Page 70 of Guiding Reason

Panting, Taros rolled. Hyran yelped, not a battle cry but something weaker. If Taros had had time to spare for thinking, he’d have thought it a pitiful whimper. There was no time for it. There was cutting, taking the beating, cutting again, and being beaten, again, again, again.

It was ninety-five before long, and it fucking hurt.

By one hundred, it was barely even about dodging or hitting, it was about moving and staying on the fucking platform, and that fucking hurt.

“Both platforms, increase to one-hundred-ten.”

Taros kept his arms up, tried to keep his armor in place at the sensitive spots, the nerve coils that might bring him to his knees. Everything else, he was willing to have beaten.

It went to fucking one-twenty. Taros hurt. He moved. It went up again, one-thirty. Two projectiles hit his goggles, one after the other, but he kept moving, his armor wanting out, but it would slow him, maybe even freeze him, if instinct took over. He moved, just moved, staying on his feet and on the platform.

Below, their audience began to cheer for the both of them.

“Isn’t it enough? Ah, fuck.Fuck!Taros! Enough?” Hyran was shouting over the noise of Taros’s pain and the assembled Guardians and Conduits.

“No!” His goggles got hit again, shifted on his face. Taros yelped because thathurt.

“Can we stop?”

“You stole Col!”

“I love Col! Let’s stop, you rock-headed idiot.”

“You don’t deserve—ow! Fucking Hunt! Fuuuck!”

“Can we say even?”

“You bleeding?”

“Fuck. Maybe. Aah! Yeah. Truce, you stupid needle head?”

“You first.”

Someone whistled, a sound of ice being pulled from the air. “If you both agree, I’ll witness the draw,” Shoda said.

“Admit you’re a Hound-fucker for stealing Col from himself!”

“Admit you want me to take you to the restaurant and meet Kashana!”

“Fucking—yes! Yes!”

“Then yes!”

“Do we have a truce?” Shoda asked.

Taros got hit three times more before he could scream, “Yes!”

“Yes!” Hyran yelled, and it stopped.

Taros sagged to his knees and pulled his goggles off, tossed them. They landed just at the edge of the platform. He locked eyes with Hyran.

“Look at you, all that red-headed smugness pummeled out of you.”

Hyran sat on his ass, not panting but wincing, tossing his goggles too. They tumbled over the edge, clattered to the ground. Hyran’s lip was split.

“Do you bleed at all?”

Taros shrugged and wiped his forehead, then gingerly touched his eye. “Nope, but this’ll swell.”