I was absorbed enough in the fight that I didn’t notice anything else was happening until a burst of laughter broke my concentration. I stepped back, lowering my sword, and looked left to see that the other groups had merged, congregating into a loose circle. At some point while I’d been busy with Haken they’d switched to one-on-one sparring while the others watched. Right now most of the group were calling out comments; whatever had just happened, it had obviously been good entertainment.
Caldera was in the middle of the circle in her white gi. Opposite her was a stocky Keeper with close-cropped hair that I knew vaguely. His name was Slate, and right now he was hunched over and scowling. “Sorry,” Caldera said. She was trying not to grin, and not doing a very good job of it. “Slipped.”
“Bullshit,” Slate said.
“Hey,” one of the men sitting around the edges called out. “Not like you were using those anyway!”
There was another burst of laughter, and Slate’s scowl got uglier. “Come on,” Caldera said. “Let’s go again.”
“Fuck that.”
“Wussing out already?”
“You know what?” Slate jerked his head in my direction. “You want to do shit like that, why don’t you try it on your friend?”
The laughter died away at that. Heads turned in my direction. Caldera gave me a glance, then shrugged. “Fine with me.”
All of a sudden everyone was looking at me. There were still a few Keepers grinning, but most of them looked expectant.
I hesitated. I really wasn’t sure I wanted to take on Caldera—doing it alone might have been fun, but having her mop the floor with me in front of an audience didn’t appeal. Unfortunately, that same audience was waiting for my answer, and from the looks in their eyes I knew I was on trial. They wouldn’t pressure me into it if I said no, but the Keepers already thought I was morally suspect. Backing down now would also make them think I was a wimp. Not a good combination.
“You know, we could—” Haken began.
“It’s fine,” I said. I was going to have to make an impression sooner or later. “Here.” I handed Haken my focus sword and walked forward.
The Keepers sitting on the ground scooted aside to let me in, and the laughter and conversation died away. All of a sudden everyone was looking very interested. I came to a stop about fifteen feet from Caldera. “Don’t want a weapon?” Caldera asked.
I shrugged. “You haven’t got one.”
Caldera raised an eyebrow. She didn’t say the obvious, namely that she didn’t need any.
We faced each other in the middle of the circle. Caldera was wearing a worn and dirty white gi with a red belt: she wasn’t carrying any tools or weapons, but given her magic type, that really didn’t make much difference. There was a mirror on the wall behind her, and in the reflection I could see myself, tall and long-limbed and wearing a black gi of my own. Thinking about it, it hadn’t been the smartest of clothing choices—having Caldera in white and me in black looked altogether too symbolic. Oh well.
Caldera bowed, and I did the same. Then she stepped back into a fighting stance and I put everything else out of my mind.
It’s hard for a nondiviner to understand what it’s like to use divination in a fight. I’ve tried to explain it a few times, but usually I can tell the other guy doesn’t get it—the abilities divination gives you are just so weird, so alien. Standing on the floor of the gym, I could see Caldera standing opposite, one foot back and hands ready. Her stance was a generic one, rather than one that identified with any particular martial art. From her posture, I could tell that she was taking this moderately seriously.
Layered on top of that was the additional sense of my magesight. I could see the spells of Caldera’s earth magic hanging around her limbs and body, solid and heavy, reinforcing her movements and keeping her braced against the floor. Other spells showed in my peripheral vision: the protective and sensory spells of all the other Keepers, the wards around the gym. All of this was what any mage would see, and it was a lot, enough that you could spend minutes analysing it all.
But on top of all that, I had another sense—my diviner’s sight—and it multiplied what I could see a million times over. Instead of just seeing the picture before me in three dimensions, I saw it in four, all the possible futures of every single person in front of me. To me, Caldera’s actions seemed to branch a dozen different ways, ghostly movements taking her back or forward or sideways, aggressive or defensive, depending on chance and whim and her responses to my own actions. And every one of those futures branched into a dozen more, and every one of those into a dozen more, hundreds and thousands of futures shifting and changing, winking out to be replaced by new ones as paths were closed off, never to become real.
For a normal person, the problem in a fight is lack of information. Diviners have the opposite problem: they have too much information. Even interacting with another person in a stable, predictable environment gives you more possibilities than you could explore in a lifetime. In something as chaotic as a fight, it’s a thousand times worse. Novice diviners usually go catatonic the first few times they’re thrown into a stressful situation: they get overloaded by trying to process the sensory input from all the possible futures at once. If you stick with it though, a diviner can actually be quite an effective fighter, in an unconventional sort of way. We aren’t any stronger or faster than regular folk, but all that information gives us an awful lot of leverage.
The futures ahead of me shifted. Now the next few seconds were all going to play out the same way; Caldera was going to close in and attack. By the time she moved I’d seen the punch and made up my mind about how to block, and I barely noticed as her fist glanced off my forearm. Caldera specialises in reinforcement magic, and the spells sheathing her arms and hands were strengthening effects, boosting her power and durability. She can punch through concrete with her bare hands, and a full-power blow would shatter my skull. But for now she was just probing, and it was easy for me to deflect the strikes, keeping a safe distance.
A minute passed, two. Neither of us was going at anywhere near full strength, so we weren’t getting tired. I made a few casual counterstrikes which Caldera brushed aside, but I wasn’t seriously trying to hit her. As seconds ticked by with neither of us landing a blow, Caldera grew more aggressive. She closed the range, aiming for a body strike. I didn’t really want to escalate things, but I wasn’t going to stand there and be a punching bag. Caldera’s attack left her head open, so as she moved in for her attack I hit her open-palm in the forehead. The impact rocked her back and pushed the two of us apart again.
I heard a murmur but didn’t look around. Surprise flashed across Caldera’s face, followed by annoyance. I hadn’t hurt her but she hadn’t been expecting to be hit like that. She came in again, and this time when she attacked, she put a bit of force behind it. I blocked and countered, striking back when I could. Caldera’s fighting style was solid and workmanlike, straight punches with the odd elbow or knee. She wasn’t fast, but there was little wasted motion and she didn’t give any easy openings.
But when you can see the future, it changes things a lot. Caldera might be skilled, but she had a human body like everyone else, and she couldn’t make an attack without leaving herself open at the same time. In a normal fight against an equally skilled opponent it’s very difficult to execute a proper counterblow, since you need to start it the instant they begin the attack, but I could see the moves coming a second or two in advance. Doesn’t sound like much, but in a fight that’s a long time. I hit Caldera in the shoulder, head, breast, and head again. Caldera kept going, shrugging off another punch, and I put a snap kick into her stomach, using the impact to push myself off and keep the range open.