The second round started without ceremony. The bunny appeared, said "begin," and the first two teams walked to the center. Jake watched from the wall and tried to think about strategy instead of the sheet against the far wall.
"The glass," he said. "When you put that pane in front of the big guy's face last round. That was the turn."
Kitch's head tilted. "You want more of that."
"I want you to cut their sight lines. Panes, not shards. Make them fight blind."
"I can hold a pane for about ten seconds. Two panes, maybe six."
"Six seconds is a lot," Vauren said. He was standing behind them, arms at his sides, watching the fight in the center. He hadn't sat down since the first round ended. Standing was how Vauren waited. "If Jake is moving, six seconds of broken sight is enough."
"And you follow," Jake said.
"I follow."
Kitch's feathers did the throat thing — the small tightening that Jake was starting to read as interest. "You want me to be a wall."
"A wall that cuts."
"Fine. But if a wall that cuts gets flanked, the wall dies." One eye on Jake, one on the fight across the room. "Stay in front of me."
Their match was called third.
Jake stood up. His body was good — healed, rested, the ankle from last round a fading ache. Across the room the other team stood up too.
Senna.
She was watching him. The six-fingered hands at her sides, her team behind her. Jake's stomach did something he ignored.
They walked to the center from opposite sides. The sourceless light caught the stone between them, flat and grey, the same stone that had been under everything since they'd arrived. Blood from the last fight had been cleaned somehow. The room took care of itself.
"Jake," Senna said.
"Hey."
"One sun." The corner of her mouth moved. "How do you grow anything."
"We manage."
The almost-smile held for a moment. Then it went. Her six-fingered hands opened.
A vine lashed from her right hand — thorned, fast, aimed at Jake's knees. A second from her left, higher. She made them the way Kitch made glass — from nothing, sharp, each one lasting a few seconds before going brittle. But she made them fast. Three, four, five in a breath, a constant whip-stream of thorned stalks.
Jake moved. Light at his feet, cutting left. A vine caught his shoulder. The thorns bit and he tore free, the sting bright, almost clarifying. Another one at his ankle. He jumped it — light firing at his soles, a burst that carried him sideways — and for a half-second the room was the launch columns, the platforms, the sky.
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Then a thorn raked his arm and he was back.
Senna tracked him, each vine aimed, the six fingers working constantly. She was good. The vines came from angles he hadn't expected, each one placed to close the gap he'd just opened. She'd watched his first fight. She knew he was fast. She was filling the space between fast and close enough.
Across the arena the stocky scaled man rushed Vauren. Kitch put a pane between them. The man hit invisible glass at full speed, bounced, and Vauren was there — precise, unhurried, a single pressurized strike to the ribs that dropped the man to one knee. Vauren stepped back. Waited. The man got up. Vauren let him. The man swung. Vauren absorbed it, his body rolling with the impact, and hit him again in the same rib. Same spot. Harder. The man went down and stayed.
Vauren straightened his sleeves. In the middle of a death tournament, on a blood-stained floor, Vauren straightened his sleeves.
The thin woman with wrong-jointed fingers reached Kitch. Her hands moved in patterns that shattered his pane from the inside. Kitch sent shards — scattered, fast, filling the space between them. She deflected some. Others got through.
Jake closed on Senna. She put a vine directly in his path. He ducked it. She put the next one where his duck would take him. It caught his wrist, wrapped, tightened.
"Senna. Stop."
"You stop." She was breathing hard. "You stop and I stop."
"If I stop we die."
"If I stop we die."
They faced each other across three meters of warm grey stone. Two people who'd liked each other four days ago.
"Kitch!" Jake ripped his wrist free. "Pane! Between us!"
Glass appeared — wide, flat, clear. Senna's next vine hit the surface and slid off. She generated another. It scratched lines across the glass.
Jake put his palm flat against the back of the pane. He didn't think about it. His hand went there and the light went through.
The glass caught it. Bent it. A single flash from Jake's hand became a scattered wall of brightness on the other side — refracted, split, filling Senna's entire field of vision. Not a beam. Something neither of them could have made alone.
For half a second his chest opened — the clean bright rush of a new thing working, the launch columns, his feet firing for the first time. He wanted to do it again.
Then he went around the pane and Senna's hands were up and her face was open and undefended, and the wanting turned to something he'd feel later and be ashamed of.
Two hits. Stomach. Jaw. Light at his knuckles both times. She went down. The last vine she'd been generating fell from her hand, already going brittle.
Vauren had finished. Kitch had finished. Three opponents on the ground. Breathing.
Jake stood over Senna. She was conscious. Looking up at him. The six-fingered hands flat on the stone.
"One sun," she said. Her voice was thin. "Unbelievable."
Jake opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
The bunny was walking toward the center.
He stepped back. Senna watched it approach. The white fur, the dark eyes, the long fingers. She didn't close her eyes. She kept them on Jake, like she'd decided that was where she'd rather be looking.
Jake didn't turn away. He owed her that and it was the worst thing he'd made himself do since he came through the portal. He watched until the bunny's hand reached her, and then he made himself keep watching, and the sound when it came was small.
He walked to the wall. Sat down. The thorn-scratches on his cheek were bleeding. His wrist was swelling where the vine had gripped. He pressed his palms flat against the warm stone floor and left them there.
Kitch lowered himself beside him. Feathers tight against his body, talons pressed into the stone. Vauren stood near them, his back against the wall, arms crossed.
"You are bleeding," Vauren said. His eyes had found the scratches.
"I know."
"You are always bleeding."
"It's becoming a thing." Jake didn't try to smile. He didn't have it.
After a while Kitch said, "The light through the glass. That was new."
"Yeah."
Kitch was quiet a moment. "We'll want it again. Later. When you can stand to think about it."
Jake looked at him. Both eyes were on him, steady, and Jake understood that Kitch had seen the whole thing — the flash, the wanting, the shame that came after — and had decided to put a wall around it for now instead of a name.
"Yeah," Jake said. "Later."
Eight teams left. The room was emptier than it had been. The sourceless light fell on fewer people, fewer packs against the wall. Somewhere behind Jake, Senna was under the sheet, and the sheet was longer than it had been yesterday.