Chapter 419: Changing the Playing Field

Kael’s jaw tightened as he looked across the dirt. He had been treating the tremors as information only he could exploit, as though the thing producing them had no interest in what he did afterward. Akrab had watched him react and adjusted. He had nearly died because he assumed being underground made it less capable of following the fight.

The earlier exchanges made more sense now. When he attacked from a distance, it covered itself with its claws. When he kept moving, it went beneath the arena. Now it was working out how to catch him when he jumped. Kael would have admired the process considerably more if he had been standing beside his master, watching it happen to a training dummy.

He searched the battlefield for something useful. The pit was gone, along with the barricades and broken pillars from the earlier rounds. None of the tricks that had frustrated the ogre offered anything here. Even a wall would accomplish very little against something perfectly happy to travel underneath it. Or worse, through it.

Akrab could choose where they met and disappear before he had a chance to retaliate. Kael needed to interfere with that freedom. Otherwise, all he was proving was that he could avoid dying several times in a row, which sounded impressive until he considered how little the creature needed him to fail.

Shadow Step might save him from a lethal strike. He was grateful to have it, but the possibility offered less comfort than he had expected when he first read the description. If it activated, he would still be in the arena afterward, facing the same scorpion with the same two tails. He doubted Akrab would politely suspend the fight for twenty-four hours while his ability recovered.

His eyes moved toward the outer wall. Reaching it meant crossing another stretch of open ground, and he could already imagine feeling the tremors accelerate beneath him halfway there. He needed somewhere useful to arrive, not merely somewhere farther from his current position.

Kael worked through what he had available while moving carefully across the dirt. His Runes, his coat, the iron weights around his wrists, and enough internal energy to attempt something more than another escape. There were options he had barely considered because each time Akrab surfaced, all his attention went into keeping its stingers out of him. He needed to carry a thought through the next attack without letting that thought get him killed.

The ground shifted beneath his boots. He jumped backward, landed, and waited for the eruption.

Nothing came through. A second vibration passed to his left, and he moved right before catching himself. Again, the earth settled without the creature appearing. Kael remained where he had landed, fists raised, slowly realizing that Akrab had just made him dodge twice without exposing so much as a claw.

"You have two tails and enough armor to stop a fucking siege weapon. Do you really need to cheat?"

His voice came out more irritated than frightened, which he appreciated. The creature had discovered that a little movement underground could send him scrambling wherever it wanted. If he continued responding that readily, it would eventually get to choose his landing before he did.

He checked his reserves again. His internal energy had fallen lower than he liked, though he still had enough to fight. That distinction mattered. He could spend it attempting something useful now, or gradually waste the opportunity while reassuring himself that he had survived another attack.

The available ground was getting worse as well. Every strike left a hole, every splash of venom another patch he could not safely step on. Akrab had the entire space beneath the arena to move through, while Kael’s portion kept shrinking. Given enough time, the creature might not even need to predict his dodge. It could simply leave him one place to land.

He looked from a spreading pool of venom to the dirt beyond it. So far, the ground had protected Akrab, hidden its movements, and allowed it to attack from almost any direction. Kael needed a way to make entering it less convenient. Trying to catch the creature during the brief moment it chose to expose itself was letting it set every condition of the fight.

The next vibration came before he could take the thought further. Kael moved as Akrab burst upward, narrowly clearing the claw sweeping toward him. He hit the ground and rolled beneath one stinger while the second carved a deep groove beside his shoulder.

Venom poured into the cut. The dirt began breaking down before Kael had finished getting his feet beneath him, forcing him to scramble sideways with one hand still against the ground. He rose just as the creature pointed its claws downward and plunged beneath the arena again.

For a moment, Kael could do little except breathe. His body wanted to keep retreating, to put distance between himself and the hole Akrab had left, even though that hole no longer told him where the creature was. He resisted the urge and settled his footing, keeping his knees loose while he looked over the ground.

The One Who Stands Where Others Flee wanted to see courage. Kael sincerely hoped the bastard was getting a satisfactory view, because being frightened while continuing to fight was becoming an increasingly familiar experience. He had no intention of improving the spectacle by standing still and letting a stinger through his chest.

His master would have beaten him for trying something that stupid, assuming Akrab left enough of him to make the lesson worthwhile. The old man had made him suffer through far too much training for him to reduce it all to increasingly desperate dodges. Kael knew how to fight. He needed to start making decisions the creature had to respond to.

He tightened his fists and watched the earth, allowing himself to feel the tremors without immediately obeying them. The next time Akrab surfaced, escaping could only be part of what he did. He needed to give the scorpion a reason to regret coming back above ground. Or better yet, make it wish to never dive back in again.

And looking at one of his runes. There was a possibility for that.

A dangerous possibility.