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"Ready to die, human?" he taunts, loud enough for all to hear. "Ready to choke on your own arrogance, your own lies?"
I don't deign to respond, stepping calmly to the edge of the ring. I feel Grok's gaze on me, heavy and hot, wretched and reverent all at once. But I don't look at him. I can't. If I do, I'll fly apart, shatter into a thousand sorrowing shards.
Instead, I fix my eyes on my opponent. On my target, my trial.
My destiny, writ large in grim, towering hatred.
"Seal the circle," the Master intones, and the gathered crowd joins him, human and ogre voices blending in uncanny unison. "Bind the blood, and the blades that spill it. From this ring, only one may rise...and in their rising, raise all."
The ancient words wash over me, through me. I feel them settle into my skin, suffusing me with a sudden, diamond clarity.
I was made for this, I realize with a distant, dizzying wonder. Made for this moment, this mission.
To be the blade in the dark, the light in the shadow. The hammer...that shatters the old order, the old enmities.
And forges something new, something miraculous...from the ruins and the rubble.
With that thought held tight to my heart, a talisman against my fear...I step into the ring. Into my fate, my future.
Into the fight of my life...for the love that has remade me. Redefined me.
For Grok. For us, and the world we would build.
I raise my sword, slipping into a guard stance as Krag bellows and charges, all brute force and bloodlust. Our blades meet with a shriek and clang of steel on steel, the impact juddering up my arms, rattling my teeth. Krag is a juggernaut, a mountain of muscle and murderous intent. He beats at my guard like a battering ram, trying to overpower me, to crush me beneath his superior size and strength.
But I am a reed, not an oak. I bend and sway, deflecting rather than blocking, conserving my energy as I dance and dart around him. Employing all the speed and subtlety Grok drilled into me, I weave a net of flashing silver around the ogre, striking and slipping away before he can bring his hammer to bear.
Slash and slice, feint and fade. The world narrows to the ring, to the deadly dance of blade and body, breath and blood. Sweat stings my eyes, trickles down my spine beneath my armor. My muscles burn, my lungs heave.
But still I press on, giving ground strategically. Letting Krag expend his fury, his force, in wild swings and bellowed taunts.
"Stand and fight, little girl!" he rages, spittle flying from his tusked mouth. "Or do you mean to prance about forever, relying on your little human tricks?"
I don't answer, saving my breath, my focus. Around and around we go, the crimson sand churned to a bloody mire beneath our boots. The crowd roars and hisses, a distant din to my ears.
I am in the void, in the hush within. The place of pure concentration, where thought falls away and there is only action. Only instinct, honed to a killing edge.
I see my opening, my chance. Krag overextends, his hammer smashing into the ground where I stood a split second before. Reversing my grip on my sword, I lunge forward, sliding between his tree-trunk legs like an otter through water.
A twist and I'm behind him, kicking out viciously at the backs of his knees, where ogre anatomy mirrors human. He staggers, off-balance, and I leap onto his back, wrapping my free arm around his neck in a chokehold as I press my blade to his jugular.
"Yield!" I rasp in his ear, my heart hammering against his spine. "Yield, Krag, and I will spare your life!"
But he only roars, reaching back to seize me by the scruff and hurl me bodily across the ring. I hit the ground hard, rolling with the impact, fighting to suck air back into my stunned lungs.
And suddenly Krag is on me, knocking my blade aside with a contemptuous swat of his hammer. His hand locks around my throat, clawed fingers digging into my flesh as he pins me to the churned earth.
"Weak," he sneers down at me, his weight crushing, compressing. Black spots bloom in my vision, the world going grey and gauzy at the edges. "Weak and worthless, just like that lovestruck fool who thought to make you his queen."
Through the encroaching dark, through the thickening fog...I see Grok. See his face, etched in lines of anguish and impotent fury. See the tears that slip down his ashen cheeks, the way his lips form my name. A invocation, a lamentation.
No. No, I will not let it end like this. I will not let our dream die here, in the dust.
I will not fail him. I will not fail us.
With a burst of desperate strength, I bring my knee up into Krag's groin, the only vulnerable spot I can reach. He grunts, his grip loosening reflexively, and I wrench free, scrabbling for my fallen sword.
My fingers close around the grip just as Krag lunges for me, his hammer hissing down in a killing arc. I roll aside, feeling the kiss of displaced air, the spray of sand. And before he can recover, I'm surging to my feet, driving my blade up and in, aiming for the unprotected juncture of neck and shoulder.
