Sam
Pain.
Sam was one huge, sentient bruise—a raw nerve exposed to the air.
She was lying down. There were lights shining down on her, so bright. The rain was coming down harder, pattering on her face. Out of all the overlapping hurts that covered her from head to toe, the one pulsing in her chest was insisting upon itself the most.
Gotta get up.
That was an impossible task. She was done. Completely done. She’d been done before she even got in the ring.
But somehow, she found her body moving. Slowly, slowly, she began to crank herself into a sitting position using only her abdominal muscles, closed fist still raised above her head. Why had she done that, again? She couldn’t quite remember.
Sam was still blinking shadows out of her vision when she caught a silhouette move in right on top of her. A fist collided with her face, and the world became all fire, and the ground dropped away beneath her.
She spun, spun, spun in a crazy carnival ride circuit, stomach lurching. Then she was all numb, everything black, nothing around her, and for a single moment of horror she thought she was dead. Then she blinked, and saw blurry smears of light. She was forced to breathe through her mouth, nostrils all clogged.
Again, she willed her body to move. As soon as she stirred, all the pain dropped back onto her in a raging flood, telling her to stay the fuck down. Sam wrenched up, up, up, every fraction of an inch seeming an excruciating distance.
Then she was sitting, hot blood pouring down over her mouth and chin. Another hit took her on the side of the head, sending her sideways, but she caught herself with her free hand, teeth gritted with the strain of supporting her own weight.
Hand raised, Sam got one wobbly foot beneath her even as blows rained down on her, each one hitting like a battering ram. Then, suddenly, she was standing up, sick with the rolling, topsy-turvy lurch of the ground beneath her.
Her vision was all out of focus, vague and choppy, but she would never mistake the dark shape of her enemy, contrasted against a field of dirty yellow.
She took one step toward him, then a second. That was all her plan had boiled down to. Just take one more step, then one more after that, repeated ad nauseum.
* * *
Henke
Why wasn’t that bitch dead yet?
Henke backed away as she shambled toward him, a smoking mess of blood and bruises. It looked as though each heavy step had to be her last, that she would give up and die any second, but she just… didn’t.
It shouldn’t have been possible. No matter how many points that dumb bitch had put into Toughness, or how many ranks she had in one stupid Laborer passive or another, his Devil’s Eye was stronger. She should have been full of holes by now, her guts out on her sand. But his ring had only left scorched, bloody welts on her. And she still had those terrible, steel-hard, blood-shot eyes on him.
His hand was stiff with hurt from punching what felt like a brick wall over and over again, and he was breathing heavy with the strain of it. The wounds he’d thought the Physicians had fixed were making themselves known again, joints and muscles throbbing all over.
He’d never used the Devil’s Eye so many times in one night—by now it was running on fumes, output dropping.
All right, the fans have gotten their money’s worth. I need to finish this quickly while I’ve still got some juice left.
Henke took his time, dancing just out of the Laborer’s range as he set up for a finishing blow. It was not difficult to find an opening when she made no attempt to block any of his attacks, and was too slow to retaliate, but he still made sure not to rush things. Precision was better than speed, after all, and if he missed this shot, he wasn’t sure how many more he would get.
She lurched forward, and he moved in to meet her, feinting with his right, then swapping the ring to his left with Soul Summoning and throwing a sharp left hook that caught her clean on the chin. The resulting explosion knocked her jaws together with a satisfying crunch of shattered teeth, and her head whipped sideways, droplets flying from her damp hair.
[At this point, so much rotational force is put into Sam’s head, with her chin as the fulcrum, that her brain bounces off the inside of her skull.]
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[This causes an immediate shutdown of mental activity, like a light switch being flicked off. It is a purely autonomous response that no amount of willpower can resist.
[It is for this reason professional fighters fear taking hard blows to the chin. A knockout caused by such a blow signals an immediate end to any fight.]
[However…]
[Sam refuses to acknowledge the very concept of failure.]
[Even when her body is broken and her brain has shut off, her spirit continues to march forward, a feat of strength made possible by her Tenacious passive.]
Sam Darling staggered several steps to the side, teetering on one leg, and Henke felt a surge of relief as she began to topple over, her raised arm wavering. But then, with speed she hadn’t shown once since the start of the fight, she threw a leg out, somehow balancing herself out in a wide, wobbly stance.
And that fucking fist was still up.
Wrapped up in mute disbelief, it was only when she had taken two steps toward her that Henke realized he should be backing up, but he found his feet unreasonably heavy, leaden and unresponsive, and he could only shuffle half-heartedly.
Coming right up to him, walking him down, Darling spat bloody tooth chips in his face and smiled a broken grin, eyes wide and crazy.
For perhaps the first time in his two lives, Henke experienced true terror.
Desperate and backed up against the wall behind him, he drew the knife he’d hidden in the folds of his clothing.
* * *
Sam
Sam moved through a liquid haze of half-formed shapes. The world around her was unreal, imaginary; an abstract suggestion. The only thing that existed was the man in front of her. She could not see him, but she knew he was there.
Her enemy.
Something came at her fast, a vague ruffle in the indecipherable quilt of colors that made up her vision. In response, a bolt of lightning went up from her feet and shot out of every orifice in her body, filling her with such power that it made her gasp.
[In this moment, Sam brushes against something deep; something elemental.]
[In this moment, she glimpses the archetypal essence of a true warrior. She acts on pure instinct, beyond thought or reason.]
[And for the duration of this one moment, she becomes infinite.]
All at once, the world snapped into place with painful clarity, so sharp that she could have counted every grain of sand inside the ring. Everything moved so very slowly, trapped in a sea of molasses. Sam looked up at the crowds lining the top of the raised walls, squinting through the limelights, saw people with shouting mouths frozen wide, others suspended in the air mid-leap, some simply staring. All the noise of a thousand people blended together into a loud, bassy rumble that rattled inside her bones.
She turned her attention back to her opponent. Henke the Hero. He crept toward her with a mad fury twisting his features as he leveraged the glinting point of a knife toward her, no more than a foot from her chest.
He looked so small.
Sam knew that it was time. Somehow, she was the only one moving at normal speed as she rolled her right arm, her fist bursting with white-hot power, and buried it in the soft part of Henke’s stomach. There was a long, surreal pause where nothing happened, all the noise dropping away to give way for a tranquil silence.
[Valor surge.]
With an explosion that scattered white lightning arcs all over, Henke went flying, ragdolling through the air.
He hit the back wall so hard he bounced off it. Anticipating his trajectory, Sam dropped low, then hoisted herself into a one-armed handstand as he came back toward her. She planted both feet into his side, completely shifting his trajectory as she sent him sailing straight up.
He flew so high that he smashed into the viewing cube that floated overhead, and it shattered into a thousand glassy shards that flickered with sliding images.
There was still a tether of arcing power that connected her to Henke, a rope linking their souls together. Without ever touching it with her hands, Sam yanked on it, knowing exactly how to do it despite having no idea what exactly she was doing.
[Surge reversal.]
Sam was pulled out of her handstand, going up as Henke rubber-banded back toward the ground. She severed the tether as they passed each other in the air, her opponent slamming face-first into the ground while she soared, weightless, passing a gawking Golden Boy as she crested her arc some thirty feet up, tipping like a high jump athlete until she was feet-first.
Sam hurtled toward her opponent with all the weight and certainty of a tombstone, arms crossed over her chest, feet blazing.
She collided with Henke’s back, bending his body like a twig.
The world exploded; brilliant white.
It was over. Henke lay motionless beneath her.
[Surge end.]
[Result:]
[Eight broken ribs, five fractured vertebrae, shattered collarbone, dislocated left shoulder, fractured left orbital, broken nose, torn right bicep, severe electrical burns, severe concussion, and involuntary bowel evacuation.]
[Status:]
[Alive. Technically.]
“You don’t deserve your title,” Sam said as she stepped off her opponent, white static still tickling her skin. “I’ll be taking it off your hands.”
She simply stood, thoughtful, waiting for something but not quite sure what it was.
The horn’s mournful cry broke the thick silence, sounding one last time.
And the very next moment, a shock went through Sam’s body. All that strength fled her muscles in and instant, and she fell flat on her face.
[Congratulations! You have reached Level 6!]
That’s nice…
[Sam Darling wins.]