Chapter 153: Just Mana and a Sword (Part 1)

The examiners escorted all of the fighters out to where they had taken the last batch. It had gone smoothly last time. It did not go smoothly now.

One of the examiners approached Violet, his hands glowing green. Violet stood in the center of the ring and let him work. The gash on her cheek closed, and then the one along her side. Then the man gestured toward the archway at the back of the arena, and put an arm on her shoulder.

Violet smacked the arm away. The man blinked and stared. He leaned in and whispered something. Violet shook her head and did not whisper back. "I'm not going fucking anywhere. Just try and take me there if you want. See how that works out for ya."

I watched the man's face pale. He looked to the other examiners, presumably for some kind of assistance. All of them looked back at him and shook their heads. It seemed they all had enough common sense not to get in Violet's way if they could help it. I didn't understand it. Damian had gone off without much of a fuss.

Violet started walking toward me, and the examiner made no further attempt to stop her. Whether that was because she frightened him, or because nobody in this coliseum was going to lay hands on a Duchess, I could not say. Probably both.

All of the fighters near me shifted and pointedly took several steps away. Violet hopped down from the ring and cracked her neck. Then she stepped toward me. She tugged her braid, and pointedly looked away from me. She was also puffing her cheeks, just slightly. "Well?" she asked, still looking away.

I very much did not understand what was happening, only that something was. "Violet, you didn't get hit in the head or anything, right?"

That made her look at me. She stared, and let out a deep sigh. "Did I do awesome or what?!" she demanded.

Oh. So that was what this was. One thumbs up hadn't been nearly enough. I stepped forward, dropped my sword onto the grass, and put an arm on both of Violet's shoulders. She stared. I shook her, hard. "Violet, that was amazing," I said. "They didn't stand a chance! I mean, I did get a little nervous at the end, but you pulled through anyway. Honestly, if I'd been in that situation, I don't know what I would have done. But you handled it like a champ."

I stopped shaking her. Her red hair had fallen over her eyes, and it was only barely a shade different from her cheeks. "That's, uh-" She coughed loudly and pulled herself away. "That's good! I was pretty goddamn awesome, wasn't I?"

"You were," I agreed. "I almost felt bad for them."

"Third group! Get in the ring!" one of the examiners called out.

All around me, boys and girls began to move. A girl with hair cropped so short she almost looked bald stared at me as she walked past to join them.

Right. It was my turn now. I bent down and retrieved my sword. Violet grabbed my arm before I could take a single step. I looked at her, and saw only concern on my friend's face. "Don't overdo it," she said.

I knew what she was talking about. My wrist had felt fine today, but all I had done so far was move around. I just had to hope it held up in an actual fight. "I know my limits. You don't have to worry."

For some reason, all that did was make Violet look even more worried than she had before. She stepped back anyway, and I joined the line of children moving toward the ring. There was a set of stairs leading up the ring's side. I was the last one up. Everyone had pointedly moved as far from me as the stone allowed, and so I decided to simply stand right where I had come up.

"Ladies and gentlemen, now we finally come to the group I know you've all been waiting for, and there's only one reason to be waiting for it! Didn't I promise that your patience would be rewarded? Well, here is your reward! I'm sure she needs no introduction at all, but I'll give her one anyway, just in case someone out there has spent the last few months living under a rock!" The announcer took a deep breath, and then spoke louder than before.

"For the first time in the one hundred and forty year history of the King's Tournament, we have a Hero among our fighters! You've all read the stories, folks, and I promise you, every last one of them is true! She marched into the Ashen Wastes and came home with a dragon's skull! She struck a trade pact with one of the most prestigious Houses in the entire Kingdom! She is the Ghost of House Veyne, the bearer of the blade of Illiana Casper herself... Esra! Veyne!" The sound that followed was an avalanche of noise.

"But don't you worry, folks, we haven't gone and rigged the whole thing!" the announcer went on, once the noise allowed him to. "No Godblades are permitted upon these hallowed stones! Which means our Hero steps into that ring with a completely normal sword! It's not even a Magical Implement! She'll have to rely on guile, on cunning, and on-"

He kept rambling. I tuned him out.

I scanned the crowd instead, for there was nothing else to do. I could feel the weight of twenty thousand stares. And there was one stare among those twenty thousand that drew my own gaze. On the left side of the arena, somewhere in the middle rows, sat Carrion. He was little more than a blur, but even that blur was enough to tell me I was not imagining it.

Click. Click.

The world zoomed in. I was right. It really was Carrion. The man sat among the common seats and watched on with his unwatching eyes. I had thought he would have left the city by now, with Violet's investiture done. Why was he still here? Vaelin stirred in the back of my mind, as he always did whenever this man came up. My hand twitched.

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Vaelin, come on. This is literally the worst possible moment for this. The Godblade relented, and I felt him slowly retreat back into wherever it was he went to sulk. It didn't matter. Or if it did matter, then it was a problem for future Esra, and not for me.

I turned my gaze toward the booth instead, far above and to my left, where my father, Sere, and Cordelia would all be watching. Where Julian Greenward and his wife would be watching too. The man must have been so puzzled when the news first reached him that I was taking part in this tournament. No doubt he had little idea what the ultimate goal of it all was. To stand upon a stage grander than even this one, and hoist him by his own petard. I would so like to see the look on his face when it finally happened.

Somehow, the announcer was still going. "-and though her opponents may be vicious, if there is anyone in this Kingdom who can stand against the odds with nothing but mana and a sword, then it just might be Esra Veyne!" There was a loud row of cheering at this, louder than any I had heard all day. "But of course, she is not the only fighter you should be keeping an eye on! We also have Sharon Nox, of the famous -or perhaps now infamous- Nox family!"

It was almost remarkable how quickly cheering could turn into booing in the span of two seconds. I looked over at the girl. She stood at my far right, and she was staring at me. An infamous family, huh? With everything else demanding my attention, I had not had the time to look into this strange girl and her brother, or to have anyone else do the looking for me. I planned to correct that. Assuming I actually qualified here.

Eventually, the booing died down. The announcer took a very deep breath, and it felt like all twenty thousand people held their breaths right along with him. "Begin!"

Last round, everyone had just stood and stared at each other when the match began. Nobody stopped to stare this time.

"Let's just get the Hero out first!" one of the boys called. "Come on, she doesn't even have her sword! Let's get her out and be done with it!" He stood on my left, and he was completely unremarkable, save that he was exactly my height. He raised his hands toward me. The ground in front of him erupted. A small spike of stone shot through the air, far too fast for me to see. At least, too fast for me to see as I was.

Click. Click.

I compressed mana into my arm and swung. The blade met the stone spike and cut it through, almost right down the middle. A dull twinge ran up my right wrist. The two halves of the spike sailed past me and slammed into the wall somewhere far behind. The boy was staring. He was not the only one. Did... did they all think I would simply keel over at the first attack? I almost felt insulted.

Then a gout of flame came from somewhere on my right. A girl was charging in from my left, spear in hand. Two more boys were coming at me from the front. One had his hands raised, and they were crackling with lightning. The other had no power that I could see, though that didn't mean much.

They really were all ganging up on me. Not all of them, but more than enough of them. Well. Nothing could ever be too easy.

I stepped forward, out of the path of the flames. The girl with the spear reached me first. The spearhead shone as she thrust it toward my chest. What that glow meant, I did not know. I only knew that I had to avoid it. I dashed to the side, away from a thrust that looked almost too slow to my eyes. The spear wobbled in the air. Then it extended, and bent, reaching after me.

I slashed with my sword. Sword met spear, and it was just enough to send the strange thing arcing upward and missing me entirely. At least for the first thrust. The girl pulled the spear back and thrust again. I moved my blade into its path, but the spear simply bent around it, arcing in from the side. It was curving toward my shoulder, and I was already mid-dash. There was only one thing left to do, and I did it.

It was a thing I had seen exactly once, in a coliseum in Myrrheim, as a living legend stood beneath a rain of falling swords and did not flinch. Condensing mana at the point of impact, in the very moment of impact. The spear slammed into my shoulder, and instead of piercing through, all it managed was to shove me back a step. The girl stared at me. Then she stared at her spear. Then back at me again.

"Sorry?" I offered. I didn't have time to say anything more. The two boys had already gotten far too close for comfort. The one with the lightning jabbed at me with his right hand. With my eyes, he might as well have been standing still, and he was not so fast that my body couldn't answer. I ducked under the blow, then under the jab that followed from his left. I swung.

It was a quick swing, too quick to put much mana behind it. Pain lanced up my wrist, and it was sharper this time. The blow still took the boy in the side, staggered him, and dropped him to his knees. I winced. I could have turned the pain off at any time, but I would not do that until I had to. The pain was the only thing that would tell me if I overdid it.

The other boy was on me then. I expected a punch, or maybe a kick. He threw neither. Instead he just... charged, head down, straight for me, like he thought himself a battering ram. I planted my feet. He was bigger, and he had the weight advantage, but mana should have made all of that moot.

It did not. He hit me like a falling wall, and I flew. I sailed through the air and barely managed to land upright, mere feet from the ring's edge.

I took a deep breath and reoriented myself. That had not felt like just mana to me. A Gift that had to do with... charging? This world truly was a strange place.

The fighters all regrouped in front of me. Spanning in all directions, encircling me. The boy with the lightning Gift dragged himself back to his feet to join them. There were five of them, and every one of them looked at me with far more caution than they had before. Surrounded on all sides and behind me the edge of the ring. Just lovely.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn all of you," I grumbled, and reached into my mana core.

Mana flooded my limbs and filled the air around us. Everyone in front of me staggered, and their faces paled. They were letting me condense a rather absurd amount of mana into my arms and legs, entirely for free. How generous of them.

An arm slammed into the fire girl on my right. The girl shot out of the arena and slammed into the distant wall with a strange crunch. She slowly slid down the stone and lay crumpled on the grass.

"Ring out! She cannot continue!" an examiner cried, and then healers were sprinting for her.

In the place where the girl had stood was an arm. Or a massive, grotesque arm in the form of a hammer. Sharon Nox stood at the end of it, staring at me with her teeth bared. Her entire front glittered with a thousand pinpricks of light, twinkling like tiny stars, and down her right side ran the thin white lines that traced the shape of a hammer.

I looked from Sharon to the girl who still lay in the grass. Who still did not move. Her target hadn't even seen the blow coming, and Sharon had put enough force behind it to break her against a wall anyway. Was she even alive?

"Ladies and gentlemen, I- I don't believe it!" The announcer cried out. "While every eye in this coliseum was on our Hero, Sharon Nox has swept her entire half of the ring! Three fighters, gone, just like that! And it seems she has claimed a fourth on her way over!"

Three. I looked around, and found no sign of them anywhere. It had been less than thirty seconds since the match began. That left six of us.

"So you can do something after all, traitor!" Sharon's sneer deepened into a grin. Traitor? And just what did that mean? I did not have time to think about it.

Sharon Nox charged, her hand made into a hammer bigger than she was.