8. Kaelor #3
"Varketh has the armor and the crown," I say. “And I don’t know how many more resets we have left.”
Olivia’s brows drift down. “Then we make the most of every second we have left. Come on.”
She marches across the ledge.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To get the relics back.”
The platforms are almost gone.
I count what remains. Four scattered across the churning lake. The gaps between them are wide. The ash is thick in the air. The lake is loud beneath us.
I stop at the edge and scan.
Not on the near platforms. Not in the water. I check the angles. The places a Pyraxx Hunter would choose. Stone underfoot. Lake on three sides. Good sight lines to the archway.
There.
Second platform back from the arch. He's standing at the far edge. Arms loose. Weight settled. Watching us .
He's wearing both.
The Magma Plate sits across his shoulders. The Ember Crown on his head. He holds still. He wants us to come to him. Open stone. Nowhere to retreat.
I feel Olivia stop beside me.
She sees it too.
"He took everything from us," she says.
"Yes. Now it’s time to take them back."
She's quiet for a moment. The lake churns below.
"Can you get the crown off him?"
"I… don't know."
She looks at the platform. Then at me. "What do we do?"
"We go at him together." I hold her eyes. "You watch for openings. Don't commit until I have his attention."
She nods once. Her jaw is set.
"Kaelor."
"What?"
"We're getting them back."
I don't answer. I step onto the first platform.
We cross without speaking.
The platforms hold. The gaps are jumpable. The last one is wide and I clear it and turn and she's already in the air.
She lands clean.
Varketh watches us cross. He doesn't move. The plate covers his chest and shoulders. The crown sits level on his head. He's had time to test both. Time to understand what they do.
We stop six feet from him.
He looks at me. Then at Olivia. Then back at me.
"You came back," he says.
"And we always will. "
He almost smiles. "It won't change anything. Coming here. Fighting me."
"Put them down," Olivia says.
He looks at her. The almost-smile holds. He doesn't answer.
With so little time remaining, I move first.
The exchange is fast.
I go for the neck. He covers it. I find the inner arm. He moves. I land two strikes on plate and one on his jaw.
He doesn't move his feet. But I feel an explosion across my face.
I come away with a split cheekbone. I take a step back. My face is running its damage report and the answer is not good.
He's faster than the last time we fought him. The plate has adjusted to him. The gaps I know exist — he knows I know them. He's positioned to cover everything I reach for before I get there.
I breathe through my nose.
The bond changes.
Not the pull toward the relic. Something closer. Running from Olivia's direction. A warmth. Rising fast.
I know what it is before I hear it.
The sound of armored fists on plate.
I look.
She's standing with the Magma Plate's secondary effect hardened over both forearms. Dark volcanic plating from elbow to knuckle. Her fists encased. Her face has gone somewhere past fury.
She goes at him.
No intervals. No pauses. She hits the rib gap. Misses with the second and doesn't try to recover — she uses the miss, spins, and the other fist comes around and connects with the back of his shoulder.
The sound is sharp.
Varketh stops.
Not pain. I've seen pain on him. This is different. This is a force he didn't calculate from a direction he wasn't watching. He stands completely still. The flat eyes process. The body pauses.
He doesn't know what to do.
Seizing upon his confusion, I move.
Both hands on the crown. The angle I know. I've done this before on this same head. I get my grip and I pull?—
His hand closes on my wrist.
He came back faster than I expected. He shifted his stance. He knew I'd go for the crown. He's positioned to break my leverage before I reach the separation point.
I twist. He adjusts.
I change the angle. He changes with me.
Not reacting. Anticipating.
The grip on my wrist tightens. My wrist sends me a report. I keep declining it.
I change the angle again.
I don't know I'm going to do it until I do it. The grip shifts by a fraction. I pull.
The crown comes free.
He hits me across the face.
Two steps back. Not down. I'm holding the crown. I look at him.
He looks at what I'm holding.
The patience is gone. I can see it leave him. The calculation is still running but there's nothing powering it anymore. He comes at me with everything committed and what follows is not a fight I'm winning .
He's too covered.
I land strikes. They're not enough. The wrist isn't cooperating. He reads my weight shift before I complete it — the flat eyes tracking the tell — and he goes the other direction.
The exchange is brief.
I go down flat. Back on stone. The crown still in my grip. Above me, the sky is grey and enormous. My legs begin their report.
Not yet.
I hear him turn.
The shift of his weight. His feet on the stone. Moving away from me and toward her.
I turn my head.
She doesn't back up.
She raises those armored fists and doesn't move her feet. She's bleeding above her eye from a blow I didn’t even notice. Her left arm is carrying something she hasn't admitted yet. She goes at him anyway.
She goes for the plate.
Not clean — she's not trying to be clean. She hits the seams. The edges. The join points of the volcanic armor. Both fists. Making him move to protect things he shouldn't need to protect.
She makes him work.
Every second. She stays on her feet. She doesn't stop.
Varketh gets a grip on her forearm. Uses his weight to turn her.
She goes with the turn. All the way. Further than he expects. She uses the rotation and brings the other fist around and finds his ear.
He releases her.
She resets.
And goes again .
I lie on the stone and watch and breathe. Something settles in my chest. Not the bond. Something below it. A certainty with no equivalent to anything I felt before these Games.
We are leaving this arena together.
RUMBLE.
The ground shakes.
I feel it through my back. Through my spine.
It’s the fourth time. Or maybe the third? I’m not sure. I decide to play it safe and assume it’s the fourth.
That was the fourth.
I close my eyes. I lie on the stone with the Ember Crown in my hand. I breathe once, fully. I let the number be what it is.
Then I say her name.
"Olivia."
She's in the middle of an attack. She doesn't stop. But her head shifts.
"It's the fourth rumble," I tell her. "We have one more."
A pause. One second. Her brow draws down and she focuses.
Her feet change.
Her stance drops lower. Wider. Her weight settles into the stone like she just found it for the first time. She drives at the plate with both fists together. Not a swing. A push. All of her mass behind the hardened fists in a single line.
The impact rocks Varketh back half a step.
I have never seen anything rock Varketh back.
He recovers. But in the recovery — in the quarter-second his attention goes to his own balance?—
I shoot up and get my hand on the plate.
My right hand. The working wrist. I know this seam. I know exactly where it separates. I've worn this armor. I've felt it being removed from me.
I get my fingers into the shoulder joint.
I pull.
His eyes go wide and he reaches back for my arm. It leaves him open. Exposed.
Olivia drives her armored fist into his elbow.
He can't reach for my arm.
I pull harder.
The ground moves.
Not a shake. Not a rumble. A shift — deep, tectonic, the whole platform tilting a fraction and correcting, the lake below responding with a slow surge that climbs the stone edges and pulls back. The chains holding the distant platforms groan. One of the far ones drops six inches and swings.
No! Not now! Not now!
I keep my grip on the plate.
The sound comes next. Low. Building from somewhere beneath the lake, beneath the stone — a frequency that I feel in my back teeth before I hear it with my ears. The volcano is working. I know this sound. I have heard it four times now.
Five times.
My hands go still on the plate, expecting the destruction to rain down upon us and end this round… but it doesn’t.
And I realize…
This is the fourth rumble! Not the fifth! I miscounted!
We have one rumble left!
The rumble holds.
Holds.
Then it fades.
I turn my head .
Olivia has both fists pressed flat against her head. Her eyes are shut — clamped, tight, the expression of someone who expected the round to be over, like I had.
Her eyes open.
She looks at the lake. The platform. The sky. Then at me.
I hold up four fingers.
She stares at them.
A single beat of silence.
I watch it land. Watch her process it. Watch her eyes change — not relief, not yet, something sharper than relief, something that has an edge to it. She looks at Varketh. She looks at my hands still gripping the edge of the plate.
She strikes at him once more.
Both fists. Together. Into the plate join at his shoulder — the same point I've been working, the seam she's been watching me dig at from the stone. She knows where it's separating. She hits it like she's been waiting for permission and now she has it.
Varketh staggers.
One step. That's all. But it's enough.
I pull.
He reaches for my arm again. Olivia drives her elbow into his reaching hand — not a swing, just her weight, her full mass behind the joint — and he pulls the reach back to cover himself and his attention splits and the seam gives another fraction and I pull harder and Olivia hits the join point again and again and again?—
The plate separates.
It flashes as it comes away. A pulse of amber light.
I fall back onto the stone, the Ember Crown in one hand. The Magma Plate in the other. I look at the sky.
I hear Olivia's breathing slow beside me. She crouches down. Her fists lower. The cut above her eye is still running. She looks at what I'm holding.
Then she looks at the relic platform across the lake.