by David Burke
Then the day came when Saber gleefully told them that it was time for a little group training. The one who lasted atop the poles for the longest time would win a bottle of alcohol of their preferences. The one with the shortest time, would go without dinner.
Kyle personally didn’t care about the beverage. The water, with occasional milk and juice, they fed him was sufficient, and that was not even factoring in that he’d learned his body didn’t require much food to live. Hunger and his desire to consume food seemed to be more about the habit and the pleasure of eating. Hilde assured him that, since his body was only a construct made by his divine soul, he could easily live without eating.
Of course, when had winning ever been about the prize for him? To him, victory was the prize. Second place was only the first loser. It wasn’t that he didn’t love the accolades, trophies, and bonuses. It was more that those were secondary considerations for him. He competed for himself. Others were just beneficiaries of the show he put on.
Saber called out once the fighters were all gathered around. “Skrug won’t be participating. He is simply too big to make it work. He will be elsewhere today. But the six of you all need to learn to master this.”
He then pointed up as one of the trainers shimmied up a corner pole. Once on the top, he demonstrated leaping from pole to pole. The two-foot diameter poles didn’t seem very wide when he jumped rapidly from one to the next. Each pole was only five feet from the edge of the other, but it was still too much for a comfortable step.
Saber continued, “Now that would be too easy, of course. Laughably so for some of you. To make things more interesting, there will be a group of trainers around the perimeter, throwing everything from rocks to discs to spears at you. If you start getting really good, we might start shooting arrows at you. And if you somehow manage to make it past the two-minute mark up there, then I believe the mages have some surprises for you. So, who wants to go first?”
No one immediately volunteered, but many of the eyes went to Kierra. She was clearly the one favored to win this. Kyle wasn’t worried about going first but would prefer to see how it looked in action before formulating his plan. Finally, when no one else volunteered but everyone kept glancing at her, the lycan finally growled, “Pathetic, not one of you men will go first. Fine. Let the woman show you how it’s done.”
Then she latched onto the wooden pole with the claws that served as her fingernails. To say that she climbed up would be a bit of a misnomer. She almost bounded up the pole, pulling with her arms and pushing with her legs, only to latch onto a spot ten feet further up. A trio of rapid bounds like that had her standing on the top of the pole.
Saber called out, “Ready. Set. Begin.”
Sure enough, rocks, circular discs that spun through the air like heavy frisbees, and even a couple spears were all thrown at her. She made it seem effortless, though. For a full minute, she leapt and flipped her way around the top of the columns just as though she were on flat ground. Most of the time, the projectiles never even got close, although a few times she simply cartwheeled in such a way that everything headed her way missed.
Kyle was captivated. He had seen her spinning in the air to catch arrows but that had only ever been out of the corner of his eye and always on flat ground. The way she moved was almost hypnotic. But if he thought this was amazing, it was even more impressive when it came time for the archers to start firing.
Every two seconds, they fired an arrow at her. Each came from a different direction and yet not only did she manage to never get struck, but she also caught half of them. The first one she even leapfrogged and caught between her legs. It was the very definition of grace under fire.
Then the two-minute mark came and suddenly it wasn’t arrows she was dodging. First, it was a great gust of wind that caught her mid-leap and threw her from one corner of the square to the other. She only barely managed to catch a grip with her claws on the last pole before she would have been flung off.
Under the onslaught of wind, she fought her way back up, but he could see that the claws on her feet were digging into the wood in order to give her enough purchase to hang on. Then whips of fire sprung out from another mage and, despite her best attempts at dodging them, the best Kierra could do was jump about, trying to lessen the impacts.
The magical lash was far more responsive than a normal weapon and the lycan was repeatedly hit. Besides generating a small crackle of burned hair and flesh combined, the sounds only underscored her determination. She took the burns and kept fighting to hang on.
The third magical attack was one she had no defense against. An arc of lightning suddenly appeared. Traveling at the speed of light, it seemed to simultaneously connect with Kierra’s body in the same instant that it appeared at the tip of two outheld fingers, extended from the long sleeve of a powder blue robe.
It wasn’t like the video games or movies where the electricity rapidly traveled from attacker to target. No, it all happened virtually instantaneously.
Kierra’s muscles spasmed as she tried to resist the charge running through her body, but it didn’t matter. She fell from the top of one of the poles an instant later. When it didn’t appear she was conscious, Kyle rushed forward and caught her limp form just before she hit the ground.
As he looked down on her, he realized she wasn’t actually unconscious, just paralyzed. Her muscles were still randomly spasming and the charge in her body gave him a shock ten times worse than any kind of static electricity he had ever felt. He could even smell the coppery tang of blood from where she had bitten her tongue.
Selma and one of her assistants came running over, but by the time they got there, Kierra was already recovering. It seemed to take her a good minute to realize she was in his arms, because at first, she simply stretched and shook out her spasming muscles. She did so without making any attempt to get out of his arms.
He could feel the fur on her back rubbing against his arms and was surprised at how soft it was, not coarse at all. And unlike what he had sorta expected, she didn’t smell like a dog. Instead, she had almost an intoxicating smell—like cinnamon. It was as warm as her skin against his arms.
When she did suddenly realize where she was, she sat up. A look of panic crossed her face, and she was sitting on one of his arms in an instant. Her weight was nothing to him whether with one arm or two, so he just continued to hold his arm out away from his body. Her side was still touching his chest, and as she looked down to where they were in contact, he both saw her face go pink with a flush of embarrassment and felt her tail wagging against him so that it patted his abs repeatedly.
From there, she sprang to the ground. Quickly turning on him, her body language was hard to read. Her face said embarrassed, her tense arms and extended claws said hostile, and her wagging tail said something entirely different.
In that moment, he couldn’t help but tell just how very feminine she was. Not in a soft, squishy way, but a curvy muscular perfection like any of the fitness models he had dated would have killed for. The thought of how much fun she might be was only counterbalanced by the sharp claws held only inches from her face.
Eventually, she sighed and relaxed. Stepping away from him, she lowered her claws and then said, “I’m sorry. I was shocked.”
Kyle laughed and said, “Yeah, we all saw that.”
She looked confused for a moment before laughing briefly and replying, “Oh, I meant shocked that you were holding me. But you must have caught me when I fell. Thank you. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Oh, you look fierce but don’t consider me frightened, not yet. I’m not that easy to scare off. I’m just glad you are safe. I would have been happy to hold you longer. Your fur is very soft,” Kyle replied.
Their banter was cut off as Selma said, “I need to check her out. Thank you for catching her but now you need to go back to the rest of the fighters.”
Kyle nodded and moved back to where the others were standing. He he
ard a couple of jokes from the human fighters about someone getting a new pet, but chose not to let them get a rise out of him. Saber apparently thought their jokes meant they were ready to go next, because one by one he sent them up the poles.
None of the three humans even made it to the end of the first minute, with Burke having the longest time of forty-three seconds. Kyle tried not to scoff too loudly but his disdain was painted all over his face. Gilthan was called upon next, which was also fitting. Kyle was impressed with how agile the elf was. He appeared as natural and fluid at it as Kierra had been, unless one watched very closely.
The near misses against him were much closer and near the end of the first minute, a pair of rocks hit him and would have undoubtedly sent him sprawling. It was then that his use of essence became clear, although Hilde later informed Kyle that the elf was calling upon his stores of essence the entire time in subtle ways to speed his movement. This time, though, a cushion of air caught him midway down and rippled until it bucked and pushed the elf back up onto one of the poles.
The humans, bruised from their own failed attempts and only partially healed by Selma’s team, jeered and called out Gilthan for cheating.
Saber turned on them rapidly and said, “And that is part of why you will never match him. It isn’t cheating to use everything he is capable of doing. Any fighter who doesn’t use everything at his disposal would be a fool. You should just thank your lucky stars that Lord Soren still has hopes of getting some value out of you. Otherwise, the rules might be very different and some of you would end up as splats upon the arena floor.”
The sudden rebuke cowed the men, but Kyle had been paying partial attention to their discussion. Instead, he was intently focused on watching Gilthan. The elven sorcerer fell back onto his essence as soon as the arrows began. A swirl of air rushed around him with the force of a small tornado. Each of the arrows was flung off course just enough that he never got more than a shallow scratch.
When the magical attacks began, the elf seemed to effortlessly dissipate the air attack. The fire whips gave him far more trouble. His air shield only seemed to make them burn all that much more brightly so that when two of them hit him at once, he was knocked flailing from a center pole. This time he wasn’t able to catch himself until right before he hit the ground. As he sat there on the cushion of air, he looked first at the top of the poles, then at the mages in their robes waiting to rain more magical attacks upon him, and finally at the ground before his mini cloud disappeared and his feet drifted slowly to the ground.
“Wise man to know when to quit,” Saber said. Then he looked at Kyle and said, “I wonder what sort of wisdom a war elemental has.”
Taking his cue, Kyle found his own way up to the top of the poles. Rather than climb on claws or shimmy up like the humans, he squatted down and gathered his strength. Hilde was laughing in the back of his mind that he was still so physically dependent. Then he leapt high enough to have his feet clear the top of the poles and he landed on one of them.
It wasn’t nearly as graceful as he would have liked, though, as he stumbled forward and had to make a jerking leap to the next pole over. As soon as he caught his balance, he heard Saber signal the beginning. While down on the ground, Kyle had reasoned out that there were three ways for him to beat this exercise. One of them required him to be able to freely tap into his essence, and since that wasn’t really an option yet, he discarded that choice. That left him with deciding between making his own attempt at agility or just gutting it out.
For now, he opted to try agility. As the projectiles came flying, he dodged as best he could and started practically running with long bounding strides between the poles. His size was his biggest advantage and handicap at the same time. While he could make the leap between poles with just a running step he was also as wide the proverbial barn door and the highly skilled trainers didn’t miss very often.
Being pelted by weighted discs and rocks was no fun, but he soon learned it was inevitable. His durability was great enough that while they didn’t feel good, they weren’t going to do anything more than leave a bruise. He could endure that. He would will himself through it.
The thing that he wanted to look out for were the spears. Their metal tips were nothing to joke about, and he wasn’t eager to learn what it would feel like to be impaled on one of them. Fortunately, his agility had already come a long way. While he wasn’t anywhere near as good as Kierra or even an essence-increased Gilthan, he was still able to avoid the long flying toothpicks when they tried to skewer him.
A couple of times, a rock would hit him hard enough to almost make him stumble while landing upon a new pole, but his great weight saved him in that regard. When the rocks began, he breathed a sigh of relief, if only for an instant, as he knew what was coming next.
When the first arrow buried its head in his arm, his first thought was that it didn’t hurt nearly as much as he had expected. Over the course of the next minute, not a single one of the thirty arrows fired at him missed entirely. A few he was able to twist enough to get nothing more than a cut, but by the time it was over he had twenty-one arrows sticking in his skin.
His saving grace was twofold. First off, his body was apparently dense enough that the arrows couldn’t make it more than an inch into his skin. Secondly, with his size, that was never enough to hit anything vital. He had taken special care to protect his eyes during the barrage and it seemed to have paid off.
Even knowing that the tornado level wind was about to hit him, Kyle still found himself woefully underprepared to resist it. He was knocked off his feet in an instant and found himself strung out between two poles. His legs were locked around one near the top and his fingers dug into the top of another. He might not have claws, but his body was so durable and his strength so great that he was still able to force his fingers into the wood, partially splitting the top of the pole in the process.
He was still there straddling the air thirty feet up when the first fire whip hit him. It sizzled against his skin and burned his bare back. A grunt escaped his lips involuntarily, but he pulled himself up onto the top of the pole his hands had created gouges in. When the next whip came at him, Kyle reached out, trying to grasp it and earning himself a burned line across his forearm.
His plan relied on being able to grab one of the whips. Hilde had assured him that it should be possible, although she had felt compelled to tell him that if he only had a greater degree of mastery over his essence, he would be able to simply will the attacks out of existence. Kyle wasn’t happy with the continual reminder of his inadequacies, but he focused on his plan for the moment.
When the third whip lashed out, he was able to grab it and twirl it around his forearm. The smell of burning flesh stung his nose, but he blunted the sensation of pain in his mind. If someone had asked him how he did that, he wouldn’t have been able to explain. It was just something that he had always been capable of. It wasn’t new to his status as the supposedly reincarnated war god. Rather, it was just part of his commitment to excellence, to never giving up.
He ignored the burning pain that was starting to increase the longer he held the lash of fire made manifest. Then threw his head back and roared. The sound came out as more like some monstrous beast than a man, but it went well with how he felt. Along with the roar, he yanked on the fiery whip.
The mage who had cast it went flying off the side of his perch on the inside wall of the coliseum. Kyle heard a scream as the man smashed into the arena floor. The fall was less than ten feet, so it shouldn’t be terminal, but he figured if the guy fell wrong, he might have broken a bone.
A pair of the healers, or flesh mages as they were known here, went running for where their fallen comrade had landed. The unexpected turn of events brought Kyle a momentary reprieve. His blood was pumping and excitement flowed through him. He felt the burns on his arms more acutely now, but they began to tingle and were starting to heal before his very eyes.
The repr
ieve was short lived, but Kyle had a plan for this. Absent the ability to use his own essence, all he could do was hold on. The sick part was that this was actually going to be useful training for if he ended up having to face Gilthan in any of the matches. He dropped flat and hung over the side of the pole with his legs fully wrapped around it and his upper half supported by the top of the pole and his hands grasping his legs to try to hold on if he started to spasm.
Then the lightning bolt hit him. No matter how he had tried to mentally prepare himself for it, he still wasn’t ready for what happened. It felt like he was having a seizure, or at least what he imagined that might feel like. He was totally out of control, and his body was tensing so hard that he was crushing the wood of the pole. Still, he held on.
He felt his teeth grinding in his mouth and still he held on. No wonder the mages were treated with such respect. Normal warriors would be helpless against this sort of attack. They would long since have been rendered unconscious. But Kyle was just plain stubborn. He wasn’t going to let some skinny, robe-wearing, finger-waggling wizard outlast him.
In part, Kyle was relying on something Hilde had told him when first explaining about essence. If he recalled correctly, most human wizards couldn’t hold that much essence. So, he was betting on his ability to outlast the mage.
As he clung there, feeling his teeth chatter and his bones rattle, he heard Saber’s voice, “You can let go. You’ve proven that you are strong. Nothing more to prove.”
Through all of the pain, Kyle found that the effect on him was gradually lessening. He didn’t know if that was because the attack was becoming weaker, or he was adapting to it. There was always the possibility that he was just plain going numb.
Somehow, through gritted teeth, he managed to spit out, “Never.”
In his head, Hilde said, “I’m sorry for pushing you to this. You don’t have to become the war god in one day. If you keep this up, you could die.”
