Chapter 133

The descent of reality was beginning to fall on me. It was like a curtain or a sheet dropping over my head, consuming me. I struggled for a moment to breathe. My lungs caught for a second, hitching as I realized what had just happened. Then the air flowed in—a ragged, elated fluttering breath. My neck became elastic, my knees and abdomen threatened to quit their jobs, and I staggered slightly.

The entire crowd was silent for that moment. Lance lay in the dust. His legs kicked and twisted as he absorbed the pain of the moment. And there must have been pain. He would certainly have felt physical hurt from the fall to the floor. But more than that, the dust he felt between his grasping, clenching fingers was the dust of defeat.

I raised my head, and my SIGHT showed me the faces of the crowd. Even among the thousands, I could see the faces I most wanted to see. Katya and Lauren stood together. My heart bloomed at the expression of untempered joy on their faces. They had chosen me as their favorite, over Lance, despite the prescriptions of class. Despite the faint bitterness that still lingered, my affection for them only grew as I felt their happiness for my success.

Harold was there. He wasn’t pressed to the railings, caught in the throng jostling for the best view. The older man stood back against a wall, still composed and reserved, but with my enhanced vision, I thought I could just, just barely, perceive shining streaks running down his cheeks.

The seconds of silence stretched. The crowd was almost holding its breath, absorbing what had happened. But no announcement had come.

I looked to the platform where the bishop stood. Mario was beside him. Balthazar stood like a statue of solidity off to the side. And, to my pleasure, Lord Morningstar of Indianapolis was there as well. None of the Boston Griidlords were present. I had no doubt Balthazar had negotiated with them to work double time, clearing their schedules for one to become available to join me in my expedition. But Morningstar had made it. Maybe he had come to see what became of me, maybe he wanted to revel and feast like the rest of the crowd, or maybe he had been here on a mission, escorting a convoy, and the stars had aligned for him to catch the show. Whatever the case, it only served to lift me further to have one of my heroes here to witness this moment.

Balthazar was nearly unreadable, his lips just barely curling in the hint of a smile. But Mario and the bishop were open books. Here was the source of the long delay in the announcement.

Their faces were perfect mirrors of each other—ashen and gray. Despite the eyes of the crowd, despite their usual composure, their jaws gaped. They had known of Lance’s relic. They may have conspired to provide it to him. Today’s outcome had been utterly preordained to them. To be standing here now, staring at me as I stood in total victory, was beyond what their imaginations could have conjured. And the icing on the cake was that I was now their Sword. My status suddenly ranked far above Mario, perhaps even above the bishop’s. I was about to be declared the Sword of Boston.

And through it all, a voice blubbered and sobbed. A male voice, tinged with the ramblings of madness. His babbling rose up as the arena gasped at what I had done. "Oh god... the fiend, please, won’t you listen. Please... please... someone, you have to listen..."

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The bishop finally realized that the eyes of the crowd were shifting from me to him—expectant eyes. He gathered himself, found his composure, and spoke, his voice booming from the extremities of the arena.

"Match! All hail—" Despite it all, there was a moment where the bishop had to reconcile this new reality, even to himself. Then he finished, striving, but somewhat failing, to muster total enthusiasm, "The new Sword of Boston, Tiberius!"

And the crowd exploded. They might not have quite reached the level of madness they had achieved during the most tense moments of the fight, but madness was still the word to describe them.

I was just as lost. I felt the excitement rising through me like a volcano. A lifetime's worth of weight seemed to fall from me. Concerns for my father, reservations about the voice—all of it fell away as I let the elation of this moment consume me. I raised my fists high in the air and bellowed in victory. The air streaming out of me, the sound, carried away an eternity of struggle. Inadequacy, worry, anxiety, dread—all fled my body in a torrent as I screamed back at the crowd. My body was its own, my fists punched the air, my sword blazed with light as my arms swung.

This was it. For so long, my world had revolved around the unlikely task of standing here in this moment. Now that it had passed, I felt a lightness and freedom that hadn't existed in my life since my oldest, most fractious memories.

I don’t know what the signal was, but the suits seemed to know it was my time. The suit around Lance started to dissolve. At first, it was horrific—like watching flesh slough from an immolated corpse. But then it was beautiful, like magic, the suit melting into a stream of particulate wonder, black flecked with electric purples, flowing like a river toward me.

I could feel the suit around me becoming more complete with each passing second. From the moment that stream of mystorium touched me, it was as though I had been connected to God’s umbilical, and the nourishment of the heavens, the essence of reality, was pooling around me and inside me.

All was perfect.

For a few more seconds.

A motor hummed down one of the tunnels that led to the arena floor. Order had been set high for the duration of the contest, allowing the speakers to function. Already, the view screens were lighting up to show the highlights of the match. The motor I was hearing was probably from a truck coming to extinguish the growing pyre that the tiered platform was rapidly becoming.

Then the top tier erupted. I felt the vibration through my feet as the piled broken beams from before tumbled down the side of the platform. The entire structure shook and shifted. I very nearly lost my footing.

The voice was in my ear, "Tiberius, you haven’t turned your POWER off. You’re wasting it. Conserve it, boy, you’re going to need it."

I started to say, "Why would I—"

But the answer to my unfinished question came smashing through the top of the platform. It must have emerged from the shaft that led down to the arena basement. Huge steel claws gripped the timber, crushing it effortlessly as they found purchase for the beast that trailed behind them.

The dark and thickening smoke of the pyre partly obscured the thing that emerged, but it was massive—that much was clear. The weakened structure beneath it creaked and groaned as the monstrous shape dragged and poured itself from the shaft.

Its ponderous motion suggested a lumbering beast. But it wasted no time in defying that lie. Without hesitation, I saw it rotate toward me and then launch itself down, tons of meat and metal streaking through the air with the lightness of a pouncing cat.