Three more fights passed before Hector could stop shaking. He didn't even catch the match directly after his own. The one after that featured Walt, who summoned a spear and threw it expertly to pierce the heart of his opponent. Then two other men went at each other with glowing swords.

That fight didn't end as fast as the others. Both of them were serviceable with their weapons, but neither had much bravery. Coming down from the adrenaline dump, Hector could sympathize with them. He did not want to return to the arena for another match. One of the swordsmen eventually gained the advantage when he sliced into the hand of his opponent. Things ended rapidly then, with the attendants rushing away a bleeding man.

There were only two fights remaining then. Evan brought out a shield that sported nasty spikes while his opponent tried to use a spear. The end result was spikes rearranging a face. Evan's opponent was screaming as he was taken away by the attendants.

Hector counted those attendants, realizing their numbers were dropping considerably. On the clay, Master Percival was caught up in officiating the fights and keeping an eye on the lord's box to ensure he was carrying out the whims of his master. Even the bench was clearing out, with half the fighters removed after losing their matches. It was the best moment for escape he'd seen yet. Not a sure thing, certainly, but promising. Unfortunately, the last fight of the first round of the bracket was Darius's.

"Win," Hector said.

"That's my plan," Darius assured him.

The opponent Darius faced was one of the unremarkable men who had kept to themselves for months now. He summoned a two-handed spiked mace with surprising reach. The mace shimmered as the rows of spikes began to revolve around the circumference. Hector frowned. That was not how an item projection worked. There were never moving parts. It was always a single solid piece. How could an externality aperture even do that?

"Some random goober inherited the insight of the Lord Mace?" Evan looked like he was about to die of an aneurysm. "How is that right?"

Hector jumped to his feet. What the hell? Darius was facing someone with the memories of a Xian lord? This was a disaster! What could he do? The answer was like cold water splashed in his face. Nothing. He could do nothing but watch and hope.

Darius entered his combat stance, hands held out equally ready to strike or grapple. Which was obviously not the thing to do against a normal mace. Hector imagined that intuition applied a thousand times more to a chainsaw mace. What was Darius doing?

The man with the mace stalked forward, waving his weapon in short arcs back and forth. His center of gravity was low, making Hector suspect he would be leaping forward to close the distance at any time. If he saw that, then surely Darius had to as well. Darius had far more experience with this kind of thing. So why wasn't he doing anything?

The mace thrust forward straight for the center line of Darius.

Hector took a step forward as if he could do something.

And at that moment Darius raised a hand to point palm towards his opponent's head. A streak of purple connected hand and head. Then the line exploded with a crack of thunder that rocked the entire arena. The man who held the inheritance of a lord collapsed headless to the clay.

Chaos bolt. Darius commanded a chaos bolt. Hector felt the tension drain from him.

The crowds cheered enthusiastically at the display until a lord flew down from the box to scream at the attendants in deranged fashion. "Get something to catch the blood! Now! I've paid too much to let any of him go to waste!"

Attendants swarmed forward, twice as many as usual. They cauterized the neck and rushed the body away, the lord following close on their heels. Master Percival turned to the lord's box and then nodded at some hand sign. "There will be a half hour intermission at this time. Please take the opportunity to place your bets for the next round."

Darius collapsed onto the bench beside Hector. "I refuse to do another match. Get us out of here."

"I'm watching for our chance." There were very few attendants around currently. The lords looked to be arguing in their box. Master Percival… was standing on the clay arena and looking down at the gladiators in the dugout.

Someone asked why the lord was so upset about the blood. Percival shrugged, overly casual. "Not all lords are used to violence. He probably thought something could be done for his fighter. There are a lot of bets being placed on these matches, you realize."

Jasmine looked at Hector, her face white. He gestured for her to come to him. She glanced at Micah, who was her next opponent, and shook her head. "Later," she mouthed.

She meant after her match. Once she no longer had to worry about Micah becoming angry with her. The thing was, she didn't have later. If Micah spared her a gruesome death, the lords would not. She was destined to end up in a vial if she didn't escape with him.

Hector took a single step and Darius seized his wrist from where he sat on the bench. "No."

"I can't just let her…." He couldn't say more with so many people around them.

"Forcing her isn't an option."

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"If I talk to her…."

"You'll make a scene."

Hector hissed as he sank onto the bench. What could he do? Nothing. He hated being weak, subjected to the whims of those in power. Especially Xian lords. "She's going to lose."

"You can't save her. She won't let you."

Hector scrubbed his face with both hands. "I hate this, Darius. Why are so many humans worse than the actual monsters? What does that say for our species?"

"This is what we are," Darius said. "You either live under the thumb or grow strong enough to place others under yours."

He checked their surroundings. Master Percival was still too close. The attendants weren't returning, though. The lords were still having an animated discussion with lots of dramatic hand gestures. The occupants of the dugout were half as many as when the bracket started.

"Percival is killing me," Hector muttered. "Hopefully not literally."

"I don't understand. What's the problem?"

"Transit spheres take time to form and move. This isn't like Orisha slipping through space." Spheres also had a distinctive appearance with their mirror bright exterior. Everyone who saw would realize what was happening. The eyes of anyone with the power to stop them had to be elsewhere. Ideally they would have been unobserved while walking from the cafeteria or something similar. That wasn't happening, though.

Master Percival soon clapped his hands. "The second round starts now. First up we have Micah versus Jasmine. Please take your places." He stared at the lord's box for a few moments before moving into place to officiate.

When he checked on the lord's box, Hector saw three of the lords gesticulating wildly at the Lord Platinum. If he had to guess, then based on the reaction when someone's head had been blown off, the gathered lords were angling for last minute rule changes to protect their investments.

Everyone who mattered was currently distracted.

Jasmine entered the arena. Micah came forward, turning around to face Hector just before following her up. "I hope you enjoyed her while you could. She's dead in two minutes." Micah cackled at the expression he saw on Hector's face, then jumped onto the raised arena.

Darius leaned close to whisper in his ear. "The time is now, Hector. I think you know that. Staying to watch the outcome will make nothing better."

He clenched his fists in his lap and didn't respond. How was he supposed to just leave now? He couldn't do anything to help but how could leaving now be anything other than abandoning Jasmine? He couldn't.

Master Percival swiped his hand down and commanded the fight to begin. Micah walked forward, a vicious smile on his face. "Did you think I'd go soft if you let me have my way with you a couple times? I don't get distracted like that. Certainly not by communal property."

Jasmine raised both hands to shoulder height like she was surrendering. "Micah? Please don't hurt me. Please. I'm sorry I upset you."

She sounded so unlike herself. The fire was gone, she stood defeated. It hurt Hector almost as much to see her like this as it did to know her life was about to end. Darius drove his elbow into Hector's gut hard enough to make him cough.

"Well, bitch, I'm sorry you were the best thing available in the barracks." A cable of force formed around Micah and lashed out towards Jasmine.

An aura flickered to life around her. That wasn't the only move she made. Jasmine leaped to one side as the lash came towards her head. Her hands were still up like she thought the conciliatory gesture would somehow help.

A second cable flickered to life as the first cracked against empty air. Micah looked absolutely confident in the outcome.

Purple stretched from Jasmine's hand. It formed a brilliant line that barely missed Micah's torso. Then the entire length of the line exploded, sending both combatants tumbling around the arena. Micah stumbled, holding his ear, and fired a chaos bolt of his own back.

Jasmine did a cartwheel to avoid his strike and shot another chaos bolt at him.

Everyone in the audience was on their feet, even the fighters in the dugout. Everyone was screaming at the action. Master Percival looked utterly preoccupied with his duties in the arena.

Hector knew this was the moment.

He hated himself for it, but he stood and pulled Darius up with him. His externality, for the first time since he'd reached level five, began to rise into reality. Its initial appearance was the size of a subatomic particle, but it grew rapidly, becoming in size comparable to first a marble then tennis ball then beach ball then larger still.

Explosions sounded as the two combatants on stage ran and dodged and fired chaos bolts at one another. Each purple line of chaos erupted in all directions moments after it formed, cracking thunder that echoed throughout the countryside.

Hector pushed in the front of his sphere, pulled Darius into the forming hollow with him.

On the stage, a final explosion sounded.

Micah no longer had a torso. The boy who had so terrorized everyone now existed only as a head and detached limbs strewn over the clay of the arena. The crowd was losing their minds.

Those who mattered, though… they were turning to look straight at the dugout.

Cables of force erupted into existence around Master Percival and shot towards Hector. The other fighters, who had abandoned the dugout to cheer along the side of the arena, were turning to look back. Standing there in victory, a despondent Jasmine reached a hand towards Hector.

Percival's attack was close to landing. It would be the end of Hector and Darius for sure.

But then an oppressive force blanketed the entire area. The cosmic energy within the force cables boiled away. Hector had just started to close the opening of his transit sphere when the surface of his externality began to ripple under the crushing pressure of the Lord Platinum's suppression field.

Hector clenched both hands into fists and flexed every muscle in his body as he resisted the force. Veins popping out, he opened his mouth and screamed in savage defiance, forcing the opening of his transit sphere to iris shut in a weld. The beam of light entering through the gap cut off.

The moment the interior of his sphere was disjoint from external reality, the crushing force of the suppression plunged them deep into primordial chaos. They were free of Tian.

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