Chapter 418: Adapt And Overcome

A vibration passed beneath Kael’s boots. He felt it travel across the ground, moving far faster than anything that size should have managed underground. The tremors gave him a rough sense of Akrab’s path, though knowing where the creature had been a moment ago offered considerably less reassurance than he would have liked.

The dirt should have slowed it. There was stone beneath that dirt, and Kael felt quite strongly that several tons of scorpion ought to experience some inconvenience while forcing its way through both. Instead, the vibrations crossed the battlefield as smoothly as ripples moving through water. Their direction changed, and Kael abandoned the argument before the creature could settle it by coming through his feet.

He drove himself sideways just as the ground exploded. Red earth struck his coat, and Akrab erupted from the opening with enough momentum to carry its entire armored body into the air. One claw passed beneath Kael while a tail whipped across behind it, forcing him to twist before he had even begun falling.

Kael landed, rolled, and pushed straight into a sprint. Above him, the enormous scorpion reached the highest point of its leap. He braced for the impact of its landing, expecting enough force to shake his teeth together, but Akrab pointed its claws downward and plunged into the earth. Its body followed with almost no loss of momentum, disappearing beneath the arena like a dolphin returning to the water.

Apparently the shell, claws, and two venomous tails had left a serious weakness in the creature’s design. Someone had examined that collection of unpleasant features and decided it also needed to swim through fucking stone. Kael would have appreciated meeting that person somewhere quiet, preferably while they were distracted and, again "standing within punching distance."

The ground shook to his left before he could spare another thought for them. He changed direction, felt the movement shift toward his right, and jumped as the earth burst apart again. Akrab’s claws snapped through the space behind him, followed by its head and the two tails sweeping overhead.

Kael cleared the attack badly. His boot slipped when he landed, driving one knee into the dirt hard enough to send a jolt up his thigh. He shoved himself upright while the scorpion completed its arc and disappeared underground, refusing to spend even a moment checking whether the joint hurt. If it could still carry him, it would have to wait its turn.

His breathing had become shorter. Above ground, Akrab had given him things to read: a claw drawing back, a tail changing position, the shift of its body before a charge. He had spent months learning to recognize those warnings and move before they became injuries. None of that training had included being attacked by the floor.

The vibrations were all he had now, and the strongest ones arrived when Akrab was already close enough to kill him. Waiting for certainty would get him caught. Moving at the first disturbance might send him directly into whatever the creature did next. Kael disliked choices where both answers ended with parts of him becoming separated.

He angled back toward the center of the arena, keeping the young gladiators near the edge of his vision. They had gathered against the outer wall, as far from the fighting as they could manage. At least Akrab seemed committed to pursuing him. Kael was relieved they were being left alone, although a small, uncharitable part of him wished the creature could express that preference with slightly less enthusiasm.

A faint tremor passed beneath his feet, then stopped. Kael slowed and watched the disturbed ground around him, waiting for the movement to continue. He shifted one foot, then the other, but felt nothing else. The scorpion had gone still somewhere beneath the arena.

That was worse than the charging. While it moved, he could follow something. Now he had an entire stretch of red dirt to watch and no useful reason to choose one patch over another. He became aware of how loudly he was breathing inside his helmet, then realized he could hear it because the spectators had stopped shouting.

Thousands of people were waiting to see where Akrab would come up. From their seats, this probably looked wonderfully tense. Kael hoped at least a few of them appreciated how much effort he was putting into remaining available for the next scene.

"If anyone up there can see where it went, feel free to shout. I promise it won’t spoil the entertainment."

He kept his eyes on the ground while he spoke. Saying something helped steady his breathing, but the silence beneath his boots remained. He could almost feel an attack coming through each patch of dirt he looked away from, and he had to stop himself from turning in a useless circle.

His fireballs could not reach Akrab down there. Punching it required the creature to surface, then remain within reach long enough for him to get past the claws and tails. Even if he managed that, he still had to break a shell that had already endured more punishment than he cared to repeat.

A more complicated Rune combination might help, provided he found time to prepare it. So far, every attempt to think beyond his next landing ended with several tons of scorpion interrupting. He could feel himself becoming occupied with escaping the next attack instead of finding a way to end the fight. That was manageable for another few exchanges, perhaps, but eventually he would land badly again. Eventually, getting back up would take too long.

The ground vibrated. Kael moved immediately, then felt the disturbance shift ahead of him.

He tried to stop, but Akrab burst out directly across his path. A claw snapped shut less than a meter from his legs as he threw himself backward. He twisted away from the first tail, barely bringing his body around before the other stinger scraped the edge of his coat.

The leather held. Kael felt the contact pull at him, and for an instant his attention fixed on that small tug rather than the enormous creature passing overhead. That was how close it had come. A little farther inward, a slightly different angle, and he would have been finding out whether his body could survive the venom currently dissolving holes across the arena.

Akrab disappeared before he could answer the attack. Kael kept moving, forcing himself to reconstruct what had happened instead of dwelling on the stinger. He had felt movement beneath him and dodged. The creature had then changed its path to emerge where his dodge would take him.

It had used the warning against him.