Chapter Ten: The Trial
The village green had been transformed into something between a courtyard and a cattle auction.
Oak benches lined three sides of the packed-earth ring. Every seat was filled. Children perched on their fathers' shoulders for a better view. The rope perimeter sagged under the weight of people pressing forward. Bram's shallow trench marked the fighting boundary, measured to the inch, because even violence deserved proper documentation.
The competitors' alcove sat on the eastern side. A canvas shade over two stools and a water bucket. Zack sat on the left stool and watched the earlier matches.
Sera faced Tomas first. She was Soul Path, low affinity. He was Body Path, weak strain. The fight lasted ninety seconds. Tomas closed the distance before Sera could shape a proper ward, drove her to the boundary with two clean rushes, and pinned her arm behind her back until she yielded.
Body closes distance on Soul. If the Soul caster can't create space, the Body fighter wins. Filed.
Rann fought Kira next. Kira had trained with a traveling instructor last summer and showed it. Spinning strikes. Feinted combinations. Footwork that looked impressive from the benches.
Rann grabbed her ankle mid-spin and put her on the ground. Match over.
Fancy moves don't matter if you end up eating dirt. Also filed.
Each fight fed him data. He watched the way fighters loaded their weight before committing. The way shoulders dropped before hooks. The way feet planted a fraction too wide when power strikes came. His new sight layered the information in heat and light, Aether surging through muscles, concentrating at impact points, thinning in the transitions between strikes.
The ring's cold pressed against his finger. Not speaking. Listening. The footnote was paying attention.
Mira appeared at his shoulder. She crouched beside the stool and kept her voice low.
"Make him miss. Make him look stupid. When he's frustrated, his right cross comes in wide." She punched his arm. Same spot as always. "His left side drops after the cross. That's your window."
She's been watching Kael fight for two years. She has better tactical data than Burrel. My sister is a thirteen-year-old intelligence network with anger issues.
"How wide?"
"Wide enough." She stood. Squeezed his shoulder once. Walked back to the rope line without looking over her shoulder.
His mother stood near the north benches, hands folded in her shawl. She caught his eye. No words. No gestures. Just a look that carried the weight of everything she'd said in the kitchen. The blessing was already given. She didn't need to repeat it.
His father stood across the ring. Arms at his sides. Jaw set. He gave a single nod. Slow. Deliberate. The nod of a man who had said everything he knew how to say and now trusted the silence to carry the rest.
That nod contains more words than he's spoken all month. I'll take it.
Bram called the match.
"Final bout. Zack of Zoe, unclassified. Kael, son of Haren, Body Path medium-high." His stylus scratched against the slate. "Standard terms apply. First to yield, first blood above the neck, or inability to continue."
Kael entered the ring from the west.
He moved with the loose confidence of someone whose body had never failed him. Sixteen. Five inches taller than Zack. Shoulders layered with Aether-fed muscle that had been building since his Path opened at six. His hands hung at his sides, square and heavy, relaxed in the way of weapons that didn't need to be drawn.
In Zack's altered sight, Kael blazed. Thick channels of green Aether pulsed through his frame, reinforcing bone, feeding muscle, layering his skin with a density that turned flesh into something closer to hardwood. The boy was a fortress walking on two legs.
Kael's eyes found Zack. No malice. Professional.
"Don't faint too early. I need the practice."
He thinks he's being funny. He's not wrong, but he's not funny either.
"I'll be helpful."
Kael's brow pinched. He'd expected fear or anger. Calm sat wrong on the moment, and Zack watched the confusion ripple through Kael's body as a brief cooling in his core temperature. Uncertainty. Small. Useful.
Bram raised his hand. The green went silent.
The hand dropped.
"Begin."
Kael closed the distance in two strides. His right fist loaded at the hip, a straight punch aimed center mass. Textbook Body Path. Maximum force through the shortest line.
The heat bloomed in his right shoulder a full second before the arm extended. Blood surged to the striking muscles. Tendons loaded. Every signal screamed the punch's arrival before it launched.
Zack didn't block. He twisted. Hips rotating, torso turning, letting the fist graze past his ribs close enough to feel the wind off Kael's knuckles.
The crowd gasped.
Kael recovered fast. A low hook aimed at the liver. Zack read the heat shift in the left hip and dropped his elbow, catching the blow on his forearm. The impact shoved him sideways. His feet skidded in the dirt. Pain bloomed from wrist to shoulder.
His blocked punch moved me three feet. His unblocked punch will rearrange my organs. New strategy: don't get hit unblocked either.
He retreated. Created space. Kael followed. Patient. Measuring.
The second combination came. Jab, cross, low kick. Zack slipped the jab. Parried the cross with his forearm. The low kick caught his thigh and buckled his stance. He stumbled sideways but stayed up.
Pattern. Jab, cross, finish. The finish rotates. And after the cross, his right bicep relaxes for a half second while the arm resets. That's the window Mira was talking about.
The ring on his finger pulsed cold. He remembered the voice. Look with the Cold Place. Not your eyeballs. Find where the threads are thin.
He shifted his perception. Stopped reading Kael's heat. Started reading Kael's absence.
The difference was immediate. Where Aether concentrated, Kael was armored. Impenetrable. But between the concentrations, in the transitions, in the split-second gaps when power moved from one muscle group to the next, there were seams. Thin spots where the reinforcement flickered.
There. Inside of the right bicep. After the cross retracts. The Aether pulls to his fist during the punch and takes a half second to redistribute. For that half second, the bicep is just muscle. Human muscle. Hittable muscle.
Kael's next cross fired. Zack slipped it. Stepped inside. His left hand drove a tight, precise jab into the soft tissue of Kael's inner bicep.
Not heavy. Not powerful. Placed.
Kael's arm spasmed. His right hand dropped an inch. His rhythm broke.
The crowd murmured. Something had changed, and nobody on the benches understood what.
Kael looked at his arm. Then at Zack. His eyes carried something new.
"Good."
One word. Not friendly. The assessment of a fighter recognizing that the rules of the engagement had shifted. The warmup was over.
And now he adapts. Because of course he does. He's not stupid. He's Body Path medium-high with years of sparring experience, and I just showed him I can find his gaps. He's going to stop leaving them open.
Kael stripped the waste from his attacks. No more wide combinations. No more telegraphed finishers. He moved with economy, closing angles, cutting off Zack's retreat paths, herding him toward the stone boundary marker at the ring's edge.
Each step backward cost Zack space he couldn't afford. The ring was twenty feet across. He'd burned twelve of them.
He's corralling me. Tightening the circle. When my back hits the boundary, I have nowhere to slip. He knows it. I know it. The entire village knows it.
Kael feinted. Left jab. Zack read the false signal in the heat pattern, the telltale absence of real commitment in the shoulder. He held his ground.
The real attack came from below. Kael's boot stamped the packed earth hard enough to send a tremor through the ring. Zack's footing stuttered. His weight shifted wrong for a quarter second.
Kael's right hand came through the gap.
The punch hit Zack's raised guard and blasted through it. Both forearms went numb. The impact drove the air from his lungs in a single compressed burst. He hit the boundary stone with his back and the world flashed white.
That was a cart. A full cart. Loaded with stones. Pushed off a cliff. Into my arms.
He blinked. Vision returned in stages. Kael stood four feet away, weight settled, measuring the distance for the finish.
The right cross. The wide one. Mira's window.
But Zack's arms were dead. His back was against the stone. No space to slip. No room to twist.
He's going to throw it. I can see the energy gathering. Aether flooding his right shoulder and fist. Hips starting to pivot. This is the one that ends it.
The ring on his finger turned to ice.
The voice entered his skull. Clipped. Precise. The footnote, speaking for the second time.
"Do not meet it. Unmake its path."
Kael's cross fired toward his jaw.