His arms were shaking under his weight.
Neil stood a few feet away and looked at him.
The arena was so quiet that the sound of Mantis's breathing carried to the edges of the shield.
Mantis raised his head.
His expression was not the arranged version of defeat.
It was the face of someone who had arrived somewhere completely different from where they intended and was genuinely working through what that meant, the particular look of a calculation that had come back wrong not because the math was bad but because the starting assumptions had been.
"That's enough," Neil said.
Mantis lowered his head.
He stayed there for a moment, then pushed himself slowly upright and stood, his balance finding itself by degrees.
The crowd found its voice again somewhere during that process and it was not the immediate loud noise of a crowd that had watched a close contest reach its conclusion.
