Chapter 169: Trial By Fire: Five

The avenue ran downhill toward the light, and the sound came up to meet them. Cal shuffled inside the length of his ankle chains, matching the guards' bored stride and doing his best not to fall on his face. Gawain walked beside him while trying to give him some pointers.

"Listen, there's a platform at the rim of the pit. They'll take the cuffs off you and you need to stand still while they do it. Men have been opened up for being too quick to stretch."

Suppressing a shudder, Cal glanced over to nod gratefully at Gawain.

"A ramp off the platform will take us down, then they'll close gate bars behind us. Across the floor there's a chute, and whatever comes out of it tends to come out hungry, mean, or both. That's assuming it's a tandem match."

Assuming? I don't like what he's implying there… if it's not a tandem match, what else would it be? Cal opted not to voice that question, fearing he knew the answer. Instead, he asked, "Tandem match means what, exactly?"

"It means the two of us against however many of whatever they throw at us. No rules beyond survival, lad. Either we walk away, or the beasts get a meal."

"Oh. Well, I guess that's simple enough. Just survive, eh?"

Gawain grunted an acknowledgment at that and angled his head towards the noise. "Survival is important, yes, but so is how the spectators grade your performance. Your treatment from the guards depends on your showing. Give them something to cheer about and you get meat tomorrow and dry ground to sleep on. Bore them, and you're back on a card before you know it."

The torch poles came into view between two huts, and beyond them the top rows of a wooden bank of seating, packed tightly with bodies.

Cal ran down his status while Gawain talked. A couple of bad nights of sleep in a row still had him in debt. Stamina channels were a bit raw from the sprint and had him in a mild condition he'd gotten used to being able to immediately alleviate, with the cure hanging against his ribs on a dead man's bootlace, sealed past anything he could do about it. Not until the cuffs came off, and even then… he certainly couldn't retrieve his weapons and backup armor. So, just a shirt and trousers, and a bruise on his jaw that had gotten progressively more tender as the day went on.

But it wasn't all bad. Against that, he had a body at peak E-tier and a promise he'd made two nights ago, which had only burned hotter over time under the pressure of his current predicament and frustration. The promise was turning into an appetite.

I could really, really use something to hit right now.

"One more thing," Gawain added. "Don't look for a way out down there. There isn't one, and looking could cost you the fight. Or your life."

The shackling platform was a rough plank stage at the pit's rim, ringed with guards who handled him without once looking at his face. One of them worked a key into the cuffs and unhooked the hinge, dropping the metal into a bucket with a clatter. The ankle set went next. The seal came off him, and the world poured back in.

Cal held still and let it come. First the currents, the whole living breath of the Virethane drifting over the camp in slow drafts, cool and green-tasting and present in every cubic foot of air he had been shut out of. Then the auras of the hundreds of people stacked in rows around a bowl of dirt, with pressure and texture on all sides. Finally, very softly, a small nugget of warmth on his chest waking back up to his senses under his shirt as his own energy reached it again.

A day of being forced into his own spirit ended in the space of one moment, and his relief lasted about as long as it took him to understand the terms.

This is a loan, Cal. A handful of minutes at their pleasure, and the second the fight is finished they lock you up again.

He shoved that negativity down before it could sour anything further and looked at the machine they'd fed him into. The pit was sunk into packed earth and forty yards across, deep enough that the floor rested twice a man's height below the rim. Raked dirt covered it and was dark in patches where raking hadn't been enough. Around the lip stood a crown of barbed wooden stakes, each one angled inward over the pit and sharpened and hooked, so that anything trying to come up the wall met a barrier of points leaning down to greet it. Behind the stakes, wooden bleachers climbed in rows with benches jammed to the ends and standing room crushed in behind them. Off to one side rose a roof-covered box, apart from the common seating.

The ramp ran down under his boots. Across the floor, behind the slats of the barred chute, something made a noise of its own.

Cal spread his perception with [Feathered Edge], softening the leading margin of it so it drifted out over the benches like ground fog. D-tier auras threaded the crowd in numbers he didn't like, thirty and forty and more of them, scattered through the rows in ones and twos. Six or seven yards up and to his left, he found one he knew, identifying Skarn in the third row before he ever turned his head.

In the roofed box there was seating for a couple dozen but only three spots filled, and he recognized two of them. Leylith's aura rested next to a man Cal didn't recognize, while Ondrel flanked her on the other side, their perfect D-tier foundations standing in contrast to the others in the crowd. Cal's perception brushed against the stranger, and he immediately realized it was the terrifying person he'd encountered on the night of his capture.

Instantly, he was made to regret the breach in propriety.

The response came out of nowhere, and gently at first, which was somehow the worst part. His entire projected awareness imperceptibly stopped being his. Before he knew it, the limits of his perception's extension were halted, and then slowly began to be folded inward until all at once his aura and his senses compressed into a point somewhere behind his own sternum. The pressure luckily skipped his flesh entirely but it still hurt, and would have crushed him if it had been capable of targeting his physical body. Instead it compressed and trapped his entire spiritual existence, holding him there for two heartbeats. Just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, and he went back to having full control of himself.

Although in control was certainly the last thing he felt in that moment.

Cal stood on the ramp overwhelmed by a painful sensation in his spirit that felt like his ears were ringing, if his soul had ears.

Got it, right. I'm a bug, you're the big bad tough guy, yadda yadda. I have been shown where bugs live and now know my place. Thanks for not killing me. By the way, you're on my list now too, ya jerk.

As Cal intentionally stoked his frustration to try and compensate for the existential fear he'd just been put through, he reflected on what he'd experienced. Nothing he'd ever read or been taught by his mentors had prepared him for that. Perception was his, and up until a couple of days ago he thought it inviolable within his own spirit. It was simply a thing you extended and retracted, and could be used to interact with others. Sure, the null metal of his restraints restricted his spirit, but he was still sovereign inside himself.

Yet another will had just disabused him of that assumption and taken him by the neck, treated his spiritual perception like a monster imploding in a dungeon, and folded him in on himself.

His spiritual senses came back to him blurred and slow, the way a limb comes back after you've slept on it, with everything arriving a half-second late and out of focus. [Sphere of Perception] still ran unimpeded in regards to spatial feedback within ten yards in every direction, so at least the portion that was unique to him and his Soul Impartments remained unbothered.

The story you're reading was pirated. The real thing, kept up to date by the author, is waiting where it was originally posted.

That C-tier—or whatever he was—was bad news, though. There was no way Cal would have the time to get a [Portal] cast off safely in the middle of the pit with someone that strong observing him. Heck, he didn't think he could get away with it with Ondrel or Leylith there, either. Perhaps escape would be possible on another card, another night, if the box stood empty.

There was no way out of his current fight.

He walked down the ramp and the barred gate slammed shut behind him. The noise from above changed pitch as the benches saw fresh stock coming out onto the dirt. The winch on the other side groaned. Rope hauled the chute open in three hard jerks, and forty yards away a pack of starving E-tier hemlock prowlers boiled out of the dark in one shabby mass.

Eight of them. Bodies the length of large dogs under plated hide the color of wet bark, the needled fur along their spines gone dull and brittle from the kennels, ribs pushing the plates up in hard ridges. Black lips peeled back off teeth that had nothing left to lose.

Cal knew these things. He'd killed them in the Virethane with his spear and bow, but none of them had ever come at him across open terrain. In the trees a prowler had to dodge around trunks and roots, and they were still plenty fast through the undergrowth. In the open, though?

Eh, who am I kidding? It's not going to save them.

The pack split around Cal without slowing, three going wide toward Gawain and five circling in on the nearer meal: him.

The first came in hard and fast, and he held his ground. He stepped off the line at the last instant with a [Flicker Step] he barely paid for, and put his knee up into its ribs as it went past. He timed the [Knee Strike] so that it landed while the animal was mid-air, and it folded sideways around his attack with a sickening crunch before rocketing off to ragdoll across the dirt. The second attacker he took by the throat, and the fur drove needles into his palms. He became a fulcrum for the lunge anyway. Cal pivoted with the beast's momentum and felt the whole weight of it come up over his hip, throwing it into the third one hard enough to spill both animals into a heap. Coming out of the throw into a roll, he dodged under a fourth that had gone airborne over him and came up on the balls of his feet with three yards of open floor around him. Momentarily, he allowed himself to tune into the cheers from the crowd.

Right. They're watching and I need to put on a good show. I can't be too flashy, however… not without open access to my void ring.

He decided then and there, in the middle of the pit with the surviving pack members reorganizing, that there would be no [Crimson Overdrive] tonight. The Ability ate purple essence stones by the fistful, and he couldn't risk accessing any stones with all these eyes on him. That made his trump card a thing he could only spend in an emergency, and so far, it didn't seem like this fight would require it. Technique should be enough.

So he would put on a clinic instead.

A prowler came in on Cal's blind side, but his sphere caught it before his eyes did, so he turned into the charge and planted a boot on the animal's bony shoulder, launching himself. The acrobatic vault off living muscle put him over the top of the knot of beasts and landed him behind their line. He killed the slowest one on the way down with an [Elbow Strike] to the base of the skull, where the plating thinned out, and felt it come apart under his arm. He caught the next by the scruff and the hind leg and hurled it into the pit wall, and the impact against the hard pack carried all the way to the back rows. [Roundhouse Kick] folded another around his shin, and it dropped and lay still. A hard block turned a snapping bite off the outside plane of his forearm, and instead of the counter the opening begged for, Cal shoved the animal back with his boot. The fifth had already quit him, loping wide across the floor to join the easier hunt on Gawain's side, and that left the biter as the only thing on his half of the pit still on its feet. Cal gave it his back and strolled toward the wall, tugging his shirt straight on the way and picking a needle of prowler fur out of his palm.

The crowd's noise picked up gleefully. Voices climbed for the kill they'd decided was coming to spite the dull-ear's arrogance, and the wagering ran loud against Cal with his back turned.

Cal lifted his face to the third row and found Skarn watching him intently.

This one's for you, big guy.

Behind him, the prowler he'd blocked circled once and dropped low, crouching, stalking towards him before loading up its hindquarters to pounce. His sphere fed him the exact instant it did, and Cal stared Skarn down the entire time. A half-step took him off the line of its leap, and he raised a leg that hammered down a heel into the beast's skull. The inertia of the charge carried the body skidding past his boots, rolling twice. Skarn frowned, while the joyous rumble of the crowd sputtered out, only to bounce back more powerful than before.

Every strike carried style, and every flourish had purpose. Cal finished each kill balanced and in control, already prepared for the next beast and playing towards whichever rows had the best view as he moved nonchalantly between beasts.

The cheering was still building when Cal turned from the stands to take in his partner's half of the fight, and his performance stopped being the priority.

Gawain was losing.

The technique was there, sure, and better than Cal had expected. The man fought the way he walked: cautiously testing the prowlers that came close to him and punishing each one when he finally committed. He'd managed to kill one already. With the deserter from Cal's side working into the pack, it was three on one again and Gawain still held a solid defense. Or at least, the appearance of one.

But he was flagging. Cal watched him lose ahold of one prowler he should have punished for its overextension. The man was taking steps to recover balance that he shouldn't have needed to, and his guard was coming up a fraction slower after each exchange. Two months of thinning rations had been quietly emptying him out, and the pit had come to collect.

Naturally, that was when Gawain went down.

There was nothing to read in it beforehand that heralded the mistake. His boot landed on a loose patch of dirt and his ankle rolled, and a man who had been standing was on his back with one arm down to catch himself and the other barely held up as a shield.

The remaining pack acted instinctively as a unit. A downed body overwrote any further hesitation, and all three of them broke for Gawain in an instant, intent on the kill. A dozen yards of pit floor lay between Cal and the man on the ground.

[Dash] put him across the gap in one swift detonation of Stamina, and he finished between the pack with his back to Gawain and his arms up. The first prowler he caught bodily and slammed into the dirt with a twist.

The second one got him.

Teeth closed on his left forearm above the wrist and drove down through skin and muscle to grate on bone, and the animal put all its weight onto that arm and hung there, thrashing, tearing back and forth to try and widen the wounds. Cal brought his right elbow down on its head twice, cratering its skull and releasing its jaws. The creature still took some of his flesh with it.

The third one hit his right shoulder from above and behind while he was still bent over the second. It locked its jaws over his deltoid, hind claws raking down his back for purchase. Cal simply straightened up under it, reached across with his chewed upon left arm, got two fingers into an eye socket, and stabbed until the animal let go of his shoulder to howl about it. Then he slammed it against the pit floor until it stopped thrashing.

Gawain had rolled onto his side and got a knee under himself, face pale and drenched in sweat. There was only one left.

It had backed off four yards and stood there, hunched and growling, the needles along its spine standing on end. The sound from the stands had changed pitch, as over one hundred voices dropped in anticipation of the climax. Cal didn't plan to disappoint, and he walked at the prowler. Blood ran off his left arm in a steady line and dripped from his fingers as he came.

The prowler was cornered and desperate and at its most dangerous. It launched itself at Cal, and he met the charge with both arms, letting the momentum come into his hips. He turned with it and poured Stamina down his legs and through his core, along the entire length of him and through his shoulders, where he launched eighty pounds of hemlock prowler up and out of the pit.

It cleared the rim for a brief moment, then came down on the barbed stakes directly beneath Skarn's paid-for seat. The angled wooden stakes went through its natural armor and ribs and held it fast as it died, mere inches from the Mycari's boots.

The crowd lost their collective mind.

The benches emptied upward, every voice in the place breaking loose at once, and the cheers came down over the pit from all around. Cal stood in the middle of it all with his arm opened to the bone and raised to the crowd. He let the noise have him for a few seconds. Then he looked up. Past the impaled animal that had gone still to where Skarn had come out of his seat. Blood had spattered up the front of his jerkin, and he was glaring straight down into the pit, face mottled with rage. Cal lowered his arm and returned the man's glare with one every bit as fierce as his own. Eventually the man turned away, angrily shoving spectators aside as he left the bleachers.

Only when the eye contact broke did the night's receipts scroll up at the corner of his vision in soft blue light and silver script.

[Your proficiency with Unarmed Block (E) has increased to Practiced]

[Your proficiency with Knee Strike (E) has increased to Practiced]

[Your proficiency with Elbow Strike (E) has increased to Practiced]

[New Skill Gained: Axe Heel (E) - Novice]

[Your proficiency with Throwing (E) has increased to Adept]

Cal could only grin as he read the last one.