by Eric Vall
The chatter of a large crowd filled my ears as I waited for the magically sealed doors in front of me to open. I took in several deep breaths and shook my arms to limber them up. Only a few more moments…
There was a click, and then the doors shuddered and swung outward. Light suddenly flooded into the tunnel. The sky was a deep orange, as the sun was already passed the walls of the arena, and they were immense walls indeed. I took a step out onto the white polish of the xanyarstone that the whole ring was made of.
The circular combat ring had a diameter at least as large as the dining hall. The walls around it were three times my height and also made of xanyarstone, naturally. Couldn’t have a magical dueling arena made of a material that couldn’t withstand magic, after all. Bleachers rose above the walls and they were filled to near capacity. Every student was present, and it seemed all of the faculty was too. The constant chatter of the crowd died as I stepped into the arena.
As I took stock of the spectators, I spotted Layla and Braden in the first row. They waved wildly when their eyes caught mine. I shook my head with a smile and waved back before I scanned the rest of the crowd. I found Arwyn, who sat with the rest of the faculty in a special section of the stands that had an awning. She nodded and smiled at me. Nia was at the very top of the stands, her perch far removed from the rest of the students, ever the loner. She didn’t smile or wave or nod. She just stood there, arms crossed, but her focused gaze was on me, and that was as good as an encouraging smile for her.
Gawain stood across from me at the opening of his own tunnel. His battle cloak billowed around him, sleek and tight across the chest and shoulders. It was gold as all elemental robes were, with the red trim of a fire mage. I felt snug in my own blue summoner robes, though I didn’t feel a need to wear jewelry to a duel as he had, his fingers were filled with rings.
He sneered at me as he cracked his fingers. I just stood patiently, arms crossed.
Suddenly, the Headmaster’s booming voice came over a megaphone that was attached to one of the tall buttresses that lined the top of the arena. “Students and faculty, lend me your attention.”
He wasn’t with the faculty, but it didn’t take long to find him. He stood in a large booth separate from the rest of the stands. Petyr stood behind him, as well as several other military officials. I gulped. It seemed that this would be my first real audition to show the world that summoners could be more.
No pressure.
The last remaining bit of chatter ceased at Headmaster Sleet’s words, and as soon as silence prevailed, he continued. “In the grand tradition of this Academy, I present to you two combatants who will fight in Rashni Kae, the Dance of Wills. Gawain of the family Maddox, fire elemental, and Gryff of Njordenfalls, summoner.”
A smattering of applause followed. The Headmaster waited for them to fall silent again. “A quick refresher of the rules for those new students.” His eyes found mine as he said that. “The duelist shall use all magical means in their possession to make their opponent submit or until one is unable to continue.”
“Know this,” he voiced boomed, suddenly grave. “I will step in if I perceive things to be out of hand, but sometimes that isn’t enough. People can and have died in duels, though we have all our healers ready to help if need be. If either duelist has second thoughts, please speak now.”
Like hell, we would. Though I hadn’t known I could die, it didn’t change anything. I’d already survived several life or death situations, I believed I could survive this. And though I hated Gawain, I certainly didn’t want to kill him, and I knew it wouldn’t come to that, not with the strategy I had in mind.
The Headmaster nodded at us. “Very well. At the gunshot, you shall begin.” He stepped back and gave way to Petyr, who held an ornate flintlock pistol in his grip. He raised his arm high, cocked the hammer back, and fired. The crack of the gunshot split the air and rang in my ears. It seemed so much louder than whenever I was firing them at the practice range, even though I knew that wasn’t possible. It was simply nerves, and I had to shake that off.
It was time.
True to what Nia had told me, Gawain was quick to make the first move. He flourished his arms, which suddenly were engulfed in flames. Score another one for Nia, he was indeed fast on his casting. Before I even had my hand in my cloak to draw an essence crystal, he gathered the flame into his palms and thrust it out to launch a ball of burning blue fire at me. I barely had enough time to dive out of the way before it slammed into the spot where I’d stood with a resounding boom. Heat washed over me and seared my skin, but not enough to burn me.
Gawain already had a second fireball ready as I leaped to my feet. He let it loose with another thrust of his arms, but this time, I was ready. I didn’t jump. Instead, I sprinted for all I was worth. As the blast exploded behind me, I gripped a handful of smaller essence crystals and let them fly. A collective flash erupted as my grunts appeared, three axe goblins, a few box ogres, and some daggerdillos. The grand strategy for this wave was simple, just for them to swarm him and distract, which they did perfectly.
They crashed over him in a wave of slashing claws, spikes, and axes. To Gawain’s credit, he didn’t bat an eye. He started to spin on his heel, faster and faster until his whole body was engulfed in a small swirling vortex of fire that protected his body. I continued to run the circumference of the arena, moving to flank him while he was distracted. As I expected, he was too busy to notice me as he swirled and pushed his flames out in a torrent that swallowed my monsters. They all fell in a poof, and each monster’s death felt like a prick on my skin.
But I had my opening.
I sprinted for him, arms pumping, with five crystals in hand, my wallerdons. I’d only had three, but Rori had let me borrow two of his from his vast collection of beasts for the fight. As Gawain came out of his flaming spin with a somewhat dizzy sway, I summoned the moving walls. They surrounded Gawain, connected at each corner, and trapped him in. The last one I laid on top to completely enclose him.
As part of my opening gambit, I didn’t expect this to stop him, and to his credit, it didn’t hold him for long. A jet of fire burst forth and threw my wallerdons and me back in a blast of heat. I tumbled a few times before I came up in a crouch. Gawain stood paces away, hands out as flames danced along his arms and tongues of fire licked his fingertips. He had a wicked grin that was directed my way.
“I’m not impressed, summoner,” he said.
I smirked back. “Give me a minute, I’ll grow on you.”
Gawain growled and slapped his hands together. When he pulled them apart, flames danced between his palms before they coalesced into what I could only describe as a fire whip. He coiled it in his hands and reared his arm back, ready to strike. I hadn’t seen this trick before, but I could adapt easily on the fly.
As he cracked the whip my way, I summoned a bullet bass, which appeared in front of my eyes just as the lash was about to tear across my face. Instead of hitting me, the fiery whip wrapped around the bass to no real harm of the monster. As I knew from the past and my battle alongside Nia in the Shadowscape, bullet bass were practically immune to fire, and I would leverage that for all it was worth.
My monster struggled against the whip as Gawain tried to reel it back. Interesting, that meant there had to be some physical substance to the elemental weapon. Before he could switch tactics or decided to ignore the bass entirely, I sent out a mental command to the bass. Immediately, the core of the whip started to turn to metal, an effect which coursed through the length of the whip back to Maddox. That’s when I summoned a lightning imp and had it strike my bass. The electricity surged through the bass’s chrome scales and traveled along the whip to my opponent. Gawain realized what was happening, but by then, it was too late. Fast reflexes were not faster than a lightning bolt, and the jolt ran up his arm and through his body. He yelped in pain and fell back on his rear which dispelled the whip in the process.
To press my momentary advantage, I threw as
many of my grade E monsters as I could. Trolls, goblins, daggerdillos, more than a dozen in all. I wanted to overwhelm him, force him to deplete his mana, but I had to give him credit, he bounced back quick. He rapidly punched at the air in front of him, as small fireballs launched from each with the speed of one of those automatic rifles I’d heard about. His flurry of attacks cut through my grunts like a hot knife through butter.
Gawain was trying to conserve his mana now, throwing smaller bursts of flame my way as I dodged out of their path. He chuckled as I did, but I saw the sweat beating down his face and the way he sucked in air. Gawain thought he was winning, but he only brought about his own defeat. I had time on my side. While I was sore all over and tired, I knew I could go for much longer.
I’d survived mana depletion in the Shadowscape. This was nothing in comparison.
Still, it was annoying to have to stay on the defensive. I ducked one of his fireballs, which soared over my head and seared my neck. As I came up, I tossed half a dozen crystals, all the elemental imps I had. They fanned out, encircling him, and before he could retaliate, they launched their own fireballs, thunderbolts, and ice spears at him. I made Gawain dance and dodge, so he couldn’t concentrate on attacking me. As he ducked, weaved, and jumped around my monster’s attacks, I lobbed more crystals. My wallerdons came out once again, which drained me to resummon, but I was on the attack. I couldn’t relent now.
Instead of boxing him in, this time I summoned the wallerdons in the air above Gawain. They hovered there for just a moment before gravity took hold. Gawain cursed as he dove away from the massive falling creatures, as they crashed into the arena floor with a series of massive booms. They dropped, one, two, three of them, but Gawain kept one step ahead of them. He threw fireballs wildly as he ran. My imps didn’t last long, but it was all part of the plan. I didn’t expect them to hit him, they were all targets to chew through his mana reserves and distract him.
“Pathetic,” he jeered. “You’ll need to do a lot more than that to beat me, but what did I expect from—”
As he was taunting me, I discreetly placed a speed slug on my hip, and before he could finish, I shot forward like a bullet and interrupted him with a punch in the jaw. Gawain’s head snapped to the side, and he flew back with the force of the blow. I stumbled forward as well from the sudden shift of my momentum.
I rolled through and tumbled back up to my feet. I turned to see Gawain laying in a heap a few steps away. He cursed and moaned as he pushed himself up as well. Both of his hands were covering his jaw, which I knew had to be broken.
“What the fuck was that?” he seethed, and I heard gasps from the crowd.
I smiled at him and plucked the large slug from my hip. I held it up for him to clearly see. “This is a speed slug, Maddox. Hard to find, easily dismissible as useless by the conventional rules of summoning, but it’s actually one of the few monsters that can enhance human abilities.”
He groaned. “You’re cheating.”
“How so?” I asked, bemused. “I summoned it using magic. It’s well within the rules. I basically summoned adept skills, so deal with it.”
Gawain roared as he gathered flames into himself before he unleashed his machine gun move again and practically filled the arena with a volley of fireballs from his punching fists. They came at me fast and plentiful, but I was able to avoid them with my enhanced speed. We danced around like that for a few moments. I ran around the arena, a trail of fiery explosions following me, but his aim could never catch up.
But Maddox wasn’t stupid, as much as I liked to think of him that way. The fusillade ended as he stopped trying to hit me. Instead, he curled into himself in a crouch, his arms crossed over his knees. I didn’t know what he was doing until his body began to tremble. Then he started to glow, as if the very core of his being was on fire. Flames so hot that they were almost white and nearly translucent curled up around him. My mind raced, the only thing he could be doing was building to a giant explosion of flame. This wasn’t good.
With a roar, Gawain shot up, limbs out, and released his magic. His flames blasted out in all directions in a blast so fierce it made a volcanic eruption look mild.
“Shit,” I said in a breath. He would swallow me in flames, for there was nowhere for me to run where the fire wouldn’t get me. As the wall of the inferno roared toward me, I fingered one small crystal in my hand, a last-ditch hope.
As the wave of fire was ready to wash over me, my bullet bass appeared right in front of me. It could absorb electrical attacks to redirect and amplify them, but it could also transfer its chrome-like form to other monsters, so maybe it could do the same for me. The bass was fireproof, as I had already illustrated, and unlike regular metal, the bullet bass did not conduct heat. I’d never tried to use the bass’s armoring ability it on me, I’d never had the need to test it before, but it was too late to try anything else.
As I willed the bullet bass to grant me its power, the fire crashed down on me and swallowed me up in a swirling mass of heat.
But I didn’t feel pain. I felt warm, comfortable. I looked at my arms. They glinted in the light of the fire, forged of shining chrome metal now. It had worked. My robes billowed around me, flame retardant as all mage robes were. Interesting to know that the bullet bass’ metal lining only encompassed my skin.
I let out a laugh of wonder and joy at this new discovery.
As the flames died away, the crowd gasped as I came into view. I guessed they expected me to be dead, but I wasn’t sorry to disappoint them. The surprised gasps turned to cheers the moment the sunlight glinted off my form. I strode forward confidently toward Gawain, whose face contorted in horror.
“How is this possible?” he gasped in surprise.
The chrome lining of my skin faded away as I pointed to the metal fish that hovered around me. “Bullet bass, my friend,” I said. “Versatile little bastards. Can absorb, redirect, and amplify lightning magic, is immune to heat, and can transfer that ability, much like a speed slug.” I shrugged. “Truthfully, I hadn’t known that last part until just now, so I thank you for making my repertoire stronger.”
Gawain growled. “No!” he bellowed. He flourished his hands, which shook with pent-up magical energy that he unleashed at that moment. The jet of flame coursed toward me, but I allowed my bullet bass to cover me in metal again as I casually walked toward it. The flames swam around me, washing over my skin, but their heat did not hurt me.
He kept trying, over and over, throwing his flames for all he was worth, but nothing changed. Sweat trickled down his face and his breathing became more ragged. He was running low on mana, which meant it was over.
“You’ve been beaten, Gawain.”
“No,” he yelled again. “I will not be defeated by a damn, worthless summoner.” He threw another large fireball that exploded at my face and knocked me back, but otherwise accomplished nothing other than to slow me down a tad.
“If I’m worthless, then what does that make you?” I mused.
He brought his fists together and shot a continuous stream of fire at me, hard and fast. It pushed against my chest like a hot wind. I had to struggle against it, but they did not stop me. His flames sputtered out as I came within paces of him, his mana nearly spent. As his fire finally died from exhaustion, I flicked a couple of essence crystals to either side of him and summoned my two cementrolls, one to each side of him.
As Gawain swayed helplessly on his feet, I had my trolls shoot their cement onto his hands and legs, until he was immobile with his hands hung loose and heavy at his side.
I stood in front of him, the metal peeling back from me. We were nose to nose now as he sneered at me, his eyes filled with pure, unbridled hate. All I did in return was grin from ear to ear. That only seemed to enrage him more.
“You’ve lost, Maddox,” I told him plain and simple.
That was when the Headmaster’s booming voice came over the megaphone. “It is over. Ladies and gentleman, your winner, Gryff of Njordenf
alls, summoner!”
The crowd erupted, and I let my shoulders sag in relief. My smile was so wide and bright that my cheeks hurt. As students began to stream from the stands and onto the arena floor, I saw Arwyn, smiling with excitement. The Headmaster clapped and nodded with approval as the officials around him showed how impressed they were with their thunderous applause. Last, I saw Nia at the very top, her arms crossed. She smiled and nodded at me, a gesture I returned in kind.
As for the students, my friends Layla and Braden led the charge down from the bleachers. Braden tackled me in a bear hug and threw me over his shoulder, his arms tight around my middle. As he did, the students engulfed us, and I suddenly had hands patting me all over, smiles and laughs and congratulations. When Braden put me down, I had no time to breathe before Layla jumped into my arms, her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck. Then she pressed her lips against mine, a smile curling with her kiss. That made the crowd cheer even louder.
After that, Braden lifted me on his shoulders as the students that surrounded us chanted my name. It wasn’t the entire student body. In fact, it was less than half, but that didn’t matter. I’d earned all of their respect. I had proven myself, before the military, the students, and faculty. I had finally showed everyone what a summoner could do. I’d defended Layla’s honor, made sure my friendship with Nia wouldn’t be torn away, and knocked my bully down.
No feeling could have ever felt better than that.
Chapter 21
Because of my quick thinking and tactics, Gawain and I walked away from our duel with only minor injuries and a minor case of mana depletion. After an incredibly awkward and brief trip to the infirmary with the defanged bully, we were both fine. With the intense high of my victory still fresh, it was time for a celebration.
