Chương 98: Chapter 97 – Three Minutes

The light didn't stop at the spine. It ran outward from there, under the fur, unmaking Talonstrike's outline as it went — not gold-and-cream tiger muscle anymore but flesh being poured and reset all at once, joints popping loud enough that the front rows flinched back from the rail without meaning to. The tremor that had been running through the body a moment ago stilled completely. Then the whole animal simply got bigger. Not a little.

Ant watched the shoulders widen, watched the ribcage swell out to fill space that hadn't existed a second before, and by the time the light finally guttered out and sank back under the skin, Talonstrike stood a third again its old size, easy — a mass that made the wall it had gone through look like it hadn't been trying very hard the first time. The gold had darkened, banded now with black the way the old stripes had never quite managed.

And where the tail had been a long unbroken sweep of muscle, there was a segmented thing instead, curved, plated, ending in a barb that caught the arena lights and threw them back sharp. Nobody clapped. Nobody in the first twenty rows made a sound at all. That, Mahkir said, very quietly, is not something I have opinions about yet.

"Give it a second." Ant's own voice came out steadier than anything in his chest actually felt.

"Nobody's told us to fight." The commentator hadn't found words either, not for a long few seconds, and when he did his voice cracked once before it caught itself.

"Ladies and — that is — I have never, in twenty-two years calling matches on this sand, I have never seen — " He stopped himself entirely.

"The judges are conferring. The fight is paused." A horn sounded, one long note instead of the usual short strike-tone, and three figures rose from the shaded box above the east stand where Ant had never once bothered looking before today. High-tier clan colors, unfamiliar crests, robes instead of arena gear. The whole crowd's attention swung up toward them the way water finds a drain, and Ant's went with it out of pure reflex. It found the middle judge and stopped there entirely.

He was heavier than Ant remembered, softer through the face where he'd once been carved close and hard, but the eyes hadn't changed at all — pale, deliberate, the kind that used to make seventeen-year-old Ant stand up straighter without being told to. Silver at the temples now instead of just threaded through. Burg. Ant knew the set of those shoulders from a hundred evaluations, a hundred mornings standing in a line while Burg walked it end to end deciding who was worth his time.

Burg's gaze crossed the sand, found Ant at the strip, and held. There was no warmth in it. There was recognition — immediate, total, the kind that didn't need a second look to confirm itself — and behind the recognition an old disappointment that had never softened back into anything kinder. Ant had spent five years being looked past. This was worse. This was being looked at, fully, by the one man who'd once staked his own name on Ant amounting to anything, and finding exactly what he'd expected to find.

Ant didn't look away first. He made himself not.

"Burg," he said, out loud, before he'd decided to. You know him.

"He sponsored me. Before." Ant kept his eyes on the box, on the man not looking away either.

"Never mind before. Watch the sand." The three judges spoke among themselves, close, none of it carrying past the box. Then the one on the left — younger, sharper-featured, a Blackthorn badge on her collar — stepped forward to the rail and lifted a hand for quiet that the crowd gave her almost before she'd finished raising it.

"By evolution mid-contest, the entrant Talonstrike no longer qualifies for Common-grade competition." Her voice carried flat and official across the whole bowl.

"The result stands as disqualification. Round Six is awarded to Oath of Defiance's Mahkir, by forfeit of grade." Half the crowd exhaled at once, and for three full seconds Ant let himself believe that was the whole of it. Then Burg leaned toward the third judge — older, silent so far, a man Ant didn't recognize at all — and said a few words too quiet to carry, and the third judge's face didn't move while he listened.

Burg straightened again and addressed the crowd himself, and his voice was exactly as Ant remembered it, level and certain and built for rooms that stopped talking when he entered them.

"Precedent in this arena has always held that a contest continues until forfeit or knockout, regardless of what changes about either combatant mid-fight," Burg said.

"If Oath of Defiance wish to forfeit rather than continue against this, that is their right, and no shame attaches to it. Absent that, the match continues." The whole bowl went from held breath to open noise in the space of a single word, and none of it was agreement. Duncan was on his feet at the rail, both hands spread like he could physically shove the ruling back the other way. Rebekah had gone still in a way Ant had never seen from her, both hands flat on the rail exactly like the moment before.

Kalsar hadn't moved, but the line of his shoulders had gone tighter than Ant had seen it all tournament.

"That's not a Common fight anymore," Duncan said, to nobody, to everybody.

"How's that fair, how's a common cat supposed to — " The third judge looked at Burg for a long moment. Then, slow, deliberate, he inclined his head. Agreement. The commentator took a full three seconds before his voice found him again.

"The — the fight continues," he said, and even through the arena's own speaking-horn Ant could hear that he didn't believe it either.

"Round Six. Resume positions." Ant. Mahkir hadn't moved from his ready stance, but the bond carried an edge under the words that hadn't been there a minute ago. That thing is not the same fight I was winning ten minutes ago.

"I know." I mean I can feel the difference in what it's going to take to hurt it. It's not the same math.

"I know," Ant said again, and meant it as steady as he could make it sound, mostly for himself. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Talonstrike didn't charge this time. It didn't need to.

The new size ate the distance in half the strides the old one had needed, unhurried in a way that read worse than speed would have — the same patience it had shown at the start of the fight, except now patience from a body this size looked a great deal more like contempt. The tail came around in a long testing arc that Mahkir barely cleared, close enough that Ant felt the wind of it through the bond before he saw it miss. It's just finding the range, Mahkir said. Same as it did with its old body.

It's relearning itself and I'm the target it's relearning on. The second pass caught him. Not the tail this time — a forepaw, easily twice the reach it had been a minute ago, and Mahkir went down and skidded a body-length through sand already chewed to nothing. [Mahkir — HP: 13/65.] He got up. Slower.

"Report." Nothing broken. Everything reset to hurting more than it used to for the same size of hit. No performance in it at all now, the way there hadn't been the whole back half of the fight against the old Talonstrike, except this time the flatness carried a note underneath it Ant didn't like the sound of. I don't think I can out-space this one the way I was out-spacing the last one.

The tail found him twice more in the next exchange, testing, almost lazy — the new limb clearly still strange even to the thing wearing it, each strike a little more accurate than the one before as Talonstrike learned its own reach in real time. Mahkir answered with everything he had, claw and flame both, and none of it landed anywhere that seemed to register. [Mahkir — HP: 6/65.] Six out of sixty-five. Not a third. Not close to it.

Mahkir came up from that one breathing hard, one foreleg not quite taking his weight the way it should, and for the first time all tournament Ant watched him actually look hurt rather than simply act it — ears back, tail low, the fire at his throat guttering weaker than it should have with that much mana still sitting in reserve. I thought I'd be strong enough for this by now, Mahkir said, and it came through quiet, almost private, the kind of thing meant for the bond and nobody else. Maren's tests.

The projections. I thought a grade up was still a year off, not something I'd meet standing on this sand.

"Mahkir—" I'm not done. I'm telling you what I'm thinking, not asking permission to stop. Ant looked at him across thirty feet of torn sand — favoring a leg, HP scraped down to almost nothing, facing a creature the arena itself had just admitted didn't belong in this bracket anymore — and felt the calm arrive the way it always did right before he needed it most, cold and total and entirely without panic.

"We're not done," Ant said.

"If they're letting an evolution stand mid-fight, then I get to use everything I've got too. Nobody's ruled against that." He didn't wait for an answer. His hand was already at the gauntlet. [Overload — activate? Halve one stat's current value, apply as bonus to Strength for one minute. No cost.] Magic. He didn't need it here, hadn't needed it all tournament, and the system took the choice the instant he made it. [Magic: 33 → 17. Strength: 48 → 64.] The boots next, before he'd let himself think past the first decision to the next one. [Speed Enhance — activate? Cost: 30 mana. +50% Agility for one minute.]"Do it." [Agility: 56 → 84. Mana: 165 → 135.] And then the greaves, the one piece he'd never once used in a real fight, because six-six-six wasn't a name you trusted when the stakes were anything less than everything. [666 Roulette — activate? Cost: 30 mana. Random modifier, up to ±50%, applied to all stats simultaneously, for three minutes. Outcome not guaranteed.]"I don't know how strong a Rare actually is," Ant said, out loud, mostly to himself.

"I don't know if this is even enough." Then let's find out, Mahkir said. Do it. The number that came back sat in the air a full second before resolving, longer than any of the others had taken, like even the system wasn't sure yet which way this one had landed. [Roulette result: +20%, applied to all stats.] [Strength: 64 → 77. Endurance: 55 → 55 → 66. Magic: 17 → 20. Agility: 84 → 101.] Ant felt it land in his own body first — a heat under the skin, his own pulse going strange and fast, everything about himself suddenly sharper and heavier at once — and didn't wait to enjoy any of it.

"Mahkir. Attribute Sharing. Now." You're already—"I know what I already did. Take it anyway." The bond went wide open the way it only ever did for this, and Ant felt himself pour into a body that wasn't only his own anymore. Attribute Sharing — active. Combined Stats — Strength: 108. Endurance: 84. Magic: 67. Agility: 144. Combined HP Pool: 83/142. Combined Mana Pool: 150/270. Warning: linked while active. A Common Kithren had never carried numbers like that.

Nothing in this bracket had, not even standing across from him now half again its old size with a stinger where a tail used to be.

"You have three minutes," Ant said, and his own voice came out from somewhere lower than usual, steadier than it had any right to be with his own heart hammering this hard.

"Go win this fight." Mahkir didn't answer in words at all. He simply wasn't where he'd been a heartbeat before. The crowd's noise didn't build so much as detonate — a whole arena's worth of breath let out at once as Mahkir crossed the sand faster than anything that size should move, faster than anything in this bracket had any right to track, and the strike that landed on Talonstrike's flank came with a sound like a felled tree.

The evolved thing staggered sideways, genuinely staggered, for the first time all match.

"How is he — " Somewhere in the Marigold section a voice cracked into a raw, disbelieving shout.

"How was that holding back, how does a Common — " Mahkir didn't let it finish the thought. He was already past it, already circling wide of the tail's new reach with room to spare now, agility that had no business belonging to anything Common-grade turning every one of Talonstrike's answering swings into strikes at empty air. Ant felt each miss through the bond as a kind of vindication he had no time to sit with. Three minutes.

He held the number in his head like a countdown he could physically feel ticking down through his own chest. The mana pool made the difference as much as anything else did.

Where Mahkir's old reserves would have run dry two exchanges into this, the combined pool held, and held, and Ant felt him draw on it without hesitation — flame lighting along both forelegs at once, then the shoulders, then spreading further than it had ever spread before until Mahkir wasn't simply wreathed in fire but built out of it, every strike arriving with the heat already ahead of the claw. Talonstrike tried to retreat.

It had never once retreated all fight, and the size that had made it terrifying two minutes ago now worked against it, too much mass to turn quickly, too much new body still unfamiliar under it. Mahkir didn't give it the room. He hit the center of its chest at full speed, full flame, everything Ant had poured into him behind a single collision, and the sound it made wasn't a strike anymore. It was closer to a wall giving up on its own foundations. Talonstrike left the ground entirely.

It crossed the width of the sand still airborne and struck the same wall it had cracked once already, except this time the stone didn't hold at all — it gave, folded inward in a spray of dust and shattered brick, and the massive gold-and-black body went straight through into whatever lay behind the arena's outer skin, out of sight entirely for one long, silent count. Nobody made a sound.

Then, from the dark gap in the wall, rubble slid and settled, and Talonstrike's ruined bulk came half back into view — not moving under its own power, dragged an inch by its own weight settling, one side of it rising and falling in short shallow pulls that were the only proof left it was still breathing at all. [Rare-grade encounter concluded. Experience gained: 2, 500.] [Mahkir has reached Level 8.] [Ant — Experience gained: 2, 500. 7, 150/8, 800 to Level 11.] Mahkir stood in the center of the sand, breathing hard, flame guttering out along legs that had carried more heat than they were built to carry, and didn't say anything through the bond at all. The commentator's voice came back online somewhere above them, thin and disbelieving.

"The — the winner. By knockout. Oath of Defiance." Nobody cheered. The whole arena just stared at the hole in its own wall, and at the cat standing in front of it, and at the boy at the strip who'd put him there.