"So." Harris rolled his shoulder, still grinning, the lance's silver tip still caught fast against his braced forearm. "How surprised are you, exactly? Be honest. I want the full number."
"Fairly," Typhoen admitted, wary now, studying Harris like a locked door that had just refused to open the way he expected. "What else can you do?"
"Wouldn't you like to know."
Up in the stands, Osmandas was still leaning hard over the railing, staring down with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"I didn't see it," he said, to no one in particular. "Jalim the great, I was watching, and I still didn't see it. One second he was standing there, the next the lance was just... there."
"Legionnaire-class strikes don't warn you," Sashah said, quiet, her sharp crimson eyes fixed on the arena floor. "That's the entire point of them."
"Legionnaire? That's what he is?"
"Watch the lance. That's not a technique conjuring a weapon. That's a technique reaching into an arsenal and pulling one out. He doesn't fight like one man. He fights like a legion wearing one man's skin."
"So he's strong."
"He's strong the way an army is strong. One soldier alone is nothing. A thousand moving together is a different problem entirely." Sashah's gaze didn't waver. "The moment he stops holding back, that arena stops looking like a match."
Alderen, silent until now, spoke without turning his head, his amethyst eyes narrowed in quiet calculation. "The real question is how long Harris survives once Typhoen stops holding back."
Down on the arena floor, Typhoen's wariness hadn't faded, though something colder had settled beneath it.
"Since we're both in the noble class," he said, "why do you bother hanging around that fat one? Gerald." He spat the name out like something rotten. "Could've picked a real fight with one of the top students. Made yourself a name. Instead you waste your talent babysitting some soft, sniveling coward. Why?"
Harris's grin didn't fade. If anything, it sharpened.
"Careful," he said, quiet now, all the earlier cheer dropping out of his voice. "Call him fat one more time, I dare you."
Then, louder, brighter, the grin snapping back into place: "Trying to buy yourself time to recharge that little trick of yours, I see. Not happening."
He moved.
There was no windup this time either — Harris simply wasn't standing where he'd been standing anymore, already inside Typhoen's guard, a gauntleted fist driving hard toward his jaw. Typhoen barely got an arm up in time.
Crack —
Crack —
Crack —
Fists and forearms traded fast, blow after blow after blow, Harris pressing forward with a relentless, grinning ferocity that gave Typhoen no room to summon anything, no room to think, no room to do anything but block and retreat and block again.
'He's not even using a technique,' Typhoen thought, ducking beneath a strike that would have taken his head clean off. 'This is just him. Raw. And it's still enough to push me back.'
He tried to counter. A quick jab, testing for an opening — and Harris caught his wrist mid-strike, twisted, and threw him bodily across the cracked stone. Typhoen skidded hard, rolled, came up spitting blood.
'Fast,' he thought, forcing himself back into a guard stance. 'Faster than fast. Faster than anyone unarmed has any right to be.'
"He's a Legionnaire," someone shouted from the upper rows. "And he's losing a fistfight!"
Typhoen heard it. Shame climbed hot up the back of his throat, uglier than any of the punches, and close behind it, nipping at its heels, came something that felt uncomfortably close to fear.
'If I break focus for even a second,' he thought, retreating another step, his back nearly to the shattered stone at the arena's edge, 'I lose. To him. To the boy everyone assumed was just Gerald's shadow.'
Sweat stung his eyes. His forearms had gone numb from absorbing blow after blow, and somewhere beneath the numbness a colder thought was taking root.
'He hasn't even used his technique yet. This is him bored.'
That was enough.
Silver light erupted from him all at once — not one lance this time, but a dozen, spears and swords and axes tearing into existence in a bristling, gleaming ring, and the crowd's roar surged upward at the sight of it.
"There it is," Sashah murmured, leaning forward. "A full legion, called all at once."
Typhoen's grin returned, thin and dangerous, sweat still tracking down his temple. "You're strong, Harris. I'll admit that much." He raised a hand, and every weapon angled inward, converging, aimed. "But strength alone doesn't win against numbers."
"Funny," Harris said, cracking his knuckles, entirely unbothered by the dozen weapons pointed at his chest. "I was about to say the exact same thing to you."
Up in the stands, Osmandas had gone very quiet.
"He's smiling," he said eventually. "Twelve weapons pointed at his chest, and he's smiling like Typhoen just told him a joke."
"That's either confidence," Sashah said, "or he genuinely doesn't understand what's about to happen to him."
"Knowing what I've seen of him so far," Alderen said, "I wouldn't wager against the first one."
"You've known him for one match."
"One match is enough."
Down below, the ring of silver weapons hummed louder, drawing tighter around Typhoen's outstretched hand, and the entire auditorium fell into a taut, breathless hush.
Even Sashah, who had watched the earlier match with cool, detached calculation, found herself leaning forward now, her hands gripping the stone railing without her quite noticing she'd done it.
"Ten," Osmandas murmured. "I'll bet ten on Harris."
"You don't have anything worth ten of," Sashah said, though her eyes never left the arena floor.
"Details," Osmandas said. "Jalim the great, I'm good for it eventually."