"Academy boy, step away from the prize before I stop asking nicely."
Aldric stared at Gears as if the sentence had insulted the room. It probably had, which meant Gears had chosen his first weapon before either sword came out.
The two black orbs at Gears’ boots split open along clean seams. Smoke poured low across the broken board, hugging cracked gold, burned frost, and the edge of Ty’s king until the match looked like someone had dragged a black cloth across its wounds.
Ty tightened his hand on the king. His body still stood in the battle space, but his actual body was somewhere outside it, asleep or trapped or worse. He had no useful way to check, and Gears had already stepped into the cover.
Aldric moved his pieces before answering with his mouth. The Gilded Sentinel shifted in front of him. The Sapphire Enchantress pulled cold toward his left side. The damaged Cavalier dragged its broken lance to the right, still limping, still dangerous enough to punish a bad angle.
"You are trespassing inside a sanctioned royal match, mercenary."
Gears’ voice came from the smoke ahead of him. "Gerald of the Black Bulls, if titles help you die calmer."
"Black Bulls do not enter academy grounds without losing bodies."
"Then your grounds are behind schedule by at least one corpse."
Aldric’s expression tightened, and Ty marked the reaction. Aldric fought best when he treated the board like a problem. Gears was trying to become someone Aldric wanted to punish.
The smoke moved around Aldric’s boots while three shapes came through it at once. The first looked like Gears running low with a black blade in each hand. The second was a smaller metal body beside him. The third dropped from above with one arm already pulled back.
Aldric chose the real-looking one because it carried the right weight.
"Sentinel, take the center attacker and pin him down."
The Gilded Sentinel drove forward. Its cracked guard opened like a shield wall and slammed into the low figure. Metal buckled. Smoke burst around the impact. The figure folded wrong, hollow in the chest, and broke into black fragments that skittered across the ground.
The decoy cost Aldric half a step and part of his angle.
He corrected fast, sending the Sapphire Enchantress toward the figure above him. Frost cut upward and caught the falling body by the waist. That one shattered too, breaking into pieces small enough to vanish in the smoke.
The third figure reached Aldric’s right side, where Gears had picked the bad leg.
He went through the Cavalier’s broken side before the knight finished turning, one sword catching the remaining lance shaft, the other cutting behind the mount’s front knee. The piece lurched. Frost spilled from the joint and died black where it touched the smoke.
Aldric stepped back once and held himself there. The step mattered because it gave Ty a better view of the fight. Gears was cutting small parts that made the next defense late.
"You brought toys into a match because you cannot face one piece directly."
"I brought tools because your pieces keep volunteering joints."
The Cavalier stabbed with the broken lance. Gears let it come close enough to prove Aldric still commanded it, then turned his shoulder and caught the shaft under one sword. His other hand flicked down, dropping a metal clamp from his sleeve onto the lance.
The clamp tightened around the weapon and pulled sideways.
Aldric’s eyes cut toward the ground, but the black cable had already vanished into the smoke. One of the opened orbs yanked it hard enough to drag the Cavalier’s damaged leg out from under the mount.
The knight hit one knee, and Gears used its falling body as cover from the Enchantress’s next frost line.
Ty watched the move and understood the title Gears had earned from his own people. Every small tool he placed made another tool turn. The smoke gave those tools room to move without being counted.
Aldric understood part of it at the same time. His hand cut through the smoke toward the board line behind Gears.
"Enchantress, freeze the ground under every moving object."
Cold spread from the staff. The smoke slowed near the floor, revealing little black shapes inside it. They were clamps, wheels, flat blades, and bent strips of metal caught mid-crawl.
Gears clicked his tongue. "That is better. You learn after bleeding."
"I learn before dying when the lesson is useful."
"Most people say that after the useful part ends."
The Gilded Sentinel turned and brought its cracked guard down on the nearest cluster of metal tools. The impact crushed several, but Gears had wanted the Sentinel’s weight there. Ty saw it in the way the smoke parted behind Aldric.
The real Gears came through the opening behind the Enchantress without flourish or announcement. One black sword chopped down near her hand. The other slid under the lower half of the staff and twisted.
The staff bent, and the cold line across the floor bent with it.
Aldric moved his hand to pull her back. Gears kicked the base of the staff into the Sentinel’s guard, forcing gold and frost together at the wrong angle. The recoil went through Aldric’s wrist.
Aldric pulled air through his teeth, then caught himself before it became a sound Gears could use.
Ty saw the discipline and hated that he respected it.
Gears saw it too. "Good. You can keep your mouth shut while losing."
"You talk too much for a hired blade."
"Only when the room needs measuring before the real work."
Gears backed into smoke before the Sentinel could crush him. Aldric turned with him, keeping the Sentinel between his body and every likely angle. That was smart. It also made him slow.
The small tools started moving again. Some dragged broken metal pieces from the Cavalier’s lance. Others pulled frost chips from under the Enchantress’s staff. One rolled near Aldric’s heel and stopped there without touching him.
Ty stared at the waiting tool long enough for Aldric to notice.
Aldric shifted his foot, and the tool opened.
It opened into four little metal teeth that snapped around Aldric’s boot and locked him to the board.
Aldric crushed it with his heel, but the delay gave Gears the line he wanted. He came in from Aldric’s left, lower than before, one blade aiming for the ribs under the arm.
The Sentinel moved to block. The Enchantress tried to freeze the blade. The Cavalier, half kneeling, shoved the broken lance across the smoke to interfere.
Gears let every defense touch him a little.
The Sentinel’s guard clipped his shoulder. Frost crawled over one sword. The broken lance scraped his side hard enough to tear cloth and draw blood. Gears kept moving through all of it and put his free blade against Aldric’s ribs.
Aldric twisted before the cut went deep. The blade still opened him, and his breath changed.
Ty knew that sound because his own body had made it too many times in the arena. Aldric had lost a rib or come close enough that the difference meant little yet.
Gears stepped away before the counter landed and let smoke take him again.
Aldric’s face went pale under the cold light.
"You stopped fighting the match when you entered my board."
"Correct, and you spent too much blood noticing that."
"Then what are you fighting inside my board?"
Gears glanced toward Ty, then toward the crack in the battle space above them. "Time is what I am fighting, and you are spending it."
The answer made Ty’s skin tighten under the ruined armor.
Gears had come to finish enough work before someone outside the board changed the rules. Every second Aldric spent reading a trick was a second Gears had already stolen.
Aldric understood it too. He stopped chasing Gears and pulled the Enchantress close to his body. The Sentinel’s cracked guard covered his front. The Cavalier forced itself upright on the bad leg. The formation became smaller, uglier, and harder to pick apart.
Gears paused at the edge of the smoke.
Aldric had given up looking impressive, which made him more dangerous.
"If you want me dead, come through the guard."
"I was hoping you would stop spreading yourself out."
Gears raised one hand, fingers spread in a rough counting shape.
The smoke answered from behind Aldric with all the pieces he had ignored after crushing the first few. Clamps, blades, bent wheels, black strips, and broken decoy joints rose from the ground in a rough ring.
Every edge turned toward the center where Aldric had made his stand.
Aldric needed one clean second to understand the pattern.