Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 30 of 42

Inside, the braided woman walked past the tatami and lifted a ring set into the floorboards. A hatch opened on iron hinges. Steps led down into lamplight. She climbed down without looking back. Kevintor followed. Sarah came behind him and pulled the hatch shut over their heads. The seal cut off the noise of the yard. The room below was wide and low-ceilinged. Mats covered the floor end to end, dozens of them, butted tight and taped at the seams. A wooden obstacle course filled the far wall — ramps, hurdles, a low balance beam, a rope rig hung from cross posts. In one corner stood a pair of oversized dumbbells, orange-painted plates as wide as cart wheels. Dust sat on the grips. No one had moved them in a long time. Kevintor understood. She had not needed them. "Sarah brought you here clean," the woman said. She tied her sleeves back at the elbow. "I asked her to. I wanted to see your instincts before I touched you. She gave me what I asked for." She stepped onto the mat. "I held back upstairs by sitting still. I won't hold back down here." Kevintor set his feet. "Teach me, then." She shot in. He had fought grapplers his whole life, and he had never seen a shot like this one. She was under his hips before he registered the level change. His back hit the mat. She passed his guard in two movements he could not name. She mounted, isolated his arm, and broke the elbow joint open at the angle, slow enough for him to feel each degree. He tapped. She released. She let him stand. She did it again. Different entry, same finish, other arm. He tapped sooner. She let him stand again. The third time she took his neck and put him to sleep for a count of two. He woke on the mat with her kneeling beside him, one finger on his pulse. "That," she said, "is the art you came here to lose." She stood. "Get up. We go until you find it inside you and refuse it. Sarah will keep time." Sarah was already seated against the wall, watching, a small hourglass in her hand. She turned it over. They went for an hour. He could not stop her once. By the end he was bleeding from one ear and could not close his left hand. But somewhere in the eighteenth submission he had felt the fifth circle — the shape of jiu-jitsu inside his ribs, separate from him for the first time, ready to be cut out. He lay on the mat and breathed. The woman crouched. "Tomorrow," she said, "you bring it up and we end it. Tonight you sleep in the bath house in the valley. Walk. Don't ride." Sarah helped him to the ladder. He climbed.