A weak rain began to fall from the heavens, growing heavier with every passing instant, as if the Veil itself had decided to watch more closely. One of his allies was on the ground, dry as salted meat and poisoned, the other had turned into an abstract sculpture of thorns, iron and flesh. The culprit was almost lodged inside the wall of the arena, where his body had struck with enough violence to open a hole in the stone.
Hakon was breathing heavily, he was angry, tired and seized by a different feeling, one he still did not know how to name, fortunately it was already over, or at least that was what he told himself. His father would probably reprimand him for losing two voroirs, however untalented they were, they were still costly assets, but it was over already, at last.
The plebeian had shown himself powerful, far too powerful for what would be sensible, and that irritated him in a way he did not want to accept, because Hakon only had so much power due to everything that had been given to him, to each privilege worthy of someone like him. He ignored the feeling and drew a deep breath, straightened his body as much as he could and began to walk toward the other young man, drawing a dagger from his waist, and advancing with slow steps, blurred vision and determination in his eyes.
His father was watching him, of that he was certain, and Hakon was not going to disappoint him, not because of a woman, whether his sister or not, unless she were touched by the Star and became something beyond what she was, a woman remained a woman. The young green voroir was far away, but not far enough to escape him, and Hakon tightened his grip on the dagger as he approached.
''Hrafn!!''
''Hrafn!!''
''Hrafn!!''
The crowd was shouting, but the sound reached his ears muffled. The rain kept falling, diluting the blood and spreading it across the ground.
His vision was bad because of it and because of the exhaustion, he was even seeing the other's broken body move. Then he decided to remove the helmet to make sure it was not his head playing tricks on him, and when he finished removing the piece he saw that the enemy was doing the same. Thin smoke rose from his armor because of the burns, and even so the bastard kept moving. Hakon watched him raise the only arm he had and begin to remove the straps of the armor, one by one, slowly and little by little, as if each gesture were a torment, but refusing to stop. Until at last he removed the piece, holding it by the ram horns, and throwing it aside.
Hakon kept walking, forcing his exhausted body as much as he could before the enemy caught his breath again. Hrafn was pushing his back against the wall with his feet, using the vertical support to incline himself upward and get to his feet with difficulty, almost falling to the side in the process, but managing in the end, until he took one staggering step forward and then another. When he raised his head and showed his eyes, Hakon almost interrupted his own advance. A ridiculous thought crossed his mind at that instant, a thing so absurd it shamed him to have even felt it, he considered surrendering. There was in those black eyes a calm that should not belong to a nearly dead man, a confidence he himself did not know whether he possessed, even with the apparent advantage.
He looked at the stands, to the highest point, where the marquis watched from a nobler seat. From that distance he could not clearly make out his father's expression, but he saw enough to understand that he would not be allowed to lose, not in his debut, and still less to a crippled plebeian. Hakon stopped and drew a deep breath, gathered within himself all the energy he still had and ran, he ran stumbling and wrong, even roaring in the process, as if the sound of his own voice could give him one more second of breath. Hrafn, meanwhile, remained still, set a stance and closed his eyes.
The moment Hakon came over him, the dagger was launched toward the neck. The young voroir shifted aside in the middle, in a movement far too clean for someone in that state, and caught the strike in a sequence Hakon understood only too late. He did not catch the dagger, nor stop his arm, but went for the fingers. Hrafn seized his fingers with the only hand and pulled them in the opposite direction from where he had struck, and a muffled crack echoed, Hakon's finger broke, twisted at a grotesque angle, with the bone coming out. Before he could properly recognize the pain, an elbow strike and a low kick came, all so well connected that Hakon came to think he was being beaten by different people. The elbow broke his nose, the kick almost tore the ground from beneath his feet, and for a moment the whole world seemed to tilt.
But he remained standing, swallowed the pain with tears in his eyes and made the little energy he still had crackle lightning once again. The blow threw the young green off balance, making his teeth clack and his body be pushed backward. Hakon then followed with a punch from the good hand, scattering spit and blood through the air, then forced the broken hand to move as well, ignoring the pain, and hurled it half closed and half open for another "punch".
But Hrafn reacted in time and lowered his head with sublime precision, dodging by almost nothing with his face turned upward, Hakon's already broken hand passing a finger's distance from his mouth. When Hakon pulled it back to prepare another blow, Hrafn bit his gauntlet, with dark green from his own miracle concentrated in his teeth, as he let out a muffled roar while putting into them all the pressure he could, cracking a good part of them in the process, as well as crushing and breaking Hakon's hand inside the gauntlet. The young blue answered with an elbow from the other arm, letting go of his own hand before it suffered permanent damage, if it had not already suffered it.
"Dirty and filthy dog," he cursed, with his hand trembling and sending spasms of pain from it to the shoulder and the nape.
"I've never been picky with food," Hrafn answered, with a bloody smile on his lips and irises full of red veins.
"Do you know what is done with mad dogs?" Hakon asked, and this time the sentence came out weaker than it should have. The posture was still good, but he did not feel well at all, something strange was tightening inside him as he looked at the other young man. The man before him seemed willing to do anything to win, it was as if the honor of a voroir and the nobility of a battle were distant concepts to him.
As if to prove that point, the young man did not answer, and instead, laughed. A strange and half-maniacal laugh, that ended in coughs of blood before he threw himself on Hakon with even more voracity. The rain now made keeping a stance harder, and together with the state the two were in, what followed seemed more like a tavern brawl than a noble battle between voroirs. Punches were thrown, low and ugly kicks, Hrafn even tried to bite him again, break his fingers, gouge his eyes and find points of pain in every petty way he could.
And no matter what Hakon did, the other always seemed to understand better and know first. He took only the blows he could endure and returned worse things, always dodging by almost nothing all the time, even from attacks that came from blind spots, as if his whole body knew before the mind what it needed to do. Hakon began to understand what the feeling was that had been growing inside him for some time already, as the rain fell and made the blood in Hrafn's mouth run, as those eyes black as dead coal looked at him, while the other's body moved in wrong ways, took blows and refused to yield, always returning more pain and torment, ever dirtier, practical and dishonest
''Hrafn!!''
''Hrafn!!''.
Hakon was feeling for the first time in his life, fear. Not the small fear of speaking to his father, much less the fear of failing, it was a more carnal kind of fear, one that entered the bones and weighed behind the eyes.
It was the fear of standing before a hungry predator.