Burning acid splashed against the back of Dovik’s throat. His stomach lurched as his body tried to expel his dinner. That dinner had cost more than he had to his name just then, and he refused to let it go.

  Mucus filled his sinuses as he forced in a breath. The healers draped in black robes were moving away from him, dragging a heavily injured deerman between them toward one of the wells of light pooling on the stone. It took everything Dovik had not to fold forward and curl up on his ribs. One had to be broken; there was no other way to excuse the agony he was in. His body couldn’t decide on what it wanted to do. The thrumming chemicals racing through his blood pushed him forward, and the pain and exhaustion tempted him to take steps back.

  It was all wrong. Even taking a few good blows from his own domain barrier shouldn’t have left him in such a state. With how slow Hart had been, he never should have been able to touch him in the first place. Above him, the cerulean eye created by his Immortal Conflux continued to hover. He fed more magic into it, willing it to stabilize. If what that bastard Mox had told him had been true, he still needed it for at least three more fights.

  Dovik figured that he had just enough magic remaining to last him that long. The real test would be seeing if his body gave out.

  His back popped as he forced himself to stand and look up at the eye. Ever since unlocking the power upon reaching the second rank, he hadn’t been able to figure out the best use for it. Its purpose was to trap a single enemy inside a cage with him, and it drew upon a tremendous amount of magic to do so. The only issue was that with his speed, he often didn’t need to trap enemies in cages with him, and if he did, they would often be powerful enough that fighting them by himself would be a death sentence. At least, that was what he had thought, until such a monster put a blade through his leg and nearly killed his lover.

  The usual flash of hot emotion that came with the thought failed to fully manifest; the pounding in his head was so great. What the cage created by the eye–he still needed to come up with a suitable name for the essentia ability–did offer was a way to damage these fighters when his swords were so handicapped. If he could maintain it for just a little longer, he might be able to see this through.

  Dovik’s eyes drifted across the field of stone as a soul presence the color of snow began to drift up from one of the wells of light. The raucous sound of the crowd above fell away as a man began to walk out of the light. Ice formed ahead of him, a lair of rime coating the stone that he tread upon. For a moment, the pain left Dovik as he stared ahead. The man who had led him into this pit had told him he would have to face fighters weaker than himself, that once he had beaten down the one occupying the sixth spot in their little hierarchy, he could bow out and get his money. This man was beyond that. This man was a rank three magician.

  “What a treat!” Galla shouted, her voice carrying through the pit and encouraging the audience to quiet down. “What an absolute delight we have been granted witness to! The Pit’s second strongest fighter has deigned to throw his proverbial hat into the ring ahead of the rest! No doubt, Mallis the Undertaker has witnessed the tragedy that befell Hart and has decided to put an end to this intruder ahead of time!”

  The elven woman danced closer to the man. The icy field of his soul billowed around him like a fogbank, and the moment she crept into it, Galla shivered and jumped back. A look of offense crossed her face, and she opened her mouth to say something, but the newcomer cut her off.

  “Start counting. You make me wait a second longer than I need to, and they will be picking up pieces of you from the floor,” Mallis said to her, barely loud enough for Dovik to hear.

  The look of affront on the woman’s face fled, replaced by a flash of genuine fear as she continued to back away. “It seems that rudeness is in the air tonight!” she yelled up to the audience. Some began to boo again, their attentions split between Dovik and the newcomer. “Very well, we can begin!” Galla began to count down from ten.

  “Hold on!” Dovik shouted, holding up his hands. “I have no need to fight you. I think that perhaps this is where I should bow out.” On his best day, he might consider fighting a rank three magician. Dovik didn’t hold any delusions that he would win, but he might be willing to do it. Today was far from his best day.

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  Across the stone, Mallis pointed a thick blue finger his way. “You aren’t going anywhere. You are going to pay for what you did.”

  Dovik ignored the man, stepping back into the pool of light he had entered from. He found the stone beneath his feet hard and unrelenting. Even when he tried to teleport through whatever barrier might be there to exit, he was stopped. The entire ramp must have been sealed behind him, making his jump out too far. One look at the walls of the cylinder he was standing inside confirmed that they had been heavily enchanted. They would have had to be in order to protect the audience from the power thrown around inside. There was little chance they weren’t warded to stop teleportation. It would seem that Treston Mox had lied to him about being able to back out.

  “Four!” Galla yelled, the audience echoing her count.

  “What I’ve done?” Dovik asked, looking around the pit for another exit. “I don’t think I’ve met. I would have remembered a face like yours.”

  Mallis growled in response.

  For a moment, Dovik found that he had his breathing back under his control. He sighed out air and readied himself. Hopefully, this wouldn’t go too badly.

  “Go!” Galla yelled. The two combatants exploded into motion.

  From her seat overlooking the arena, Lady Talagast watched. Very few in the audience were able to witness the displays of magic and might occurring, but she could. To everyone else, the promised battle had turned into a boring affair. As soon as the countdown had ended, silvery light had lashed out from the conjured eye still floating above the stone and struck Mallis as he began his charge forward. Rather than fight it, the man had plunged ahead, willfully entering the domain of energy surrounding the eye and trapping himself inside with Dovik Willian.

  A moment later, ice had grown over the interior of the sphere in which the two fought. That had been move than five minutes ago, and the combat inside was cut off from the average observer. Lady Talagast was barely able to follow the back and forth inside the sphere of ice. She wouldn’t need much longer. The melee was drawing to a close.

  The blue energy surrounding the sphere vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving only a perfect orb of ice standing in the center of the arena. A crack snaked up the ball of ice as it was slammed into from the outside, the blow hard enough to send flakes scattering into the air. Three more rapid blows followed the first, each widening the cracks rolling across the surface of the globe, until at last the sphere shattered.

  A streak of blue was launched away as the ice collapsed like an eggshell. Dovik Willian’s unconscious form hit the stone, rolling and sliding away for a good fifty feet before it finally fell still. Walking from the collapsing shell of ice came Mallis, his soul presence billowing around him like a flame, a trident of red ice held tightly in one meaty hand.

  Black-clad healers and medical staff appeared in the arena, rushing toward the fallen scion of the Willian Guild. Blood was beginning to pool beneath the unconscious man, a score of large puncture holes covering his chest. Warm, magical light began to pour from the hands of two of the healers as they raced to staunch the wicked wounds. Only one looked up to see Mallis continuing to stalk forward.

  “Amend the message,” Lady Talagast called over her shoulder as she watched the scene below devolve into madness as Mallis batted aside the healer who stood to block his way. Screams began to roll up from the field below as more staff were teleported into the pit to stop the crazed magician from cutting down everyone in his way as he continued to storm toward the bleeding Dovik Willian. The screams from below were echoed by a rising panic in those watching from their positions in the protected audience seating. “The message will need to be more severe and empathetic.”

  “Of course,” Teravold said behind her.

  “You understand that the timing is pivotal,” Lady Talagast reiterated. Below, other fighters were running up from their waiting rooms, moving to restrain Mallis as he fought to get at Dovik Willian. It took many of them to force the murderous man to the ground. He wasn’t the second strongest fighter in the Pit for nothing.

  “I do, my Lady.”

  “Good.”

  Mallis was screaming: rage, despair, and grief mixing into his voice to produce a warbling cry that was truly horrible. Lady Talagast looked on. Once, she would have been sad to watch the display. Before that, she would have balked to even think of using so many people to get closer to her own ends, but those feelings had died long ago, had died when that girl who had peered beyond the veil of civilization finally picked herself up off her apartment floor and decided to do something about it, about the world. Now, it would just be a matter of whether the girl was strong enough, and that was a bet that Lady Talagast was more than willing to make.

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