Warcry’s lips twisted up in a snarl. “Kick his arse, grav.”
I nodded and headed out into the arena.
There was hardly anyone in the stands, so it was easy to pick Kest and Rali out. They were in floor seats right up next to the arena floor, right up in the blood and teeth splash zone. I didn’t see Biggerstaff out there, but I figured if he was going to put restrictions on people and keep track of what counted as a win or loss, then he probably had a way to keep an eye on every match.
The Ylef stood out at the center of the dirt floor, waiting for me.
His one-point-eight-second victory in the Wilderness Territorial championship match kept running through my head. He was so much faster than anyone I’d fought. I wouldn’t be able to see him without Ki-sight, and I’d never be able to touch him without Ki-speed. And with the scythe weighing me down, I’d never get up to speed without a metric ton of Ki-strength.
I stopped a good twenty feet away from him, hoping the distance would give me enough time to react to his first shot. Adrenaline flared through my body. I clutched Hungry Ghost in my fist and triggered the Ki enhancements, sending as much Miasma as I could stand rushing through my muscles.
The Ylef took a fighting stance that was half runner’s crouch. But he didn’t summon his glass hammers.
“Fighting in...” The announcer oversold the dramatic pause, and for a second, all I could hear was my breath scraping in and out of my trachea and my heart thumping in my ears. “...bamboo forest!”
There were a couple of halfhearted claps, then the floor started rumbling. Bamboo exploded out of the ground, the stalks growing and stretching up toward the arena ceiling until they towered over us, blocking out the crowd.
Instead of facing me head-on, the Ylef launched himself at the bamboo, parkouring up the stalks like he was doing wall jumps. I turned to follow his route, trying to focus on the essence of Death and throw everything I had into a last-ditch cloaking effort.
Nothing happened.
The Ylef leapt at me. Shining Spirit raced down his leg and boot, covering his massive overhead axe kick in a layer of glass.
I threw my arms up and triggered Death Metal. Glass shattered against my shield, plinking off the bamboo stalks around us like rain. I threw my weight into a massive Ki-strengthened shield bash, but the Ylef was already off to my side, circling around behind me.
Glass flashed. I slammed a shield down behind me, but it was a heartbeat too slow. The tip of a Glass shortsword stabbed into my back, just under my kidney. It was just the first inch or so of the blade, not deep enough to do lethal damage, but deep enough that it sliced through the muscle. My right leg went weak, and hot blood trickled down my side.
No healing kicked in to close it up.
Crap, right, no script tattoo.
I flooded the wound with Miasma, frosting it over enough to stop the bleeding.
The Ylef was already out of range for a shield bash, but he still had his feet on the forest floor.
I had to slow him down. With another massive dose of Spirit from Hungry Ghost, I sent the eerie ghost hands of Death Grip reaching up out of the dirt, snapping for his ankles, but the Ylef was too fast. He was already running back up into the bamboo.
The hole in my back muscles screamed, and my right leg wouldn’t respond fast enough to run after him. I couldn’t even jump for a kick. Without healing, I was totally grounded while the Ylef had the overhead advantage. I had to drag him down to my level.
Miasma exploded off me to the front and both sides, forming a trio of almost-human-shaped blobs. Three Corpse Sickness.
The Corpses scrambled up the bamboo like monkeys, every smoky turquoise appendage grabbing and pulling and swinging them higher.
The Ylef’s gray eyes shot to me, then back to them.
Something I’d noticed since coming up with the Three Corpse Sickness ability was that people tended to assume that it must be powerful and well-thought-out, like I had some brilliant endgame in mind when I used it. That wasn’t true at all. I just went with my gut, and their reaction to the Three Corpses filled in the rest.
But it was usually good for a distraction. While the Ylef tried to figure out how to deal with these new enemies, I dug the healing elixir out of my pocket and gulped it down. Nobody had said I couldn’t use it during the match. Right away, the bleeding stopped, and the muscles grew back together. The spot still felt weak, like the stab wound was a couple weeks old instead of brand new, but at least my leg wasn’t buckling with every step anymore.
Up in the bamboo, the Ylef hesitated for a split second too long. The fastest of my Corpses leapt off its stalk at him like it was going to tackle him out of the air.
Glittering Glass Spirit shot down the Ylef’s arms and coalesced in his fists as hammers. His first crashed into the Corpse, hammer exploding into a bomb of glass shrapnel. Of course, since the Corpse had basically no structure, it disintegrated in a flash of turquoise.
Down on the ground, I threw out Dead Reckoning in a wide net around myself, so I’d have plenty of warning when the Ylef fell, and set it up to trigger Death Grip.
I could feel the scythe clinging to my skeleton, weighing me down. How was I supposed to summon that? Whenever the angel of death used the scythe, it always looked like she pulled the thing out of thin air.
Heavenly Weapon is not
