He’d given me his weapon.

My opponent had dropped the chain in order to slash at me with his stinger, giving me full control of it. I yanked the other end of the chain away from him, then flicked it at his feet. I only was able to wrap the end around his left ankle, which he twisted, so that he was stepping on the chain with his caught foot and stepped on more of the length with his right as he knelt low so he could free himself.

I moved back in, throwing my end of the chain at his face. He rolled to his right, but as soon as he took his eyes off of me, I slammed the blade of my sword into the floor. I wasn’t able to bury more than the tip into the floor, but that was enough to deny him the slack that he had thought he’d have. His whole body stretched out across the floor like a dog was still running when they hit the end of their leash.

I caught his left arm as he tried to roll over to face me and punched him in the gut with my right fist. His hide was just as tough as I’d thought, but with his arm in my hand, I started weakening him, making his entire body more pliable.

He pushed his right arm and tail against the floor to try to stand, but a quick kick to the chest had him trying to scoot away from me.

I hooked my right leg behind his and sat on his hips, forcing him onto his back. I could see the surprise in his eyes at how strong I was. It hadn’t clicked yet that part of my strength was his and that he was also getting weaker.

“You’re done.” My opponent gritted his teeth as he struggled to push my arms back. I had him by each of his wrists and was slowly forcing his arms to his sides.

A stinger from either elbow jammed into each of my thighs. Triumph was in his eyes as he started to gloat, but nothing but a little frost escaped his lips.

The ice that had started to grow on my legs was nothing more than a coin sized spot around where each stinger had stabbed me. Instead of those spots growing, spots in identical places on the Naledzar’s legs had ice crawling over his skin.

I wanted to grab my head because it felt like I’d drank a slush way too fast. My teeth were starting to chatter as the cold slowly spread through me on its way back into the Naledzar.

I dropped his hands and grabbed the place where the stingers were attached to me, holding them in place, so he couldn’t withdraw them. He tried to buck me off of him and started clawing at my arms, but the lines of red that he drew closed over almost as fast as he made them, only to be replaced by lines of black on his arms.

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It wouldn’t have been difficult to have just let him sting me from the beginning, but as soon as he realized that I was a Singiver, he would have retracted the stingers and tried to kill me without letting me touch him. I still would have won, but that would have been a long beatdown until I could have got him into a hold. This way was much faster, though probably a lot more painful.

The crowd was screaming, though it was hard to tell how much of it was cheering, how much was booing, and how much of it was people simply excited to see someone die.

The Naledzar’s arms fell to the sides of my legs as he stopped breathing. I pulled the stingers out and continued to move the frozen damage into the other man’s body until my powers stopped working on him. I couldn’t move wounds onto a dead body, as convenient as that would be.

I stood up and rubbed my thighs. I was still cold and it would probably be smart to see a healer or at least get something to counteract whatever poison was still in my system. I picked up the sword that my opponent had knocked over and with a quick slash, cut the head off the popsicle on the ground. I turned to face the crowd.

“He took a bounty to kill me.” I pointed the blade at the headless ice statue. “Anyone else want to join him?”

There were whispers and murmuring within the crowd, but no one stepped up. I walked over to the open cage door where the yellow Goblin from earlier was straightening his suit to try to not look nervous.

“I’m Kwish Highlow.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold coins. “This is your share of the winnings.”

I looked at the seven of them gold coins. Most of what I dealt with was silver and copper coins. Until this trip, where Alessa had given me five gold coins to spend on all three of us, I’d never had more than a gold coin on me at any given time. There was simply no need for me to carry around that much. Yet this Golbin was handling the money like it was birdseed.

“You also have someone that wishes to speak with you.” He took a step back so that the way out of the cage was clear.

“Where?” I pocketed the coins. I’d have to add them to the bag that was back with Starna. Maybe buy her something nice before I went back. I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to approve of my method of getting the Naledzar to back off. While the group of assassins might not like that I killed one of their operatives, I’d just displayed how risky it would be for them to try to continue to cash in on the bounty. Hopefully, I had shown them that it wouldn’t be worth it. In any event, I doubted any freelancers would try anything any time soon.

“Right this way.” The short yellow man ducked his head and took off towards the stairs.

I wasn’t sure who wanted to talk to me, but I hoped it was someone who wanted to call off the bounty. While I was a little weak, I doubted that I was going to be walking into another fight, so I did my best not to limp as I followed after the Goblin.