Ninety thousand voices chanted her name, a wave of sound crashing against the tiers, yet Alya heard only her pulse. The Mirror Ring spread beneath her feet, polished obsidian so flawless that the whole sky hung upside down in it.
'Ninety thousand voices. Not one of them standing in my corner.'
Herald Quillon bounced along the high gallery in a striped coat, waving both arms like a man trying to fly.
"Ladies, gentlemen and gentle monsters, welcome to the Semifinal!" he shrieked, his voice cracking with joy.
"In the dawn corner, the radiant, the relentless, the one and only Spear of Mercy!"
The roar that followed shook dust from the arches, rolling across the ring like surf on a stony beach. She raised Dawnbreak a single inch in acknowledgment, as protocol demanded, her face set into a perfectly calm mask.
Herald Quillon swept a hand toward the far gate, "And in the other corner, the Baron of Bad Decisions, the Shard-less Wonder, the man who brought a chain to a spear fight!"
