Mona came off Joan's face.
Joan wiped her cheek twice and did not say anything else about it, which from Joan was forgiveness.
Then the bracket on the wall ran the morning roster and Soren's name was in the semifinal slot, and the room stopped being a thermostat dispute.
◆◆◆◆
The Central arena was bigger than the academy yard and built to be watched.
Vasquez Sr. had a box up in the high tier with glass that caught the light, and Soren did not look at it on the way in because it was what the man wanted.
His semifinal draw was a second-year named Aldric Pell, a borderline D-rank with a stone-shell boar that had taken two opponents off the board already without a scratch on it.
Soren ran the math on the walk to the ring.
Boar with subdermal mineralization, low mobility, high front armor, the kind of beast that won by making you spend everything on its face while it walked through you.
