It was like she’d been struck by a wrecking ball. But the crushing force of the Heilong Javelin wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that force spearing her through a point tinier than a needle’s head.

The Heilong Javelin was so sharp that even its holding case, forged of twice-smelted brightsteel, was designed to leave an air pocket around its tip—for a mere touch from that cruel, gleaming fang could carve grievous wounds into the toughest of metals.

Now it drilled into a human body. A human body of astonishing make, to be sure, a marvel of flesh and blood—but still, in the end, flesh and blood.

Eudora let out a choked gasp as she was thrown backwards, crumpled over, her eyes jolted wide with disbelief, arms splayed about her as she was flung into the sands. There was a flash of scarlet as her life-saving treasure pulsed sharply with qi, sending the Javelin careening halfway across the arena—but the damage was done.

If this was a real fight, that might well have been a fatal blow!

Wincing, Dorian struggled to his feet and glanced up to the ceiling, where the their health bars lay in bold projections. He hardly dared to hope.

In an instant, hers was slashed down by more than two-thirds. Just like that. It seemed impossible. A goddess-like figure, a machine of brute force who’d had him at her mercy mere seconds prior, cut down with such ease?

The Heilong Javelin lived up to its title. It was the most feared weapon in the Oasis for a hell of a good reason.

Silence. Wonderful, stunned, gaping silence gripped the arena.

Then there was an uproar so frenzied, so explosive not even the arena’s force fields could dampen it. There wasn’t a person in the crowd not on their feet, screaming, hollering, jumping up and down or plain gaping. There was a wholesale losing of shits: everywhere Dorian looked were Oasis-dwellers faces, hung slack with shock. Nobody seemed to know what to think.

Nobody except Dorian, that was, who was grinning ear-to-ear. It really godsdamned worked! And it did so much better than he’d thought it would. The thing handled so well it felt like flexing yet another muscle! There was no bright line between thought and action, no gap between the motion and the will to motion. He wanted, and it did. It was everything a Spirit Weapons ought to be.

And he was only making use of maybe a tenth of its true potential—if that! [Shadow-Strike] was all he could draw out at Profound. One Technique. Lucky it’s a damned good one, eh?

Then Dorian winced as a crackle of pain spiked up his shoulder, searing the joint between arm and torso. He wiggling his fingers and feet, keen to coax some blood into them. This Eudora was stupid strong. She’d nearly yanked his arm straight out the socket. If she caught ahold of him again he suspected there would be no slow burn, no drawn-out torture. No—she’d be ripping limbs right off of him with a vengeance.

Vengeance. Yes, that was certainly a good word for it. There was a great deal of vengeance in her eyes as she picked herself back up, coughing blood, her face flush from top-to-bottom. She took in the grin on Dorian’s face, and flushed harder.

“What?!” she snapped, still coughing, wiping blood off her lips with the back of her hand. It was hard to keep an air of dignity when you could hardly stand upright. Still, she made a valiant effort. “You think one lucky shot means you’ve won?!”

It was music to Dorian’s ears. He didn’t think he’d won. Not by a long shot. But by her tone, her attitude had done a heel turn. He saw it in the way she stood, the way she shifted on the balls of her feet: that cagey, wounded-animal look.

It’s like you said, isn’t it? The initiative is paramount!

She’d gotten him by rushing at him full bore, catching him floundering on the back foot. But now she’d lost that first strike advantage. If she caught hold of him again he had no doubt she’d tear him limb from limb, but now he’d gotten a feel for her, now that he’d found the chink in her armor and cut her down to size, he felt almost—dare he think it?—assured. Like he had seized the upper hand! She had seemed, at the start, an unsolvable puzzle. It’d seemed like he’d be slaughtered without so much as a chance to fight back!

Now that he only needed to land one more clean hit to win, now that he’d wounded her for more than half her health, now that he saw how badly his tricks could wound her? It was like the last puzzle-piece had clicked into place, and he saw the full picture of her being. Everything that was once blurry resolved into sharp focus.

Was this cockiness? Or was it simply confidence?

He frowned at himself. Don’t get ahead of yourself, now! He had to keep his head screwed on. No rushing in. No over-extending. He needed her to do that so he could counter with his little tricks.

So he made a show of checking out their health bars. He made a show of acting surprised. “Wait, really?” he said. “I nearly finished you with just one shot?”

He frowned. “Weren’t you supposed to be tough? By the way you were acting, I thought you were [x!]”

The look on her face was priceless.

“Why, you little—!”

She pounced at him, snarling, her hands arching to seize his throat. Her sashes whipped through the air. She was but a blur in his vision.

But even blurs cast shadows, and this time he was ready for her.

He timed the throw of his Javelin to match her. He’d goaded her, after all! He’d thrown his Javelin before she’d moved—as soon as he sensed in her body the intention he’d already begun his own strike.

They met halfway. Her sashes, his Javelin. One sash looped over the top, arching for his throat. The other dove for the Javelin, fanning out like a net—intent on wrapping up his weapon and stifling it.

And once more his Javelin dove into the shadow like a fish slipping into water. This time, however, Eudora tracked it like a hawk. She reacted in an instant—she would not make the same mistake twice. Dorian saw her crouch as the Javelin dove. Then she sprung up in a leap that almost touched the ceiling, putting a huge chunk of distance between herself and the ground. She scoured her own shadows for the threat. Wherever his Javelin emerged, she’d be ready.

Folish girl. Dorian snorted. In a game of tactics, you’re trying to out-wit me?! He bared his teeth in a grin. You’re a thousand years too young for that!

Shadow-Strike was a costly technique. Most of its cost came in that in-between space: when it slipped out from reality and into the darkness. It did not re-emerge instantly. No—it traversed some parallel dimension, a shadow realm, and then slipped back into this reality. Holding it in shadow was what cost Dorian vast chunks of his qi. But sometimes that cost was worth it.

Eudora was in the air, brow furrowed, leaping in an arc. In a blink she’d neared the top of the leap. Her own attack was quickly forgotten. All her focus was on the defensive—she would not let him get off another clean hit!

Only it wasn’t quite the same setup, and that made all the difference. Dorian held.

In the space of the shadow he waited, patient, feeling his newly made qi drained from his Spirit Sea in swathes. The seconds passed with agonizing slowness but his qi went shockingly fast. Three-quarters. He grimaced, feeling the harsh wrench in his gut. One-half. Not yet—not yet! He let the wrenching grow to a spiking tug and still he held tight. This needed to be godsdamned perfect!

And then, just when his qi was dipping below a third, the chance presented itself.

At the start of the leap, Eudora had put on a defiant snarl.

By the top she reached the top it’d become a triumphant grin. Here, she knew she was far enough away that she could block any bolt from her shadows.

But no bolt came. And then came the dawning realization, the shock, the [horror], as gravity grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her down, down, down, speeding up into those very same shadows, those shadows she was trying so desperately to avoid—

She braced herself as she dropped. Both sashes whipped back before her in defensive posture, one stacked atop the other, shortening the shadows they cast to a dark puddle. She was falling fast, and the Javelin would come out faster, but if she wrapped herself well enough she could blunt most of it—if not swallow the strike whole in the folds of her sashes. Dorian could practically see the thoughts flash across her face. If Dorian was smart, she deduced, he’d wait until she was mere feet from the ground, when her downward speed and the Javelin’s upward speed was greatest, when the distance was least. That was when he’d have the best shot at her. So that was what she braced herself for.

But of course Dorian knew that was exactly what she was expecting. He cackled to himself. A thousand years too young, girl! A thousand years too young!

There was one more thing here. One thing she failed to consider.

When she stood on the ground, she cast no shadow. The lighting, streaming from a string of huge lamps, was too flooding for that.

When she was up high, blocking only a few light sources, the others voided her shadows. At the top of her leap, she was still safe.

But there was a point—a sliver of time when she was but a dozen feet from the ground—when she hit a sweet spot. Far enough away that she still blocked out a chunk of light, but close enough that her body stopped the others from covering for it. And in that sliver there was a shadow. A small but very present shadow. Just behind her. Barely visible, and certainly invisible to her.

Dorian smirked. Got you!

Carefully, ruthlessly, he threaded the eye of the needle.

Here’s the thing about dodging. If you were caught off guard but your feet were still planted on the ground, with sufficient reflexes you could still manage a decent attempt at it. Kick off. Twist. Leap. You could still move out the way.

Here’s the thing about blocking. If you were caught off guard but your shield was still nearby, you only needed but a glimpse of the strike before it hit you— and good enough reflexes, of course—to manage a solid try at a block.

But what happened when you were in the air and you needed in a split-second to shift directions but you had nothing to kick off of, no terrain to latch onto, nothing to move yourself with? What if your blocking instruments were literally on the opposite side of your body, far too slow to whip around?

What if the strike came from underneath and behind you, so you couldn’t even see it coming?

And what if—the nail in the coffin—it came a half-second earlier, and from a different place, than you’d been led to believe?

Well.

Then even if you were a superhuman Princess whose whole body a treasure of the highest caliber, even if you had a one-and-a-half-realm advantage, even if by every single objective measure this fight should’ve been an easy sweep for you—

Dorian had to believe she was finished.

Even so, as he saw the Javelin peek out from the darkness he tensed, bracing for yet another miracle. Bracing for her to defy all laws of physics, whirl around mid-air, and block. Perhaps she’d catch it between two fingers . Perhaps she’d wiggle her whole upper body out the way like a snake!

But she didn’t react at all.

The Javelin struck her in the small of the back. In the very same spot Dorian had kicked in the oyster restaurant just a few days prior. Dorian saw the force ripple up and down her body. He saw her face go from flush red to stark white. He saw the life-saving treasure crackle with sharp scarlet light and wink out, saw her eyes roll back, saw blood spurting from her mouth as she was flung rag-doll limp into the force-field, bouncing off, flipping head-over-heels once, twice, and skidding to a stop at last in an unmoving, twisted-up heap in the sands, her limbs strewn carelessly about her. A cloud of dust and sand bloomed in her wake.

Dorian held his breath, scarcely daring to believe it. The entire arena seemed to hold its breath too. No fucking way. He kept expecting her to spring up in a rage. Kept expecting her head to snap back up, spitting sand out of her mouth and raring for another go at him. It seemed somehow wrong, obscene, even, that he could finish off such a creature in but two well-placed, well-timed strikes!

But Dorian had been in enough fights to know that this was no impossibility. Nowhere near it. With a well-timed blow, struck at the picture perfect spot, even the sling of a peasant-boy could down a giant.

And he’d struck her twice with something far heavier, and harder, and sharper than a mere sling.

He looked up at the health bars. The red in hers dropped until it was but a thin, glowing rectangle, filling but a tiny fraction of the full bar.

Then it was a line.

And then nothing at all.