Chapter 154: Just Mana and a Sword (Part 2)

Sharon Nox charged, and she was fast. Her arm-hammer swung, and I only just managed to dart back from it. The wind whipped as the arm passed. I swung my sword at that arm. No matter its form, it was still made of flesh and blood. Steel met that flesh and… bounced off. Even the impact felt wrong. A twang ran all the way up my arm.

I had no time to think about it, for she was stepping in and swinging again. I was too slow the second time around. The hammer caught me on my left side and sent me sliding across the ground. My arm throbbed. For a moment, I almost dropped the sword entirely. The girl blinked and looked genuinely surprised, as if she'd expected to break me with just one hit. If I hadn't compressed mana at the very last instant, she might just have done that.

"It's fine," Sharon Nox said, snarling. "It's more fun this way."

She rushed me again. This time the hammer came from above. I darted to the side even as it slammed into the ground. Dirt shot into the air, and a crack split the stage. The crack spidered across the floor.

"Don't tell me you're just going to run, Hero," she snarled. She said the word like it was an insult.

Then she came again, this time with a swipe from the right. I dashed inside her swing with a thrust. My blade cut through her tunic and slammed into her shoulder. There was resistance, and then the blade punctured through the skin. The girl let out a hiss and jumped back, blood spilling across the floor. The wound was not nearly as deep as I had wanted it to be, but it was something, at least.

"Would you look at that, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer cried out. "For a moment there it seemed our Hero was firmly on the back foot, but she has recovered and answered with a vicious counter of her own! First blood in this bout goes to Esra Veyne!"

The crowd roared. I ignored it. The girl was glaring at me. I had thought she was angry with me before, but that had been nothing compared to what I was seeing now. "So you can do something without that damned sword after all," she hissed. "You can keep up. And you have a stupid amount of mana." She spat on the ground and straightened. And I noticed, distinctly, that the blood had stopped dripping onto the floor. "It won't be enough to save you, though."

I clicked my tongue and risked a glance at the arena around me. All of the other fights were on the very far side of the ring. They were spaced apart from each other, but they were all still on the same side. And more important than that, none of them were fighting. They were just watching, waiting to see which one of us would eliminate the other.

Goddamnit. I didn't sign up for a one-on-one melee.

The girl brought her hand back up to her chest. The thousand pinpricks of light near the bottom shifted, connecting together into straight lines. She had drawn feet of some kind. Then her body started to morph. I held the blade tighter as her legs grew wider, and then wider still. Muscle bulged against skin. Thick veins ran up her calves. She'd gained a foot of height in an instant, and through all of it she had not so much as made a sound.

Katarina was right. This really was an unappealing Gift.

"Let's see," the girl breathed. "Let's see you try and keep up with me now."

The announcer shouted something. I tuned him out, because Sharon Nox was already moving.

It was immediately different. Before, with my Gift, I had been able to keep up with her easily enough. See the hammer and read the swing. Now she crossed the space between us so fast that my body almost didn't react at all. I got my sword up in front of me. Barely.

The hammer slammed into it. The blade snapped like a dry branch, and I went skidding sideways across the stone. Half a sword spun away somewhere behind me.

She chased me. I threw out a fist with all the mana I could compress in a hurry. She slid past it and her left elbow cracked into my chin. The world spun. Through the spinning, all I saw was the blur of the hammer, already coming down.

Instinct took over. I ducked. The air shifted above me. Sharon had overextended herself in the swing. I kicked out at her legs. More specifically, at her right knee. It felt like trying to kick down a brick wall. Still, with the mana in my legs, it did something. The girl staggered and swayed, and I threw out a fist at her face. It landed. There was a thud, and the sound of something cracking. She cried out and stepped back. Pain lanced up my arm, far sharper this time.

She pressed her hand against her nose. Blood seeped past her fingers. "You traitor bitch," she hissed. "How dare you hurt me?"

Then a handful of the pinpricks scattered across her chest guttered and winked out like snuffed candles. She moved her hand aside, and the nose I was certain I had broken was…simply fine again.

I stared. She had healed the shoulder wound just as quickly, and I hadn't seen how. She could heal, and heal that quickly too? I did not even have my sword anymore, and my hand was still aching. This was bad.

"Ladies and gentlemen, in case you missed it in all the excitement, our Hero's sword is gone!" the announcer cried. "How in the world is Esra Veyne going to make it out of this one?! And will somebody please tell me, are the rest of our fighters truly just going to stand there and watch?!"

I blinked. Right. There was a way out of this after all.

"Don't tell me you've lost your nerve already, Hero," Sharon Nox said. "Go on. We're only just getting start-"

I dashed to the side. Toward the nearest boy standing near the arena's edge. He was the one who had fired the stone spike at me when this round had begun. His eyes widened in panic as I drew close. Another spear of stone erupted from the ground in front of him. Too slow. I reached him first, and punched with my left. I was right-handed, and so the swing was awkward and clumsy. With mana behind it, it was still strong. It knocked him back, just far enough that he toppled out of the ring and onto the grass.

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He looked around, then up at me. "Fuck!" he cried out.

"Ring out!" an examiner called.

I ignored them both. I didn't have much time, I knew that much. There were five of us left, and I needed to eliminate two more before-

"How dare you just run?!" Sharon shouted somewhere behind me. I felt the weight of her mana, and there was a great deal of it. It filled the air, and it was almost enough to make me stumble. Almost.

The next closest person was the girl with the spear. Unlike the boy before her, she had seen what had just happened, and she wasn't about to be taken by surprise. She thrust the spear at me, its tip glowing, aimed straight for my face. With my eyes, the thrust was almost too slow. I twisted to the side and dodged it, waiting for it to bend. It did. I ducked, evading the second strike. There would be no third. Her Gift could only make that strange, unnatural motion happen once.

Her eyes went wide as I stepped in, grabbed her by the waist, and heaved. Mana filled my legs and my back as I lifted her clean off the ground. She was taller than me, and doubtless weighed more besides, but mana could make up that much of a difference easily enough.

"What the hell are you-"

I moved toward the nearest edge. It was only a few steps away.

Something slammed into my side, and the world tilted. I hit the stone hard, and the girl came down on top of me. Her spear clattered out of her grip and rolled somewhere out of sight. I turned, and Sharon Nox loomed above the both of us. Both of her arms had turned into those strange flesh hammers now. When exactly she had drawn the second one, I had no idea. Her face was red, and she was fuming.

"You coward!" She raised both of those hammers into the air.

The girl pinning me down with her weight squirmed and all but leapt off of me. Something glinted at the corner of my vision. My right hand moved for it. The hammers came down, and met a spear.

I held it aloft in both hands, straining. It was the spear the girl had dropped. I flooded my arms with mana, condensing it as fast as my body would allow, and even then my arms shook. The stone groaned under my back. A spasm of pain shot up my right arm.

I kicked out, and took Sharon in the stomach. Whatever else she had redrawn on herself, her stomach was apparently still just a girl's. It was enough to make her retreat a step, and enough for me to rise. I raised the spear. The girl it belonged to stood several feet away, staring at it as if I were holding her third arm aloft. It… seemed she had no way to recall it, then. I rushed forward and charged her.

"You bastard!" the Nox girl roared behind me.

I ignored her. I thrust the spear out at the girl it belonged to. She raised her hands clumsily, perhaps trying to shield her face. The tip rushed toward her stomach. Just before it landed, the point bent, turned, and arced back toward me instead. And even as it did, the girl herself struck out with one of those raised hands.

So she could bend the spear even in someone else's grip. It was clever. I did not have the time to admire it. Or the time to dodge. I could only do one thing.

Click. Click.

The tip of the spear pierced into my side. The punch took me in the shoulder. I felt neither. I stepped forward, and the spear fell and clattered somewhere behind me. The girl's eyes went very wide. "How are yo-"

I punched her in the face. With my right hand this time, and with a great deal of mana behind it. She went clean off her feet, landing hard at the very lip of the ring, only barely not tumbling out of the arena entirely. I stepped forward and kicked her off.

"Ring out!" an examiner cried, catching her before she hit the grass.

"And that is another elimination, ladies and gentlemen! Would you believe it, only four fighters remain!"

I whirled just as Sharon Nox reached me again. She took me by surprise. Not because I hadn't expected her on my heels. I had. But because the hammers were gone. In their place were two hands in the shape of long, wicked swords.

The first blade whistled past my throat. The second was already moving for my chin. I threw myself sideways. She was faster with the swords than she had ever been with the hammers.

"You filthy traitor!" Sharon screamed, slashing with both arms at once. "You go down right here!"

"I don't know what that means!" I screamed right back, ducking under both.

Her next flurry came so wild and so fast that I gave up three full steps just to survive it.

Vaelin. You wouldn't happen to know why she's so angry, would you?

Did say. Dangerous.

I blinked, nearly missing a step. Deadpan humor now, Vaelin? Aren't you full of surprises.

I snuck a punch in whenever her swings left me an opening, but for the most part, it was all I could do just to survive. I scanned the ring. There were two boys left besides us. All I needed was one of them out, and this entire round ended.

Sharon wasn't letting me. Every time I tried to move past her, she would charge wildly at me. All I could do was slowly but surely keep giving ground. My heel came down and brushed the edge of the stage. Sharon saw it and lunged. I leapt to the side, even as one of those two swords punctured a hole clean through the side of my tunic.

And then I found him. One of the two boys left stood a dozen feet away, trying very hard to hide in a place where there was nothing at all to hide behind. I did not remember what his Gift was, not now. It did not matter. I ran towards him as fast as I could. I heard Sharon racing after me. The boy met my eyes and his eyes widened. Then he screamed, and charged. He charged me like a battering ram. Ah, so he was that one.

I jumped to the side. The boy met Sharon. His was the Gift that had thrown me half-across the ring at the start of this match. Against Sharon Nox, it did nothing at all. She swatted him aside without ever taking her eyes off me. The boy went sailing out of the ring.

"Ring out!" an examiner called.

There was a stunned silence. Sharon whirled toward me, and for the first time she looked something other than furious. She looked horrified. It seemed she'd realized what she'd just done. I took a deep breath, and smirked.

"And… and that's the match, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer cried. "That is the match! And then there were three! Your qualifiers from the third group are Esra Veyne! Sharon Nox! And… Teo Wick! And folks, I can hardly believe I am saying this, but for the second time today, a fighter has advanced through these qualifiers by doing absolutely nothing at all!"

On the far side of the ring, Teo Wick sat huddled, staring up at twenty thousand roaring people in open disbelief. He slowly rose on unsteady legs.

"It's over," I said to Sharon.

She glowered and took a step toward me anyway.

I braced myself. Was she angry enough to attack me even after the match was over? Violet was over the ring's edge in an instant, planting herself directly in front of me with hammer already in hand.

"Fucking try it," Violet hissed. "Fucking try it and see what happens."

Several examiners had landed in front of Sharon in the same breath. None of them said anything.

Sharon glared past all of them at me. "This isn't over," she spat. Then she turned and leapt off the arena, landing near the line of the fourth group.

"I don't expect it is," I grumbled, and looked down at my right hand. It was very pink, and slightly swollen besides. I didn't even want to imagine how much it hurt.

Clever. But careless. Vaelin grumbled.

Some help you were. I grumbled right back.

"I told you not to overdo it," Violet said, turning around, one hand already tugging at her braid. Then her eyes dropped, and went very wide. "Esra. Your side."

I looked down. My dark tunic had gone darker still along my right side, wet where the spear had gone in, I was pretty sure. Somewhere behind Violet, a healer was already sprinting for the stairs.

"…Oops?" I said.