Chapter 128: Dog Ten

They did not talk much on the way back to the ship.

Alice went ahead down the slope with the last dog padding at her heel, and Logan followed with a stone arch at his back and forty-four percent sitting in a panel he kept reopening for no reason.

’Fifty-seven Warlords left,’ he thought. ’And a man in the north who wants me to arrive rested.’

It was Alice who broke it, once they were aboard and the island was behind them.

"You said you would be ready when you could hold four thousand stacks for longer than twenty seconds."

"I did."

"That is not something you get by thinking about it." She was already pulling up Nyriel’s map. "So pick one."

Logan looked at fifty-seven signatures burning across the sweep and put a finger on the nearest.

---

The Warlord that taught Alice something new did not look like much.

Kesreth Palewake was thin and grey and stood alone at the center of a salt plain with no faction around it at all, which by now meant only one thing.

"Another one that does not need an army," Logan said.

"I hate those."

```

[ Warlord: Kesreth Palewake ]

Mythic | Level 40

Attack: 7,900

Speed: 4,200

```

It killed three Mythic-plus units in the first eleven seconds.

Not with a spell or a sweep. It raised one hand, and whatever it was pointing at stopped existing, and there was no travel time and no warning and nothing to dodge.

Xairon rebuilt two of them. The third did not come back, and Logan felt Kindred Wellspring reaching for something that was not there anymore.

---

"It has no wind-up," Alice said. "I have been watching for one. There is nothing."

"There is always something."

"Then it is shorter than my arrow." She was already tracking it. "Logan, that is the whole problem. My arrow takes four tenths of a second to cross the gap. It kills in less than that."

’Homing does not help.’ Logan cut in front of it and took the next point for himself, and the Skyrend Emberglass Coat screamed and held. ’Homing corrects a path. It does not shorten one.’

```

[ HP: 63% ]

```

"Get closer!" he shouted.

"I got closer. It killed Vaskren at nine meters."

That was the third unit. Logan did not answer.

Alice drew and held it, and her arms started to burn, and she watched Kesreth Palewake raise a hand toward Billy.

’Not enough time.’

The thought was not panic. It was measurement, and she had been making that measurement for the entire fight and getting the same answer.

Four tenths of a second was too long.

So make it shorter.

---

She had understood Puncture as what an arrow could go through.

She had understood Homing as where an arrow was going.

Standing on a salt plain watching something reach for Billy, Alice understood the third thing, and it was so simple that she was briefly furious about it.

An arrow in flight is a thing moving through time.

Puncture had been about space. Homing had been about destination.

This one was about the clock.

```

[ Insight gained. ]

[ Arrow Intent: 26% → 34%. ]

[ New application understood: Velocity. ]

> Arrows released with intent travel at increased speed. Increase scales with understanding.

```

She let go.

The arrow crossed two hundred meters in a length of time that did not feel like a length of time at all. There was a sound afterward, arriving late, the way thunder arrives late.

Kesreth Palewake’s hand was still raised when the arrow went through its skull.

```

[ Warlord Kesreth Palewake has been slain. ]

```

---

Billy landed beside her and looked at the corpse and then at her.

"You were two hundred meters out."

"I know."

"It did not get to finish."

"I know." Alice’s hands were shaking and she did not bother hiding it. "Billy, it did not get to start."

```

[ Warlord Badges held: 22 ]

[ Warlord kills: 12 ]

```

Logan came over with blood on one sleeve and looked at her for a long moment.

"Three applications," he said.

"Three."

"Puncture, Homing, Velocity. Thirty-four percent." He almost smiled. "I have one technique family and three days of a mountain and I am at forty-four. You have been doing this for a fraction as long."

"Do not turn it into a race."

"It has been a race since you looked at a leaderboard and saw your name under mine." Logan did smile then. "I am saying you are gaining faster than me. That is not a complaint."

---

The match announcement came while they were still on the salt.

```

[ Fifty Warlords eliminated. The remaining fifty Warlords are 50% stronger, and their badges reward 100% extra Tier Points. ]

```

"Double," Alice said. "Twenty-two badges at double conversion."

"And fifty Warlords left that are half again as strong as the ones that nearly killed us."

Logan pulled the other panel, the one he checked less often and liked less every time.

```

[ Players remaining: 88 / 500 ]

```

Alice stopped moving.

"Eighty-eight."

"It was two hundred and nineteen when we left the island."

’A hundred and thirty-one players gone.’ Logan read the number again and it did not improve. ’And we accounted for six of them.’

"Somebody is clearing the board," Alice said.

"Everybody is clearing the board. That is what happens at the end of one of these." He closed the panel.

"The people who are left are the people who are good at it, and every one of them is looking at the same eighty-eight number we are."

---

Dog ten did not want to go.

It had been the loudest of the ten at the start and it had gone quiet somewhere around the seventh marker, and when Logan finally crouched in front of it, it put its head against his chest and stayed there.

"That bad?"

It did not answer, because it was a dog.

"Save it," Alice said quietly. "We have one left. We do not have to spend it today."

Logan scratched behind a spectral ear and stood up.

"No," he agreed. "We do not."

---

The message was waiting for them when they got back to the ship, and it did not come through any system Logan recognized.

It arrived on the deck of their ship, written into the wood in a hand nobody had watched make it, and Nyriel had not registered a single thing crossing the water in either direction.

Alice read it over his shoulder and said something unrepeatable.

```

Leon Flanke.

Fifty Warlords left and eighty-eight players. Neither of those numbers is going to hold, and when they break, whoever is standing closest to the other one wins by accident. I do not want to win by accident.

There is an island at the northern edge of the sweep. Your scanner has had it marked as empty since the match began. It is not empty.

We will be there.

Come when you are ready and not before. I mean that literally. If you arrive tired I will take it, and it will not be worth having.

V.

```

Logan read it three times.

"He is giving us time to prepare," Alice said flatly.

"Yes."

"For the fight where he intends to kill us."

"Yes."

"Why."

Logan ran a thumb across the letters cut into the deck. They were very neat. Whoever had made them had not been in a hurry.

’Because he has been counting since the crater and he has already decided how this ends.’ The thought was cold and clear. ’And the only thing that would spoil it for him is winning against a version of us that was not trying.’

"Because he is not afraid of us at our best," he said. "He is only afraid of the result not meaning anything."

Alice was quiet for a while.

"I do not like him," she said eventually. "I have spent this whole match trying to work out whether I do, and I have landed on no."

"Good."

"He is not cruel. He is not a liar. He gave us the last pair of fruits without a fight and told us we would stay ahead." She folded her arms.

"And he is going to kill us both and feel absolutely fine about it, because he thinks that is what the Tower is for."

"That is exactly right."

"So what do we do?"

Logan looked north, at a stretch of Nyriel’s map that had been blank since the first hour of the match.

```

[ Northern sweep: no signature. ]

```

"We take him at his word," he said. "We go when we are ready."

"And when is that?"

"When I can hold four thousand stacks for longer than twenty seconds." Logan stood up off the rail. "And when you can put an arrow through somebody who already knows where it is going."