Stan met Niko’s charge, back on his left foot, kicking with his right.
Niko blocked the blow. A simple kick would’ve been okay, but this guy had fueled it with energy. His foot was hot to the touch. Niko’s arm went numb.
It was worth it. He drove a fist into Stan’s face. It was a good solid strike. Niko should’ve used his First Study right then. Too late for regret.
A non-Artist might’ve dropped from Niko’s punch, or at least suffered a bloody nose. Stan, though, was made of tougher stuff. He was a Mars Belt, after all. Niko didn’t have time to check his foe’s stats. But that must’ve dropped Stan’s sharira a bit.
Stan lunged, fire erupting around his neck.
The flames sizzled off Niko’s wet robes even as the heat scorched him. The pain was sharp, but not unexpected. A Battle Artist lived in pain, creation and destruction, birth and death. To avoid pain was to court defeat.
Niko tried to back up, but he hit the cage bars. They might have been the Arena Master’s construct, but they were solid enough.
Stan had him trapped between iron and the flames circling his neck. Niko felt his sharira drop. He grunted. He didn’t want the fight to end so soon. But what could he do?
The Sunfire Artist struck Niko, again and again, sharp jabs, his fists obscured by the heat. Niko blocked some, but not all. He felt blood gush from his nose.
Normal fire would’ve torched his hair and ignited his robes. This was relatively unmanifested flames, mostly for show, but still hot enough to burn Niko’s face red.
Niko went low and threw a shoulder into Stan, lifting up for a second and then dumping him back down onto the hard tiles. Niko leapt over the man and made it to the center of the ring.
Stan’s Fire Mane disappeared. He leapt to his feet. He was smiling.
Niko glanced at their stats. The Sunfire Artist was at thirty percent prana but still had eighty percent sharira.
For Niko, he was down to twenty-five percent sharira but still had full prana. Not that that would help him much, since he was so out of shape. He wasn’t even sure he could use Twin Damage.
Fire hit Niko. He thought the Flame Lance would end him for sure. His sharira must be near single digits, and yet, the Arena Master hadn’t called it. He must be at ten percent sharira. The fight was basically over.
Hope, though, had deep roots.
Niko danced back and raised his fists. His robes were dry now, his skin pink from the burning, but he wasn’t going to try and close with Stan, not yet, or he’d have to fight through the Fire Mane, which would end him. He had to drain his opponent to have any chance at all. “Come on, Howling. Hit me again. All you’re doing is giving me a nice tan.”
The crowd roared—even Coffey and Barton stopped their conversation and stared at the battle.
Stan, sweating, blinking, threw another spear of fire at him. Niko dodged it but didn’t close. He danced back.
“Nice one. But not good enough. Hit me again, Stan, and put me down in the first round. Or do you want to give the people more fight for their money?”
The crowd roared. Beer Belly shouted the loudest. They all wanted more!
Niko glanced at the stats. He was at fifteen percent sharira. That was okay, Stan was at ten percent prana. Stan’s technique must be crappy, since every single Study cost him so much prana. A true Artist would still have a core at least sixty if not seventy percent full of power.
The fight clock ticked below two minutes, a hundred nineteen seconds, dropping fast.
Another round would be nice, but the Sunfire Artist wasn’t about to let that happen. Stan started forward. Sure, he wasn’t going to waste his last Studies; he was going to save his Fire Mane for when Niko tried to engage him again.
There was nothing left for it.
Niko wiped the sweat out of his eyes. Rage licked at his soul, and he wanted to scream it out. Instead, he focused his stiff prana into his one strike.
He sped forward, his hand raised, and sure, the minute he got close, Stan Howling used the last of his prana on his defensive move. Once again, flames erupted around his neck.
Niko felt them roast through the last of his sharira. He wasn’t going to win, he was simply too weak, but he wasn’t going to let Howling, or Barton, or even Andrew J. Coffey, forget him.
Niko channeled his weak prana into his fist. When he struck, two other fists, half-manifested orange energy, struck his opponent, face, throat, chest.
Howling staggered, clutching his throat, his flames gone.
Niko dropped onto his side. He could smell his singed hair and every part of him ached. He glanced up. Stan was also on the ground, on all fours, spitting blood onto the tiles. He gave Niko a bloody grin.
“Stan Howling wins!” the Arena Master called out. “Artists to their corners.”
Stan bounced up and moved quickly back.
Niko tried to get up. It was a knockout, clearly, and he wasn’t just below ten percent sharira. He was at zero, clinging to consciousness. He was burned, bruised, feeling like toast pounded on with a hammer. But he’d been taught not to show his opponent weakness in defeat.
The crowd was silent. They were watching, waiting.
“Stay down, Artist,” the Arena Master ordered. “You will be adjusted.”
Niko ignored him. He got on his hands and knees, breathing hard, and the memories of all his matches came to him, his wins, his losses, Teddy cheering him on, and Taylor, smiling at him, nodding at him. Thinking of her forced him to his feet.
He stood. With zero sharira, he was standing.
The applause was thunderous. Howling turned, glancing around in wonder. They weren’t cheering for him, no, they were roaring for Niko.
To confirm it, Niko raised a fist. He couldn’t stop a single tear from falling. He wasn’t sure why the emotions were so strong—he’d lost after a quick fight—but he’d won the crowd, and that was something.
He limped to the corner, keeping on his feet by force of will. He was so grateful for Teddy, who rushed over to help hold him up when the Arena Master swept away the iron cage.
Barton and Coffey came down to shake hands with Stan. Maddy had gone over there as well, probably to check on them. They were the important people at the con, after all.
The Arena Master’s old assistant ducked under the poles. A twinkle filled his eye as he grinned. There was nothing else to say as he reached out and touched Niko. They were already connected. It wasn’t just his prana the old man adjusted; he healed his sharira as well. Just enough to get Niko out of danger.
Niko felt he had to say something. “I’m not used to getting knocked out like that. The Arena Master was right. I shouldn’t have gotten up. I couldn’t help myself.”
The old man didn’t respond. Neither did the amused expression leave his face.
Maddy crossed the tiles to reach him. She looked concerned.
Niko could understand. He must look like week-old dog crap. The dream flickered inside him. He’d won the crowd. Barton must’ve seen that. It didn’t matter. Those glances from the agent were gone, and he was massaging Howling’s shoulders now. Coffey stood smiling next to them.
Hope has deep roots. It was from The Pranad. And he remembered the next part. Despair flowers fast.
In better Arenas, they would have a stool of manifested prana for him. Not here. That was fine. He could stand. The old man eased his hands over Niko’s burns, and they felt immediately better. “You’re a Luna.”
The old man said gruffly, “Back in my day, we called ourselves Cancers. But it’s all the same.”
The Arena Assistant moved to the side.
Maddy flung her arms around Niko. “You were amazing. People can’t stop talking about you. They want you back here, next year. I won’t ask because I know...”
She wasn’t going to finish that sentence. Because she did know.
She stepped back. “Andrew J. Coffey asked about you. He has some personal stuff to do, but he wondered if you wouldn’t mind swinging
by his suite in about an hour. It’s Room 917. Don’t tell anyone, okay? And sorry, but Teddy can’t come.”
Niko got that. A guy like Coffey wouldn’t want fanboys around him all the time.
Niko’s despair might’ve flowered, but those petals withered in an instant. Coffey wanted to talk to him. It might mean everything, or nothing at all. Either way, he wasn’t going to turn the great Andrew J. Coffey down.
The Wine
ANDREW J. COFFEY SHUT off his phone. She wasn’t answering his call. He sighed.
This MudCon event was a mistake.
Andrew didn’t want to give up these local events, especially in Bay City, where he had a good fan base, but they were becoming too expensive. Not in terms of money, no, they paid all travel expenses and for his suite, and he got a stipend. No, the problem was his time. It was a weekend away. It disrupted his training schedule. A Con with only a few hundred people wouldn’t add that many fans.
On his phone, he checked his So-Me fan page. A few people had joined, so that was good, every single one counted. Lose someone, get a new one, it was the way it worked. Barton said he wasn’t worried. Yet Barton had just dropped another Artist from his table, a buddy of Andrew’s, from back in the day when both struggled up the ranks of the Bay City Battle Artists, a nonprofit that offered help, training, and pointers. The BCBA had Quarterly Cons and a big yearly conference. Attendees were mostly fighters, but a few fans trickled in.
If Andrew couldn’t get his numbers up, he might lose his agent and access to SoulFire resources. He had his sights set on a match with LJ Crown at Fright Night. The pair had joked about it at a league match in Angel City. Only Andrew hadn’t been joking. And there was next year’s Grand Tournament, the biggest event of the League of Battle Artists. The SoulFire corporation could easily field a full Zodiac. They had Sanguines, four deep, waiting to compete. Some were young, with a good following. Few had Coffey’s reputation.
Andrew went to the window. The South Bay’s waters lapped at the reeds and muck, a gray and brown landscape, good for herons and birds, but not good for people. MudCon’s organizers must’ve gotten the Marriot cheap; a similar venue in Apricot or South Valley would’ve been far more expensive.
Growing up in East Oak, Andrew and his friends would sometimes drive to the Flats for the seafood shacks squatting next to wide parking lots full of birds and the homeless. He and his friends would eat greasy shrimp and then drink beer out of the trunks of their cars. And of course, someone would suggest a fight, and Andrew would jump at the chance. Any training was good training, even scrapping with friends, a little buzzed, in a parking lot, awash in the stink of bird crap and stagnant water. Fighting drunk had never worked for Andrew. Some claimed that you could increase your prana flow if you were in an inebriated state.
Andrew thought it was a lot of talk. The Drunken Master was fun in the movies, but in real life, you needed a sober mind to focus your technique.
He thought of those days. Where was the punk kid he’d been at eighteen? Would he even recognize himself? He would. Andrew was a repped Battle Artist, on SoulFire’s extended team, and inches away from a Neptune Belt, still able to pull in people for a Battle Con. He was in a free suite at a Marriot—his eighteen-year-old self would think he had it all.
Then why hadn’t she picked up? She always had her phone on her. Always. He thought about calling the police. Instead, he texted his son. He couldn’t text his daughter. She’d asked him not to.
That hurt. Andrew put his phone on the dresser.
What would that kid in the parking have thought of his estranged daughter? That kid would’ve tilted his head, smirked, and said something about women being difficult. He would've said it would all work out because it was something you said, and in your later teens, you could quote The Pranad and mean it. Sure everything would work out. The heroes won. The villains lost. It was easy to tell which was which and who was who.
He didn’t travel with his leatherbound copy of The Pranad. If he felt the need, he could read it off his phone. He had thrown his ratty old A Princess of the Changing Winds paperback into his suitcase, the Del Rey edition with the Michael Whelan cover. That was the book he traveled with.
The novel meant the world to him. Andrew’s father had given him a copy around the same time he’d attended his first Artist School, Gifts of the Twelve. The Master Teacher had been an old Chinese man. That made it better—of course it did, for a poor kid from East Oak, who was shy, quiet, and very white when a lot of his classmates weren’t.
He trained at the school, but his first real fights weren’t there, on the dirty, scratched tiles, nor in any kind of Arena.
His first fights were on streets, behind 7-Elevens, or on the banks of drainage ditches, littered and murky. Even then, he vowed he’d fight with honor, and he never really hurt the bullies and bastards who picked on him. Word spread. He wasn’t anyone to mess with. He was cool, when it came down to it, and he was powerful. Not TV Battle Artist powerful, but enough that he could easily blacken an eye or pop a nose bloody. By middle school, no one would mess with him. By high school, he was fighting for the school, working on his technique, and learning to do it the right way. He helped take East Oak High School to state three out of his four years there.
The academic leagues were rigorous, based on points, and everything was judged right down to how much prana your Studies needed. Usage efficiency was critical. Stan Howling’s technique was embarrassing. Any junior varsity Artist from any Bay City High School had better technique. Then again, Howling was coming into the Arts later in life. That was tough. Age only helped you in the Arena or in the Arts if you’d spent your early years building a foundation, working on your technique.
Like the kid. Niko Black.
When the knock came, Andrew turned from the window and checked that his favorite Beaujolais was on ice, because he was a celebrity, and that was expected. He’d graduated from beer to wine in his twenties when he’d done a six-month stint on the European circuit, fighting in London, Paris, Munich, and Venice. He’d gotten some European fans. Not enough. You never had enough fans. Every year, there was a natural attrition as new Battle Artists appeared, as the big corporations found new faces, or better yet, you got a movie deal, or got a comic book thing going. That was when you would really rise, where the real money was, and then it was only the choicest Artist events, and you’d show up on your private jet. Like LJ Crown or Bulldog Johnson. LJ was a real Artist, while Bulldog had jumped to movies the first chance he got. Sellout.
Andrew was close to the big money. He could feel it. After nearly twenty years paying his dues, he wasn’t about to stop now.
He opened the door. The kid was there, face a little pink from the fire he took, and the bruises starting to form from Howling’s jabs. He wasn’t a Mars Belt. If he were Mars, he wouldn’t have taken so much physical damage from the fight.
He nodded. “Niko Black?”
The kid shook his head. “No, it’s just Niko. I’m not... I don’t really have a Battle Artist name.”
Andrew liked that. “Come in. Would you like some wine? I can’t drink it now, but I had some brought in for after my fight tonight. Are you going to stay and watch it?”
“Yeah, I am. I got the day off.”
Andrew turned and went to the low table in front of the couch. The sun was setting, giving the Flats a little color. His bed was in the attached room. That was the nice thing about a suite: you could talk to people without them sitting on your bed. Andrew liked a clean bed.
“So, Niko, wine?” he asked.
The kid followed him in the room, jumpy, tense, and a little starstruck. Andrew knew what he was thinking. He saw Andrew as a way into Barton Hennessey’s good graces, which might mean a contract with SoulFire, which meant wealth and fame. Or that was the story.
Andrew had gotten some sizeable paychecks in his time. Probably should’ve saved more. Probably should’ve focused more on the money than the fame. It might’ve made his
family life easier.
“Relax, Niko. It’s okay. I just wanted to meet you. And talk to you.” Andrew sized him up. He might’ve been in shape during high school, but now, Niko was getting a gut. His neck was thickening. More than that, his prana wasn’t flowing.
“I don’t need wine,” the kid said. He went to the window, which of course was the best place to stand. “I’m just happy to be here. I’m really honored. I’m a fan. My buddy Teddy is too. He nearly exploded when I told him you wanted to talk to me.”
Andrew remembered the fat guy who’d helped the kid stand after the knockout. “That was a nice move, at the end.”
“The Twin Damage?” Niko asked, a bright look on his face.
The punch was a good flourish in a doomed fight. The goading was also a nice touch because everyone liked a confident underdog, battling for their life.
Andrew didn’t have to say anything. The kid could come to his own conclusion.
He finally connected the dots. “Oh, standing up at zero sharira? It was just... in high school, my coach said not to show weakness. You never lay on the ground. If you couldn’t stand, you’d at least get on one knee.”
Andrew knew the kid had more to say. When people met him, they either clammed up tight, or they poured out every thought they’d ever had.
Niko made a fist with his left hand and held it in his right. “I don’t have much going for me. I mean, I had a chance in high school, but it didn’t work. I’m a cusp, June 20, 11:58. It’s a bad birthday. No way could I even begin to master Luna, so I focused on Quintessence. I got to Mars Belt. But lost it.”
Andrew knew that. When Maddy had said Niko was a Mars Belt, Andrew hadn’t believed it. Then, when he didn’t use any prana in his attacks, Andrew’s suspicions were confirmed. This kid was strange, in a lot of ways. “How did you lose a belt?”
Sages of the Underpass Page 3