I honestly never thought I would find myself enjoying tonight all that much, but this contest against the 4th-best fighter of the arena, an archer with a complicated M-name, is fun. Mana pours through the vastly improved mana channels in my body, flooding into the moonsilver staff in my hands like a tidal wave. In a fraction of a fraction of a second, a new bead of silvery dragonfire condenses at the head of my staff, growing brighter and smaller the more mana I force into it.

  The entire chamber falls quiet with me.

  Then comes the waiting.

  Across the field, the man conjures another arrow between his fingers as he reaches back. His eyes are like a hawk's, intense, far more focused than his shaking body. They do not waver, and so I can't either. I strain to keep a serene expression as I watch him pull back the string of his bow despite the river of sweat running down my back. The bow in his hands arches, creaking as the wood is bent to the point of potentially warping. The archer stops, and so do I. Each of us stares across the field, the world shrinking with each second that passes until only the two exist.

  Just as we have dozens of times now, we wait to fire.

  Why do we wait? Even I don't really understand. Since our battle evolved to this straightforward challenge, the cycle has repeated, each time growing stranger and more difficult. I doubt anyone above can tell how fast these projectiles fly, but he always fires first. His arrow will release and fly toward me like a lightning bolt, but I hold my shot until his goes first.

  To others, his lightning arrows seem rather simplistic, but they are anything but. This archer possesses four different arrows that all appear identical, but they are anything but. One isn't even a lightning arrow; it is some more complex mana concept that I have never experienced before, but it looks identical to the others. The others can do things like pierce through magic, curve mid-flight, or even be multiple times more powerful than the others. Until I know which he fired, I have to hold my shot.

  I don't know why he holds his when he knows that he will eventually shoot first. Perhaps he only determines what kind of arrow he fires when he looses it. Maybe he is thinking about something else entirely. I shouldn't complain; this strain between each volley is what makes this contest fun to me, and all of the waiting has helped me restore nearly my entire mana pool.

  The archer has a tell. When he prepares to fire, his chin dips the slightest amount, like he is checking his aim one final time before releasing. The two of us wait. His chin dips, and I drop into the battle fever.

  The world slows to a crawl as my vital healing energies are set on fire like so many sheets of paper. Even as things crawl by, his arrow soars across the field like a man on a sprint. Before it makes half the distance, I see the sign. The arrow is aimed more at my hand than center mass. He aims to destroy my attack before injuring my arm; it is one of the magic piercing arrows. If I could move fast enough, I would smirk.

  At this distance, it is no wonder really that he hasn't figured out how I have already beaten this arrow. The grain of black sand I hold at the top of my staff to conjure my dragonfire bolts onto is very small after all. This man would need to heavily invest in a mediocre attribute like perception to even notice it at this distance, and given that he isn't even an essentia magician, that seems rather unlikely.

  Just as his arrow crosses the halfway point, the grain of black sand rises half a foot before letting the bolt of dragonfire shoot forth. As it leaves me, I command my body to make a final adjustment before letting go of the battle fever. In just this moment of use, a tenth of my healing points are used up. If it weren't for my insane recovery attribute, clearly the most superior attribute, I would have never been able to attempt to train my use of the battle fever this way.

  The world lurches into motion once more. Bars of light stretch across the arena, seeming to have been released simultaneously. The archer’s arrow passes inches beneath the arc of my dragonfire before reaching me. There is a scratching sound that comes and goes so fast it might as well have been imagined as the tip of the arrow scratches down the length of the moonsilver staff before thudding against the wall behind me. That instant of contact is enough for a small measure of the lighting mana inside the arrow to soak into the black dust stored in my staff. Just forty or fifty more exchanges like this, and I might finally have enough lightning mana to…

  “I yield!” the archer's voice barks across the arena.

  My thoughts grind to a halt, and I stare across the distance toward the man. He kneels on the ground, only barely having managed to pull himself up after taking another one of my dragonfire bolts. The man is durable: was durable.

  “We have a yield!” Galla announces as she prances toward the man. More slowly than the times before, the black-clad medical staff begins to appear. “Let us all give an appreciative applause to M--”

  I turn away, considering. This last fight actually made me retrieve my staff, but it became apparent after only using it for a moment that there is a problem. While the Moonsilver staff is amazing and incredibly useful, it is not a battle staff. Enchanters are partial to two magical weapons, wands and staffs, and the deadly enchantments they can weave into such weapons are frankly awesome. The sheer amount of potency that a staff can multiply a mage's power by is comparable to how much deadlier a powerful sword can make a swordsman. If a staff isn't as vital in a fight against a mage as a weapon is to a warrior, then it isn't good enough. If I am being honest, the Moonsilver staff has never been that important to me in combat. Just another thing for me to look to remedy. With the windfall I expect by the end of the night, that should finally be doable.

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  My thoughts are again derailed as I notice a face peeking up at me from the floor. There, little more than a head sitting on the ground, is one of the armed men that I saw escorting Treston Mox before.

  When he sees that he has my attention, the head speaks. “Mr. Mox would like to see you in the preparation room. Follow me, please.” The head looks expectantly at me for a moment as I cross my arms and stare back.

  I take a second to glance up at the audience above, and they've already started a chant that says some truly horrible things about my mother. If my mother heard these people calling her such names, there might have been a murder. I offer the crowd my most smug sneer.

  “The only way I am leaving this arena is after I have finished The Run,” I tell the head. “If Mr. Mox would like to speak to me, he can do it here.”

  The head stares back at me for a moment before turning around and vanishing into the illusory floor once again. It doesn't take even twenty seconds before Galla claps to get everyone's attention.

  “Now, isn't this a treat, ladies and gentlemen! The owner of our fine arena has decided to grace us with his presence. Please join me in welcoming the man who single-handedly helped to revive this lost and destitute part of our grand city, Treston Mo!” Not many join her in cheers as Treston Mox enters the arena from the same ramp that the head disappeared into. Too much of the crowd is now focused on a chant involving my father, and that one actually starts to get under my skin a little.

  Mr. Mox waves up at the audience as he enters and calls out to them, but the smile he wears is strained. He turns his eyes on me and begins to approach. He is not happy.

  “What the fuck do you think you are trying to accomplish?” he asks me with a grin that I might consider sincere from a distance.

  “I thought that I might try my hand at this contest you put on when the task you blackmailed me into performing was through,” I answer.

  “No, you are deciding to be a pawn in some attempt at my business interests. Don't be surprised that I discovered the wager you placed. You didn't even attempt to use another name.”

  “Should I have? There is no rule against betting on oneself. As I'm to understand, that is how most of these underpaid fighters make ends meet.”

  “Don't think that I would be incapable of understanding that the one hundred thousand suns of your bet didn't fall out of the sky. Who put you up to this: Abbrams, Talagast, Widower, Man'sliko?” He narrows his eyes, trying to catch a reaction to a name, but I keep my expression neutral.

  “It doesn't matter. I gave you the price when you came to me about this issue, but instead, you wanted to put my friend's safety on the line. Now, you are going to pay much more, and everyone will see me do it. By the end of the night, when your strongest man is broken against these walls, no one will be willing to cross me again, not in this city.”

  “I own this arena,” he says, his mask falling for a moment. “I can make you leave at any time, you child. I could have you dragged from here.”

  “In front of this crowd?” I ask. I wave up to the people above, and anyone would think that I personally slapped their mothers. “They would rip this place apart. It would show that your little arena is entirely rigged, and I am certain that your friends betting in my favor would most certainly complain to greater authorities about that. In fact, I am almost certain that there are a few such wealthy individuals up there right now who are desperately wanting you to do exactly that. Such people might be willing to bring mayoral attention down on the scheme you have set up here; you might even say they have letters in their pockets for such eventualities even now.”

  The more I speak, the redder his face becomes. At last, the mask is fully gone, and he stalks over, thinking he can leer down at me, only to remember that I am the taller of us. His finger appears, waving in front of my face so close it skips across my nose.

  “Do you forget that I am holding your friend? You want him back in one piece, don't you?”

  I refuse to waver, to show even a hint of hesitance despite how my heart pounds in my chest. “Mr. Mox, if you are so scared of me succeeding and defeating your strongest man, what are the chances you would back out on your deal with me and hurt my friend. I refuse to believe you are that stupid.” With a gentle hand, I push his finger away and narrow my eyes down at him. “If you do that, I will torch your life.”

  The man stands there in front of me for a contemplative moment. Then, he turns on his heels, trudging back down the ramp from which he came without uttering another word. A bewildered Galla looks on, only failing to move for a moment before she lifts her voice to the audience above and begins to get the show moving along again. As the man vanishes, I sigh out, letting the tension I have been holding finally escape me.

  “You did it,” Gaela says at my side.

  “The hard part is over,” I agree with the fey spirit. “Now, I just have to win two more fights.” Turning, I look out toward the light where my next opponent ought to come from, getting ready for anything.

  The men waiting at the bottom of the ramp take a hesitant step back when Treston Mox enters the room.

  “...sir?” one asks.

  “Did I say anything to you?” Treston barks, leaving the man to sputter. “Go make sure that Kedrick knows the score tonight. Get him a set of enhancers and tell him to join me in my box.”

  The man replies with a quick nod before racing away.

  Treston becomes so occupied with muttering and tapping his temple that he fails to realize that his eyes bore straight into the other man. His thoughts race, trying to think through several things at once. He let that woman get under his skin. He failed to even make her an offer, he became so angry. She thought she could beat his real fighters? She would die in this arena for such arrogance. No one ever got the opportunity to embarrass him in this way. No one.

  Treston's hand lashes out and catches the other man's sleeve. “Get to the tower,” he says, nodding to himself. “Let Mallis loose from where we have him. Tell him that his brother's killer is here in the arena, and that he only has a few minutes to get here if he wants a shot.”

  Without a word, the man runs out of the room, racing off to relay his orders. For a long moment afterward, Treston watches the doorway, feeling genuine anxiety for the first time in a long time. Something was wrong about tonight. Some other shoe is waiting to drop.

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