The crowd let out a collective "Oh!" as Kiva bounced off the ropes of the ring and fell to the floor, thrown by Stonebreaker. Blood on her claws stained where her fingers dug into the ring, and she let out a growl. On the other side, Stonebreaker stalked forward, trails of red running down his bare chest, and a matching set down his back. Kiva had gotten some solid hits in, but she was getting worse than she gave in the exchange.

"Care for an assist, Dragon Queen?" List asked, extending her hand down to her friend.

Kiva gave a low growl, but slapped List's outstretched hand, tagging her in. In the corner, Valerie felt a surge of relief as she helped Kiva to her feet. The persona List and Kiva had come up with for them had called for Kiva to go first as their leader, but now, finally, this would be over, and they could all go home.

List sashayed forward, a hungry smile on her lips as she eyed Stonebreaker up and down. "Hello, big man. May I have this dance?"

He must have been almost twice the size of List, and he stared down at her like he intended to crush her under his boot. "Pretty face," Stonebreaker said. "Hate to ruin it. But at least there's a spare."

List batted her eyelashes, and Valerie was slightly disturbed to see her own features perform such exaggerated flirtation.

"Fortunately," List said, "there's only one of yours."

Then red lightning ran across her body, and she kicked Stonebreaker in the gut. The man staggered back several steps, coughing violently. The smile on List's face shifted into a manic grin, and then she attacked in earnest.

She leapt forward, spinning once in the air before catching him in the face with a roundhouse while he was still recovering. She followed with a quick burst of jabs until he finally gathered himself up enough to swing back, and she effortlessly weaved around his punches. When she had her fill of dodging, she leapt straight at him, grabbed his head, and delivered a flying knee to his nose.

Still in the air, she transitioned to locking her legs around his neck, and threw him to the floor with a shift of her weight. She bowed to the crowd as she landed, and the cheers were almost deafening in the underground confines of the makeshift arena. When Stonebreaker started to stand, Valerie expected List to hammer him back into the ground.

Instead, the hellborn performed a neat double backflip to land next to her, and slapped her on the ass.

"Your turn!" she shouted, shoving her forward.

"List!"

Valerie tried to tag List back in, but the hellborn stepped out of reach, and by then Stonebreaker was back up, and Valerie's training swiveled her body around, unable to ignore the threat.

The beating he'd taken seemed to have stoked him from seething contempt into boiling rage, and now veins bulged on his balding head, which was already turning red. Blood streamed from his nose, which List had broken, and a bruise was already forming under one of his eyes.

"I'm sorry about my sister," Valerie said, taking a step back. "Let me just go tag her bag in, and you can have your rev—"

She made the mistake of starting to turn away, and Stonebreaker's fist caught her in the chest. The wind was knocked from her lungs, and she flew from her feet before crashing first into the ropes around the ring, and then to the floor.

Her ears rang, and the noise of the crowd had turned into a muted buzz in the back of her head. She thought she heard someone shout her name, but she couldn't tell who. Vaguely, she was aware of Stonebreaker stalking toward her, but that was a distant and unfocused thought she processed in the background. Something else was taking up the forefront of her mind.

It had been a particularly frustrating few weeks, stuck in the hideout. She was frustrated with List, for dragging her into this. She was frustrated with Arden for hiding things from her. She was frustrated with the progress of her own research. But the truth was, frustrations for Valerie had been mounting for a long time.

She was frustrated with being hunted down, by the Chosen, by the Pavers before that, by monsters in the woods before that. She was frustrated with losing fights, and a year of her life, and her old life in Corsar before that. She had spent months tapping those frustrations down, taking deep breaths, and being a good and faithful student. The disciplined one. The sensible one. The one who stayed in control.

Now all of that came to a head, focused into a single point at the end of a giant's fist and hammered into her like a spike. And suddenly, it wasn't frustration she was feeling at all.

It was anger.

She clearly heard List's voice now, calling her name, but she waved her away as she hauled herself to her feet. If she looked at List right now, she might explode in her face, and she didn't want to do that. Some of what she was feeling was List's fault, but a lot of it wasn't, and it wouldn't be fair to unload that on her sister.

Especially not when there was a perfectly viable outlet right in front of her.

Stonebreaker was a big man, but that was all he was. Valerie had grappled with monsters. And now, she wanted this fight. If you could call it that.

He came at her, wide and obvious. She dodged and countered in the same movement, her first meeting his already broken nose. He swung, she sidestepped. He staggered, she advanced. Jabs to his ribs, an uppercut to the chin, a kick to the inside of his knee, and a cross to his jaw. Every blow was a surge of energy through her body, a shock of relief as her anger exited her through her fists.

She heard Kiva call out her name, saw movement, and expected to see her friend rushing to pull her away. Instead, the dragonborn was bringing over an empty bottle someone had handed her through the bars.

When Valerie broke it over Stonebreaker's head, screaming as she did, it was the sweetest release Valerie had felt in her life. All the months of hardship, all the pain and frustration, all the rage drained out of her in a rush of an instant, like she was the bottle being broken open.

Either the bottle had been made of particularly cheap glass, or Stonebreaker's head was sturdier than normal, because he was still conscious afterward. Valerie was impressed, but also suddenly much more tired than she'd been a second ago. She'd emptied herself onto the man, and wasn't sure she had enough left in her to actually bring him down.

Luckily, Kiva was there, looking fresh and eager. Panting to catch her breath, Valerie tagged her back in and staggered off to join List, who was standing in the corner, beaming with pride.

"Okay, I admit, I think I needed that."

It was hours later, and Valerie, List, and Kiva were sitting on somebody's roof,stargazing and sharing a bottle of liquor they'd bought with their prize money from Throwdown. They were blissfully back to being fully clothed, though Valerie and List were still wearing their improvised shorts. List still couldn't mend anything with her magic, and hadn't brought along anything to repair their pants after "tailoring" them for the show.

They'd won the night in spectacular fashion, with Kiva diving down onto Stonebreaker from the top rope elbow first, and had all stumbled out of the West End Rumblepit giddy in the afterglow of the fight's adrenaline. And so they'd ended up here.

"I told you," List said, taking a long swallow from their shared bottle. "Nothing better for de-stressing than beating the tar out of something."

"I would still like a warning next time," Valerie said, and maybe it was the fact that she was officially the elder sister, maybe it was the beatdown she'd given Stonebreaker, but List hastily nodded.

"That's fair."

"You two were amazing in there," Kiva said. "I thought after all this time, I knew how to fight. But you guys…it was like he was nothing."

"I've strangled a troll with its own guts, and Valerie's wrestled a werewolf," List said. "A big oaf with a fragile ego's a holiday."

Valerie smiled, but Kiva's expression stayed sober. Not sad, but something contemplative. The Waymire sisters fell silent, waiting for their friend to speak.

"I'm glad we did this. I'm glad . . . I'm glad you're both here. Not just for the rebellion but . . ." The dragonblood sighed. "Things were rough for a while, after my mom died. It was like me and Dad were just going through the motions, you know? Daniel and Thomas were there but, I don't know. It was like the world lost some color."

Finally, her face broke into a draconic smile. "And then I met you two, and it was like remembering that life could be fun. Being with you, doing shit like this, it makes me feel more alive than I have in a long time."

"Ugh, so heartfelt," List choked, clutching her chest in mock agony. "Too much . . . sincerity. Need . . . to undercut . . ."

"Fuck you, hell spawn," Kiva said with a smile.

List returned it. "Back at you, lizard."

They both laughed while Valerie sat quietly to the side, smiling. She couldn't help but agree with Kiva. Moments like this, nights like tonight, brought a kind of buzz all their own, entirely separate from the one they were chasing to the bottom of their bottle. She was alive to the point of bursting.

And that reflection sparked an idly idea in her. Propelled by both of the buzzes she was experiencing, Valerie held out her hand, and with a moment's focus, kindled a small black flame in her palm. She held it, stared at the ink black wisps, like burning night in her palm, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The happy fullness in her chest faded quickly, as if rapidly coming down from a high. But it took over a minute for her to even start feeling the fatigue of producing the blackfire kick in. She snuffed it out as soon as she did, lest she fall off the roof, but already, excitement was rushing in to fill in the space left behind by her fading joy.

Presence was the essence of life. And she suspected she'd just stumbled on a way to cultivate it. Dozens of ideas and tests came to her, but she set them aside, and focused simply on enjoying the rest of the night with her friends.

List and Valerie stumbled into the hideout late that evening, exhausted, bruised, and laughing, to find Kaleb and Xigbar in the kitchen assembling a late night snack of crackers and hard cheese. Instantly, the two girls stopped dead in their tracks.

The two boys were . . . glowing. Not literally perhaps, but there was a clear health and vigor to their skin, their hair was shining, and their eyes were bright. They looked like they'd gotten a week of sleep and a bath that had scrubbed them down to the soul.

By contrast, the girls looked as if they'd gotten drunk after being dragged through the dirt and beaten with sticks. Also, someone had sliced the legs off their pants.

At the same time, both sides asked, "What happened to you?"