Diggs Malone's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Dawn was hours off, but Candice pulled Diggs from the tavern before the sky turned. She led him into the swamp, boots sucking in black mud. Rex lumbered behind, and Howler trailed with his notebook. Diggs stopped at the edge of a shallow pool. "You know who I fight," he said. "A throat-biter. And I still know nothing about him." Candice smirked. "You don't need to know him. You need to know how to think." She crouched by a thorny mangrove and plucked a small green fruit. "Fighting's not muscle," she said. "It's psychology. You beat a man by outsmarting him, not wearing him down." She tossed the fruit at his chest. Diggs caught it. It smelled sharp and sour. "Tonight you don't train with me," she said. "You train with something worse than the Baron's fighter." A branch snapped. Diggs turned. A green-and-black lizard climbed from the water, taller than a man, with four clawed arms and a spined back. Its fangs shone. Rex grinned. "Clatterclaw. Meaner than anything in the ring." Diggs gripped his machete. "You're insane." Candice didn't blink. "If you can beat this, the throat-biter is nothing. Now watch it. Find its weakness." The lizard charged. Diggs dove behind a tree. Claws raked the bark inches from his head. He rolled, breathing hard. "Stop swinging," Candice called. "Watch first!" Diggs forced himself still and studied the beast. It turned its whole body to track him. Its head swayed side to side. It couldn't see straight ahead. It struck at sound and movement, not sight. Diggs remembered the fruit in his fist. He crushed it. The sour smell burst thick in the wet air. The lizard's head snapped toward it. Its jaws worked, chasing the scent. Diggs threw the pulp across the pool. The clatterclaw lunged after it, blind to everything else. Diggs circled wide and quiet, keeping to the beast's flank. It buried its snout in the mud, hunting the fruit. Diggs stepped in behind the spined back. He raised the machete and drove it down between the plates at the base of the skull. The lizard thrashed once, then dropped. The swamp went silent. Diggs stood over it, chest heaving, blade dripping. Candice waded over and clapped his shoulder. "That," she said, "is how you win." Rex laughed and slapped the dead beast's tail. Howler scribbled in his notebook, tail wagging. "Crowd'll eat this up," he said. Diggs wiped his blade on his jacket. His hands had stopped shaking. He looked at the beast he hadn't out-muscled but out-thought. He didn't need to know the throat-biter's name anymore. He knew what to do with any opponent. Watch. Find the blind spot. Bait it. Strike. The fear that had gnawed him all night was gone. In its place sat something colder and steadier. Dawn was coming. This time, Diggs would be the one setting the trap.