and make it fall but was soon on the run, trailing a couple and frantically searching for the others.
Still, he was smarter than most Draksa and almost certainly more so than any this man had faced. He rocketed high and immediately plummeted, twisting and twirling to avoid the objects. His speed left them behind easily, and his spiral made it hard for his opponent to target him with the blasts he fired from his trident.
The impasse ended when the trainer’s concentration broke and the discs thudded into the grass around him while he huddled under a shield to protect himself from the impact of an angry Draksa. Fyre blasted the barrier with ice to lock him in and swooped to avoid making impact himself. His moment of satisfaction was broken when the cocoon shattered and icy pellets bounced off his scales. He spun to see another lightning net flying toward him, this one too close to dodge.
Tanyith frowned at his opponent as the woman made a series of gestures like an old-time-movie martial artist. When she finished, she was in a back stance with glimmering shadow blades in each hand that gleamed black and purple. He imagined he could see the malevolence radiating off them. I hope mine are up to the task.
He attacked, momentarily amused by the memory of the Malniets telling him that he should allow himself to be vanquished early. Now it’s time to give this one a little of what they got.
She exploded out of her stance into a leaping kick, and he angled to the side to avoid it. In midair, she pointed both daggers at him and a line of shadow extended from each. He barely interposed his weapons in time, and the shields that sprung from their tips defeated the beams. Focused, he kept the barriers moving with the woman, who sustained the attack until her feet found solid purchase and she threw the blades.
Tanyith flinched and batted them aside but in the interim, she’d summoned another two and closed half the distance between them. Damn, she’s amped up somehow. He’d tried to learn how to use his magic for speed but had never mastered it enough to sustain it while doing anything else. But what he lacked in finesse, he usually made up for in endurance and sheer bullheadedness. He used a blast of force to launch him up and over the woman, who skidded on the grass as she twisted to face him. In his split-second moment of advantage, he launched a lightning bolt into her stomach, and her armor glowed as it absorbed the magic but apparently, not all the impact. She grunted, nodded at him, and attacked even faster.
His first reaction was to throw a force barrier in her way at ankle height and when she skipped over it, he summoned another at her throat. She crouched to avoid that one too, and he hurled a ball of fire at her head. Undeterred, she crossed her daggers and shouted, and his attack was sucked into them and vanished in a second. In the next moment, he was on the run again, doing his best to stay out of her range so the unnaturally fast attacks couldn’t catch him.
This is not sustainable, he acknowledged as he panted for breath. I have to try something different. He slid his hand into the pouch at his waist and grasped the glass orb Invel had given him for a fight long before. The Dark Elf had ensured that he and Cali each had one after the initial battle they’d been intended for, and there hadn’t been a reason to use them since. Now, though, it was the only thing he could think of to even the score. This will totally suck.
Cali closed her eyes when her light charm triggered and opened them hoping to find her opponent staggering away, blinded. What she discovered instead was that his armor plates were aglow, having absorbed her magic and protected him. The pressure of his sword against her shield had lessened slightly, however, which gave her an opportunity.
Before all her work with Nylotte on controlling electricity and the subsequent experience of merging with the sword, she wouldn’t have been able to bifurcate her attention enough to achieve the desired result. She tasked one part of her mind to maintain the shield that protected her from being skewered. With that secured, she used the other to create two bands of force beneath her sufficient to lift her far enough off the ground that she could reach behind her back with the arm nearest him.
Her fingers found the handles of the flat throwing knives and worked them free. Her foe continued to press his sword into her, seemingly focused on overcoming her strength with his. After a moment’s pause to stabilize the magic she was already using, she opened a gap in the shield on her left that he hopefully wouldn’t be able to see from his angle.
She hurled the knives up at the best angle she could manage and with as much strength as she could generate. The first struck an instant before the second and scraped ineffectively against his chest plate before it fell. The other stabbed into his stomach above his belt and below his armor. The pressure from his sword abated, and she was able to twist and slap the weapon away with hers.
Swiftly, she rolled away and to her feet and raised Defender in a diagonal block. Her opponent yanked the knife free and threw it at her. A subtle shift of her blade deflected the projectile and he grimaced. “Sneaky trick, Matriarch.”
“There are more to come,” she said and nodded.
“I don’t suppose you’ll wait for a minute while I take a healing potion.”
Cali raised her chin with a smile. “Go ahead. Give it a try and see what happens.”
Her opponent chuckled. “Too bad we had to meet this way. I think we would get along.”
She shrugged. “You could submit. I’ll buy you a drink after—hell, I’ll buy you as many as you like.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid I have a job to do.” He stalked slowly toward her as he drew a dagger with his offhand and led with the Rivette family sword.
The magic deflector attached to the back of Fyre’s compass pendant snapped as the lightning web met its protective aura and shattered both the web and the crystal. He bathed his foe with an ice blast, and his opponent’s attempt to evade was only partially successful. The man’s left arm and leg were encased and a less restrictive sheen of frost covered the rest of him. He shouted a curse and hurled the trident.
The Draksa couldn’t get completely out of the way of the speeding projectile, and its tines scraped along his stomach and sheared through his scales and into his flesh with an effectiveness no other weapon except another of his species’ claws had ever done. Clearly, the trainer had excellent resources.
However, he did too. He assumed the man would be able to call the trident back or produce a second weapon, so he avoided the apparent opportunity to counterattack. Instead, he circled toward his adversary’s disabled side and forced him to turn to keep him in sight. He continued to circle and waited for a stumble or misstep to give him an opening.
It was a great plan, right up until the moment when the trainer crouched suddenly, shielded himself, and cleared his affected limbs of the ice. Fyre attacked the shield with his breath and claws but was unable to pierce it as the man downed a vial, doubtless a healing potion. As he banked sharply for another run, the man’s weapon returned to his hand and he summoned a lightning net, this one dangling from his free palm.
“Enough playing, lizard,” he shouted. “It’s time for you to learn your place.” He swept the trident hor
izontally before him, and an inescapable torrent of electricity streaked out in a wide cone. Fyre howled as it struck, folded his wings protectively, and plummeted.
Tanyith careened toward the woman, hoping a better option would appear but fairly confident that it wouldn’t. His main hand dagger had a double-sized shield on it, and he interposed it in the path of the incoming shadow bolts. His opponent raced forward, equally eager to end things, and he hoped she didn’t also have something sneaky planned.
Well, there’s nothing to do about it now. He braced himself for the pain to come and squeezed with his left hand, broke the glass, and sliced his palm with the sharp crystals, which were capable of piercing a Draksa’s hide. Human skin and flesh offered little resistance.
His adversary tried to dodge at the last moment and cut to his weak side, but he expected it. She stabbed with both daggers and her main hand came up and over to drive the weapon into his back, where it skidded along his shoulder blade before it stopped in the muscle above it. Fortunately, his hand had been in motion before she damaged his arm, and he pressed it and the crystals it contained over her nose and mouth. Her other dagger slid off his shield and dealt a flesh wound to his thigh. The impact of her body against his hurled him away, ripped the dagger out of his shoulder, and hammered his head on the ground.
She landed beside him, and the incomprehension on her face quickly turned to stillness as the crystals she’d inhaled ravaged her insides. With tears of pain seeping from his eyes, he fumbled for his potion and concentrated on staying conscious long enough to take it.
When the barrier fell around them, Cali grinned at her opponent and whirled to run toward Fyre’s position. It’s time for phase two.
Chapter Twenty-Five