I bounded to my feet.

The slowness of my movements alerted me to the fact that, at some point since the beast had hit me, I had either relinquished POWER or exhausted it. Good. Either way, it meant there would be some scrap left or some scrap recharged.

I pounded up the slope, sword drawn.

I would christen myself in the fiend’s ichor today. I would seize the chance, not have it thrust upon me. My mind flashed to the knights I had overheard, wishing for Lance to be their Sword, to "put the city in good hands."

My chest burned with rage. I would show them.

Chowwick leapt away from the creature as I approached. Like the demon, Chowwick was another creature far too big to be so graceful. He turned to me, and his helm dipped in a nod of acknowledgment. I would show him too.

But most of all, it was time to show myself what I could do. The time for treading lightly was over. The time for fear was over. I had become a god, something greater than mortal, and it was time to impose my will.

The fiend had been facing Chowwick, but it turned at my approach and roared. The roar did nothing to dissuade me from plunging forward. Even as I felt the vibration of the deafening sound, I charged on. It did nothing to scathe my vigor.

A memory flashed in my mind. My mother. One of those faint, nearly dream-like memories of her. Sitting at our rickety little table, a sharp knife in her hands. She held a whole chicken. Had I helped her pluck it? I felt like that had been my job—to pluck the birds. Too small to use the knife, I was still fascinated when she broke the bird into pieces.

That was the flash in my mind. She would bend the joints, cut through the connective tissues and not the bones. Cartilage yielded easily, tendons and sinews did nothing to slow her blade at all. I could see her now, the knife flicking at the skin where the thigh met the body of the bird. The skin sprang away as she cut, loosening the joint. Then her small, strong hand pushed the thigh from the body, folding it out, exposing the threads that were weaker than bone. And then…

The beast hesitated. Its face, hard to read with its twisted hate and deformity, seemed to hold an expression of doubt. But I swear, it felt a difference in me as I reached it. It… it hesitated. Recoiled even.

That was the moment I brought POWER to bear. My visor blazed, and the sluggishness vanished. My body became many times stronger, many times faster than it had been a moment before.

I leapt at it. It tried to defend itself, but it couldn’t have predicted how I would move. I landed on its defensive forearm and thrust a POWER-strengthened arm against its chest, pushing with my feet. The fiend’s forelimb yielded, and the shoulder opened.

Just like the chicken thigh…

CUT blazed. I exalted in the power I felt. Just like my mother’s knife, my blade found sinews and tendons easier than bone. It snagged briefly on the thick, rubbery cartilage, but only for a moment. With a savage jerk and a bestial scream, I cut through. Ichor and blood erupted from the wound, coating me. And in that moment, I exalted in that as well.

The forelimb fell from the creature as it writhed and twisted. As it did, the forearm beneath my feet went with it.

I slipped to the ground. I must have been a gruesome figure then, with only the shining metallic edges of my armor visible through the foul blackness of the blood that coated me.

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The fiend flailed, its mobility badly compromised. I darted forward beneath the remaining forelimb that supported its weight and kicked, putting all the strength of POWER behind the blow. The limb snapped out, the joint opened wide, and again my blade flashed. It was more of a hatcheting than swordplay. Once, then twice, I hacked up through the armpit, and once more there was the spray. The blood of the fiend was fetid, stinking like rotten pig’s blood. But it was glorious too.

I barely noticed "CUT 5.0" flashing across my HUD.

The second limb fell to the ground, and the fiend collapsed forward onto its chest. I danced aside. I wasted no time. The fight might have been as good as won, but I couldn’t determine how much POWER remained.

I was on its back in a moment. It wriggled helplessly, like a man bound in rope. My blade went high above my head, pointed downwards, in front of and parallel to my chest. I paused for just a moment like that.

The men below could see me clearly—the fiend slayer, the gore-coated god. I wanted them to see me, to understand that it was their greatest fortune to have me as their Sword. Chowwick watched from a little ways off, his helm peeled back to show his face, a thin smile of satisfaction crossing his lips.

My blade came down, and I buried it to the hilt in the back of the thing’s head, even as POWER flickered out from my visor.

A new graphic passed in front of my HUD.

"Level: 8" flashed before me. The 8 blinked away, and a 9 came to take its place.

***

"That was a proper show!" Chowwick bellowed, his arm draped around my shoulder, paying no mind to the foul black stickiness spreading from my suit to his as he did.

"I thought I’d put you up to too much there for a mite! Thought I’d need to pull you out of it! Ah! But you put it together! And a damn fine job too. Those shitheels down there won’t forget it for a while!"

We had walked much of the way down the slope, and I doubted very much that his ever-booming words had failed to reach the ears of "those shitheels down below."

I was giddy. Elated. At the task I had completed, at the camaraderie of my teammate.

"I leveled as well!" I said.

Chowwick threw his head back and laughed at the sky. "What does that make you now, lad?"

"My CUT went from a 4 to a 5! And my real level, my actual level just hit 9!"

"A nine!" he roared with unfettered glee. "A nine? Our rookie is a 9? I never imagined it! They never come out of the arena so high! I sure as hell didn’t! A nine!"

He turned his head and stared into my face. His eyes twinkled as he said more softly, "A nine… just one more till level ten then…"

"Is... ten special?" I asked.

He boomed, "Of course ten is special! Did your tutors teach you nothing?"

I said, "They taught me how to win the suit, not how to wear it… Father didn’t want me wasting time on elements that would come after winning the suit… my training was a little more protracted than most."

I remembered the hard year of making my body strong enough to train at all. Father’s constant urging, his obvious disappointment when I slowed or failed, the scraps of love when I pushed on.

Chowwick said, "When an attribute reaches each ten mark, you’ll gain new options, new sub-attributes. Ten, twenty, thirty… so on. The same for the levels, lad. You’ll get a new skill or power. It’ll be something to have a rookie Sword with new skills so soon after the Choosing!"

My mind reeled. My tutors had told me nothing of this, but there had been little time in my training to focus on anything but making my body strong, my skills sharp. New skills. I thought back, a little guiltily, to how I had reveled in the showers of blood from the wounds I opened in the fiend. It wasn’t the gore I had cherished. It had been the power. Ever since I donned the suit, the power of it had become a never-sated obsession of mine.

The thought that there was more to come only fed my giddiness.

Suddenly, the voice was in my ear.

“What’s that all over… yeuch… oh, that’s really horrible.”

I thought to it, So you’re back?

"Back?" it said. "I was always here."

I said, "I called to you."

It replied, "What? Oh, never mind that, we need to talk."