“Great!” Daren says. “Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s be off! Adventure awaits!”
“Wait,” I call out to the woman, as she turns to leave. “You still didn’t tell us your name.”
The woman turns towards me and gives me a pondering look. After careful consideration, she decides to answer.
“It’s Kate,” she says. “My name is Kate.”
With those last words, the three of us leave the clearing and head into the forest, in the hopes of finding some place away from the ongoing battles that are being waged across the land.
As we march through the forest, I hear a few loud beeps coming from my right pocket.
“Barry, what’s that sound?” Daren asks. “I know that sound. Don’t tell me you brought a fortune teller’s trinket with you all the way here. Are you planning to tell us our fortunes, Barry?”
A fortune teller’s trinket. That’s what most people call these devices nowadays. But very few people know what they really do, and how they actually work. My research has led me to believe that these devices harness their energy from the magic all around them. The more energy they harness, the more effective they become. Since mages are usually spread far apart from one another and they don’t really have any reason to cast powerful spells one after the other, the effects of such a device are mostly negligible.
But imagine the amount of energy it could gather in a place filled with the most powerful mages in the world who are constantly fighting each other.
I pull the device out of my pocket. It looks much like a toy, with a few buttons and a screen. As I press the buttons, different letters magically appear on the screen, forming words, and showing me numbers. The device calls these my ‘stats’, and there are nine of them, in total. My stats consist mostly of various physical attributes such as strength, speed, reflexes, toughness, observation and hearing, but there are also three other stats that are called combat technique, ancient languages and premonition.
When the device harnesses enough energy, it announces me by beeping, and it then allows me to invest a limited number of points in my stats. At the moment, all of my stats are at zero, which means that the device’s energy was completely depleted when I bought it. I guess I’ll have to start leveling them from scratch.
Investing my points in stats is supposed to actually enhance my real attributes, as long as I keep the device close enough to me that it comes into contact with my magical aura. As I spend my time here, I’m expecting to hear these beeps more and more often. I’ll have to think twice about the way I spend my points though, since I have no way of knowing when I’ll get my next batch of points, and no way to change my mind after I’ve invested them. Each stat currently seems to have a maximum value of three, but this number is likely to increase as I spend more time on the continent.
This device is mostly used by fortune tellers because of its premonition stat. It provides them with some very vague glimpses into the future that they are then free to interpret to their own liking. I wonder if the ancient languages stat actually means that I’ll start being able to understand and speak ancient tongues. I heard there are many such writings on this continent. And I heard some people here don’t speak the common tongue.
I don’t think that I should be investing in the physical stats right away. I’m not exactly sure what these numbers represent, but something tells me that a maximum level of three is not going to help me much against trained mages, even if I spend my points on speed or strength. I’ll start investing in those stats once their maximum level increases. For now, I think that I should put some points into my ancient languages stat, since it might give me some advantage over the other mages, in case we’ll need to travel through ancient ruins as part of our objectives. I also want to test to what extent this premonition stat could actually help me predict the future. If the visions are clear enough, this stat might prove to be incredibly useful.
Since I’ve only been given three points to invest so far, I decide to spend two of them on my ancient languages stat, and one on the premonition stat.
“Barry,” Daren says, as he sees me fiddling with the stat device’s buttons, “don’t you think there are more important things to do right now than playing around with that toy?”
“This isn’t a toy,” I answer him as I put the device back into my pocket. “And I think you should pay more attention to where you’re going instead of lecturing me, because I see we just ran out of forest.”
“Quiet, the two of you!” Kate says. “We’ve got company.”
She’s right. Looking all around us, I see there are fallen trees everywhere in this area, and there are quite a few dead bodies lying around. It seems there’s been a battle here, or maybe several. The victors were in the middle of looting the bodies when they noticed us.
There are three of them in total. One of them is considerably well-built for a mage. He has a very long black beard covering his face, he seems to be in his mid-forties, he’s wearing heavy armor and he is holding a large battle-axe in his hands. The other two are a bit skinnier and younger and are wearing chainmail vests instead, but they’re holding no weapons. The bearded mage with the battle-axe shouts to Daren:
“Quite the team you’ve assembled there, healer in armor. A healer, a banshee and an ordinary human. It’s like you’re dying to lose this tournament!”
Kate was visibly affected by the banshee comment. Her eyes twitched and her look went subconsciously towards the ground.
“Mind your tongue, fool,” I reply to him. “Who are you calling an ordinary human? Have you not heard of stillwaters?”
“Hah!” the bearded mage says. “Stillwaters are legends and nothing more! I don’t know what you were trying to achieve by joining this tournament, boy, but soon it won’t matter anymore.”
“Why?” Daren asks the bearded mage. “Why have you done this?”
He gestures towards the lifeless bodies lying all around us.
“Nobody told us that we should start killing each other!” Daren continues. “They told us there are no rules until they give us our first objectives. We don’t even know if there was going to be combat involved! Why did you have to kill all of these people?”
“Because there are no rules,” answers the mage with the battleaxe. “No rules means we can do whatever we want. And what we want is to eliminate as much of the competition as possible before the main event starts!”
He grins.
“My sons and I were a little worried at first!” he continues. “We were afraid we might not be ready for the big leagues.”
He then raises his hands and takes a victorious stance.
“But here we are!” the bearded mage says, grinning.
He pauses for a few seconds, as he lowers his hands.
“But enough talk!” the bearded mage says. “I think we all know what’s coming next!”
His grin then widens, as he looks straight at me.
“First rule of combat,” he continues.
Suddenly, one of the two younger mages that were standing next to the mage with the battle-axe vanishes and appears right behind me, with a dagger in his hand.
“Always kill the weakest enemies first,” the bearded mage continues.
Shortly after the young mage appears behind me, I see a vision of him slashing his dagger towards my neck. Was that… a premonition?
Sure enough, the young mage now slashes his dagger in the exact same way he did in my vision. Knowing where the hit’s coming from, I manage to dodge it at the very last second. Right after I dodge, the mage kicks me hard in the chest, knocking me flat on my back.
“Barry!” Daren screams, as he rushes between me and my attacker, blocking the next strike with his shield.
“Hah!” the bearded mage says. “You left the woman undefended! Classic mistake.”
Right after he’s done talking, his second son makes a dozen swords appear out of thin air, floating in front of him, and he sends them all flying towards Kate. Just
as the swords reach her, Kate’s left arm gets covered in a large, thick block of ice, sculpted in the form of a shield. She puts it in front of her, and all of the swords get stuck into it.
“Left the woman undefended?” Kate asks. “So which is it, then? Woman?… Or banshee?”
She lowers her left arm to reveal her face, as she looks straight at the mage with the black beard. Her eyes are brimming with fury.
“Make up your mind!” she shouts, as the whole forest falls silent from the sound of her voice.
The mage with the battle-axe seems to have temporarily lost his cool, and he’s looking a bit terrified. And he should be. Kate’s killing intent is so strong, that it almost seems palpable.
“I see backstabbers and sword throwers,” she shouts. “And you call yourselves mages? Come. I’ll show you real magic!”
As she talks, the air all around us seems to be getting colder. So this is what it feels like to be in a tournament alongside the most powerful mages in the world.
The bearded mage seems to have shaken off his fear from earlier, and he’s now looking directly at Kate.
“Your parlor tricks won’t save you a second time, wench,” he says. “I don’t care if you’re a banshee or not. None of you are going to leave this place alive!”
He then rushes towards Daren, with his battle-axe ready to strike.
As he approaches, I realize that if I don’t do something quick, Daren will be forced to fight both the older and the younger mage by himself while also defending me, and he won’t have the luxury of using healing spells since they require him to be calm and relaxed in order to cast them.
However, if I try to handle the younger mage myself, I might just get in Daren’s way. It’s better to leave things to him, for now, and try to follow his lead as much as possible.
Kate seems to have gotten the sword throwing mage’s undivided attention. He is constantly sending swords her way from every direction, as she creates walls of ice to block his attacks. We’re lucky. With Daren’s weakness against weapons and my lack of magical talents, that mage would probably have been the hardest for us to fight.
As the bearded mage reaches us, his battle-axe clashes loudly with Daren’s sword.
“I see you’ve enchanted your weapon well, healer,” the bearded mage says. “But how long can you last against a battle-hardened warrior such as myself?”
He roars, and he presses his battle-axe harder against Daren’s sword. The younger mage tries to have another go at me with his dagger, but Daren intercepts his strike with his shield.
“How long do you plan on defending this little whelp?” the bearded mage says. “You can’t protect him and fight the both of us at the same time! Abandon the boy, and maybe you’ll stand a chance!”
“Never!” Daren shouts, as he slashes towards the bearded mage and his blade meets the battle-axe’s steel yet again.
In the meantime, the mage fighting Kate has managed to surround her with floating swords, aimed at her from every direction. He sends them all at her simultaneously, in an attempt to overwhelm her defenses. She quickly surrounds herself with a sphere of very thick ice, and all of the swords get stuck into it before they reach her. As she dismisses the sphere, all the hundreds of swords drop to the ground, with a deafening clang.
The mage with the dagger is very keen on landing a blow at me. Daren has managed to successfully block every one of his hits that were aimed at me, but he got himself hurt in the process more than once. Even with his full body armor equipped, I can tell he won’t last much longer this way. Something needs to be done.
“Kate, help!” I yell, while Daren is still trying to keep the two attackers at bay.
Kate doesn’t show any sign of having heard me, and she continues to defend herself from the swords flying at her.
“Kate!” I shout again. “They’re killing him!”
As I finish shouting, Kate briefly looks in my direction, and she extends her right arm towards the dagger wielding mage, with her palm facing him. A cone of ice comes slowly out of her palm, with its sharp end aimed towards the mage’s head.
Everything that followed happened almost in an instant. She sent the cone of ice flying straight into the young mage’s head, killing him instantly. The older mage’s shock of seeing his son die in front of him provided enough of an opening for Daren to cut his head right off his shoulders. As the sword throwing mage was still recovering from what he’d just seen happen, Kate quickly created a sword made of ice out of thin air, and she sent it flying straight at him, impaling him through the heart and killing him on the spot.
It was a gruesome show, but at this point, all I care about is that I somehow managed to make it out of that alive.
Daren is looking very angry. He is giving me an accusatory look as he’s healing his wounds.
“Barry, we need to talk,” he says. “You haven’t been completely honest with me, and we almost died back there because of it. You’re not really a stillwater, are you?”
“No… I’m not,” I admit.
“But you’re not one of the locals either,” Daren says. “Otherwise that spell of theirs would have alerted us the moment we sensed your presence.”
He is talking about the spell that the organizers of the tournament cast on each of the participants before teleporting us here. We aren’t allowed to hurt the humans that live on this continent, so their spell warns us when one of them is near. If what they said can be believed, their spell is supposed to stop us even before we try hurting any of the locals. If it’s accidental, then it simply stops us before doing it. If it’s intentional, it eliminates us from the tournament and sends us back to our own continents.
Their spell is also supposed to act as a means of communication with the organizers. They said they’ll transmit the objectives to each of us individually. It’s funny. All of those careful preparations on their side, and they never even bothered to check if I was a mage or not. Hell, what am I saying? They probably didn’t even care.
“So you must be a participant, then,” Daren continues. “What reason would you have to participate in a tournament against the most powerful mages in the world?”
I am after the same thing as every other participant in this tournament, Daren, but I’m not sure how wise it would be to tell you of this.
I’m after the prize that’s being offered to the winner. The Magium.
Nobody knows exactly what it looks like, or what it’s made of, but everyone knows the fact that it is the source of all magic in the world, and that it can only be found on the continent of Varathia. All mages seek it. They crave it. They are certain that if they have access to it, they can increase their powers a hundredfold and become living legends. And although it is a common misconception that the Magium is only useful for learned mages, my studies have led me to believe that the Magium is so extraordinary that it can even turn a normal human into a mage.
I’ve searched very long for a way to get into Varathia, but the only way one can travel to their continent is by receiving a direct invitation. Very few of those are sent yearly, and the people being teleported there are being held under direct supervision for the duration of their stay, and return with no information regarding the coordinates of the place.
But when all hope seemed lost, the announcement came. A worldwide announcement by the kings of Varathia that they were organizing a tournament where almost every single mage in the world was invited. And the winner would be granted access to the Magium.
I knew then that there would never be another chance like this.
“Why did you join this tournament, Barry?” Daren asks me again.
After careful consideration, I decide that it would not be a good idea to tell Daren the true reason why I decided to come here. He may act friendly now, but I’m not sure how he’d react if he learned that I’m actually trying to compete with him and every other mage that joined this tournament. Perhaps it would be in my best interest to lie to him for now, at least until I
get to know him better, and until I get to confirm that the legends about him are really true.
“I didn’t come here by choice,” I tell him. “Believe me, I would love nothing more than to leave this place and never look back. But that’s not really an option for me at this point. All I can do now is to try to survive until the end of the tournament.”
Daren pauses a little to reflect on my words.
“Hold on, Barry…” he says. “I think there’s also another way.”
“There is?” I ask him.
“Yeah!” Daren says. “Remember the rules? They said they’d eliminate us from the tournament and teleport us right back if they detected any intent to harm the locals. You could use that, Barry! You just need to find any of the humans living on this continent, try to punch them in the face, and you’ll be set free!”
“I..uh… I never thought of it this way,” I say.
“Don’t worry,” Daren says. “I’ll make sure to keep you safe until we reach one of the cities!”
“If I might interrupt,” Kate says. “I think we should get out of here as soon as possible, before anyone sees us standing amidst all of these dead bodies and figures that we’re the ones who killed all of these people.”
Daren glances back at her.
“I don’t understand you, woman,” he says. “With the way you were fighting back there, why would you ever ask for an escort? Couldn’t you easily handle everything by yourself?”
“Everyone has their weaknesses, healer…” Kate says. “Judging by how much you’ve been struggling during this fight, I would assume that ironically, you are weakest against other weapon enchanters such as yourself. But just because I handled these thugs with ease, it doesn’t mean I won’t have any problems against other foes. No one can survive this tournament alone.”
“Yes…” Daren says. “I suppose you’re right.”
He then pauses for a few seconds.
“Very well,” Daren says, as he begins to head towards the trees. “Let’s keep going, then.”
Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1 Page 2
