by Andrew Rowe
Reika wheeled around in mid-air, still holding the ball. Both flames and lightning were flying out of the burning dome toward her. I suspected the lightning attacks counted as “air” and wouldn’t be treated as hits against her, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to be hit by lightning even if it didn’t count. She presumably had similar feelings on the subject.
I approached the dome. A blast of lightning flickered outward, and while I tried to dodge, it arced straight to the sword I was carrying and traveled through it.
My suit flashed, registering a hit.
I grunted, wishing I’d been using Dawn. She could have probably protected me or reflected it outright.
As neat as that idea was, it was too impractical for the moment.
As a blast of flame followed the lightning, I dodged that, gauged the direction the flame had come from, and reshaped the water-element sphere in my hand.
When I hurled it, it split apart into three separate pieces.
My gamble didn’t work the way I’d hoped. All of the pieces immediately went inert, losing their water elemental property. I’d been hoping they’d retain their enchantment for a moment, allowing me to potentially hit the fire user three times with one throw and take him straight out of the match.
As it was, none of them counted as hits, but I did hear a telltale grunt of impact.
With that, I rushed forward toward the flames.
Part.
The curtain of fire shifted, making a hole into the dome. I rushed inside.
Immediately, an electrified trident flashed at me from my right side. On instinct, I parried.
This was, of course, a mistake. The lightning carried through and shocked me, dealing another hit to my suit.
On the plus side, I was now in contact with the trident.
Fall apart.
The trident fell to pieces.
The woman carrying it froze in shock, then took a step backward — right into the fire wall.
Her hair ignited. She screamed.
Her team mate — a man with a flaming sword — screamed as well, saying something that was presumably her name. Then he waved a hand and the flaming dome vanished.
The lightning-user’s hair went out, the fire dispersed at the same time as the dome vanished. She was still reeling in shock and pain, though, and barely managed to get her arms up in time to provide some semblance of defense before I hit her.
Two quick strikes took her out of the arena. The flaming dome had counted as the first hit.
Then a blast of flame was coming toward me, too large to dodge, too potent for me to deflect at close range.
The last thing I saw before it hit me was Reika descending from the sky, right toward the exposed pillar.
My suit flashed, and then I was out of the ring.
I blinked.
I was standing in a square room with no obvious entrances or exits. There were two unfamiliar figures inside wearing arena worker uniforms.
Walter was in there, too. He nodded as I appeared.
The workers spoke first. “Any injuries?”
I glanced myself over, then shook my head. “Nope.”
They nodded. “You’ll be teleported back to your pillar in—”
The crowd erupted in cheers, and I heard an announcer’s voice. “Team Dawn has scored a point!”
I blinked. “Team Dawn?”
“I had to register a name.” Walter grinned. “Surprise?”
I laughed. “How are things going on your side?”
“Good. Ari and I have been—”
Walter vanished. Apparently, he must have been eliminated first, and his minute was up.
He still doesn’t know you’re intelligent.
If you’re okay with it, I will. I know you wanted to talk to Octave at some point, and that would—
I reappeared in the arena.
...We’ll discuss this more later.
I appeared near my team’s goal. Which, hilariously, was not near the goal’s starting position — I showed up next to Ari and Walter, who were in the middle of fighting two attackers.
“Fighting” might have been something of a misnomer in Ari case. He was just pointing and laughing while a woman with a light sword —one with a solid beam of light for a blade — swung at him. Every time her blade got close, it refracted off of a barrier of force. I didn’t see any cracks like I would have from a traditional barrier, either.
“Hah! You’re going to have to hit me harder than that!” Ari stuck out his tongue. His attacker threw a punch next, carrying a blast of flame along with it, but Ari deflected that just as easily. “Nope! Keep trying!”
Is that just his shroud? How’d get that much more powerful this quickly?
My question had been mostly rhetorical, but Dawn’s analysis was a good one. He wasn’t attacking, just dancing around the pillar cradled in his arms like a baby.
It was kind of adorable, honestly.
Walter was more actively fighting against the other attacker, who was using a whip that glowed with bright green energy.
The earth weapon was the one that could eliminate me permanently, and thus the worst possible thing for me to tangle with. Conversely, the light wielder couldn’t hurt me with their light weapon.
Strategically, going for the light weapon user was the obvious choice, but that didn’t sound like any fun.
I rushed straight for the one with the whip. He spun toward me, grinning. “Been looking forward to fighting you, Dawnbringer. If I take you out of this match, I—”
I hurled a blast of fire at him before he could finish talking. Fire was his elemental weakness, and if I could tag him with a few bursts, I could knock him out of the match entirely.
The whip-user side-stepped my flames, but the attack distracted him. Walter blurred forward, punching the whip-user in the jaw.
It didn’t count as a hit, but it did stagger him pretty badly.
Then, as the whip-user tried to recover, I stomped a foot down on the whip to pin it in place.
That, unfortunately, counted as a hit against me.
As the whip-wielder struggled to pull his weapon free, though, Walter smashed him twice.
Before Walter could land the finishing blow, I ducked down and grabbed onto the glowing coil of the whip — then yanked, hard.
The whip came free from the user’s hand just before Walter hit him a third time.
My suit flashed. Apparently, grabbing the earth whip had counted as a second hit.
Then, as the light-sword user turned with horrified eyes, I shifted the glowing green whip into my right hand. “Hi.”
She bolted.
I pulled back and swung the whip, managing to wrap it right around the sword-wielder’s ankle. Her suit flashed once — and then she was gone.
She must have already taken two other hits earlier.
By using an earth weapon against a light user, I’d eliminated her from the match entirely.
I tried not to feel too guilty about that. Instead, I dropped the whip.
“Ari, hit me with your axe real quick.”
Ari turned toward me and blinked. “Uh, Keras? You sure about that?” He turned toward Walter, looking askance.
“It’s a good plan.” Walter nodded. “He’s taken two hits and our goal is clear. Do it, Ari.”
“Oh! You’re just resetting. Got it.” Ari poked me with the axe with a comical degree of gentleness.
I vanished, reappearing in the waiting room for people who had been eliminated.
I had one hit left. Losing a full minute is bad, but if someone else was thinking anything like I was, they could have eliminated me permanently at that point. It’s better to have a buffer of a couple hits.
I snorted. Sure, Dawn. Let’s go with that.
A minute later, I was back in the ring.
Ari was by himself, still cradling the pillar, but he’d moved to the opposite corner on our side of the arena. We were now standing inside a stone dome, completely blocked from the rest of the arena.
“Something happen?” I asked.
“The other team was on full offense. Walter’s still fighting them, but he insisted that I stay here.”
I nodded. “I’ll go out and close the door behind me.”
“Aww. Fine.”
I put a hand on the stone dome, making a hole to exit. Almost immediately, a blast of lightning flickered inward. Ari pointed a hand and the lightning stopped in mid-air, then flew off in another direction.
My eyes widened. “How did you—”
Ari gave me a big smile. “Hidden. Powers. Go on, get out of here.”
I rushed outside, then touched the dome and concentrated to close the stone behind me.
I dodged another blast of lightning, then the lightning user was in close and swinging.
Rather than a trident, she had a staff this time. It was all wooden, but still crackling with energy.
Dawn was right, but there was something else she was missing.
As the electrified staff flickered downward, I caught it in my left hand.
The jolt caused me to shudder for a moment, and my suit flashed to process a hit.
Then, with a single motion, I yanked the staff out of my opponent’s hands.
She stumbled forward when I pulled, then fell backward a moment later when she realized she was unarmed.
I snapped the staff over my knee, then the crackling lightning ceased.
The unarmed woman stared at me. “How did you...that’s...not even fair.”
I gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry. Want a running start?”
She gave one more mournful glance back down at her broken staff, then turned her head back up to me. “You know what? I’ll take it.”
She turned and bolted, presumably toward one of the nearby walls with more weapons available.
I let her run. There were two more people nearby, both attacking Walter. He was defending himself effectively with his halberd, but one of his attackers was the water-element guy, this time wielding a curved two-handed sword. Since Walter was using fire, a third hit from the water sword would take Walter out of the match.
Given how many of their remaining players were on the attack, I had to assume that was their plan — eliminate us with a full assault. Their couple other remaining players must have had some kind of emergency defense going, but I couldn’t see what was going on from my angle. There was a gigantic wall of stone in the middle of the arena now, and I didn’t even know which team had conjured it.
I focused on helping Walter, rushing for the water-sword wielder, but the man with the stone shield moved in my way, blocking my initial swing with a shadow-coated scimitar.
Bad move on his part. Light beats shadow.
I didn’t bother to concentrate on breaking the shadow sword, I simply pulled my blade back for a counter attack.
My opponent moved faster. He pulled back his other arm, and his shield split into six separate pieces. Each of them arced toward me, glowing with the characteristic green light of an earth-element weapon.
Ordinarily, dodging several projectiles rapidly wasn’t all that difficult for me. But I’d made a critical mistake — I’d underestimated how much other people could affect the arena.
When I moved to dodge, I realized that my feet were stuck to the arena floor. I hadn’t sunk into it like mud; someone had shifted the composition of the floor into some kind of adhesive.
When I realized that, I made my second mistake, moving my sword to parry the incoming projectiles instead. As soon as I hit one of the pieces of the shield, it fragmented again, but retained its glow. Two pieces split off. I deflected one piece, but the other hit me.
My outfit flashed. I had one hit remaining and more pieces of stone were flying rapidly toward me. I fell backward, trying to dodge, but the projectiles just shifted in mid-air to follow me.
Then Walter was in front of me, taking the hits from the rest of the barrage. He vanished.
The stone pieces didn’t. They continued to hover in mid-air.
The stone-shield user made a gesture, then they re-oriented and began to move toward me again.
I concentrated on the ground. A wall of stone surged upward, blocking the remaining projectiles. Then the water sword wielder came in with a slash from my flank, and I barely turned in time to block his swing.
A mental command shattered his sword into pieces.
My wall of stone exploded before I could do anything else. The stone shield user smiled at me from the opposite side, his stone fragments floating around him.
I was still stuck to the floor. I couldn’t dodge. Walter was gone. Blocking was futile; the shield pieces would just fragment again. I had one hit left, and a stone weapon would take me out of the fight permanently.
I raised my sword. The safe option would be to try to hit myself with another weapon, like one of the glowing pieces of the water weapon on the ground. Or perhaps just conjuring a ball of flame and hitting myself with it.
But I didn’t do safe.
I raised my sword and pointed it at my opponent.
I didn’t need to say any more. She could read my mind, after all.
A warm light began to emanate from my right hand, leaking out from underneath my glove.
I hope this works.
“Luminous Arc!”
Brilliant radiance erupted from my right hand and flowed into my broken sword.
The blast of light that erupted from my blade was nothing compared to what Dawnbringer herself could have accomplished. It was a thin stream of energy, barely worthy of being called an attack at all.
But it didn’t need to be strong. A hit was a hit.
The blast of light slammed into the shield user. He was momentarily startled, but quickly commanded his shield pieces to move. They surged toward me.
But light was faster.
With a mental signal to Dawn, I wordlessly blasted him twice more in rapid succession.
The pieces of his shield were mere inches from me when he vanished — then they clattered, inert, to the arena floor.
Then, I swung toward the water-sword user. I found him already running toward the arena wall for another weapon.
I pointed my sword at him, narrowing my eyes. “Luminous Arc!”
Nothing happened.
You okay?
I patted her hilt.
Thanks, Dawn. You saved me there.
<...I know.>
Get some rest.
I ducked down, briefly debating if I should try to annihilate the adhesive in the floor or just hit myself with fire to teleport myself out of the ring.
I didn’t have to bother, though. I heard an announcement a moment later.
“Team Dawn has scored another point. And with that, the match is over!”
***
After the match, we were ushered back into a waiting room. The arena workers instructed us that our next match would begin in a half hour.
Not a lot of time, but it’s better than nothing.
The waiting room h
ad chairs, tables, and a bunch of miscellaneous supplies in it. Most notable were additional uniforms and weapons. I immediately went and traded out my damaged sword for a new one of the same style.
Most of the team trickled toward the center to talk, with the exception of Shun, who simply lied down on the floor on one of the sides of the room. We gave him some space. Everyone recovered in their own way.
“Anyone injured?” Walter asked.
Meilin grudgingly raised her hand. “It isn’t much, but...” She showed a long burn on her right arm, which looked more painful than she was willing to admit.
“Shun, see to that.” Walter gestured in Meilin’s direction.
“If I must.” Shun sighed, heading over to Meilin. His hand glowed with green light as he put it above the injury.
Walter had called Shun our “secret weapon”, but I hadn’t seen any indication of that yet. His green theme made him look a bit suspicious, but he hadn’t demonstrated any abilities out of the ordinary.
I hoped he was simply holding his power back for more difficult matches. There were advantages to keeping secrets from opposing teams in a competition like this.
I was tempted to ask for more clarification, but given Shun’s general apathy toward us, I didn’t bother. I didn’t want to shift his disinterest toward outright hostility, and I didn’t plan on relying on whatever his secret capabilities were in any case.
How are you feeling?
Do you want me to try to feed you some mana?
I nodded. She had good reason to be concerned — items generally weren’t built to handle variable types and amounts of mana like humans could. While the slow transfer of mana through our bond didn’t seem to be causing her harm, deliberate transfer of mana at a faster rate had risks.
We’ll do it in a minute, I want to check on Rei first.
Reika had shapeshifted again to get rid of her wings. This was probably a mistake, since her uniform looked like it was about one stray breeze away from falling apart.
“How are you holding up?” I asked her.
“I’m great.” She grinned. “Meilin and I made a great team! We’re going to smash ‘em again in the next match, right Mei?”
