...
"Listen to your instincts," Lexicon urged. "And let your adrenalin take over."
"I got the girl," I yelled to Tritteon, and threw myself at her before she could react. I slammed my shoulder into her gut, knocking her across the table, away from Tritteon and the Emperor. The surface shuddered and the screen flickered.
She snarled, thrusting her feet up into my ribs and kicked me over her head. I flipped and landed on my back, grimacing as pinching pains began to eat their way across my rib cage with each breath.
"What a great start," I said to Lexicon, pretty sure I couldn't stand another blow like that.
The girl hissed and my left arm prickled in warning. I rolled to the right and the table flashed and went black as she stabbed her claws down into the place I had been, perforating the surface with ten sparking holes.
Behind me, a roar and a horrible, bone crunching filled the air, followed by heartrending screams from multiple people in the room. But I made myself ignored them. That was Tritteon's fight.
And then a crack and the huge, wooden doors at the opposite end of the room burst open. Seven, copper armored Kovei stormed into the room, their rods crackling with that gold electricity.
"Be careful. One bolt from that could turn a person to dust," Lexicon said.
I tried to keep the cringe from my face, my attention fixed on the girl still crouched a few feet in front of me. Her expression was feral, her eyes searching wildly, for what I wasn't sure. A way out? A way to finish what she's started?
But in between her moments of frantic searching, so brief I wondered at first if I'd been mistaken, her eyes went still and her brow creased, and then the searching resumed.
Two Kovei broke away from the group and grabbed the rogue Guardians' Sponsors. Neither put up a fight, both with identical expressions of devastation.
Gauwin rose slowly to her feet, her fingers cracking into fists as she realized it was over, that she had failed. Those disturbing, black eyes said everything. Except for another brief flash of something else, that stillness in her eyes and conflict in her brow. Or was that confusion?
The remaining Kovei positioned themselves around the table, training their rods on both of us. I flinched. Was I done for, too?
"Stop!" Rilyin yelled. "Stand down!"
The Kovei lowered their rods and turned their thin heads toward Rilyin like they were confused.
Tritteon jumped onto the table, his hand outstretched toward Gauwin, the air around it rippling. "What are you doing?"
"Nam, stop this!" Prince Sorrell yelled.
Gauwin let out a deep, rolling growl.
Tritteon tried a step closer. "Please. Why are you doing this?"
"Don't," she snarled.
A young girl to my right whimpered, her eyes awash with tears. "Gauwin, you don't have to die too!"
"This is not you," Tritteon continued, his deep, mesmerizing lilt a soothing caress. "Please, Nam. We can talk about this. Stand down."
"I said DON'T!" she roared.
Tritteon surrendered a step, his eyes closing for half a second in resignation.
"Let her finish the fight, Tritteon. Let Gauwin choose her fate," Rilyin said.
"No," the girl sobbed, backing up into the arms of her sponsor who had gotten to her feet, face pale.
I gave Rilyin my own incredulous look.
Tritteon gave me a once over, his eyes widening slightly at what he saw, and then he turned back to the girl, looking conflicted. He swallowed hard. "She has it under control," Tritteon said to the Kovei, motioning toward me.
I gave him an incredulous look.
"Why doesn't he take over?"
"To prove yourself," Lexicon said. "For what purpose, I don't know."
Gauwin snarled.
I shook my head at her. "You aren't really dumb enough to fight, are you? It's over with. You failed."
She took a menacing step toward me.
"I don't have a choice, do I?" I said to Lexicon.
"No."
At her words, I expected fear to come rushing through me. Instead, clarity and a strange sort of calm took over. I'd chosen to come down here—chosen to help. I wasn't backed into a corner. Apart from the brief misstep and getting kicked in the ribs, so far I'd held my own and it was exhilarating. Only yesterday, I wouldn't have dreamed of being capable of something like this. But whatever I'd been in my past life, instinctively awesome was part of it.
I slipped off my shoes, taking shallow breaths to ease the pinching in my ribs, and threw them at her as she lunged. She batted them aside and slid to her knees and I jumped and twisted over her as her foot came at my shins. She rolled away and I landed unsteadily, trying to keep myself balanced as silver buttons shifted and dug into the bottom of my feet.
Where had they come from?
I spotted a piece of silver string hanging from the edge of Gauwin's clawed pinky and chanced a glance down. She'd managed to slice open my dress and graze a good eight inches of buttons off and it hung open awkwardly, my black undershirt on full display.
Thet filled my hand with barely a thought and I sliced it downward, breaking the remaining buttons from my dress. The buttons scattered everywhere as I slipped it from my shoulders and dropped it behind me. My black shirt and pants would be easier to fight in by themselves anyway.
Her black eyes sized me up as she stood, moving in a taunting circle around me, and I couldn't help but feel all the more grateful for whatever miracle had turned me into something she saw as an actual opponent instead of that emaciated, helpless thing I'd been before.
Her mouth opened wider than any humans was capable of, showing me two rows of long, pointed black teeth that ran along the side of her molars. I must not have done a very good job hiding my surprise because her answering smile was horrifying, and her claws grew longer. This was all about revenge now. As long as she killed me, she would be satisfied, and whatever happened to her after that wouldn't matter. I just hoped she didn't know how much my ribs still hurt from the first kick she'd given me.
A war cry ripped from her throat and she sprang at me, her claws a blur of black, coming straight for my middle.
"Dammit," I hissed, thrusting my arms forward in time to grab her wrists, jerk her toward me, and kick her in the chest, sending her sliding across the table. But she was up a breath later, pivoting back toward me, the skin on either side of her neck bulging and rippling.
"Incapacitate her quickly! Do not let her slip those out!" Lexicon said.
She slammed into me, but I twisted to lessen the impact, grabbing her wrists to keep her from impaling me, and tried to throw her to the table. But her center of gravity was too strong, and she didn't budge this time. My arms shook under the effort of keeping a hold of her as the screen spider-cracked beneath us. At the edge of my vision, I could see Prince Sorrell making strange motions to her with his hand; motions that I somehow understood. He was giving her instructions, telling her to distract me while he got a Veehm beneath my feet.
I gritted my teeth. The buttons were causing me enough trouble.
"I don't want to hurt you," I whispered. "Just stop this. It's useless."
She growled. If I hadn't heard her speak, I would've wondered if she even possessed the ability. And I felt the warning my instincts had been waiting for.
Heat flared down my arms from my Thet point and the air vibrated as I wrenched away from her and threw the two balls of hard air. One hit the girl in the face, hurling her backwards ten feet to the table's edge, and the other hit the table, shooting the buttons toward her charge at a speed I'd miscalculated.
A resonating gasp went around the table as the prince yelled and crumpled to the floor, cutting his Veehm short, and the girl screamed and jumped to her feet, dark blood dripping from her nose. She looked wildly from me to the man, a vein pulsing in her forehead, her lips curling back to reveal those black teeth lengthening in her gaping mouth. The bulging around her neck stopped and something icy blue slid around her throat and traveled up her chin and down under her clothes. In seconds, her face was a scaly, ice colored mass with eyes, nose, and a mouthful of fangs.
"Stop her. Stop her now. It takes her concentration to cover herself!" Lexicon shouted. "BREAK IT!"
My legs tensed and I darted toward her. She dodged to my left, but my instincts had expected it. I pivoted and dived, grabbing her leg. She turned over and kicked out at me, forcing me to let go to put my arms up to block it and the screen shattered beneath me under the force of her kick. We fell eight inches to the steel surface below it.
I heard a screeching of claws against metal and the sound of glass against glass. A warning vibrated through me and I rolled to my knees and jumped on top of her, scrambling up to dig my finger into the pressure point under her arm and she screamed and dropped the glass.
"Good one. That spot hurts five times as much as it does on a human," Lexicon cheered.
The girl slashed at me with her claws and I ducked and slammed my elbows into her stomach. She grunted and slashed at me again and I had to jump away to dodge them.
"Filthy Zourr," she gasped, wincing as she rolled to her knees, the icy blue scales disappearing from her face. The same guttural growl I had heard before rumbled up her throat and she pushed herself to her feet.
"Just give up," I pleaded. "I don't want to hurt you more."
She roared and jumped at me again, but my instincts anticipated the move and the air around my hands vibrated as I thrust them in her direction. She screamed and flew into the air, slamming into the wall above the doors behind several Royals, ten feet up. They and their Guardians scrambled out of the way as she fell to the ground in a heap and I flipped off the table, over their heads, and landed, bringing my knee down onto her back.
She tried to swipe back with her claws, but I brought my elbow down onto the back of her head, right where Lexicon said, and she stopped moving.
"Well done!" Lexicon cheered.
"That was exhilarating."
"Who is this?" a voice said behind me.
I stood and spun to face the speaker, my Thet filled hands ready. The black-haired FengDohrn girl took a step back, her palms, one heavily bandaged, toward me in a sign of surrender.
"Hold back, Angquin," Rilyin said. "She is Tritteon's backup plan."
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