The spider bodies sizzle after a short while and slowly dissolve themselves. On the one hand, an efficient ecological clean up system. On the other, it explains why we haven’t found a lot of dead spiders if we’ve been anywhere near Jes. After resting up, with Sadie still keeping wary watch on Jes, we decide it’s a decent arena for us to try our skills on each other. We settle on a chamber twice as large as a boxing ring in each direction with a ten-foot ceiling covered in veins of crystal moss, so the lighting isn’t terrible.

  “So what is this again?” I ask, picking up her spiky fist thing, now mostly free of spider guts.

  “Cestus,” Jes answers, allowing me to examine her metal and leather pain machine. It’s got spikes on the back of the fist, so every punch comes extra spicy. It looks a lot like the same construction as Brigadier Baco’s hardened and spiked helm.

  “Sounds like a size of coffee,” I joke, examining the craftsmanship of the weapon.

  “God, I could use a mocha latte,” Jes sighs.

  “Chai for me,” I say, handing the cestus back.

  “With cinnamon sprinkled on. We’ve probably gotten cups at the same coffee shop,” Jes says. “That’s enough for me to be on your team. That and the fact that I haven’t seen anyone human. Speaking of…”

  I look at her. She holds a finger up in the air next to her temple.

  I finger my horns. “Neat, right? Think of this like your armor.”

  “Bit more intrusive than armor,” she says, leaning to get a better view. “You didn’t get that off a body.”

  I shrug. “It’s something I picked up along the way. Maybe you’ll get a tail or something.”

  “Telemete,” Sadie says, rolling her goat eyes. “She’s not getting a tail.”

  “Oh, right,” I say, carefully handing the cestus over. “Of course not. Who could possibly think that?”

  When Jes slips the cestus on, it clings to her, shrinking to form fit her hand. It seems to be the same magical technology that makes my spear go from stake to javelin. When the armpiece wraps around her fist and forearm, it fits tightly. It’s several jointed metal plates, but her fingers are bare. An impressive design, overall.

  “I’ll need my akon and labrys back,” she says.

  “Actually, we could probably level up in bare knuckle brawling without the weapons.”

  She makes a fist in the cestus and the spikes grow to finger long viscous points. “That doesn’t seem very fair to you. My knuckles ain’t bare.”

  “Whoa,” I say, putting my fingers to her wrist and lowering the fist of fury. “None of that. While healing might be accelerated here, let’s not push it.”

  “Your mouth isn’t even bleeding anymore,” she points out.

  Even weirder, I can feel a tooth starting to come back into place from when she clonked one out of my head before the spider ambush.

  “You have to go as close as you can to real fighting,” Sadie says. “The more it’s like real moves, the more chance you will increase your skill. Just standing doing practice moves against no opponent will take hours. Pulling attacks will slow the rate of increase, but not terribly.”

  “Got it,” I say, “Light contact, no blades, no spiky fist things, no dismembering, and I won’t impale you.”

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  “What’s your gear?”

  All I got was a rock…

  “I have this eviscerating spear.”

  “I know that. What else? You didn’t survive this long with a fancy toothpick.”

  Sadie shoulders up next to me. “He’s got me.”

  Jes nods. “I’ve seen you throw the fire. Not bad.”

  “That reminds me, I have to resummon Brigadier Baco.”

  “Brigadier,” Jes breathes, “Baco.”

  “Field promotion,” I explain. “He deserved it.”

  “I’m intrigued,” Jes says. “Show me how you summon your Brigadier.”

  “It’s not really all that pleasant,” I say. “When I do it, well, I kind of get sick.”

  Less now, after my horns bonus. Rather than just extend my hand, I go through an elaborate kung fu arm swirl just to make it look more impressive. I end up on one knee, so that if it hits me with a gut punch, I don’t look like a jerk falling over.

  I’m on one knee, growling and holding out my hand. Baco digs himself from the floor.

  “Holy cow,” Jes says, stepping back from the armored fart machine. “That’s wild.”

  Baco bares his teeth and snarls. Jes goes into fighting stance.

  “No,” I say.

  Baco growls and paws the ground, getting ready to charge.

  “Baco! Down. Heel.” I step between them and give the Stay hand signal.

  He looks past me to grumble at Jes. I squat and put my hands on his bristly unwashed jowls.

  “Baco, relax.”

  He sidesteps to get a path to charge her. I intervene.

  “She did chop him in half,” Sadie says.

  “Not helping,” I say. I lock eyes with Baco and breathe deep, calling on my Dominance skill.

  “Baco, relax.”

  Baco’s entire body relaxes. He approaches Jes, gross tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. She takes a half step back, but it’s clear his intention is not aggression.

  “Can I touch him?” she asks.

  “He’s not the softest piggy, but sure.”

  She scratches an open spot in the armor behind Baco’s ear. Baco freezes, and his rear leg starts stomping wildly. Jes smiles. This isn’t a wry smile, but an actual relaxed smile. Baco takes a quick sidestep away, back bristling.

  “Sorry, Brigadier. Didn’t mean to overstep,” Jes says. “We ended up very different in this world.”

  Jes plucks her throwing darts from the ground, where they pierced a spider. She takes them in her hand and spins them in her palm. They end up evenly angled from each other like a giant asterisk. She chucks that asterisk in the air and she spins. She catches one between two fingers of her cestus hand, and the others get held like chopsticks in her other hand. In a phenomenal blaze of speed, she starts tossing the spikes between her hands, flipping them, catching them in her fingertips, rolling them over the back of her hands, sliding them over her forearms, and popping them back into the air.

  “Juggling fourteen,” I say.

  She throws all three up, bows, and catches them in one hand behind her back.

  “Ah,” she says. “Fifteen.”

  Well, crap.

  “If you get your whole arsenal,” Sadie says, “Dom should get his.”

  We look at her.

  “Me and Baco. We’re Dom’s weapons.”

  “Hold on now,” Jes says. “That’s three on one. Doesn’t seem quite fair now does it?”

  I pick up Jes’ labrys and hand it to her. “Why not? All I get is a spear otherwise.”

  Jes considers. “I wasn’t realizing they were part of the package.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, spinning my spear. “They’re literally a part of me.”

  Sadie flares her hands, perfectly on cue, and snaps a spark to my spear. The head ignites in a pale, blue glow.

  “Ease that up,” Jes says. “I paid way too much for the hair.”

  I hadn’t noticed. Her hair is in tight cornrows that she had tied through a golden loop at the back of her head. It’s probably long and all over the place if not bound.

  “Sadie, can we turn it down a notch?”

  “Oops, sorry,” Sadie says. “I’m just so used to going all out, I never think to turn it down.”

  Sadie flicks a blob of flame to the spear. Now, instead of a propane blast, it’s a pale yellow haze. Jes reaches her hand over it.

  “Okay, yeah,” she says.

  “No spikes,” I say. The spikes on her Cestus retract.

  Jes nods. “No lightning shear. Unless monsters come by.”

  “Ready?” I say. Baco gallops pudgily to my side.

  Jes nods.

  “Let’s rumble,” I say, handing her the axe.

  And I’m lying on the floor. She stepped forward, spun, and kicked my leg out from under me before I even raised my weapon. There’s an akon sticking out of the ground on either side of my head, and one just over me. Jes bends over me to pluck the spikes, looks me in the eye and says. “That’s one for me.”

  I get up, look at my bondlings and get ready. Really ready this time.

  “Try that again,” I sneer.

  Shit, she did it again. Exact same move.

  “Two,” she says, plucking the akon from around my head.

  “Hold on, hold on,” I say. “Sadie, Baco, you’re my weapons. Why aren’t you helping?”

  “Two reasons,” Sadie says, holding out two fingers. “One, I believe the fight ended, because I’m sure she could have thrown those needles into your eyes and was just playing nice.”

  “And two?” I ask.

  She smacks her lips. “It was really funny how fast you hit the ground, and I was laughing too much to fight.”