Chương 88: What Kalio Carried Into the Ring

The quarterfinals drew the largest crowd Baskerville's grounds had seen all season, word of Ellia's grinding victory and my own two clean wins having apparently spread far enough through Trigatia that half the city seemed to have found a reason to be present. My own match went quickly a capable but outmatched second-year named Ferris, who fought bravely for three minutes before a well-placed disarm ended things cleanly.

He took the loss with good grace, and I found myself, watching him rejoin the stands afterward, genuinely hoping the experience taught him more than it discouraged him. Ellia's quarterfinal proved considerably less dramatic than her second-round grind, a decisive four-minute victory against an opponent whose style simply didn't trouble her the way Corwyn's patience had. She rejoined us at the rail afterward barely winded, considerably more rested than she'd been two days prior.

"Good," she said, watching the board update.

"I'd rather save the hard fight for you." Kalio's quarterfinal was the one none of us could watch comfortably. His opponent, a sixth-year named Braxon, had been quietly dominating his side of the bracket with a combat style built entirely around overwhelming aggression fast, relentless, giving opponents no room to settle into their own rhythm before the next exchange was already crashing into the last.

He'd won every prior match in under three minutes, and the crowd's energy shifted, audibly, the moment he and Kalio squared off at the center of the arena.

"He's good," Ellia said quietly, watching Braxon's opening stance.

"Genuinely good, not just aggressive for the sake of it. Kalio's going to need to survive the first minute before he can even think about finding an answer."

"He's a Nightsky heir facing down a sixth-year specialist," I said.

"That's not exactly a fair fight on paper."

"Neither was your first duel against him, once," Ellia pointed out.

"People surprise you, if you let them. I'd rather watch and hope than talk myself into assuming the worst before it's even started." Kalio didn't survive the first minute cleanly. Braxon's opening flurry drove him back three full steps, one strike landing hard enough that I heard the impact from the rail, and for one genuinely frightening moment I thought the match might end as quickly and decisively as all of Braxon's others had. But Kalio held.

Not elegantly, not with the polished economy Ellia or I might have managed against the same pressure, but with the stubborn, hard-won discipline of someone who'd spent the past three years learning to absorb far worse than a tournament bout could throw at him and keep standing regardless.

"Come on," I heard myself say, low, gripping the rail hard enough that my knuckles had gone pale. The match turned somewhere past the second minute, not through any single decisive moment but through accumulated small ones Kalio's guard tightening fractionally with each exchange, his own counters growing sharper as he found the seams in Braxon's relentless rhythm, the crowd's energy shifting again as they registered a fight that had stopped being a foregone conclusion.

It ran nine minutes total, longer than any of Braxon's previous bouts by a wide margin, both competitors visibly exhausted by the final exchange. Kalio won it on pure grinding persistence, a final counter that left Braxon overextended just long enough for a clean, decisive strike to close things out. The crowd's roar was deafening, and I found myself shouting along with it, all pretense of composed observation abandoned entirely somewhere around the seventh minute.

He found us afterward, favoring one side slightly, a fresh bruise already darkening along his jaw, grinning despite it in a way that made the whole ordeal look, retroactively, considerably more worth it than it had felt watching from the rail. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"That," he said, "was the hardest thing I've done since the duel that got me here in the first place."

"You looked rough in the first minute," I admitted.

"I felt rough in the first minute," Kalio said.

"I genuinely thought he might end it before I found my footing." He accepted the water skin Ellia offered, drinking deeply before continuing.

"I kept thinking about my father, honestly. About what he said before we left for Blood Moon go see the size of the world before you finish deciding how afraid of it to be. Braxon's aggression felt like exactly that kind of moment. I decided somewhere around the ninety-second mark that I'd rather find out how afraid I actually was than keep guessing about it from a safer distance."

"And?" Ellia asked.

"Considerably less afraid than I expected," Kalio said, "once I actually let myself find out properly." He looked between the two of us, something warmer settling into his exhausted grin.

"Semifinals tomorrow. The two of you, finally, against each other. I intend to have the best seat in the house for it, bruises and all."

"Will Braxon be alright?" I asked.

"That was a hard fall to end on."

"He'll heal," Kalio said.

"Came by afterward to shake my hand properly, actually. Said something about respecting a fight more when it costs him something real. I think we'll spar again sometime, once we've both finished healing. He's the kind of opponent worth learning from more than once." He shook his head slowly, still visibly processing the whole ordeal.

"Strange, thinking of him as anything other than an obstacle a few hours ago. I suppose that's another thing this whole tournament's been quietly teaching me most people worth fighting are also worth knowing afterward." That evening, the three of us shared a quieter meal than the celebratory one after the first round, exhaustion and anticipation both settling in equal measure over the table.

Dororo joined partway through, Rethven's latest letter tucked away unread again, apparently having decided the ordinary business of watching us fight properly still outranked the wider world's business, at least for one more evening.

"Nervous?" he asked me directly, watching Ellia deep in conversation with Kalio further down the table.

"Yes," I admitted.

"More than I expected to be, honestly. I've fought considerably more dangerous things than her this year. None of it prepared me for how strange it feels, actually planning to fight someone I care about this much, in front of a crowd that has no idea what any of that even means."

"That's precisely why it should feel strange," Dororo said gently.

"Anything else would be considerably more concerning, to my mind. I'd worry more about a version of you that found tomorrow easy." He allowed himself a small, knowing smile.

"For what it's worth, child, I don't believe either outcome tomorrow costs either of you anything that actually matters. Whoever wins, you'll both still be exactly what you've become to each other this past year. A tournament bracket was never going to be large enough to change that."

"You sound very certain of that."

"I've watched the two of you for a year now," Dororo said.

"Certainty comes easily, on this particular subject." I held onto that thought carefully through the rest of the evening, Ember dozing warm against my collar, and found, by the time I finally settled into bed that night, that some of the nervousness had eased into something closer to genuine anticipation not dread, not really, just the honest, uncomplicated wanting to finally find out exactly how evenly matched two people who'd spent a year growing side by side had actually become.

Ellia caught me before I turned in for the night, lingering a moment longer at my door than she usually did.

"For what it's worth," she said, "I've already decided I'm not going to hold back tomorrow. Not out of spite, and not because I don't care what it means for us afterward. Because I think you'd be disappointed in me if I did, and honestly, I think I'd be disappointed in myself too."

"I wouldn't want you to hold back," I said.

"I don't think I could, even if I tried. It wouldn't feel like actually fighting you, otherwise. It'd just feel like going through the motions of it."

"Good," she said, something fierce and fond mixing together in her expression.

"Then we understand each other properly." She studied me a moment longer, some of the fierceness softening.

"Whatever happens tomorrow, I want you to know I'm glad it's you. Out of everyone this bracket could have handed me, I'm glad the semifinals gave me you."

"Same," I said simply, and found I didn't need any more words than that to mean it fully.

She left with a last, easy smile, and I stood at my own door a while longer after she'd gone, turning the coming match over in my mind not with dread, not anymore, but with the same honest anticipation I imagined she was carrying back to her own quarters at that very moment, both of us quietly readying ourselves for a fight that would, whatever its outcome, change absolutely nothing about what actually mattered most between us.