The two bouts of the finals were held at blue tide, which translated to primetime for hyperweb viewers. The kokugikan had been getting steadily more packed over the course of the tournament, but that night, I could actually feel the building rumbling and shifting from all the bodies yelling and moving.

  Kest and the Jianjiao candidate were the two lowest remaining seeds in the tournament, so Warcry and Shishi the foo dog were set to square off first, followed by the headliner of Gleurah versus Tatsu Shin Be.

  In reality, with the crowd hyped through the roof, it felt like both matches were the headliner. From inside the locker room with the door shut, I could hear people chanting Warcry’s name and others howling, which was the signature call of the Shishi fan base.

  While Warcry knelt in the middle of the floor, praying and focusing his breathing, I patrolled the locker room over and over again for any hint of trouble. This close to the championship, I couldn’t screw up and let some unexpected attack through. The ghost’s warning hadn’t mentioned what the huge unforeseen boogieman would do once it got there, but I couldn’t let it get to my friends if there was any possibility of stopping it.

  Then it was time to do his walk-out. I pumped a full spiral of Miasma into reinforcing Dead Reckoning as I followed him into the arena.

  The cheering was deafening as Warcry stalked up the steps into the cage. After getting my eardrum busted in that first Technol raid, my hearing on that side had gotten worse while the ear itself had somehow gotten more sensitive. The noise in the kokugikan felt like a pickax slamming into my ear canal, like I couldn’t fully hear the sound, but I could feel it and then some. I sent a little necrotizing frost to kill the nerves there so my eyes would stop watering.

  The crowd only got louder when Shishi strode into the cage to join Warcry.

  Shishi was the only fighter I’d seen in this tourney with a beard, its stony gray curls sparkling under the stadium lights as if they were flecked with quartz. Bold fashion choice, based on what Warcry had said about hair-pulling. I pictured the ginger holding the foo dog’s beard in one fist and pummeling his face in with the other, and wondered if that would’ve been enough incentive for me to shave when I could finally grow a beard.

  Probably not.

  The official gave the signal. Warcry and Shishi bowed to each other, then took their fighting stances.

  The howl of the spectators felt like a living thing beating on me from every angle. Someone had started up some kind of chant that involved claps and stomps, but there was so much noise I couldn’t tell what the words were or who they were supporting. Overhead, the lights shook and shuddered in time with the stomping.

  No one heard the official yell, “Fight,” but the second he jerked out of the way, the Burning Hatred cultivator and the Smoldering Pride cultivator burst into flames and streaked at each other.

  Warcry’s prosthetic pinged, and Shishi’s stoney retaliations clanked. Both of their Spirits had flame specializations, so fire blazed every time they made contact. The stink of burning rubber filled the air, the black coating on the cage’s chain link melted by exploding in pyrotechnic geysers.

  Warcry was the faster fighter, striking four or five times for every massive retaliation Shishi launched. But Shishi’s stone skin was so thick and he stayed so solidly grounded that Warcry’s shots barely rocked him. Warcry threw everything he had at the foo dog. Blazing volleys of punches, kicks and combos that would take any other fighter’s head off.

  Shishi ate it all and kept coming, one floor-skimming step after another. Relentless. A force of nature. Like somebody had carved a stone guardian out of a living mountain.

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  Watching Shishi steadily force the ginger around the ring, realization hit me like a slap: Warcry was struggling.

  He’d hit Shishi with everything in his arsenal, and it hadn’t even left a mark. His signature kicks and punches were useless. Shishi was too powerful, too tough, too strong.

  Then it happened. Shishi snapped out a stop kick as Warcry shot in. The stone foot blasted into the ginger’s real knee, halting his forward motion on the spot with a crunch that sent a shudder down my spine.

  The pain must not have hit immediately. Warcry was still in motion, his prosthetic snapping toward bearded chin. Shishi shoved in, smothering the shot with his body and started throwing punches.

  Warcry dodged, skipping back on his real leg.

  The knee folded and he went down.

  Shishi moved in, blasting the fallen ginger with kicks. Warcry got his prosthetic between them, holding the foo dog off and trying shove him back, but Shishi’s stance and position were too strong. Even the knockback from a stray fist smacking the prosthetic didn’t back the foo dog up. He just kept raining punches and stomping kicks.

  The official dropped onto all fours beside Warcry, yelling in the ginger’s ear. Asking whether he wanted to throw in the towel.

  Frantically, Warcry shook his head. He shoved his guard higher and cycled his prosthetic to keep Shishi from dropping down on him.

  I had no idea what Warcry would do if he did manage to shove Shishi back long enough to get up. It wasn’t like he could stand. His knee looked destroyed. The joint was already swelling and turning dark purple.

  He couldn’t fight on, but he wasn’t going to give up.

  The ref started counting, swinging his arm out to his side to indicate each step closer to ending the bout. If Warcry didn’t find a way to progress the fight before the ref reached ten, he would lose by TKO.

  “Take him,” someone yelled in my ear.

  Out of nowhere, Hyla shoved a lump of covers with Bodhi in the middle into my arms. I hadn’t even seen her show up. Too stunned to ask what the heck was going on, I caught the baby and stabilized him against my stomach, praying I didn’t drop him and wondering if I should cover his ears or something to protect them from all this noise.

  Hyla marched up to the coated chain-link fence.

  “Come on, Thompson, you bleeding quitter!” she screamed, beating a fist on the cage wall. “Are you gonna let an ancient tosser like that beat you?”

  Even with all the shouting and cheering in the kokugikan, Warcry’s gaze darted over to the green-haired Nameless yelling cageside.

  Everything seemed to shift into slow motion.

  Shishi leaned into a huge rib-crushing stomp. Warcry lurched up out of his guard and snatched the leg. Twisting and heaving at the same time, the ginger rocked the foo dog off balance. Shishi’s opposite foot moved to take his weight, but Warcry kicked that foot out from under him with his prosthetic.

  Shishi smacked down on the cage floor beside Warcry.

  In an instant, Warcry had an arm around the foo dog’s throat. He locked in the guillotine choke. He hooked his prosthetic around Shishi’s thick waist and tried to link ankles with his foot so the foo dog couldn’t escape. But his foot wouldn’t hold the body triangle. It slipped uselessly off the prosthetic.

  The foo dog barraged Warcry’s ribs and gut with punches, wriggling his head around and twisting his torso like crazy, trying to create some distance between them and break the choke hold. Then, realizing where the real money shot was, Shishi switched to throwing elbows at Warcry’s injured knee.

  They were awkward shots, but they were landing. Warcry’s grip slipped. Light appeared between the fighters. Shishi gained centimeters. Then inches.

  “Don’t you dare let him escape!” Hyla clawed her fingers in the cage wall. Cords stood out in her neck as she rattled the chain link and screamed at the top of her lungs, “This is it, Thompson! You live or you die, but don’t you bloody let go!”

  Roaring through his teeth, Warcry squeezed his legs tighter around Shishi. This time he hooked the foot of his prosthetic under his swollen purple knee. Sweat poured off him, and his skin blazed beneath the flames, livid with pain and effort.

  Shishi thrashed, but the triangle held. Warcry screwed his choke down tighter, muscles bulging, and constricted the blood flow in the foo dog’s throat.

  Shishi’s elbow strikes got farther and farther apart.

  Then suddenly, his arms dropped.

  The official pounced, ripping Warcry off the unconscious foo dog.

  “Winner!” The announcer’s shout was almost lost in the thunder of the crowd. “Warcry Thompson!”

  The ref lifted Warcry’s arm and tried to pull him up to present him to the spectators and skybox. The ginger dropped onto his butt. His destroyed knee wouldn’t support him.

  Hyla stalked back to me and lifted Bodhi out of my arms.

  “Go get your lad, Death boy.”