“Please do,” Lis cuts in. “Watching you flounder will be exhausting enough without prolonging it.”
I shoot her one last glare.
Then the world fractures and morphs.
Space folds inward with the now-familiar wrenching violence, the ruined square dissolving into crimson static before reforming around me in a burst of freezing wind.
The first thing I feel is the cold—and I fucking hate it.
Snow whips through the air in dense, blinding sheets, driven by a howling gale so fierce I have to brace myself just to remain upright. Beneath my feet stretches a vast frozen expanse of cracked ice, frost-covered stone and jagged formations. Far in the distance loom shattered glaciers and cliffs of blue-white ice that vanish into a sky the color of blood.
Once more, the arena benefits my opponent. At this point, I have to wonder whether that’s on purpose or I just have wicked luck.
The boundary sets automatically around, creating a barrier between the fighting space and the space where the audience is. The cold, too, seems to stop the moment it reaches the barrier.
Moe and Lis are right there, watching me, as are a dozen or so other warriors.
With a nod to Moe, I turn and focus on the fight.
My opponent is a small distance away.
Tall and lean, he’s clad in pale armor rimed with frost, his silver hair whipping violently in the storm. Even from this distance I can see the thin crystalline layer coating his skin, creeping over his throat and jaw like frozen veins. He holds no weapon.
He does not need one when this entire arenaishis weapon.
He smiles as he rakes his gaze over me.
“So,” he calls over the screaming wind, “you’re the little anomaly everyone’s talking about.”
Ice creeps over the arena floor toward me in branching white veins.
I lower into stance.
Across the frozen battlefield, Serrik raises one hand and the storm intensifies immediately.
Just as the greyish gale steals my eyes, he lunges for me.
He crosses the distance with shocking speed, his boots barely seeming to touch the ice as he glides over it rather than runs.
The storm moves with him, snow whipping in his wake like a living thing, and by the time I brace for impact his fist is already hurtling toward my face.
I duck beneath it and counter with a strike to his ribs.
My knuckles hit solid ice. Pain shoots up my hand.
He smirks.
Then the ground beneath me freezes over completely.
My footing vanishes.
I slip just enough for his knee to slam into my stomach and send me skidding backward across the ice. Before I can regain balance, he thrusts his palm forward and a jagged spear of ice erupts from the floor where I stood a heartbeat before.
I throw myself sideways. Another spike tears upward. Then another.
Then five more in rapid succession, each one forcing me farther and farther back as the battlefield transforms beneath my feet. Smooth frozen ground becomes a maze of jagged crystal, each path narrowing, funneling, dictating where I can move.
Exactly as Lis said—battlefield control.
