Solitaire POV: Day 90

  Current Wealth: 211 gold 2 silver 42 copper

  I showed up at the stadium soon after receiving word of my own match coming soon. Turned out Shango had been handed an ass kicking. That was about typical, he’d always loved getting those back on earth. It was different here, though, due to being a fairly massive inconvenience for all of us. I swallowed my frustration, and tried to remind myself that it wasn’t quite his fault he’d been born with a silver spoon lodged in his colon.

  “So, a woman.” I noted. Shango glared at me.

  “It was a very strong woman.” He growled. “And well trained. And she got lucky.”

  “Right.” I nodded, grin blossoming. “A very powerful woman, of course, that explains it then.”

  “Fuck off.” Shango seemed impervious to my attempts at cheering him up, and I could hardly blame him. He’d lost his shot to progress through the tournament and get another mainline of experience points. That hurt, a lot. More than any loss in prize money could have. And it made me all the more nervous for my own bout.

  “It’s not the end of the world.” I noted, switching tactics quickly. “You have more time to focus on business rather than training, now, and your combat power was never what made you an asset to begin with. It’s not like Beam’s dropping out, right?”

  He did relax, slightly, at that. And I saw that there’d not be much more I could do. I headed off for my own match, feeling suddenly heavy at the thought.

  My armour hadn’t quite been finished yet, but Beam’s fit me well enough. An inch too short, an inch too broad, but otherwise I slipped in ready for a fight. It was somehow a slight reassurance, Shango’s loss had reminded us again that good steel didn’t make us invincible.

  Arthur Nightne strolled out, and I had to resist the urge to swear blind.

  He was one of the tournament’s favourites, a fairly tall, fairly lean man who, despite his not-particularly-bulky build, moved like a damned viper. He was wearing full plate armour like me, and a fairly large longsword which hopped from one hand to the other like it weighed as much as a pencil.

  I knew this man was fast, strong, terrifyingly skilled. I knew all this, because he’d been one of our main characters back when Redacle was just a damned fantasy world.

  The match began, and he closed fast, swinging faster. A feint- he always opened with those- and I bypassed it by throwing a quick lunge for his face.

  There was no point in even worrying about guarding myself, knowing that his blow was faked, and I’d have definitely hit him had he not been so damned explosive in his speed. He swatted my sword aside, but I was already backing away before his counter-stroke. My elbow ached from where the clash of our strength had sent an impact down my arm, and it was all I could do to hold the fucking sword he’d batted away so easily. This was not going to be a fun fight in the slightest.

  Apparently, though, I’d shaken him. The idiot was probably trying to figure out whether I was a secret fighting genius or just ridiculously lucky, and I decided to take advantage of his uncertainty, closing in and pressing my sword to his, bringing my strength to bear. Whispering in the moment I had before being forced back.

  “I know it’s all an act.”

  He froze up, instantly. And I smashed my forehead against his face with every inch of strength my entire body could muster, using the plate of my helmet as a bludgeon. It did its job well enough, hammering in the visor guarding Arthur’s eyes and sending him back a step.

  Only a step, mind. He was really quite strong.

  Arthur seemed galvanised by the headbutt, but cautioned, too. He backed up, eying me, studying my moves. I knew, because I was the one who’d written his habit of doing that into the character. It felt surreal to see it from the perspective of an enemy, and just a bit terrifying.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  It wouldn’t take long for him to get my measure, and once he figured out how much weaker I was this fight would be as good as over. I’d have to do something clever before that could happen.

  “What do you mean?” The Knight asked. He was on me almost before I could react, but did just what I had. Swinging down, softening the impact right before it came, clashing our swords and making a show of pressing his bodyweight against mine. From this close, I could see one of his eyes had been near-totally covered by the folded metal of his visor. His voice was all uncertainty and worry, almost fearful. That was a hopeful sign- a fearful enemy was half beaten.

  “I know you’re not a noble Knight.” I breathed, pushing back against him. “You’ve never voluntarily saved a maiden in your life, you spend most of your days desperately trying to avoid danger, and you’ve shoved more than one person in-between you and it.”

  “Whoever told you this-”

  “Nobody told me.” I cut in, grunting as his strength became too much to bear and stumbling back. I realised my mistake an instant later when he swung for me with every scrap of strength he had.

  Twenty two Strength, on our system. Shango had checked. It was like being hit by a fucking motorbike. My steel-clad boots screamed as they scraped against the ground, entire body sent sliding, then falling as my balance broke. I hit the stone, rolled, got to my feet just in time for a boot to catch my chest and send me flying all over again.

  Very much like being hit by a motorbike, because this time, between the force and the lack of friction metal had on stone, my back actually hit the far wall of the arena…

  …Ten metres away.

  It was ridiculous. I almost burst out laughing then and there. Five, six kilojoules, had just hit me? Accounting for waste energy at least. That wasn’t the kind of impact a person took, it just didn’t happen. That was comic book shit. And I was fighting it.

  I got to my feet as fast as I could, and I was still barely up in time for Arthur to find me standing and swinging rather than lying back. My error was clear now- if I knew his secret, that his mythological heroism and Quixotian valour was just a hoax, it meant I was a threat to the cushy hero’s life he’d come to enjoy.

  Arthur Nightne was a fucking bastard. A selfish, cowardly, conniving piece of shit who got by on misunderstandings, a great deal of genuine martial skill, and the fact that people were always willing to tell heroic tales about a good-looking white man. I’d felt so clever, writing him.

  I didn’t feel very clever now.

  Because when you took a man like that and showed him a threat to the high life, his first instinct wasn’t to ask any question. It was to kill that threat before someone else could. My block was barely in time to stop his sword, and even as it did I was still forced down to one knee by the sheer, unbridled fucking strength on the other end. He was farther advanced from me than I was from a normal human, and the screaming joints in my shoulders were evidence of the fact.

  Only one thing caught my eye during the exchange, over my own anatomical torture. It was the big dent left in Nightne’s sword. Hope, that.

  Being stronger than a polar bear didn’t exactly make your weapons any harder, I supposed.

  “I’m not going to expose you-” I managed, which, being honest, was an impressive feat alone given how quickly the fucker kicked me. His boot found all the heavy plates over my gut, which wasn’t actually a weak spot in my armour at all. Somehow, he made it feel like one. My feet left the ground, and I flew a good foot or more upwards before finally starting my gravitic drift back downwards.

  He beat me to it, of course, punching again. This time when I flew it was without the slightest contact with the stone underfoot, and I practically bounced off the wall right behind me.

  For the second time, I was in the dirt. It was only my mother’s psychotic lessons that kept me from lying there helpless.

  A stationary person is a dead person, she’d say. Right between “always remember to say please and thank you”, but just before “if somebody looks like they’re planning something, best to gut them then and there.” My body was rolling before my brain even knew it had touched down, and even that was too late to keep Nightne’s next kick from launching me again.

  It really was getting quite tiresome, being thrown around. Not as tiresome as landing though. This time I did a fine job breaking the fall, saving my precious neck and shoulders from being beaten by the hard stone by absorbing the impact with my face. I was up as fast as before, though, and bought myself a second by swinging out wide at Nightne’s face.

  “Do you really think I’d be telling you this if someone else didn’t already know as insurance!?”

  He hesitated. I’d bought myself seconds, at least. Nightne was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. Now all I had to do was carve a handhold into him and see how I could work it, if not…

  Fuck, the worst they’d do if he beheaded me after the match was called was disqualify him, and somehow he’d go down in history as a glorious saviour for it to boot.

  “My brothers know.” I told him, speaking faster than I’d ever spoken in my life. “And I doubt even you could kill all of them together, not with my magic protecting them. But I have a way you don’t need to.”

  He closed, and for one horrible moment I thought I was about to get one limb lighter. Instead, he just entered another feigned grapple. Squeezing a bit harder than was probably necessary.

  “Speak fast.” He spat. I spoke fast.

  “We know how skilled you are, how strong you are, how fast you are. And we know how often you get thrown into deadly fights because some idiot thinks you want to be there. I’d like to offer you a job with some people who know better.”

  The pressure eased up a fraction.