She crossed the forty metres before he'd finished looking. He got his good hand up with fire in it, and she hit the hand aside, and the fire went out. He swung an elbow wrapped in flame. She took the elbow and turned him and put him down. He went into the ground on his back hard enough that the grass jumped all round him and the earth sank in a bowl under his shoulders.
He lay in it, breathing in whoops.
"What are you?" It came out of him cracked and high, nothing like the voice at the door. "You're not. There's no Challenger. There's nobody ranked who—" He coughed. "What did he find?"
Nyra stood over him with her wings open and said nothing.
"Stay down," she said. "It's finished. Stay there."
He stared up at her. Then his eyes went past her, back up toward the houses.
She looked too.
