It was strange how ordinary a morning can be on the most important day of your life. Slava woke me with a gentle shake of the shoulder, breakfast ready. He sat on my bed with notes that he must have written through the night because the bags under his eyes looked carved through his face.

  After I got dressed and Slava drove me back to the stadium, he helped me double-check my equipment while talking. About nothing in particular, how his day was going, some potential issues with the pistol that he would “take care of”, what we would do after I won.

  It felt surreal, like my trembling hands and gritted teeth belonged to someone else. Like Boris’s half-burnt face after his match with Calder wasn’t constantly looping through my mind, always undercutting all the plans and tactics I was going over.

  And then, there I was, standing under those steps and looking up at the platform. Slava had walked me here after our equipment check and stayed as long as he could with his arm around my shoulders, staring up those steps like he would be the one fighting.

  But then his stream buzzed, and I felt his hand stiffen. He turned me toward him, cupped my cheeks, and said, “You can do this. I believe in you.”

  And then, he was walking away, his shoulders sagging like they bore the weight of the entire world.

  I shifted the gear hanging off my shoulders, the crossbow softly hitting my arm with every slight rotation of my body. My fingers tapping absently against the weapons at my belt, the rifle hanging off my left shoulder almost clunky, almost unnecessary.

  But no more underestimating him. I no longer had the luxury to pit him against opponents I believed to be his superior in every measure, and watch him win again and again, despite the odds. I needed every weapon I could get my hands on if I wanted to beat him.

  My mind drifted from the weaponry to the argument I had with Slava about Johannes’s extinguishing grenades, shoving the image of Boris aside for the first time since I woke up. Of course, I argued for frag grenades, they were the most logical choice. And my argument had fallen flat when he clicked on the TV, right as the rerun of Boris holding a grenade to Calder’s chest started playing. Because of course it had.

  So we had decided on misdirection. Flashbangs, smokes, and of course, the aforementioned extinguishing grenades. The guns, crossbow, and if it came to it, knives would be my main method of attack.

  Except, of course, for my map. My ability’s restriction, my ability’s strength, all on an A4-sized piece of paper tucked neatly into the front pocket of my body armour. I would only have one chance to activate it, so Slava and I had agonized over it for hours before concluding what geographical changes I should make.

  That was the only thing giving me hope. Because despite the pistols and knives, despite the rifle and crossbow, despite the body armour strapped to my chest and the helmet on my head, it didn’t feel like enough.

  Because of him.

  His footsteps had started softly, unhurried. But as they approached, they felt like they were splitting my skull, drowning out the crowd's roar as they screamed my name.

  “Sofia! Sofia! Sofia!”

  His shadow appeared first, stretching out before him, before he was standing next to me, not a hand's breadth between us. It was almost laughable how afraid I was of a man with a single piece of equipment.

  I studied the shield up close now, something I had always ignored. It looked like a normal piece of metal, a leadish sheen glinting off it in the light as he adjusted the weight of it. How could something so innocuous lead to this?

  I looked up from the shield only to find his eyes boring into me. My fingers curled around the pistol on my hip as we stared at each other. I had studied boxers for lessons in intimidation, and their staredown before a match was the best time to use those skills. I would stare at him until he was uncomfortable, until my gaze tore through his skull.

  I needed him to rush forward at the start of the match, to close the distance between us. He had done so in almost every other match he had been a part of. But not every match. Anger would blind him, make him predictable. I needed to provoke him before the match started.

  I would do this with an insult. I would first insult his manhood and poor fighting abilities, before going deeper into who he is as a person, to his religion, and status as a civvie. I had struggled with what to end it off on.

  I had written down the insult a hundred times, going through a dozen variations before landing on something concise, exactly what was needed to make him freak out. But a small, cruel part of me knew that there was something else I could insult. Something else I could say that would achieve the desired results.

  But I would need to work with him afterward. As a kindness, I would not mention his kids. No matter what insults we threw at each other, now.

  “So, civvie, is your ability to fight as disappointing as your manho—”

  “Please shut up. Your voice is irritating,” he interrupted, his tone flat and uninterested.

  “Too afraid of what your superior has to say? I thought a religious man would enjoy listening to someone blessed.”

  His cheek didn’t twitch, his jaw didn’t lock. The only way I knew he was even alive was because he blinked for the first time since he arrived.

  “Afraid? You are so scared that you took all my weapons away in the middle of the night, as if wrapping my hands around your throat will kill you differently than a bullet. Just remember, Sofia. Mommy can’t save you now.”

  All the fear I had felt in facing him, all the pity and sympathy I would have shown him, all turned to hate in that moment. My mother had favoured him from the time she had met him, allowed him to live after he murdered two men in cold blood right in front of her.

  And he thinks she was saving me?

  “My mother doesn’t need to save me. That reminds me: how are your kids? Do they still need saving?”

  I regretted the words the moment they left my mouth, and I regretted them all the more the way Boris looked at me.

  He just nodded, as if he received confirmation. “I am glad you understand what is about to happen. Please don’t surrender.”

  I was going to retort with something clever, but then our names were called, and we stood across from one another before I could blink. I don’t even remember climbing the stairs, I only remember the weight of the pistol in my hand.

  The bubble started closing, Major Shange as always quiet during this process. Even the crowd was quiet, like they knew what was at stake. I wanted to scream at them, go on a tirade and ask if they knew what it was like to stand across from that stare?

  He was pacing back and forth, but I didn’t mirror his movements. I upholstered a grenade and a pistol as I took deep breaths. Inhaling in until my ribs could no longer expand, and exhaling out until the feeling of suffocation crept into my eyes.

  I can do this. I have to.

  The bubble closed like a gun went off. Boris had activated his shield and was ten steps toward me before I pulled my arm back to lob the grenade. I threw it with everything I had, not counting the three-second delay as I brought my pistol up and fired at the monster charging toward me, trying to keep him in place.

  I fired the pistol four times before the grenade landed. I couldn’t tell if my hands were shaking or if it was the nonexistent recoil. I had slowed his relentless charge by a fraction of a second, but that was all I needed for Johannes’s grenade to go off at his feet in the middle of the arena.

  One moment his hateful eyes were peaking over his shield, the next there was only a wall of white covering everything I could see. My body moved on instinct, my feet moving me at a right angle as they plodded forward before I unholstered a smoke grenade, dropping it at my feet before I kept moving, continuing forward to try and bury myself within the foam.

  I saw Boris exit the foam as the smoke went off, but I ignored his actions as I let off another smoke grenade. I stopped at what I thought was the center of the platform, holstered my pistol, and brought out my ace in the hole: the map.

  I tore it out of the pocket without restraint, tapping my left shoulder with a frantic need that brought me back to the present. My body stopped moving without instruction, my mind started functioning as I held the map up to my face.

  I tried to calm down, allowing my mind to catch up to the current situation. Boris was blinded, but he could still hear or smell me. Should I let off a flashbang? It would distract his hearing, but his smell could still locate me, or he already knew where I was, and he could—

  This hesitation born of uncertainty would kill me. I ignored all other thoughts, focusing solely on the map in my hands as I let my ability take over. My feet left the ground as the bubble, the wall of white and smoke filling my lungs, almost ceased to exist. All that mattered was me and the map.

  I had argued for more quadrants, and Slava had argued for only two. We settled on four. To the right quadrant on which Boris started on I added extensive contour lines that increased in height to an almost absurd degree, almost fifteen meters of elevation separating each line. I added small ditches or walls for every third contour line I added, since this would serve as my base of operations.

  For the left quadrant on his side, I considered ignoring Slava’s advice, but I only added walls and ditches, with a singular section left for me to fall back on. Every ditch was a single contour line ten meters deep, and every wall was a single contour line behind it ten meters in height.

  I hadn’t been able to check whether my power created matter or not, so I made sure that if I were displacing something with a wall or a ditch, I would add the opposite right in front or behind it so that the ground, mass I should say, was moving rather than being added or subtracted.

  For both quadrants on the side I started on, I made it a death trap. Both were lowered significantly, in the hope that all the displaced mass would go into the nest I was creating.

  For the left quadrant on the side I started on, besides the basin I was making, I also added random elevation changes in some attempt at making movement more difficult. This would make sure that if my nest and the backup I made next to it failed, I would have a place to retreat to.

  That left the final quadrant, which I made into a maze. This was the most time-consuming part of the map changes, so I hurried through that last. With relief, I added the finishing touches to random walls and hallways that led to dead ends before I deactivated my power.

  Most of my time yesterday was devoted to this, drawing the map. By about half past two, I could have every contour line drawn within sixty seconds. I had shortened it to thirty-five before I fell asleep, and even then it didn’t feel like enough.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  But my power deactivated without issue, and I was already sprinting before my feet even touched the ground. I felt the ground groaning beneath my feet and my eyes widening as I left the wall in white.

  I was almost in the center of the platform as I exited the extinguishing foam. My feet stopped moving as I marveled at what I could do. Deep trenches carved through the earth as if I was cutting through a cheeseboard, walls that should never have existed jutted out of the ground and exponentially increased in height with every second that passed.

  And it was still too slow. I could hear Boris swearing, which meant he had most likely exited onto the other side of the platform, only the smoke and foam separating us now. I holstered the pistol and let off every grenade and device at my belt without restraint as I sprinted up the hill appearing before me.

  I stumbled a few times as I climbed, the flashbangs, smokes, and extinguishing grenades rolling down the hill and stopping at whatever wall or ditch appeared. By the end of the hike, my calves burned with a fever, for I was no longer stumbling, but climbing over every obstacle that increased in size with every second.

  When I reached the top, I was able to see every inch of the platform without issue, but I was out of grenades. The flashbangs going off pounded through my ears as I unclipped the crossbow and loaded it, before I unslung the rifle at my shoulder and prepared.

  I stared down my slope and swore under my breath. I had made a mistake, for all the grenades I set off now obstructed my view of the hill, which meant that my advantage with the high ground had already decreased.

  I laid the crossbow on the ground, searching for some sign of Boris and finding it within a heartbeat. In the middle of the platform where the foam and smoke had congregated, I saw deep lines cut into the foam, indicating every place he had been.

  I held the crossbow to my shoulder, watching as that line angled towards me with a speed I could not believe. I breathed in, and he was eleven steps closer. I breathed out, and any sight of him was lost in the smoke at the base of my hill.

  I fired at where he should be, the crossbow thudding against my shoulder as the bolt left the string with a shing! I smiled as I heard a shout of surprise, and through the smoke. I considered just throwing the crossbow away now that it should have done its job, but I only slung it over my shoulder before I picked up the rifle and changed location.

  With every two shots, I would move at least three meters, left or right, forward or backward, trying to keep him guessing. But I suppose I failed because I still heard the crunch of stone, the yelp of surprise, and the occasional swear word always a little louder, always a little closer.

  When I could hear his footsteps, I knew this place was compromised. I retreated down the hill towards the original fallback plan as I ditched the empty rifle. I reentered the smoke and foam that had congregated on the ‘level’ floor at the base of the hill, pulling out a pistol as I found the bubble’s edge.

  Boris' voice rose over the noise of the flashbangs, “All this noise and smoke won’t hide you forever! Delay as much as you want, you are still going to die slow you bitch!”

  Thank you, fool, I know where you are now.

  I braced my back against the wall, aiming at where I heard his voice, and fired. Three times in quick succession, the recoil was almost non-existent as the gun bucked in my hand. I ducked away, deciding this entire half of the platform was compromised as I moved towards the maze.

  Remember Zach’s mistake. Keep your distance.

  Stone exploded behind where I had just been standing. The rubble hit my back like shrapnel, pebbles falling down my shirt as I stumbled away with a renewed sense of danger. I forget that six times the strength equals a lot of force behind a thrown object.

  I hoped that no yelp escaped my lips as I pressed forward. I knew where all the obstacles I made were theoretically, but this proved to be a different issue practically. My terrain changes slowed me down instead of their intended target.

  I looked back at the top of the hill, only catching glimpses through the haze of the smoke, before I saw Boris standing tall as he studied the area below him. I froze in place as my breath caught in my throat, squatting down in some hope that he hadn’t seen me.

  I took out a bolt, my hands dripping sweat as I loaded it into the crossbow. My eyes remained locked on the figure hidden as I started shuffling with minute steps toward the maze. If I arrived, I could gain some breathing room, maybe even lure him there before I sprinted up the hill again.

  Without warning, Boris jumped, soaring through the air towards where he had thrown the stone. That was far too close for comfort, so I stopped shuffling and started sprinting. I made it four steps before I ran headlong into a wall, my nose exploding with pain as my crossbow went off.

  I felt the nose as I got back to my feet, bleeding but hopefully not broken. I took out another bolt and held it between my teeth as I ran to my left, my every thought screaming at me to move.

  I found the entrance to the maze within five seconds. Boris crashed into the same wall I had within three. I felt the crack of stone beneath me, and I knew he was far too close to reload. I bit down on the bolt and moved, screaming at the top of my lungs, “I’m still here! I’m still unharmed! Or are your promises as empty as your head!”

  I passed the two left turns that led to dead ends, made a sharp right, and jumped over the ditch in the middle of the maze. I ignored the cursing and cracking of stone as Boris screamed a vow of cruelty behind me, thinking through the maze I had designed at one o'clock this morning.

  With a final right turn, the bubble’s wall stretched before me. I was out of the maze, and the smoke here was almost translucent. I took deep breaths in the semi-clean air, reloading the crossbow in record time before I aimed it back at the entrance, expecting his silhouette to round the corner at any moment.

  But it didn’t come. It was almost quiet, the flash bangs long since finished their noisy sequence. There was no shouting now. No swear words or the sound of exploding obstacles behind me. The maze had slowed him down, for once.

  I lowered the crossbow, thinking it through. I was at the same place where I started the match. If I wanted to run back to my intended nest, the high ground specifically for me to survey the battlefield and take potshots at Boris from, I would need to move now.

  When I arrived, what was my course of action? The smoke and foam would give him away, but I needed to remove the shield. There was no point if every bullet that flew his way only ricocheted—

  The wall on my right exploded, rubble and stone flying in every direction as he landed on his feet. He shook off the stone in his clothes, dusting himself off without a hurry before he turned to me with an unnatural smile on his face.

  “There you are! I didn’t know you could do this shit,” he said, waving at the platform I had painstakingly designed to contain him, “Must say, I would be impressed if you weren’t such a cunt. Now, stay still and take your death like a good dog.”

  He walked towards me without a care, even as I aimed the crossbow at him. I needed him to move, so I would escape back into the maze when he blocked the bolt and hoped that two bolts sticking through his shield would be enough to make him get rid of it.

  I breathed out as I pulled the trigger. The bolt whistled through the air, flying slowly toward him. He paused for less than a split second. The only way I knew the bolt had been fired was because he leaned his head to the right.

  “That was a close one! Want to try again? I’ll even make it easy for you,” he said mockingly, dropping the shield next to him like it wasn’t the entire reason I had the crossbow in the first place.

  With his every step forward, I stepped backward. I dropped the crossbow and unholstered both pistols, aiming them in his general direction. Right now, accuracy wasn’t needed; he would most likely dodge the bullets anyway.

  I fired with no thought of hitting him, only trying to create space before I dashed back into the maze. I made the first turn before I felt his hand on the back of my throat, halting me in my tracks with almost no effort.

  He wrenched me backward, his disgusting voice whispering in my ear, “I promised, didn’t I? I could kill you with a squeeze, but I won’t. Let’s take you someplace all those bastards can see you, just so the things they call me are accurate.”

  He hefted me back like I was a softball, and then I was flying through the air. I curled myself into a ball, tucking my chin against my chest as I pointed both pistols past my hips to make sure they didn’t go off when I landed.

  The wind whistling in my ears felt calming, familiar. It reminded me of every zipline Slava made when he wanted to make me laugh. But when I crashed against the stone with a thud, and my ribs started screaming, any sense of familiarity left me with the whimper escaping my lips.

  Get up if you want to live.

  I coughed before I got to my knees, the pistols still somehow in my hands. I checked my legs, and they didn’t seem broken, so I rose to my feet. My heartbeat was the only thing I could hear, and every time it crashed against my ribs, a sharp pain would spread through me, but none of it mattered.

  I started walking backwards up the hill, but I saw the way the smoke was parting. He would be here within seconds.

  Is that a reason to stay here?

  No. It wasn’t. I turned and sprinted up the hill, checking the magazines on both pistols. The one was almost empty, so I fired it in his direction without a thought before I felt it click empty. With every step I took, I expected to hit a wall, but I found the path Boris had originally taken. It wasn't difficult ascending the hill after that.

  When I made it to the top, I turned around to see he was only twenty steps behind me. I fired wildly as I took out a knife, trying to slow him down as I continued stepping backward.

  It was strange what you noticed when death was approaching. For instance, that Boris no longer had a shield, that I was where I had wanted to be since the match started, and that the thing charging toward me held my empty crossbow in one hand?

  I stopped firing like an idiot and focused. I ignored the distance between us and fired once, twice, three times before he crested the lip of the hill. All three shots found their mark, hitting him center mass with explosions of blood.

  And he didn’t even stumble. He had his hand around my throat by the time my finger squeezed for the fourth time, picking me up so that my legs kicked uselessly beneath me.

  “Ow, that hurt!” he said as he smashed me against the bubble’s wall. He leaned in, our eyes inches apart, before that dead-eyed gaze broke. Something flashed through his face even as I rammed the knife into his shoulder.

  He smashed me against the wall again. I aimed the pistol down, not caring where the bullets ended up, and fired twice more. He only grunted before he smacked me across the face, taking the gun from my hand and breaking it with a simple squeeze before looking back at me.

  I reached for the dagger in his shoulder, but his grip on my neck grew tighter, my breath growing shorter as I started kicking at him, flailing to escape his grip. But he ignored every scratch, every kick like they hadn’t happened in the first place.

  Hatred twisted his face, that same evil look in his eye glinting in the crystal's light before it… left. He closed his eyes and looked away before he said under his breath. “I can’t do it. For fucks sake, I just can’t do it.”

  The squeeze didn’t let up; if anything, only growing tighter as he held me higher. He held up the crossbow with his free hand like it was a show and tell, “I was going to beat you to death with this. I don’t know, I thought it would be funny. But seeing you struggle now… I just can’t do it. I prove myself a coward and a liar, can’t even follow through on one promise when I see the look in your eyes. Take some comfort, I guess, I’m going to let you drift off to sleep before I snap your neck.”

  His every word felt like it was stealing the breath out of my lungs. I was reaching for the knife sticking out of his shoulder with every ounce of strength left in me, dark spots flooding across my eyes.

  When the promise of death started forming at the edges of my eyes, I felt my hand grip the knife. I ripped it out of his shoulder, held it above my head, and drove it toward his face. He grabbed my wrist like I was a child throwing a tantrum.

  “Can you stop? Just die, I am being nice to you for fucks sake.”

  I ignored his insane command and dropped the knife. It fell past our faces, his eyes growing wide as our eyes separated for the first time since he started strangling me. He let go of my wrist, but it was already past his chest, twirling slowly toward the floor.

  It fell into the free hand I had brought back to my waist, and I didn’t hesitate. I only screamed, shoving the knife straight into his crotch where his manhood should be. There we stood, my hand around the knife buried to the hilt in his crotch, his hand around my neck as our eyes remained locked.

  He let go first, taking a step back and screaming as he stared down at the hilt, bringing both his hands toward it. I dropped to the floor on my hands and knees, gagging as the oxygen returned to my lungs.

  The scream that escaped his lips wasn’t a sound I thought a human could make. It was like a dying animal, raw and unfiltered, no pretense that what caused it was anything other than pain.

  I ignored it, refilling my lungs with oxygen as I took out the final knife, my final weapon, and with a scream that equaled his, I drove the knife into his face before falling to the floor. His screaming stopped as he staggered, coughing around the knife buried between his teeth before falling, landing face-first next to me.

  I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. I just looked at the sky as tears filled my eyes, sobs racking my broken chest with more pain than the broken ribs.

  He isn’t dead. Get up. Stab him again. Until his head is removed, you can’t be sure. Get up. Come on, you think just because he got a little hurt, he’s going to stop? Get up. GET UP!

  I sat up with a whimper, turning to Boris as he lay still next to me. He didn’t move, didn’t even flinch when I pushed him. He just lay there.

  I hugged my knees and cried. Cried that it was over. Cried at my victory, cried at the pain coursing through me. I didn’t care that every man, woman, and child on Kaleidos was watching me. I let the tears fall without resistance, sobbing at the ordeal I had just suffered through.

  And then his hand closed around my mouth, and his broken face looked up at me as he spluttered, “...kind! I.. was… kind!”

  He drove my head against the floor, holding me down with not an ounce of strength lost. I reached for the knife sticking out of his crotch, but he grabbed and slammed me against the floor, once, twice, every thud making my ribs ache all the more.

  He let go of my face, grabbing hold of the hand I had stabbed him in the crotch with, and snapped it over his knee as if it were a twig.

  My sobs turned to screams as I cradled the broken limb. He grabbed me by the hair and walked towards the crossbow sitting a few feet away from us, as if he wanted to fulfill his original purpose for bringing it up here.

  He dropped me and picked it up, pointing at as blood leaked from his mouth, “fuck… you…”

  He lifted the crossbow above his head, the promise of cruelty flashing in his eyes as it flew toward me…

  And then we were standing across from one another, all the pain nowhere to be found. I fell backward before I checked my arm, not believing that it was okay.

  And as if the day could get any stranger, Major Shange’s surprised voice echoed through the arena, “Sofia wins!”