Chapter 52: Divine Intervention 2

Aldric bowed to me.

I had to hand it to him, that motherfucker was elegant. Full bow, hand across the chest, head down, all that. And, when he came back up, he gave the crowd the same smile I’d written in Chapter Nine of the OG novel as "the kind of smile that made you feel like you were one of many and yet he chose you". Today, it was pointed at me, and it was going to be the last thing I saw before I got folded in half.

[Not very reassuring, to be honest.]

I bowed back, badly.

"You fought Alderltoft well," Aldric said, drawing his sword.

"Thank you, Your Highness."

He nodded, still smiling.

"I’ll try to make this quick for you."

[Ah, he means that kindly. That’s the worst part. He genuinely thinks he’s doing me a favor.]

The flag went up, and then came down.

And immediately, Aldric came at me like I’d just insulted his mother.

Here’s the thing about that "he’ll go easy on you" bullshit: Aldric Stellaris-Vane does not go easy on people.

As had been so wonderfully explained to me earlier, this man doesn’t coast, he doesn’t sandbag, and he doesn’t stand around letting the underdog land a few for the crowd. Marisol sat in a tree for eleven hours to find that out. I got it confirmed two seconds into the match, when his sword arrived where my head had been.

I was already moving, and that was the only reason it missed.

Then he was on me again, and again. The weasel had its claws in my collar and was holding on for its life.

[Don’t worry, little guy, we’ll get through this!]

I ran.

I ran sideways along the edge of the ring with my sword up in something Cassian would have generously called a guard. Aldric walked me down. Every time I broke off in a new direction he was already turning to meet me. Four days of sprints, and all they bought me was the ability to keep doing this without throwing up.

[Okay, what do I actually know? He’s faster than me and stronger than me. His footwork is better, his reach is longer, and he has a house technique I’ve seen exactly one description of, which I wrote, and which called it "elegant and merciless" because fifteen-year-old me thought that was writing.]

In truth, I had exactly one thing going for me.

If this were a real fight, the kind where people die, I’d already be dead. He’d have opened my throat in the first exchange and gone to lunch. There was no version of this where I survived a serious battle against Aldric Stellaris-Vane, and there was no plot armor coming for me either, since I’m not the protagonist. I’m an extra with a weasel for a spirit.

What I had was the ring, the rules, and a boy who had been raised from birth to be perfect in public. He was trying to win a tournament cleanly and beautifully, in front of his father’s banner, so every swing he took was one he was willing to have judged.

I could probably work with that.

He came in on the left. I got my blade up and the impact went down my arms and into my spine. I skidded back four feet and stayed standing.

[HOLY SHIT!]

My Coating held, which surprised me, given that my arms suddenly felt like mush.

"Hm. You’re making a very good effort," he admitted.

The crowd laughed. Apparently, they thought that was funny.

Now, I’d love to tell you that the next ninety seconds were a display of technical brilliance from an underdog who’d trained hard and earned her shot.

What actually happened was this.

I tried a Snap into a lateral step and put too much mana in it. My knee went one way and I went the other. I recovered by throwing myself flat and rolling, which is what a raccoon does when a dog gets too close.

Two exchanges later he clipped my shoulder and I spun a full turn before I got my feet under me again.

And then, at what I’d estimate was the peak of my athletic career, I overcommitted on a dodge and went down face-first into the sand with my ass in the air.

Four thousand people saw that. I know they saw it, because a whole section of the west stands started howling. Somewhere up there a Wildfolk girl screamed something about my hips. Fenna was going to dream about this moment for the next week.

[Get up. Get up get up get up!]

I got up. Aldric had stepped back and let me stand.

[He’s being sporting. God, he’s so much worse than if he were just evil.]

We reset. He started walking me down again and I backed off around the ring, and as I came around the eastern arc I looked past the barrier into the front row.

Cassian was standing at the rail with his arms crossed. He just looked at me, and I heard "don’t flinch" in his stupid flat voice.

Two rows behind him, Serena hadn’t sat down since the flag dropped. She wasn’t watching Aldric at all. She was watching me.

[Right. Serena’s window. He hits me clean, he believes he scored, and he steps back and lowers his sword for a second and a half. In that second and a half I set my palms and I put everything I have through his chest and out the back of the ring. Which means I have to take a proper hit from him. On purpose. I hate this so much.]

I stopped running. I planted my feet and dropped my guard about six inches wider than I should have, and I let him see the gap under my ribs. Aldric’s eyes went to it and he came in fast.

I set my palms together, fingertips apart, and pulled my hands back the way Cassian had shown me eighty times in a dark room, and I opened my mouth to say the first syllable-

Aldric’s pommel went into my gut.

He drove it in short and low with his whole shoulder behind it, up under the ribs, and all the mana I’d been gathering stopped existing. My hands came apart and my lungs emptied out. I went backward off my own feet with my heels dragging two lines through the sand.

He didn’t step back or lower his sword or wait for a judge to confirm anything. A pommel isn’t a scoring hit, and Aldric knew it better than anyone. He’d read the same rulebook everyone else had and he was the only person in the ring using it.

[He didn’t freeze. Serena, he didn’t freeze!]

Then the crowd gasped.

[Eh?]

I looked down.

My right foot came down outside the line.

In the half second before I hit the ground I got a very clear picture of the Calamity Queen sitting on her throne of skulls doing the limbo with a conga line of demons behind her, celebrating the end of the world, because the fox girl fell over.

I landed on my back with my foot outside the ring.

"OOOOH! AND THAT IS A FOOT OUT!" Prue howled. "THAT IS ONE FOOT OUT OF THE RING! WHICH IS, UH..."

Papers rustled loudly, directly into the amplification crystal.

"... WHICH IS NOT AN ELIMINATION! Rule sixteen, folks! BOTH FEET! You need BOTH FEET out of the ring! Sakana is STILL IN THIS MATCH!"

The stands made a noise I felt in my teeth. Somewhere in it I could hear Lily screaming my name.

I lay there with my foot in the dirt outside the line and my whole midsection screaming, and I started laughing, which hurt.

[Rule sixteen!!! I wrote rule sixteen at three in the morning, drunk on cheap wine, because I wanted a scene where the heroine survives on a technicality. Teenage me, you absolute legend.]

The weasel got its paws on my collarbone and MEND went through my ribs, and the pain dropped from unbearable to merely terrible. It sagged a little afterward. That was one of maybe four it had in it today, and I’d spent it on getting off the floor.

I rolled onto my side, got my knee under me, and pushed myself up. Aldric stood in the middle of the ring with his head tilted, watching me and waiting for me to be ready.

"You can concede," he said. "There’s no shame in it. You’ve done better than anyone expected. The healers are right there and I’d rather you walked out than got carried."

[Anyone expected. He said that out loud, in public, to my face, and he meant it as a compliment.]

I dragged my heel back over the line and got my guard up.

"Eh, what kind of a show would I be putting on if I gave up here, huh?" I asked with a grin more confident than I actually felt.

He nodded with a hint of respect.

[Okay... Attempt number two, incoming.]