Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Dovik chanted the words in his mind as his vision swam. He tried everything he could think of to slow his breathing. He tried to force air through his nose but found himself gasping as the feeling of drowning started to take over. He concentrated on meditative mantras he knew, but nothing soothed the pounding thump of his heart in his chest. He didn’t have time for this. They were already coming.

  His left leg wavered, a sudden sense of weakness shaking up. Dovik hammered his fist against his thigh, stopping the tremble forcefully.

  These fights weren’t what he had expected. With his swords dulled, they were little better than sticks. Had this been a real battle, his opponent would have been cut in half in the first few seconds.

  But this hadn’t been a real battle. It had been a show, and his stamina was failing to keep up with the slower tempo.

  “Hart!!!!” Galla was yelling as she extended a hand toward one of the pools of light splashed on the stone.

  The first thing that rose from the circle of light was the long and forked branch of an antler. More and more of the bony spines shot up from the ground as Dovik’s next opponent stepped into the pit. The blurring of his vision was so awful that for a moment he thought he was hallucinating, but as the figure in front of him began to settle, he saw the truth of it. Stepping out of the well of light was a faethian dwarf, a man with blue skin that barely eclipsed four feet in height. That was, if the three feet of branching antlers sticking straight up from his scalp weren’t counted.

  The crowd overhead screamed in delight as he stepped out of the light and waved up to them.

  “The Hero of Gaspinrough,” Galla was saying, gesturing at the man as she walked around him. “The Stag of the West Sea. Hart Seacastle, the next champion our challenger is to face.”

  Dovik struggled, only barely managing to calm his breathing enough that he didn’t think he would pass out. His heart never stopped racing, pounding away inside his chest.

  He knew that he had done this to himself. Weeks of testing different concoctions, skipping safety protocols, and trying to cut a path forward through the art of alchemy had taken its toll. The toxins would have worked out on their own in time. His constitution was good for that at least. He just hadn’t been expecting to have to fight a gauntlet.

  As Galla turned, calling out to the audience that perhaps they might learn something of the challenger, Dovik studied the antlered man. He was an essentia magician, Dovik thought. The soul burning in his chest hinted at that. Likely, he would be one of the beast magicians, a tricky lot. Those antlers would be one of his essentia abilities. Most magicians with a beast essentia gained some physical aspect of the animals or creatures they had integrated into their souls. Most were physical fighters as well, their bodies reinforced with magic. The beast magician he travelled with was a bit of an exception to that rule. But then, was she? Dovik had seen her punch monsters with exploding magic before.

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  He shook his head, forcing his thoughts to focus again. The elven woman was saying something.

  Hissing in a breath, Dovik wiped the sweat-slicked hair from his face and stood to his full height. “I’m sorry,” he said to Galla. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

  “I asked if you were human?” the elven woman said with a knowing smile.

  The question was so out of the blue that Dovik lost control of his breathing as he stared back at her. The whole pit had grown more subdued. “Yes,” he said after forcing in a breath. “Yes, I am.”

  The woman next to him nodded. “So we had thought. There have been rumors that your king is positioning himself to begin a new crusade. Do you have any thoughts about that?”

  He blinked. The pounding of his heart was pulsing in his head, forcing pressure to build behind his eyes. What king? Grim had a ruler, a nobleman, but he was more of a figurehead. Was she asking about a human crusade, that historical fiction passed around the world like the most damaging rumor in history? Who could even…

  From up in the audience, someone began to boo. The sound came so suddenly that Dovik flinched. Then the jeering became a chorus, and in no time at all, a thousand voices were yelling down their disdain. Dovik stood, stunned beneath the bright lights raining down onto him, listening as Faeth told him what they really thought.

  The pounding in his head didn’t recede, didn’t lessen the least bit, but a well of hot emotion cut straight through. On a better day, he might have been able to laugh it off. That would have been what his decorum tutors, Marsha and Dextin, would have advised him to do. Never lose control, or if that were impossible, never let anyone see you lose control. However, just then, Dovik came to realize that his emotions had slipped the leash. They had run off ahead of him weeks ago. He had no real control.

  “Start the fucking fight,” he spat at the woman. Dovik levelled one of his swords at her, the useless thing that it was. Yet, she still flinched and took a step away, and he saw in the resonance of her soul that the rush of fear wasn’t feigned.

  “How fiery,” Galla said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she continued to walk away from him. The lizard perched on her shoulder carried her voice higher, but it was still difficult to hear over the boos reverberating around the chamber. “Let us begin the count then!”

  As the woman started to count down from ten, Dovik turned to look at the man he would need to face. He found the dwarf grimacing, his eyes hard with unrestrained anger, but the man wasn’t looking at him. Hart Seacastle was sneering at Galla as she sashayed across the floor, counting down seconds on her hands as the crowd half-booed and half-counted along with her. Dovik thought for a moment that the man might have held sympathies for him, but Hart’s hard eyes only intensified as he turned his gaze on the young man.

  As the count dropped to six, Dovik knelt on the ground and held his sabers out before him, doing everything that he could to control his breathing. Stamina would be the end of him. The fight would have to end quickly, and there was only one thing for that.

  Hissing out an exhale, Dovik poured his magic into his swords. He would have to keep things short.

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