If my panoply isn’t working, it’s not an accident. Call off the duel now, and there was no guarantee she’d get another chance. Not when they’re willing to go this far. If she’d been less careful stopping Tanax’s attacks, she could easily have died already.
She fixed Tanax’s gaze and shook her head. Then, as his eyes widened, she charged.
He met her with a flurry of parries, blocking every strike, backing away.
“Maya, please,” he said over the crackle and buzz of their weapons. “You’ll get yourself killed. Yield.”
“You yield,” Maya snarled, slamming her haken down. Tanax retreated another step, found his back to a pillar, and hastily parried. Maya pressed down with all her weight, forcing the paired weapons toward his face.
“I can’t,” Tanax gasped. “Master Nicomidi … he told me …”
“I can guess.” Maya thrust her free hand toward his stomach, fire gathering around it to form a blazing gauntlet. Tanax spun a shield of twisting force just in time, and her blow slammed against it. They stayed there for a long moment, locked together, two streams of deiat thrashing against each other like roaring beasts.
“I can’t … go easy,” Tanax gasped. “If you don’t … yield … I have to …”
“Do what you fucking like,” Maya grunted.
Tanax swallowed. He reached out to the ground below them, and sand exploded upward in a gritty geyser that drove Maya back, letting him spin away. Half-blind, she wiped at her eyes even as she charged after him, relying on her sense of deiat to feel his assault. Tanax ran, darting between the pillars, launching attacks over his shoulder as she pounded doggedly after him.
Stay close. She forced herself to move, though all she wanted to do was turn away and find somewhere to hide. Keep on him. She’d never been so aware of her body, in all its horrible fragility, soft skin and brittle bones, a bag of guts and muscles that stood about as much chance against the raw power of creation as—
As that girl. Behind her eyes, the rebel charred once again into a lifeless skeleton, and Yora fell in two pieces. Plague plague plaguing fuck what in the name of the Chosen am I doing—
She missed a block and threw herself to the ground just in time. A wave of rippling space slashed over her head, impacting a pillar behind her, blasting a crater in solid rock. Tanax skidded to a halt in a spray of sand.
“Maya, please—” His voice was hoarse.
Maya bounced back to her feet, breathing hard, bolts of flame lashing toward him. Tanax blocked and kept running, and Maya pounded after. Space boiled in his wake, ripples and twists of impossible geometry floating around her like dandelion seeds, then falling inward. Intercepting them took more and more of her attention, and Tanax got farther and farther ahead, darting through the maze of pillars.
He knows I can take him blade to blade. She wanted to scream with frustration. This isn’t going to work. Her legs already felt leaden, and she wasn’t going to be able to run him down, not with his power lashing at her from every direction. Sooner or later, he’ll get through, and—
She cut off that thought, abruptly, and came to a halt in the shadow of a pillar. Tanax paused as well, keeping a safe distance and concentrating on the threads of deiat that boiled all around him. Maya’s defenses retreated closer and closer, a shell of flame that contracted by the moment.
She raised her free hand and drew hard on her connection to deiat. Diverting power meant her defense weakened even faster, but she persisted, gathering energy for a single, colossal blow. She saw Tanax frown, and his attack slowed as he gathered power to counter. She imagined his confusion—an attack like this was wasteful, easy to see coming, trivial to deflect. She raised her hand, and a shield already shimmered in front of him.
Grinning savagely, Maya turned, shifting her aim. The energy she’d gathered lanced out as a single coherent beam of light, the backwash strong enough to kick the sand at her feet into a raging cyclone. It blasted across the arena, missed Tanax by a meter, and impacted on the stone pillar behind him. As the light faded, a thunderclap rolled out in its wake.
Tanax raised his haken, hesitated. Looked up.
The lance of pure energy had blown a hole in the stone pillar the size of a wagon wheel, sending the rock in molten spatters across the sand. Maya had judged her aim carefully, shearing away the stone on the side closer to Tanax. It started to tip, stone cracking with a sound like a blaster bolt, slowly at first but with unstoppable momentum.
It was falling behind him, blocking off his retreat, unless he wanted to test his panoply against a thousand tons of granite. Tanax turned back to Maya to find her charging straight at him, haken leveled like a spear.
Get close. A hundred wisps of twisted space raced toward her, threads of deiat blooming all around him. Maya focused her power in front of her, a wave of fire that cleared her path, and ignored the rest. Tanax adjusted, flinging waves and ripping tendrils of energy, too many and too fast, desperate to make her back off and resume the long-range battle he was sure to win.
Maya refused. She kept coming, twisting aside to avoid his attacks as Jaedia would have done, not meeting him force for force but letting his power flow past her. Behind him, the huge stone pillar hit the ground with a crunch, and a wave of dust and sand engulfed them both. Maya closed her eyes against it, navigating by deiat alone, feeling the energy flowing through Tanax and the concentrated power of his haken.
A line of power touched her hip, space warping to snag and tear, ripping away a chunk of flesh. Another caressed her left arm, shredding her skin like a wood saw. Pain hammered at the edge of her consciousness, but she kept moving. Almost there. Tanax was right in front of her, haken raised, blinded by flying grit. At that moment, it was the easiest thing in the world to duck, letting his blade swing over her head, and pivot on one foot with all the momentum of her charge. Her flaming sword caught him high in the chest, drawing a titanic burst of power from his panoply belt as the blow picked him up and tossed him against the broken pillar.
He vanished from her sight, his connection to deiat snuffed out. Maya opened her eyes in time to see him slump forward, falling on his face to lie motionless on the sand. She stood in the center of a whirlwind of dust, bleeding freely from arm and hip, her skin slick with sweat. At the center of her chest, she could feel the Thing humming to itself, resonating with her power. The flames of her haken roiled and crackled.
As the roar of her own pulse in her ears faded, she could hear the cheering of the crowd.
Slowly, Maya focused on the seats high above the arena. The Order was on its collective feet, the arcanists and the servants and the quartermasters, all shouting their approval. The centarchs were more reserved, as befitted their station, but their applause added to the storm of noise.
Pain rose around Maya, threatening to engulf her. Blood pattered to the sand beside her at a frightening rate. Her legs threatened to give way, but she forced herself to stay on her feet. She let her haken’s blade vanish and tossed it to one side. From the arena entrance she could see Evinda approaching with a gang of servants. I hope they brought a healer.
Above the arena, two things caught her eye. One was Beq, pushing forward to the very front, marked out by her golden spectacles. Maya gave her a weak wave, and her heart flopped as Beq waved back.
The other was the Council. Prodominus was on his feet, applauding and whistling through his teeth, and after a moment Baselanthus joined him. The rest had their heads bent together, in urgent discussion. Except for Nicomidi. Nicomidi was—