Chương 50: Chapter 49 - Maren Steps Up

The referee turned to Calvin, his expression flat and unimpressed.

"Clarify."

"We wagered clan against clan," Calvin said, entirely unbothered by the scrutiny.

"Not one man against another. We've got five people standing here, they've got three, so the fair split's obvious enough — best of three matches, first side to win two takes the whole thing. Your man just took the first one for them. Doesn't mean the wager's decided." The referee's eyes moved to Ant, then to Kalsar, waiting.

"That's not what I agreed to," Kalsar said, an edge in his voice Ant hadn't heard before — not quite anger yet, but close enough to it that the words came out clipped, each one deliberately controlled.

"I offered myself. One representative. That's how this is done."

"That's not what you said," Calvin replied, maddeningly calm.

"You said you accepted. I said clan versus clan before either of us said another word. If you assumed differently, that's not my error to fix." Kalsar took half a step forward, and the referee's hand came up, not quite touching his chest but close enough to make the point.

"He's not wrong," the referee said, flat and final.

"The terms were stated before the match began. Clan versus clan. You accepted them. I don't adjudicate assumptions — only what was actually said."

"You could have clarified," Kalsar said, an edge creeping into his voice now.

"You stood right there. You heard the same thing I did."

"I heard 'clan versus clan,'" the referee said.

"I heard you say 'I accept.' Nobody asked me to define the phrase before you agreed to it, and it isn't my place to define terms nobody asked me to define. That's not how a referee works. I enforce what's said, not what people meant to say instead." His eyes held Kalsar's, not unsympathetic exactly, but entirely unmoved.

"Once a match begins under agreed terms, it doesn't stop until a winner's declared. Those are the rules I referee under. If you want to walk away now, you forfeit the fee outright, no further matches required. That's the only alternative I can offer you." Kalsar's jaw worked for a moment before he said anything else.

A few people from the queue had drifted closer during the argument, drawn by the raised voices, and Ant caught snatches of murmured commentary from the growing audience — nobody seemed to think Calvin's reading of the rules was wrong, exactly, just that springing it this way was a particularly ugly move even by the standards of people used to gaming the registration process.

"He set this up from the start," Kalsar said, low, to Ant rather than to Calvin.

"The gold, the deed, the game. All of it. He knew we'd take the wager without reading every line of what we were agreeing to."

"Doesn't change where we're standing," Ant said, though it cost him something to say it that plainly. Kalsar exhaled hard through his nose, and Ant watched him visibly force himself toward acceptance rather than actually arrive at it.

"Fine," he said, low.

"Fine. Play it out." Calvin's grin hadn't wavered through any of it. He stepped back toward his remaining companions, and for the first time Ant got a proper look at the other three — until now they'd been background, watching from the edge of the crowd, but stepping forward now they carried themselves with an ease that made his stomach tighten. Their Kithren had been resting at a distance during Calvin's match, barely visible past the crowd. Up close, they weren't.

One, a heavyset creature with layered plating across its shoulders, stood with a stillness Ant recognised immediately from watching Mahkir at rest — not idle, but coiled, aware. Another moved with a fluid, restless energy that suggested speed held carefully in check. Appraisal, Ant thought, and the screen answered slower than he expected, the readout flickering once before settling, incomplete in a way it never was against anything weaker. Kithren Type: Iron-Scaled Drake. Level — unreadable.

Evolution stage: second, tentative. He stared at the gap where a number should have been. He'd never seen Appraisal fail to produce one outright before, only ever watched it struggle with Wraithkin, and this wasn't that same blank refusal — this was straining, reaching too far above what it could properly measure and coming back with less than it wanted to give him.

"Can't get a level," he murmured.

"Just that it's evolved once already, past its first stage, and it's strong enough my own skill won't tell me how strong." Maren's face had already gone pale beside him, whatever she'd seen with her own eyes apparently enough on its own.

"They're not new to this," she said quietly.

"Not even close." Maren didn't wait to be told who was going next. She stepped forward herself, chin lifting slightly, before Calvin had said a word about it. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"I'll go," she said.

"You don't have to," Ant said, close enough that only she'd hear it.

"We could put Kalsar up again. He's still standing."

"He already played his match. It's my turn, and I'm not going to stand here and let you two decide that for me." She glanced at him sideways, stubbornness and a flicker of fear showing at once.

"Besides, if I don't do this now, I'm going to spend the whole walk home wondering if I could have."

"That's not a good reason."

"It's mine, though." She managed a thin smile.

"Wish me luck instead of arguing with me."

"Good luck," he said, because there wasn't really anything else to say to that. One of Calvin's companions stepped up to the opposing panel without needing to be asked either — a woman perhaps a few years older than Maren, unhurried, carrying herself like someone who already knew exactly how this was going to go. The referee reset the counter and tapped both frames simultaneously. Level one lit for both of them at once, gentle and evenly spaced.

Maren's hands moved with careful, deliberate precision rather than natural speed — the movements of someone who'd clearly practiced, but practiced alone, without the thousands of repetitions that turned effort into instinct. She cleared the level, but slowly, each strike a conscious decision rather than a reflex.

Beside her, the woman cleared the same fifty lights without so much as glancing at her own hands, finishing well before Maren had, and threw a small, easy smile toward the crowd on her way into level two — the smile of someone treating this as an audience rather than a contest. Level two exposed the gap properly. The paired points demanded quick decisions Maren simply didn't have the reaction speed to make cleanly — she caught some, missed others, her first life gone barely a quarter of the way through the level.

Her opponent, meanwhile, had slowed her own pace deliberately, Ant realised, striking each point with an exaggerated, unhurried flourish, glancing over at Maren's panel between strikes to gauge exactly how far behind she'd fallen. It wasn't a contest to her. It was a display. Maren pushed on regardless, jaw set, refusing to look at anyone but the panel in front of her, but the misses came faster than the successes now, her second life burning away less than halfway through the level.

The woman beside her cleared level two without spending a single life, then paused deliberately before level three began — a full second of stillness, hands loose at her sides, watching Maren fumble through her own remaining lights with open, unhurried amusement.

"She's playing with her," Ant muttered, anger rising in his chest that had nothing to do with the score. She could end this in half the time, Mahkir said, and there was no humour in it now. She's choosing not to. Ant felt his own hands curl into fists without deciding to make them, watching a fourth light flare and fade untouched, then a fifth, Maren's rhythm collapsing entirely under the pressure of trying to hurry herself into speed her body simply hadn't been trained for.

He thought about saying something, calling out, anything that might steady her — and stopped himself, because he didn't actually know what he'd say that would help, and a shouted distraction mid-round felt more likely to cost her than save her. Beside him, Kalsar had gone very still, his earlier anger folded into a quieter, more watchful focus, his eyes moving between Maren's struggling hands and the opposing woman's easy, mocking pace.

"She shouldn't have gone first," he murmured, almost to himself.

"She wanted to," Ant said.

"You heard her. There wasn't much room to argue her out of it."

"I know that." Kalsar's jaw tightened.

"Doesn't mean I have to like watching it happen. I've trained enough people over the years to know the difference between someone who's ready for something and someone who just wants to prove they're not afraid of it."

"Which one is she?" Kalsar didn't answer right away, his eyes still fixed on the panel.

"Ask me again once we know how this ends." Maren's third life went with a light she'd seen coming and simply couldn't reach in time, exhaustion and unfamiliarity working against her in equal measure. The panel went dark. The referee checked the counter.

"Ninety-one," he said.

"Three lives spent. Attempt ends partway through level two." Maren stepped back from the panel, breathing hard, refusing to meet anyone's eyes for a moment. Ant moved to her side without thinking about it, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers, and felt her exhale slowly, the tension leaving her spine even as her expression stayed carefully blank.

"You did fine," he said quietly.

"I lost."

"You did fine anyway." Her opponent kept going, entirely unbothered, clearing the rest of level two at the same unhurried pace, throwing a mock salute toward Maren's dark panel as she moved into level three. She lost her first life there — not from any real challenge, Ant suspected, but from the sheer inattention of someone no longer taking the exercise seriously at all — and let out a short, delighted laugh at the sound of the chime, as though even her own mistake amused her.

She pushed on through level three cleanly after that, deliberately slowing her strikes further, drawing the whole display out longer than it needed to be, until a final light in level four finally caught her out for good. She turned, gave an exaggerated little bow to the watching crowd, and let her attempt end there. The referee read the total.

"Two hundred and thirty-eight," he said.

"Attempt ends partway through level four." A ripple of quiet laughter passed through part of the crowd, someone near the front applauding properly, clearly delighted by the show. Calvin's remaining companions didn't join in — they simply watched, arms still folded, the same flat patience Ant had noticed from the very start of all this. Whatever confidence they carried, it didn't need noise to prove itself.

"Match two," the referee added, marking his slate.

"Their side." Calvin caught Ant's eye across the small distance separating them and offered a small, unhurried shrug, as if to say the outcome had never really been in doubt and there was no point pretending otherwise now.

"One down," Calvin called over.

"One left. Should be quick." Ant didn't answer him. There didn't seem to be much point. Maren pressed her palm briefly against her eyes before looking back up, some of the sting of the loss visibly pushed down and set aside.

"That's one each," she said, quieter now.

"It comes down to you."

"I know."

"You saw what their Kithren looked like. What Appraisal couldn't even tell you." She held his gaze, searching his face for an answer. Ant thought about lying to her, decided against it.

"No," he said.

"But I don't think ready's really on offer today." Ant looked past her toward the Iron-Scaled Drake resting beside its master, waiting. His Appraisal still refused to show a level.