The second structure was a long low building with the roof gone at one end, and it had been stripped.
Every container in the front room was open. The straw and packing that had been in them was on the floor and had been walked through.
I went in anyway, because a man who has already got a good weapon leaves a serviceable one on the floor behind him, and I did not have a serviceable anything except the gauntlets.
There had been a fight in there.
Two long scorch marks up the inside of the near wall, black and still faintly warm when I put the back of my hand near them.
A section of timber post split from the outside in. Blood on the floor in a smear about a metre long, going toward the door, already tacky.
Somebody had come out of here and somebody had not.
---
I was in the second room, crouched over a box that had one glove and no partner in it, when the door frame behind me changed.
I did not hear a footstep. I heard the air.
Something came in at the level of my neck and I put my head down and went forward off my toes, and it went over me and into the box and took the corner off it.
No shout. No demand. Nothing at all.
He came round with it already reversing and I got both gauntlets up under the shaft and pushed, and that was the first time in my life the things on my hands did the job instead of my bones.
---
Then the second one came through the window on my left.
She was quiet about it. She came off the sill with a short blade in each hand and she did not go for me at all.
She went for the space behind my right shoulder, which is where a man backing away from the first one would have been in about one second.
I did not back away.
I went sideways into the wall instead and she had to change her feet, and that half-second told me exactly what I was standing in.
They had done this before. Not for years. For this afternoon.
> **[Ability Activated: Androphagos.]**
>
> **[Duration: 01:00.]**
---
Two bodies inside six metres, and both of them moving.
It is a completely different thing against people.
A monster comes at you and keeps coming and if it fails at something it will fail at the same thing again. I had a raider on a wall try the same overhand three times.
These two watched.
He came in with the long weapon at my hip. I turned it on a gauntlet and he did not try it again.
The next one came at my knee, which is where I had left space when I turned the first one, and he had found that in one exchange.
She never once attacked my front.
Every single time she moved, she was going to somewhere I could not see, and every time I turned to keep her in front of me, he came into the side I had opened doing it.
---
They caught me on the fourth rotation.
I had put my attention on her for about a second too long and he came round with the whole of his shoulder in it.
> **[Ability Activated: Gorse — B.]**
Something ran down the haft and the impact arrived twice, once when the metal hit and once about a tenth of a second later.
It landed across the plate over my ribs on the left.
The plate took it.
I felt it in my spine and my feet came off the floor and I went into the wall about a metre and a half back.
There was a bright hot line up my side afterward where the edge of the plate had come round into me.
> **[Health: 372/410 → 331/410.]**
But it did not open me.
Forty minutes ago that would have gone into me through a shirt.
---
I got off the wall with my ears ringing and understood what was going to happen if I let it continue.
They were not better than me. Individually, either of them alone, I would have finished it inside twenty seconds.
They did not need to be better. They needed to keep me turning, and they had been doing it for ninety seconds, and every rotation cost me a little more than it cost them because there were two of them to share it.
So I stopped turning.
I put my back into the corner where the two walls met, which took away everything behind me and gave them one direction to come from, and I watched his feet.
He wanted a big one. His weapon needed it. He had been setting up for a heavy commit for about four exchanges and I had been denying him the room, and in a corner he finally had a target that could not go anywhere.
He planted.
---
> **[Ability Activated: Snare.]**
>
> **[Mana: 228/250 → 218/250.]**
The front boot stopped belonging to him.
Everything above it kept going, exactly as it does, because that Ability takes the contact and nothing else. His hips came round.
His shoulders went past his hips. The weapon came through on the line he had chosen and his own weight arrived somewhere his foot could not follow it.
He did not fall. He was still swinging and he could still reach.
But he was standing on a leg that would not turn, and I was already inside the arc.
> **[Ability Activated: Aten.]**
>
> **[Mana: 218/250 → 206/250.]**
---
Six seconds, and it went through leather and reinforced plate instead of through my hands.
That was the difference and I felt every bit of it.
The heat stayed where I put it. My fingers closed properly. I hit him three times in six seconds in the same place under the arm and I did not have to stop and shake out my own forearm between any of them.
She came for my back on the third one and I knew she was coming because she was inside the field, and I took a cut across the shoulder piece to finish him rather than turning.
> **[Floor Protection activated.]**
>
> **[Challenger eliminated.]**
>
> **[Experience acquired: 65.]**
>
> **[EXP: 930/1,100 → 995/1,100.]**
>
> **[Challengers Remaining: 87.]**
—
He went out in a column of pale light and the room got dimmer.
His weapon hit the floor. His chest plate came down on top of it about half a second later, and a small bag went with it and rolled, and a bottle came out of the bag and did not break.
I did not look at any of it for more than a quarter of a second, because she was still there.
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