The arena wasn't large, a marked circle set into a room adjoining the lab, walls thick enough to muffle sound from the corridor outside, the boundary itself traced in a faint line that brightened to a pale shimmer the moment Maren pressed something on a panel near its edge. The air within it moved differently once it activated, the same faint distortion Ant recognised from reader lenses, scaled up until it filled the whole space. It smelled faintly of ozone in here, sharper than the lab, and the light came from somewhere overhead he couldn't immediately place, it was even, shadowless, the kind of light built for recording rather than comfort.
"Scan first," Maren said, already crossing to a console at the boundary's edge. "Then a few direct tests, strength, endurance, something to hit and something hitting him, so we get real numbers instead of estimates. After that we simulate using the numbers we have discovered. Recorded Kithren of various levels, run against his actual profile. Should tell us considerably more than a guess from a photograph."
"And you'll know if he's holding back."
"I'll know. Half data's worse than none, it tells us the wrong thing with total confidence." She glanced at him, her expression going sharper than it had been back in the lab. "Make sure he doesn't."
Ant looked down at Mahkir, already sitting upright at the arena's edge, ears forward, every part of him fixed on Maren, nothing lazy in it. He was always watching, Ant had learned that much in the last few hours, but this was different, weight already forward onto his front paws, muscles coiled, ready to move before anything had actually happened. The tail wasn't curling in its usual unhurried rhythm. It was flicking, quick and precise, the same motion Ant recognised from right before a fight Mahkir actually wanted.
You want this, Ant thought, sending it through the bond without quite deciding to.
She has no idea what she's about to see, Mahkir replied, and there wasn't a trace of his usual reluctance in it, no dignity to protect here, no embarrassment in it either.
Ant found himself almost smiling, even with the old envy still there. Years watching other people's Kithren perform in academy rings, always from outside the fence. He'd never once pictured himself standing at the edge of one with something of his own that actually wanted to be tested.
Maren wasted no time getting to it. She wheeled out a reinforced plate on a stand, thick enough that Ant doubted his own fist would leave a mark on it, and set it at the arena's edge.
"Strength first. Hit it. As hard as you're willing to."
Mahkir didn't wait for Ant to relay anything. He crossed the distance in two strides and struck once, claws raking across the plate's surface with a shriek of metal that made Ant's teeth ache. The plate buckled, dented deep rather than broken through, four parallel gouges cut deep enough that Maren whistled low under her breath before she'd even reached the readout properly.
"Strength nine was already on the low end of what I expected given what I watched on the path. That plate's rated to survive a level six." She ran a hand along the damage without quite touching it. "It didn't survive cleanly."
"Is that bad."
"It's data, and bad would only be if I couldn't explain it, I can explain a plate underperforming its rating easily enough, but if you're right about his level being level three, and I have to assume you are, then what I can't explain is how a Kithren at that level is doing things it should not be capable of doing." The uncertainty clearly bothered her considerably more than any actual danger might have, her attention already half back on the readout in front of her.
Endurance came next, a padded mechanical arm on a hinge, swinging with adjustable force, calibrated up in careful increments while Maren watched a readout Ant couldn't see from where he stood. Mahkir took four full-force strikes without so much as flinching, ears staying forward, weight barely shifting on his feet.
"He's registering none of that as damage," Maren said, more to herself than to either of them. "Which either means my calibration's off, or his endurance number is genuinely higher than what I'd estimate for his level."
"One more before we move to simulation." Maren wheeled a fresh plate into place, similar to the first, and stepped back further than she had for the claws test. "Any skill he's got. I want the damage output, and anything it does beyond the hit itself, heat, spread, duration, whatever comes with it."
Show her, Ant thought.
Mahkir didn't need telling twice. He drew back and let a stream of flame loose at the plate, fire spreading across the metal in a controlled burst that left it glowing at the edges, warped where the heat had concentrated hardest.
Maren stared at the readout, then at the plate, then back at the readout. "That's more than heat damage. There's a magic component layered under the raw output, and it's reading higher than the claws did." She crossed to the plate, keeping well clear of it, studying the warping. "Flame Breath, I'm assuming, from what I watched him use on the path."
"Flame Breath," Ant confirmed.
"The burn radius, and however long the heat stays elevated after the fact, could matter as much as the initial number. Give me a second." She made notes rapidly, glancing between the plate and her screen.
"Once we've got the raw data," Maren continued, oblivious to the exchange happening a few feet away, "it runs against a simulation library, thousands of recorded battles, various levels and types, and the system estimates how he'd perform against each of them based on the numbers we capture." She tapped the console, and a rough outline sketched itself into the display, waiting to be filled. "Having watched him on the path, my honest guess is he tops out somewhere around level five, he took two Kithren at once after all, which was significant on its own."
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She held up a hand before he could respond to that.
"The thing I can't simulate is battle intelligence, it's instinct, decision-making under pressure, something nobody's ever actually managed to quantify in a way that holds up against reality, but my guess is the two he beat had low tactical awareness, reactive rather than adaptive, whereas you two clearly aren't, which is most of why I think five is close to his ceiling, stats and tactics working together, tactics mattering just as much as the raw numbers, that's about the honest limit of what I can actually predict."
Mahkir made a sound somewhere between a growl and a snort, air pushed sharply through his nose, unmistakably dismissive.
"He disagrees," Ant said.
"Noted." Her mouth twitched, amused rather than offended. "We'll see."
"You sound very confident for someone about to be proven wrong."
"I sound confident because I'm usually right. Being wrong occasionally is how I know I'm doing more than just guessing." She said it without any real defensiveness in it, more curiosity than pride. "I'd actually prefer to be wrong here, if I'm honest. Wrong is more interesting."
She moved back to the console, fingers finding the controls with practiced ease.
"Nothing about this is him fighting, physically," she added, glancing at Ant. "Nothing happens to either of you. The system renders the mechanics so we can watch them play out. Might feel strange to watch, the render's detailed enough that people forget, for a second, that it isn't real."
"I'll manage."
You'll actually be able to see this properly? Ant asked him.
Better than properly, Mahkir said, real eagerness coming through the bond. I finally get to watch myself work.
"Okay," Maren said. "Level one."
The display resolved into a low, hunched creature, scaled hide the colour of wet clay, spines running down its back in an uneven ridge, close to the ground, and beside it a rendered Mahkir, translucent at the edges but otherwise faithful, down to how unhurried he looked sitting there before the exchange began.
The rendered Mahkir crossed the distance before the construct had finished registering him as a threat, a blur of red closing the gap in a fraction of a second. One strike, claws rather than fire, precise and economical, aimed at the join beneath the jaw rather than anywhere Ant would have guessed. The construct dissolved back into shimmering air, gone before the sound of the impact had fully finished.
Ant let out a breath he hadn't noticed holding. It hadn't been real, nothing in the room had actually touched anything, and nothing about watching it happen had felt any less real for that.
Maren stared at the readout scrolling across her console.
"That's..." She adjusted something, read it again. "Faster than the system expected. Considerably faster."
The real Mahkir made a small, satisfied sound. Obvious opening. It committed before it had assessed my speed. I wouldn't have needed to move that fast against something more careful.
"He says it should've been slower," Ant said. "The construct made an obvious mistake."
Maren glanced at him, then at Mahkir, visibly recalculating something behind her eyes. "He's narrating his own fights?"
"Apparently."
"Level two," Ant said, before she could chase that any further.
She looked up at him, amused, a little startled, whatever hesitation she'd been carrying about pushing too fast clearly forgotten now that the number in front of her was already higher than she'd expected. "Eager," she said, without any real complaint in it, and the display folded and reshaped, something larger this time, feathered, wingspan filling most of the marked space, the rendered Mahkir standing his ground as it circled.
This one lasted longer. Four seconds, maybe five, the winged construct landing one genuine strike that the render avoided with a sideways roll, feathers scattering in a wide arc where a wingtip had clipped the ground instead of him, before closing the distance and ending it with the same economy as before, a single strike to the base of the neck.
I'd have let that one land, the real Mahkir said, tail flicking with open disapproval. A glancing wing strike wouldn't touch my endurance. The dodge wasted momentum I'd rather have kept for the follow-up. It's playing me too cautious.
"He thinks the render's being overly careful," Ant relayed. "Says he'd take the hit rather than waste the movement dodging it."
Maren's eyebrows rose. "That's actually a reasonable tactical note, the simulation defaults toward damage avoidance unless told otherwise, and I hadn't accounted for a Kithren who'd rather trade a minor hit for better positioning." She made a note on one of the side screens, half to herself. "Level two average combat duration against a level three opponent runs in the tens of seconds. Well past single digits."
"Level three," she said, reaching for the controls again, whatever caution she'd started with clearly losing ground to momentum.
She keeps checking your face for permission to keep going, Mahkir observed, watching Maren work. Let her.
I wasn't going to stop her.
Good. I was enjoying myself.
You're always enjoying yourself.
This is a different kind of enjoying myself. Pay attention. There's a genuine difference.
I'm aware there's a difference. I asked which one this was.
You'll know by the end of it, one way or another, Mahkir said, and the certainty in it did more to steady Ant than any explanation Maren could have offered.
The construct this time had genuine presence, heavyset, four-legged, scaled and thick-hided, low and built for sustained combat. It circled once before committing, testing the space between them with something closer to actual strategy than the previous two had managed.
The rendered Mahkir let it circle, tracking the movement, waiting rather than manufacturing an opening. When the construct finally lunged, the render was already gone from where it had aimed.
The exchange ran closer to fifteen seconds, longer than either fight before it, both circling and probing now, the construct feinting low twice before committing to a third attempt, the render reading through the pattern and staying just out of range each time, before the render finally found a weakness at the joint of a foreleg and ended it there, the construct folding sideways and dissolving mid-collapse.
That took too long, the real Mahkir said, and this time there was a genuine edge in it. The joint was obvious from the second pass. It's running me cautious again. I wouldn't have needed three exchanges to find that.
Ant relayed it. Maren's expression sharpened, more focused now, less amused.
She'd stopped leaning back against the console at some point during the second fight, he realised. Now she was leaning into it instead, both hands braced on the edge, the can of whatever she'd been drinking abandoned somewhere behind her and forgotten.
"That's..." She stopped herself, scrolled back through something, checked it again.
Maren's hands went motionless over the console.
Then she did a proper double take, her eyes moving quickly from the console to Mahkir and back again, checking the same information twice before she'd trust it.
"The response curve doesn't fit the model at all," she said, quiet now. "If he genuinely fights faster and more decisively than the simulation's projecting, every prediction I've made from this data is running..."
She looked up at him.
"Considerably low."