The light of Ren's army drifted away on the wind, and then there was nothing left on the hill but my recruits and the broken platform and me.
My chest was heaving. My sword was still humming in my hand. The theatre had already begun to mend the crater, slowly, stone knitting back into stone, as if it were embarrassed about what we'd done to it.
I pulled up the board.
1. SERAPHINA ZENITH · 12,500
2. JIN ASHBLUFF · 11,800
3. ARTHUR NIGHTINGALE · 10,200
4. REN KAGU · 9,900 · eliminated
Third.
A quarter of Ren's score had put me on the podium, and the duel had cost me the twenty minutes it took to win it. While Ren and I had been taking a hill apart, Seraphina had taken the northern relay, and Jin had taken the southern vault the moment Ren's army stopped existing to guard it. The Tactical Simulation wasn't a duelling event. I'd known that going in. It had still taken me twenty minutes to remember it.
