The crowd roared their approval at Ferris's acceptance of the duel. Miles lowered the compound wall again, and erected three walls to make a twenty by twenty box that jutted out into the clearing—leaving the compound side open. The Urchin was led inside and had her blindfold stripped away. Ferris followed her in, and they both stood at opposite sides of the arena. Everyone made their way to the open side and Miles raised them all up with the final wall, locking the two threaders inside.
Caruso sat atop the wall next to Kumiko. ‘Why would Ferris agree to this? What if he loses?’
Kumiko chuckled, ‘Clearly you haven’t seen Ferris fight before.’
Kumiko didn’t seem concerned, nor did anyone else, but the look in the Urchin’s eyes put Caruso on edge. She stood down in the arena, her back to the right-hand wall, looking like a pissed-off and cornered animal. Caruso knew nothing of her skill, only that she had nothing to lose. Against the opposite wall stood Ferris, with the confidence of a predator toying with its prey.
‘Let me make it clear,’ Ferris announced. ‘If I am defeated, this woman shall have both her life and freedom.’ He turned to his opponent. ‘Anything to add?’
‘Fuck yourself,’ the Urchin spat on the ground.
‘Very, well. Miles, do the honours.’
Miles summoned a tall wall to cut the arena down the middle, separating the two fighters.
Caruso looked at Kumiko confused.
‘This is the proper way to start a duel,’ she explained. ‘The fight begins when it’s lowered. It gives them a minute to strategize, get into position, and prepare in private. It also builds suspense.’
‘So, are there any rules?’
‘No rules, except of course to stay in the arena. How they fight is up to them.’
‘How does a duel of threaders usually go down? Will they try to strangle each other?’ Caruso remembered Ferris’s harsh threading demonstration in the woods.
‘Strangle? Nah, way too slow. If you have someone by the neck, you can just as easily gouge a thread through their nose or ear into their brain, and end them instantly.’
Caruso squirmed uncomfortably at the image.
‘Remember,’ Kumiko continued. ‘Threaders have a max range of ten paces, once in range it just becomes a race to bind and gouge the other. But there are little tricks a skilled threader can employ to extend their range.’
‘Like what?’
‘See what the Urchin is doing now?’
The Urchin below was summoning threads that looped into a lasso. She let the completed ones fall back to the ground while she prepared more.
‘She can fling one of those lassos across the arena using the thread's own momentum. Because of the sliding noose, she can still tighten it if the loop is out of range. And since this is a knife-less fight, if she were to snag a limb or two, there would normally be no way for the opponent to free themselves.’
‘Normally?’
‘Well this is Ferris. The only person that comes close to his skill level would be Orange.’
‘Orange? Really?’
‘Don’t let his demeanor fool you, I could talk all day about the things I’ve seen him do with threads.’
The dividing wall lowered slowly. The Foresters shouted down calls of encouragement.
‘You’re going to die, bitch!’ Kactus called out.
The Urchin erected two of her pre-made lassos, they rose like a pair of charmed snakes and circled at the tips so the loops stayed open, spinning faster and faster until the rope blurred and hummed.
Ferris, on the other side, did nothing.
Caruso studied the ground around him, but saw no sign of any threads.
‘What’s he doing?’ he asked Kumiko.
‘You can’t see it? Look at the wall behind him.’
Sure enough, four thick threads had emerged at the top of the wall, but dropped out of sight behind it. It didn’t take long to see what they were for.
When the divider sank all the way down, the red Urchin’s lassos flew towards Ferris, far quicker than a human could’ve tossed them. Ferris did two things at once. First, he shot a thread from the ground through both the incoming loops, binding them harmlessly to the ground. And secondly, one of the thick wall-mounted threads flicked forward. The length of thread behind the wall began to unspool and unroll up and over the wall, far longer than Caruso had thought. While the thread was thick at the base, it tapered down to a thin single-root width at its tip. A wave rolled through the length as it shot forward towards the Urchin.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Many cowherds back in Bob used whips; no one used them as weapons. But Caruso had never seen a whip this long, nor heard one this loud. The crack made him jump and set his ears ringing. The Urchin could only throw her arms in front of her face, earning her a bloody bracelet.
But Ferris wasn’t done. As the first whip recoiled back behind the wall, the second fired, and the third, and the fourth, followed again by the first. Before long there was a constant barrage of deafening cracks. Each one found its mark. The Urchin’s clothes became bloodied tatters, and her face didn’t fare much better. She did the only thing that made sense: she charged at Ferris, straight down the center of the arena. Caruso understood her plan; she was no match for Ferris at range, her only hope was to close the gap and force the fight to a conclusion.
Caruso gripped the wall tighter, his heart beat faster. Kumiko was watching with a similar intensity; she hadn’t said a word in the past thirty seconds. All the other Foresters yelled as one. Caruso heard Blue’s shrill cheers, and Kactus’s deeper yells, it was all unintelligible, but Caruso added his voice to the mix all the same. It wasn’t that he was excited to see the Urchin killed, more that he wanted Ferris to survive.
Ferris’s whips continued cracking down on the advancing Urchin, Caruso flinched with each one. The Urchin blocked her face with her arms, but the whipping threads licked around, finding unguarded flesh, and ripping it asunder. Despite the punishment, she continued.
When she finally came within ten paces of Ferris, things did not play out the way Caruso had expected. The Urchin, instead of continuing her straight path, began hopping around randomly, light-footed, avoiding the threads that reached to grab her feet. Caruso guessed she was also countering them with her own threads as they snarled and tangled together like coupling snakes on the ground below her.
And still Ferris barely moved, he remained stoic, almost casually amused. No threads appeared at his feet to attempt to bind him. The Urchin was utterly outmatched. The crowd loved this, they laughed at the bloody Urchin’s manic dance, and when she finally gave up on her approach and retreated back to her wall, everyone applauded and laughed as if the fight was already won.
One of the Urchin’s old forgotten threads swelled up from the ground and sent a quick tall wave rolling down its length, across the ground towards Ferris. The man looked slowly about his feet. The waveform branched off into two, circling around a large loop which Ferris stood in the center of.
Many in the crowd gasped. The thread tautened before Ferris could make any attempt to escape the lasso—his legs were binded together. From the silence in the crowd, Caruso figured everyone was realizing the same thing. The Urchin had bested Ferris. Her earlier charge was a diversion, she must’ve used it to set the loop in place.
And the Urchin wasn’t done. The thread kept tightening, locking Ferris’s legs together and digging into his flesh. He tried to steady himself with a couple of quick summoned threads to hold. But the Urchin had already sent more lassos his way. She could barely see for the blood sheeting from the multiple lacerations on her head, but each lasso was slung with perfect precision. Ferris’s attempt to block them was clumsier than before. He soon lost his balance and fell. A loop floated down and tightened around his neck.
The Urchin was safely out of range. While this meant she couldn't gouge him, Ferris would still suffocate within the minute. He had no knife, he no longer bothered with his whips, there was no way to escape.
Caruso looked down the row of Foresters, wondering if someone would intervene. Surely we can’t just let her kill him? It might be dishonorable, but who cares? She was just an urchin. But nobody moved to help, and the silence continued. Even Kactus remained quiet. Kumiko studied the scene with a thoughtful expression. Does she think Ferris can still win?
A lone thread emerged before Ferris. It rose a few feet straight up, then kinked off to the side. The kink began to spin around like a windmill, speeding up until it made a slow pulsing whirring sound—similar to the sound of Ferris’s bullroarer. The droning whir steadily increased in pitch until it became a continuous scream. The thread itself was a barely perceptible blur. Ferris lowered the windmill down to kiss the taut threads that binded him. His single spinning cord cut through the Urchin’s threads with more ease than a sharp knife would have.
The Urchin stared wide-eyed at what Ferris had done, a mixture of fear and awe.
Kumiko leaned in, ‘In case you’re wondering, this is not something normal threaders can do.’ Her mouth slid up into a satisfied grin. ‘Look at her, she is beginning to understand just how outmatched she is.’
Ferris stood up smoothly, discarding the slack loops around his legs and neck. He threw a quick knowing grin at his audience before locking eyes with the Urchin and slowly walked towards her, his screaming windmill advancing ahead of him. The predator toying with its prey had returned.
The Urchin scurried into a corner, she flung lassos as Ferris stalked closer, but his windmill shredded them instantly. The crowd had once more come alive, riled up into a blood frenzy like before. And Caruso was swept away with them. His worry and panic from moments ago had fallen away. He cheered with the crowd: he cheered for Ferris’s imminent victory, and he cheered for the Urchin’s defeat.
If the Urchin screamed it couldn’t be heard over the vicious shriek of spinning threads. Ferris kept out of range and let his windmill close the gap. The whirring blur lengthened, got wider, keeping the Urchin in her corner. It cut first through the walls either side of the blood drenched woman, shredding the mycelium as if it were cotton. She made a pathetic attempt to flee upwards, hoisting herself with threads summoned from atop the walls. But the windmill found her first. As easily as it sliced through the thick mycelium, the windmill simply eviscerated her and splattered the surrounding walls thickly with her gore.
It was over. Ferris had won. He turned to the crowd, his deep brown skin glistened with the Urchin’s blood, and he raised a solitary fist in the air.
Caruso felt a surge of jubilation, similar to how he felt when he watched Webber dispatch the Vandelier brothers. But somehow, this felt more intense. Maybe it was the crowds energy, or maybe it was the indomitable display of strength he’d just witnessed. For this was a strength that he was now a part of—it filled him up, washed through him like a drug. Any uncertaintities, fears, or weaknesses were nothing compared to this. He raised his fist with the others and joined in the chanting of Ferris's name.