[Clear Vision active.]
[Duration under Link: ninety seconds. This unit cannot extend it.]
The floor of the jungle lit up.
Karl saw it from the throne, through her, arrows bleeding up out of the ground in four colours, each one tagged with a name he had watched all afternoon.
Kito coming down the wall crack.
James two steps ahead of him, already drifting wide the way he always drifted wide before a hook. Yuna holding the ramp. Bastien nowhere near any of them, walking the long way around the pit, cutting the exit.
Ninety seconds of the future, and four people walking into it.
"Kazu, I’m coming," Elsa said. "I’m two waves out, just hold—"
"No."
"What do you mean no—"
"Take the mid-tower." Karl’s hands stayed flat on the stone. "Sana, gold lane, all of it, don’t stop for anything. Dane, go with her. Dori, ward the river and get out."
Nobody moved for a second.
"That’s four people," Dane said. "That’s four people and you., are you insane? You may be skilled but come on."
"I know what it is."
"Kazu—"
"They left the whole map to come get me." He watched Kito’s arrow bend around the second camp, three seconds before Kito decided to bend around it. "So take the map."
Dori’s voice came in flat over the top of everyone.
"He’s right. Go."
...
The first thirty seconds were almost boring.
Draeven’s blade came through the space where Charlotte had been standing and Karl was already out of it, one dash, then a second stacked on the end of the first, the wall passing through him. Ophelia’s stun hit the wall crack.
He was on the other side of the wall. Kito swung again, and Karl walked backwards out of the swing without looking at it, because the arrow had told him about the swing four seconds ago.
"He’s not even fighting back," Kito said. "He’s just—"
"He’s stalling." Bastien didn’t sound bothered. "Close the ramp."
At the casters’ table one of them had both hands in his hair.
"Four of them. Four, and he has not taken a point of damage in half a minute, what am I watching?"
Karl came off the ramp wall, turned, and put two strikes into Yuna’s shoulder before the arrow under her feet had finished drawing. Her health opened up.
She flashed backwards on instinct and lost her only escape doing it.
’Good.’
Then James arrived, and James did not come from anywhere the arrows had drawn.
Volk hit Charlotte from the side at full speed. Karl felt it land in the throne, the whole left half of him going bright, and then stone, then the wall of the jungle corridor, and the hall around him rang with it. His arms stayed pinned flat to the arms of the chair.
He could not have curled up if he wanted to.
"Master!"
’Where did he come from.’
[He did not rotate. He was standing in the wall before Clear Vision initialized. The skill displays movement only.]
Volk’s boot came down.
Karl rolled Charlotte out of it and put the wall at her back and there was nowhere else to go, because Kito had the ramp now and Bastien had the crack and Yuna was walking up the corridor with both hands lit.
James’s voice came through proximity, close enough to feel.
"There he is."
Karl said nothing.
"Two weeks. Two weeks I’ve had your name in my mouth." Volk’s chain swung once, twice, lazy. "You want to know the funny part? Nobody remembers you beat me. They remember I lost. That’s what you did to me."
"You picked a fight in a car park," Karl said.
"And you put me on a stretcher."
"You put yourself there."
The chain came at his head. Karl slipped it, put a blade through Volk’s guard, and got exactly one strike in before Kito’s stun found him and the corridor tilted.
Health, three quarters. Then half.
He reached for a dash and the panel came back grey.
Then another. Grey.
’How many.’
[All charges expended. First recovery in six seconds.]
Six seconds was a long time with four people in a corridor.
...
And then the arrows started going thin.
They didn’t vanish. They faded from the outside in, colour draining off them a strip at a time, and the corridor stopped telling him what was about to happen and went back to being a corridor.
[Sixty seconds elapsed. Thirty remain.]
’That’s not enough.’
"Master." Charlotte’s voice had changed. It came from beside him and inside him and it was not steady in either place. "Master, I can’t see them. I can’t see them anymore, I don’t know where he might go"
’Charlotte.’
"I said I would not embarrass you." Her health was at a third. "I said it, I said it this morning."
’Charlotte, breathe.’
"I can’t."
Karl sat in a chair he could not stand up from, in an empty hall with no walls, and felt his own hands shaking somewhere on the other side of a body that wasn’t his, and understood that Steel Nerve had been spent nine minutes ago on a turtle he chose not to fight.
’Then hold onto me instead.’
In the red pods, Bastien Orlov stopped moving.
He had been about to walk into the corridor, and instead he looked at the corner of his screen, at the two gold lane towers that were no longer on it, and at a scoreboard with his own marksman’s name greyed out on it.
"Otto’s dead."
"Who cares, we’ve got—"
"Otto’s dead, both gold towers are gone, and their mid is hitting my second one right now." Bastien’s voice went up with total seriousness. "We came for one man and they took a quarter of the map. Everyone recall. Now."
"He has low hp, are we really going to miss the chance to kill this guy?!" James shouted.
"Recall goddammit!!!"
...
Four hands went up at once, and four bodies started to glow.
Dane came out of the river.
He did not say anything. He put his shoulder into the ground and the whole corridor jumped, and four recalls broke at the same time, and the glow went out of all of them.
"Sorry," Dane said, on proximity, breathing hard. "But you’re not going anywhere"
"Kill him," James said.
They turned on him. Kharon’s blade came down, and Dane’s hero Gorran ate it on the guard and dropped to half in one exchange, and then to a quarter, and Dane held his ground anyway because he was counting seconds for somebody else.
Trisla’s wall came down between them.
Elsa had run the entire length of mid lane to place it, and the second it landed she had Gorran by the shoulder and was dragging him backwards through the river.
"You’re done, you’re done, come on—"
"I can still—"
"Dane." Her voice cracked and steadied in the same word. "He asked us to take the towers. Not to die in his jungle. Let’s take the towers."
Dane looked back once at the corridor.
"We’re holding him back," he said. "You know that, right? All four of us. He’s doing this because we can’t."
"Then we get better," Elsa said. "Later. Move."
Ophelia’s hands came up behind them, the same opening she had cast four times today, and Karl came off the wall with the last dash charge he had and put both blades through the middle of it.
The spell broke apart. Yuna staggered back into the corridor.
He landed badly. Charlotte went down on one knee on the jungle floor with her health in the red and nothing left in her hands, and four heroes closed the corridor at both ends.
"Now," James said.
Light came down out of the sky and folded itself small on Charlotte’s back.
"Sorry I’m late," Dori said, both hands out. "Can’t have you dying on me just yet."
Health climbed. Not too full but enough.
[Restorative effect received at full strength.]
[Charlotte’s passive has triggered.]
[All charges restored.]
Every grey panel in the corner of Karl’s vision went gold at once.
...
Karl stood up.
Not in the arena. In the hall, on the throne, in the empty place where he was not supposed to be able to move at all, and the stone let him.
"Master?"
’Get behind me. Both of you.’
He opened proximity chat, and when he spoke it came out flat and quiet, and the arena microphones picked up every word of it and put it through forty speakers.
"I’m strong. Really strong. Because of that, I already know I can’t lose this."
He rolled his shoulders. Charlotte rolled hers.
"So come at me. All of you. I have no intention of losing."
The building came apart.
Kito went first, because Kito was closest and because he had spent the whole match believing a scoreboard. Two dashes stacked, one strike through the guard, one blade reversed behind his ear.
{Kazu has slain Kito Sarn.}
Yuna tried to run for the wall. She had been out of flash since the ramp.
{Double Kill.}
Otto Pran came up the corridor eleven seconds out of the fountain, saw what was standing in it, and turned around.
{Triple Kill.}
"Get out of there!" Bastien shouted. "James, GET OUT—"
James did not get out. He walked forward with his chain swinging and his health at eighty percent and something in his voice that had stopped being about the game a long time ago.
"You don’t get to walk away from me twice."
"Okay," Karl said.
The chain went past Charlotte’s shoulder. She was already inside it.
{Quadra Kill.}
Dori dropped off Charlotte’s back into the grass with every cooldown on her spent. "That’s me. I’m empty. Kazu, I’m sorry—"
"Go."
She went.
...
Kharon did not run.
Bastien Orlov stood in the middle of Karl’s jungle with a shield up and four teammates dead behind him, and he held for eleven seconds against a hero built out of paper.
He blocked the first two dashes.
He turned the third into a stack.
He put Charlotte’s health to a sliver and stood on the exact patch of ground she needed and would not give it up.
"You’re the best player in this building, no doubt about it." he said, on proximity, not even breathing hard. "I want you to know I knew that at seven minutes."
"Thanks."
"It’s still not going to matter."
".."
Karl went low instead of around, took the fourth stack on the shoulder, felt it come down through the throne into his spine, and came up under Kharon’s guard with one blade reversed.
{Kazu has slain Bastien Orlov.}
{SAVAGE.}
The arena stopped being a room and became one solid wall of sound. Somebody in the upper block was screaming a name that had not existed in this district three hours ago, and then four hundred people were screaming it with him.
"SAVAGE! SAVAGE, ALONE, IN HIS OWN JUNGLE, WITH FOUR TEAMMATES PUSHING LANES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP, I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS, I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS AT A REGIONAL—"
Elsa’s voice arrived on comms in pieces. "Did you—Kazu, did you just—"
"Lord," Karl said. "It’s up in nine seconds. Everyone."
They took it in twenty-two, uncontested, with five red respawn timers still running.
The Lord walked down mid lane and TBD walked behind it. Two towers. Then the base towers. Then the crystal, in front of a crowd that had laughed at a skull on a bracket board four hours earlier and was not laughing now.
{VICTORY.}
[Quest: Find a new tournament. Earn money.]
[Condition two: pending. Reward will scale with final placement.]
The helmet came off.
Karl sat up in the pod with his hands still shaking and looked down the row at four people climbing out of theirs, and Elsa was already halfway to him with her mask pushed up on her forehead and her eyes wet, and Dori was standing very still and staring at him, and Sana had not let go of the edge of her pod yet.
On the board above the stage, the MVP graphic loaded.
TBD. Kazu. 14.4.
And on the losing side, in silver, top three global for two straight seasons, a man sitting on the edge of his pod with his elbows on his knees, looking at nothing.