The boy did not take it well. “You think she’s stronger than me?” The words came out tight,ground out through a jaw that had locked shut. “That freak? Her mark is a joke. All she does is make the air shimmer.” A few of the nearby students laughed. “Fine then.” The boy straightened and turned back to Edda. “How about we find out right now then? Let’s see how strong your little shimmer really is. You know what? How about we make it a Ranking Match. That's more than your kind is ever offered.”
The Arena shifted. Bouts stopped mid exchange. Heads turned toward the words ranking match the way they had turned toward Ilyasviel.
The Elf paused, mouth half open. She glanced around at the humans and found them eager. At the demonbloods, who had drawn together into a knot of their own. Her gaze found mine and I held it. Those lips thinned. "Well, if my students are so eager for it, I do not see why not." The Elf's lips curled into the first smile I had seen from her. I had preferred the frown."Very well. It is rare for Lines, but we will have a sanctioned match." She raised one hand between the two of them, palm flat. "We need stakes, then. State them."
"I don't want anything. What does she have worth taking?” He spread his arms. There was no need to. “My ranking against hers. My sixth against her…what was it? One hundred and three? Let's make it a proper contest.”
There was laughter, from the humans nearest him. I understood the joke a moment later. He was staking his ranking on this duel. Sixth, wagered against one hundred and third. It was an insult from someone who thought himself untouchable.
Edda herself had gone very still. Her gaze moved from the boy to me. It should not have been possible for a mere look to carry that much accusation. It did anyway. “I refuse,” Edda said quietly.
The crowd murmured and somebody snickered. The fool boy’s lip curled into triumph.
I had seen these demonbloods cower from the first moment I had stepped into Koralis. They bowed their heads, shrank their shoulders, and spoke in whispers so the humans might not hear them. The exceptions had been too few by far. I knew, by now, some of why they cowered. The knowing had not made the sight of it any easier. And if they did not stand at their full height today, they never would.
“If you refuse,” I said, “then perhaps he is right about you.”
The look Edda gave me was sharp. I had received worse, but not by much. Her jaw worked. Her hands balled at her sides. For a moment, I thought she might actually refuse. She straightened. “Fine,” Edda said. “I’ll…I’ll stake my ranking.”
The Inker had channeled Essence into some device along one wall, and the smaller rings had recessed into the floor. A single platform rose in their place, twenty paces to a side.
That was not the only change. The wooden device in my pocket hummed against my hip. I drew it out and found the engraved letters rearranging themselves. It told of a sanctioned match, it listed the competitors, it listed the time, which was now.
The stands began to fill before the Elf had finished raising the ring. By the time she stepped down, their murmuring had given the arena a dull buzz. Most of the people I saw were humans. Some of them were Inkers.
I spied a few familiar faces in the crowd. Corin and Ren were along the opposite row of seats. I spotted Alisa in the crowd. She was sitting near one of the exits. She met my gaze and looked away. Malachor was easy to make out. He sat on one of the lowest rows, arms folded. His two heads wore the same mirrored frown. I had not seen them agree before.
Ash and I stood to the side of the singular ring, alongside the other humans who had been part of the class. Many of the demonbloods who had been part of our class had withdrawn at the first mention of this ‘ranking match’. The only one who’d stayed was the frost haired girl. I was sure she still had not blinked. Her gaze had simply moved to the ring.
The Elven Inker stood at the center of the raised platform. She glanced at the crowd, saw something that pleased her, and spoke. Her voice carried. She was projecting it with Essence. A simple enough trick with mana, no more difficult with Essence I suspected. “This is a ranking match. One between Edda Eryn, ranked one hundred and third among the Lines and two hundred and nine two at the Academy. Against Tobias of House Redford, ranked sixth among the Lines and one hundred and eighty nine at the Academy."
"The stakes are rank for rank, as is custom. You both fight until either one of you yields, leaves the ring, or cannot continue. Should matters go too far, I will intervene. As this is a ranking match, normal restrictions on mark usage do not apply. Do you both understand?”
They both nodded, Edda nodded far more slowly than her opponent. The boy settled into a stance of some kind. His feet were wide and his Line pulsed orange on his forearm. There was a confidence in the way he held himself.
Edda stood opposite him and her arms hung at her sides. Her shifting blue and red Line was barely visible. She was not pushing Essence through it.
Her Mark can only make the air shimmer, that’s what this Tobias had said, and the others had seemed to agree. That meant they had seen it too. Edda's mark shifted again as I watched. It shifted to blue and stayed there. I saw the haze then, the air around her moving and twisting, just faintly. Then, a pale blue glow settled round her entire body. I could barely see the glow under the lights.
I could see why others dismissed it. If this was the power of the girl’s mark, then it was no wonder people mocked her. I would not. I had sifted the strong from the weak for hundreds of years, and that same instinct flared every time I looked at the girl.
Ash stood beside me. She folded her arms and watched. She had been quiet for some time. “You pushed her into this,” Ash said. Her voice was low enough that only I could hear.
“I gave her a choice and she made it.”
“That wasn’t a choice. That was a corner. We both know there was only one way forward for her.” I did not answer immediately. I felt the Hero studying my face. “Why?” she asked.
I considered several responses. Each of them was a lie. “I am not sure,” I said. That, at least, was honest. Ash waited. “I did not like the way she cowered from him,” I said finally.
Ash's face softened. She had read more into my words than I had intended, I think. She pressed herself closer to me. “I can agree to that,” she murmured.
The Elven woman stepped out of the ring, and the duel began.
The tall boy opened with a straight right. It was a fast blow, reinforced with Essence. His fist drove forward with the full weight of his body behind it. It struck Edda’s raised guard and Edda slid back two feet, her boots carving furrows in the packed earth. Her pale glow rippled, a brief distortion that vanished soon after. The crowd jeered.
“Hit her harder!”
“Make it quick!”
“Careful Redford! You’ll dirty your hands!”
I ignored them. I was watching the boy’s second strike. It landed on the same shoulder as the first, almost on the same spot. Edda absorbed it and slid again, farther this time. The impact was harder, though the boy's form had not changed and I felt no swell of power from him. His mark flared.
The same punch thrown with the same body behind it, and yet it had more force. Interesting.
The third strike hit Edda’s ribs. It landed with a sound that made several in the stands wince. Edda bent at the waist but did not go down. More blows came, each more vicious than the last.
The boy’s grin was growing wider. His mark flared brighter with every blow. Each blow had more force behind it than the last. Each of Edda’s blocks were clumsy. Her guard was crumbling. Her blue glow did nothing.
I think I understood the shape of the boy’s power now. His mark had some kind of stacking effect. The more he punched, the harder he punched. By this world’s classification, it would be a Somatic. Perhaps there was more to it, but if there was, this boy didn’t need it. It was a tyrant’s power. I would know.
The tenth caught Edda across the jaw. Her head snapped sideways and blood flew from her lip. The blow launched her across the ring. She landed a hand's width inside the bounds of the ring. The haze around her skin rippled and the crowd roared.
“Pathetic!” someone shouted.
“Give up already!”
“Demon trash!”
Not everyone cheered. Among the humans, perhaps one in five did. The one was enough to drown out the four.
Then, there were those who did not cheer, and were not silent. Ren's flames lit her whole section of the stands. Corin had both arms around her middle and was losing. From what, I could not say. Her jumping down and storming the arena, perhaps.
The frost-haired demonblood still had not blinked. Both of Malachor’s heads had looked away from each other. I spotted Alisa in the crowd. She was sitting near one of the exits. She met my gaze and looked away. Then, there were the other demonbloods, the few that had come just to sit in the stands. They all looked, but I did not think any of them saw. I looked at their faces and saw Edda's blankness mirrored back, over and over.
Edda had not yielded yet. I could not tell whether that was courage or habit. She straightened on unsteady legs, and raised her guard again. The pale blue was still there. That had never faded, though it might have flickered, a few times.
“You see it as well." I said to Ash. It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“Did you know about this?”
“She didn’t tell me,” Ash said. “But I suspected something like this.”
Another blow landed on her raised forearm, all the weight of his stacking behind it. By any measure it should have shattered the arm or thrown Edda from the ring. It put her on her back and nothing more.
That power had to go somewhere. No, it had gone somewhere. Everyone was too busy watching the girl lose to notice.
I almost laughed. I might have, had the sight not frustrated me so. “Stay down,” the boy said. He was breathing hard now, but grinning. The sweat on his face caught the light. “You should have stayed down from the start. Come on, don't make me look like the bad guy here. Go down nice and quiet and we can call it mercy.”
Edda rose, slower now than she had at the start. Her legs wobbled, and for a moment I thought she would go down again. She did not. “I understand what this is for now,” Ash said. “But this is still cruel. You could have challenged him yourself”
“I could have,” I agreed. “I would not have them stand only on my shoulders.” I had to force the last part out. “They should learn to stand for themselves.” Ash sighed, but did not say more.
Isabelle’s question found me again. Why would the strong waste themselves shielding the weak? I still had no answer for her. But perhaps I had the beginning of one: the strong could refuse to let the weak remain so.
Edda moved forward and swung for the first time. It was an artless and clumsy blow, one the boy stepped aside from almost casually. Edda tried again, missed again. Her footwork was terrible, or perhaps she was simply that wounded.
The boy hit her again. And again. The sound of the blows landing was wet and heavy. Edda’s lip was split wide. One eye was swelling shut. She swayed on her feet like a reed in a gale.
The Elf watched. She had said she would stop things from going too far. I understood now that too far was a border she had drawn somewhere on the other side of Edda’s body.
The boy's whole body twisted into the kick. It lifted Edda off her feet and put her down hard enough that I felt it through my legs. Edda did not rise immediately, and so the boy smirked and looked at the Inker.
“Well? I wanted to make a show of it, but it’s not much of a show like this. I do think the audience is starting to get bored,” he said. He found a few faces in the crowd, and raised his arms as he made a show of walking around the ring. He was staring out at one section of the stands. I followed his gaze.
I saw the girl there, the one from the mess hall. The girl who had called herself Lena Eckhart, as if her name alone might mean something. Her arms were folded. She watched like a queen presiding over an execution of her own decree. She wore the look poorly.
Edda grunted and coughed. Tobias turned. Edda was standing again. The few cheering humans had finally stopped their jeering. Even the dullest among them could feel that something was wrong with this picture. Even the boy’s face was red.
“Stay fucking down already!” he shouted. “What, trying to get some sympathy now demonblood? Gonna make me end this more permanently are you?" He turned to the Inker as if demanding the Inker step in instead.
I did not understand. He had seemed rather nonchalant about attacking Edda before.
“It’s because it was a contest before,” Ash murmured. I had not asked her. “An uneven contest, but still a contest. There’s honor in winning a contest. There’s only shame in slaughter.”
I stared at her. That was…a rather odd distinction. One that a Hero could understand, and a Demon Queen could not. I turned back to the ring.
The Elf looked at Edda swaying in the ring, and shook her head. The smile was barely hidden by the tilt of her chin.“She’s still standing.”
Edda barely raised her arms. Was she trying to get beaten, or was she so used to it that anything else felt foreign to her? I could not watch any longer.
“Edda.” I did not raise my voice. The Essence carried it to every seat in the arena, and the arena went quiet around it, because a Queen's voice brooked nothing less. “Why are you holding back? Have you spent so long on your knees that you have forgotten you own feet?” I felt Ash shift next to me, but she did not stop me.
The boy whirled toward me, his face twisted. “Commentary from the crowd? And from the half-demon no less. Well?” He jabbed a finger at Edda. “Still think she is stronger than me?” He smirked, and then that smirk faded. He looked around, his gaze fixing on the humans that were silent. Had been silent since the fighting began. “You all know this, don’t act like you don’t just because it isn’t polite. These half-demons are bad enough, but these demonbloods are worse. They live among us, act like they’re just like us. He was-” Tobias’ voice broke, and he looked at me. “He was just like-”
“I was not speaking to you,” I said. The boy’s mouth hung open. I had already turned from him. “Edda,” I said, softer this time, though not by much. “Are you content with this?” I turned my gaze from her, swept towards the entire Arena. It was very quiet. “Are all of you content with this?” I turned back to the blue haired girl, battered and bloody as she was.
Edda stood in the centre of the circle. Blood on her chin, one eye half-shut. The blue-tinged air around her was denser now. That was no trick of the light. “It is no sin to be born weak. It is a sin to spend your life pretending to be. I will ask once, and never again. Is this what you choose?”
She looked at me. Even past the passivity the girl always wore, there was a fire in her gaze. “No,” she said.
“Then stand.”
Edda exhaled. The mark bled from blue to red, and the haze changed with it. Her blue had been dim under the arena lights. Her red made the lights look dim in turn.
She crossed the ring in a single step. He never saw her arrive. Her palm found his chest, the air around her split and everything he had spent on her came home at once.
He left the ground. He crossed what remained of the ring in the air, struck the earth at its edge, bounced once, and skidded to rest in the dirt beyond it. He did not get up.
He was breathing. I could see that much. He was conscious too, though only barely. His eyes were open and glassy.
The arena was silent. Nobody spoke, nobody moved. It tasted familiar. It tasted like fear. It came from the demonbloods as much as from the humans.I understood, then, a little of why they had feared the red-skinned half-demon.
The Elf's mouth worked around the words before she let them out. She did not project them. "Winner…Edda Eryn." Her words were a whisper so low Edda herself might not have heard them.
Edda stood at the center of the ring, her hand still extended, trembling faintly. Blood dripped from her chin onto the earth. She was shaking, and I did not think it was from exhaustion.
Something in the stands shifted. It was Ren who broke the silence. She rose, and she let out a sound so loud it filled the entire arena. “WOOO! YOU SHOWED THAT BASTARD WHAT’S WHAT EDDA!”
A dam broke. The other demonbloods stirred as if surfacing from deep water. Some rose and cheered. Others rose and simply stood, as if the standing were the whole of what they could do. The girl with the frost hair blinked for the first time.
Malachor rose. The Demon towered, until the row above him could barely be seen at all. His right head spoke. “That was a fine contest, girl! Stand tall!” His voice boomed, echoed off the walls. The left head said nothing.
Edda stared at the stands. She seemed to shrink from the gazes, even the cheering ones. This shrinking I had seen in Ash, and I had not liked it then. I did not like it in Edda now. I stepped past the Elf, who had not yet found her way out of her daze, and into the ring.
I stopped in front of Edda. She was still shaking. The shimmer was gone, and her mark was now a shifting red and blue again. How interesting, a mark that could be two different things. Her arms had dropped to her side. Her one good eye found me and in it I saw something I recognized. Pride. The pride of my kind. The pride of every demon who had ever walked beneath a crimson sky head held high.
I held out my hand. “Welcome to the strong.”
Edda stared at my hand for a long time. Then she took it. Her grip was firm, and the shaking had stopped. When she looked up at me, the blankness was gone. What replaced it was something fierce. Edda smiled, and the smile was part of it.
The Requiem pulsed cold on my right. The Cradle answered it with warmth. I had not asked either of them to.