Chapter 129

I didn’t even have time to react. Lance seized the opportunity, and his booted foot shot out, slamming into my gut with a speed nearly impossible to track. The air rushed from my lungs for the second time, and my feet left the boards. I smashed into the wreckage of the upper tiers, feeling the heat building around me. It didn’t burn, but I felt it wash over me, accompanied by ash and smoke erupting as I struck the irregular but painfully solid debris.

The voice spoke, You flubbed it, Tiberius. You had the chance, and you hesitated. Why? Because you had empathy for him? Because you felt what he felt? There won’t be time for that when you’re a Griidlord fighting other Griidlords.

In that moment, with Lance advancing, his visor blazing with POWER, I couldn’t imagine a reality where I was a Griidlord.

Lance paused, unwilling to charge into the smoke. His visor dimmed, the light extinguished—not from exhaustion, but conservation. He had learned from his last mistake. But now he had other options. He leveled his sword at me, and panic surged through my veins as I realized what he was about to do. The light of BEAM raced up the length of his blade. I rolled off the platform, dropping to the tier below. The fourth tier, maybe?

I cried out in agony as I hit the boards, every part of my body screaming. My wrist throbbed with searing pain, broken or twisted. My torso ached fiercely, my lungs fighting for air through the pain of bruised ribs and the smoke I had inhaled.

Coughing and groaning, I forced myself upright. Tears of fear and frustration burned at the corners of my eyes behind the visor. I stood as straight as I could, trying to focus enough to activate HEARING, to detect where Lance was.

But I was too late. He was on me before I even sensed him. I didn’t see the attack, didn’t prepare. I didn’t even pulse SHIELD. His CUT exploded against me, and agony ripped through my entire body. I was tossed like a rag doll, my body skipping down the tiers like a stone across water.

Unlike Lance, I had no composure to anchor myself with a well-placed CUT. I tumbled helplessly from one tier to the next, each impact shattering the boards beneath me. Every landing sent fresh waves of pain coursing through my body.

I rolled awkwardly on my wrist, unable to stop the momentum. I flew off another edge, landing hard on my wrist again, and a sharp cry escaped me.

My head hit the next tier, a terrible blow to the same spot that had only recently recovered from a concussion in the last round.

I hit the floor of the next tier like a cannonball, crashing hard on my side. I felt the sharp crack of a rib—or maybe a few—as I smashed into the boards. Timber popped and splintered around me, and my momentum finally began to slow.

Despite my desperate efforts to stop, my body flopped down once more, landing on the last tier. I hit squarely on my chest, and my already struggling lungs lost what little air they had left. The suffocation was immediate. I rolled onto my back, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. It felt like a giant had placed his foot on my chest, pressing down. Each breath was an insurmountable task, like lifting a weight far beyond my strength. With every ounce of willpower, I forced my burning chest to draw breath. Finally, I inhaled.

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My head swam, and I felt dazed, unable to orient myself. I realized that my back was pressed against the boards, but my shoulder and left arm were hanging over the edge, suspended in space. Turning my head, I saw the arena floor—just ten or twelve feet below me. I lay on the brink of the last tier, my body broken. The voice had been right. I had squandered my last chance.

It reminded me of that, its words bursting into my mind, bitter and sharp. "I did everything I possibly could, Tiberius. This saddens me so. I know you don’t always trust my words or my feelings, but I want you to know, this truly brings me sadness. We could have been great together."

Above me, I saw Lance leaping down from the top. He had paused, perhaps long enough to savor my fall, caught in the spectacle. Maybe he had hoped—or even expected—that I would tumble all the way to the arena floor.

I had seconds.

There was no way I could fight him like this, not in this state, even if he didn’t have POWER.

But the voice was wrong. It had said there was only one path to victory.

How had it explained it? To flex my bones? Wasn’t that it? To increase BEAM, I had to flex my sword like a muscle. For SHIELD, it was flexing my skin, as if it were voluntary. But the last... the last had been to flex the power coursing through my bones. That was it. I gave myself over to the practice.

And I could feel it—what the voice had been talking about. It was just like the strange awareness I had gained of my sword when I learned BEAM. I felt something pulsing through my bones, like my entire skeleton had become a muscle, or a massive nerve, alive with energy. I focused on it, abandoning everything else. I lay there, struggling to breathe, but giving all I had to the sensation.

Lance landed lightly by my feet.

He looked down at me. His visor was not alight. Even now, he was holding back, saving his strength for any last trick. He must have been able to taste victory.

But he extended me the same courtesy I had given him. He stood, cautious but ready, his sword leveled, and spoke. "You can yield, shopkeeper. You don’t have to sacrifice your body... any more than you already have."

I was barely aware of him. I just kept flexing, kept pushing that something down through my bones to a place I couldn’t quite identify.

Lance seemed to hesitate. Maybe he was waiting for Mario or the bishop to declare the match over, to grant him the mercy of victory without further bloodshed. But no such voice came.

I vaguely remember Lance gathering himself as he stared down at me. It probably wasn’t that hard for him. He hated me. He always had. I knew it from the start—the commoner who dared to challenge his betters, the shopkeeper who reached for the mantle of Griidlord. But as his jaw clenched and his mouth tightened, other feelings pulsed through him. Hatred for the gifts I had, gifts he could only dream of. Hatred for the humiliation I had delivered to him, time and again.

Lance was a winner. Lance was a practical man.

He raised his sword above his head. He had made his choice: if I had to die for him to win the honor and glory of being the Sword, then so be it.

His sword blazed with the light of CUT. His visor lit up with the brilliance of his stolen POWER.

The blow arced down toward my head, and still I just pushed.