“What?” I say. “No! Of course not!”
“Interesting…” Azarius says. “May I ask you then if you know about the Beacon of Hope?”
“Yes, she…”
I take a short glance towards Kate before I continue.
“She told me everything…”
“Wait a minute,” Daren interrupts us. “Didn’t Eiden say something about the Beacon this morning?”
“Yeah, he said that Kate was a survivor from there,” I tell him.
“A survivor?” Daren asks. “Yeah, now I remember. And he didn’t want to tell us what that meant. What is this Beacon of Hope, anyway?”
“To put it bluntly,” Azarius says, “the Beacon of Hope was a human experimentation facility disguised as an orphanage. The purpose of that institution was to create mages artificially. Kate’s magical powers are a direct result of those experiments.”
“She’s… what?…” Daren asks, seemingly in too much of a shock to be able to form a coherent sentence.
“Kate, you were a mage?” Rose asks, surprised.
“Yes…” Kate answers her. “What did you think I was?”
“Well, those mages we met in the forest this morning kept shouting that you were a banshee, so I kind of figured that’s what you were… Everyone seemed to know what it meant, so I didn’t want to appear dumb by asking.”
Kate laughs softly.
“I guess labels aren’t really very important to you, are they, Rose?” she says, smiling.
“Still, I have to admit,” Hadrik says, grinning, “I didn’t expect to meet two survivors from the Beacon in the same day. This tournament is really something else!”
“Two survivors?” I ask him. “You mean to say that you’ve met another artificial mage here on this continent besides Kate?”
“Aye!” the dwarf says. “And she’s mighty strong too! She took me out with almost no effort. I’m pretty sure that she was using lightning in the same way elementalists would use water or fire. Being an artificial mage sure has its perks!”
“Do you know where she was headed?” Kate asks.
“She and her friends in dark blue robes have a camp set up not far from here,” Hadrik says. “From what I understood, they had no plans to leave until later tomorrow.”
“Could you take me to them?” Kate blurts out, perhaps a little too loudly.
The dwarf looks slightly taken aback by Kate’s sudden request.
“Please…” she adds, this time in a lower, pleading voice.
“Hmm…” Hadrik says. “You’re asking quite a lot of me, lass. I only barely escaped with my life the last time. Is this woman your friend?”
“Yes…” Kate says. “She is a very old friend…”
Hadrik gives Kate a long pondering look before he decides to speak.
“Tell you what,” the dwarf says. “I’ll agree to lead you to your friend’s camp on one condition!”
“Name it!” Kate says, her face suddenly lighting up.
Hadrik grins.
“Your friend over there has to beat me in a duel!” he says, as he points towards me.
“Barry?” Kate shouts, with a mixture of both shock and disappointment in her voice. “You want Barry to defeat you in a duel? You can’t be serious! Why him of all people?”
“Well, I don’t know if he’s a stillwater or not,” Hadrik says, “but I am quite positive that I saw him singlehandedly fighting a dragon in the sky a few hours ago. You rarely get to meet a worthier opponent!”
Kate looks at me hesitatingly, probably wanting to see what my reaction is to all of this.
“I’m not looking for an all-out fight,” Hadrik says. “We wouldn’t want to wear ourselves out completely before the tournament even begins. A short sparring session will do! No magic, no weapons, just like my fight with the stillwater from before. And since we’re in a hurry, whoever makes the other one fall to the ground first will be declared the victor!”
The dwarf turns to me, grinning yet again.
“So, what do you say, Barry? Are you in or are you out?”
“Sure, why not?” I say. “I’ll give it a shot.”
“Hah! That’s the spirit!” Hadrik says.
“Barry, wait!” Kate says. “You’ll get yourself killed!”
“I’ll be fine!” I tell her as I move to align myself with the dwarf, leaving about twenty feet of distance between us.
Kate doesn’t try to stop me anymore, but I can see that she has an uneasy look in her eyes. The others are now stepping aside in order to give us the space we need to begin our fight.
There’s something that’s been bothering me ever since we got teleported here. I’m not sure if anyone else noticed this, but the dwarf has been shapeshifting this entire time. I can tell by the feel of his magical aura. This is not his original form. As far as I know, shapeshifting magic can only be used to change your size, or to transform yourself into another creature. It cannot be used to disguise yourself as someone else. What possible benefit could Hadrik get from transforming himself into a dwarf?
I then suddenly remember his first appearance. Of course! Now it all makes sense! Why didn’t I realize this sooner? Shapeshifting magic cannot be used to turn yourself into a giant, but it can be used to turn yourself into a dwarf. He didn’t use magic to become fifty foot tall, he just reverted to his original form. Hadrik is a giant! The reason he is masquerading as a dwarf is likely because giants were never invited to this tournament, and he fears that they will kick him out if they find out the truth. This also explains his inhuman strength from before.
When shapeshifting into something smaller than yourself, you usually retain a small part of your original mass and most of your original strength. A single punch from him could blow me to bits. I need to be extra careful here. Even if he said this was going to be a sparring match, he doesn’t really look like the kind of guy who knows how to hold back.
Now that I know that he is a giant, I can use this information to my advantage! Since he chose to transform into a dwarf and not a human, his body proportions are completely different from those of his normal body. He even said himself that he wasn’t used to running with short legs. I’m willing to bet that this is affecting his sense of balance somehow. I just need to use techniques that aim specifically to knock him off balance.
Hadrik is now grinning and cracking his knuckles.
“Well, Barry,” he says after a while. “Here I come!”
The dwarf comes charging directly towards me, without bothering to use any evasive maneuvers. Just before he reaches me, he picks up speed and appears right in front of me, almost as if he’d used teleportation.
Instead of going for a punch, however, he attempts to prod me with his index finger. Even for a prod, his strike was so fast that I couldn’t even dream of dodging it. Instead, I get thrown back about four feet before falling to the ground with a big thump.
“Barry, are you okay?” Daren shouts as he rushes towards me.
“I’m fine,” I answer him. “Maybe just a little shaken up.”
“Well, that was underwhelming,” Hadrik says, disappointed. “I guess I was getting my hopes up a little too much for this fight.”
“How about a rematch?” I ask him.
“Hah!” Hadrik says. “You are tenacious, boy, I’ll give you that! Alright, then, a rematch it is! But I won’t be going easy on you anymore this time around.”
“No!” Kate shouts, as she comes towards us and then turns to me. “Barry, I’m really sorry that you got hurt for my sake. I shouldn’t have let you fight in my stead.”
Now she turns to Hadrik.
“Dwarf,” Kate says. “How about another deal? I will fight you instead of Barry, and if I win, you will lead me to my friend’s camp. But instead of a fistfight, we’ll have a magic duel.”
“A magic duel?” Hadrik says, with a grin. “Are you sure about that?”
“I’m positive,” Kate says.
“Well, then, we have a deal!
” Hadrik says. “You defeat me in a magic duel, and I will personally lead you to where you want to go! I’m just going to need a few seconds to get ready, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” Kate says. “Feel free to cast any protection spells you want. I’ve already cast mine this mor—”
As Kate was talking, the dwarf started rapidly gaining in size. The ground began to shake violently as he grew more and more, while his skin started getting covered in black scales and wings started sprouting out of his back. When he reached the end of his transformation, Hadrik had turned into a full blown black dragon, almost the same size as Tyrath.
“There,” Hadrik says, baring his fangs to show his usual wide grin. “Now I’m ready!”
“Gods have mercy…” Kate says, looking up at the huge monster that had spawned before her.
“Aaaaaah!” Rose starts screaming all of a sudden as she sees the dragon. “Stay away! Stay away!”
“Rose, calm down,” Daren tells her. “It’s just Hadrik in his shapeshifted form. It’s not a real dragon.”
“What’s wrong, Kate?” Hadrik says. His voice is much deeper and louder than when he is in his dwarf form. “You aren’t going to back out on me now, are you?”
Kate frowns.
“No,” Kate says. “I was just a little surprised, that’s all. But if it’s a dragon fight you want, then I have no objections.”
Kate is now assembling her very own dragon out of sculpted ice, with a size to match that of Hadrik’s. But this seems different from all of her other spells. The ice dragon that is now standing before us seems almost as if it were an actual living, breathing creature. This is on a whole other level compared to what she’s cast before. She must really be going all out.
“You may have the appearance of a dragon,” Kate says. “But you and I both know that shapeshifting does not grant you the ability to breathe fire, and you can’t cast any fire spells while you are in that form either. Let’s see how long you can last against my ice.”
Hadrik grins, and he soars into the sky. Kate’s dragon follows him, and in the meantime, she starts building a cage of ice around herself, which she then uses to raise herself into the air, in order to get a better view of the fight.
The two dragons are diving at each other and attacking with both their claws and their fangs. Kate’s reinforced ice seems to be holding up rather well against Hadrik’s attacks. I’m quite sure that Tyrath would have sliced through her ice dragon as through butter. I guess his ‘king of all dragons’ title was not just for show after all.
Kate is now ramping up her attacks by also shooting Hadrik with hundreds of icicles while her ice dragon is still on his tail. Every time that Hadrik tries to go for Kate, she moves her cage out of his way and sends her ice dragon to intercept him. Some of the icicles hit the black dragon in his left wing, and he starts falling from the sky, as the ice dragon takes full advantage of this opportunity and dives right onto its opponent.
The two dragons crash on the ground, with the ice one on top, pinning the black one into place with its claws. Kate is now slowly descending as well, still in her ice cage, and she looks at Hadrik, waiting for his next move.
“Okay, okay, I give up, you win!” Hadrik says, as he transforms back into his dwarf form.
Upon hearing his words, Kate brings her cage back down, and once she’s safely on the ground, she dismisses both the cage and the dragon.
“Does this mean that you’ll grant me my request?” Kate says, with a hopeful look in her eyes.
“Well, I can’t say that I’m really looking forward to it, but a deal’s a deal,” Hadrik says. “Pack your bags, Kate, I’m going to lead you to your friend!”
“Thank you so much…” Kate says. “I have a lot of money with me, I promise I will make it worth your while.”
“What are you talking about?” Hadrik asks her. “I already said that we have a deal, didn’t I? There’s no need for you to pay me anything. Now hurry up and get your backpack. It’ll be a lot harder to find our way through the forest once it gets dark.”
“Of course,” Kate says. “I’ll be right back!”
“My friends,” Azarius tells us, as Kate hurries past him to get her backpack. “It has been a great privilege to meet you all, but I’m afraid we must take our departure as well. I only have one question before we leave… I couldn’t help but notice that the four of you seemed to have been acquainted with the young stillwater from even before he teleported us all to this clearing. Would you by any chance know any information that could prove useful if we were ever to have to face him in a battle?”
“We don’t know very much about him, really, since we only just met him this morning,” I tell him. “From what I could tell, he has a ridiculous amount of magical power and can use multiple types of elemental magic. He also seems to be able to completely ignore the traditional laws of magic. When we first met him, he just bypassed all of Daren’s magical protections and put him to sleep with a simple wave of his hand. Oh, and one more thing. He appears to be virtually undetectable when he turns invisible. I couldn’t even sense a hint of his magical aura when he was hiding his presence.”
“Interesting…” Azarius says, as he smashes his staff into the ground and I feel a wave of air hit me in the face. “Well, unless he also found a way to completely eliminate his physical presence from this plane, we can rest assured that he at least isn’t listening to our conversation right now. I just used a sonar spell to detect all objects and persons in the area, and we are the only mages in this clearing. I also have another question for you. Do you know if he has any enemies here, on this continent?”
“Yes, he does!” I say. “Tyrath, the dragon I’ve fought in the sky a few hours ago was looking specifically for Eiden and wanted him dead. I believe that he’s made an enemy of the lessathi as well. He told us to deliver a message to any ancients we find, and tell them to ‘remember the still winter’. Given what I’ve heard you say about the still winter earlier, I can only assume that it’s meant as a threat.”
“I see,” the old sage says, as he strokes his beard. “This could prove to be invaluable information, if we are ever to make an enemy of him ourselves. The stillwater said earlier that he wasn’t participating in the tournament, but it never hurts to be too careful. Thank you for sharing this with me.”
“You’re welcome,” I tell him.
“Master Azarius!” the mage’s pupil says, as he approaches us, holding a map in his hands.
“Azarius,” the sage says. “Just call me Azarius.”
“Yes, master Azarius.”
The sage sighs.
“Tell me, Henry, what is it?”
“I noticed that there is an unusually large concentration of magic around this area,” Henry says, while pointing at the lower side of his map. “Perhaps it could be what we are looking for?”
“Perhaps…” Azarius says. “At any rate, it’s not very far from here, so I suppose we could make it there before it gets too dark to see anything. Mark the location on the map.”
“Understood,” Henry says.
As Kate comes back with her backpack, Azarius turns to us.
“Goodbye, my friends,” he says. “I wish you all safe travels, and I hope we’ll meet again.”
“Goodbye, Azarius! Goodbye, Henry!” Rose says, as we all wave to them. “I’m sure that our paths will cross again someday!”
Henry looks back towards us with a surprised expression on his face. He probably isn’t used to people acknowledging his existence as he travels alongside the Sage of the West. He nods curtly to Rose, and then he hurries to catch up with Azarius, as they both slowly distance themselves from us and disappear into the depths of the forest.
“Well…” Kate says. “I suppose I should get going too.”
Daren, Rose and I all turn to look at her simultaneously.
“I… guess this is goodbye…” Kate says. “We’ve had our ups and downs, but I’m really glad that I got to spend this
short time with you. Thank you all very much for the patience you’ve shown me!”
She then takes a deep bow, and she prepares to take her leave.
“Kate, what are you saying all of a sudden?” Rose asks her. “You do realize we’re coming with you, right?”
“We are?” Daren starts to say, but I hit him in the side with my elbow. “I mean, uh… Of course we are. Naturally!”
“What?…” Kate says, shocked. “No, Rose, you can’t! What about all of the sick people waiting for you in your hometown?”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that!” Rose says. “With all of the shortcuts we’ve been taking so far, I am days ahead of my original schedule. I would’ve never had the courage to take such a direct route if you hadn’t been there to escort me. Accompanying you on your way to meet your friend is the least I can do to pay you back. And besides, Hadrik said that the camp you are headed for isn’t that far from here. Isn’t that right, Hadrik?”
“Aye,” Hadrik answers her. “It’s true!”
“There, you see?” Rose says, smiling. “Everything works out just fine!”
“But… I couldn’t…” Kate starts to say, but Hadrik interrupts her.
“It’s settled then!” he says loudly, completely drowning out the sound of Kate’s voice. “We all go to see Kate’s friend! Now come on, follow me, I’m going to try and take a shortcut.”
With these final words, we all grab our backpacks and hurry up to follow Hadrik. Kate just stands there for a few moments, unsure of what to do, but then she decides to follow him too, and before long, she starts walking side by side with us again, as if our previous discussion never even took place.
We walk in complete silence for a few minutes. Kate has always been the silent type, so I’m not really surprised about her, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Daren go for more than a minute without opening his mouth. He must still be in shock after what he’s heard about the Beacon. He’s probably still having a hard time internalizing that information, given how adamantly he’s been holding on to the opinion that Kate was a banshee until now.
Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1 Page 15
