One of my soldiers ducked inside and spoke, fear and reverence warring on his face. He knew I could take his life at any moment and he could do nothing to stop me. They all did.
I smiled and slipped away from the soft, warm bodies, pulling on a fine silk robe and tying it as I stepped out into the bright light of the day suns.
The dirt shook beneath my bare feet as a barbarian horde of a dozen weakly allied tribes rode down our encampment. I could feel the Miasma already, waiting to be unleashed.
The horde’s fastest riders spotted me immediately, their Spirit seas sensing my power and marking me as their greatest threat. I registered the barbarians’ looks of shock and confusion and knew they saw not a powerful khan, but an armorless youth, barely old enough to grow whiskers, standing barefoot and half-naked on the battlefield, ready to die with a smile on his face.
With a storm of Miasma greater than any defense these barbarians or even my own men could muster, I leveled the horde.
Then suddenly I was back in the boulder field, standing with one foot on the ’roided-out chest of the jackal-guy while the tiny crowd cheered and clapped.
Air whistled through my broken nose, and blood and sweat ran down my face. One invisible Death Metal shield covered my left arm.
My right arm was nothing but bones.
I was holding the shining black blade of the angel of death’s scythe to the jackal’s throat.
First Win
“I GIVE!” YOKI BARKED, terrified whites showing all around his brown dog-eyes. His huge hands were covered in giant Hulk-fists of boulder, but he was holding them up defensively. “I quit! You win!”
“Match!” the announcer’s voice boomed ecstatically through the arena’s speaker system. “Winner—Grady Hake, one win, one loss!”
It took a second for me to realize what was going on. I’d won...somehow. I knew I should be surprised, but the oblivion and nothingness blanketed my emotions like a warm hoodie.
The ground rumbled as the boulder field sank back into the arena floor.
“It’s over, I gave up!” Yoki yelled, practically begging now. “Don’t kill me!”
This giant monster of a guy was scared of me. A tingle of emotion got through the oblivion then. I didn’t recognize it, but its presence made the nothingness slip through my fingers. The Spirit cloak disappeared.
I dropped the Death Metal shield and opened my fist so that the scythe ripped back into my skeleton. I had to grit my teeth so I wouldn’t scream in front of the guy I’d just—somehow—beaten, but I had just enough oblivion left floating around the edges to keep my cool.
I backed off a step and offered the jackal a hand up.
He flinched, big ears flattening and teeth baring in a silent growl.
“Good fight,” I said even though I had no idea. I just wanted to make sure he knew I wasn’t going to kill him.
Yoki hesitated. A little shudder went through his roid-rager muscles. He stood up on his own.
“You’re a lot tougher than you look, meat roach,” he growled, dusting off his stone mail skirt and shaking himself off like a wet dog. He grabbed my hand in a grip like a bear trap and bowed to me. “Good fight.”
I returned the bow. Yoki headed for the locker room doors, and I went back up the steps into the stands. The announcer called the next bout, and two more fighters took our place.
Blood and sweat dripped off my chin onto my shirt and oozed down the back of my throat, reminding me about my broken nose. With the back of one sweaty fist, I scrubbed the blood away. The healing elixir was still in my pocket, so at least I hadn’t used it up during the match this time. I dropped into a cushioned seating box and gulped it down.
What happened? I asked Hungry Ghost.
Later, he croaked weakly. Drained.
A fist thumped into my shoulder. “That was savage, grav.”
Warcry plopped into the box next to me, and Kest stepped over our legs to sit on my other side.
“Have you been working on some new techniques?” she asked. “A lot of those attacks were different from what you usually use.”
“Different?” I asked, hoping she’d go into detail.
“The grav’s been watching Battles of the Ancients, haven’t ya?” Warcry said. “That style was straight outta their reenactments—but without the ponser actors making it look all dainty and choreographed. Proper brutal was what it was.”
I used the bottom of my shirt to wipe some of the blood off my face. Pain flashed through my sinuses. The healing elixir had already stopped the bleeding and healed the break, but the spot was still tender.
“Neither of you guys happened to, like, record that fight or anything, did you?” I asked. “So I can study it?”
They both shook their heads.
“Biggerstaff said they broadcast some of the fights for Prison League Fighting,” Kest said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were recording all of them, just in case.”
“I’ll get your next one,” Warcry said, weirdly charged up about the idea. “You need it. You’re still giving away every kick before you make it, twitching your leg and looking at your target. If that Anuban had had half a brain in his skull, he coulda avoided everything you threw.”
“Thanks,” I said, meaning for offering to record my fight, not for reminding me about telegraphing my kicks. Warcry had been harping on that since we started training together.
Kest scrolled through notes on her HUD. “Your defense was different, too. Usually you have your hands in some variation of this.” She showed me a stick figure of a guy with his hands in high guard, like the muay thai I’d practiced back on Earth. “This time...”
“You weren’t bothering,” Warcry said. “Once you switched tactics and ran at him, you didn’t even mess about with defending yerself. Risky, but it paid off.”
Kest
