“Boy, you guys sure are a quiet bunch!” Hadrik says, after a few more minutes of awkward silence. “Fine, I’ll break the ice, then. Come on, ask me anything!”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m curious. Why did you rush to defend Kate earlier in the clearing, when you didn’t even know who she was?”
“Well, I’d heard all about the Beacon from Kate’s friend, and she also taught me how to differentiate between artificial mages and banshees by the feel of their magical aura. I couldn’t just stand by and let a tragedy happen before my eyes because of an unfortunate misunderstanding!”
“Could you tell me how you and Diane met?” Kate asks Hadrik.
“Diane?…” the dwarf says, confused. “Oh, right, that’s what your friend was called! We met by chance this afternoon, while I was searching for a powerful opponent to fight. I mistook her for a banshee, and was excited at the prospect of having a one on one battle with such a strong challenger. Unfortunately for me, she proved to be a bit too powerful, and she neutralized me with a single spell. Her friends in the blue robes ordered her to finish me off, but she refused to do it. They eventually stopped trying to reason with her and told her to just make sure that I won’t stand in their way anymore.”
“She… defied the ancients?” Kate asks, surprised.
“Aye!” Hadrik says. “When I realized that she was actually serious about sparing my life, I asked her if she was really a banshee, and that’s when she told me all about the Beacon of Hope, and about artificial mages.”
“Could you tell us why you like fighting so much?” Rose asks him.
“Why does a bird flap its wings?” Hadrik says. “Why does a snake slither on the ground? I enjoy fighting because it’s in my blood! My father was a warrior, and his father before him, and it goes the same for all the members of my clan.”
“Mahad selak…” I tell Hadrik.
“Mahad maktar!” he answers me, without thinking.
Hadrik then realizes the trap I’ve laid for him and starts laughing loudly.
“You got me, Barry!” he says. “Well played.”
“I’m sorry, I do not understand…” Rose says.
“Glory in life, glory in death,” I translate to her. “Many of the giants on the northern continent live and die by this credo, and some of the clans even use this as a salute between members. I read about it once in a book that described the races and cultures of the northern continent.”
“But why would a dwarf like Hadrik know this credo?” Rose asks, still confused.
“It’s because he isn’t actually a dwarf,” I say. “He’s a giant shapeshifting as one.”
“What?!” Daren asks, utterly shocked.
“That’s some really impressive deductive skills there, Barry,” Hadrik tells me. “How did you figure it out?”
“Well,” I say, “ever since I saw you in the clearing, I could tell by your magical aura that you were already shapeshifting. But shapeshifting magic can only be used to modify your size or to transform yourself into another creature. You cannot use it to disguise yourself as someone else. So I figured that you needed to have some sort of reason to make yourself seem smaller than you actually were. It was then that I remembered your giant form from when you first called out to us. Normally it should be impossible for someone to transform himself into a giant, because it would break the laws of shapeshifting. That made me realize that it must have been the other way around, and that the giant form was actually your original form.”
Hadrik laughs again.
“Well, you found out my secret,” he says. “What are you going to do now? Will you report me to the organizers so that they can kick me out of the tournament? Are you going to use this information to blackmail me into helping you with the objectives?”
“What?” I ask him. “No, don’t be ridiculous. If I did any of that, then what were to stop you from also reporting me for having joined this mage tournament as an ordinary human? The reality is that the organizers likely just don’t care. They didn’t even bother to do some minimal screening of the contestants, and they let hundreds of ordinary people like me join this tournament without even considering the implications. Why would they care if they also let in a giant or two?”
“I think you may be right,” Hadrik says. “Well, I guess that’s enough questions for now. If we go on like this, I may well end up giving away my home address. Hahahaha!”
As we advance through the forest, we start seeing some bright yellow lights circling around the trees.
“What are these, I wonder?” I ask, as I point towards one of the yellow lights. “Overgrown fireflies?”
“Oh…” Rose says. “Oh, no… This isn’t good. We need to get out of this place as fast as possible.”
“Why?” I ask her. “What’s wrong?”
“These aren’t fireflies, they’re spirits of the forest. We must have entered their sacred woods by accident. We’re not allowed to be here!”
“What are spirits of the forest?” I say.
“They are guardians,” Rose tells me. “Sworn to protect both the animals and the forest and keep them from harm.”
“And who exactly decided that we are not allowed passage through these woods?” I say.
“The great golden fox,” Rose says. “Please, there’s no time to talk! We need to get out of here before it’s too lat—”
“Kate?…” we hear a woman’s voice, coming from behind a tree. “Kate, is that you?”
As the woman who appears to be Kate’s friend reveals herself to us, we see that she has a rather muscular physique, although it doesn’t by any means make her look unattractive. She has blue eyes, and short, blond hair that’s standing up on her head, likely as a side-effect of her electrical powers. She is wearing tight leather pants and a gray tank top shirt, while her age seems to be close to that of Kate. She also has a burn scar on her left arm, which is likely a souvenir from a hard-fought battle.
“Diane!” Kate says, unable to contain her joy. “I can’t believe it’s really you… You don’t know how long I’ve been trying to find—”
“You idiot!” Diane shouts, immediately silencing Kate. “Why did you come back? You aren’t supposed to be here!”
“Diane, listen to me,” Kate says. “I came back here to save you… I came back here to take you away from this place.”
“I don’t need to be saved!” Diane says, as she points at her neck, in order to show Kate that she is no longer wearing a collar. “I am working with them of my own free will.”
“What?…” Kate asks, confused. “But, why? I don’t understand…”
“It doesn’t matter!” Diane shouts. “What matters is that you need to get out of here. Quick! Before the ancients come back. And stop looking for me! Please…”
“No!” Kate shouts. “I’m not leaving here without you!”
“Yes, you are,” Diane says, as her eyes start glowing bright, and electrical currents start forming around her.
“Kate, maybe we should retreat for now,” I tell her, as I start to feel the hair on my skin stand up from the static electricity around me.
“No!” Kate says. “If she doesn’t plan to see reason until I beat some sense into her stupid head, then I’ll—”
Before Kate gets to finish her sentence, there’s a sudden powerful surge of electricity in the air around us, which shocks us all violently and then makes us fall to the ground in unison. Out of the five of us, I appear to be the only one who still maintained his consciousness, although I can barely move.
As I look towards Diane, I can see two men in dark blue robes approach from behind her. They are both wearing their hoods, so I can’t see their faces clearly.
“What’s going on, here?” asks the man on the right. “More intruders?”
“Look,” says the one on the left. “One of them is that dwarf she refused to kill this afternoon. He’s brought his friends with him this time.”
He turns to Diane.
“Well?
” he says. “What are you waiting for? Finish them off! Or are you waiting for them to bring even more friends to take their revenge on us?”
“No!” she says. “I won’t kill them.”
“Typical,” says the man on the right. “Move over. I’ll finish them myself.”
“If you dare to lay even a finger on them, I will murder you here and now,” Diane says.
“You dare threaten me, wench?” the man says. “Don’t you realize what position you are in?”
“Stop it, Zenir,” says the man on the left as he puts his hand on the other’s shoulder. “You know full well that we are no match for her in battle. Come on, let’s make preparations for our departure. We shouldn’t linger here for much longer, now that our location has been compromised.”
“You’re right,” Zenir says, as he calms down. “We should get ready to leave here as soon as possible.”
He then points menacingly towards Diane and says:
“Lady Meridith will hear of this, I assure you!”
“I’m counting on it,” Diane says, smiling defiantly.
Zenir frowns, and then he goes to follow his ally back to their main camp. Once the two of them are no longer visible, Diane turns back towards the five of us, and she notices that I’m still conscious.
“You are still awake?” she says, as she approaches me. “Strange… That high a voltage should have normally made you all lose your consciousness. So why are you the only one that was able to maintain his awareness?”
When she gets closer to me, she looks shocked for a brief moment, and then she smiles.
“I see,” she says. “You are a lessathi. Kate must really trust you if she’s willing to travel with you despite this fact.”
“Wait,” I start to tell her. “Why are you—”
“Take good care of her, will you?” Diane says, smiling, as she puts a finger on my forehead. “I’m counting on you to keep her safe from now on!”
She then sends a surge of electricity throughout my entire body, and the last thing I see is her sad smile, as I slowly lose my consciousness and everything goes dark.
Chapter 8
“Barry!” I hear Daren’s voice calling out to me. “Hey, Barry, can you hear me?”
I wake up with a slight headache and my vision blurry. As I start to see clearer, I notice that I am sitting in the middle of a room with stone walls and no windows, with the only visible exit being a metal bar door which seems to be locked shut. The stones used to build the walls look very old, are full of cracks, and there’s moss growing all over them. If I were to guess, I’d say we are being held in the prison cell of some old ruins. I suddenly remember Kate’s friend, and how she left us all unconscious in the middle of the forest. Is she the one that brought us here?
I look around me to see if everyone’s here. Daren is standing right beside me, while Kate and Rose are sitting on the floor on the opposite side of the room, with their backs leaned against the wall. Hadrik is standing near the metal bar door and knocking lightly on the walls around it, likely in an attempt to test their durability.
“What happened?” I ask Daren. “Did the lessathi bring us here?”
“No, it wasn’t the lessathi,” Daren says. “It was the animals from the forest. They seemed really upset that we trespassed on their sacred magical fairy lands. I’ll gladly bring you up to speed with everything that happened while you were passed out, but first, can you please shut off that infernal device of yours? It’s been beeping ever since I woke up, and it’s really starting to get on my nerves.”
I take out my stats device and see that I received four more points while I was unconscious. It must have picked up some energy from the air after yesterday’s fights. Given that I’m not exactly sure what situation we’re in, I decide to simply stop the beeping, and to keep the points for later.
“Finally!” Daren says, as I put the device back in my pocket. “At least now we can get some peace and quiet while we try to think of a way out of here.”
“Wait,” I tell him. “You said that some animals brought us here, but I don’t see anyone guarding our cell. Did they come by here while I was still unconscious?”
“Yeah,” Daren says. “A tiger and a bear came by earlier and started growling at us. At first, I thought the jailers sent their pets here to scare us, but then Kate and Rose started talking to them, by making weird animal noises. It turns out that all of the animals and monsters on this continent can speak, but they only use ancient languages. Monsters can’t speak in the common tongue because they don’t know any better, and the animals aren’t allowed to speak it because their spirit fox leader has forbidden its use after the humans started hunting them for food. It also turns out that having a basic understanding of ancient languages is not so uncommon if you were born on this continent.”
“Never mind all that,” I tell Daren. “Did they say what they want from us?”
“Yeah,” Daren says. “They said that we should wait here until their great golden fox arrives, and they apparently kept making jokes about how she will teach us all a lesson.”
“So, why aren’t they guarding us, then?” I say. “What’s to stop us from just breaking through the walls and escaping?”
“These,” Daren says, as he points at his neck.
For the first time, I notice that we are all wearing green collars around our necks, with strange markings written on them. I turn to Kate.
“Wait, are these—” I start to ask her but she cuts me off.
“Yes,” she answers me. “They’re the same type of collars that the ancients used on artificial mages at the Beacon of Hope in order to keep their powers under control. The good news is that I know how to turn them off. The bad news is that we need to find the device that’s powering all of these collars, before I can use it to deactivate them. These ruins were also built by the lessathi of old, so if they are anything like the Beacon, then there should be a control room not far from here.”
“But if none of you can cast spells, then why is Hadrik still in his dwarf form?” I say.
“Yeah, I was wondering about that too,” Hadrik says. “I guess the collars don’t actually dispel any spell that you cast on yourself before wearing them. They just prevent you from casting any more magic. The first thing I tried when I woke up was to turn into a giant, but this damn collar won’t let me cast any sort of shapeshifting magic.”
“You say that you can’t cast any magic…” I tell him. “But you still have your superhuman strength, right?”
“Aye!” Hadrik says, grinning. “But even with my power, I still can’t smash the collar around my neck. These blasted contraptions seem to be near indestructible. Now I was checking to see if the walls are as durable as the collars, but it looks like they’re just made up of regular stones. I should be able to break through them without any problem!”
“Wait, I think we should try to talk things through with their leader, first,” I say.
“Sounds like a good plan,” Daren says, with a sarcastic tone. “I mean, for all we know, this may well just be some cultural misunderstanding, and they only want to offer us a cup of tea.”
“Damn it, Daren, you know very well that this isn’t what I was—”
“Alright, everyone!” Daren shouts loudly, to cover up the sound of my voice. “It’s time for a vote! Barry says that we should all stay here and eat cupcakes with the queen of magical fairy land. I say we should make a run for it now, while there’s no one guarding our cell. Whoever also thinks that escaping now would be our best course of action, please raise your hand!”
All four of them raise their hands simultaneously. Daren and Hadrik are both grinning at me, while Kate is looking away, and Rose is smiling apologetically.
“Sorry, Barry!” she says.
“Well,” Daren continues, “since we’re running a democracy here, I’m afraid that you were two votes short of a victory, Barry. It’s too bad, the results were pretty close! Hadrik, whenever you’re ready.�
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“Aye!” the dwarf says, preparing to punch a hole in the wall.
“Stop!” I shout, and Hadrik interrupts his swing to look at me.
“Oh, for crying out loud, what is it this time?” Daren asks.
“What if this is all a trap?” I say. “Don’t you find it strange that there isn’t even a single guard watching our cell? What if they’re baiting us to escape, so that they can capture us again on more severe charges? Right now, the only thing we’re guilty of is temporarily trespassing on their territory. Given that we are outsiders and do not know these lands very well, we should have extenuating circumstances. But if we try to escape now, we’ll most surely have to fight some of the animals, and we might even be forced to kill some of them. Do we really want to make enemies of an entire race just because of a small misunderstanding?”
“Hmm…” Hadrik says thoughtfully, while stroking his beard. “The lad does have a point.”
“You can’t be serious!” Daren tells him.
“Rose,” I continue, “didn’t you tell us that this spirit fox of theirs is like some kind of god? Isn’t she like, crazy strong?”
“Oh, yes,” Rose says. “She is thousands of years old and likely dwarfs the power of most mages from this tournament.”
“So,” I say, “would you choose to make her into our enemy right off the bat, knowing that there might be a small chance to talk things through with her if we just have a little patience?”
“Well, when you put it like that, I suppose I wouldn’t!” Rose says, smiling.
“Oh, come on!” Daren says, exasperated. “You were all on my side a few moments ago!”
“What’s the matter, Daren?” I ask him, with a smirk. “Don’t you like democracy anymore?”
Daren frowns at me, but he eventually gives up and decides to drop his stance on the subject.
“Fine!” he says. “I see that you’ve all made up your minds already, so there’s no use in dragging this matter on any further. We’ll have a talk with this great golden fox and see where we go from there.”
Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1 Page 16
