There was no sound. There was only pressure and light.
Leonidas didn't charge. He detonated. One moment, he was at his starting mark, a figure of calm, cold hatred. The next, he was in my face. The sand he'd stood on erupted in a concussive plume, but he had already crossed the ten-pace distance before the sound of it even reached me.
He was fast. Faster than Damien. Faster than anything I had ever seen or imagined.
My eyes were useless. They couldn't even track the movement. My entire world, my entire survival, snapped into a singular reliance on my one, true weapon.
My Soul Resonance flared, screaming a warning. It didn't feel a feint or a complex maneuver. It felt a single, simple, overwhelming spike of intent. A straight, decapitating line aimed at my neck.
I had seven days of practice. Seven days of burning the pure, defensive forms into my muscles.
I didn't try to block. I didn't try to parry. I didn't have the strength or the speed. I deflected.
My body moved without my conscious thought. I dropped into a low, spiraling crouch, my own sword coming up not to meet his, but to guide it. It was the "Patient Stream" movement from the dusty philosophy book, a way of redirecting, not opposing.
CLANG!
The sound was a deafening, metallic shriek. His blade, wreathed in a brilliant, blinding-white mana, connected with the flat of mine.
The force was not a push. It was a cataclysm.
It was like being hit by a carriage. The impact shattered my stance, bypassed my deflection, and sent me flying backward. I tumbled through the air, hitting the sand ten feet away, rolling in a cloud of dust and humiliation. My entire right arm, from shoulder to fingertip, exploded in a blinding, white-hot agony. The training sword, which I had clutched with all my strength, was gone, ripped from my grasp and lying uselessly a dozen yards away.
A deafening roar went up from the crowd. They were on their feet, cheering, screaming for their hero. He had, in their eyes, ended the duel in a single, glorious blow.
I lay in the sand, my lungs empty, my vision blurred with black spots. My right arm was numb, broken. I was sure it was broken.
Damien was wrong. The thought was a shaft of pure, cold clarity in the midst of the pain. He wasn't a beast. He's a god of vengeance. And the plan is over.
This wasn't a show. This wasn't a "provocation." This was an execution.
But as the numbness in my arm faded, replaced by a deep, throbbing, but contained throb, I realized something. It wasn't broken. It was fractured, maybe dislocated, but the bone had not shattered. My internal armor, the seven days of hell, had held. It had saved my arm from being ripped from its socket.
Leonidas was walking toward me, not running, his sword now held loosely at his side. His face was still that terrifying mask of cold calm. He was an executioner approaching the block. The proctor, Professor Valerius, was watching intently, but he hadn't called the match. I was not incapacitated. Not yet.
I had to complete the mission.
With my left hand, I pushed myself to my knees. The crowd's cheering faltered, replaced by a low, confused murmur. I was disarmed. I was clearly, devastatingly outmatched. Why was I getting up?
I got to one knee. I was a pathetic, half-crippled figure, my right arm hanging uselessly.
I looked up at him. And I smiled.
It was the most difficult, most painful expression I had ever formed. It was the mask of Lucian Greyfall, pulled over a face of pure terror.
"Is that it?" I rasped, my voice a dry, broken thing. "Is that all the rage you have?"
Leonidas stopped, five paces away. His cold mask didn't break.
"This," I spat, nodding at my useless arm, "is this for your broken little pet? Thomas?"
I saw a flicker in his eyes. A flash of the white-hot inferno beneath the ice.
"Or," I continued, my voice rising, gaining a hysterical, goading edge, "is it for the girl? Tell me, Aris, has she stopped crying yet?"
It happened.
The ice didn't just crack. It vaporized.
A sound I had only read about, a sound that should not come from a human throat, tore through the arena. It was a roar of such profound, bottomless rage and grief that a wave of pure, terrified silence washed over the crowd.
The brilliant, warm, "heroic" light that wreathed his blade changed. It turned a blinding, unstable, almost-white-blue. It flared, spitting raw, uncontrolled mana into the air. The "controlled" executioner was gone, and the beast Damien had predicted was finally, terrifyingly, here.
"I," he bellowed, his voice distorted by his own magic, "WILL... END YOU!"
He charged. Not with the precise speed of before, but with a blind, thundering, all-consuming fury.
I had no sword. I had one good arm. I had nowhere to run.
I did the only thing I could. I fell back on my last, desperate piece of training. I let my mana flow, not into my dead arm, but into my legs, my torso, my chest. I turned myself into a rock.
His first blow was a wild, downward slash. I threw myself to the side, the blade of light missing my head by an inch and exploding in the sand where I had been.
I didn't even have time to recover. He was on me, his attacks a storm, a relentless, blinding barrage of light and steel. He was no longer aiming for a clean "win." He was trying to annihilate me.
I was a rat in a hurricane. I was rolling, dodging, scrambling backward on my hands and knees. The flat of his blade caught me in the ribs, the reinforced padding of my uniform vaporizing on contact, the force sending me spinning. Another blow grazed my shoulder, the mana-light searing through the fabric and into my skin.
The crowd was screaming. But the cheers had turned to gasps of horror. This was not a duel. This was a beating. This was a public, brutal assault.
"Stop the match!" a professor yelled.
But Leonidas was beyond hearing. He was lost in the red haze.
He raised his sword for a final, two-handed overhead strike, a blow that would undoubtedly cave in my chest, armor or no.
I was on my back, my one good arm raised in a pathetic, useless block. This was it.
"Leonidas, NO!" a voice, a female voice, shrieked from the stands.
It was Seraphina.
The shout, the one voice of reason in the din, seemed to cut through his rage. He flinched. His eyes, for a split second, cleared. He saw me, pathetic and broken at his feet. He saw his own sword, wreathed in killing-light.
He tried to stop. He tried to pull the blow.
But he was too strong, his momentum too great. He couldn't stop the attack. He could only turn it.
At the last possible second, he twisted his body, diverting the glowing blade from my chest.
The sword, screaming with power, plunged deep into the sand right beside my head, the resulting shockwave of light and force blasting me backward, filling my mouth, my nose, my eyes with sand and the smell of ozone.
The arena was utterly silent.
Leonidas stood over me, his chest heaving, his sword embedded to the hilt in the arena floor. He was staring at his own hands, at what he had just done, his face a mask of dawning, catastrophic horror.
Professor Valerius, his face ashen, finally found his voice.
"The duel is over!" he roared. "Winner, by disqualification of the opponent for use of uncontrolled, lethal-intent magic... Lucian Greyfall!"