It was obvious from the way the two fought that they’d trained for countless hours to achieve such flawless teamwork.
As Kira watched, Joule punched the shield through the air, stirring up a cloud of dust to conceal Devon’s form as he snuck toward their opponents behind.
“You suppose we should do something about those?” Raider used his chin to gesture at the drones silently slipping their way over head. The commotion of the blast had probably been what drew their attention.
Kira sighed. “Might as well. Those two are working so hard. We can’t let them show us up.”
They had their reputations as Curs to protect after all.
twenty-two
“The human is impressive, wouldn’t you say?” Torvald leaned back in his chair, his eyes on the floor of the arena as Raider hid himself in a pocket of the dust cloud Kira had created.
“He is,” Graydon responded as a swarm of drones closed in on where Kira still stood, immobile, in the hole she’d blown in the wall.
She hadn’t just disrupted the tether that enabled the particles to communicate on a molecular level to assume different shapes and densities; she’d reduced them to dust.
They would be nothing but inert matter now, unable to relink.
It was a remarkable feat in someone who was relatively new to ki training—and a decent approximation of the technique Graydon first showed her on Ta Da’an when he’d reduced a statue to rubble.
Pride filled Graydon at the sight.
“This level of skill is sufficient to get him through the test of survival but to advance further he will need to be capable of more,” Torvald said as the drones passed over Raider’s position.
The human stepped out of the dust cloud, lobbing a small object the size of a fist in their direction.
The drones parted, allowing the object to pass before closing ranks and changing targets.
Raider smirked as they slunk in his direction and held up his middle finger.
Light and electricity burst from the shape. An energy field hit the drones directly around it.
They dropped.
Kira laughed as she darted across the ground toward the closest intact wall. She raced up its side before pushing off and flipping to land on a drone passing by.
Sensing its passenger, the drone activated its defenses. Blue light arced upward as Kira punched down.
Her fist broke through the casing. She ripped her hand free, the core of the drone clutched in her fingers.
She hurled it at another drone, leaping off the first and onto another.
Quiet rippled through the audience as they watched the destruction the pair wrought as Joule and Devon completed their task of dealing with those Tuann who’d been foolish enough to try to ambush them.
Torvald propped his head on his fist as he and Graydon watched the spectacle quietly.
A drone graveyard grew around the pair, many of the machines lying in pieces on the ground. Sparks still flew occasionally as Raider dealt with the final drone.
Their conversation echoed in Torvald’s box as the monitoring devices installed throughout the arena transmitted their voices.
It was an honor only those the Overlords and those within their boxes could access.
Several Houses had designated a few of their initiates as priority, allowing only themselves the ability to eavesdrop. Roake had done the same for Kira.
Such an action would block the rest of the arena from spying on those initiates who didn’t belong to their Houses.
Only the emperor could circumvent those restrictions.
