Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 26 of 42

Kevintor left the sparring grounds before Starlark's words could draw a crowd. He walked the ridge road with four circles closed and the fifth pressing under his ribs. The fifth art was Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It lived in the ground, in grips and angles, in a body that would not break when his weight came down. He needed a grappler who could survive him long enough for the door to open. He asked two fighters on the road where such a man trained. Both pointed up the mountain to a building called the Iron Match Ring. The ring stood on a raised platform behind a low wall. Taut ropes ran between padded posts. Outside the gate, a champion belt hung from a hook on the post, its center plate scratched and dull. Next to it, a gold figure of a strongman stood waist-high on a stone block, polished and posed. A hand-cut sign beneath the figure read: throw the statue, get a match. Kevintor lifted the strongman off the block with one arm and set it on the dirt. The belt on the hook meant the man inside had taken every grappler the mountain had sent and put each of them out. Inside the yard, a shirtless wrestler was pacing the platform. He saw Kevintor and grinned. "You moved the statue," he said. "Good. I've been waiting. Name's Armstrong. I'm the one who finally beats him. You're just the warm-up." Kevintor said he was not here for Armstrong. He was here for the man who held the belt. Armstrong laughed and climbed through the ropes anyway. "Then go through me first. I drop my weight on your chest and it's over. The Avalanche. Ask anyone." Kevintor stepped onto the platform. Armstrong rushed him with arms wide. Kevintor took a low grip, dropped his hips, and put the big man on his back in one motion. He passed to side control, took the arm, and held it straight until Armstrong slapped the canvas twice. The whole thing took eleven seconds. Kevintor let him up and waited for the one who mattered. No one came out of the back room. The door stayed shut. A woman stood at the corner of the platform with a towel over her shoulder. Rita Ripley. She watched him climb down. "He left at first light," she said. "He heard a champion was on the mountain. He took his gear and went down the back trail. He won't come back while you're here." She paused. "My father stopped fighting when a better man came to his town. He never said why. I think it was the same reason." She handed him the towel. "You won't find your match up here. The mountain's empty of him now." Kevintor took the towel and looked at the closed door. The fifth art still pressed under his ribs, and the only man who could draw it out was gone.