The pit floor was colder than the air above it.

  Stone that had absorbed impact for long enough that it had stopped being surprised by it, the surface worn smooth in the center and fractured at the edges where the walls had received things they hadn't been designed to receive. The crowd above looked down from their tiers with the forward lean of people who knew what the beginning of something looked like and wanted to be ready for it.

  Corven Ash's voice came from everywhere the acoustics sent it.

  "Four challengers," he said, with the warm certainty of a man who had been describing things for thirty years and had never once been at a loss for words. "Against our undefeated champion. Six months. Sixteen bouts. Not one of them has put him down." A pause, perfectly weighted. "Let's see what tonight brings."

  The crowd answered this with the sound of people who had been waiting for exactly this and were ready to give it everything they had.

  Crux stood on the far side of the pit and looked at the four of them with the dark unhurried eyes of someone who had done this enough times that the beginning no longer produced anything in him except readiness. He was large in the way that years of a specific kind of Eido made people large, the build of someone whose power had been reshaping their physical architecture from the inside for long enough that the two things had reached an agreement. Avalanche pressed close around him, the massive geological Eido folded into the space he occupied, its compressed presence distorting the air around him slightly, everything in his immediate vicinity oriented toward him the way things orient toward the heaviest object in a room.

  He did not move.

  He did not need to yet.

  "Alright," Colette said, low and fast. She had the voice of someone who had run preparation briefings for three years and could compress what needed to be said into the time available. "I need to know what each of you can do. Tell me your Eidos, tell me your ranges, tell me your—"

  "I know what I can do," Kai said.

  He was already walking forward.

  His Eido, Reaper, rose from his back and shoulders as he moved. It came up the way it always came up, the dark lean form pressing close above his skin, suggesting a body without fully committing to one, its edges sharp in the way that Void's were blurred. The scythe assembled in his right hand simultaneously, manifesting from the Eido's presence into something physical and real, its blade a deep black that consumed the pit's lamp light rather than reflecting it. The edge of the blade had a quality that was difficult to look at directly, the eye sliding off it the way eyes slide off things that were made to cut before they could be properly seen.

  Kai rolled his shoulder once. Felt the weight of Reaper settle into its familiar position.

  "Kai," Colette said. "I'm not finished."

  "I've been watching him since we came down the stairs," Kai said, without turning. "His Eido compresses when he receives and expands when he strikes. There's an interval."

  "That's an observation, not a—"

  "I'll find the interval," Kai said, and crossed the pit.

  He moved the way Reaper allowed him to move.

  One moment he was at the edge of the engagement. The next he was inside Crux's reach, the space between those two positions having collapsed without the intermediate steps, Reaper pouring itself into his legs and spine for one instant and redirecting him across the distance faster than the distance had a right to expect. The scythe was already swinging when he arrived, the arc chosen from across the pit, the black blade coming down across Crux's left side with the clean commitment of someone who had decided on the cut before making it.

  The blade hit.

  Avalanche received it.

  The geological mass of Crux's Eido compressed further inward as the cut arrived, thickening between the blade and its host, and for a moment the surface of it showed the line of what Harvest had done, a fine dark seam running several centimeters into the grey stone mass, the evidence of a blade that cut anything finding purchase even in something this dense.

  Then Avalanche moved.

  Not retreating. Redistributing. The mass flowing around the seam the way stone under immense pressure flows, finding new configuration, closing the line from below with the patient thoroughness of something that had more depth than any single cut could account for.

  Kai was already gone.

  Reaper folded him out of the space before Crux could turn, depositing him two meters to the right with the scythe resetting, and he came in again immediately, a second arc from the new angle, the blade finding Avalanche's surface and opening another seam that the mass closed with the same geological patience.

  The crowd leaned forward.

  "He's cutting through," Aris said, from the pit's edge where he and Colette stood.

  "He's cutting the surface," Colette said. Her eyes moved across the fight with the quality of attention that Sovereign gave her when she let it, the crowned conductor Eido rising softly from her skin and reading the space. "Avalanche has depth. Every cut Kai makes closes behind him. He needs to go deeper or he's just rearranging the problem."

  In the pit, Kai tried for deeper.

  He came in a third time, not the quick precise slice but the full committed arc, Reaper's scythe swinging with the weight of everything behind it. The blade hit and the seam went further than the previous two combined, cutting down into Avalanche's mass with the darkness of it, and something shifted in the quality of Crux's stillness. Not pain. Not alarm. A recalibration, the adjustment of someone who had received something that cost more than the previous things.

  Then Crux moved.

  His right arm came forward and Avalanche expanded into it, the compressed mass releasing through his fist in the direction that Kai had been standing a half second earlier. The movement was not fast in the way that Reaper was fast. It was fast in the way that falling was fast, inevitable and final, the speed of something that had decided on its direction and was not going to be redirected.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Kai wasn't there.

  The space between his previous position and a new one two meters left collapsed, Reaper pulling him through it, and the strike that had been aimed at him arrived at the pit floor instead. The stone expressed its opinion about this immediately and at length. A crack opened from the point of impact, deep and sudden, running three directions from the center point and going further than cracks in stone had any right to go, the force of Avalanche's full delivery finding the ground and distributing through it like a verdict.

  The crowd made a sound.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," Ash said, from his platform with the appreciation of a connoisseur, "our champion reminds us why the maintenance budget exists."

  Aris looked at the crack.

  He looked at it for the specific amount of time it took to understand what the person receiving that strike directly would experience afterward, which was very little, because there would not be much of an afterward.

  "I'm going to help," he said.

  "Test first," Colette said immediately. "Don't commit until you know what your Eido does to him."

  Aris moved to the edge of the engagement. His Eido, Void, the tall featureless dark silhouette with the smooth mask for a face, rose from his skin and oriented toward Crux with the focused stillness of something that had identified a problem and was considering it. Aris directed the pulling force downward, into Crux, the same force that had yanked dungeon debris across rooms and dragged injured Wanderers back from ledges, applied now to a level four arena champion standing in a pit.

  Crux's next step landed slightly heavier than the one before it.

  That was all.

  The force found Avalanche's compressed mass and pushed against it and Avalanche simply absorbed it, the way the geological absorbed pressure, by being denser than the pressure.

  "It's not working," Aris said.

  "It's working," Colette said. "He's just too settled to move. You can't pull something down that has already decided to be heavy." She watched Crux's positioning. "Try the other one. The burst."

  Aris raised his palm and pushed outward, Void releasing a short sharp shockwave that crossed the distance between them and arrived at Avalanche's surface and distributed across it the way wind distributed across a cliff face, which was evenly and without result.

  "That one's not working either," Aris said.

  "No," Colette said.

  She had Sovereign fully present now, the luminous crowned conductor form hovering close above her skin, its arms extended in the posture of something ready to coordinate. Through it she could read the fight with a clarity that her eyes alone couldn't provide, the positions and forces and intervals of it feeding back to her nervous system in the way Sovereign fed information, and what she was reading was not good.

  "Kai is burning his Eido," she said, low and tight. "Every time he moves like that it costs him. Crux hasn't spent anything meaningful yet."

  In the pit, Kai was circling.

  The confidence he'd come in with was still present but had acquired a quality it hadn't had at the start, the particular confidence of someone who has revised their estimate of a problem and is continuing anyway. His grey coat had a new tear at the left shoulder where a near-miss had grazed him, Avalanche's surface catching the fabric as he turned a half step slower than perfect out of his last repositioning.

  He came in again with the same sequence he'd found, the feint pulling Mantle's redistribution in the wrong direction and the real cut following into the gap, Harvest going deeper than the first three combined. Avalanche shuddered. The seam stayed open for a full second before the mass closed it, and in that second the crowd could see all the way into the depth of the Eido, the darkness of Harvest's cut visible against the grey.

  "There," Kai said, to himself, with the flat satisfaction of someone confirming a hypothesis.

  He reset. Breathed. Came in again with the same sequence.

  The feint left. Harvest right. The seam opening at the same depth, the mass shuddering, Kai pulling back before the counter could form and repositioning for the next approach.

  "He's found a pattern," Aris said.

  "Crux is letting him find it," Colette said.

  "What—"

  "His feet," Colette said. "Watch his feet."

  Crux had not moved his feet since the bout started. He had turned, had struck once, had received everything Kai brought and given back one strike of his own. His feet remained planted in the same position, the settled weight of someone who understood exactly where the center of the fight was and had no reason to move away from it.

  He was waiting for Kai to run out.

  "We need to help him," Aris said.

  "I know," Colette said. "Kai. Fall back."

  "I'm fine," Kai said, from across the pit, circling.

  "You're spending more than he is—"

  "I'm fine."

  "I can coordinate us if you'd just—"

  "In a moment," Kai said, and came in again.

  Aris watched him go and looked at the fight the way Colette had been looking at it, trying to find the angle that his tools could reach. Gravity couldn't move Crux. The burst couldn't move Crux. The pulling force could find the seam when Harvest opened it but the seam closed before he could do anything meaningful with the access.

  Unless.

  "If I pulled at the same moment you cut," he said to Kai's back. "Not pulling him down. Pulling the surface of the Eido into the seam while it's open. Both forces at the same point at the same time."

  Kai's eye flicked to him for half a second.

  "You'd need to know where I'm cutting," Kai said.

  "Tell me," Aris said.

  A pause the length of one circling step.

  "Left shoulder," Kai said. "Next pass."

  He went in. The feint right, Harvest swinging left to the shoulder exactly as called, and Aris directed the pulling force into the seam the instant the blade opened it, both forces converging on the same point simultaneously, and Avalanche shuddered harder than it had shuddered before, the redistribution taking longer, the seam staying open for almost two full seconds before the mass found its new configuration.

  Crux turned.

  Not toward Kai. Toward Aris.

  The dark eyes found him across the pit with the quality of someone updating a threat assessment, and Avalanche turned with Crux, the seam closing as it oriented away from Kai and toward the second source.

  "He's looking at you," Kai said.

  "I noticed," Aris said.

  "Good," Kai said, and came in from behind while Crux's attention was divided.

  Harvest went deep. Deeper than any previous cut, the seam opening into Avalanche's mass with the darkness of it and staying open, Avalanche's attention split between closing the cut and addressing Aris across the pit, and for three full seconds the stone Eido was doing two things at once and doing neither of them completely.

  The crowd made a different sound than it had made before.

  "Now we're seeing something," Ash said, with genuine pleasure. "The challenger with the scythe has found a partner. The question, as always, is whether they've found it in time."

  Crux planted his feet.

  Both of them, the full weight of him settling into the pit floor with the finality of a decision made. Avalanche compressed back inward with the force of that settling, the redistribution faster than it had been, the seam closing hard, and then he turned back toward Kai with the full attention of something that had decided the division was over.

  The counter came from the left.

  Short. Economic. Not the big strike that had cracked the floor, something faster and more considered, his forearm swinging in a horizontal arc with Avalanche compressed into it, the mass of the Eido packed into the contact surface. It caught Kai across the chest before Swift could pull him clear, the force of Avalanche's delivery finding him and distributing through him the way Impact distributed through everything, looking for the weak points and expressing itself there.

  Kai left the ground.

  He traveled three meters in the direction the force decided and arrived at the pit wall with a sound that made the crowd go briefly quiet, stone meeting stone in the way that had nothing pleasant in it. He slid down the wall and ended at its base with one knee on the ground, Reaper still present above him, the scythe still in his hand, the dark form of the Eido pressing close as if deciding whether its host was continuing.

  He did not get up immediately.

  "Kai," Aris said.

  He was moving before the word finished. Not deciding to, just moving, Void pressing close around him as he crossed the pit floor toward the wall where Kai had landed. He heard Crux's attention find him, felt the quality of the air change in the way it changed when something large oriented toward you, and he didn't stop.

  Elysse's sword was in his hand.

  She had pressed it into his grip at the top of the stairs before they descended, the quiet practical transfer of someone who understood the distribution of resources before a difficult situation. He had taken it with the full awareness that he had never seriously used a sword against anything that could respond to it.

  He used it now.