by Andy Adams
Brenner looked at the giant wooden board behind the trader, which listed pairs of spellcasters fighting in Contendir matches. Each listing contained the Contendir ring, the spellcaster, their home biome, academy rank, and then the odds for or against them. Brenner’s eyes widened.
Gemry, at ring number four, was paired against a level twelve sorcerer from Aquaperni, Rodick DePallo, and the odds, Brenner saw with dismay, were 7-to-1 that she would lose.
“Three silvers on Gespelti,” he said, pulling the coins from his tunic and sliding them on the counter.
The trader gave a small laugh, amused at either Brenner’s choice of combatant or more likely, the small wager. He pointed his mircon at the coins, which floated to the Wagers bin, plopped in with a soft chink, and then out from the other side of the bin came a small, metal arm, much like a record player needle, which sliced a short inscription onto a metal wafer.
The trader floated it to Brenner, then called out, “Next.”
Brenner edged away from the counter, reading the smooth, polished metal: Contendir, Gemry Gespelti, 3rd day of the Games, Wager: 3 silvers, Odds: 1-to-7. He held tightly to it as he and Finnegan marched to the main entrance of the northern stadium. The crowds were thick.
Vendors at the gate saw Finnegan’s and Brenner’s robes with green Valoria crests, and waived them through the gate without charge.
“It pays to be an academy spellcaster,” Finnegan said.
“Yeah,” said Brenner. The free admission got him thinking. “Where does all the money from the gates go?”
“Where else? The Silvalo government takes all the money from admission, all merchandise tax, and betting on players. Then the council doles out prize money, pays stadium employees, the city guards…”
“So, who pays for yesterday’s burials?”
“I dunno. I would hope the council.”
“Hmm,” Brenner said, his brow furrowing as he worried about Gemry.
The two climbed up to a green section of the stands, where a large segment of Valoria spellcasters had joined together to cheer on their peers. The mid-morning sun felt warm against his green, embroidered tunic.
The scent of fried meats wafted over to them from the chest packs of food vendors, who strode up and down the staircases of the stadium, their loud voices calling out like squawking seagulls. From their vantage point, Brenner could see the vast arena, its surface completely transformed from yesterday’s Zabrani match, as if a giant had unplugged the lakes and heaved the ridges into their empty basins, then leveled the entire arena with packed clay. Drawn on the surface were four enormous, white rings—each larger than a city block—for the Contendir matches. Taking in the entire field, with each ring nestled in its quadrant, Brenner thought the pattern looked like four holes of a humongous button.
“Do you see her?” he asked Finnegan.
“Not yet.”
A woman dressed in rainbow colored robes flew to the epicenter of the arena and announced in an amplified voice, “Welcome to the third day of the games, and the thrilling sport of Contendir!”
The crowd around the stadium hollered so loudly that Brenner felt a physical wave of energy push against his body.
The master of ceremonies opened a wooden chest, and eight shimmering glowbes flew out like pairs of hummingbirds to the four circles, then divided once more and flew to opposite ends of their rings. She called out, “Please welcome the first round Contendir players: in the first circle, Baridus Silver of Montadaux versus Johanes Sparks of Vispaludem!”
The red and violet colored sections of the crowd bellowed their approval, as the two players flew, mircons in hand, to opposite sides of the first ring.
“In the second circle, Jerimani Warsett of Arenaterro versus Armelia Sommers of Safronius!” Again the crowd burst forth with cheers, as it did again for the third combatants—“Jardin Swarts of Aquaperni versus Darimond Toyli of Gelemensus!”—and loudest yet for the fourth ring, since it contained a home favorite: “Gemry Gespelti of Silvalo versus Rodick DePallo of Aquaperni!”
Gemry flew gracefully from the southern side of the dirt-packed arena and landed just in front of her glowbe in the fourth ring. Thankfully, Finnegan had used the betting chart to guide them to the side of the stadium closest to her ring.
The rules of Contendir, told to Brenner by Gemry while flying a few weeks ago, seemed fairly straightforward: using mircons, spellcasters won if they got their opponent’s glowbe first, using any spell, land formation, or flight maneuver to get it. Players lost if they left the ring, lost their amulet, or died.
“Combatants, collect your landform seeds.”
Attendants approached each of the eight players, offering silver plates with colorful pebbles.
Gemry collected the tiny seeds with her left hand, holding her mircon high in her right. Her opponent, Rodick, a muscular young man with long, sun-bleached hair, bent his knees and rocked forward in anticipation.
“Contendir combatants!” called the rainbow-robed woman with a flourish, floating high above and rotating to look at all four circles, “Begin!”
Sizzles of spellfire ripped across the four rings of the arena as the players sought to disable their opponents. Rodick was among the offensive sorcerers, blasting Gemry with a blue spell that she met with a protective Aura bubbled around herself. Sprinting forward, Rodick used the advantage of her pause to throw his landform seeds in front of himself, creating huge shafts of earth that pierced upward like gigantic rock crystals. Gemry used some of her own seeds to grow a forest in a semicircle in front of herself. A moment later, huge redwoods and firs towered on her side of the ring. Levitating up from the back of her territory and using the trees as shields, Gemry pushed forward, keeping one eye on her white glowbe, which floated in the back of her territory. The two combatants sent stunning spells from behind trees and rocks, blocked with Auras, and the game progressed equally for awhile, like chess players trading pawns, then bishops, then knights.
Then Rodick lashed out from behind a jagged rock, sending a red spell at Gemry. Brenner inhaled sharply—but the spell missed Gemry and hit the tree in front of her.
Then Brenner realized Rodick had intentionally missed: it was a scorching spell, and it quickly engulfed the great redwood. Gemry was forced to fly backward, retreating halfway back on her side while Rodick advanced past the center ridge. With a yell, Gemry cast a misty white spell at him. It hit him in the arm and stunned him momentarily midair.
Rodick clutched at his temples and plummeted to the ground, but at the last moment sent a spell to his face, purging himself of the mental damage Gemry had inflicted. Ten feet above the ground Rodick paused, hovering. Then he abandoned any defensive strategy of using trees for cover: pulsing through the air like a missile, Rodick fired spells at Gemry—ratta-tatta-tat!—with an intensity akin to a Gatling gun.
Gemry dove for cover behind a tall oakbrawn, sending counterspells at her opponent, but Rodick wasn’t allowing her enough time to get a clear shot. He pelted forward, now in the final twenty yards of Gemry’s field, rattling off spells as quick as his thoughts would allow.
Gemry cast an Aura over herself, floated out from behind her tree, and bravely flew straight at Rodick, lapsing her Aura for a quick moment to shoot spells back. Brenner realized Rodick must have had a large amount of elixir in his amulet, for he soon bombarded Gemry with a nonstop barrage of blue and red fire spells, each one shrinking her Aura. Brenner grimaced. And then, like a pane of glass cracking, a loud snap rent the air: Gemry’s Aura shattered.
The crowd let out a sharp gasp and watched her drop, limp as a ragdoll. Brenner jumped to his feet, horrified, as Gemry fell and landed on her side.
Rodick flew to her unguarded glowbe, grasped it, and it changed to blue. He gave a passing glance back at Gemry, then raised his arm in victory, to which the blue Aquaperni fans applauded loudly.
Brenner went to fly from his seat onto the field, but Finnegan pulled the hem of his shirt back. “Hey, you can’t get pas
t the shield curtain.”
Brenner made one more effort, but Finnegan was insistent. “Brenner, it’s like trying to puncture diamond. I know you want to help her, but you can’t. Let the officials below do their job.”
Fuming, he let Finnegan pull him back down.
Two sages came to Gemry’s ring and channeled a spell into her, which seemed to revive her. Slowly she stood up, and then with their assistance, shuffled off the field, holding a hand to her head.
Above the din of the crowd, a brazen bell tolled.
“Brenner,” said Finnegan, “that’s the ceremonial bell for Agilis. You’ve only got about twenty minutes.”
He had completely forgot. Torn between his desires to support Gemry and meet the challenges of his own match, Brenner reluctantly hovered down to the exit, through the gates, and out of the stadium.
Wind whistled past him as he soared through the streets. He felt a bit selfish, leaving the Contendir match right after Gemry suffered a loss. But Finnegan was probably right. What else could he really do?
Descending to the players’ entrance of the stadium, his feet touched down in front of a city guard who was posted at the stone archway.
“I’m here to play Agilis,” he said.
The guard saw the tree insignia of Silvalo on Brenner’s uniform, and the Agilis logo of a glowing, sun-like orb. He nodded, letting Brenner pass.
As Brenner hustled through the tunnels to the field, he realized he had a stronger reason to play than prestige: unless he could match the best spellcasters, those like Rodick who probably had large amounts of elixir in their amulets, he would always run the risk of being overpowered…of standing by helplessly if others, like Gemry, were targeted—on the field or off. Today he would play as hard as possible.
Jogging into the final corridor, he remembered a story he’d read long ago…how the Greeks, descending upon the shores of their enemy and being heavily outnumbered, did something unexpected to their boats. He turned to his own mental safeguards—of fears, escape routes, and what-if’s—and like the Greeks, set them afire.
There is nothing to go back to.
I must win.
I must.
As he entered the arena, a hundred thousand spellcasters in the crowd shouted and sang chants for their home players. But Brenner didn’t hear them. He had entered into fight mode.
A white-bearded official came toward Brenner, motioning for his mircon to be placed in a lockbox. Brenner dropped it in, looking at the middle of the field, where four glowbes hovered next to an announcer.
“Get a move on,” the old official said, pointing to the slingshot launch-pad, which was busy sorting the forty players around the field. As Brenner jogged toward it, he watched the game announcer scatter the landform seeds—and then a huge column of earth and rock jutted up from the middle of the field…up fifty feet…one hundred…two hundred…he look-ed away, stepping onto the launchpad, and was soon flung over the center of the peak, now looking a bit like Devil’s Tower. The announcer commanded, “Release the malipedes.”
Brenner fell to the other side of the arena, slowing through a pair of poles raised off the ground, fitting neatly into the last open position of competing players, equally spaced around the arena like forty spokes of a wheel.
Looking to the huge monolith, he noticed the black hind legs of some giant creature disappearing into the side of its steep cliff-face; in an instant it had burrowed completely inside.
The announcer, her long hair billowing behind her as she flew above the middle of the mountain, cast a reddish spell downward, and immediately four tubes of glass appeared at the peak of the monolith, growing upward about four-to-five stories high. She directed the glowbes to hover above each of the tubes.
Brenner looked at the rock face to plan his climbing route, but was interrupted when the announcer said, “Let the second round of Agilis—begin!”
Brenner sprinted forward—an orange-caped Arenaterro boy to his left, and an indigo-clad Gelemensus girl to his right—his nimble feet jumping over piles of earth and granite boulders that the newly birthed monolith had shed like snakeskin.
The peak rose steeply ahead, and as he darted up the lowest ledges, its severe incline would soon force him to switch from running to climbing hand over foot. He jumped the last boulders, then leapt onto the wall and heaved himself up, using the protruding shield-sized stones for purchase. Other spellcasters arrived at the wall just after he began his ascent. They, too, scaled the crag wall.
Soon beads of sweat rolled off Brenner’s forehead, down into his eyes, as he steadily gained elevation…twenty feet, now thirty feet…the holds became smaller, forcing him to exercise caution…forty feet. He used a crack to climb to fifty feet…keep going, come on…he spotted a large jug hold, and soon was thankful to catch his breath and rest an arm while hanging from it.
The wall trembled.
Then the sound of TNT exploding nearly threw him off. He glanced up in time to see a barrage of rocks raining down. Quickly, he flattened himself against the red rock as boulders careened past him, with smaller debris whacking his head and arms.
“AAAARGH—!” an Arenaterro player screamed below him, as a bear-sized boulder struck him off the wall. Brenner closed his eyes, not wishing to see the final impact. A moment later he felt his whole body vibrate from the rocks smashing against the arena floor.
Looking up again, Brenner saw black, scaly legs of the culprits recede into the side of the mountain: malipedes.
He changed direction to climb away from the large, blown-out hole on the side of monolith, but was jolted a second later when yet another explosion rocked the wall—this one not ten feet to his right. A grotesque, black, ant-like head of a malipede protruded from the hole—judging from the size of its large head, the creature must be as big as a buffalo—then it pulled back inside.
Another loud bang came from the other side of the mountain. Brenner looked up. There were several hundred feet to climb to the top ledge, and now that the explosions were happening at a feverish pace, he didn’t want to find out what would happen if a malipede blasted through the very rocks he was holding.
He needed to get inside.
Against the voice of his fear, he climbed across a crag, and flung himself into one of the blown-out tunnel entrances. He landed, stood, and then pressed his back to the side wall, listening attentively in case one of the creatures came back through this passage. The interior of the tunnel was dim, fairly wide, and tall enough that he didn’t have to duck down. He moved along it, and as he came to a fork in the passage, followed the side going up. The tunnel became darker. Heavy scuttling noises echoed around the passage, causing his arms to tingle with goose pimples…if those creatures can bore through rock…I don’t stand a chance fighting them.
The sound of dozens of legs scurrying on rocks came from a tunnel to his right—and for a horrible moment, his body froze. He forced himself to climb the walls and cling to the ceiling—just in time, as a thundering beast pounded through the tunnel, charged underneath him—its hardened, scaly carapace scraping against his skin—and then it was past. Brenner took a quick gulp of air.
He leapt down, then ran faster up the tunnel—at least he felt it was rising up—and prayed that more malipedes would not be charging down upon him.
Going away from the outside and into the center, Brenner felt the darkness thicken, and a couple of times he bashed his shoulder into the walls. Then the tunnel turned, light filtered in, and Brenner came into a nightmare chamber where he could see clearly: the inner hive of the malipedes. Before him scuttled a herd of black, scaly, ant-like creatures the size of rhinos, scurrying, nipping, and crawling over everything with loud clicks.
Then one saw Brenner.
It charged.
Brenner grabbed the first thing on the ground he could—a rock—and chucked it at the beast. It hit the malipede in the head, and it shrieked in pain—buying Brenner a moment to search for the closest upper passage—and jump to the
wall, climbing up it for his life.
The malipede darted after him—snapping its jaws—but couldn’t climb upward as fast as it could scuttle across flat ground. Brenner bouldered over to another tunnel, and, seeing another black armored beast rearing up at him, leaped towards a window ledge, catching it with his fingers, and heaving himself up. The tunnel was clear. He sprinted upward, following the path higher and higher to the growing light. Unfortunately, a dead-end forced him to backtrack, losing precious time.
Panting, Brenner pushed himself up…and up…then shouted with relief to find the blue sky above him. He was out of the mound, out of the clacking, cacophonous lair of the malipedes, and standing atop the granite plateau of the peak.
A final task separated him from the four glowbes hovering up high: clear tubes of glass, rising up another fifty feet.
What were those dark shapes in the tubes?
He grimaced. Those were three other spellcasters, each shimmying up to a glowbe. He dashed for the fourth—and only—empty glass tube. Ducking inside the archway of the tube, he ran his fingers across the smooth, opaque wall, hunting for climbing holds. As the tube was a little bigger than a manhole, his search didn’t take long: there weren’t any holds.
