Diamantine (Weapons and Wielders Book 2)

by Andrew Rowe

  And there was a gap in her explanation. “Why ask us, rather than the other wielders?”

  Iron looked surprised for the first time. “There are other wielders competing?”

  Oh, she just doesn’t know about them. That makes sense.

  I felt a little better knowing that, at least. “We believe at least one or two are on their way,” I explained. I could have lied, but I saw no reason to.

  “I will likely attempt to recruit them as well, in truth. But reaching them before another sponsor does would be difficult. That is why I came to you as soon as I possibly could, in spite of the risks. You will very likely have numerous prospective sponsors approach you, now that it’s known that a sacred sword wielder is here. I would like you to formally accept me as your sponsor. I will provide you with food, local clothing, and lodgings. There will be nothing as…opulent, as what a noble might offer, but I can offer you something far more valuable.”

  I was already going to accept, but I had to ask. “What would that be?”

  “Knowledge.” Iron gave me a grin and tapped the side of her head. “I’ve made it to the final round. You won’t find many others who know this tournament as well as I do. And moreover, I’ll make sure you’re trained to fight against the most formidable opponents in the arena. You’re certain to have skills if you wield that sword, but I assure you, there will be people with abilities in this tournament like you’ve never seen.”

  I turned back toward Reika. She leaned in close, and we exchanged whispers.

  “She has a vendetta here,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, obviously. Is that a problem?”

  “That depends on if that vendetta is reciprocated. I don’t want to get involved in a political struggle if I can avoid it.”

  “Just ask more questions, then.”

  I turned back toward Iron. “We’re in it to win, as you suspected. But, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, I believe there’s more to this than what you’re saying.”

  Iron tilted her head down in acknowledgement. “Of course. We all have our secrets, Wielder of Dawnbringer. It is far too soon for me to share such things with you, however, much as I’m certain you would not share your own with me.”

  She had a point, but I still had reservations. “I would want to know more about your motives before we make any kind of permanent sponsorship agreement.”

  “Very well. Let us do this, then.” Iron unfolded her hands, gesturing toward the door. “Go to the preliminaries. Demonstrate your talents. And if you impress me significantly,” Iron smiled, “I’ll tell you what you wish to know.”

  Chapter IV – Fatal Labyrinth

  Grandmother Iron led us back to the large room where we’d seen students training before. Now that we knew we might be staying longer, I got a better look at them.

  There were a total of twelve people currently practicing, but from the size of the training facility, I suspected that was only a fraction of the total.

  Most of them are pretty young, I realized.

 

  I’m really not. I’m still in the best years of my life.

 

  That...isn’t helpful, Dawn.

  She didn’t sound sorry.

  You’re very important, Dawn. But I’m not sure I’ll ever get old and grey.

 

  No, I’m not planning to get old or die at all.

 

  That’s not what I meant...but hm? What are you thinking?

 

  That’s your only objection? Your color scheme?

 

  I sighed and got back to looking at the class.

  Of the twelve people practicing, nine of them looked like teenagers. I assumed the other three were probably assistant instructors, since they seemed to be overseeing the training.

  “You will be spending many hours in this room if you make it through the preliminaries. I won’t bother introducing you to the other students until after that.”

  “What do the preliminaries involve? We were sent here before we had a chance to gather any information about the tests.” I asked.

  Grandmother Iron furrowed her brow. “You must be very new here. How much do you know about the tournament in general?”

  “Just assume we grew up in a cave in the middle of nowhere and that this is our first time in the city,” Reika offered. I smirked at that.

  “Right.” Grandmother Iron took a breath, glancing to Reika and then back to me. “Before we get any deeper into this discussion, what’s the relationship between the two of you?”

  Reika and I glanced at each other.

  I was a bit worried about how to respond to that, given that I wasn’t quite sure how she was interpreting me. She spoke up before I could say anything to avoid any confusion.

  “We’re adventuring companions,” Reika explained. “Think of us like a climber group, but we primarily explore ruins in the Unclaimed Lands.”

  That’s...actually not a bad answer.

 

  I mean, she did seem to convince the people at the hotel we were married...but wait, married siblings?

 

  Look, that only happened in one—

  “Ah, ruin explorers.” Grandmother Iron nodded. “I understand. Did a bit of that in my own youth. Always hoped to make it into the Seventh Spire. Perhaps Diamantine would allow such a thing.”

  “Only when the six are united,” Reika replied.

  Grandmother Iron’s eyebrow (the one above her good eye) went up. “You’re a firm believer in the scriptures, then?”

  “I am. Keras...maybe a bit less so.” She gave me a somewhat sad look.

  I was thinking, I am literally from another continent, you can’t expect me to pick up your religion, but I didn’t say anything aloud.

  Of course, that didn’t matter to Dawn.

 

  What about you?

 

  Agreed. Although, just to be fair, the goddess might not have known you were going to end up being sapient. We still need to figure out exactly how that happened.

 

  Admittedly, that’s pretty bad, yeah. I didn’t realize you disagreed with this so strongly.

 

  “Keras, pay attention.” Reika poked me in the ribs.

  I blinked. “Sorry. Got distracted by my sword.”

  Grandmother Iron gave me a look like she wanted to say something about that, but thankfully, she avoided the obvious jokes. “As I was saying, the Tournament of the Sacred Sword begins with a preliminary round. You may enter at any point during this week. Based on your results in the preliminary, you will be seeded into positions against specific competitors with similar skill lev
els for future tests.”

  “How many tests are there?” I asked.

  “After the preliminary, there will be six other phases to the tournament. The first one starts one week from today, and after that, most rounds are one week apart. After the third round, there will be a two-week break, during which other competitions are held. Each tournament round is distinct, and they will be held all over Edria.”

  “Is transportation provided?” Reika asked.

  “Of course.” Grandmother Iron pointed down. “We’re standing on it.”

  I probably should have guessed that the floating arena moved.

  “So, if there are other competition areas, they’re not necessarily all going to be arena fights?” Reika sounded a little discouraged.

  “Oh, dear, no. The last round of the tournament proper will be; that much never changes. But each of the other rounds is a different test every year. The rounds are often themed to a single word, like ‘fire’ or ‘Katashi’, but that isn’t much to go on. And the specifics of each challenge are not announced in advance.”

  Hm. This is like the Trials of Unyielding Steel, just on a larger scale.

 

  My entrance exams to join the Paladins of Tae’os. They had one test for each of their gods.

 

  Sure, but for now, please stop distracting me so I can listen.

 

  Meanwhile, Reika was asking about the details of individual tests, and Grandmother Iron was being evasive.

  “I’ll give you more information after you’ve passed the preliminaries. For the moment, I’d suggest you focus on those.”

  I nodded to her. “What can you tell us about the preliminaries this year?”

  “They’re using the main arena for them. There are dozens of entrances around the arena. Several times per day they send in a group of up to two hundred people. For this purpose, the arena has been converted into a huge labyrinth, and each door leads to a different entrance.”

  “Ooh, it must be Kerivas themed! She loves labyrinths.” Reika grinned. “This sounds exciting!”

  Grandmother turned to her, nodding in approval. “Each of the entrants will be given a crystal at the start of the test. There will be additional crystals hidden throughout the labyrinth with different point values based on their color and size.”

  “And I’m assuming that the crystals we’re carrying can be stolen by other contestants?” I asked.

  Grandmother Iron smiled. “Yes, that’s one of the most common methods for obtaining crystals. Once the test starts, the doors to the outside will be closed for six minutes. After that point, you can leave at any time with the crystals you’ve collected, if any.”

  “So, someone could just wait near the door with their starting crystal?” Reika asked.

  “No, your starting crystal isn’t worth enough points to pass the test. You’d fail if you tried that. Besides, people near the doors will be very vulnerable to attack.”

  “Wait.” I paused, thinking. “Can people attack each other during this test?”

  “Obviously.” Grandmother Iron frowned at me. “This is a fighting tournament.”

  “That...sounds like a potential bloodbath. How do they prevent contestants from just murdering each other outright for crystals?”

  “Shield sigils with teleportation effects when they’re depleted?” Reika guessed.

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “No, this round isn’t in the Valian style.” Iron shook her head. “All parts of the tournament, including the preliminaries, are observed both by judges and an audience. The audience for the preliminaries will be smaller, but that means it only includes thousands, rather than tens or hundreds of thousands like some later rounds.”

  Hundreds of thousands?

  The idea of a tournament audience of that size was mind-boggling to me. The largest arenas I’d seen could only support in the low tens of thousands.

  Iron continued her explanation. “Killing someone deliberately is strictly against tournament rules and results in disqualification. If battles look like they are reaching the point where they could be fatal, judges will swiftly interfere, generally by separating the contestants. The arena also employs dozens of healers for any injuries that occur. There are also rumors that they hire Seers to attempt to see the future to anticipate any possible deaths in advance, then take steps to avoid them. None of these steps are foolproof; deaths still happen on occasion. In those few cases, having such a large audience means that it’s generally easy to determine who was at fault. Most deaths in the arena are the result of personal vendettas that make their way into the arena, rather than mere accidents.”

  That still sounded like the kind of setup that would result in a considerable number of fatalities to me. Putting hundreds of people with real weapons into an arena and expecting them not to kill each other sounded awfully optimistic. “Are we expected to use practice weapons or protective gear of some kind?” I asked, hoping to find something to minimize my concerns.

  Not that I was worried about myself, mind you. I was concerned about the morality of participating in something that might get other people killed. And, to some degree, I was worried I might kill someone else by accident.

  “Oh, no, dear. Almost everyone in there will be Sunstone or higher.”

  I didn’t know a lot about attunements, but I knew Sunstone was roughly the “average” attunement level — higher than Quartz and Carnelian, but lower than Citrine and Emerald. That level of power didn’t seem particularly threatening, but after a moment, I realized what Iron was getting at: virtually everyone fighting in the tournament would be high enough level to have shrouds, providing them with significant protection against harm.

  I hadn’t been thinking about the effects of shrouds on arena fighting, since I didn’t have one myself, and I’d only fought a few people with them. They presented a tremendous difference from how combat worked in my homeland. With shrouds, entering combat was much safer — it was almost like everyone with a shroud was wearing a suit of armor that protected against both physical and magical attacks.

  That made me feel a lot less worried that Reika or I would kill someone with just a random punch. We’d still probably have to hold back against most opponents, but the risks were much lower than they would have been back home.

  “I think we’ve heard enough about the preliminaries, unless you have any advice.” Reika looked jittery. Excited, maybe.

  I was getting a little excited, too. I didn’t get a chance to fight very often.

  “I don’t know the first thing about your abilities yet, so I can’t give you detailed advice. But there are two general strategies for the labyrinth; either attack as many people as possible with overwhelming force, or try to find crystals. The larger crystals are in the center of the maze, with progressively stronger monsters guarding them.”

  “Monsters?” I asked. “They have live monsters in the arena?”

  “Summons, obviously.” Iron waved a hand dismissively. “They wouldn’t waste real monsters on something small like the preliminaries. This is more like one of your Valian ‘Survival Matches’.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but apparently she was assuming we were Valian due to our choice of language or appearance. I saw no reason to correct her.

  I’d read enough about summoned monsters to know that they were copies of an original, and that if they were ‘killed’, they could just be re-summoned by their Summoner later. I didn’t know exactly how that worked, but at the time, my suspicion was that the essence of the monster was just returning to the summoner when it was ‘killed’, then being re-corporealized. If that was accurate, that meant they were never really dying at all.

  Finally, something I can fight without having to hold back.

  I could feel my heart beating faster just thinking a
bout it.

  “I’d advise you to collect more crystals than you need to pass the test. The points you earn will be relevant for future rounds.”

  “Relevant?” I quirked a brow. “Relevant how?”

  Iron waved a hand. “You can use them to buy things later, like a currency. Don’t worry about it too much right now. I’ll explain more later.”

  Simple enough.

  “Okay. Anything else?” Reika was rocking back and forth. She clearly wanted to go.

  “You should be fine with just knowing that, granddaughter. Keep track of your points after the test, so you can tell me how you’ve scored. We can discuss our strategies after that.”

  “Yes, Grandma.” Reika grinned, then turned to me. “Ready?”

  I smiled back at her. “Yep. Let’s go.”

  ***

  We headed out of the training hall, trying to follow Grandmother Iron’s directions to the closest arena entrance. The layout of the buildings was already confusing enough to feel like a maze and we hadn’t even gotten inside yet.

  Fortunately, there were a lot of entrances into the arena proper. I think we actually missed the one that Iron directed us to, but we found one soon enough.

  I was grateful that there wasn’t a another line for this part of the process. There were just two people in front of the door, both dressed in the uniforms indicating they worked for the arena.

  Before we approached, I pulled Reika off to the side to address something important.

  “What is it? Something wrong?” She glanced at me, then back toward the arena door.

  “No, just a quick note. We might not want to advertise that we’re anything other than normal attuned at this early stage in the tournament.”

  Reika sighed. “You’re saying I shouldn’t turn into my big form in there.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. For now, I think we should stick with things we can pass off as local magic.”

  “I don’t really have a lot of that, you know.” She folded her arms. “I don’t have fire and stone and metal magic to throw around like you do.”