4. Kaelor #5
I keep Olivia behind me.
That is not instinct. That is something else. Something I don't have a name for yet—or perhaps I do, and I'm not ready to say it.
Varketh and Khaedren and I begin to circle.
The platform is wide and circular, a ring of magma churns in slow spirals at its edges—or what was slow an hour ago.
Now when I glance over, the glow is brighter.
Closer. The heat rises through the stone itself, pressing against my soles like a warning that is rapidly becoming a deadline.
I extend my claws. The plates along my shoulders and spine shiver as they lock into place.
From across the platform come the answering calls—the serrated scrape of Khaedren's teeth baring, the low rolling growl building in Varketh's chest like something ancient waking.
Khaedren hisses. Varketh answers with a rumble so deep I feel it in my sternum.
Then the volcano answers too.
The platform shudders. A deep tectonic groan travels up through the stone, and I watch Varketh stagger—just half a step, his weight shifting wrong. I see it and file it away for later.
Khaedren recovers instantly. His eyes snap back to me. No, not to me.
To Olivia .
That's when I remember: they don't want to beat me. They want her . I am just the obstacle in their way—because if they have her, they have me. The moment she is in their hands, I will do anything they ask. Surrender. Kneel. Even beg.
She is my weakness and I don't care. I would rather be weak with her than unbeatable without her.
"Olivia." I keep my voice low, barely moving my lips. We continue circling and I speak to the space just over my shoulder. "When this starts—stay back. Don't move. Don't help me. You must promise me."
Silence.
I have learned the shape of her silences, and this one has teeth.
" Promise me. " No softening in my voice. "You fighting gives them a target. Do you understand? You are not a distraction I can afford."
Another beat. Then, quietly: "Fine. I promise."
Her body shifts behind me. She moves slightly left, putting a few more feet between us. Something in me almost wants to smile. She promised. But she absolutely intends to fight anyway. Still, the promise might slow her down.
I face forward and wait.
Whoever attacks first is at a disadvantage, leaving themselves open to attack from the third.
It's Varketh who breaks first. He has always had less patience than pride—I remember that about him, from a different arena, a different round I spent three days trying to forget. He roars, and the sound fills the chamber, bounces off volcanic rock, and then he charges.
He is massive. Faster than something that size has any right to be. When he swings, the displaced air reaches me before his claws do—a hot pressurized wall carrying the smell of sulfur and old blood.
But he telegraphs. He always telegraphs.
I read the rotation of his shoulder two beats before the strike lands. I drop under it. The claw shears the air just above my head—close enough that I hear it, a thin whistling note. I'm already spinning before he completes the motion. His momentum is his enemy.
I catch his extended arm and use the force of his own swing to drag him sideways, throwing his weight off the axis he committed to.
He can't correct. I come around behind him and drive my elbow into the juncture between his plates—where the natural armor thins and the nerve clusters sit just below the surface.
He grunts. Good.
I don't stop moving. Stillness is death in a three-body fight.
I step back immediately, already tracking Khaedren at the edge of my vision—a pale fast smear along the far arc of the platform, watching, waiting.
Patient in the way feral things are patient when they know they don't need to be first to win.
He doesn't move. Not yet.
He's waiting for me to extend. Waiting for me to commit too deeply to Varketh and leave a flank open. That's what I would do. It's what I am doing my best to prevent.
The platform shudders again. Harder this time. A long rolling tremor that travels up through my feet and into my chest. The magma below surges with it, and I catch the flash of orange climbing the chamber walls. It's rising. Fast. The deadline is not hours away anymore. But minutes.
Varketh stumbles once more at the tremor. Both feet lose their line, his massive body lurching sideways. I see the window—maybe a second wide .
I don't take it. Not yet.
I keep him circling instead. Keep him working. Every swing he throws burns energy he can't recover, and I am faster than he is—not by much, but better trained and willing to make him look foolish if that's what it takes.
He hacks at me twice more, big overhead strikes meant to split rather than slice, and both times I'm not there when they land. I can feel his frustration building—the strikes getting wider, less precise, more committed. He'll be the one to overextend soon. And then he’ll be at Khaedren’s mercy.
He'll put everything into one blow because he'd rather risk it than keep losing ground to someone he believes shouldn't be a challenge.
I wait for another rumble. That’s when I’ll strike.
I glance back at Olivia. She’s still there, still behind me. Safe. In position.
Another tremor builds. I feel it before it arrives, a low vibration starting at my soles and traveling upward. Varketh doesn't feel it coming. He's too loud in his own body, too full of forward momentum.
He commits. A huge driving strike, all his mass behind it, aimed at my chest.
The tremor hits.
His foot catches wrong. His shoulder drops. His frame lists sideways by just a few degrees, but those degrees are everything. They’re my opening.
I'm already moving before he finishes falling out of his stance. Not elegant—there is no elegance left in me, just the efficient application of force to the places most likely to end this quickly.
I slide into his defense, and aim at his jaw.
The plate-join at his neck. The nerve cluster at the inside of his elbow that drops the whole arm useless.
I strike, knocking him backward. Strike after strike, and I feel the fight draining out of him—the resistance dulling, the aggression dimming, the enormous engine of him losing power.
He goes to one knee. Then both.
His head drops.
There.
I raise my arm for the last strike—the one that ends him, that takes him out long enough for me to deal with Khaedren without a war on two fronts and?—
Olivia screams.
Her voice bypasses every layer of training I have. I turn, spinning out of my strike.
The pain arrives half a second later.
Low in my back, just above my hip. Not blunt. Sharp —a deep, intimate puncture that announces itself with horrible precision.
My body knows what it means before my mind does.
I feel the warmth spreading from the point of entry, the slight thickening of my senses. I reach back, wrap my fingers around the thing, and pull.
It comes away free, wet, and dark.
Khaedren's claw. One of the longer ones, hooked at the base where the serration begins. Still warm from his hand. I hold it and my palm is already soaked, and when I turn my hand over I watch the blood sheet down my wrist and fall in slow heavy drops onto the stone.
I lash out before Khaedren can stick me again, backhanding him across the face.
The blow lands clean—full force—and he goes down hard, skidding across the platform. Something in his face cracks. But it doesn’t match the damage he’s done to me.
I track where he lands and turn back to the calculation, because the wound is real and the blood is real and the arithmetic of this fight has just changed completely.
I can still win. There’s one way. If I’m quick, if I can take the advantage now in a quick rampage, I can end them and claim the relic. But I can’t waste a second. The window is already closing. Fast.
" Kaelor —"
"Stay back." I don't look at Olivia. "I'm not finished yet."
I cross the platform in four strides and I'm on Khaedren before he's reached his knees. One hand in the back of his neck, driving him down. I raise my fist?—
His eyes move.
Just a fraction. A flicker past my shoulder, involuntary, the kind of tell you can't train out of someone who doesn't think they need to hide it. It's all the warning I get.
But it isn't enough.
The blow hits the side of my head like a thunderbolt. BAM!
There is a moment—brief—where the world simply stops. No sound. No light. Just a vast ringing white that fills everything.
Then I am moving, or something is moving me. Old training. Body acting without instruction. Rolling, stone rushing past my face, warmth spreading beneath me, a widening trail of it marking every inch I travel across the platform.
I try to rise.
I get one arm under me before I slam into the platform again. I think it’s Varketh, but it’s not. It’s my own weakness.
"Kaelor!"
Her voice. Olivia’s voice. Too close.
She is beside me. I don't know when she moved. I told her to stay back, she promised, she broke it. But I would have done the same. Her hands are on my face, my shoulder, finding the wound, pressing down with everything she has.
The pressure is enormous. I feel it and the pain beneath it. "Stop. Just… stop."
"You're bleeding. I have to stop the bleeding?—"
"Olivia…" I find her eyes. Ash-stained and terrified and refusing to show either. "Olivia. I need you to listen to me. Listen. You cannot allow them to claim you. Do you understand? You cannot?—"
Khaedren's hand closes around her arm.
She's gone so fast her fingers drag four thin red lines across my chest. The sound she makes—not a scream yet, just one involuntary cry of shock—lands worse than the claw did.
She fights.
She fights .