The orb was coming closer. The light was mesmerizing, washing across the snow at our feet, making it dance like a schizophrenic rainbow.

  I spoke. I didn’t need to be loud. They all had the same enhanced hearing I had. I didn’t want to speak loudly enough for the enhanced ears of our opponents to hear me.

  I said, "We go straight at them. I’m going to try and make a line for their Axe. They mightn’t be planning on sending him straight at me, but they certainly won’t expect me to go straight at him. It will disrupt everything. Either he takes the fight, and I put him down fast with Axe-break, or I miss, and he squashes me. If I succeed, then our odds of winning go through the roof. If I don’t, then we can probably concede. If he bounces away from me, then that should make an opening for us to go two to one on one of them. That’s the thrust of it—there’s no point assigning targets; it comes down to how he reacts to me."

  Tara said, "I don’t know if I like the sound of that. What you’re naming as ‘not succeeding’ could, in reality, just be getting yourself killed."

  I said, "I’ll yield if I have to. The way things are laid out before us, we have to roll the dice pretty hard."

  It was unspoken that Olaf was the reason we needed to gamble hard. He was amazing for a Griidlord so new to the suit, but the reality was simple—he was a babe learning to walk, and where our opponents had four Griidlords, we probably had the equivalent of three and a half. Or maybe even less than that.

  Magneblade chuckled darkly. “I knew I’d like you. This is my kind of play. Go big or go home, ladies and gents.”

  Tara said, “Well, I don’t like it.”

  Olaf spoke. His voice was uncertain. He had yet to find his place among us. I knew he felt like the last-minute addition he was. It was surprising, in fact, that he even went so far as to pose his opinion in that moment. “I don’t like it either.”

  I looked to each of them, reading their faces. Their bare skin was bitten by the cold, cheeks red, noses running. We should all have donned our helms before this, but I was glad of it. I wanted to be able to read their expressions, gauge them. Magneblade was eager, a hound barely leashed. Tara’s face was etched with concern, but her steel was still there. Only Olaf looked truly hesitant.

  It would be our first true time in battle. I couldn’t know for sure yet if he would have the mettle for this. I couldn’t know for certain if he would accept my lead. Heck, I’d never asserted myself so with any of them before. It was as though the absence of Chowwick’s personality had left a vacuum, and something in me was growing to fill it.

  Magneblade caught my eye, and I saw him nod. It was the barest of gestures, almost imperceptible. But I could feel the approval radiating from him. It was something special to receive something like that from one such as him. I turned my attention to Tara, held my gaze there until she met my eye. The worry was written in block capitals on her face, but she too nodded. This was not one of quiet admiration but a silent agreement to follow.

  I said, “Alright then.”

  ***

  As soon as our Footfields ignited, driving us forward across the dusty snow, there were four answering booms from the side of our opponents.

  We surged toward each other. It was silly to use the Footfields now. It was a symbolic action. We were charging one another. In seconds, we would all disengage the fields to avoid having us meld with one another in a mutually assured fusion of flesh, organ, and suit. But it was thrilling nonetheless.

  The world melted past me in a lightning blur of chaos. The light of the locked orb cascaded everywhere like a late-night club in the inner sector. I could imagine the music.

  Enki spoke in my brain, Big moment, kiddo. Me thinks a moment like this deserves a rendition of something exciting. Do you know ‘Welcome to the Jungle’? I do a mean Axl Rose.

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  I didn’t know what it meant. I managed to urgently think, No, stop.

  Enki made a harrumphing noise in my mind.

  Then, like that, we released our fields, and the organized chaos began. It wasn’t organized—that wasn’t the right term. But it sure as shit was chaos.

  We stayed close together as we released our fields and returned to the gelatinous pace of charging horses. They were more spread out. Rosegold, the Arrow, had gone wide to our left. She had gone so wide as to be skirting us, moving beyond us. It was an uncomfortable feeling to think that she was behind us, but it was equally heartening. In a battle between Griidlords, where explosive powers could be unleashed and the world could change in seconds, her separation from us might be a boon.

  The opposing Sword made for me. I itched to lock blades with him, but my attention went to the Axe as he darted to the left of us. I cast Assess quickly, trying to understand what I faced.

  Subject: Rufus Ulfran

  Status: Chosen Axe

  Level: 31

  Skills: ***, Phase, ***

  My mind raced. There was a strange affirmation. I had grown so much, and yet it was strangely exalting to find myself looking at a peer. Well, a peer in level, at least. He was an Axe and, save for Axe-break, able to smash me over his knee with type advantage. Still, there was a moment of feeling like I had arrived.

  I cast Assess again, on the Sword this time.

  Subject: Remus Gladius

  Status: Chosen Sword

  Level: 32

  Skills: Detonate, ***, ***

  Again, I felt my chest surge. I know how stupid that must seem now, looking back at it. Combat was imminent, and there I was feeling elated to find myself equal in level to two others. Two others who had probably worn their suits for years, probably decades. But the feeling was there—I can’t deny it.

  I hadn’t much time to think, but I had the dreadful feeling I knew what Detonate was. I had a memory of an explosion of fire erupting from the form of a Griidlord on the field. A bomb going off, walls of fire and kinetic force rushing from the suit in all directions. It was one to watch for.

  Remus wouldn’t employ it while close to teammates, but it was a skill that carried the potential to upend everything in a moment.

  I did as I had said I would do. I darted forward, towards Rufus, the Axe. I could see Rosegold beyond him, far too distant, continuing to circle towards our flank. The flank rotation was worrying, but for now, it was to our advantage if we could impact the battle swiftly.

  Rufus hovered for an instant. He seemed to deny physics. It was as though he hung there for a moment, refusing to acknowledge his own momentum, mid-stride. I knew every fiber of his being was begging—wanting—to turn on me like the prey item he saw me as. But he couldn’t do it. I had no doubts that they had consulted on this as we had. He had been told to avoid the Sword that wielded the terrible Axe-break skill. I could practically feel the emotions rending in him, the urge to pounce warring against the duty to fall back.

  It struck me then, like a wave. Somehow, I had escaped the thought until that moment. We were competing for a locked Orb. We only needed to win four of these to attain the Griid-Crown. Even as I stared at a deadly opponent, I felt my head swim at the thought.

  I had wanted the suit to appease my father at first. Later, I had wanted it to serve the people—the common folk who chanted my name. Then, I had come to understand that I wanted it for myself, to own that power, to experience the sensory riches of it.

  But this was the first moment that I realized I wanted it for more.

  I wanted to be validated by the masses for more than just justifying their faith in me. I wanted the glory. I wanted the validation that my father had never given me, screamed from a thousand faces. And winning the Griid-Crown in my first year in the suit would deliver that.

  My heart raced and fluttered at the thought. This was the first step of four to total victory.

  Rufus leapt back from my charge, as I had expected him to. And the action exposed all three of them.