Catherine charged at Rudd using every modicum of speed that her peak-Bone constitution granted her. The speed with which her feet struck the ground and the scream of the wind in her ears told her that that was more than enough to get her to the larger brother in time.

She didn’t bother forming a coherent technique to send the boy off balance, she knew her momentum would be more than enough to do that work for her. Rudd spun and faced her as she grew close, and before his eyes had the time to widen in response, she flung her small body into him with all the speed and power that she could generate.

A spear tackle is devilishly hard to use when the opponent can see you coming, but when you were as fast as Catherine, it would be easier to catch sunlight in your fingertips.

Her momentum came to a halt in a jarring lurch as Rudd’s plate armor screeched and dented at the force of their clash. The larger Bone-Ranker fell to the ground with a mounted Catherine following him down. She took a rolling position and sprung to her feet as the last of her momentum faded, and stared down at her target.

Rudd’s eyes were glued to his brother’s position as Pip sent a sharpened point of darkness at the gap in Theo’s armor located at his throat. Rudd made an attempt to get up before Catherine sent a lightning fast kick at his head. The older boy dodged to the floor before coming up in a smooth roll.

Pip, in the meantime, stuck her weapon into the younger brothers armor. The purple girl smiled a devil’s grin as she tried taking the younger boy out of the fight, before a gauntleted fist came up to nearly take her head clean off.

Pip ducked smoothly and flitted away with impressive dexterity, leaving a confused Catherine to move out of range of Rudd’s coming jab.

“They have Gold Bodies, Catherine. Be wary of them!”

Catherine cursed and saw a smile slide onto Rudd’s face under his helmet as she sent a counter at his chin. Gold bodies made things a lot more difficult, and went a long way into explaining exactly how the two brothers had made it as far as they had in the rankings.

Catherine backed off from Rudd enough to stay out of his effective melee range. As strong as her physical body was, she couldn’t guarantee she would be able to take out Rudd and his gold body before Pip would be crushed by Theo. Even in the brief moment that her re-orientation had taken the younger merchant was pressing his newfound advantage against her friend.

Rudd seemed content to keep Catherine busy in the meantime, mimicking their own initial plan against the brothers. With Pip on the retreat Catherine nearly did exactly as Pip had forced Rudd, but chose to instead re-engage the older merchant. Running would only give the brothers the initiative. Pip would need to hold out long enough for her to help.

As weak as the girl was, Catherine knew one thing. Pip was slippery.

She instead turned to face the merchant directly. Catherine would use the one thing that she knew she could control. Her strength. A smile crept at her lips at the thought, a smile that she hadn’t seen in a long time. One that promised the merchant in front of her that he would not enjoy what was coming for him.

She rose to the pads of her feet and slipped into an outfighter’s stance that kept the merchant boy at the end of her range. The Merchant had a larger wingspan than her, but she was counting on that not mattering very much.

The merchant took the bait, as every stronger, taller fighter seemed to do. He ignored her range and came in for a strong left hook while avoiding the straight jab she sent at his head. That caused him to miss her slipping to his right and sending a hook of her own to his temple.

Her superior speed and strength caused a great twang of metal as she dented the boys helmet and skull and snapped his head to the side.

Where normally her opponent would have fallen slack, Rudd simply stumbled a step and rose to face her. This was why she hated fighting Gold Bodies. She had felt his skull crumble at the strength in her punch, but his bodies malleability meant that anything short of a piercing strike would just deform his form a little, leaving him no worse than when she had started. It was one of the worst kinds of opponents a pure melee fighter could face.

At least, so long as she didn’t resort to that.

A hollow chuckling emerged from the boy’s armor as he lifted his visor enough to spit a glob of blood from his damaged skull.

“That was good, Catherine. I was wondering why you would have picked that stance. Shame it won’t work again,” he said genuinely as he lowered his visor.

Catherine couldn’t help but agree with the boy, but she knew well enough that her gambit would only work once, and worse, it had been her best shot at ending the fight quickly. She nodded her head at the boy and fell to a lower stance with her feet planted firmly to the ground. The merchant responded in kind and fell into brawler stance, looking to get her to stand and fight against him.

unfortunately for him, Catherine had exactly zero intentions of getting into a straight-up slug fest against him and his gold body. Instead, she had something much worse on the table for her opponent.

Not wanting her to gain the initiative, Rudd moved forward with a slow, plodding inevitability, knowing that he could take any singular throw that Catherine could send his way. It was an effective strategy, if crude enough. Once he entered her range she sent a straight jab at his head which he ducked cleanly. An uppercut that he sent from his crouched position sent her jumping back into an unsteady stance that Rudd used to land a quick hook to her jaw.

She rolled with the blow and stood upright enough to look him in the eye. He smiled with confidence through his helmet, and Catherine smiled as well and sent him a nod. This time she went in for the first move. It was time to see which would break first. Her fist, or his body. Hopefully Pip would get the message.

________

Pip smoothly dodged a second punch from Theo, and jumped the follow-up golden disc that he threw her way. The boy was not a skilled fighter, but his impressive strength and apostle seemed enough to make up for the difference thus far.

Thankfully, Pip’s speed seemed more than enough to outwit the merchant, at least, so long as he didn’t try anything to tricky. Noting the nigh belligerent rage underneath the boy’s helmet, she very much doubted that would be a problem at any point in the near future.

Instead, her issue was her utterly lacking potential to actually harm her opponent. Theo was almost certainly closer to the lower-middle end of Bone than anything else, but that simply didn’t matter. Even weakened as it was, his gold body was too strong for the piercing potential of her shadow. The only option open to her was to drain the boy further.

Perhaps that would have proven trivial, were it not for the younger merchant’s insipid chasing. For each step she took, Theo would follow. He clung to her as dung on a boot, and his lacking speed meant that he was almost as hindering. What he did achieve, however, was to keep her shadow from properly draining him.

Her focus may have been impeccable, but even she faltered in the face of the overwhelming exhaustion that was being inflicted upon her by their constant movement. It meant that she was only draining thimbles of the boy’s shadow, nowhere near enough to weaken him such that she could injure him.

She did have enough to construct some new tools, however, and so her arsenal had grown some. Two daggers of shadow lingered in the belt at her waist, with a shortsword in her hands that she was using to parry some of the boy’s lighter blows, much to his agitation.

Catherine had made little enough progress as well, with each of her strikes being taken at their peak, only to be returned to her in turn. While certainly weaker than the true beast that was Pip’s friend, Rudd was strong enough to slowly wear her down if she allowed him, while taking minimal damage in turn. Even now the girl had a slowly accumulating list of bruises and gashed from the boy’s continued blows.

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The sight only further proved they were fighting a losing battle, and it was her job to fix that.

A slight stumble caused a thunderous hook from Theo to graze her hip. sending her spinning to the floor and flailing into an impromptu roll. The boy tried another blow, but she was able to painfully right herself, but she had taken some damage. Her hip burned painfully at the position of impact, and it slowed her movement.

That was a most unwelcome development.

With another roll she finally decided on one of the more risky courses of action in her repertoire. As Theo swung once more at her she dodged through the blow and placed her back to Catherine and Rudd’s fight and began slowly moving toward them. While she wasn’t strong enough to puncture their skin, weak and impotent as that made her feel, she knew that Catherine could. All she needed was a tool that would she could use.

Thankfully, Pip could manipulate more shadow than her own. At least, she would be able to should their proximity be close enough. If only that didn’t mean approaching the large, powerful Rudd and his massive, crushing hands. If a Goddess could feel fear, she might even have felt it at the idea. A ludicrous thought, she told herself.

________

Catherine took another blow to her abdomen to send a counter at Rudd’s chin. Her uppercut crunched his chin and teeth. Rudd shifted his crooked teeth into a wince and moan before reforming his skull into its normal position.

Catherine wasn’t doing nearly as well. She spat out a glob of blood, taking another tooth with it. Hopefully the healer would fix that for her. At least it seemed to please the roaring crowd, judging by the screams it elicited.

That scream very well might have made that shot worth it, if it weren’t for thousand other bruises and aches that she had accumulated over the course of the fight. Even weaker than she was, Rudd was strong enough that his hits were adding up, slowly but surely slowing her down. The smile on her face managed to keep the pain to a minimum at the very least. Maybe her bloodied teeth even scared Rudd enough to give her a break.

The fist that broke across her head and snapped it to the side told her that wasn’t the case. The kick she sent at his knee and the uppercut that damn near took his head off proved she still wasn’t down for the count.

The cough and creak of Rudd’s reforming body told her that he wasn’t either.

Her lungs were already burning, and the cut on her eye from Rudd’s plate armor was only getting worse. The ones on her cheek, stomach, and arm weren’t doing any better. Still, planter her feet to take another exchange. One after another, until she went down, or he gave out. Hopefully Pip would figure it out soon enough.

A glance behind her to Pip told her that she had. The horned girl was finally making her way to Catherine and would hopefully make it before long.

Two more exchanges, with another missing tooth joining the pile and a three more hits of her own meeting Rudd, and Pip was in range. She felt Pip’s connection to her shadow in the same way that she did her apostle when it activated, and the comparison sickened her. She hated that feeling with every fiber of her being, but she needed what it would give her.

A part of her shadow started coalescing into a spike as Pip dodged out of the way of Theo and Catherine sent another kick at Rudd to keep him from attacking her squishy friend. Her shadowed weapon completed and Catherine took a brutal kick to her side as she rolled to collect it.

With a laugh she brought up her new found weapon to shoulder height and leveled it at the man in front of her. She finally saw a hint of nerves in the man’s eyes as she flourished the blade in front of her, which brought a tight grin to her face. It was time to payback all of the punishment that she had been receiving up to that point.

Rudd tried forming his own dagger of gold, but if wouldn’t do him any good. Her dagger was made from her own shadow, and had every single bit as much power as her peak Bone apostle would dictate. The fight would end one way or another very, very soon.

________

Rudd frowned at the approaching woman. No one would guess it seeing her curly brown hair, or her freckled cheeks, but she was a monster. She was the only woman that he had ever met that could stand and fight against him for any decent length of time, and by the sounds of the jubilant crowd, it was theirs too.

Every single strike he threw, no matter how strong it was or how bloody and bruised she got, she’d just take it and throw out another of her own. No. Matter. What. He had no clue how she was continuing. If it weren’t for his gold body keeping him together, Rudd would have given in twenty minutes ago when she crushed his damn temple.

Instead, he was facing down a gap-toothed monster in hand to hand combat.

As he sent another shot to her abdomen, she winced and sent an uppercut right at his chin. His teeth and jaw crunched with a blinding pain, and for the 100th time in the fight, he wondered if he shouldn’t just give in and let it all be over. The madwoman spat out another tooth with some blood, and the crowd went ballistic. He couldn’t blame them. part of him wanted to scream right alongside them. He hadn’t seen anyone this damn stubborn since that kid with the crystals and his girlfriend.

Another exchange, another crushed knee and skull. Another reformation. More blood from the woman, more shouting from the crowd. She was an animal. She was fucking smiling at him. Who in the briny deep could even manage to smile with all of those injuries? How was she even standing?

The other girl, the purple one with the horns, Pip, finally brought him a reprieve. If he managed to take her out quickly, then not even Catherine would be able to fight both of them at once. At least, he hoped she wouldn’t. He wasn’t so sure after this. If she could stay standing with all that he had done to her, who was to say she couldn’t take a little more?

He leapt at the purple girl when she got close, but was somehow rebuffed by his opponent. How she managed to close the distance and kick him was beyond him, but it sent him sprawling far enough that the purple girl was out of range. Damn. It would mean that he had to somehow break off from the damn animal long enough to take out her friend, all without letting her take out his brother. Still, so long as nothing changed, he and Theo would still continue to edge the odds further and further into their favor. One painful, aching exchange at a time.

Only, that was not the case. Catherine pulled a dark, shifting dagger from behind her, leveling it at him. Rudd frowned at her, and finally realized this fight was not going the way he thought it would. The way Catherine smiled at him, he figured she knew that from the start.

Part of him practically stood in awe at the tenacity of the girl. To stand across from a foe that could shrug off any shot she could could send and pretend it never happened. Undaunted. He knew as he looked at her that he could never do that. He was tired. The phantom aches from a million different injuries just pulled him further and further from peak condition. All Rudd wanted was to step away and lie down.

Catherine stood as tall and strong as if the fight had just begun. She was a monolith where he was a man. There was no winning this.

The woman outclassed him as a hand-to-hand fighter enough that he hadn’t even bothered to wield a weapon, betting that she would be even better and more used to fighting against a weapon. As he faced her down as she artfully wielded her dagger, he realized she was just excellent with or without a weapon.

Each strike of his met dagger or bracer, and he just didn’t have the gold to form a weapon long enough to counter it. He was countered and parried again and again, slashed and cut for his first permanent damage of the fight.

He did his best to duck and bob out of the way, but she was a terror with a dagger and a monster that he just couldn’t overtake. She cut him apart with every exchange and finally, as yet another cut bit into his thigh, he realized he simply couldn’t rise again.

The girl looked down and sent a smile his way before a thunderous kick sent his consciousness into a deep, dark black.

_________

Theo swung with wild abandon as the godsdammed briny woman in front of him dodged his thousandth strike. With each miss he grew wilder, hit less, and screamed more. The laughter of the crow watching sent his flesh red until he felt a vein pop out of his neck, before finally he heard a change in the crowd.

A deafening scream tore him from the target of his anger as he turned to see the mousey girl fall. To face his older brother meant death, and he was salivating to see the girl meet it. Only, that isn’t what he saw. Instead, his mouth went dry and he froze in lockstep.

Catherine stood over his fallen brother, arms raised in victory, teeth missing and blooding. The adulations of the crowd washed over him like a cold wave, biting at his courage and letting the sneaky girl punch him in the helm, rocking his head forward and dodging his counterstrike. He switched his attention back to his opponent, flailing another few blows at her before a slow, plodding cadence brought his attention to the approach of Catherine.

Theo knew he still had a chance. He saw the state of Catherine after her bout with Rudd, and he knew she would be on her last legs. So long as he could just wrap his hands around the throat of the slippery little fucker that kept running away from him. Then, he could turn against Catherine and finish the job his brother started. It would work. He knew it would, just so long as he could catch that damn girl.

The slow, consistent arrival of Catherine’s steps was nearly maddening. The approach rose his nerves to a new height, even with his burning lungs and accumulated exhaustion. Each. Step. Bringing. Death. Closer.

He redoubled his chase, faster, faster. He just needed to-

Steel wrapped around his throat as an immovable vice wrapped around his neck. The skin and bones of his neck deformed, and he nearly laughed as his gold body rendered her attempt to strangle him moot. And then the grip around his throat shrunk. Crushing. She was crushing his windpipe.

Bit by bit Catherine brought the might of a vice around his throat without ever turning him to face her. He tried wheezing out a surrender, but his crushed windpipe didn’t allow it. His eyes felt they would explode out of his head, his brain felt squished against his skull. He was dying - Oh Gods he was dying, she was killing him.

The blackness of his vision clouded his consciousness with the overwhelming knowledge that he was going to die in that arena.

____________

As Catherine’s grip finally went slack over the scrawny neck of the man in her hand, she fell to her right knee next to his unconscious form. A raspy breath left her as the crowd rose to their feet with shouts about the “sentinel”.

Pip laid down next to her as the healers rushed to their opponents.

“Thank you for your timely intervention, Catherine. I fear I was just about out of steam,” the horned girl said between deep breaths. Catherine barely heard her over the enthusiastic applause of ten thousand people. Catherine smiled at the noise. A genuine, full smile for the first time in what seemed like a thousand years.

Not the smile she showed to the world to tell it she was ok. Or the one that she used to let Pip know she was ok. It was the smile she used as a girl, when everything seemed so much simpler.

She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, and fell from her knee onto her aching stomach, before a healer managed to reach her and start putting teeth back into her empty gums.

“Damn good work, Kid. That was one hell of a briny show if I’ve ever seen one,” the older man said, and Catherine couldn’t help but agree. It was one of the best fights she had ever fought. She didn’t think even an arena of ten million could have made her fell as victorious as she did right then and there.

The crowd refused to let up as she started a painful, aching cackle, which Pip joined.

Eventually, the healer left them feeling better, teeth intact, and spry as the day they were born. Earth-ranked healers really were a gift from the Gods.

They were leaving to throw themselves onto their wooden beds when a short man approached them with a spry walk and a wide smile.