Nax breathed in the air of the arena, letting the familiar cheers flow through his ears, down to his stomach, and back up with his breathing. Despite the endless fights he'd had, none of them had prepared him for watching Lume's.

Inside the ring, everything was as clear as Tuwallo's shallows. Here, standing on the outside looking in, he could go mad.

Lume wasn't ready. He knew that and so did she. This was her last fight before the break that preceded her bout with a Lithium, and Verrin had pulled out all the stops. They'd stacked her up against the fighter who'd ranked second the whole time Nax had been champion, and there was a reason the man had held the title for years.

Uol Mattus was an excellent fighter. Huge, strong as a thunder ape, deceptively quick for his size, and his lineage meant he was tougher than any two fighters combined. All things that would give any ordinary fighter pause.

But the real threat was his mind. Uol's knowledge rivaled even Seph's on technique, training regimens, and fight strategy. Nax had watched countless fighters enter the ring with what they thought was a brute and find themselves outmaneuvered before they could blink. The gray-tinted giant of a man dissected his opponents with methodical precision, using his bulk as both a deterrent and a weapon.

His style was uncomfortably similar to Nax's own.

They had started calling Uol 'The Conductor.' Nax didn't much like the name, but he had to admit it fit. Uol's fights looked like he was dancing to a tune only he could hear.

And now Lume was standing across from him.

She looked determined, though he dwarfed her. He had nearly a hundred pounds on Lume, and none useless weight. Her only advantage was that she was quicker than the man, though by a slimmer margin than Nax would prefer. They'd gone over her plan the evening before.

"You want me to stay in his range, and not stay in his range?" Lume had asked.

"Yes," he replied.

Seph had sighed. "You need to be in or out. Uol will punish you if he can outrange you, which is all the time. You have two options: stay inside and negate the reach advantage but risk grappling, or stay outside and pepper him with kicks."

"You want me to grapple with a man twice my size," Lume said incredulously.

"No," Nax replied. "I want you to come inside when he thinks you want to be outside and do the same the other way. Give him what he expects, and then flip the table. Uol knows how I fight, and he'll be expecting you to do the same. It's what you've done up until now. Playing the opponent's game and beating them at it is what I do, and it's what he'll expect. We don't want to play the game. We want to flip the board."

He knew Seph would like the reference as soon as he'd said it.

"Great. So you just want me to surprise the arena's most famous genius with a strategy he couldn't possibly think of," Lume replied. "Is that right?"

"Second most," Nax said. He suppressed a smile while she and Seph shared a glance.

"Fine. But how do I win? You're telling me how to survive."

Seph chimed in eagerly, his enthusiasm for fight strategy unwaning despite his lack of talent. "Same way you cut down a tree: at the base. You have to shred his legs, take the time to wear him down, and then finish him when he isn't mobile anymore."

"Your kick is better than his," Nax said grudgingly, though he admitted satisfaction at seeing her light up. "If you can maintain distance with your legs and chip away at his, you can limit his mobility. Limit his mobility, and he's not a leviathan anymore. Just a broken tree waiting for a push."

"That's all well and good," Lume replied, "but how am I supposed to keep distance long enough for that to work?"

"That's where the inside comes in," Seph said. He turned to Nax, gesturing how to weave in and out at the speed he was capable of. "When he closes, you either check him with kicks or duck inside before he's ready. You get a couple of good body shots off, create distance, and reset."

"It's going to feel like punching limestone. Uol is a quarter giganti on his mother's side, and it makes his bones and flesh harder as a result. Same with his size. You're still doing damage, but it won't feel like it." Nax winced silently after he said it. He'd broken a knuckle on Uol's ribs in his fifteenth cycle before he'd become champion. It still ached sometimes.

"Let me see if I understand. You're saying I have to fight someone twice my size, with twice my resilience, and he's smarter than me and any two of the fry you care to choose put together. And our plan consists of don't get hit and hit him?" Lume looked like she was ready to bolt.

"Same as every other fight. Difference is, this one you have to be perfect. Uol gets a decent strike in and it's over. Trust me." Nax's last loss was the day he broke his hand on Uol. The pain had distracted him from the man's fist, and he'd woken up almost four hours later. No matter how many times he beat The Conductor now, he couldn't erase the sting of that defeat.

Now Lume was facing him on the sand, and her posture was all wrong. She was stiff, legs heavy and joints locked. Her eyes kept flicking to Uol's fists instead of his hips, her fear of the massive instruments palpable. The announcer was reading off their introductions, but Nax wasn't listening.

He was willing Lume to remember what all they'd taught her. Sixty seconds left, and the Ojentus looked like she'd never fought in her life.

Until he heard Seph yell from beside him.

"Go for his dick, Lume!" His friend shouted. "He can't retaliate in kind!"

Nax suppressed a chuckle, and even Uol seemed amused despite the poor joke. But Lume was so tightly wound that Seph's words seemed to open a floodgate.

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She laughed hysterically, so much so that Nax heard the announcer stumble in her introduction. He saw tears in her eyes and readied himself to smack the back of Seph's head.

Before he could, she seemed to finally fall into the state of tranquility he'd tried to instill in her since they'd begun training her. Her breathing slowed, her eyes narrowed, and her joints loosened. She looked like a coiled serpent ready to strike, or a bird of prey ready to take flight. Nax turned to Seph.

"How did you know?"

"She has a sense of humor, unlike some of us," he replied lightly, making sure to keep his gaze on the arena instead of Nax. "She just needed something to knock her loose."

Nax nodded, but before he could respond, the judge signaled the fight. He waited, hoping that Seph's yell hadn't distracted Lume.

If anything, she looked deeper into the fighter's trance than he'd ever seen her. She circled Uol warily, guard tight and feet light, gliding across the sand like a snake winding over it. He noticed a few mistakes in her stance, but that was no different from Uol. He noticed mistakes in everyone's stances these days.

The larger man approached her cautiously, seemingly expecting her to wait to counterpunch, but before he could fully close the range she snapped out a kick that struck his lead leg.

Nax winced at the sound, and even the crowd groaned. Lume's kicks were her biggest strength, and recently, she was firing them away like one of the breakwater shrimps that gave the pearl divers trouble. The creatures struck so quickly that water vaporized between them and their target, and Seph had told him the crowd was working on a nickname for Lume based on the creatures.

Uol shrugged off the kick, and Nax could tell that striking him had pained the girl, but it was exactly what he wanted to see. The giant of a man was too cautious to engage with her directly. If he'd been willing to sacrifice a few strikes, he might've been able to bear her to the ground and smother her with his size. Instead, he elected for the wary approach.

Against almost anyone else, it would've been for the best. With Lume, it was like offering yourself up to a hammerbeak. She continued to pepper him with kicks, the crack of her shins impacting his legs sounding throughout the stadium in an ugly drumbeat. Nax could see the man flagging already.

"She's doing it," Seph said excitedly, his legs bouncing as he watched the bout. Nax didn't miss the way his hands clenched at key moments in the fight, almost like he was in the ring alongside Lume. "She's tearing his roots apart. At this rate, he won't be able to walk after the bout."

Nax shook his head. "You know it. I know it. That means Uol knows it. We wanted Lume to flip the board? This is where he does the same."

Right on cue, Uol did as Nax predicted. He feinted forward, offering up an already weakened leg for Lume's kick, and when she sent it snapping towards him he lifted the vulnerable limb, catching her shin on the hardened bone under his knee instead of his already tenderized leg muscles.

Lume winced like she'd kicked a wall, and her shuffle backward didn't have the fluidity it should.

"Shit," Seph hissed. "Is it broken?"

"Cracked," Nax said, the word clipped while he struggled to master his emotions. He watched her a moment before continuing. "Bruised, maybe. Still sturdy, but it'll slow her."

And it did. The hesitation she'd left behind earlier came back, seemingly from her unwillingness to engage with Uol in a straight fight now that he'd successfully checked a kick. She hesitated to go for openings, not knowing if they were smoke and mirrors, and she gave ground rapidly as the enormous man walked her down.

"Lume!" Seph shouted, standing to try to be heard over the crowd above. "You can't let him walk you! He pins you against the wall and it's over!"

She didn't acknowledge his words, but she did begin to circle. When Uol stepped forward, she retreated at an angle instead of straight back.

Nax knew the truth, though. She was just prolonging the inevitable.

Lume stumbled on the sand, one tiny not-perfect retreating step, and Uol was on her like carrion eaters circling the docks. He stepped in instantly, throwing a straight right that just grazed Lume's nose as she leaned away.

Uol took advantage of her obscured vision to throw a punch into her kidney like a meteor with her other hand. It connected with all the might of a battering ram.

She went sailing, thrown a yard to the side from the force of the blow, and hunched around her side like a glowtortoise as she retreated.

"Two ribs," Nax said before Seph could ask. "Maybe three."

Uol didn't let her breathe. He stepped in to finish the job, eyes bright now that he had a path to victory. He lifted a hammer fist, intent on bringing it down on Lume's head.

As he did, she uncoiled like a serpent and brought up her left arm, guiding the hammer fist around and down her outside shoulder to slide harmlessly past her body. Her right hand was diving for Uol's kidney.

The shot rocked him like he'd been struck by a cannonball, and he stumbled back holding his left side.

Leaving his head exposed.

Seph saw it a moment after Nax did. "She can't-"

Lume pivoted in the ring, generating momentum with a half-rotation, and finished it by sending a heel screaming at Uol's temple. Nax saw her wince as she put weight on her cracked shin, but her stance was steady and the kick vicious.

He looked on, and the world seemed to slow as he waited to see if Uol would block in time.

----------------------------------------

"So that's it then," the vulcanite said from his place at Verrin's side. The man hadn't given his name, and Verrin hadn't asked. It simply wasn't done.

"I suppose," Verrin gulped, eyes glued to the ring where Lume and Uol had just fought.

"You assured us that this fight would end in our favor."

"I did," Verrin acknowledged. "And it has."

"Interesting. Explain to me, please, how that tree-hugging child managed to beat a quarter-giganti. One who has years of experience on her!" The vulcanite's face was neutral, despite the fury of his words. Verrin found it unsettling the level to watch vulcanites could control their bodies.

"She has Surestrike. I've told you, as I'm sure many have. The man is a once-in-a-generation talent, and he has another one in his corner handling everything that isn't the fight."

"HE IS A MAN!" The vulcanite screamed, his breath coming in short gasps as he stood, cracking the arms of the chair he sat on between his fingers and casting aside his ultra-cam facade. "He is just a man, for all his talent! Not a wisp of animus in him. And every time someone tries to stop him in the ring, they find themselves flat on their back! Tell me, Verrin: can you not even arrange a fall for a girl who hasn't seen her nineteenth cycle? And if you can, then why are you still here?"

Verrin shuddered, both at the implied threat and the crazed look in the vulcanite's eyes. "This is good for us, I assure you. It builds her legend even more before you crush it. The city is convinced that she's the next Surestrike. Show them she isn't and they'll run scurrying back to their holes like they did before."

The vulcanite stared at him, unblinking for such a long time Verrin wondered if he should speak. Finally, the man spoke. "I don't want her beaten, Verrin. I want her embarrassed. I want her so thoroughly destroyed they can't find enough of her to feed to the ironshells. I want both her and Surestrike's legacies to be a footnote in the history of Tuwallo. Make it happen, or I find a new arena master. One who's accomplishments keep up with his mouth. I can assure you, retirement is less pleasant than you imagine." He spun on his heel, exiting through the same door Nax had walked out of weeks before.

This time, the man slammed it so hard the door shattered like glass.

Verrin sighed. "Winora?" He called, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to dab at his brow. His assistant glided in, eyes roving over the shattered door and cracked chair. "Can you get a new door made, my dear? Something a bit sturdier this time. Limestone slab, maybe? Don't know a damn thing about doors."

"Of course, Mister Kinwall. Is there anything else I can do for you?" Her spectacles covered some of her features, but he could tell she was shocked.

"I could use a drink, thank you."

"Absolutely," she replied. She turned, striding out rapidly.

Verrin's voice arrested her in the hallway. "Winora?"

She turned, looking at him as he surveyed the destruction in his office. Verrin had to imagine he was a sight.

"Something strong, please. It's been a trying few weeks."

She nodded.