I held the shaper a moment longer before letting him fall. Smoke hissed, small flame chomping at his clothes. That was it? I kicked the body, but it didn’t move. That was who was left? Hell, why couldn’t they all have been that easy?
I raised my head to the sea of spectators who watched from on high. Huge screens dotted the lip of the enclosed city, showing me standing above the last of my victims. I turned in circles, arms thrust up to the sky, and let out a mighty scream. I had made it through alive. Alive and rich beyond my wildest dreams. The winner of the Azar Arena was given five hundred million qet, more than enough for a dozen lifetimes. No more bodyguard jobs, no more back-alley bruising, no more killings…well, ’cept for fun.
I smiled big at the crowds, before looking again at the crumpled man. Not much of a shaper. Hell, not much of anything.
“How in the Core you get so far?”
It was then that I noticed the blades, glittering bright on the ground. They were slim and delicate, alike as fesriitwins. I deactivated the lectro gauntlet and reached down to pick up the closest.
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The sound of movement stopped me, and I looked up to see the shaper rising. His skin had sloughed off in patches, leaving a strange, blackened skeleton showing.
“Ironic,” said the dead man.
I clicked my lectro gauntlet back on, rising from my crouch. “What is?”
The smile he gave me was gruesome. “I just saved your life.”
I sprang to attack, but my fists slammed into an invisible barrier. I backed off a step. “How you figure?”
He titled his head, and my legs swept out, landing me on the ground beside one of the blades. He smiled again. “Pick that up and you’ll see.”
I didn’t bother. I was done out in the open. I twisted, ripping a hole in space with one hand and yanking myself through it with the other.
I was suddenly in a world of burning skies and mirror stone earth. The air was heavy, and it seemed to take forever to stand and stumble forward. I could see shadows of buildings from my plane, and a thin outline of the shaper. He held still as if waiting for me to come back. Part of his brain must have melted if he thought he could stop me like that. I moved until I was near on top of him, and then ripped back through.
My fists only had to travel a few inches to connect, but somehow he was ready, grinding my body to a halt with his mind. His remaining eye looked amused as I struggled against his will.
“So you can mension walk,” he said. “You could have been a shaper. But now you are nothing.”
I looked—
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