“Blade of the Unseen Eye! Blade of the Unseen Eye!” The chant grew louder and Maleshi snarled in appreciation, soaking it all in.
Corian sped toward her again in a brilliant silver flash, preceded by a burst of lightning crackling across the sand. In that split second, Cheyenne forced herself not to slip into drow speed again. I can’t keep up with this anyway.
The nightstalkers’ streaks converged, then Maleshi stopped on the other side of Corian, one arm wrapped around his middle with her claws pressed against his belly, the other hand holding the tips of her deadly blades against his exposed throat. She hissed in his ear and pushed him away.
The crowd went wild.
Corian spun and leaped toward her again, sending blinding streaks of silver lightning at her as he charged. Maleshi deflected each attack with a swipe of her claws, her eyes widening as a crazed laugh escaped her open-mouthed grin. Then Corian was on her again, slashing and swiping too quickly to follow without going into enhanced speed. The general blocked every attack, sparks flying up second after second as the air filled with the shriek and clang of nightstalker claws meeting, scraping against each other, and freeing themselves.
He ducked her next swing, blocked a second with his forearm, then brought his left hand slicing down toward her face and leaped away.
A lock of black hair separated from those hanging over her shoulders and drifted to the ground, scattering into individual hairs across the sand. Maleshi looked down at the hair he’d sliced from her head and grinned. “That’s a first.”
“First time for everything, ma gairín.” Corian crouched again in a ready stance and jerked his chin at her.
With a dark chuckle, Maleshi advanced again, and this time, she didn’t hold back.
The general’s silver streaks of light flashed in strobing brilliance as she slipped in and out of enhanced speed too quickly for Corian to follow. Five seconds later, he was meeting her nightstalker speed as nothing more than a defensive tactic, but General Hi’et was too quick. Unbelievably quick.
She darted around him again and again, pausing in regular time for half a second to give the spectators the show they wanted. A spray of blood erupted from Corian’s back, and he staggered forward, roaring. The next second, Maleshi’s dark fist cracked against the side of his face. Corian toppled sideways, and she reappeared on his right to slash his thigh and spray more blood across the sand before shoving him in the opposite direction.
Corian limped in a circle, blinking in and out of his brilliant silver speed to catch her. But he couldn’t.
Over and over again, Maleshi darted around her opponent, claws glinting in the muted light one second, more blood spraying from a new wound somewhere else on Corian’s body the next.
She is gonna kill him.
Cheyenne found L’zar standing at the edge of the pit, arms folded and a satisfied smirk on his face as he watched General Hi’et demolish his Nós Aní in the ring.
He’s loving this. Of course he is. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone else.
The halfling looked urgently back down into the pit in time to see Corian drop to his knees in the sand, snarling, his chest heaving as he raised his arm to feebly block Maleshi’s next downward swing. She darted in a bright flash to his other side and sliced her claws across his ribs. Corian roared and lurched away, but Maleshi appeared in front of him again in the blink of an eye, claws retracted, and sent a vicious uppercut into the underside of Corian’s chin. His eyes rolled back as he skidded on his back across the sand.
The crowd cheered and bellowed their approval, stomping and screaming the general’s name. Maleshi ignored them all and tossed her hair out of her eyes, laughing through panting breaths as she stalked toward a prone Corian on the pit floor.
No way. Cheyenne’s jaw ached from how hard she’d clenched it. No way he is going to keep going after that.
The general set one foot on either side of Corian’s body, then dropped to her knees and straddled his chest. He coughed through a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. Maleshi’s claws extended again, and she pressed their tips into the side of his neck at the jugular. “Do you yield, vae shra’ni?”
Corian let out a gurgling laugh that turned into a cough. He lifted one hand to her thigh beside his chest and gave it a little squeeze before picking his head up off the sand as far as he could. “Are you kidding? Finish it.”
His head thumped back into the sand with another wet, dangerously choking laugh. Maleshi’s lips twitched as she grinned down at him with battle-crazed eyes.
“Maleshi!” Cheyenne shouted.
Whether the general heard the cry above the roar of the spectators didn’t matter. Maleshi drew her claws across Corian’s throat, the crowd lost it, and Cheyenne roared in fury and horror.
Instantly, General Hi’et leaped to her feet as Corian’s blood spilled into the sand and went quickly to the closest wall of the pit. She pounded it with her fist, and a tall drawer slid out of the wall toward her. From it, she withdrew a thick torch of black metal that flared to life with green fire the second it left the drawer. Laughing, Maleshi thrust the torch in the air and screamed, “The O’gúl deathflame, brothers and sisters. For blood and glory!”
Then she swiped the eerily flickering flames of green and black across Corian’s body and stepped back. His body erupted in flames, consuming him until the center of the pit was filled with green and black, turning the fallen nightstalker into a pillar of flame shooting four feet above
