Projection’s face appeared above Det, the mean standing at his head and leaning forward.

  “Well?” The announcer-slash-ref asked Det. “Do you have any tricks to get you out of this… predicament?”

  “I got nothing,” Det said, his banged-up body relaxing with the admission. She’d whooped him almost as bad as he’d beaten baby-face. Hell, the dagger through his shoulder was literally nailing him to the ground. It had barely been a fight. More like bullying from start to finish. Worse, Det had a sinking suspicion—mainly because of the smirk on the woman’s face—she hadn’t shown all her cards either.

  “Then…” Projection said, voice low, before it exploded out to reach all corners of the arena once again. “We have a winner!” He stepped back and thrust both hands to indicate the cadet still perched on top of Det. The black flames had grown up her boot to her knee, but she didn’t even flinch under it. They’d spent a good part of a day during their first week getting burned—extensively—so her body knew how to deal with it.

  “Think you could put this out?” she asked him, eyes going to those same ink flames. In the background, Projection was saying something about capitalizing on the Right of Revenge, and asking if there were any other takers.

  Det half-expected Calisco to be jumping on the chance, but he didn’t look away from his opponent.

  “Depends,” Det said.

  “On?” she said, knife still pressed against his throat. It wasn’t like he had a lot of leverage for negotiations.

  “Two things,” Det said.

  “Oh, aren’t you fun?” she said. “Let’s hear them.” Despite being on fire, there wasn’t any urgency in her voice to get that resolved.

  “One, could you get off me?” Det said.

  “That’s a fair ask,” she said… without getting off him. “What’s the second?”

  “What’s your name?” Det said. “I should at least get introduced to the person who kicked my ass in front of the entire pillar.”

  “This better not turn into a you-asking-me-out-on-a-date-because-you’re-into-getting-abused kind of thing,” she said, waggling a finger in front of him. “Like I said, I’m out of your league.”

  Det resisted rolling his eyes. “Not going to lie, this feels like my rival arc. Need a name for this.”

  The woman laughed, the shake of her body grinding her boot into his shoulder and the dagger within.

  “Sorry to say, you’re not good enough to be my rival,” the woman said.

  “Exactly why it feels like you’re going to be mine,” Det said. “You’re the next hurdle I have to get over, whether you want to be or not. When I beat you, it’ll show everybody how much I’ve grown.”

  The woman leaned in closer, somehow bending so her nose almost touched his. “I’m not going to sit around and stagnate. You won’t be the only one getting stronger.”

  “I know,” Det said. “Which’ll just make it that much more impressive.”

  The woman looked deep into his eyes for a few seconds. There, crouched—one of them with a knife straight through their shoulder, and the other with an entire leg engulfed in inky, black flames—the pair sized each other up. Three years was a long time for both of them to get stronger. Who would be at the top of the pile when that time finished?

  “Fourth,” she said. “That’s what the call me, on account of what my magic can do.”

  Det blinked. “Like the ninja?”

  “Hah, if you know the reference, you can’t be all bad, Det,” Fourth said. Then, the dagger came away from his neck, and she flipped it up into the air. Between blinks, she vanished from where she crouched on top of him to appear standing beside him, dagger back in her outstretched hand. “About this leg?”

  “Deal’s a deal,” Det said, willing the flames to extinguish. They hadn’t exactly served their purpose, so it took an extra second of concentration, but that was all. Just like that, what had looked like animated black flames halfway past her thigh disappeared in a splash of ink. Underneath, her pantleg—and flesh—was an absolute mess. She hardly even acknowledged it.

  “Nice trick with the bottle, by the way,” she said, Projection and the crowd still engaged with what should’ve been deafening volume. Somehow, it didn’t obscure Fourth’s words at all. “I should’ve known there was more of a reason you pulled it out.”

  “Not that it did much good,” Det said, turning to look at where the knife had him impaled and partially stuck to the ground. It wasn’t just the pain, but being pinned there like a bug on display was… annoying. “At least it took away one of your knives, I guess.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Is it bothering you?”

  “The knife through my shoulder?” Det said, one eyebrow going up. “You could say that.”

  “Lemme fix that,” she said, and just like that, the knife was back in her hand. The not-on-fire knife.

  “Damn,” Det said. “It didn’t do anything other than make me think I’d taken one of your weapons out of the fight.”

  She winked at him, then offered a hand to help him up. The one that wasn’t holding a knife, thankfully.

  Not nearly too proud to take the help, Det reached out with his good hand, wrapped his fingers around her wrist, and let her ReSouled strength pull him to his feet.

  “Thanks,” Det said, only wincing a bit at how much everything hurt. “I’ve got to ask, did you really know Aarak?”

  “Who?’ Fourth said.

  “Your roommate,” Det said flatly.

  “Oh, you mean Aarag?” Fourth said.

  “Yeah, him.” Det didn’t bother arguing. “The one you claimed the right of revenge for.”

  “I saw him in the morning that one time,” she said, tapping her chin with a finger. “Oh, oh, oh, and once when he came out of the bathroom. Real stinker. Not going to forget that.”

  “… and so you took it out on me?” Det said.

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  “Nah,” Fourth said. “You were an opportunity. You basically made a meal of him, which made you even more a feast yourself.”

  Det rolled his ruined shoulder, wincing a bit at the distant pain. “I hope you at least get indigestion.”

  Fourth looked around, holding her hands up to her sides—which only made the cheering audience even louder—and did a full three-sixty, slow turn. “Don’t think that’s going to happen. Everybody knows my name now.”

  “Is that your drive?” Det said. “Be the best? Be known? Something like that.”

  “Nah,” Fourth said. “But this helps. The first step of many.”

  “Until this step comes back later to trip you up,” Det said. “I wasn’t kidding. We’re not done.”

  Fourth stared him down for a solid three seconds before she smirked. “The way you are now, you aren’t even worth my time for a round two.”

  “I’ll catch up,” Det promised.

  “Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Fourth said, though she looked to the stands where the only group of five people stood silently, staring at the fighters in the middle of the arena. “Then again, maybe your friends up there agree with you. None of them are jumping in.

  “Now, if you don’t mind, you’re hogging my limelight. Isn’t the loser supposed to leave first?”

  “I… honestly wouldn’t know,” Det said. “Last time… I uh… woke up in the infirmary.”

  Fourth pointed toward the one open gate. “At least, this time, you can walk out yourself.” She looked him up and down, blood covering a good three-quarters of him. “Limp out yourself.”

  Det looked at her leg. “I won’t be the only one. And I hope it itches in the morning.”

  “What are you talking about?” Fourth said. “It’ll be gone as soon as I pass through my gate.”

  “… huh?” Det said.

  Fourth shooed him. “Go find out yourself. I’ve got some adoration to soak up.”

  Det glared at the woman—his new self-proclaimed rival, even if she didn’t agree with it—then shook his head and hobbled back the way he’d come. The roar of the audience picked up just a notch, showing most people didn’t consider his loss a bad one, but it dulled again as soon as he entered the short tunnel.

  Not that he really noticed, with one other very important thing happening. All of his aches and pains vanished. The hole in his shoulder? Gone. The blood covering him. Missing, like it was never there.

  “… the hell?” he asked out loud as he entered the prep room where Beauty still waited with the obnoxious gate agent.

  “Ah,” Beauty said. “As you were unconscious the first time you left the arena last time, and were the first—so you didn’t get to see any other matches—you may not have been aware of how the arena’s magic works.”

  “I thought it just prevented serious injuries?” Det said.

  “Ignorant,” the gatekeeper tisked.

  “This way, please, cadet,” Beauty said, ushering Det out of the room before he murdered the gate agent. “I shall explain on the way.”

  “And, maybe you could explain what the hell just happened to me out there after that?” Det said. The thumb over his shoulder toward the short tunnel leading to the arena told Beauty exactly what Det referred to.

  “A loose interpretation of the rules,” Beauty said, hands behind his back as the pair began retracting their steps to the arena’s entrance. “The magic of the arena does several things. One, as you said, is to protect the fighters within from sustaining any serious injuries. It would do us—the Mistguard—little good to have our new cadets braining each other on the regular.”

  “I can think of a few who might benefit from a good braining or two,” Det said.

  “Now, now. Bitterness at losing does not become you. Take what happened and grow.”

  “Was already my plan,” Det said. “Doesn’t mean I can’t imagine a few unpleasant scenarios for her. Salt in her pepper shaker. Lego on her bathroom floor in the middle of the night. Soggy pancakes.”

  “The lengths of your revenge fantasies truly know no bounds,” Beauty said.

  “Yeah,” Det said. “So, other things the arena magic does?”

  “Entertainment,” Beauty said. “That is the main, secondary enchantment. As you experienced, the injuries you take within the arena are not completely real. They are, in many ways, simulated within the arena’s boundaries. Your ReSouled body—and you—truly believed you had a hole in your shoulder. That you had gashes in your side, and a cut on your cheek.”

  “And you’re saying I didn’t,” Det said.

  “You both did and you didn’t,” Beauty replied. “The arena twisted the strands of fate and the future to make you and the entire audience believe you did. While inside the arena, the wounds were real, showing the natural outcome as if it was what would’ve happened to you had that been a real fight. When you left the arena, it twisted the future again, changing real wounds to simulated wounds, along with the resulting penalties of having them, and like what happened with Aarak, even the win-lose condition.”

  “That sounds complicated… and powerful,” Det said.

  ‘Extremely,” Beauty said. “Set up by one of our S-Rank forefathers whose magic read—and to an extent controlled—the threads of fate. None since have had the ability to replicate it, but it has served us well.”

  “Wait, that means Aarak won’t even be sore in the morning?”

  “No more than his ego,” Beauty said.

  “Guess I’ll be right there with him.” Det mumbled. “What about my first time in the arena, then? I definitely woke up on a bed with Jeckles reading nearby. He even told me he put my teeth back in.”

  It was Beauty’s turn to tisk. “Dr. Jeckles was taking more credit for his work than he likely should have. The transition from real to simulated effects on your body does not always happen perfectly. We keep Medics handy for fringe cases for injuries persisting beyond the gate. Unconsciousness—or simulated death—are not as easily shrugged off as scrapes and bruises. Your body does need a short time to recover from those things.

  “That is why you only awoke a short time later. Jeckles cannot take the full credit for putting your face back together. More likely, he had snuck away to read instead of watching the first-year matches, and wanted the excuse.”

  “He was complaining about missing them… and blaming me,” Det said.

  “A cover story,” Beauty said. “Any soreness you felt then, or you feel today, are more a phantom pain than anything else. Something lingering from the memory of the injuries from your fight.”

  “You said this was for entertainment, right?” Det said. Beauty nodded. “Meaning it’s for the audience. So, they can enjoy the show more while, like you said, new cadets aren’t getting brained.”

  “Exactly,” Beauty said. “This aspect of the arena’s magic facilitates the dueling circuit you will become more of a part of later in the year. You will not need to hold back for fear of hurting your fellow Mistguard, nor worry about getting crippled yourself.”

  “Yay,” Det said flatly.

  Beauty just gave him a look.

  “Fine, I know,” Det said with a shrug. “The duels will help us get stronger. I’m all for it. Just not as excited for the rules I don’t know about jumping into the arena with me to bite me in the ass. Or stab me. Can you explain that right of revenge thing?”

  “An obscure rule that rarely gets put into practice,” Beauty said. “It is mainly as the name describes. Immediately following an arena defeat, another may demand revenge. There has to be some kind of existing relationship between the two. It is normally reserved for very close friends, lovers, or siblings. In a stretch, it can be expanded to party members. I have never seen it allowed for roommates, though that does technically fall within the scope of the challenge.

  “As for the opponent who issued the challenge, while this likely won’t soften the sting of the loss, you should be proud of how well you managed to do. Fourth is one of the cadets who stand near the top of the class. Many eyes were already on her. Even more are now. Big things are expected.”

  “She’s one of those people in the advanced class you mentioned before?” Det reasoned.

  “Correct,” Beauty said. “Between her background, her skills, and her magic, she will be a terror in the dueling arena. You did well to even land a blow against her.”

  “Pretty sure she was holding back,” Det said, though it irked him to admit that. He hadn’t even been able to push her enough to pull all her cards out. Then again, that was why he hadn’t been joking when beating her became his next hurdle. She’d used him to get something useless like renown. He’d use her right back, to get stronger.

  “She was,” Beauty admitted. “Though, perhaps not as much as she expected she would be able to.”

  “Still kicked my ass.” Det rolled his shoulder again at the memory of the dagger that’d been driven through it. Arena magic or not, that’d sucked.

  “Unfortunately for you, yes,” Beauty said. “You two are not starting in the same place, however. She has been tutored and groomed since it was realized she was ReSouled. Knightbreaker, the pillar where she was born, is known for producing some of the most skilled fighters in the Nivelhime Kingdom. That is twice as true when it comes to ReSouled.

  “She is going to do very well in the dueling circuit, and when she takes to the field. Her particular form of magic makes her even more dangerous.”

  “I can speak to that firsthand,” Det said. “How are we going to get to that level?”

  Beauty turned his head to look at Det with his one good eye, and nodded. “That is the correct question. Not ‘if’ or ‘when’, but ‘how’. As to the answer, it will begin tomorrow with your combat classes. Expect it to be grueling. This will continue on Saturday, as previously discussed, immediately after which we will leave for our next field trip.”

  “Keeping us busy,” Det said. “I’m in.”