Vayra’s fight had started in the morning, and she had to sit through a slew of other fights before Glade’s began at sunset. There were still about thirty fights to get through in this round, but given multiple days, it didn’t seem like such an outlandish proposal.

At least they were on the first day of the round, and it’d give them plenty of time to investigate Karmion’s ship afterward.

She just had to get through the day, sitting up in the viewing gallery of King Tallerion’s tower while icing her strained muscles and back—from resisting the pressure Kelos had placed on her.

She stood at the brink of the overlook, leaning on the railing with one arm while using her mechanical hand to hold the brick of ice. (It had been from a tray of drinks served to the most esteemed guests in the higher rings of the arena’s audience, but she’d snagged it on her way up to the tower.) Her mechanical fingers didn’t sting from the cold, so it was perfect for holding ice.

Right after her fight, the lapin woman from the party at the Grand Continental Inn fought her next opponent. Ameena?

‘Yes, Ameena,’ Phasoné confirmed.

She planted her staff in the ground like she was stabbing a giant beast, then used it as a platform to launch high kicks off of. Portable high ground. But her true power came from her ability to…unheal.

According to Glade, she had healing abilities. She could transfer Arcara and stimulate someone’s flesh, telling it to knit back together, but when she landed a strike with a kick, she could also do the opposite. She left swathes of bruises and scraped away flesh, and almost a light rot, even from glancing blows.

But the higher they climbed, the stronger the opponents were. She won her first round, lost the second, and won the third, just barely scraping out a victory against a half-dwarven man with a heavy warhammer and the ability to manipulate gunpowder.

A few fights later, Myrrir arrived for his fight. He pummelled an elven woman with a flurry of blows, cold and brutal as ever, until he forced her into submission twice in a row. She surrendered, and they parted both times.

The second time, Myrrir tried to bow to the woman in respect, but she was already walking away.

“Could be performative,” Vayra whispered. “He knows we’re watching.”

‘If he was telling the truth about Karmion’s weapon, what will you do then?’ Phasoné asked.

“It depends how close he was to the truth.”

Phasoné scoffed inside Vayra’s head. ‘I see. You haven’t made up your mind.’

“You didn’t need to ask me to determine that.”

Glade glanced at her curiously, but then one of the palace guards summoned him for his next fight, and with a nod, he backed away. He wouldn’t enter the arena right away; he’d wait one more round, given a chance to prepare and get in place.

In the meantime, the current contestants—the fighters after Myrrir and the elf—entered the arena.

Larra marched out into the arena, wearing her coat, but no cloak, and carrying her three-part staff as a bunched-up lump instead of activating it.

‘She’s a Commodore now, too,’ Phasoné said.

“Indeed…” Vayra whispered. She shifted the block of ice around to her lower back and directed more Arcara to the site of the strain, healing her body faster. “Let’s see what we’re up against, then.”

Larra’s opponent approached from the other side of the arena. He was a wood-wielder, one of Vallor’s children, and what looked to be a set of seven training sabers floated behind him. Sawdust swirled on their edges, and their hilts had been carved like the hull of a longboat. He tilted his hat toward Larra, then spoke. When Vayra strained her ears, she thought she picked up a simple acknowledgement: “Cousin.”

“Cousin?” Vayra asked.

‘The big three of the High Pantheon—Karmion, Brannûl, and Vallor—are all brothers and sisters, by blood,’ Phasoné explained. ‘The others ascended through their different lineages, and replaced old Gods and Goddesses who perished. At this point, their bloodlines are so different that they don’t resemble their original member of the Pantheon at all.’

Vayra nodded slowly, then turned her attention back to the fight. A trumpet blared, and immediately, Larra held up a hand, like she was lifting something off the ground. Something heavy.

In her spiritual sight, Vayra picked up swirls of Arcara brimming on Larra’s fingertips, much brighter than any other energy around.

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Her opponent, announced by Karmion as Dane-Lee, moved forward like he was trying to run through thigh-deep water. Larra held back his blood, slowing him and making each step he took twice as strenuous.

But she’d done that before, and to Dane-Lee’s credit, he resisted—or pushed through—better than Vayra thought he would. And his swords, disconnected from his body, whirled behind him. They flared out in all directions and shot toward Larra, harassing her from a distance without even needing to close the ground.

She deflected them all with her staff, but they kept swirling about, poking and slashing. One cut through the shoulder of her coat and drew a spatter of blood.

She just kept moving. She clenched her fist, snatching up an invisible object, then threw Dane-Lee to the ground without touching him. Another of his swords ripped through her leg, drawing a spatter of blood, but she redirected it into a whip, controlling it effortlessly, like it was no different than any other water.

“She’s…she’s better with free-flowing blood,” Vayra commented. “If she can see it, she can control it. Otherwise, it’s like she’s trying to just manipulate a giant boulder.”

‘Visualization is important for your abilities,’ Phasoné commented. ‘You work better when you can see what you’re doing with the starlight. Same goes for her when it comes to blood.’

“So don’t bleed…” Vayra breathed. “Easier said than done.”

‘Never said it’d be easy.’ Phasone paused for a few seconds, then added, ‘Karmion wouldn’t have us fight her last. She’s lost to us once, and he won’t trust her. At least, not enough to let everything rest on her shoulders.’

“So we’ll face her sooner than later?” Vayra swallowed. “Not much of a reassurance.”

They watched the rest of the match in silence. Larra’s opponent fought up to the very end, manipulating his swords while keeping his chin high. The longer the battle went, the more he bled. Some of his veins ruptured, bruising him. When his arm turned a sickly brown-purple, it started working against him, dragging him back and away and trying to pin him.

He never gave up, not even in his final moments, when a vessel in his neck ruptured from the inside, blood blasting outward like a knife. His head lolled to the side, and he collapsed on the spot.

Vayra shut her eyes and turned away from the sight. “We need to practice the internal Warding more.”

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

The guards dragged away Dane-Lee’s body, and within moments, the next fight began—Glade against another man. He was humanoid, but he had bone-white skin and ridges along his bald head, like perfectly straight wrinkles, except vertical. They culminated in braided tendrils that ran all the way down his back.

Vayra was pretty sure he only had two natural arms, like all humans, but he hunched over under the weight of two extra arm-shaped limbs sprouting from his back. They were like her own mechanical arm, and shaped exactly like arms, except they had no wooden panelling on their exterior. Just wooden bone, starsteel wires, string tendons, and the odd armour plate where they needed protection.

In each of his hands, he held a straight saber. Lightning and electricity crackled along their thin, silver blades.

“Well…” Vayra breathed. “Four swords against one? Two, with the swordwyrm. They’re picking opponents they think will be strong against him, too.”

Phasoné snorted. ‘If they think they’ll defeat an Order of Balance swordsman with someone who isn’t a sword-Path user, they’re sorely mistaken.’

“He’s a God-heir,” Vayra said. “Glade’s only…what, twenty? Twenty one? I’d bet his opponent is at least five times as old. Experience has to count for something when it comes to swords.”

‘We’ll see. Remember what I said about God-heirs, though. Their experience is overrated.’

The start trumpet blared, and Glade’s opponent (named Nekarme), flourished his swords at his side, whipping up four gyres of white lightning. He pointed one blade over his shoulder with a mechanical arm and fired a bolt of lightning at Glade.

Glade jumped aside and rolled, then sprang back up and dove into the fight. He pointed his sword high and lunged, then set a chain of quick swipes upon his foe. Vayra couldn’t track them; they were moving too fast. She caught every third or fourth movement. He always found a way to use up two of his opponent’s swords, while styling light on his feet and dancing around to the other side, then slipping back out of the way. The swordwyrm occupied another limb, and if the fourth saber ever drew close to Glade, he knocked it aside with a blast of metal filings.

Bolts of lightning seared down from the empty air above, and the God-heir drew power from a contained sphere of cloud hovering on the left side of the arena—enough to fuel the heir’s abilities and keep the fight fair.

But from the outside, it didn’t look fair. Glade crushed his opponent in a half minute, breaking through his defensive sword guards and navigating close enough to place his own blade up against the man’s neck.

When the second round began, Nekarme attacked more aggressively right from the start, exposing his additional, mechanical limbs. Glade slit the strings and sliced through their starsteel wires in a few quick slashes, disabling the limbs, then knocked the swords out of the God-heir’s grip. With a final, powerful swipe, he struck his opponent with the flat of his blade and sent him skidding back across the arena.

Nekarme stood up, panting and disarmed, and bowed out immediately.

“I wasn’t going to bet against him,” Vayra whispered. “But I wasn’t expecting it to be that fast.”

‘Glade has focussed on learning the sword, and just the sword, for every waking hour of his life…for at least the past ten years, if not longer. Do you think a God-heir ever put in as much rigorous practice and effort?’

“I…” Vayra shook her head. “Even if he did, he’d have split his attention between that and advancing his magic.”

‘Exactly.’

“But if we can figure that out, then so can Karmion.”

‘That means we have him right where we want him. He’s too focussed on you that he won’t panic about Glade—until it’s too late.’

Vayra chewed her bottom lip. A blessing in disguise, perhaps, but she still had to make it through the tournament.

And, speaking of Karmion, they had a boat to stalk.