by David Burke
Sure enough, as she walked out, cheering broke out. When Saber started to announce her, she cut him off. The audience grew silent as she silenced Saber. She then yelled out, “This match is not going to be anything impressive. I will show you what a real fighter can do. My opponent is nothing but a brute. Don’t cheer for him. Show him that fans of battle can discern true warriors.”
Kyle didn’t know how to respond. He had plenty of experience with players from other teams talking shit. It was just part of the game, but this felt more personal. He knew that he couldn’t let it get to him, though.
Saber seized control again and instructed both of the fighters to go to their places thirty feet apart. Kyle thought through the sequence and wondered if he should change his strategy or taunt her back. Instead, he just went quiet.
Once he was in place, Kyle stared across at her. She was gorgeous. Her veil was still in place. The chainmail armor and whip in her hand cut such a figure. As she displayed with Kierra, she might be cold and brutal, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hot as all get out.
The command to begin was shouted and faster than Kyle could react, she was charging at him. The whip lashed out and Kyle blocked with his left arm. The whip wrapped around his arm, but he ignored that as he swung the maul at her incoming form. Lash slid right under it and between his legs, taking the whip with her.
As she stood up behind him and yanked, Kyle was flipped over. The amount of force that she generated was staggering. She pulled his arm down and between his legs until he ended up on his back staring up at the dome overhead. It didn’t hurt, but he was caught completely off guard.
Kyle had no idea how she could be so strong. He had to weigh nearly eight hundred pounds. There were no scales here, but he was so dense, and his body was almost all bone and muscle. Yet she had just flipped him over like he was a ragdoll.
He was still processing what had happened when he found her on him, twirling the whip around to tie his arms up faster than he could grab her. The end of the whip was still bound around his left arm and after a couple loops, she pulled it taut and his wrists were bound together. He dropped the maul and he tried to yank her forward.
Shockingly, she pulled back and neither was able to budge the other.
“Fraud,” she said softly as she tugged. Before he could respond, he felt a tiny sliver of War Essence flow out of her and into the whip and suddenly his body was lit up with pain.
Since arriving in Verden, he had fallen far enough to make a crater in the ground, had been stabbed by spears, cut by swords, burnt, and electrocuted, and none of it rivaled this pain.
It was all that Kyle could do to clamp his jaw shut and not scream out. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Instead, he summoned his strength and kicked out with enough force to move his body along the ground. His leg caught hers on the side just above the knee and swept her feet out from under her.
The move disrupted whatever she was doing with the whip because the pain began to fade, and he no longer felt like his heart was going to explode. But rather than landing on her head, she went with the force of his kick and somersaulted back onto her feet. Faster than should have been possible, she shifted her momentum, and he found a spinning heel kick hitting his head. The helmet protected him, but he was still rattled.
Kyle still couldn’t figure out how she was so strong, but at least he had been able to yank the whip away. Between flipping her and then her kick sending him stumbling away, he had bought enough space for a momentary reprieve. A quick jerk told him the whip was too strong to break so he quickly rotated his hands and undid the loops.
Before he could free the end for the armor on his left hand, she was upon him. She rushed and leapt into the air, landing both feet against his chest. Her movements were precise and so fast he could barely follow her, let alone block in time.
As he stumbled back under her onslaught she asked, “Why do you look like him?”
Ignoring her wasn’t getting him anywhere so he snapped back at her, “You have no idea who I am.”
One hand came and punched him in the solar plexus while the other hand caught the whip and yanked him off balance again. “I know you are trying to imitate Krig, my lord, my husband, my god.”
Kyle gasped for breath as he said, “Not imitating anyone.”
A roundhouse kick to his knee drove his leg into the ground and as he fell forward, she moved into him and a rigid hand strike caught his throat. He saw it at the last instant and tensed up just enough to keep her from crushing his windpipe like she had with Kierra.
Happy for small victories, he listened as she taunted, “You will suffer for imitating him. I don’t know who put you up to this or how you are duplicating his aura, but you will pay.”
Her tirade bought him enough time to free his armor from the whip, but he was starting to grow nervous. More than a minute into this fight and he had only managed to kick her legs once and even then, she had recovered instantly. ”You don’t know what you are talking about.”
“I know that you will die. I will gladly pay your slave price personally. No one dishonors the war god as you are,” she said furiously.
There was clearly no reasoning with her. So, Kyle charged at her. It was only a feint though. He simply wanted to get his maul again. He hit the ground in a roll and came up with the weapon. When he came up, he reached out with Earth Essence. The action seemed so much easier than before.
This time when her whip lashed out at him, it bounced off of the earth armor as it bubbled up to form around him. That only seemed to infuriate her more though, for she cried out, “You prove yourself false. What sort of war god, or war elemental for that matter, would use Earth Essence?”
Kyle wanted to argue with her but calculated that any claims he made would only aggravate her more. Instead, he just would have to take her down. She was so powerful, though, he couldn’t risk going easy on her. Resigned to having to hit her hard, Kyle felt the War Essence flow into him. It made time seem to slow down around him.
It was a phenomenon that he was familiar with. Sometimes in the moment, his perception seemed to change. Time wasn’t really slower; he was simply more aware of what was going on around him. The more War Essence that he grasped onto, the more powerful he felt.
Kyle assumed that Lash could sense him using War Essence and his guess proved correct when she became even more infuriated. “Don’t touch his power,” she shrieked loud enough for the crowd to hear. Then she was charging at him. She had retracted the whip down the flexible staff she used against Kierra.
This time though, Kyle could sense her movement. He felt the way that War Essence flowed through her. She was attuned to it and it had to be what was making her so strong. He was able to move fast enough to dodge her blow as she lashed out with the staff and swung his maul around. He had to choke up on it, as she’d moved in too close for a full swing.
Kyle had timed it just right though. Her forward motion stopped her from dodging the blow and the maul connected center mass on her, right into the partial silver breastplate that she wore. Kyle expected to feel metal crumple, bones crack, and to then see her body go flying. The strike felt so right, and he could feel his War Essence flowing into it, empowering the blow.
He was shocked when instead a silvery flash occurred, and some type of mystical shield formed around her. It was a bubble that protected her and, more than that, rebounded the force of his blow right back at him. The metal head of the maul was split in half and the shaft splintered apart in his hands as the force capable of bringing down a quarry wall reverberated back through the weapon.
Instead of watching his opponent fly, he felt his body flung backwards until he slammed into the wall of the arena, cracking the very stone. Both his hands were broken. He could feel the cracks in the bones of his arms and his head was swimming with darkness, threatening to take him. Kyle could feel his body already starting to heal itself, but then there was a sound like a thunderclap over
head.
His vision was fuzzy, so it was hard to say for sure, but it seemed like some of the mages above had fallen and the dome over the top was gone. When he looked for where Lash was, he saw a great hole in space torn open in the center of the arena and nightmarish creatures poured out of it.
First lizard men with black and green scales came rushing out in two columns. Their bodies were all jagged edges, with spikey shoulders, elbows, and legs bent back on themselves. He almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Behind them came a monstrosity that crawled out and then stood up on three long legs. Its body looked like an orb that was ten feet across with eight tentacles waving around on the top of the boney sphere. Its front was entirely filled with a single large eye and a maw filled with razor sharp teeth.
It cried out in a deep guttural voice, “Kill them, my children. Sow the seeds of chaos.”
Chapter 28 - Interruption
Kyle saw the monstrosity, and something stirred within him. He felt a deep-seated hatred, more raw than anything he had ever felt. It was as though the very sight of this creature that he had never seen before caused him to feel such anger. A single word entered his head, “Aekor.” Part of him realized that it must be related to Krig, but he also realized he didn’t have time to get caught up thinking about that.
His hands were still healing as he lay slumped against the wall in a mound of the broken earth that had made up his earthen armor. His back hurt, but thankfully the armor skill had absorbed a good deal of the impact. Kyle looked out over the arena and saw more than a hundred of the lizard creatures all running out of the rift. Groups of them were charging for the seats.
As he looked closer, he realized that the lizard creatures didn’t actually have heads but a singular tentacle-like stalk rising up from where their neck would have been. The creatures moved with an ominous silence. They were all covered in scales and were armed with jagged sawtooth swords.
The audience began to scream and stampede out. Guards came running out of the tunnels to engage the monsters but there was only a couple dozen of the defenders. Three mages from the top level of the coliseum jumped into the air and were descending on currents of air. Everywhere he looked, there were so many moving parts. Chaos was the name of the game.
A quick glance at the section where the nobles were revealed a more organized retreat as their bodyguards began pushing the rest of the crowd out of the way to allow their patrons to escape. It was just more proof of how despicable the nobles were but, again, nothing that he needed to focus on.
Hilde’s voice came through in his head, “Those creatures are called glytharen. They were exceedingly rare above ground before the cataclysm. Careful with them. Each is proficient in a single type of essence and can project it out of their tentacles.”
Kyle asked, “What about the giant eyeball on legs?”
“I don’t really know. I think I read some legends about creatures like that but don’t remember the source. I do know that I’ve never seen or talked to anyone about such a monster,” Hilde replied.
“I’m going to go make sure that the other fighters are safe. I don’t really care about any of these people here other than them and, of course, Nyda. Oh, and I guess Saber is okay too.”
“Are your hands up to it?”
“All my bones seem to be healed, so time to get at it,” Kyle said as he started to run for one of the tunnels. The other fighters and slaves were probably down below.
Behind him he heard, “Where are you going?”
Lash was there. In one hand, she had her whip, and in her other a gladius. Kyle just looked at her and said, “I’m not here to save these people.”
“Neither am I, but how can you leave before our fight is over? Don’t you even know anything about who you are pretending to be?” Her rage was evident on her face.
Stopping to answer Lash left Kyle out in the middle of the arena instead of slumped against the wall. That got him the attention of the glytharen. Four of them came running at him. Lash struck with her whip and tripped up the first of the monsters. Then she slid forward and chopped through the arm of one of the others. From there she was locked into a sword battle with two of the monsters. They moved fast, but not nearly as well as her. Still, there were two of them.
The one that she had disarmed was on the ground with green blood gushing out of its severed arm. Its stalk stiffened and a small eyeball extended from the end of the tentacle. A green blast of energy shot out and struck Lash, sending her flying backwards. The one that she had tripped up managed to make it back to its feet and now she was being rushed by three of them.
Kyle acted without hesitation. It felt natural to go to her aid, so he charged right at them. Weaponless, the only real tactic that he had was to tackle them. Shoulder down, he bore into the first of the creatures and pushed it into the second, sending them both sprawling to the ground. His forward moment sent him into the final monster.
It turned to face him but because it had been running, that caused it to stumble. The monster turned, trying to swing its sword, but missed. Meanwhile, Kyle slammed his head down into a headbutt. The fin blade along the top of his helm cut deeply into its tentacle and sent it stumbling backwards. A grin crossed his face as he relished the improvised use of his helm.
He was starting to find joy in battle. Winning was the goal, but the simple act of fighting was becoming its own excitement. He laughed and then grabbed the wounded creature’s arms. He intended to wrench its sword free for his own use but was shocked at its strength. He had to watch where he grabbed it because of the jagged edges to its scales, but it was under no such limitation.
Hilde’s voice said, “Remember, they are monsters, they can have tier two stats.”
Kyle didn’t respond but took note of what she said. The creature moved with Kyle, and after the initial shock it became obvious that it wasn’t as strong as he was, even if it was far stronger than a human. He slammed the ball of his foot up and into its gut. The scales on its stomach rippled and he saw what looked like foot-wide mouth open up in the middle of its body.
The force from his kick sent it flying. Kyle grabbed the sword when it flew free. A quick shift of his grip and he stepped forward to chop the tentacle the rest of the way off. This caused it to collapse, seemingly dead. This life form was so different from what he knew, without a head and apparently having a mouth where its stomach was. Then he realized something. He could tell that it was dead. The essence in it was dissipating out into the surrounding atmosphere.
Kyle turned to see Lash and the other two engaged in a sword battle. She was chopping them up a slice at a time, but they seemed exceptionally durable. Behind her, the one she had cut the arm off was watching as if it could see through that eye on the end of its tentacle. The tentacle weaved back and forth, and it was clearly preparing to fire again.
Kyle was too far to intervene but suddenly everything fell into place. He knew what he needed to do. The knowledge locked into place in his head. His arm reared back, and he threw the sword. It spun through the air. The sawtooth sword wasn’t made for that, but he managed to make it work. With enough strength behind it, he still made the throw. The blade cut the tentacle off just as a flash of green appeared.
Lash looked back at him as she brought the second of her opponents down.
“Look, we need to work together if we are going to take them down. Yes, I want to kill these things, but I am more concerned about making sure the people I know here get away safely. That includes you, Marie.”
She scowled at him. “How do you know that name?”
“This is a battle, not a time to talk.”
“Very well, but you will owe me an explanation afterwards. Judging from how you fight, I have far more experience at this than you do, so follow my lead,” Marie ordered.
After that they rushed at the nearest group of the glytharen. Kyle noticed that the large creature in the center had been delayed by a circle of robed magi but
each of the tentacles on the top of its head were shooting out different colored beams and one by one the wizards were falling.
He let that go though. An important lesson in life, whether it be baseball or combat, was to focus on your part. He had to win his fight and couldn’t worry about the others. As he and Marie hit the next group, they rescued a small group of viewers who had been caught in the stands. Fighting on the stone bleachers made for an unstable surface, but the more he fought, the more Kyle felt an urge to slay them all.
What shocked him the most was how he fell into a rhythm with Marie. He began to be able to anticipate her movements. When she went low with a whip to tangle up a foot, he would go high and sever a tentacle. As their unity grew greater, he felt like these monsters were easy prey. Each time that he landed a killing blow, he could feel a small amount of essence seep into him, but it wasn’t enough for him to worry about at this time.
For now, he was lost in the joy of battle. He found himself singing songs as he fought. At one point he was even shouting out, “We will, we will, rock you, rock you!”
Marie seemed to notice the unity of their movements too, because she had lost that perpetual scowl and seemed to be relaxing. There was most definitely something wrong with loving to fight this much and maybe she was a psycho, but then again, he was the one singing.
When they finished their fourth group of glytharen warriors, the area around them was clear. Kyle paused for a second and scanned the broader area. The stadium appeared empty of non-combatants now. There were a couple clusters of guards left but they were falling too quickly. Only a third of the original invaders appeared to be alive, and another force was fighting near one of the tunnels.
It looked like Saber had already rallied his training staff and the other gladiators. It was a large group of over forty who were fighting to keep most of the rest of the glytharen from entering one of the tunnels. Kyle assumed Saber was acting to protect the flesh mages and the slaves who would have been working in the bowels of the coliseum.
