by Andrew Rowe
“You can probably get away with using wings, scales, and claws. I read about a Shapeshifter attunement, and it’s local.”
Reika flexed her hand, shifting it into a claw, then back. “Okay. I think I can manage with that. It’ll be a bit of an extra challenge...but they’re going to need every advantage they can get to beat me.”
I nudged her. “That’s the spirit.”
“I am the spirit. Spirit dragon, remember?”
I laughed. “Okay. But let’s maybe stop talking about that for a while. We can discuss if we’re going to let Iron in on it later.”
“Got it. Can we go now?” She glanced back at the arena door.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
We headed over to the door guards and showed them our paperwork.
“Next round starts in ten minutes. You can head into the waiting room inside.”
We headed into the waiting room.
Once in there, the staff instructed us to turn in our paperwork temporarily at the desk, and that we’d get it back when we were finished. We turned in our papers and got some additional instructions.
“The test lasts for twenty-four minutes. You each begin with one of these orange crystals.” The arena worker passed a crystal to each of us, which we tucked away in our belt pouches. “There are other crystals inside the arena. Clear crystals are worth one point. Red are five. Orange are ten. Yellow are twenty-five, but aren’t many of those. Maybe a couple dozen. Green are fifty – there are only three of those one each floor.”
Twenty-four minutes seemed like a strange number to me, but I realized after a moment it was an increment of six, which was a sacred number in Kaldwyn’s culture. It probably had something to do with that.
I had a more important question that I wasn’t as sure about, though.
Floor? Just how big is this arena?
“Finally, there’s one blue crystal at the very end of the maze. That’s worth a hundred points.”
Reika whistled appreciatively. “That sounds like a lot.”
“It is. You only need twenty-five points to move on to the next round, but if you get more, you’ll be able to spend those extra points to help in later rounds. You may work together with other contestants if you choose. You may also trade crystals freely at your discretion.”
Reika and I gave each other a quick nod. It was obvious we’d be cooperating if that was allowed.
“You may exit early if you’ve earned enough crystals and want to play it safe. The doors unlock after six minutes. There are several exit doors. After twenty-four minutes have elapsed, you must cease all fighting and find the nearest exit as quickly as possible. If you are injured too badly to leave on your own, you’ll be retrieved and taken to the treatment area.”
The arena worker described a few more rules, but it was all basic stuff we already knew about, such as reiterating that lethal force was not allowed.
After that, we leaned against a nearby wall to wait. There were seats, but Reika was too jittery to sit, and she’d infected me.
I counted eight other contestants waiting in that room. I’d heard there were ten other entrances, so I estimated somewhere around eighty to a hundred or so total participants in this round.
Most of the eight people in there turned to size us up as soon as we entered. At least two of them had looks of recognition when they saw Dawnbringer on my hip.
Of the two, one was a red-haired swordsman with an arming sword on his hip and a shield sitting on his lap. He was young, but from the scars on his cheeks and neck, he looked to me like he had some fighting experience.
The other was a dark-haired woman in robes carrying a scythe, of all things. I had no idea how she intended to fight non-lethally with that, but it caught my attention because of the rarity of the weapon, as well as the broken red crystal embedded just below the blade. She smiled when I looked at her.
Crystals were everywhere on Kaldwyn, but that cracked gem was larger than most, and it emanated powerful flame sorcery. Maybe a hint of spirit sorcery, too, and something else I couldn’t identify. I’d have to keep an eye out for her on the battlefield — I suspected the flames from that weapon were stronger than I could easily counter.
The only other person that caught my attention was a green-haired man who didn’t even look up from his book when we walked in. He had an air of nonchalance about the whole affair that I might have taken for confidence, if not for the tightness of his grasp on that book.
I spent the next several minutes sizing my competition up for weaknesses, then it was time to enter the labyrinth.
Reika and I walked in together, but when I reoriented myself after stepping inside, she wasn’t there.
I was surrounded by strangers.
Chapter V – Eye of the...
I really needed to stop being surprised when I walked through a doorway and ended up being teleported somewhere else. My entry into the labyrinth was hardly the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
I scanned the area around me, getting my bearings. I was standing in some sort of crystalline structure, where the floors, ceilings, and walls were all made of the same material. The walls surrounded me on three sides, meaning that there was only a single path for me to walk. Interestingly, there was also a clearly labeled door on one of the walls. I assumed it was an exit, but I couldn’t actually read the writing — it was in Edrian.
That was inconvenient. I didn’t want to miss a path because I’d made a wrong assumption about the meaning of the word, but I didn’t want to open it and get teleported right out of the test, either. That would have been terribly embarrassing.
The crystal that surrounded me was almost glass-clear, with just a bit of distortion as I looked through it. Notably, that meant I could see what looked like two more entire levels of this area above and below me. I didn’t see any people in those sections yet, but I did see what looked like a horned jaguar-like monster in the area below me.
The floor seemed to hold my weight without any difficultly, as well as the weight of the other people who were rapidly appearing next to me.
A moment later, there were five of us standing in that area. I didn’t recognize anyone else, implying that whatever was teleporting us wasn’t putting us in the same place as the people we’d come through the doors with.
I saw some of them fumble for weapons. I took a few steps back and rested a hand on Dawn’s hilt, but didn’t draw.
A few of them exchanged words in Edrian, similarly backing away from another.
I had a few options at that point.
I could see if anyone speaks Valian, maybe make a team. Might make it easier to handle bigger threats, like other teams and large monsters.
Or I could just attack and pick up some easy crystals. These guys are probably weaker than the tails, unless I randomly ended up in the same room as another sacred sword wielder or another unusually strong fighter.
Neither. I’m not interested in taking an easy route.
We’re going monster hunting.
I concentrated on the crystal below me. While my boots were a barrier that interfered with getting a perfect connection, I could still sense the material clearly enough to interact with it. It didn’t have the same density as the crystalline scabbard that I’d used for Dawnbringer, but it was similar enough that I could manipulate it easily.
With a moment of concentration, a hole opened in the floor in front of me, and I stepped in.
The panther-like creature jumped toward me as I descended, but my arm was already moving.
I didn’t cut the monster.
Instead, I sliced off the collar around its neck, sending the collar — and the red crystal attached to it — tumbling to the floor.
The panther would have collided with me a moment later. Instead, it vanished in mid-air, and I twirled Dawnbringer and sheathed her as I hit the ground.
I was gathering information.
Yeah, also that.
Did I? Wait, no, you mean the floor. That’s crystal, and I just moved it. It doesn’t count.
Bah.
I’m just getting started.
In truth, I was gathering information, and I’d confirmed something important.
Grandmother Iron had mentioned that I’d be fighting summoned monsters, so I didn’t have to worry much about killing them — they’d just dissipate until their Summoner called them again.
This was even better, however. While most summoned monsters were powered by the Summoner’s mana, some others utilized a separate mana source. In those cases, they generally disappeared as soon as their mana source was taken away.
The crystals supply their mana. This is going to be easy.
A grin slid across my face.
I glanced back up briefly, said “good luck”, and then grabbed the fallen crystal from the floor and put it in my pouch.
That’s five points. Not a bad start.
After that, I looked at potential routes I could take. I could have jumped up and sealed the hole I’d descended through, but I wasn’t going to waste any more time. If someone decided to follow me down, I’d deal with it.
The lower floor was much like the area above, but there was no exit door. Instead, there were two paths; one that was straight ahead from where I’d landed, and one to the left. In addition, the ground below me was solid stone, rather than transparent crystal. That meant this was probably the bottom floor.
I briefly considered trying to figure out where Reika was — we’d wanted to cooperate, after all — but that didn’t seem like a good investment of time. She was far more mobile than I was, and likely already moving fast. Trying to track her was pointless. If she found me, great. If not, we’d handle things on our own and compare notes later.
Without any means of determining which path was best, I headed left.
I hit another intersection almost immediately, then turned left again.
I missed a hidden rune on my right side.
Crystalline vines burst from the wall, rushing out to entangle me. I reacted in a moment, drawing Dawn and slashing them apart. The crystalline pieces shattered easily, but they weren’t the end of my problems.
A blast of lighting flashed from the opposite side of the corridor.
I was ready for that.
“Radiant Dawn!”
I slammed Dawnbringer into the electrical blast, rebounding it back at the originator. The lightning dissipated harmlessly upon hitting the rune it had emerged from.
More vines of crystal continued to emerge from the right, twisting and grabbing at my arm.
I grunted and stepped closer to the wall.
I slammed my left fist into the glowing rune in the center of the crystalline tendrils. The wall cracked on impact, and the rune’s light faded as it lost cohesion.
As the trap ceased to function, I tore myself free just in time to dodge the next lightning bolt from the trap from the end of the hall. Apparently, reflecting the first bolt hadn’t stopped it.
I cracked my neck and advanced. I saw the trap at the end of the hall flash again.
There was no need to dodge, nor was I going to waste any more of Dawn’s valuable mana on reflecting another blast.
Instead, I reshaped my own destructive aura, wrapping it around Dawn’s blade. Now that I was her wielder, our connection seemed to protect her from the aura. And that meant I had a whole new way of fighting with her in-hand.
As the next blast flew down the hall, I swung upward and cut it in half.
I advanced. Lightning flashed. I severed it.
Walk. Lightning. Cut. Repeat.
It was as simple as breathing for me.
I reached the end of the passage and sliced the trap in half.
The passage turned to the left, going for another ten feet or so before branching to the left and right. I was planning to turn left again, but first, I had to deal with the half a dozen monsters blocking the intersection.
I had to take a moment to process what I was looking at.
Not because the monsters were scary, or particularly powerful.
Because they were skeletons. Just skeletons.
The idea of using skeletons as combatants was so ludicrous to me that I had to stop for a minute just to burst out laughing. They weren’t scary. They were absurd.
The amount of magic it took to animate and move something that didn’t have muscles was an absolute waste on something like a skeleton. Moving something like a suit of armor would have been equally simple and vastly more effective.
I didn’t even entertain the possibility that these might be actual people that had somehow been raised from the dead. While I’d heard of death sorcery being used to get bodies up and moving again, the idea of using it for something skeletal was ludicrous.
I managed to recover from laughing just in time to parry a swing from a sword-wielding skeleton. As I expected, the swing had practically no force behind it.
I responded by punching it in the skull, which burst apart in a shower of (presumably fake) bone dust.
A clear crystal fell to the ground, apparently having been housed inside the skull. The remainder of the skeleton collapsed, rather than vanishing. These were more like golems, rather than a summoned monster.
I moved forward, raising Dawnbringer to swing at the next nearest skeleton.
I froze in mid-swing, dancing back to avoid a clumsy strike from a mace-wielding skeleton.
What?
I sighed, rolled my eyes, and leapt forward.
At least this poses a little more of a challenge.
A kick smashed the ribs of the skeleton that had just been in front of me, and another punch knocked the jaw off the one to his left.
I sheathed Dawn, not even bothering to use her to parry, and smashed the remaining skeletons in a flurry of punches and kicks.
In the end, I had six quartz crystals in my pouch.
Well, that was an anticlimactic reward.
True.
I drew Dawn and turned left.
I continued down the path. It wove and winded, leading to another juncture. I turned again.
This led me to another intersection, but of a different variety.
First, there was an exit door here, like where I’d first started.
Second, there were a handful of people waiting there with weapons in hand. Four of them were standing, and one was sitting in front of what looked like a rug with a handful of objects laid out on it. I didn’t know what to make of that.
I stopped a good twenty feet away from them and braced myself for a fight.
Two of them approached. One was a huge man with a pair of axes, one glowing blue, the other green.
The other was a woman in head-to-toe armor carrying a spear. The outfit reminded me of Velas, but this woman was a head shorter and had curly black hair.
They said something in Edrian.
I replied with, “Do you speak Valian?”
“Oh, sure,” the woman said. “I asked if you wanted to come buy anything.”
I blinked. “...Buy?”
“Keep your sword sheathed and your hands away from it, and you’re welcome to come on over.”
They escorted me to where three other people were waiting, and I finally got a look at what was sitting on the floor. Red and blue potion bottles, a torch, and three colors of crystals — clear, red, and orange.
“Welcome, welcome!” The sitting man was dark skinned, wearing a fashionable black outfit and a top hat. He didn’t stand as I approached. Instead, he continued to hold his h
ands together, and I could see a visible aura of magic gleaming between them.
I braced myself for an attack, but when he opened his hands, something different happened.
He held up a glimmering red crystal. “I’m Jelani, and this is my shop. For a small fee, I sell supplies you would find useful in this challenge.”
I waved at the crystals. “Are those...”
“Yes, the same ones that are worth points in the tournament.”
I blinked. “And you’re selling them? Do you work for the arena?”
“No, no. Observe.” He set the crystal down, then put his hands together. A soft glow appeared between his hands, and a few moments later, he showed me a newly-appeared clear crystal.
“You’re making crystals?”
He smiled. “Precisely. I can make enough for my friends here and myself to pass quite easily. The rest, I sell, along with supplies for those who are more eager to fight.”
I could see disadvantages to that approach, since apparently higher scores would be valuable in future matches...
...but if his goal wasn’t to win the competition, and just to make a profit, this was an incredible strategy.
“How much are you charging?”
He told me his prices.
My face blanched.
“A little low on coins, friend?” He shook his head. “Perhaps just one item?”
I frowned, considered, and then bought what was probably an actual healing potion. It cost me five gold imperials, which was absolute robbery as far as I was concerned, but I’d been injured badly enough recently to know how valuable one could be. I also didn’t want to waste any time on fighting these guys, who I expected might try to rob me if I didn’t give them any business.
“Your patronage is appreciated,” Jelani said. “Go in peace, my friend.”
I pocketed my potion and moved on. The others wished me well and didn’t attack.
[Eighteen minutes remaining. The exit doors are now unlocked.] The announcement seemed to come from everywhere at once, and I realized it was probably some kind of telepathy, rather than sound-based. It was louder and more obnoxious than Dawn’s voice, but I was still grateful for it. Knowing my remaining time was important.
