The first drumbeat was like a thunderclap.
The second was a heartbeat.
The third became a roar that swallowed the Coliseum whole.
From the royal balcony, King Rega raised his hand—and the arena answered. The tiered walls of the Coliseum of Ọ̀yọ́-Ìlú shuddered beneath a tidal wave of cheers.
Beneath the desert sun, the fighters circled each other like predators in the sand.
The first match—Dambe versus Laamb—exploded into motion.
The Dambe boxer, his right arm wrapped thick with crimson cloth, charged forward. Each step sent small clouds of dust spiraling. His wrapped hand, the spear hand, struck like lightning—short, devastating, meant to kill.
The Laamb wrestler, bare-chested and glistening with sacred oil, moved like a wave. He caught the first strike on his shoulder and slammed his opponent down in a whirl of sand. The crowd erupted as both men grappled, muscles trembling, chanting battle-songs that sounded half like prayers, half like curses.
"Ẹ kú ìjà o!"—"Well fought!"
"Rise, Ogun's child!"
The words rolled through the stands like thunder.
Leonotis watched, unmoving, his breath shallow. Sweat slicked his brow though the wind was cool. He wasn't seeing just a fight—he was seeing the world itself awaken. Every impact carried àṣẹ, every motion shimmered with divine weight. The air around the combatants pulsed like living flame.
Beside him, Low leaned on her stone axe and yawned, though her eyes were sharp. "First blood to the wrestler," she muttered. "But the boxer's not done."
She was right. The Dambe fighter surged back to his feet, his one arm like an iron piston. The Laamb champion swung, aiming for a throw—but a flash of crimson cloth struck his jaw. The sound was sickening.
The Laamb fighter fell. The crowd screamed.
And then—silence.
The griots' drums rolled once. The High Seer Jabara raised her staff. The Dambe fighter knelt, touching his forehead to the sand. His opponent, dazed but alive, was lifted by attendants and carried out of the ring.
"Victory," Jabara intoned, "to Bako of the Red Hand."
Cheers followed, wild and ecstatic.
Leonotis didn't cheer. He couldn't. Something inside him was stirring.
He pressed a hand to his chest. His heartbeat wasn't steady. It throbbed in rhythm with the drumming. Each pulse carried a faint green shimmer beneath his skin, like sap coursing through roots.
Low noticed. "You're doing it again," she whispered.
"I can't help it," he muttered. "It's like something's… calling."
"Well tell it you're busy. You'll need your focus soon."
Another bout began. Two Engolo dancers leapt into the arena, their movements like twin storms of motion—backflips, inverted handstands, spinning kicks that blurred into artistry. Dust rose around them in shimmering clouds.
Their feet barely touched the earth. Each kick carried ritual grace, invoking their ancestral warriors who had once fought not for sport, but survival.
Leonotis couldn't take his eyes off them. "They're… dancing," he breathed.
"I think that is the fight," Low said. "Every movement is a strike."
When one of the Engolo fighters flipped backward, catching his opponent's chin with both feet and sending him spinning into the dust, even the nobles gasped. The victor bowed, his body glistening with sweat, his breath steady.
The High Seer Jabara nodded once. "Victory," she said. "To Zola of the Light."
Zola. The name burned into Leonotis's mind. He could feel her àṣẹ from here—bright, nimble, radiant as sunlight on water.
Low whistled low. "Fast one, that girl. Bet she'll make it to the finals."
"Maybe," Leonotis said. But his voice sounded far away, because the feeling inside him was growing stronger. The longer he stood on this sand, the more it seemed to breathe beneath him—like something massive and patient was just beneath the surface, waiting.
The drummers changed rhythm again—slower, deeper. The next gate opened.
A massive man stepped into the arena, his body painted in black-iron dust. His eyes glowed faintly green. He was a Mgba wrestler, a master of leg hooks and bone locks.
Opposite him was a stick fighter, lean and sharp, carrying two slender rods and a hide shield marked with white ash.
They saluted each other, then the fight began—chaos and grace intertwined.
The Mgba fighter lunged low, trying to sweep. The stick fighter leapt over him, spinning his rods in a blur, landing with a crack against the man's shoulder. Sparks burst on impact—literal sparks of àṣẹ.
Every strike, every block, carried the voice of their ancestors. The ground shook. The crowd howled.
"Now that's a fight," Low grinned, her eyes alive. "No ceremony, no flourish. Just pain."
Leonotis didn't hear her. The hum beneath his skin became a tremor, then a pulse that spread through his arms and legs. His vision blurred. The world tilted. He saw the fighters, but around them—something else.
He saw roots.
Vast, green-gold roots coiling beneath the arena floor, weaving through the sand like living veins. With each hit, they flared, releasing ripples of àṣẹ that fed the crowd's frenzy.
He blinked, and the vision snapped away. He staggered.
Low grabbed his shoulder. "Hey! You good?"
"I saw…" He swallowed. "The ground. There's a root system underneath."
Low frowned. "That's not possible."
"Nothing here feels possible."
The Mgba fighter roared—a sound that silenced even the nobles. He caught the stick fighter's leg and slammed him to the ground with an echo that cracked the air. The earth trembled beneath them.
Leonotis gasped, clutching his chest. The vibration wasn't just sound. It was inside him.
Then, for a moment, he felt the crowd. The pulse of their voices, the àṣẹ of thousands of souls crying for blood and glory. It rushed through him like a river, fierce and electric.
His knees nearly buckled.
He saw images flash through his mind—trees splitting open to reveal glowing hearts, rivers turning to gold, roots drinking starlight.
"Leonotis!" Low's voice broke through. "Stay with me."
He blinked hard. The world steadied. The crowd blurred back into focus.
"I'm fine," he said hoarsely.
"You're not. That's your àṣẹ reacting to theirs. You're too open."
Before he could answer, the final strike landed. The stick fighter fell still. Jabara raised her staff again. "Victory to Adebayo of the Earthbound."
The stands erupted in praise. Drums pounded. Dust rose like incense.
Leonotis stared at Adebayo—the towering boy of only fifteen, body gleaming with earth's blessing. The ground itself seemed to rise to meet his footsteps.
Leonotis whispered, "Earth àṣẹ. He's young like us."
Low exhaled through her nose. "Yeah. And has a lot more control of his àṣẹ than you've got."
He didn't reply. He was still staring at Adebayo. Something deep within him resonated with the boy's power, like a song echoing across an ancient valley.
The sun began to dip lower, staining the sky orange and red. The griots' voices rose again, chanting names and praises, calling for the next wave of combatants.
Low stretched, cracking her neck. "Our turn soon."
Leonotis adjusted the wraps on his sword. The hum in his veins steadied, quieter now—but not gone.
As the crowd's chant swelled again, he looked to the horizon.
The shadows had lengthened across the amphitheater by the time the announcer's voice—half magic, half wind—boomed across the dunes.
"Next bout! Grom Stonehand… versus… Naguib the Rhythm of Tahtib!"
A hush rolled through the crowd, followed by excited murmurs.
The desert wind caught the sound and scattered it across the tiers like restless ghosts.
Leonotis's breath caught in his throat. This was it—Low's turn.
The arena gates yawned open, releasing a rush of warm, iron-scented air. The sand shimmered beneath the golden light of late afternoon.
Low—disguised as the squat, broad-shouldered "Grom"—walked forward, her stone axe resting lazily on her shoulder. Every step she took left a perfect print in the sand. She didn't hurry, didn't bow. She just rolled her shoulders once and looked up at the crowd.
From above, the sun caught in her eyes, turning them molten amber.
Across from her, her opponent was already waiting.
Naguib, the Tahtib master, stood tall and lean as a reed. His bronze skin glistened beneath ritual oil. His stick—a carved, perfectly balanced length of acacia wood—rested across his shoulders like a sacred relic. His headband bore the Eye of Ra, and when he looked at Low, it was not with arrogance, but with pity.
He saluted her with a nod, and then with the staff. "May your bones remember rhythm, stranger."
Low smirked. "Oh, they'll remember something."
The drums began again.
A deep, rolling rhythm. Dum. Dum. Ka-ka. Dum. Ka.
Each beat echoed through the amphitheater, pulsing in time with the crowd's collective heart. Naguib closed his eyes and breathed with it. His stick began to move—not in attack, but in dance. He spun it around his body, a blur of grace and precision, faster, tighter, until the sound of wood cutting through air became a song.
The audience cheered. Tahtib was not merely a fight—it was a performance, one older than iron, said to have been used to honor the sun itself.
Leonotis leaned forward. "He's weaving àṣẹ with rhythm," he murmured, half to himself.
And it was true. The air shimmered faintly around Naguib. Each pivot of his foot, each rotation of the staff, drew invisible sigils in the dust. Energy flowed around him, coiling like smoke.
Low exhaled through her nose, unimpressed. "Nice dance," she muttered. "Let's see if he can fight."
Then she charged.
The crowd gasped.
She moved faster than her squat, bulky disguise should have allowed—kicking up a trail of sand as she swung the axe down in a brutal arc.
Naguib flowed backward like water. His staff spun once, then met the axe with a sharp crack! Sparks of àṣẹ leapt from the impact, brief colorful embers that vanished on the wind.
Naguib countered. His stick blurred, striking her shoulder, ribs, hip—each hit precise, clean, almost tender. But every blow carried rhythm. Each one built upon the last, weaving into a living drumbeat that filled the arena's pulse.
Crack. Tap. Crack-crack. Boom.
Low stumbled backward, blinking through sweat and dust. "You fight like a musician," she hissed.
"And you fight like noise," Naguib replied calmly, twirling his staff.
The crowd loved it—every flick of the stick, every parry that turned Low's brute strength into missed momentum. The drummers outside the ring adjusted their pace to match Naguib's rhythm, amplifying his movements. It was hypnotic—art in motion.
But Leonotis frowned. He could feel it again—the hum of àṣẹ rippling through the air, syncing with the beat. The arena floor trembled with it. And under his breath, he whispered, "He's using the sound to move the earth."
Indeed, when Naguib stomped his heel, a plume of sand spiraled up like a small cyclone, coiling around Low's feet. The energy in it was tangible—heavy with desert heat and sacred history.
Low grimaced. "Oh, that's how it is?"
She kicked off the ground, breaking the snare, and swung the axe in a wide horizontal sweep. The blade carved a shimmering crescent of dust. Naguib ducked beneath it effortlessly, flowing like wind around a boulder.
Leonotis's hands clenched. He could see Low's frustration building—every miss feeding the opponent's tempo, every swing turning her into part of Naguib's rhythm instead of breaking it.
Then, suddenly, Low smiled.
It was a dangerous smile.
She stopped moving. Dropped her stance completely.
The crowd murmured in confusion. Naguib tilted his head. "You yield already?"
Low shrugged. "Nah. Just trying to catch the beat."
She raised her axe—then let it fall into the sand.
Gasps rippled through the stands.
Naguib blinked. "What—?"
Before he could finish, Low scooped a handful of sand and flung it into his face.
The crowd howled—half surprise, half laughter.
Naguib stumbled back, coughing. His rhythm faltered. The drums missed a beat.
Low grinned wide. "Sorry! No fancy footwork where I come from."
She darted forward again. No rhythm now, no grace—just chaos. Her movements were unpredictable, jarring, every strike timed off-beat. She used the flat of her foot, her elbow, even her forehead to drive him back.
Naguib tried to recover the rhythm, spinning his staff again—but every time he found the pattern, Low disrupted it. She swung her knee into the sand, grabbed a fallen piece of driftwood, and used it like a club, keeping him guessing.
"Fight's not a song," she growled. "It's a story—and you don't get to write mine."
She slammed the makeshift club into his shoulder. He grunted, spinning, trying to counter—but the tempo was gone. Without rhythm, the àṣẹ in his movements unraveled, like a drumskin torn mid-performance.
Leonotis's heart pounded. He could see it—the magic in Naguib's strikes flickering out as Low's sheer unpredictability shattered his control.
Still, the Tahtib master was no novice. He swept her leg, bringing her to one knee, and swung his staff for her neck.
Low caught the strike between her forearms, gritting her teeth. The staff vibrated with energy. For a moment, their eyes met—hers wild and defiant, his calm but straining.
"Adapt," she hissed. "That's the rhythm of survival."
She twisted her grip, forcing the staff down, then drove her head into his nose. The crack echoed like a snapped branch. Naguib fell back, clutching his face, and Low snatched his staff from the sand.
The crowd went insane.
She twirled the stick once then spun it behind her shoulders in mock imitation of his earlier flourish. "Huh. Not so hard."
Naguib staggered to his knees, blood running from his nose. "You… you mock the dance of Tahtib?"
Low's smile softened just a little. "No. I just dance to a different drum."
She brought the staff down decisively hitting his chest.
Silence.
Then the High Seer Jabara's voice boomed over the amphitheater:
"Victory… to Grom Stonehand."
The crowd erupted into wild applause, half in admiration, half in scandalized delight. The griots began to chant Grom's name.
Low raised the staff in one hand, grinning wide, her fake beard dusty.
From the stands, Leonotis couldn't help but laugh, though his chest ached with pride and unease. For all her bravado, he could feel the subtle shift in àṣẹ—the way the arena's pulse had started to bend toward her tempo, not the other way around.
Below, Low brushed the dust from her shoulders and looked up at her friend. "Your turn next," she mouthed. "Try not to let me do all the fighting."
Leonotis forced a shaky smile, but inside, his blood was roaring again—alive with the same wild pulse.
The drums started once more.
The crowd's ululation deepened.
"Now entering the ring… Lia of the Greenwater… versus Makan the capoeira!"
The crowd was far from done roaring.