The weird dreams I’d been having about home flashed through my brain. I wasn’t trying to hang on to that, though. If anything, since I’d been dropped on Van Diemann, I’d been trying to move on with this new life. I had no idea why I was suddenly dreaming about Gramps and Dad.
Down in the arena, a shark lady crunched a yellow dude’s knee backward with a flying tackle. They slammed into the walls of the warehouse landscape they were fighting in.
“I wonder what sort of Ten specializations there are for Death Spirit,” I said.
“That’s exactly what you oughta be wondering.” Warcry downed the last of his meat and rice. “You gotta stay hungry, keep fighting toward that next level. Otherwise, you’re just falling back, ain’t ya?”
I opened the hyperweb on my Winchester and searched for Death Spirit specializations, but nobody had any answers.
From the things Rali had said, he’d chosen between Cold Heart and Warm Heart. Kest flipped back and forth between Hot and Cold Metal and would presumably have to pick one of those when she specialized. A quick search for Warcry’s Hatred Spirit came back with mostly confusion and claims that it couldn’t be specialized through Ten restrictions or covenants because it was an Entropic supertype.
“How’d you decide on Burning Hatred?” I asked Warcry. “The hyperweb says Hatred Spirit’s too chaotic to specialize.”
“That’s failure talk,” he sneered. “I do whatever I need to, don’t I? Most cultivators get to a point where they have a choice, go this way or go that way. Ya pick one and live with the consequences or go back to yer rut and fade away.”
Versus Parasitic Twins
WE HUNG OUT WATCHING the fights until my bout was called.
“Grady Hake—one win, one loss—versus Rata—five wins, two losses!”
I headed down from the box, taking the stairs into the arena. Rata, my opponent, was this half-lizard, half-rodent dude. He looked me up and down, then smirked like he thought I was a walkover.
My hand twitched toward the stone lump in my pocket, then stopped. I didn’t need Hungry Ghost. I took a deep breath and focused on the stuff I didn’t want to think about, like how I’d killed a guy and Rali was dropping me and what Gramps would say if he knew about any of it. It only took a second to get into the right headspace for Last Light, Last Breath. My Spirit sank into oblivion.
“Fighting in...” The announcer took her customary dramatic pause. “Close-quarter confusion!”
The thick, clear glass walls of a maze rose out of the arena floor and closed over our heads, shoving us closer together until we were less than five feet apart.
I slid back along the wall to put more distance between us and bumped into a corner. The scythe wasn’t going to be of any use in such a cramped space. I’d never be able to swing it.
Rata held out his hand and a lead pipe appeared in it, one end wrapped in grimy cloth tape for a better grip. Then out of nowhere, he turned into two Ratas—one holding the pipe in his right hand, the other holding it in his left. Righty shot toward me, while Lefty ran off into the maze.
To slow Righty down, I sent a forest of invisible hands up in front of him, getting a Death Grip on his legs. He stumbled, but didn’t fall. I blasted out a huge wave of Dead Reckoning. Instantly, the Miasma sent me back a map of the glass maze with bloody pinkish life points showing where Righty and Lefty were located.
That didn’t make sense. No way could Rata totally divide himself in two, down to the life point. Was Dead Reckoning glitching somehow?
Parasitic Twin Spirit, Hungry Ghost croaked. Weakness. In a fight to the death, killing one Parasitic Twin kills both.
Look who can talk again, I said.
Hungry Ghost sent me a feeling like a door slamming in my face. That almost knocked me out of oblivion, but I grabbed onto Last Light, Last Breath just before it slipped away, keeping my insides locked in hollow nothingness.
Righty Rata broke through Death Grip and launched himself at me, swinging his lead pipe, but Dead Reckoning sent me backpedaling out of his reach. I shouldered backward around a corner, and the pipe crunched into the glass where my face had been a second before. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact site.
Farther out in the maze, Lefty was circling around, taking a path that would bring him up behind me.
Dead Reckoning pinged closer to me. Another pipe from Righty, this one a body shot.
I ducked inside the swing, reinforcing my side with Miasma. The pipe thudded into my messed-up ribs, but with the nerves deadened, I barely felt any pain, just the shock waves from the impact. Before Righty could react, I clamped my arm down over the pipe and slammed him with a reinforced elbow.
Righty’s head rocked on his furry-scaly shoulders, but he didn’t go down. With Ki-sight, I could see a pinkish aura pulsing with red veins floating into him from across the maze.
He was borrowing health from Lefty to stay conscious.
The same Lefty who was coming up behind me. He just had a couple corners left before he could crack me in the back of the head with his pipe.
Under normal circumstances, I didn’t have enough awareness and Spirit in my reserve to keep more than two techniques going at once, but after that resonant cultivation with Kest and the extra concentration I had in the emotionless Last Light, Last Breath, I had total control over the enormous amount of Miasma we’d cultivated.
So I threw
