Once Kayden calmed down, she decided against revealing to Cassius what exactly happened. If she had him step in whenever she was in trouble then she would never learn to take care of anything on her own. And she would never be able to avenge her father.
At first Cassius was angry. It wasn’t in his nature to let an offense like this pass. It was Kayden that pointed out that she knew the risks when she signed up for this. Still, now that the initiates knew about her shadow dagger, it had grown exponentially more dangerous.
“I won’t give up,” Kayden said. “This is my chance to show them that I’m not some Uptowner. Would you run away in my position?”
They had moved to sit on her bed, and Cassius watched her. His initial anger had vanished, only calculation remained.
“Okay,” he said.
Kayden was surprised, she had expected him to put up more of a struggle.
“It is your decision,” he said, reading her expression. “You may stay. However, it is strictly prohibited to attack another initiate. They must be made an example of.”
“Don’t,” Kayden said. “If you do that, then it is me they will blame. It will only make things worse. The only way to keep them away from me is to prove I deserve to be here with the rest of them.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?”
“I’m going to spar against the one who attacked me. When I beat him, they will have to admit that I belong here.”
Cassius nodded thoughtfully. “But can you beat him?”
“Yes,” she answered. She made a mistake before. She misread her opponent. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. “I can beat him.”
*****
The next day Kayden made sure to keep as far away from Spax as possible, but it seemed that word of her possessing a shadow dagger had spread.
Surprisingly, this news did not spark the outrage she expected. There were certainly still many antagonistic people who held that bloodthirsty look in their eyes, but there were also some who the news seemed to make more friendly toward her.
She first noticed it when she was going about her early morning chores, preparing for breakfast. An initiate nodded to her as she passed. This was the most reaction she had received from most of them.
Launi was on breakfast duty and she went to him for an explanation as more people gave her approving remarks. One of them she even recognized from the group tormenting her last night. He explained that her possession proved that she wasn’t an Uptowner. No respectable Uptowner would hold such a weapon.
And only the most legendary of Cliffside criminals had such an item in their possession. For a lot of the initiates, they could finally understand why she had been allowed to enter Nikiphero. They like the idea of having someone who wielded a shadow dagger on their team.
On top of all that, she had gained some respect with all the duties forced on her shoulders. Apparently, some of the initiates had taken notice of her resolve and begun remarking how her treatment wasn’t fair. This was the first she was hearing of it, but that wasn’t surprising since nobody really spoke to her.
“You are living up to the Wreckage’s name,” Launi said. “You’ll have to show me that shadow dagger sometime.” He turned back to his duties when Corsin yelled at him.
Her conversation with Launi lightened her spirits somewhat. A part of her had been expecting that she would have to fend off wave after wave of greedy initiates who were after her shadow dagger.
However, she wasn’t naive enough to believe that they would side with her if it came down to a confrontation between her and Spax. She still had work to do if she wanted to solidify her place here. That opportunity would come tonight.
Her anticipation grew the closer it came to evening. Between meals, she focused on meditation to prepare. She couldn’t allow her nerves to cause her to make a mistake like last night.
Her face was still heavily bruised up from Spax punching her, but not enough to interfere with her ability to see. She found that by meditating and concentrating on manipulating her aura to the areas in the most pain that it soothed them, and even caused the bruising to fade somewhat.
This illustrated the level of growth she had developed in her aura manipulation. She still had a hard time strengthening her legs the way she did her arms, but she could do it enough that it could aid her a small amount in the fight.
She wouldn’t be able to fight Spax head on. His exoskeleton gave him too much strength for her aura to handle. So she would have to rely on what Cassius had taught her, avoiding being struck.
For all intents and purposes this would be like a knife fight. If one blow landed on her, it would be enough to take her out of commission.
She couldn’t say the same for Spax. She could pack a punch when she concentrated all of her aura on her fists, but Spax would be able to deflect anything she threw at him with his exoskeleton.
There were two ways she could get past that. One was to force her way through. With enough blows, even the strongest defense would break. And Spax by no means had the strongest defense. However, each second the fight was prolonged decreased Kayden’s chances of coming out on top. Even if he didn’t have the strongest defense, it would still take her time to break through.
The other way was to find a chink in his armor. Luckily, this would be simple enough because the exoskeleton was primarily focused on enhancing the strength of the one using it, not in being an all encompassing defense.
Spax would have to concentrate on the area’s he wanted to defend and extend his exoskeleton over them. Kayden’s strategy would have to consist of striking him before he couldn’t defend himself.
With all of this in mind, Kayden exited her closet after the evening meal and made her way to the gym. She was in the process of gathering up discarded shirts and towels when Cassius made his entrance with Rem and a few other full-fledged members of Nikiphero.
His gaze swept across the initiates as they all came to rapt attention at his unexpected arrival. His gaze did not pause on Kayden.
Bog rushed forward to greet him, but Cassius waved him to silence before he could speak.
“With the tournament approaching, I want to see how the initiates have progressed. We will be holding some informal sparring matches,” Cassius announced.
This elicited excited chatter among the initiates, who liked any chance they could to show off in front of the boss.
While Bog organized the sparring matches, picking out the most worthy of the candidates, Kayden went up to him.
“I want to fight,” she said.
“Go away girl, can’t you see I’m busy?” he said.
She stepped in front of him, blocking his path. He glared down at her.
Then she said loud enough so that everyone could hear, “I challenge Spax to a sparring match.”
This drew everyone’s attention onto her. Then onto Spax as they waited for his response.
He laughed it off. “I don’t have time to waste sparring a little Uptown alley cat. What will that prove?”
The other initiates laughed along with him, but Kayden summoned her dagger in response. The cloud of darkness silenced everyone as she held it up.
“If you beat me, you can have this.”
This was a huge risk. Despite what she had said to Cassius, she wasn’t sure she could win. But this raised the stakes. It meant she had to win.
But beyond that, it would show how serious she was to everyone else. It was a statement. If she was worthy to hold the dagger then she would beat Spax and no one could deny her claim.
“Deal,” Spax said instantly. He would be crazy if he didn’t.
All eyes turned to Cassius where he had taken a seat with his retinue on the bleachers. He nodded.
Kayden felt her heart thrum. There was no going back now. Did she really believe she could beat Spax?
She had come so far and faced so much. She may not have grown up on the streets like the other initiates, but she had faced her share of combat in the last few months. She had put her life on the line and came out on the other side alive and fighting. Spax was nothing compared to that.
It was time for her to start fighting back. She couldn’t be the girl who cried any more. She couldn’t go running into Cassius’s arms every time she got scared. He wasn’t her father. Her father was dead and gone. There was no one to protect her anymore. She would protect herself.
Since the fight was approved, the rest of the skirmishes were finalized and it was determined that Kayden’s fight would be held last.
As the first of the fights commenced she couldn’t help glancing over at Spax. He was watching her like a hungry predator. When he saw her looking, he smiled and blew her a kiss.
She immediately looked away in disgust and heard his laughter in response. White hot anger rose within her. It surprised her how ferocious it was, but it was the culmination of all of the abuse she had suffered. And it would end now.
Spax thought she wouldn’t put up a fight. He thought he was going to take her shadow dagger from her. But she wouldn’t allow it.
It had found its way into her hands for a reason. She had chosen it out of all the other focuses she could have taken.
She had regretted it when it happened, like she had made a wrong choice. But Uptown had conditioned her to feel that way.
She now knew better. She knew that there was nothing wrong with her. The dagger was hers, not Spax’s. And this fight wouldn’t just cement her place within Nikiphero, it would be the moment Kayden became what she was so scared of becoming; a killer.
It was there within her, a black spot. She had denied its existence. She had run from it. Uptown had taught her to fear it. Her father had taught her to fear it. He had tried to lead her down another path. And she knew it was for good reasons.
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She didn’t want to be a killer. She wished there was another way. But if there ever had been a different path available to her, it had been taken from her on the night her father was murdered in front of her.
Nobody would give her justice. The people who were supposed to, were the source of all the injustice in her life. It was time to stop running and time to start fighting.
Her eyes almost unconsciously searched out Cassius. He was already looking at her, not paying attention to the fight taking place. His face was set in his usual practiced neutral expression.
She wondered what he was thinking. Was he surprised she had put so much on the line? Was he disappointed that she had turned into a blubbering baby in his arms last night? Was he excited to see how his training would translate to an actual fight?
He bowed his head slightly to her then turned his attention back to the sparring. But that small acknowledgement said enough. It said that he was confident in her ability.
Her confidence soared in response, and she couldn’t help a slight smile tug at her lips. Then she saw Spax still watching her from across the sparring ring.
His eyes flickered between her and Cassius. He had seen the entire exchange and his lips were tight, lips flared in anger.
When he met Kayden’s eyes there was pure hatred burning brightly in them. It was an expression she had never experienced in its entirety before. Sure there were instances of it during one of the many dangerous conflicts she had been part of, but never had it been so personal before. Never had it been directly focused on her.
Her smile vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. She set her eyes grimly on Spax’s. She would not let him intimidate her.
They leveled their gazes on each other, neither breaking. Then Spax raised his hand and ran the nail of his thumb across his throat.
The message was clear, their match was about more than the dagger now. Spax was going to use her to make a statement.
But that was okay, she was going to use him for the exact same purpose.
She chose to turn away from him then. She needed to take this chance to concentrate and still her emotions before the fight. Her mind needed to be clear. Emotions played an important rule in a fight, but not if they ran out of control.
So she turned to her extensive training with meditation. There wasn’t an opportunity to sit cross legged, so she had to settle for simple breathing exercises.
With each exhalation she concentrated on forcing out all the doubt, self-pity, and fear. She held onto the anger. She would need that. She concentrated on that anger, condensed it within herself until it was like a white-hot coal.
It invigorated her like a steam-powered engine, churning her gears into action.
She pictured how she would beat Spax. He would be overconfident because of how their fight the night before had gone. She would take advantage of that.
It crystallized in her mind, a vision of her victory.
Of course, she also thought about contingencies in case it did not go according to plan.
Schemes upon schemes just like Cassius had taught her. If one thing failed, it would be a stepping stone for something else.
So even as she crystallized one plan in her mind, she crystallized another, and another.
She found herself relaxing, falling into the familiar deep serenity that came with meditation. Usually it took her a long time to get to this state, but this time she fell into it almost immediately.
It was as if her senses were completely in tune with her surroundings. She could feel her heartbeat, the air coming in through her nose and out through her mouth, the smell of sweat and iron, the thudding sounds of fists and feet pounding against flesh as opponents fought in the ring, every subtle shift of motion from the various spectators. It all fed into Kayden’s mind, she felt at once connected and disconnected from it like she was viewing it through a lens in slow motion.
“Kayden!”
The last fight had come to an end. Bog had entered the ring and called her name. The crowd parted for her as she entered the ring and stood before Bog.
“Spax!”
Spax was already walking up. He stood on the other side of Bog from her, looking down at her with that same vicious glare.
“You know the rules, fight until one of you is knocked out or taps out. Are you ready?”
Spax growled. Kayden nodded.
“Then get to your side of the ring.”
Spax backed up to one side of the ring, already raising fists and bouncing on his heels in anticipation. He rolled his shoulders and stretched out his neck as he smiled.
Kayden backed up to her side, feeling all the eyes on her. She set her stance wide and raised her fists up to her face.
“Begin!”
Spax bound forward just as Kayden was drawing in a breath. It caught in her throat as Spax swept at her with lightning speed, a ferocious light in his eyes. He didn’t just want to end the fight quickly, he wanted to leave an impression.
This time she didn’t try to block his blow. His exoskeleton was just too much more powerful than her imbuement.
She ducked under it, attempting her first path to victory, and drove her fist toward his stomach. It connected. Spax had put everything behind that attack and left himself completely open in the process.
The breath whooshed out of him. Kayden moved on to the next phase of the plan by driving her fist toward Spax’s chin. Anyone struck like that would be sent reeling, and Kayden hoped she would be able to claim victory before he recovered. But she never got that far.
As her fist drove toward Spax, he grinned. Before she could pull back, his aura came up to deflect her blow. It still rocked his head back, but not enough to do any damage.
To her aura sense she could see lights flash as the two auras came into conflict.
It was a trap. Spax had let himself get hit by her attack to draw her in. She should have expected he could be devious. That was Nikiphero’s number one strategy.
She attempted to pull back and reformulate into a new plan, but Spax reached out and grabbed her, spinning her around and wrapping his arm around her throat.
She struggled to free herself, but he was too strong. She couldn’t breathe and her vision blackened.
He spun her around, facing the crowd. “You see! She doesn’t belong here! She isn’t one of us!” He came to a stop, staring at Cassius. “I will take that dagger out of the hands of an Uptowner as a prize for Cliffside and Nikiphero!”
Kayden met Cassius’s eyes even as her consciousness faded. He wore no expression.
A part of her cried out for help, but she couldn’t breathe. Even if she could, she knew Cassius wouldn’t interfere--couldn’t.
She had challenged Spax and offered up her dagger. This was her fight. If he put an end to it now, Kayden would never learn to fight for herself. She would never be considered a part of Nikiphero.
She gritted her teeth and forced herself into that meditative battle trance she had learned from Cassius, a combination of the emptying out she learned from gate magic and the crystallization of her intent. All the plans and formulations came to mind.
Cassius’s face remained stoic, but his gaze bored into hers. Was she a fighter or not?
Channeling more of her aura, instead of imbuing her arms as was natural for her, she spread it all throughout her body.
It was hard, especially with being choked while doing it, and a lot of her power was lost in the process, but she felt it take hold, if only for a moment.
It coursed through her, making her vision snap back into focus for an instant. Time seemed to dilate, and her awareness to expand.
It was a strange sensation. Not something she had intended or expected to happen. This was her first true full body imbuement after all. It must have been a product of having all of her nerves and muscles so thoroughly energized, including her mind. She had to capitalize on it before she lost control.
Having her aura spread out like this made her even weaker than before, because it wasn’t concentrated in a single place, but she didn’t need her strength for this next part.
Acutely aware of every movement Spax made, the next time he took a step, instead of trying to force herself free, she wrapped her legs around his and at the same time drove her fist up into his chin.
Just as before, the blow didn’t accomplish much, but she didn’t need it to. It was enough to rock his balance which her legs were already interrupting.
He plummeted to the ground, his grip loosening enough for Kayden to pull free and get a gasp of air.
They both hit the ground and Kayden rolled away, rising to her feet with her fists raised still dragging in lung fulls of blessed air. Sweat dripped from her brow.
Spax was quick to spring back to his feet. The attack hadn’t done much damage to him, but rage engulfed his whole being as if she had just insulted him in front of everyone.
“You think you can be one of us?” he asked so only she could hear. “I’ll show you what a real killer looks like. Cassius will acknowledge me, not you.”
He launched into a vicious attack, but Kayden was ready. With her enhanced senses, it was almost easy to weave through his attacks.
In her mind it almost played out like a game of tag. She couldn’t let herself get touched, although in this case the consequences would be much worse.
Each time she dodged a blow, she would find an opening in Spax’s defense and attack it.
Even in the midst of his rage induced assault, his exoskeleton still reacted with surprising speed and accuracy, deflecting her blows. Flashes of light lit up her aura sense at the sight. Some of them even lighting up in the visible spectrum.
Speed and her small frame were her advantage.
She felt that familiar sensation she got after sparring with Cassius over an extended amount of time. As if there was something within her spurring her on, pushing herself beyond her limits.
She had envisioned how she would defeat Spax, made plans inside of plans. But when she tried to envision them, she found that her reaction slowed.
Having envisioned the plans ahead of time helped, but trying to keep them all in mind made her second guess herself. She couldn’t afford that right now.
Her body knew the plans, and had trained for them when sparring with Cassius. This was the time for her to rely on her instinct.
Once she had reached that point, she broke through another layer of her limitations, and soon Spax was struggling to keep up.
His exoskeleton wasn’t as quick to deflect her, and her blows began to land. He concentrated his defense on his most vital areas, but that left him with less to defend his other areas, and even though she was weaker then if all her power was concentrated in her arms, she was still supernaturally strong.
Without his exoskeleton to deflect the blows, they hit him like a hammer. That was an advantage to her form of body enhancement. She didn’t have to concentrate her defense on specific areas.
But she could feel her full body imbuement slipping. She had to end this now.
She slammed a fist into his gut because she couldn’t get to his solar plexus. His abs were hard, but not hard enough that her blow didn’t hurt.
He winced, and that was enough for her to slam her foot into his knee, sending him stumbling as his knee was almost knocked out of its socket by the force.
He forced himself to stay upright, but for the first time in their fight there was genuine pain and worry on his face. All traces of anger were gone as he panted for breath after their rapid exchange of blows.
Kayden fell back into her defensive position, struggling to find breath herself.
“That--that dagger is mine!” His aura flared as he channeled the last of his reserves. He pulled all the energy from his defense.
It congregated into his arms. The energy was so intense that it could be seen with the naked eye. It was an impressive display of power, even for someone with years more training than Spax. His aura extended out from his hands like blades.
“I’ll pry it from your lifeless corpse!”
There were shouts from the crowd of onlookers. Spax had moved past nonlethal methods. Even people with weak aura senses would be able to tell that.
But they were all too far away to interfere before Spax could deal a killing blow.
But Kayden had already won. She knew it, and Cassius knew it as he sat calmly watching her in the midst of the anxious spectators.
It was something they had discussed when sparring. How to gauge when a victory was assured and when it was uncertain.
“When you come up against an opponent that is of equal or greater strength than you,” he said, “Then the battle is not just here.” He grabbed her hand and forced it into a fist. “Or here.” He pushed a finger against her forehead. He moved his finger down so it was pointing at her chest, her heart. “It is here. Your will is how you win. Your intent. Break your opponents will and your victory is assured.”
“But,” he cautioned. “A broken opponent is unpredictable. They may overextend themself and begin making mistakes, but they won’t act rationally. You must remain cautious and observant. Let your opponent defeat themself. Don’t let them drag you down with them. A broken opponent is when they are at their most deadliest. For themself as well as for you.”
As people leapt to interfere and put an end to the fight--Launi was the first among them--Spax leapt toward her with a burst of power from his aura.
He flew through the air, his exoskeletal blades extended out in front of him, a murderous look twisting his face. It would have been frightening if it wasn’t so pathetic.
For the first time that Kayden could recall, she felt completely empowered and in control. At this moment, everything was in her favor, going how she intended.
There was none of the constant doubt and fear that seemed to plague her. The self-consciousness and feeling of being out of place was gone. This was who she was. She was a fighter.
She ducked beneath Spax’s blades as he came at her through the air. He tried to twist and swing his blades downward, but she pirouetted expertly, and in the same motion, she blasted upward.
She released her full body imbuement at the same time and concentrated all her aura into her fist.
Just as Spax passed overhead, slashing at empty air where she had been standing, she flew upward and slammed her fist into his completely unprotected chin. The force launched him through the air; blood, spittle, and teeth, flying free from his mouth.
He hit the ground a few feet away, unmoving. His aura blades dissolved without his concentration keeping them up.
Everyone came to a stunned halt. Cassius’s voice rang out in the silence. “Kayden is the victor. Get that scum out of here. He is no longer one of us.”