War God for Hire- Gladiator

by David Burke

  Within a couple of minutes, he was joined by Kierra and Gilthan. There was a tension between them. Kierra lacked her usual confidence and spent far too much time staring at the floor. Gilthan had never been warm but he seemed even pricklier tonight. The reason was obvious, of course. None of them knew who they would be fighting.

  The regular seats were already filled. Whereas last night there had been something like five hundred viewers, now there must have been two thousand. Word was obviously spreading. It still seemed a lot of people for a society that worked nine out of every ten days, though. But escapism was a common need for anyone stuck in a life that they didn’t enjoy.

  Shortly after that, the nobles all filed in. Kyle could pick out each of the three noblewomen from the night before, as well as the man. Again, though, their numbers had swelled. There were half a dozen more nobles, each accompanied by slaves and guards. With a trumpet sound, the audience grew quiet.

  Saber came running out from one of the tunnels and shouted out, “Before last night, they were all complete unknowns. Now each of them has been blooded in the arena, or at least has drawn blood from their foes. Exhibition matches or not, these fighters play for keeps.”

  He waited for the cheering to calm down like a true showman. Then called out, “House Sorengaard has three fighters to present for your entertainment. First, there is Kierra the Lycan. She is a mistress of fury and fang, and if you don’t watch out, it will be your life she has stolen.

  “Then there is noble Gilthan, Stormcaller. Not only is he a son of one of the noble elven houses defeated in recent skirmishes, but also coursing within his veins is the blood of storm dragons. The very air around you is his to command.

  “And last but not least, is a one-of-a-kind wonder. A war elemental. His name may be odd, but you will find that he is stronger than a troll, and hits harder than a charging bull. I give you, Kyle Warborn.”

  Once again, the crowd erupted and Saber spurred them on. Then as he began to speak again, they grew hushed trying to hear his words. “Alas, the road won’t be easy for one of them, for they will have to fight Lash. Once a weapon maiden to Krig, the god of war, she is a master of every method of death known to man.”

  The blonde trotted out to stand next to Saber and whispered something in his ear. Kyle thought it looked like the head trainer blanched, but he regained his composure quickly and yelled out, “What better match could we have than to see two lovely ladies going at it? The first match tonight will feature Kierra the Lycan vs Lash, servant of none.”

  After he finished speaking, he glanced quickly at Lash, who nodded her head ever so slightly. Kyle looked over at Kierra, but rather than appearing nervous or worried as she had most of the day, she held her head up high and actually appeared to be excited.

  The lycan trotted out to the middle of the arena. Saber had the two fighters position themselves thirty feet apart. Then he called out, “This match is until submission or knock out. If Lash should happen to kill Kierra, her patron will make recompense to House Sorengaard for the loss of a slave. Should Kierra kill Lash, then House Sorengaard shall likewise owe her price to her patron.”

  Kyle didn’t have time to wonder about the odd wording used by Saber because as soon as he dropped his hand, he was running for the side and the two women were going at it. Kierra immediately charged forward while a whip flicked out from Lash. Kierra rolled to avoid it and moved forward faster as she came up out of the roll.

  Her fangs were bared and she looked like she was closing in for the kill. But she made the mistake of underestimating what Lash could do with her namesake weapon. The tip that had so narrowly missed the lycan on the snap out whipped back at her and struck her from behind.

  The movement was inconceivable but somehow, Kyle had been expecting it. Watching Lash manipulate her weapon caused a feeling of pleasant reminiscence settle into his mind, even if he couldn’t remember any specific memories. Still, the stinging blow didn’t do more than knock Kierra’s final lunge off course slightly and Lash was forced to dance back.

  She began to swirl the whip into a tight circle that whirled around faster than an industrial fan blade and created a five-foot shield. Kierra pulled up short in her next charge and snarled at the spinning whip. As Kyle watched he could feel, almost see, the War Essence in use. It only made sense; there was no natural way to move the whip that quickly.

  Undaunted, Kierra kicked up a clump of sand from the arena floor and watched as it was turned into a blinding cloud by the spinning whip. Then she bounded around the whip wielder and came at her from behind. Her movements were a flash, and Kyle could only imagine how quickly she would have been able to round the bases.

  As fast as she was, though, it wasn’t enough. Even occupied with the dust cloud in front of her, Lash still was able to respond, and in dramatic fashion. Kierra lunged, claws extended, and Lash pivoted on her front plant foot. But that wasn’t all. As she moved out of the way of the lunging lycan, she brought that back foot up and around in a hook kick that landed on the back of Kierra’s head.

  The force of her own momentum enhanced by the kick drove her into the ground face first. Fortunately, by that time Lash had ended the swirling whip shield, but Kierra still found herself with her face in the sand and Lash bearing down on her. Not to be outdone by Lash, she pulled her feet up under her and pushed with both feet and hands so that she flew up into the air while still prone.

  Lash’s axe kick missed as Kierra pushed herself up and out of the way to land a few feet away. Kyle had never seen the lycan fight with a weapon but apparently, she decided she needed more range, because she pulled what he had taken to be fighting sticks that were held in a harness across her back.

  It turned out instead to be a three-section staff. She allowed one end to dangle in front while holding the opposite end up at a forty-five-degree angle and the middle section jutting out away from her body. Kyle smiled as he realized she was all business. In every martial arts movie he had ever seen, any time someone pulled out a weapon like this or nunchaku they always began spinning them around in a supposed display of skill.

  That part of him that was Krig murmured in approval. Weapons were for fighting, killing, and defending. They were not toys to amuse children, and war was a way of life. A holy sacrament taken to purify the soul. Whether because of Krig’s influence or not, Kyle was pleased to see that Kierra took this seriously.

  Lash’s whip suddenly retracted until it was only four feet long. It was thicker, but not enough to account for all of the whip’s length, and while it looked like a staff in some ways, it was clearly more like a very long riding crop. It flexed in the air as Lash went on the attack for the first time. She lashed out at Kierra’s head, but the middle pole of her staff raised up and blocked it.

  Blow after blow got traded as both women displayed great mastery of not only their weapons but their bodies. Nary a foot was misplaced as each danced around the other. Kierra sought to club the side of Lash’s head only to have her duck underneath and then drop to try to sweep her legs.

  A moment later, Lash was unleashing a series of rapid-fire blows with the retracted whip. It was so flexible that even as it hit the tri-staff it would wrap around it, threatening to yank it from the lycan’s hands. Had she been a pure human, Lash’s technique likely would have worked but Kierra’s claws dug into the wood of her staff and she managed to hold on.

  When she pulled free, Kierra spun around, extending the tri-sectional staff out in a whipping motion. Lash reacted in an instant as though she had been waiting for exactly that type of extended attack. Her own leather staff snapped out at the chain section between the piece Kierra was holding and the middle section.

  Kyle witnessed a surge of War Essence and the metal gave way before the leather.

  But Lash wasn’t done with that. The sudden loss of two thirds of her weapon and the accompanying change in momentum caused Kierra to stumble. Lash was already moving forward so that she brought up
a knee into the face of the off-balance lycan. The knee slammed with bone crushing force into her nose and caused her to fall back. To her credit, Kierra managed to hold onto her weapon but still put her free hand to her nose, which gushed blood everywhere.

  Eyes blurry with tears brought about from the broken nose didn’t give her enough warning so that when the leathery staff snapped out repeatedly, it hit her forehead, then the hand holding the weapon, and finally took her leg out from underneath her. Each blow was punctuated by a burst of War Essence and in an instant Kierra was laying weaponless on the ground with a broken wrist, broken kneecap, and cracked skull.

  Her howl of pain was cut short as Lash dropped a knee on her throat, crushing it and causing her to gasp for breath. Out of the corner of his eye, Kyle saw Selma and her team lining up and ready to rush to Kierra the moment the fight was called. Saber looked on but couldn’t end the fight until the lycan was either unconscious or tapped out. The proud woman was unlikely to do that, so the audience watched on over the view screens that magically zoomed in to see her gurgling and gasping, trying without success to draw air into her crushed windpipe.

  After a long minute that seemed to drag on forever, she finally went limp. Several times, Kyle had started to stand up. Competition was good, but watching a woman as she struggled to breathe because of some rule was just insane. Each time he stood, Hilde barked in his mind, “You are the war god. You have seen worse. You have done worse.”

  Saber yelled for Selma the moment Kierra stopped struggling, and then announced Lash as the winner to the audience.

  She held her hands up and smiled as though she were a model walking down the runway. Then she turned her head towards Kyle. For just a moment, he felt her eyes settle on him. An unspoken threat came through, and he couldn’t help but feel that he was staring down some demented Bond villain.

  Chapter 24 - Shocking Match

  The brutality of the finish left Kyle feeling uneasy. Just knocking Kierra out had been enough of a challenge for him. He couldn’t imagine intentionally crushing someone’s throat, even in an attempt to win the World Series. Of course, to him, that was what these matches were, a game.

  Kyle didn’t question for a second his ability to destroy an enemy that was trying to kill him. It was one of the things that he had been asking himself repeatedly since the quarry. He was sure that there would be no hesitation on that account, but this wasn’t the same thing.

  Or was it? This world definitely had different standards. What he witnessed minutes ago would have been shocking even for MMA fans in the modern world.

  As the sand was cleared, Gilthan stood up. Without looking back at Kyle, he said, “I respect what you did with Kierra before, but we have to take this seriously. I won’t hold back. Neither should you. Or do. That is up to you.”

  Then he strode out towards where Saber was already making announcements about the next match. The name Warborn seemed to be catching on for him, so he would just go with it. He raised his hands and let the crowd cheer for him. Earth or Verden, Kyle knew how to work a crowd, and it was pretty obvious who the favorite to win was. Maybe that was because the crowd was uniformly human, but whatever the reason, they were already shouting his name, or the name that Saber had given him. “Warborn! Warborn! Warborn!”

  Kyle took his time walking out to the center of the arena. It wasn’t only to give the audience more time to cheer for him, but also because he had a sudden thought about how he might counteract Gilthan’s lightning. It was too fast to dodge. Dexterity saving throws aside, you simply couldn’t dodge something that traveled at the speed of light.

  Beyond the pure speed of the attack, the range was its greatest power. Kyle didn’t have any way to attack from more than about fifty feet out, and that was only with his Divine Ability. Not to mention that such an attack would likely turn Gilthan into a fine mist. He still didn’t possess the level of control necessary. He needed a way to minimize the impact of the electricity. But he did have an idea now.

  The thing was that it would require him to be able to access the essence he held, which was something he had not been able to do with any degree of reliability. So he thought that through as he walked forward slowly. Kyle had been thinking of the times that he accessed his essence as an instinctive process, but that wasn’t really helpful. He needed to figure out how to break it down.

  At first, he thought that it had come down to him forming an intent. But that was too cerebral, and he needed something more primal. It was based on his need. Or at least that was what he was guessing. He had needed to escape. He had needed to protect Nyda. Those were the times that he had been able to utilize essence. Even the swing that brought down the wall was a need to vent frustration.

  It could have been seen in other ways, of course, and he realized that feeling that rightness from the original swing might also be a key. But he thought he was onto something with the need issue. It was raw and unrefined. It didn’t use spells like the flesh mages, or even skills like Gilthan. It was just a raw expression of power.

  That matched with Hilde’s concept that the gods were just some larger, stronger type of elemental, a raw expression of the metaphysical aspect they represented. Maybe part of why he was having trouble tapping into these powers was because he was thinking of God or gods from a modern Western perspective, as though they were these higher, more intellectual beings.

  Maybe they were just big collections of power centered around simple, core principles.

  If that was the case, then he needed to dumb down his approach. He needed to think more of the aspect that he needed and try to utilize it like that. At least that was what he hoped would work. Either way, time was up.

  Saber positioned them thirty feet away from each other. Kyle realized that the distance favored Gilthan, but there wasn’t anything to do about it. He went through all of Saber’s lessons about closing the distance and how to weave so as to avoid projectiles. He didn’t think that would work against a lightning bolt, though.

  A moment of panic threatened to set in as Kyle realized he wasn’t sure he could call upon the essence, but then the competitor in him won out. He wouldn’t be afraid of any enemy. This was just another victory for him to claim.

  As he heard the command to begin, Kyle shot forward. He crossed the thirty feet in two steps and was moving like a freight train at the elf who calmly stood there. His maul was swinging through its arc, intending to end this fight in an instant when Gilthan did something he had never shown in training.

  The wind swirled around his feet and he leapt into the air just before the maul passed the space where he had been. Within two seconds, he was fifty feet in the air. He extended a hand and suddenly Kyle found his body spasming under the power of an electric bolt.

  Kyle screamed out through clenched teeth. He had been expecting lightning bolts, but he didn’t know how to respond to it when Gilthan was attacking from the air. The bolt ended and Kyle rolled up off the ground. At least there appeared to be limits to how long the elf could sustain an attack.

  Sadly, that limit seemed to have a short cool down because Kyle hadn’t even made it two steps before he was hit by another bolt. This was powerful enough to not only shock him into a spasming mess, but to also scorch a hole into his shoulder. The only good news was that a wound that would have kept him out for the rest of the season back home would be healed up within minutes here.

  There was nothing fun about being stuck on the ground while the sorcerer blasted him at his leisure, so Kyle determined to take matters into his own hands. He still had his idea about how to use the essence, but it was hard to think straight while he was trying not to bite off his tongue.

  So once again, a more direct approach was called for. Kyle crouched down and felt the need to leap high. He called upon his muscles and then leapt up like a rocket. His body propelled not only by the powerful muscles but by his instinctive summoning of War Essence. A lesson flowed through his mind; always be where
the enemy least expects you.

  He knew it was Krig’s teaching about the importance of mobility and surprise, but he’d be damned if it didn’t sound like one of those fortune cookie Sun Tzu quotes that his old coach used to spout. The source mattered little, for in his need and acting without thought, Kyle had once again applied War Essence to a simple act. This time a leap.

  Gilthan’s saucer shaped eyes showed that he hadn’t been expecting this. They all knew that Kyle could leap over thirty feet, which was probably why the elf had elected to fly some fifty feet up. Kyle screamed through the air, wishing he had a cool battle cry, and slammed his shoulder into the elf.

  Or at least that was his intent. The swirling winds that were holding Gilthan aloft also acted to shield him. Kyle’s force ripped through the pneumatic barrier, but not before he was thrown off course. He found himself flying through the air until he landed on the far side of the arena.

  Gilthan was not as graceful once his spell was ripped apart by Kyle’s essence-fueled leap. The elf was soon bopping across the sky like a punctured balloon. When the fabric of the spell completely gave out, he started to fall to the ground like a rock and only just managed to catch himself with a cushion of air.

  Kyle saw his chance. They were a football field apart, but he started running. As he ran, he traced through his mind what he had meant to do and how he had instinctively called upon the War Essence. It clicked in his head then that it was always a reaction.

  Just as he had reflexes that used to allow him to catch a ball that was screaming past him and now had learned to apply that to blocking incoming sword blows, he needed to apply it to this other part of himself. He could feel the essence inside of him, and yet somehow it felt like trying to run with a third leg that he suddenly grew.

  He crossed the distance and saw Gilthan stumbling to his feet. The man was already raising his hand. The blue sparkles of electrical arcs were leaping across his knuckles. There was no way that Kyle was gonna reach him before getting blasted again. Not unless… there it was. He felt the ground beneath him. It was full of essence and that echoed within him.