Fire and Song by Bryce O'Connor

Author:Bryce O'Connor [O'Connor, Bryce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wraithmarked Creative, LLC
Published: 2023-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 28

"Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight, For the greatest tragedy of them all, Is never to feel the burning light."

-Attributed to Oscar Wilde

Ancient Earth Poet and Playwright

Friday morning was the start of the bloodbath, with Cashe—ironically—proving its very first victim.

While the individual members of Firesong had thus far ripped through the Dueling rounds without issue every morning, the rule of chance had been bound to bite them in the ass at some point, as it did so the moment pairings were announced for the morning fights. While Rei, Aria, Viv, and Catcher were largely in the clear—at a glance getting matched with fighters from other schools they all suspected they had the advantage on—Cashe and Grant weren’t so lucky.

They, unfortunately, had been paired against each other, and the match went about as expected.

Despite her improved armor, specs, and Ability, the fact of the matter was that Cashe wasn’t on the same level as the Mauler when it came to pure combat skill. She put up a hell of a fight—lasting long enough to trigger Warband not once but twice—but Grant’s neural aptitude was just too good, countering the Ability both times with a whirling, two-handed spin of Honoris’ axe that intercepted all three points of attack within microseconds of each other, fracturing the illusion of the false pair and smacking the true strike off-course. After the second, Grant himself triggered Overclock, and about 15 seconds later Cashe lay still atop the white surface of the standard Neutral Zone they had been fighting on, the originally-pristine floor a wreck of gouges and shattered flooring in the aftermath of their back and forth onslaught.

Grant had helped the Lancer to her feet after that, and was still praising her effort and approach strategy when they reached the rest of the team again, climbing up out of the underworks side by side.

First one to go, Rei had thought, glad Cashe seemed in relatively good spirits despite the loss, but fighting a grimace all the same. If he’d been honest with himself, he’d kinda been hoping all six of them would make it to the final eight of the first-year bracket together.

No such luck, though.

On the other hand, he, Aria, Viv, and Catcher performed as expected, so after a quick lunch the six of them headed for SB2 to snag a field to warm up on in preparation for a rapidly approaching afternoon Team Battle. They’d been paired off with the 9th Sector Division’s “Greyfang” squad, who were led by none other than Andrew Boone, the Phalanx who’d nearly done in Catcher in the Dueling rounds earlier in the week. This far into the tournament there were very few true non-threats left in the brackets of any format, so Firesong was intending to take Greyfang seriously, especially given Boone’s Repulsion Ability and the fact that he was one of five C-ranked Users on the squad, with only a Duelist—Simone Alba—still registering in the Ds.

Taking 10 minutes to warm up in

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