The Swords of August

A clash of steel was lost in the roar of the crowd around us, but my opponent seemed as focused as I was. We crossed blades and then danced out of reach, each of us trying to get the right combination of distance and timing to strike. Contrary to my original thinking, longswords were extremely fast weapons, especially given my armour. It was like holding a really sharp feather.

I grunted as an upward cleave with my longsword was parried off to my right. Instinctively, I hopped back before he could take advantage of the opening and my opponents sword passed through empty air, his thrust finding nothing but empty space. He ended the motion in a guard position and I mimicked him.

He cocked his head and stood his ground as he gave me a confused look. I grinned beneath my helmet. My caution was probably not the norm, at least among the lower-ranking fighters.

His hand began blurring, warping even, as he planted his sword in the sand next to him. He raised it, palm facing towards me and I tensed.

"Shit."

My guess was that I'd broken some unspoken rule by showing feats beyond that of a normal man. He didn't need to know the intricacies of augmented movement to know it wasn't natural movement.

The crowd roared, as if reading my thoughts, perhaps knowing that the fight was about to escalate, or maybe they just really liked the fight.

Abandoning my longsword, and its weight, I skipped to my left, darting across a flat, sandy arena. I'd analysed his movements, skeletal structure and old injuries, looking for any sign of weakness that I could exploit. Unfortunately, there were few. He wasn't terribly skilled as far as I could tell, but that was about it.

A fireball sailed on past me harmlessly before expanding and dissipating somewhere behind me. Then more and more began to streak towards me as the mage let his longsword drop. I cursed, tucking and rolling as fire streaked past me, the man's arms moving with a kind of hateful alacrity.

As I came up onto my feet again, a constant stream of fire surged forward from both of the mages' hands and began cooking me in my suit, stretching an unbelievable distance. More than a little daunted, but my suit wasn't giving me temperature warnings just yet. I dashed out of the stream and began zigzagging in a staggered irregular pattern, getting closer to him.

Much closer. I was only three steps away when he bent to retrieve his weapon that he'd so casually discarded. His hand gripped it as I reached him and my knee slammed into his face with a sickening crunch before he could rise.

My leg whipped out and around him, kicking him in the liver as my suit helpfully highlighted it. A stream of fire from his hand answered in kind but it was weak, almost gentle, or at least it would've been if not for the pained and toxic expression on his face.

I didn't bother with grappling, or anything fancy, but I did note that my armour's temperature was well above safe levels for unarmoured humans. Touching me wouldn't be a good idea. In the time it took me to read the information of my HUD, his other hand came around to join his first, all his fingers splayed and flames spilling from his palms, arms outstretched.

I'd actually been somewhat worried at first, but his attacks weren't hot enough to damage my armour's softer, less resilient parts, let alone the hard plate.

I planted one foot on his chest, picking his right arm, simply because it was the easiest to reach. I gripped his wrist and squeezed until I felt snapping, then squeezed some more. The roar of his screams were almost lost amidst the screams of the crowd. Where his were a protest, theirs were a bloodthirsty assent.

I repeated the process with his other wrist, and flipped him over with my boot, pinning him to the ground. Then, I looked out at the crowd. It was times like these I really appreciated the public address function built into my armour.

I held a hand up and out to the crowd. I was calm, still, and quiet. Gradually, the crowd began to quiet too. When silence gripped them, their fervor abandoned for anticipation, I smiled. Not merely satisfied at defeating my opponent, but fully overcome with a familiar battle-mania. It was a heady, addictive feeling.

I stood there, surveying the perfectly still crowd, but my eye caught on something, or someone, I should say.

I dropped my hand back down to my side, looking down at my captured prey. He had struggled quite a bit initially, but I think after the silence he'd simply given up, resigned to his fate. I didn't know him, but in some ways I pitied him. This wasn't a fair fight, at the end of the day.

Against most anyone else, fire would have been a very effective weapon, but against me it was little more than a gentle warmth, our suits being rated to handle temperature extremes on hostile worlds and plasma-based IED's in equal measure. A little fire wasn't going to hurt me, short of there being battle damage. I wouldn't have fared nearly so well against extreme cold or pressure, but that seemed to be in short supply in a country known mostly for its desert and dry, arid conditions.

The crowd penetrated my consciousness then, and to this day I still couldn't say how long they'd been chanting, but I knew a spectacle was what the spectators in the arena sought, and it was what would get me noticed by the right spectators.

My next move was barbaric and macabre, I'll freely admit that. A few short moments later and my opponent was missing a hand, two legs, and the side of his head. I didn't particularly relish the blood covering me, but at least I could say it blended in well with the natural red tones of my suit.

The crowd's frenzied outpouring of excitement and exhilaration was something I'd hardly noticed. What I'd just done was more like dissecting a live insect than a clean kill. That I'd done it to a human being disturbed me greatly, but that feeling warred with the warrior spirit inside me—the knowledge that I'd gone up against someone in a life and death struggle and come out on top.

I don't really remember what happened after that, so lost in thought, I was. I vaguely remember being praised by some ethereal announcer and being led off the arena floor to be cleaned and rewarded. I thought about it, and I think I saw what people meant when they said the Empire was barbaric. It wasn't the casual disregard for life and how disposable everyone here thought it was, it was the relishing of bloodshed, and excessive means.

When I was being scrubbed down by a pair of slaves, I told myself it was for the good of the mission, and that may be true, but I found myself thinking that I'd leave this place a more unclean man than I'd been when I'd gone in.

Chen found me after the battle and we walked through the long halls, tracing an aimless route through the colossal circular arena. I walked, and Chen walked with me. We both thought of it differently, I felt that, but I didn't speak about it, we just walked.

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We did comment on how our respective fights differed. Chen had been facing a mage who'd preferred lightning over fire and he'd had a much tougher time of it. Fortunately, once he closed the gap, he was able to quickly immobilise his opponent with superior weight, strength and technique. One benefit of wearing our helmets for the fight was that we were able to gather full sensor data, including recordings.

"How do you dodge lightning?"

Chen just shrugged. "I anticipated the trajectory, and got out of the way. How do you dodge fire?"

"Oh, well, I didn't really."

He stopped suddenly, his expressionless helmet turning to look at me. "You know fire's hot, right?"

"I know." I nodded. "But our suits held up to the fire of that cult dumbass, so I figured this guy couldn't be any worse."

Chen started walking again and I kept pace with him. "You know, in hindsight, that was really lucky. What if he'd been able to melt steel?"

I shrugged. It wasn't like I'd had much choice. "Then… I guess I wouldn't be standing here?"

I watched as various slaves, fighters and admin personnel scurried about, and we walked in silence for a while.

Chen sighed. "The food here sucks."

I grinned. "Always thinking with your stomach, aren't you?"

"Hey! You go three rounds with Zeus and see if you don't work up an appetite."

I had to give it to him, it had been quite taxing, though not as much as I'd feared. For Chen though, the fight had drawn out noticeably longer than mine so it was no wonder he felt the need to eat.

"You think they have some kind of goat dish here?" He asked.

"What, you have a thing for goat?"

"It's pretty good. Tried some on Hyafax just after basic. There was some kind of orange sauce and it melted in my mouth—"

"Stop! Stop!" I laughed. "You're making me hungry."

Chen laughed, a booming, powerful thing that was hard to ignore. We decided to see if the city had any good restaurants, or failing that, anything resembling pub food. Checking in at the Inn was our first order of business, though, since not only would they have food, but they had a bunch of bored mages and Carver, who if I had to have guessed was probably enamoured in designing something vitally important or interesting on his implant.

About a day later and I got word that my next match would be a pair of us against another pair of fighters. I recalled that it was supposed to be the other way around, with single combat being our second fight. I shrugged. It wasn't the first time I'd been fed bad intel.

After perusing the local inn's offerings, we settled on some kind of flesh-eating scorpion dish. We'd had to pull together an extra table to seat all six of us and initially I'd been slightly wary of sitting on a chair in my armour, given the weight, but my fears were unfounded. Neither ass nor chair collapsed onto the floor, and we had a pleasant meal.

"If I see one more slave, I swear I'll shoot whoever runs this place." Chen stabbed a piece of some kind of animal and I could only agree with him.

"We can't fight a whole country." Carver argued, sending me a fabricator file.

It floated above the table we were eating at, and I was impressed. He'd gone beyond just creating a new weapon for us, but he'd designed armour for us too. It wasn't even a viable prototype, but the fabricator files, illustrated in wireframe fashion showed promise. Gone was the large opening in the back of the armour, instead the whole thing was made up of interlocking pieces that formed an airtight seal. A hell of a lot easier to take on and off, and more dignified.

"How the hell do you come up with ideas this fast?"

He shrugged. "It's a hobby of mine."

"Your hobby is designing military-grade equipment that'll most likely never see the light of day because it's the opposite of cost-effective?"

"Yep. I wasn't thinking of equipping the recruits with these suits, though. You're right in that they're too expensive. It'd take at least six months to get them to a prototyping stage."

"And much longer to work out the bugs and come up with a production model." I surmised.

"Insofar as there would be one, yes. It's extremely expensive to make and I doubt that'll change. The capabilities are extraordinary though. Given what we've already seen I think we'll need all the tools we can get going forward, so I see a real possibility of these being put into production. Maybe not soon, but someday."

"Contrast-matching, adaptive armour? What next, force shields and lasers?"

Chen laughed, while the mages listened in intently.

"Well, no, but holographic projectors would allow for a much easier time planning when working with mixed groups. Not everyone is going to have access to our network."

I nodded as I looked over his suggested improvements. As I was beginning to understand, Carver's brain was constantly in motion, planning or designing something. He was more of a builder than a problem-solver, but he could do both when it was required.

"What about something to detect magic?" Chen asked.

"I've not had the time to work on that. All we've really seen so far is a byproduct of magic, heat or some kind of visual anomaly. Finding a reliable indicator of magic use, especially one that doesn't require line-of-sight is proving difficult. I fine-tuned the algorithms a little yesterday, but there's not a whole lot to say. Improvements will take time."

"Fair enough, what can you tell me about the locals, then? See anything yesterday?"

"We had a few bar fights, but nothing was stolen and no one went near our gear. We've had at least two people in the room at all times and we've already divided into watches. We haven't seen much, honestly. I did a little recon with the drone and so far as I can tell there's some kind of government building or palace about a klick and a half east of here. I'm guessing that's where this Sefira lives."

"But we don't know?" I asked.

"No. If we had a better physical description of her, or a likeness then it would be a lot easier."

"I doubt that's going to happen."

"Unfortunate."

I agreed with him, but we didn't have many opportunities to exploit yet. Hopefully, once word got out about us, that would change.

"You boys notice anything odd around here?" The mages were all listening politely, enjoying the food, but I wanted everyone's input.

"A couple kids, have been watching us. We warded the room so nobody can listen in or play any nasty tricks, but every time one of us leaves the building I see at least two kids on rooftops looking at us. I wouldn't normally have spotted them, but Daniel has a keen eye. All of you do, for that matter."

"Not much we can do about that. I don't suppose we could pay them to spy for us?"

"No," Rovald grimaced. "The ones we saw were always too far away to speak to."

"Shame. Keep an eye out. The tournament's only going to last about another week, and then… well, I'll keep you posted."

We chatted amicably through the evening and into the night before calling it quits. Fortunately, the tournament didn't happen all back to back in one week. There was a day between each round, and that meant I could do a little sleuthing tomorrow. I wanted a closer look at some of the magic found here. Carver hadn't mentioned it, but I knew he was studying the stuff and trying to understand what made it work.

It was one of our biggest blind spots. Most of the more dangerous sorts we were likely to encounter would probably use magic in some form, whether that was directly or through a tool or weapon of some sort. I resolved to visit the local library if I could. Purchasing some reading material would go a long way to furthering Carver's research, and it might score us some points with the King and the higher-ups, too.

Provided that we weren't buying something widely available, of course. The equivalent of an Oxford Dictionary probably wasn't likely to garner favour, but some obscure tome only found in the Empire? That might be more useful to us, and more appreciated by Lilith and the King.

As I lay in bed, willing myself to drift off to sleep, I found myself wondering how Eric was holding up. When we returned, I'd make sure to check up on him. All I needed to do was survive a tournament all about mortal combat, track down a notorious witch and find a hidden weapon all the while fending off attacks from an increasingly numerous population of Vitaru bugs. No pressure.

Unwilling to remove my armour while I slept, I drifted off to sleep inside my suit. It felt a little like a tomb, but mostly it felt like safety, and shelter. I'd be smelling ripe if I kept that up for the whole time we were here, but it was better that than taking a dagger to the throat in the name of comfort.

As I finally felt sleep take me, I thought I heard a scratching noise at the door, but a sleepy command to my suit revealed nothing. Jordan had set wards at the door's threshold to warn us of any approach. Those same wards were silent, so I didn't bother getting up to check on it. It was probably just a stray cat, or something.