The Sound of Iron
BlackSand Warrior Gauntlet
The chain hit the sand before he saw her. Clink. Drag. Clink.
Justice Hacker of the Dawn stepped into the BlackSand Arena without hesitation. He never did. The sun burned white across the rim of his helmet, and the weight of his Skylord plate settled over his frame like memory. His boots sank half an inch into the sand with each step. Measured. Final.
The crowd screamed, but he didn’t hear them. Not in any way that mattered.
The chainsaw was already in his hand, resting against his shoulder. Dormant. Not asleep, just waiting. A shiver traveled from the hilt into his wrist. It knew.
Then the sound again. Clink. Drag. Clink.
Across the arena, she emerged. Bernadette Leveler of the Rune Raiders. Scarred. Bent with something older than age. One hand wrapped around the chain of a flail, dragging the spiked iron head behind her like a memory she refused to bury. No banners. No paint. No anthem.
He liked that. No show. Just business.
But she was dangerous. He knew it before she moved. Her kind always were. Wounded animals didn’t bluff. They bit.
The gates slammed shut behind them with a sound like judgment.
Between them stood the boulder. Ancient. Pitted. As if the gods themselves had once hurled it in rage and left it here as a monument to failure. The sand whispered around its base, as if afraid to touch it.
Justice’s gaze flicked once across the terrain. He counted angles. Measured gaps. Not because he was thinking ahead. Because the moment was already forming.
Bernadette moved first. Not fast. With purpose.
The flail spun once in her grip, just enough to lift dust. Her body tilted forward, shoulders twitching, testing its weight.
Justice didn’t move. She stepped left. He mirrored. Then she charged. Low. Violent. Her bootsteps like thunder under sand. The flail arced toward his ribs with the full weight of her rage.
He didn’t block. He stepped into it, letting the blow glance off the armored curve of his side. The chain struck with a wrenching clang, loud enough to hush a section of the crowd. She’d swung wide, expecting him to brace. Instead, he moved through the gap she’d opened.
Now they were close. Too close for a chain weapon to cycle again.
The chainsaw roared to life in blue fire. The teeth tore through her leather pauldron and carved a shallow line into the muscle beneath. Blood welled instantly. Not deep. A warning.
She twisted away, retreating in two practiced steps, eyes hard. The chain reset in her grip, curling like a snake. Her breathing deepened. Scarred muscle on her back flexed.
Justice lowered the blade. Its hum steady. She was still standing. Good.
The flail hissed across the sand, its head dragging in a wide arc. This time, she aimed lower. A sweep. Fast. Wide. Targeting his knees.
He pivoted back just enough. The chain tore through air.
She circled. He followed. Both of them drawing slow paths around the central boulder like it was sacred. One rotation. Then another.
Then she leapt straight onto the jagged top. The crowd roared as her silhouette cut across the sun, flail spinning overhead. She dropped.
The chain came down like a hammer meant to split skulls.
Justice rolled hard left. Sand exploded under the impact. The flail cracked against stone and rang out like a war drum.
He rose smoothly. Chainsaw still in hand. Still warm.
As she yanked the flail free, he moved in. Not fast, just direct. He caught the chain mid-recoil, wrapped it once around his armored forearm, and pulled.
Her stance broke. She stumbled forward, off balance. He was already closing.
Three strides. Heavy. Intentional. She dropped the flail and slammed her fist into his helmet.
His vision rattled. Metal rang.
He didn’t flinch. He leaned in and slammed his shoulder into her chest, driving her back into the boulder.
She bounced off the stone and grinned, blood tracing her lip. It was a smile with no joy.
She kneed him. Twice. Fast and high. The second strike landed hard just above his hip joint. His leg buckled.
She lunged for her weapon.
Justice reset. Adjusted. Slow. Methodical.
He tracked her as the chain wrapped around her hand once more. This time, she kept her distance.
Not enough.
She came again, aiming low. The flail curled mid-air and slammed into his thigh. Armor held, but the impact punched through into muscle.
He bit down behind his mask. Pain. Expected.
She struck again. High. Low. High. Testing for weakness, forcing him back.
But Justice didn’t break rhythm.
He surged forward. The chainsaw came up in a vicious slash. It caught her side, and sparks flew as steel teeth shredded buckles and split leather.
She recoiled, gasping, hand flying to the wound.
He advanced. She ducked. Sand flew.
The chain came in close. Too close to whip. Not close enough to wrap. Desperation range.
She punched. Elbowed. Ducked again. Streetfighter rhythm. Fast. Ugly. Brutal.
He took a rib shot. Then shoulder. Then grabbed her wrist and slammed her into the boulder.
Stone cracked behind her.
She hit hard. Dropped to her knees, blinking grit and blood.
She wasn’t done. Reaching… The flail.
Justice stepped between her and the weapon.
She rose. One foot. Then both. No weapon. No stance. Just breath. Bloody. Shaking.
Her fists came up anyway. She swung.
Wild. Hard. One cracked his shoulder plate. One rattled off his helmet grill. All rage. No form.
Justice stepped inside the arc, grabbed her arm mid-swing, and twisted.
She snarled.
He headbutted her. Forehead to forehead. A brutal crack. Her head snapped back. She dropped to one knee again, one hand groping the boulder behind her.
The flail lay behind her. Out of reach.
Her chest heaved in broken rhythms.
Justice raised the chainsaw.
She looked up at him. Blood on her teeth. No fear.
Her voice… dry, cracked, real. Cut through the noise. "You going to wait all day?"
The chainsaw ignited. He brought it down.
It tore through shoulder and collarbone, screaming through bone. The blade buried halfway into her chest, catching on ribs, spitting fire and blood.
She jerked once. Then again. Her hand dropped. Her knees followed.
She slumped against the boulder, breathless. Chest heaving. Eyes still open.
The chainsaw sputtered in his grip, blood soaking the handle.
Justice stepped back. Let the weapon hang at his side. His shoulder ached. His side burned. His knee throbbed with dull fire.
The arena erupted, but it still felt distant.
He didn’t raise his arms. Didn’t turn to the crowd.
He stepped over the flail. Half-buried now in black sand, and walked toward the gate, leaving Bernadette’s body crumpled at the base of the stone she had tried to use for the kill.
The chain trailed from her hand like it still wanted to fight. It didn’t. And neither did she.
Entered by: 0xB9D1…4eA5
Only One Walks Out
BlackSand Warrior Gauntlet
The gates opened.
Justice stepped forward, chainsaw already in hand, its weight dragging heat down his arm. He didn’t test it. Didn’t adjust his grip. The weapon knew its purpose. So did he.
The arena was smaller now. Tight. No room to breathe. The black sand had been freshly churned, still scored with old drag lines from corpses removed. At the edge of the pit, new iron spikes jutted like rusted teeth, driven deep into the stone. Anyone pushed back too far wouldn’t get a second chance.
And in the center: the boulder. Still there. The same ancient, scarred slab that had split Bernadette’s spine and drunk Edge’s oil. It stood like a judge. Or maybe a grave.
Justice didn’t spare it a glance.
Across from him, Tad Rogue shed his cloak like it meant something. Shirtless. Scarred. A thousand stories scrawled across his skin. His rapier gleamed. His shield pulsed faintly, just once, in the way something alive might breathe.
){kind=link}
The chainsaw in Justice’s grip hummed low. It was aware. Ready.
Tad shifted left, loose-footed, calculating distance. Justice let him. No rush. No chase. Only the kill.
He pulled the cord.
The chainsaw came alive with a howl of teeth and fire. Blue smoke belched upward, coiling into heat. The sound cut through the arena like a scream that remembered every other scream.
Tad’s expression didn’t change, but the shield tilted forward, unprompted. Not defensive, but curious.
Good.
Justice stepped forward.
Not fast, just closing space. The crowd above them bayed for blood, but the noise barely mattered. All that mattered was range. And the moment Tad came within it.
Tad moved first.
A flash-step across the sand, light and sharp, circling toward the boulder. His shield floated with him, smooth and unnaturally timed. The rapier dipped once, a low feint, then reset. No commitment. Just tests.
Justice tracked him through the eye-slit of his helm. He dragged his boots deliberately through the sand, drawing a line between them.
Tad took the bait. A short lunge. Blade aimed for the gap at the hip joint.
Justice rotated into it, letting it scrape across plate. Sparks, not blood.
He answered with a wide horizontal cut. The chainsaw screamed across the shield’s edge, teeth shrieking against its curved face.
The shield caught it, but it shifted. Half a second too late.
Tad flinched.
Justice pressed forward with a step, then two, blade rising again. Tad reversed fast, boots carving a wide arc around the boulder. Buying time. Buying space.
Justice adjusted his grip. Pain flared in his elbow, deep and echoing from Edge’s final strike two rounds ago. Bone clicked against bone. If it gave out mid-swing, the chainsaw would leave him wide open.
The shield pulsed again. Not defensively. It was watching him.
Tad came in tighter. A quick stab to the shoulder gap. This one hit. A shallow red line opened beneath the pauldron.
Justice’s head turned with the impact. He didn’t grunt. He stepped into the strike, crowding the space.
The chainsaw came up like a guillotine.
Tad raised the shield.
The saw shrieked against it, grinding hard enough to jolt Tad’s whole body. The crowd roared at the clash.
Tad staggered back.
Justice didn’t chase. Not yet.
The saw hissed. The arm burned. But the line was forming now.
This wasn’t a duel. This was a corner.
The shield moved before Tad did.
Not a twitch, but a correction. As Justice stepped forward, blade angled low, it rotated inward, perfectly anticipating his arc. Tad hadn’t even shifted. The magic was reading the fight faster than the fighter.
Justice’s saw barked once, quick and sharp, a bluff-strike aimed high, and the shield lifted.
But he was already pivoting low.
He stepped into the gap, twisted, and swung tight toward Tad’s thigh.
The chain caught meat.
Not deep. The shield caught the follow-through. But enough to pull a red line across Tad’s leg and leave smoke trailing in its wake. He backed off quickly, limping just a little. His stance held, but the rhythm faltered.
The crowd gasped. They smelled blood now. But Justice didn’t hear them. He watched the shield.
It twitched again, fluttering almost imperceptibly. Reacting to pain, or recalibrating priorities. Whatever bond it had with Tad was working overtime.
Which meant it could be baited.
Justice began testing. Slow, measured swings. One to the left, wide. One overhead. One from the flank, late and tired-looking. He staggered his stance on purpose. Let the elbow hitch.
Each time, the shield moved too early. Too eagerly. Tad was following it, not leading.
A crack in control.
Justice advanced, forcing Tad toward the edge of the pit. The spikes loomed behind him now, jagged, silent, ready. He couldn’t dance forever.
Another feint. Justice dipped the chainsaw low and made it sputter.
The shield dropped to guard the knee.
Tad’s eyes widened.
Too slow.
Justice closed the distance, shoulder-first, driving him off balance.
The line was almost there. Not a corner now. A trap.
Tad stumbled, one heel dragging a trench through the sand.
Justice kept coming, one pace, then two, chainsaw raised like a butcher’s promise. Tad threw the shield up in desperation. It caught the impact, but not cleanly. The chain’s teeth kissed the outer rim before skipping wide, carving sparks into the air.
Too close now for finesse. Too close for delicate footwork.
Justice could see it in Tad’s breathing. Not fear, but pressure. A man used to controlling the rhythm, suddenly out of time. He backed off hard, sweeping his blade in a wide arc to clear space.
Justice let him.
He slowed. Watched.
Tad’s bootwork recovered, and the shield repositioned. But the tempo was wrong now. Every parry came a half-step too late. The chain-cut on his thigh had done its work. His turns were tighter. Less confident.
Justice shifted his stance again, dragging his left leg through the sand like it was failing.
A fake.
The shield twitched, anticipating the weakness, overcorrecting.
Justice lunged.
The chainsaw went high, deliberately telegraphed and slow, and Tad raised the shield.
That’s when Justice dropped his weight and twisted into a low, brutal horizontal slash. The blade connected under the ribs, ripping fabric and carving a shallow trench across Tad’s stomach. Not deep. But loud.
Blood hit the sand. The crowd erupted.
Tad staggered. For real this time.
The shield moved late.
He backpedaled, wincing, and nearly tripped where sand met stone.
Justice didn’t push him into the spikes. Not yet.
He looked at the boulder. Still there. Still waiting.
Then he advanced again. Not fast. Just enough to make sure Tad saw there was nowhere left to go.
Tad pivoted toward the boulder. His steps were uneven now, one foot dragging. Blood from his side darkened across his hip, soaking into the waistband of his gladiator briefs.
He was breaking. Slowly. Elegantly.
The shield stayed high, tight to his body. Less confident. Less performative. It had stopped predicting and started reacting.
Justice walked forward, never rushing. He let the saw drag against his shoulder, spitting embers. Every breath stung, the gash in his ribs, the bruised leg, the elbow that wouldn’t lock. But pain was old. Familiar.
Tad circled wide, trying to reset.
But there was no reset left.
Only spikes. Sand. And the stone they both orbited like dying stars.
The shield pulsed once.
Then committed.
Tad lunged, fast and desperate, the rapier driving for the throat gap in Justice’s armor.
Justice dropped low.
The blade skimmed over his helmet, missing by inches.
His shoulder crashed into Tad’s midsection, and they hit the boulder together. Stone against spine. Metal against flesh. The impact jarred the chainsaw loose. It sputtered and coughed smoke.
Tad grunted, half-choked, still fighting to raise the shield.
But Justice was already inside.
He pinned Tad’s shield arm against the boulder, trapping it beneath armor and weight. The saw rose again.
Tad twisted and spit blood.
The chainsaw died. Silence.
Tad laughed, sharp and red-toothed.
Justice didn’t answer.
He pulled the cord.
The blade roared. The shield shrieked with a wrong, unnatural sound, trying to wedge itself free.
Too late.
Justice leaned in and drove the saw through Tad’s chest, teeth first, point-blank.
Steel met bone. Sparks met blood.
And in that moment, Justice spoke, quiet and cold.
“Now you can die as yourself.”
He twisted the saw once and let go.
Tad’s body slumped, pinned to the boulder by dead weight and steel. The chainsaw sputtered, coughed dry like a dying breath, and fell silent.
Justice stepped back.
He didn’t look at the corpse. Didn’t check the wound.
He already knew.
The crowd erupted.
It rolled down from the stands like thunder in a canyon, wave after wave of chants, fists pounding stone, a roar that tasted of blood and victory.
“JUS-TICE! JUS-TICE! JUS-TICE!”
Above them, rose petals began to fall. Blood-colored, soft, slow. Drifting through the heat like a rain that remembered every name carved into this sand.
The gate behind him opened.
From the shadows stepped Jabir. In his hands: a wreath.
He placed it atop Justice’s helmet without a word.
Justice didn’t bow.
He turned and walked into the dark as the petals fell.
Entered by: 0xB9D1…4eA5
