The Great Game Trilogy

by O. J. Lowe

  All he could do was try to do whatever was right for him. And lately, it hadn’t been the same as when it had started. Maybe he’d changed too much, maybe she had. He wasn’t the same person now as he was when they’d first met.

  “Arnholt’s spirit is glowing, I think we might be about to see something special here… Is that what I think it is?”

  “It could well be… And it is! Game over! Arnholt unleashes the fury of the fairy and finishes off what many predicted to be a one-sided affair for his opponent. The crowd is loving this; they’ve seen the first major surprise of this tournament as Matthew Arnholt of Premesoir defeats Willow Silva of Serran to enter the group stage of the tournament.”

  Huh…

  Scott didn’t realise he’d made the sound out loud immediately. Maybe, just maybe, Matt was better than he’d expected. Fury of the fairy… Jess had mentioned that move in the past, her being the owner of a kos fairy of her own. They were naturally free creatures who didn’t appreciate being locked into crystals, even if they had no choice but to reluctantly obey. Fury of the fairy entailed tapping into all that useless anger and rage at being forced to be a slave and unleashing it on an enemy. She’d spoken about her inability to utilise it when it mattered, a problem it appeared Matt had managed to overcome.

  Maybe he should keep that from her. No doubt it’d just piss her off.

  “That was an astonishing show of power from young Arnholt. Plenty of more seasoned callers have struggled with that risky move. If you get it right, it’s a bountiful reward. If you get it wrong, it leaves you open to the most brutal of counter attacks.”

  “It could have gone so wrong, but Matthew Arnholt gets it so right in the qualifying rounds of the Quin-C. It was reminiscent of watching his father at the same age, the same steely grit and nerves under pressure. If you’ve just joined us again, Matthew Arnholt has beaten Willow Silva to make the group stage.”

  Scott stretched in his chair, turned the screen off. He was done here. Once more, he found himself nursing the feeling he could have done more. Ah, screw it. He knew what might be thrown against him. He didn’t like to focus too much on what the opponent would do. He wanted to make them worry about him instead.

  Nadia Yepes was a tall-ish dark skinned woman with thick black hair naturally forming ringlets he could see her from across the battlefield, the ground just regular flooring, treated wood and special paint. Others did have special battlegrounds, he’d seen an example in Pete’s bout earlier with ice in the indoor stadium, but he was going to have to make do with the standard one. You had to be able to master the field no matter what. He’d once fought on a battlefield that had consisted of five raised platforms above a chasm, the bottom too far to be seen. You just had to avoid thinking of the worst-case scenario. Compared to that, this was easy. Yepes had her long fingers tucked into the belt of her shorts, her legs long and supple and her feet bare. Scott tried to avoid staring. Maybe she was deliberately trying to distract him. The sunlight kept glinting off big hooped earrings.

  He had enough women trouble plaguing him without adding to it. He set his face to be impassive, she wouldn’t get to him. Instead he tried to focus on everything around him. The stadium did look magnificent from inside the bowl, he had to admit, forty thousand people all surrounding him cheering and screaming in anticipation of the bout.

  He didn’t even hear the commentator above it all, didn’t hear what Yepes mouthed at him. All he saw was the video referee signal that he should send out his spirit. Yepes sent out hers, a Vazaran plains lioness, a sturdy golden furred beast which drew admiration from the crowd as she stretched out, extending claws larger and sharper than standard. Scott studied it, realised he’d seen it on screen yesterday and grinned. He’d have this in the bag in no time.

  Again, she mouthed something he didn’t hear, too caught up in the moment to care, as he summoned his own spirit.

  Herc! Take it away.

  Herc materialised in front of him, the spirit raising his horn proudly to the air. He’d claimed the oversized stag bug a while ago, out in the forests of Premesoir and he’d done very little modifying if he’d been honest. He hadn’t needed to. Herc stood at least four hands taller than the lioness, exoskeleton a brilliant mix of dull brown and gleaming blue. Two gleaming eyes peered from his face below the horn, a magnificently spiked appendage that hung from his head, mini thorns protruding across it. He stood on two stocky hind legs, he’d had to give him a better posture for fighting after all, two arms on each side of his body, armoured with wicked claws of his own.

  “Shall we dance?” he asked, grinning confidently as the video referee signalled to get the battle underway.

  The whistle died down, the lioness let out a roar of challenge, Herc unimpressed, before leaping into the air with claws extended. Scott made his choice, suddenly praying he’d made the right one. Mentally he berated himself. If he started to question his decisions now, there was no hope for him at all.

  Wings snapped from Herc’s back, translucently delicate but still capable of getting him off the ground and he rose with the opponent. There was a horrific scraping as claw raked across carapace, Herc grunting with surprise before swinging his horn like a hammer. The blow caught the lioness in the side, adding more momentum to the fall. Yepes’ spirit hit the ground hard, a deep gash raked into her side from where Herc had swung.

  Follow it up!

  Scott watched as Herc shot towards the ground, the blood on his horn glinting in the afternoon sun as he charged towards the lioness. Press this advantage; it might be over very quickly indeed.

  Yepes reacted, her spirit managed to lunge back out of reach. Herc did manage to pull up, avoiding hitting the ground but not before the lioness’ jaws started to glow. Scott gulped, suddenly realising what was coming. All his thoughts moved to imploring Herc to move, quickly. As the uniblast burst from Yepes’ spirit, Scott felt a flush of fresh sweat ripple over his face; he gasped as Herc spun over it, back into the air. It had been close…

  Too close.

  He closed his eyes, swore to himself. Herc wasn’t moving freely, a large burn wrought across his chest, not deep enough to be fatal but it looked to be impeding movement. He forced himself to open his eyes and watch. He couldn’t fall away now. By the looks of it, Yepes had ordered her spirit onto the attack, the lioness leaping up at Herc to try and drag the stag bug to the ground.

  Each time the claws went for the armoured chest and Scott found himself furrowing his brow in bemusement. She’d already seen how those claws were no match for his armour so why keep doing the same thing over and again. It was her aim anyway, he guessed. Hitting Herc was proving to be more of a challenge than she’d expected. The front might be hurting but the wings still worked fine, the bug was weaving away from anything that might hurt with surprising agility for one so big.

  Herc! Lower! Swat it down!

  He hoped this’d work, he watched as the stag bug descended, hovering down into range. The lioness leaped, sprang with claws out, fangs bared…

  The attack never quite landed as Herc swung both upper arms into Yepes’ spirit in a crushing hammer motion, yet still the claws swept out, dealt an unintentional blow, cutting deep into the already damaged areas on his body. The lioness bellowed in agony as she hit the ground, Herc squealed with a sound hard to imagine an insect-like creature making, ichor dripping from his chest wounds. Scott finally realised what it was that Yepes had been trying to do in one horrible instant. Standard practice when fighting something armoured. When you manage to crack that nut, keep focusing on that area.

  He cursed himself for not realising sooner, yet looking at the lioness in front of him, he realised it might not be much of a fatal mistake. Herc wasn’t looking perfect but the lioness had come off worse. She couldn’t stand on one of her legs, it hung uselessly behind her, dragging across the floor. That golden fur had lost its shine, blood and dust taking its lustre. One of her eyes was closed, as she roared he could see some teeth were missing.


  Yep, Herc looked in better condition. He grinned at Yepes. If he’d looked at the lioness, he might have seen the tell-tale glow about her mouth, the sure sign of another uniblast readying.

  As it was, all he saw was Yepes’ smirk in reply.

  Chapter Fifteen. Love and Other Mysteries.

  “I could deal with the criminals, it’s the families of those they’d hurt that I couldn’t stand dealing with.”

  First line in autobiography of unnamed Unisco agent after retirement.

  The twenty third day of Summerdawn.

  With the qualifiers out of the way, the draw for the group stages of the tournament had been made quickly. Unlike the opening ceremony, it hadn’t been mandatory to attend it, although some had, of course. Many hadn’t. In comparison to the opening ceremony five days earlier, it had been quite low key. A parallel applied to those knocked out of the competition, their participation guaranteeing them free entry to any other bout in the competition all the way up to and including the final.

  Some of the ungracious losers had already left. Whether they’d come back or not for the final, only time would tell. Organisers were expecting them to do so. Tickets to the final were traditionally hard to come by. Amongst the observers in Stadium One, also named the Stronghold, David Wilsin found himself wondering why he’d bothered. It’d be all over every screen on the island in the next five minutes, all over the kingdoms in ten. He could be doing something else.

  Still it wasn’t every day he found himself here, might as well make the most of it. He’d triumphed in his qualifier, beaten some guy from Serran named Erik Jendrisek, never heard of him before. Easy. Too easy. Wilsin had seen how some of the other callers here had been given those tricky opponents. It was a fine balancing act. Ideally, you wanted enough of a challenge to make you feel like you’d earned it while at the same time not facing someone tough enough to beat you.

  He’d seen it before; it was never someone starting out strong who went on to win the tournament. There were a lot of bouts between here and the final, the potential for running out of steam enormous, ideally, you’d want to build up momentum as you progressed. Start off at a jog and break into a sprint at the end. Not run from the start and collapse well short of the finish line. He’d seen it too many times.

  Maybe Baxter had been the exception last time. He’d swept all before him and proved his dominance in ruthless fashion as he’d broken all records with minimum effort. But he wasn’t entirely a good example for it. And maybe he was the exception that proved the rule. Wilsin was glad he hadn’t returned to defend the title this year.

  Up on the podium left over from the opening ceremony, the officials delegating the draw were droning on. Adam Evans and Raul de Blanco the nominees present for it. At least he wasn’t stuck on the battlefield this time, rather in one of the seats up in the stands. He was finding it hard to listen to, but he didn’t truly need to. Everyone knew the general gist. Here’s your group, you’ll be informed of the time and the place, good luck, make sure you don’t let the viewing public down and cost us money when they switch off. Ritellia hadn’t shown up, neither had Nwakili. Probably just about summed it up, Wilsin noted with a grin. They had better things to do. They probably weren’t alone.

  Down below, the two officials had four pots, each with a button in front of them. Each pot contained twenty-five names, pushing the button would reveal one of them at random. For each group, each pot would give up a competitor. It would be repeated until the process was completed. The top two from each group would go into the next round via the points system. Three points for a win, one for a draw, zip for a loss. For a stadium that could hold eighty thousand when full, it felt empty with several pockets of people dotted about the stands, a dozen here and there maybe. If there was more than a thousand who’d shown up, Wilsin would have been surprised.

  Yet, the excitement was about to get underway, if that was the right term for it. The pots were lighting up, the few who had come to see what the fuss was about suddenly that little bit more interested and the giant screen high in the stands was ready to show the results. He craned his head back in interest, rested his ankle across his knee.

  Four quick hits for Group A. Teresa Senko, Theobald Jameson, Bradley Richards and Matthew Arnholt. Wilsin nodded thoughtfully. Supposedly the pots were stacked based on past performances, competitive seeding to ensure each group had an assortment of talent in it. A favourite, two potential runners up and a wild card. If he was honest, he thought it at random. Because there was no way of telling who was the favourite in that group. Maybe Senko if you went on stats while having never seen her fight. She was competent enough, sure. But if she won it, or even got to the latter stages, it’d be a massive shock. He didn’t know enough about the rest of them, except… He could see Arnholt’s kid several rows down; he’d shown up. As to his feelings regarding those he had to face, he couldn’t say.

  “Good luck with that, kid,” Wilsin muttered as the pots lit up again, ready for the announcement concerning those to be contesting Group B. Katherine Sommer, Wim Antonio Caine, Ryan Babel and Talia Constance. Already he found himself wondering where he’d find himself and who with.

  He was deep in thought as he wandered out, not even noticing as he felt himself hit something hard. Wilsin gasped, glanced up to see what he’d hit. Not a something. Someone.

  “Sorry,” he said, rubbing his nose with a wince. He’d broken it more than once; a hint of sensitivity about it. Just because Unisco issue mufflers obscured your features didn’t mean that someone didn’t occasionally get lucky and land a blow in a sore spot.

  “It’s okay,” Roper said, glancing around. “David.”

  “Nicholas,” Wilsin replied, nodding at him. He knew of him more than he really knew him but they’d both had the same idea of going to the draw. “Happy with your group?”

  “Definitely,” Nick said. “Santo Bruzack, Leslie Graham and Scott Taylor. No problem. I’d have taken that before I went in there. You were in group J, right?”

  “K,” Wilsin replied. “You seem confident.”

  “You aren’t?”

  “No easy bouts at this level,” he said. “Despite what the qualifiers might have us believe.”

  Nick chuckled. “Yeah, they need to look at that. I thought they were supposed to be doing it this time. Guess they had more important things on their mind. Like lunch. You know how some of those big shots like their free food.”

  Wilsin grinned more out of politeness than amusement. It felt like taking easy shots at the ICCC was the order of the day.

  “Tell you what though.” Nick apparently wasn’t finished. “Good luck with your concentration though.”

  “How you mean?”

  “Well, staring at Meadow Laine for the entirety of your bout. Wow. Think there’s plenty of guys jealous at you right there.”

  This time Wilsin’s laugh was genuine. Meadow Laine was an exceptionally attractive woman; you’d have to be blind not to notice. And she was aware of that, despite the rumour going around how she preferred the company of other women. She’d been drawn in his group along with Akihiro Yong and Danielle Welback. It’d probably be between him and her to contest who finish the top two… Except he didn’t think like that. He'd always said overconfidence was the biggest enemy you could face.

  “Think there might be some jealous women too?” Wilsin asked, folding his arms as he and Nick wandered back into the resort area away from the stadium. Nick burst out laughing.

  “More than likely. Oh well, can’t have everything now, can you? It’d be a dull life if you did, I suppose.”

  “Mmmm-hmm,” Wilsin murmured, casting his eyes around the area. He let Nick’s voice wash over him, filtering it out as he studied his surroundings. He couldn’t explain why he did it. Something gnawed at the back of his mind, just the smallest hint demanding his attention. What it was, he couldn’t say. He’d seen something that had twigged his sense of danger. But…

  If there was
anything there, Nick hadn’t seemed to notice it. Then again, he hadn’t had Wilsin’s training. He had to notice things out of the ordinary that the ordinary couldn’t hope to spot. His eyes darted back and forth across the street until finally they fell on the ICCC building and the three men stood outside like doormen. Nothing unusual about that. Some very important people worked there and the last thing they’d want was to let some nutter wander in off the street with a weapon. Especially how said nutters usually felt towards those in charge of the establishment. But he’d never seen doormen like that at an official building. They tended to gravitate towards those who’d been unable to get into local law enforcement. These guys looked like they’d managed to retire comfortably from a life of crime.

  Still all sorts to make a world. And good for them if they’d stopped being criminals, it did make some aspect of his job that little bit easier. Except, he looked again, it wasn’t that which had caught him worried. Guard number one was hefty with muscle, had more hair on the back of his neck than his head, caveman brow and tattoos on his knuckles. Guard number two, hefty with muscle, hairy neck, protruding brow, tattooed knuckles… and a scar on his cheek. From what he could see that was the first real difference, so much so he dragged his attention back to the first guard. Same scar, faint in the shadows cast by the ICCC building but there regardless.

  It was enough to bring him up short, Nick’s surprise evident as he glanced around.

  “Something wrong?” He sounded politely bemused.