Chương 97: Chapter 96 – More Than Seventy Percent

The strip had a smell all its own by the time of the final — hot sand, singed hair from a hundred fights before this one, and under it something sweeter, cheap wine somebody in the front rows had already started on though it wasn't past midmorning. Ant knelt by the rail and didn't let himself look at the gate yet. He looked at the stands instead. Took him a second to find them. Then Rebekah, front row, both thumbs up and grinning like she'd already decided how this went.

Kalsar beside her, arms folded, not moving at all, which from Kalsar was its own kind of vote of confidence. Duncan next to Rowan, mouthing something Ant couldn't make out and didn't need to. Andy sat apart from the rest as usual, one row back, and even from here Ant could tell where his attention had already landed — not on the empty sand, not on the gate. On Mahkir.

Kalsar caught his eye across the distance, held it a second, then looked away again — nothing more than that, the kind of look that didn't need words attached to it. He let a breath out. Turned back to the sand. Talonstrike came through the gate like it already owned the arena — head up, tail high, a trot instead of a charge because it had never once needed to hurry and wasn't about to start now.

Marigold gold and cream over a tiger's build, bigger through the shoulder than Striata, and it didn't look at Mahkir so much as past him, the way a man might glance at furniture on his way to somewhere better. The crowd noise went up half a register and stayed there. Confident, Mahkir said, watching it circle to its own strip. I can work with confident.

"You said that about Umbra too." Umbra was confident and wrong. There's a difference between the two, and I plan on finding out which this is. Ant crouched, checking the collar's clasp out of habit, feeling the plating settle under his palm.

"Before the horn. I need a real number from you." Go on.

"Semifinal. Against Ironmaw. Not the estimate you gave Kalsar after — what were you actually running at?" Mahkir considered that with more care than he usually gave a question, ears tilting back. Seventy. Give or take. Maybe seventy-five toward the end, once he stopped falling for the same dodge.

"Seventy percent took down a bear that size." Seventy percent and every trick I had that didn't come out of the collar. A pause, the kind Ant had learned to read as Mahkir deciding how much of the truth to hand over. I had more. I didn't need it, so I didn't spend it.

"How much more?" Enough that I'd rather not find out today unless I have to.

"Then that's where we start." Ant said it more to convince himself than to instruct Mahkir — the number felt low, and there wasn't time left to argue with it.

"Seventy. If it needs more, take more — but nothing from the claws. Not the fire. Save that." You keep saying save it. Save it for what, exactly?

"No doubt they've been watching you like we've been watching them." Ant straightened, hand still on the collar a moment longer than it needed to be.

"So give them what they're expecting first. Let it look like the fight they scouted. But the second you see an opening, don't hold back for it — go all out for the surprise. And if you see a knockout shot, use your skill." Fine. Mahkir's tail gave one slow sweep through the sand, already turning to face the strip proper. Seventy, then. Though I want it on record that I think this is overly cautious.

"Noted. Now go." The horn sounded before Ant had cleared the last word from his mouth, long and low, and the crowd's hum dropped into that tight, waiting silence that always came right before the first real move. Talonstrike didn't charge. It approached — an unhurried lope that closed distance without ever looking like it was closing distance, head low, eyes on Mahkir the whole way like it was reading something written across his fur.

Three strides out it feinted left, pulled up, circled instead, and did it again from the other side a moment later. Testing. Same as the ram it had put away in under a minute, according to what Kalsar had watched from the stands — except the ram, evidently, hadn't been worth this much patience. Mahkir matched the circle, kept the distance even, didn't take the bait on either feint.

"Good," Ant murmured.

"Don't chase it." I'm not an idiot.

"Didn't say you were." You implied it. With your tone. Talonstrike broke the pattern on the third pass — no feint this time, just speed, more of it than anything Mahkir had faced all tournament, closing the gap in a stride and a half and turning what should have been a glancing pass into a full shoulder check that Mahkir hadn't fully cleared. It caught him high on the flank, and it didn't land like a strike. It landed like a wall arriving.

Mahkir went down hard enough that the sound of it traveled up through the strip and into Ant's boots the same way Ironmaw's fall had the day before, except this time it wasn't the other fighter hitting the ground. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. [Mahkir — HP: 52/65.]"Up." Ant's hands found the rail without him deciding to put them there.

"Up, now." Working on it. Already rolling, legs finding sand, breathing harder than the exchange should have earned. That wasn't a feint. That was the whole animal, all at once, no warning.

"You said you could work with confident." I said that before it hit me like a collapsing roof. Talonstrike hadn't pressed the advantage. It had pulled back to the center of the sand instead, tail moving slow, watching Mahkir get his feet back under him. From the rail it read as patience, plain and uncomfortable — not finishing him, waiting to see what he'd do with the room it had given him.

"It's not pushing," Ant said, half to himself, half to Mahkir.

"It's letting you get up." I noticed. I'd rather it didn't.

"Then don't give it a reason to stay generous." Ant heard his own voice come out harder than he meant it to, and made himself pull it back down before he went on. Somewhere behind him a vendor's oil drum popped and hissed, ordinary and far away, like it belonged to a different morning entirely.

"Seventy wasn't enough. Go to what you had left in the semis." You're sure.

"I'm telling you. Full strength. Everything but the claws." Mahkir didn't answer that one out loud at all. He just moved. It was different from the first three exchanges in a way Ant felt through the bond before he saw it on the sand. The strain went out of it. Whatever Mahkir had been keeping in reserve, he wasn't keeping it anymore, and the difference showed up in his stance before it showed up in anything he did.

Talonstrike came in again, same unhurried lope building toward the same shoulder check that had put him down the first time, and Mahkir wasn't where it landed. He was already past it, already turning low, and the strike he answered with caught Talonstrike across a hind leg, hard enough to buckle the stride under it.

Up in the stands, somebody — Duncan, probably, though Ant couldn't have said for certain over the crowd — let out a whoop that cut off almost as fast as it started, like even Duncan wasn't sure yet what he was cheering. Kalsar wasn't cheering at all. He'd come forward against the rail, both hands gripping it now, watching the sand with an expression Ant had only seen on him a handful of times before. Something between disbelief and calculation. He'd have to ask about that one later.

This is different, Mahkir said, and the usual performance had dropped clean out of it — flat, focused, a register Ant hadn't heard from him all tournament. I can feel where it's going before it goes there. Everything's slower. Everything but me.

"Keep it that way. Legs, if you can reach them. Slow it down before it gets to try that charge again." I keep eyeing the throat. He was still circling, testing the distance before committing to anything. Too many teeth in the way for that yet.

"Then don't force it. Take the leg. It's open." Talonstrike didn't stay down long enough to prove him wrong. It came off the ground already turning, faster than the hit should have let it, and caught Mahkir across the ribs on the recovery — a worse angle than the first hit, close enough to bone that it put him down a second time, the air leaving him in one hard sound Ant felt through the bond before he heard it across the sand. [Mahkir — HP: 38/65.]"Report." Ribs. Nothing broken.

Everything else has an opinion about it. No performance in that one at all. Every swing's got real force behind it, not just speed. Whatever he throws, all of him goes with it.

"Then stop giving him a target to swing at." Easier said than managed. What followed was the longest stretch of the fight by a wide margin — neither of them backing off the center of the sand, blow answering blow. Mahkir went for the throat once, a real opening for half a heartbeat, and pulled the strike short rather than trade it for a set of jaws already turning to meet him.

He dropped low instead and took the same hind leg twice more, opening it wider each time, and Talonstrike answered every strike with one of its own, wilder now, less aimed than it had been at the start. One of them folded Mahkir's front legs out from under him entirely. [Mahkir — HP: 29/65.]"Mahkir—" I'm up. And he was, slower than before, blood matting dark along one side, breathing in short pulls Ant felt as much as heard from across the sand. He's not walking away from this clean either. Look at him. He wasn't.

The hind leg Mahkir had opened kept giving out under it a fraction too late every stride, blood running down and darkening the sand it crossed. It circled wide, tried the same feint-then-charge pattern that had worked at the very start of the fight — and Mahkir wasn't fooled twice.

He cut the angle before the charge fully committed, caught it broadside, and for the first time all fight it was Talonstrike that went down, skidding a body-length through sand already chewed loose from everything that had come before it. The whole arena had gone quieter than it should have been for a fight this far from finished.

Ant caught it in pieces — Andy leaning forward without seeming to notice he'd moved, Ray's mouth open around a word he hadn't decided to say yet, Rebekah's thumbs-up long since forgotten, both hands flat against the rail instead. Even Duncan had gone quiet. Rowan had a hand pressed flat to his own chest, like he was checking his heart was still keeping the same pace as everyone else's. Talonstrike got back up.

Slower this time, the ruined hind leg buckling once under it before it found its feet, whatever confidence it had walked in with bled out of its stride entirely. And it came in one last time anyway, because whatever else it was, it plainly didn't know how to stop. Mahkir didn't go low this time. The throat was still guarded, but the head wasn't — weaving now instead of tracking clean, the way a tired animal's does right before it stops tracking at all — and that was worth the trade.

His claw led, flame gathering along it the way it gathered in his throat before a breath. Ant felt the heat of it arrive through the bond a half-second before it showed on the sand, and then Mahkir's whole foreleg was wreathed in it, fire riding the strike itself instead of coming ahead of it, and the swipe caught the side of Talonstrike's skull with a sound like something tearing. Talonstrike left the ground.

It hit the back wall hard enough that dust came off the stone in a sheet, and slid down it in a heap that didn't move for a long three-count.

"That's it," Ant said, out loud, to no one.

"It's over." That, Mahkir said, standing in the center of the sand, breathing hard, flame still guttering low along his claw before it died out on its own, is what seventy percent looks like when it stops being seventy percent. Talonstrike wasn't getting up the way a beaten fighter got up.

It was shaking — a fine, constant tremor running the length of its body, legs folding and catching and folding again like it couldn't decide whether to try — and for a moment Ant let himself believe that was just what losing looked like. Then the shaking stopped, all at once, and a light started underneath its fur instead. White. Not fire-white.

Something colder than that, spreading out from wherever the last strike had landed until the whole animal was outlined in it, and the noise the crowd had been building toward died in every throat at once, a whole arena going silent in the space of a single breath. Kalsar's voice cut through it, low, and none of the usual economy left in it at all.

"No—" Ant turned. Kalsar hadn't moved from the rail, both hands still gripping it, eyes fixed on the glow now climbing up through Talonstrike's spine like a fuse finding its own end.

"It's evolving."