But as soon as my fingers closed around his leg, Rafael unleashed a technique I hadn’t seen before.
All the anger he’d built up in his aura burst away from him in a powerful shock wave. It ripped my hands away from his body and threw me back toward the edge of the dueling ring. Worse, the furious wave smashed into my core and scattered half the jinsei I’d gathered.
The maneuver had also severed my connections through the Borrowed Core and sapped my strength. I was stunned and unsteady on my feet, hands wobbling uselessly when I tried to raise them to defend myself. Three shimmering Rafaels approached me, all blurry and indistinct, and I couldn’t tell which one was the real threat.
And then, suddenly, one of the trio of enemies solidified. Rafael gave me a wide, hungry smile and drove an open-palm strike into the center of my chest.
Red sparks exploded around the dueling circle.
“Point, Rafael,” Professor Song shouted. He motioned Rafael back, then grabbed my hands and looked into my eyes. “You okay to continue?”
My vision was still blurry, and my core ached from the lingering effects of Rafael’s technique. I felt like I was standing on the deck of a ship in rough seas, my legs unsteady beneath me. I shook my head and cycled my breath, pulling on the beast aspects and hoping that would steady me. One breath, two, and I nodded.
“I’m fine,” I said to the professor. “I’m good.”
“Ready,” Professor Song said, eyeing me warily as I assumed a defensive position. “Fight!”
It turns out I wasn’t fine. My core was a jumbled mess and my aura was shot through with confusion and exhaustion aspects. Rafael hardly had to try to score a second point with a simple punch to my gut.
My Eclipse nature was strangely subdued when I needed its aggressive strength the most. The dark urge lay quiet beneath my thoughts like a slumbering alligator. I shook my head and purged as much of the weakness and confusion as I could from my aura. Adding more jinsei to my core helped, but not enough.
This was bad. If I didn’t recover, soon, I’d lose this duel.
As we reset our positions and assumed our stances, my thoughts raced to find a solution to this problem. My darker nature was playing possum, for whatever reason, so I’d need something tricky. A thought occurred to me, and I clung to the sneaky tactic that had sprung into my thoughts.
“Ready,” Professor Song called out once we’d assumed our fighting stances. “Fight!”
Rafael wanted to finish the duel and claim his victory. He was cocky, and that made him careless.
He walked toward me, no mind for defense, no techniques ready, the victory already secure in his mind.
“You’re done,” he said. “The big man, brought low by my hand.”
Rafael’s overconfidence gave me a tiny window of opportunity, and I took it. I pretended to stumble toward him, as if my legs could barely hold me up. The crowd gasped, sure I’d just lost the match.
My opponent raised his hands above his head, laced his fingers together, and swung a hammer blow down at my back.
Blue sparks exploded around the ring, and Rafael gasped and stumbled away from me. The front of his robes had a long, clean slice through them. A single drop of his blood ran down the fusion blade I’d summoned at the last possible second.
“Point, Jace,” Professor Song said, clearly surprised by my maneuver. “Take a knee, Mr. Warin. I want to make sure Rafael is all right.”
“No!” Rafael shouted. “I’m fine. He barely scratched me. Let’s finish this.”
The maneuver had worked, but it had cost me dearly. I’d use the last of the pure jinsei still in my core to summon my blade, and there wasn’t time to refill. I was completely defenseless, now, and my body would only grudgingly and clumsily take orders from my mind. I wasn’t sure there was anything else I could do.
Unless...
I settled into a low, defensive crouch. I held my arms tight in front of my chest, hands raised on either side of my face to protect me from a finishing blow. The next point would decide everything, and I wouldn’t go down easily.
Rafael adopted a neutral stance. He kept his right hand across his torso, protecting himself from a body blow. His left elbow was just above his right fist, that forearm vertical so his hand could protect his face on that side. It was a balanced posture, good for either attack or defense.
Especially against an opponent he knew was weakened.
“Ready,” Professor Song said. “Fight!”
I didn’t move. My legs were still wobbly, and without jinsei to strengthen them, I didn’t trust myself to take so much as another step. Instead, I cycled my breath through my core to calm myself and center my awareness. I’d struggled with this technique all year, and if it didn’t work now, I’d lose the fight.
Rafael took his time approaching me. He was wary I’d cut him again and didn’t want to give me the advantage like he had the last time. He balanced on the balls of his feet, head weaving back and forth like a snake sizing up its prey. Jinsei gathered around his hands in dark, shadowy clouds. If his next punch landed, it was really going to hurt.
My Eclipse nature roused itself at last. It wanted me to devour the jinsei and his core. It wanted blood and death. It hungered, and denying it in my weakened state was so very hard. It promised me an easy win if I let it off the leash. One moment was all it would take. Rafael would pay the ultimate price for his arrogance.
It would be Singapore all over again.
No. I’d rather lose than go through that again.
There was another way. I
