Chapter 276: The Other Target

Ivo Talren was polite at the marks, which somehow made it worse.

"Astor. Good climb." He had the slight breathlessness of someone who had been warming up. "No hard feelings whichever way this goes, yeah? I need the place."

"Same here," Jin said.

Talren glanced from Glitch to him. "You’ve seen my recordings?"

"The sword and darts? Yes."

"Then you know I won’t just be standing back."

Jin nodded. He’d known that before coming in. Hearing it from someone who would soon be swinging a sword at him was less comfortable.

Jin checked the floor from his mark: forty meters of connected composite, with the raised boundary circling it. He kept a generous stretch of open ground behind him and settled Glitch ahead.

The referee called the start.

Quarrel moved backward, mineral ridges flaring along its spine. The first burst of shards came low across the floor, and Glitch angled a Hardened shoulder into it. The stone fragments cracked off his plating and skittered across the floor, and one of them opened a thin line above his eye, where the angle of the plating left skin exposed.

The skink withdrew four meters and fired again.

Don’t chase it.

Glitch advanced diagonally, keeping his head guarded. Quarrel stopped to aim its next burst, and Glitch used that pause to gain a little more ground toward the eastern arc.

Talren left his own mark at an angle. Jin saw the movement, but his attention snagged on the blood above Glitch’s eye for a moment too long.

He missed the first dart forming. By the time he looked back, a hand-length sliver of ice was coming toward him. He turned his shoulder, and it passed close enough to make him flinch.

The second one hit.

It caught him high on the left arm and skated off, and it hurt, an immediate hot line above the elbow, and Jin heard himself say something he would not have said in front of his mother.

Move. Move, you idiot, you knew this was coming—

He moved.

His first sideways push carried him farther than he expected. He caught the next step cleanly and opened a little distance before Talren formed another dart.

The physical sharing from Glitch’s partial awakening had strengthened considerably after the Peak Silver evolution. Jin had felt it in training, in lifting and bracing and recovering his balance. He hadn’t tested it with somebody trying to hit him with a weapon.

"Glitch — keep going! East!"

Talren was coming.

A short, cloudy blade formed in Talren’s right hand. He advanced across the route toward the western half of the floor, cutting off Jin’s easiest retreat into open space.

Jin went left instead, hard, and discovered that a man with a sword covers ground very quickly.

The blade came across at waist height. He got back out of the arc by about twenty centimeters and felt the cold of it go past his stomach, and then he was stumbling, because he had put his foot down wrong in the retreat and his body was faster than his footwork by a considerable margin.

He caught himself on one hand and kept moving.

Too straight. Stop going straight back.

He knew better than to retreat blindly toward a boundary. Doing something about it while watching a sword was harder. His conditioning let him recover from the stumble, but he couldn’t find a comfortable distance from which to watch both opponents.

The instinct sitting at the front of his skull was call Glitch back.

Glitch would come. Through the bond, Jin could feel how badly he wanted to turn around already.

But pulling him off Quarrel would give the skink its retreating space back. Jin would trade their progress for a moment’s shelter, then have to deal with the same two opponents again. He still had room toward the middle if he could get past the sword’s line.

No. Buy time.

"Glitch — the ridge line, don’t let it turn!"

He moved as Talren recovered from the swing, cutting laterally toward the center. A quick glance showed Glitch still advancing, Quarrel backing closer to the eastern curve.

Three more darts followed. One clipped the back of Jin’s shoulder through his shirt; he avoided the other two and kept moving. His lungs were working hard by the time he had enough distance to look toward Glitch again.

Talren had noticed.

Talren cut the corner instead of following him, aiming for the space Jin was moving toward. Direct pursuit hadn’t gained him enough ground, and he was no longer treating Jin as someone he could simply run down.

He was breathing harder too. His next dart took longer to form, and he shortened the sword while calling an instruction to Quarrel. Maintaining both attacks was costing him, but Jin couldn’t count on that cost ending the match in time.

He used the pause to check the beasts.

Glitch had reached the inner side of Quarrel’s retreat. The skink stopped near the boundary to fire again, and Glitch braced into the volley with his head turned to protect the cut above his eye. The impact checked him briefly. He pushed forward as the last fragments bounced away.

"Across!" Talren called to his beast.

Quarrel broke sideways along the ring, trying to pass Glitch’s forequarters and regain the open center. Jin recognized the turn from its recordings.

"Close that side!" he shouted, then had to dodge as Talren advanced again.

When he looked back, Glitch had stepped across the skink’s route. Quarrel checked its movement before colliding with his chest, leaving its tail toward the boundary.

Glitch drove into the opening with an ordinary step, putting his shoulder against Quarrel before it could turn inward again. The skink twisted and tried to brace. Glitch planted his rear feet and pushed, using his chest to keep it from slipping past.

Quarrel’s tail crossed the raised ring first. Its hind feet caught at the lip for a moment, then Glitch’s next shove carried its body over. The forefeet lost purchase, and the skink landed entirely beyond the boundary.

"Out! Ring-out — match!" The referee’s arm was up. "Talren — stand down!"

The blade in Talren’s hand was still coming forward.

He stopped it. His arm dropped, the ice went to nothing, and he stood there in the middle of the floor breathing hard with his other hand on his knee.

[Match result: Defender victory.]

[Jin Astor — Third-Class Rank 20]

[Ivo Talren — Third-Class Rank 24]

A medic cleaned the graze above Jin’s elbow and checked the mark on the back of his shoulder. That one had bruised beneath the shirt without breaking the skin.

"Nothing embedded," she said, dressing his arm. "Keep this clean. Come back if the swelling gets worse."

Jin thanked her and flexed his fingers while she checked the dressing.

Glitch came over and pushed his nose against the bandage, unhappy in a way that had nothing to do with the injury and everything to do with not having been standing next to him.

"I’m all right," Jin told him, stroking the uninjured side of his jaw.

Glitch’s nose stayed close to the dressing until Jin gently moved it away. Lesser Regeneration worked on the lizard’s own body; it couldn’t deal with Jin’s graze for him.

Talren arrived with Quarrel walking stiffly beside him, entirely intact.

"Fair," he said, before anything else. "Clean. I got beaten on the floor and I’d rather that than some referee decision." He rolled his shoulder. "How are you that fast?"

"Physical sharing," Jin said. "It’s improved since his evolution."

"More than I expected." Talren glanced at the bandage. "I thought I’d catch you before you could settle. Your first retreat nearly gave it to me."

"I noticed," Jin said.

"Get someone to work on your feet. You’ve got the speed for it." He put his hand out, and Jin shook it. "Congratulations on the qualification. Assuming you hold it tomorrow."

Jin replayed the match that evening, stopping at his first retreat. He could see the mistake clearly from outside it: his attention had stayed on the blade while his feet took him toward the ring.

The improved physique had let him recover. Keeping Glitch on Quarrel had been the right decision too. But he had lost sight of the beasts for too long, and each hurried glance had given Talren another chance to close.

I need to practice both jobs at once.

He added footwork to his training notes, then a second line about commanding under pressure. Someone who knew what they were doing would have to teach him. Running faster wouldn’t fix where he put his feet.

He saved the recording with the note and went to check his beasts.