Two of Knaves Chpt 103

Just a reminder, both MBGSP and Two of Knaves are going on a 4 week hiatus while I finish the newest War Horses book. Please enjoy the chapter!

Chapter 103 - As Below, So Above

The prep room for the duos duel was beneath the north end of the stands, and I could hear the stomping feet and murmurs of deals being made, as well as the subtle clink of coins passing between hands. Not to brag, but I was pretty sure I could tell the who’s-who up there by the soft soles on their boots and the sound of copper being traded vs silver. Gold, of course, would be changing hands not through the passing of hard currency but in the swift quill across a ledger in the boxes above the arena.

Annalisa warmed herself up with a series of jabs, elbows, and knees thrust into an unfortunate training dummy whose better days included all of the ones before being subjected to my partner’s attention. The devilborn half of our particular duo was becoming an absolute terror of an infighter, just as deadly with her joints as her extremities. After being warded away with an orc axe, and later a spear and chain whip, it seemed she’d redoubled her focus on getting comfortable in a range where most weapons failed to function. My own theory was that it made it easier to remember she was in a fight when her opponent filled the majority of her field of vision.

“The juice is really working tonight!” said Annalisa.

Curious, as I hadn’t called upon the card since entering the antechamber. I sat on the floor, meditating, instead—holding the same awkward cross-legged pose Daggertongue insisted aligned some inner channels of a mage. With a twitch, I brought it up from the bloodstained deck, and found it cool to the touch. Another twitch and it disappeared back into the ranks of the wills. Her fighting focus wasn’t the only thing improving.

My own warmups were in my fingertips and my mind. I still hadn’t completely recovered from Daggertongue’s latest session. As I rifled through my deck and spread them in a slow orbit in the air around me, I opened my mind to the wills as well, feeling the convoluted cascade of bloodstained panes jumbling themselves. I let them flow around me, stepped into the turbulence and became the sole anchor for the chaos. The furtive, fearful things—dangerous in their cowardice—swirled around me, gaining some semblance of order. I became their locus—a lighthouse in a storm. That was a thought that resonated with the storms in the deck, but especially with the towers. It felt like I was on the cusp of another realization that might unlock a deeper card in either suit. If I could just reach a little further…

Three bells sounded above, breaking me from my meditation. It was time.

With a final uppercut, Annalisa split the head off the training dummy, leaving only a splintered stump of wood behind. She flashed her devilish grin at me and bounded to the door leading up to the arena, bouncing on the balls of her feet and waiting for me to catch up. I rebound my deck, slipping them into the inner pocket of the padded seeker’s robe before climbing to my feet and rubbing some blood back into my legs. Elven poses were good for magic circulation, poor for normal people blood circulation.

The Lucitan paladins at the top of the stairs had their knuckles on, as though the Mayazians might break into the prep room. One of them nodded to us as he gripped the door handle. The other leaned forward.

“I’ve gots ten cunnings on Lady Blue getting a second-rounds knockout,” he said.

I half-smiled. “A Lucitan trying to influence a fight in the Lady of Odds’ arena?”

His cheeks flushed. “I never would! But if she spots an opening, I gots two brats at the upper-city arts academy with tuitions due.”

“Noted,” I said. “We’ll see what we can do.”

His partner yanked the door open to the shouts of the fight crowd, and we stepped out into the ashen ring. I looked across from our entry at the pair of figures emerging from the opposite side and stopped—just as they froze when they saw us. Our lady of gods-damned odds.

Annalisa recognized them immediately, too. Only her reaction was, of course, to jump up and down waving.

“Hey!” she shouted, cupping a hand to her mouth to be heard over the crowd. “Hey! Do you remember us? I’m glad you didn’t get eaten!”

Celithia and Volian, the pair of professional delvers we’d squared off against in the undercity, glared daggers back at us from across the ash. Cel’s hands crackled with frost and mist, while Vol ground the butt of his spear into the ash hard enough for a small cloud of the stuff to drift around his feet. Had they known who they were fighting? Well, they’d had names, sure. But had they known?

“I’m pretty sure they remember, Anna,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. And then beamed. “I am pretty unforgettable!”

Truer words were never uttered.

We moved into position and I pulled the deck out of my pocket. High Priestess Problems came out and announced us. I barely heard her with the blood pounding in my ears. She’d promised as close a match as she could find, and it was only divine providence that she’d found one that had never been finished in the first place. But the pair of adventurers had certainly had the upper hand before I’d been forced to lure a mutated bug back into its privy to interrupt the fight. It certainly didn’t look like they’d grown weaker in the time since. I spotted a new silver chain wrapped around Cel’s hand that shimmered with a dark fog, while Vol had a pair of metal gauntlets shimmering with a heat haze and a stone ear-stud, neither of which he’d worn on our last encounter. Guess they’d gotten their new magic items after all.

The chain in particular was worrying. It obscured the shape of the elf mage’s hand. Figuring out what spell a mage is casting is done in large part by interpreting the gestures made by the hands. But I had no doubt that whatever those gauntlets did, they were meant to counter Annalisa’s frost tunneling.

High Priestess Problems finished her invocation, and I felt the divine binding on the arena to prevent cheating and outside influence settle around us—and with it, the active enchantments I’d been maintaining with cards and wards placed strategically around the district. Ah, well, there went the last hope that such a thing wouldn’t take. I guess this was going to be a fair fight for us, after all.

I wasn’t a fan of fair fights. They’re so unpredictable.

A cheer went up as the Lucitan high priestess resumed her seat, and then the first-round gong sounded.

Vol shot forward, spear raised, and Annalisa rushed to meet him. Within a heartbeat, I had the deck of wills out and the two of dragons burning a thin line across the arena even as the three of dragons began pumping celerity into my partner. She met the first spear thrust with a hardened obsidian portal, and ducked around it to close inside the range of Vol’s spear. The delver whipped the butt-cap around and caught her in the midsection, forcing her back.

Celithian turned his hand, and the line of dragon’s fire took a hard right angle and exploded against the wall of the arena. His wand came up, but I revealed the two of storms and the elf grit his teeth, circling me with his battle wand leveled. Instead of attacking me directly, his hazed hand twisted toward Annalisa. The ash at her feet began to grow hoarfrost, and her boots began sticking to the ground.

Annalisa, slowing down despite the dragon buff, grabbed the spear to keep it from impaling her. But Vol grinned at the other end, and his gauntlets flashed. The metal haft of the spear glowed red-hot for a moment, and Annalisa flinched fell back, crying out. Vol followed with a vicious thrust, but Annalisa opened a portal behind herself and fell backwards through it, emerging ten feet in the air above the fighter. With a burst of heat from the Daughter of Dragons, I flash-boiled the hoarfrost on the ground into steam to obscure Vol, and Annalisa landed a solid hit across the top of his helmet with a first reinforced by obsidian before backing off from the first exchange.

We circled around each other, having tested the waters and found them hostile enough to merit caution. Even if this duel was to incapacitation and not to the death, one thrust of that spear or one spell from the wand landing too close to home would kill easily enough. The three of dragons shone from where it hovered above Annalisa—next to the blazing mountain and the lovers I’d somehow put there. It was a constant reminder that our fates and fortunes were intertwined.

Cel decided to risk the wand, and the runes along its length glowed. Before I could bring out the two of storms, Vol threw his spear at me. Annalisa dove for it, but the fighter snapped it back to its hand as if there was a rope binding the two together. The brief distraction was all the elf needed to ignite the wand, and a caustic black spray shot from its tip, cascading toward me.

“Darcent!” shouted Annalisa.

Abandoning the two of towers, I instead focused on the flow of that black miasma, how it churned and roiled, and reached out, forcing my will to understand its flow. Rather than flowing across me, it spun in a violent orbit, with me at its center. It pressed against my mind from all directions, not unlike Daggertongue’s demon. It tried to bind, confuse, and disorient. And against the me of months ago, I’m sure it would have left me a gibbering wreck on the ash. But it wasn’t a centuries-old malicious intelligence from another dimension intent on devouring my mind. It was just speed and pressure. I’d grown used to pressure.

With understanding came control, and a card battered around my brain, demanding to be recognized. I brought it to the front of the deck and exposed it: the four of storms. A wave of my own flowed out from me. The black miasma vanished. So too did the faint glow of my scarf, Annalisa’s ring, the haze around Cel’s hands, and the heat shimmer of Volian’s gauntlets. The power siphon from the three of dragons fell away, and then the enhanced sight from the four of dragons vanished from my eyes. The barrier around the arena disappeared. The magic, ever-floating ever-watchful eyes of Lucita dropped from the air above the arena, dull and lifeless, thumping into the ash. Hell, even the color drained from the arena.

The Mage across from me opened his mouth to speak, and then pressed a hand to his throat. He’d been silenced and gone ashy-gray—and in fact, everything up through the first three rows of the audience had taken on a colorless pallor. Annalisa yelled something at me, but her words didn’t reach my ears. Huh. The four of storms had created an area null-magic zone of silence. Even my cards floated out of the air, dropping to the ash where I could no longer sense the wills at all.

No more magic, no more enchanted items. No portals or returning spears, no spoken team tactics, no wands. This fight had just transitioned from two fighters and two mages to four fighters. And between me and the elf, I wouldn’t give even odds as to who was the scrappier of the two. I felt a grin creep across my face, pulled the abyssal dagger from its sheath, and shot forward.