I didn't need to say a word to Salem. We've been together long enough that I can read him the way a good card shark reads a drunken noble — every twitch of his hand, every slight drop in his shoulder telling me more than any shouted warning could.
His muscles were loosening in that predatory way, like a bowstring that's found its perfect tension. He wasn't bracing for impact. He was preparing to erase the space between himself and the stitched giant.
And then he was gone.
Not literally gone — there's no magic to make you vanish completely, not yet anyway — but Salem's movement always feels like the world just skipped a frame. One moment he was beside me, the next he was a blur slicing through the dust-choked air, feet hitting the stone just long enough to launch him forward again. He closed the gap in a heartbeat, his coat snapping around his waist as the hulking figure brought that ridiculous maul around in a wide arc to greet him.
The sound of the impact was… wrong. It wasn't the sharp crack of steel against steel or the ringing echo of a clean parry. It was a heavy, meaty thud, like someone had dropped an anvil into wet clay. Salem had twisted just enough to take the blow on his forearm rather than his skull, but even so, the sheer force sent him sliding back across the cobblestones, boots scraping.
I winced. That arm was going to be a problem later.
Salem didn't waste breath cursing or complaining — he came right back in, bare fisted, ducking under the next swing and driving his palm into the giant's ribs. I heard the strike, felt it in my own chest even from here, but the stitched man barely flinched. Salem shifted, striking again and again in quick succession, each blow precise, calculated… and each one landing with all the effect of tapping a marble statue with a spoon.
It took me longer than I'd like to admit to put it together. This wasn't just raw physicality. The way the seams of his skin flexed, the unnatural density of his movements — it was all too familiar. Incarnic enhancements. Strong ones, if they were letting him tank hits from Salem without breaking stride.
Suddenly, another question arose. His maul — how in the hell had he gotten away with it? No one was supposed to have their personal weapons or relics on them for the preliminaries. Yet here he was, swinging a maul the size of a small horse like it was a stick he'd picked up for fun. That didn't happen by accident.
The answer slotted into place in my head with a kind of cold inevitability. He'd been planted. Whether it was the Northern Cathedral — or maybe someone higher, someone with their own agenda — they had to have put him here on purpose. This thought was backed by the fact that the man held no armband signifying his rank.
Which was deeply fascinating… but not immediately helpful.
A million other thoughts blurred through my mind but I forced them down. I glanced to look away from the fight, scanning for Rodrick instead. I spotted him slumped against the wall where the giant had sent him, blood leaking through the cracks in what was left of his armor. His breaths were shallow, ragged, his eyes half-lidded but still tracking movement. He wasn't gone yet, but it was close enough to light a fuse in my chest.
I moved.
Or I would have, if the fight hadn't come crashing directly between us. Salem dodged left at the same time the giant swung right, and the maul cut a path that put the two of them right in my way. I had to skid back or risk losing my entire midsection to a weapon I had zero interest in meeting up close.
"Scatter!" Salem barked, twisting away from another blow that smashed a chunk out of the plaza's fountain.
"Not without—" I started, but then I saw Rodrick again. He was dragging himself along the wall now, teeth gritted, leaving a smear of blood behind him. I breathed a short sigh of relief before scanning for Dunny.
Dunny, to his credit, was already making himself scarce. I caught sight of him halfway up the wall of a nearby building, scrambling for the rooftop like a cat that had just decided it wanted absolutely no part in this. At least I wouldn't have to worry about him becoming maul paste.
Salem's voice cut through my thoughts again, sharper this time. "Cecil, Run!"
I could have. Should have. He was the fast one, the one who could maybe, possibly, keep this stitched monster busy long enough for the rest of us to regroup.
But I'm not wired that way.
Instead, I darted forward, cutting in on the giant's flank. He swung at me without even looking, a casual backhand with the maul that would have turned my ribs into a fine powder if I hadn't dropped into a slide that carried me under the arc. Salem took the opening to land a heel kick to the side of the giant's knee — it bent, but didn't break, and the man snarled, jerking his leg back like we were an inconvenience rather than a threat.
For a moment, we had him turning between us. He'd start toward Salem, then whip back toward me when I came in low, then spin again when Salem feinted high. It wasn't enough to hurt him — not yet — but it kept him from getting a clean line to Rodrick, and that was the point.
We didn't need to win. We just needed to buy time.
"We need to split!" Salem said, and I knew exactly what he meant.
In an instant, we moved in opposite directions at the same time, circling wide and whistling sharply to keep his attention away from Rodrick. The giant's head snapped between us, his brow furrowing as he decided which one of us he hated more.
I didn't wait to find out. I darted down a narrow alley, the kind where the walls felt close enough to press in on your shoulders. For half a heartbeat, I thought maybe, just maybe, he'd choose to follow Salem instead.
No such luck.
The ground shook with each step as he came after me, his bulk somehow moving faster than it had any right to. I groaned out loud — partly from the exertion, partly from the sheer unfairness of my life — and pushed harder.
I threw what obstacles I could into his path — market stalls, barrels, a stack of crates that some poor shopkeeper had probably spent all morning arranging. He smashed through them like they were made of paper, splinters spraying into the air behind him.
Overhead, the air balloons drifted closer, their colorful canopies blotting out chunks of the sky. From them came the sound of laughter and cheering, faint but unmistakable. Of course. The nobles and merchants who'd paid for front-row seats to the preliminaries weren't just sitting in some bleacher somewhere. They were up there, watching the chaos from above like it was some kind of gladiator match. Which, I guess it was.
I figured then that if I wanted to live long enough to be worth the ticket price, I needed to find some way to strip the man chasing me of his mobility. Make him fight me on my terms.
That's when I saw it — rising above the rooftops a few blocks away, its stone face marked with age but still standing proud. A bell tower. Tall, narrow, the kind of structure that could become a very large, very satisfying problem for someone that size.
The plan started forming before I even realized I was committing to it. I veered toward the tower, cutting through side streets and vaulting bridges.
Everywhere I looked, the tournament was already in full swing, like someone had set fire to the board before we'd even taken our seats. Competitors were tearing into each other in alleyways, on rooftops, in the middle of what should have been quiet streets. Bodies — some conscious, some not — were being dragged off by cloaked attendants who seemed to appear out of nowhere, slipping through doorways or shadows to collect the fallen.
In one plaza, a wiry elf with hair the color of copper coins was fencing with a pair of knives so fast the sunlight seemed to stutter over them, dancing around a snarling beastfolk whose claws were long enough to pass for short swords. They moved like water over stone — graceful, fluid — but the air around them was sharp with the smell of iron and the sound of flesh meeting steel.
Two streets over, a group of three competitors had ganged up on a single demon — tall, horned, grinning in a way that made my skin crawl. He was unarmed but didn't seem to care, hurling one of them bodily into the side of a fruit stand hard enough to burst half the apples in an explosion of pulp. The other two hesitated. I didn't blame them.
I tightened my grip on my own fear and kept moving. If I looked too long at any of it, I might start wondering which one of them was going to be the one who killed me. And I didn't have time for that kind of honesty right now.
When I reached the base of the tower, its entrance was, mercifully, unlocked, the heavy wooden door creaking as I shoved it open and bolted inside. The interior smelled of dust and old oil, the air thick with a metallic tang. A spiral staircase wrapped around the inner walls. I took the steps two at a time, then three, my lungs starting to burn as the incline went on longer than I'd anticipated.
Halfway up, I decided to cheat. I poured energy into my lungs and hamstrings, the familiar hum of enhancement running through me. The air came easier, my stride lengthened, and the world narrowed to the rhythm of my boots hitting the stone.
Behind me, I heard the boom of footsteps growing louder — and then, in a moment that nearly made me lose my footing, he jumped. Not up the stairs, but between them, clearing whole sections in single, bone-rattling bounds.
"Oh, wonderful," I muttered.
I pushed harder, the top of the tower finally coming into sight. The space opened up into the belfry, sunlight streaming through the arches that looked out over the city. The bell itself dominated the center, its bronze surface dulled with age, suspended by a massive iron pulley chain.
I scanned quickly, spotting a section of the chain that had worked loose near the counterweight. Perfect.
When the giant hauled himself onto the landing, I was already in position. He stepped forward, raising the maul high. It was then that I kicked the counterweight free.
The chain screamed as it caught, links rattling like a jar of angry wasps, and then the bell moved. Not swung — lunged, as if the centuries-old bronze had been waiting all its life for this single, glorious act of violence.
The air split with a deafening clang, the strike so powerful it seemed to tear the breath from my lungs. Its rim caught him square in the chest, and for a heartbeat I swore I saw the skin ripple over his ribs before the force hurled him backward, straight out the open archway.