Once Daren is done with her backpack too, we continue on our way. We spend the next few hours travelling south, taking the most direct route available to Rose’s town. Her usual route was designed to avoid most areas that are known to be frequented by monsters, but Daren insisted on delivering the cure to the sick as soon as possible, and he said that our group should be more than able to handle a few monster attacks.
The scenery that we’ve seen during our travel has been rather underwhelming. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I always thought that the fabled continent of Varathia would be filled with all sorts of natural wonders and mythical creatures. All I’ve seen today were your everyday pine and oak forests, with a lake or a river here and there to keep it from becoming completely monotonous. At least it’s been a few hours since the last time we’ve been attacked, which is quite an achievement, judging by how this tournament has been going so far.
Kate has opened up a bit since her last discussion with me. When we first met yesterday, she looked very tense, and it seemed as though she was expecting us to try and kill her the moment she turns her back on us. Now she seems calmer, and she allows herself to smile a little more often, even if only faintly, especially when she’s talking with Rose.
Daren, on the other hand, has reminded me on several occasions since we left the caves that he still hasn’t completely forgiven me for the fact that I lied to him about my true motives for joining the tournament. He did also say that he appreciated the fact that I decided to tell him the truth in the end, so I can only hope that he will get over it in due time. As for the Magium, Daren told me that if he wins the tournament, he will make sure to help me achieve my goal of becoming a mage, and that he hopes I would help him with his goal as well, if I somehow ended up winning the tournament myself.
During our trip, we’ve been keeping a steady pace for the most part, and there haven’t been any breaks except for occasionally stopping to get some fruits from the trees, or to fill our gourds with water from a river. While we were having one of these small breaks, Rose approached me in private to ask me about the discussion I had with Kate this morning.
“Barry, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Rose says, while we’re both standing near the bank of a river, “Did we actually interrupt an important discussion between you and Kate this morning? Kate’s been acting evasive every time I brought up the subject. I’d feel terrible if you two lost the chance to confess your feelings for each other because Daren and I couldn’t read the mood.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “That wasn’t what our discussion was about.”
“Oh?” Rose says, in a manner that suggests she doesn’t really believe me. “Well, if both you and Kate say nothing happened, then I won’t insist anymore! Come on, we should help the others with picking fruits. We’ll need all the food we can get for the long journey ahead of us.”
Rose and I join the others, and once we’re all done gathering provisions, we depart once more. As we travel, we start talking about various things: Daren’s adventures, our lives before joining the tournament, the reasons we all came here. During our conversations, Daren was of course the one that’s been speaking the most, while Kate has been as evasive as always about her past and her reasons for being here. Hearing our stories, Rose decides to join our discussion, by telling us a bit about herself.
“I’ve always liked plants,” she tells us. “Plants and books. So it’s no surprise that I spent most of my youth with my nose buried in herbology manuals. As time passed, I started to learn more about herbal medicine, and I realized my talents could be used to help the people in need. Most people I help don’t really have much money to repay me, but the little they give me is enough for me to make a living, and their sincere feelings of gratitude are much more rewarding to me than the money I’d get by only working for rich folk. I’ve been living a modest life along with my brother and sister who are nine and eight years old respectively, and ever since my father died last year, I’ve been occasionally getting some financial support from my ex-husband.”
“You were married?” Daren asks.
“Yes, for a few years,” Rose says, “but it didn’t really work out in the end. We’ve both moved on with our lives since then, and we’ve had no children together, so there were no hard feelings. Ever since my father died, I’ve had to take care of my siblings all by myself, so my main focus for the past year has been my work, and my family.”
“But what about your mother?” Kate says.
“She died long ago, when she gave birth to my little sister,” Rose says.
“Oh… I’m sorry,” Kate says.
Rose smiles.
“There’s no need,” she says. “You couldn’t have known.”
“So, how did you all handle the death of your grand priest?” Daren asks, trying to change the subject. “You said he was the last person alive that could create food out of nothing in your city, so I imagine there must have been some backup plan in case of his inevitable death?”
“Oh, yes,” Rose says. “Many people have started to learn agriculture, but the problem is that most of the fertile terrain around our town is already owned by the nobles. By planting your seeds further away from the town, you run a great risk of getting your crops raided by monsters.”
“Are monster raids frequent in your area?” I ask.
“Yes,” Rose says. “Monsters have been getting bolder in the past few decades. It’s not just in our area, it happens throughout the entire continent. I’m not certain, but I think it all started when we lost contact with the animal kingdom. After the first animal hunts were started by the people of Olmnar several decades ago, the animals’ leader, the spirit golden fox has ordered her subjects to stop speaking in our language. The monsters must have found out about this, and they took advantage of the fact that the humans and the animals were no longer working together in order to wreak havoc.”
“But if the fields that are far away from the cities get raided by monsters,” I say, “and the nobles own all of the lands near the cities, why aren’t people rebelling against the nobles?”
“Some of them are,” Rose says, “but the nobles are backed up by royalty, so most people don’t dare to openly oppose them. In our town, the rebels are almost inexistent, but I hear that in some cities with a similar situation to ours there are full-blown civil wars going.”
“What about the gods?” Daren asks. “Are they not getting involved in any of this?”
“The only gods that are currently getting involved are the God of Fate and the God of Death,” Rose says, “but I very much doubt that any of them have our best interests at heart. It is said that the two of them started working together recently, and that might well be true, judging by the high level of cooperation between their followers lately.”
“Wait, isn’t the God of Fate just a fancy title for the God of Illusions?” Daren says.
“Yes,” Rose answers. “Most gods name themselves after the power their followers gain by worshipping them. Some of them, however, choose other names for themselves, which can be a bit confusing. It’s the same for the God of Death. Judging by his name, you would think that he reigns over the underworld, but in fact he is just a god of necromancy, bringing the dead back to life to serve his bidding.”
As Rose talks, I hear three loud beeps coming from my pocket. I pull out my stat device, and I am surprised to see that the maximum numbers for my stats have now been increased to four.
“What’s that?” Rose asks.
“It’s a toy,” Daren says, before I get a chance to reply. “You know those magical devices that simulate a pet in order to teach little kids about responsibilities? Those beeps you heard were Barry’s pet getting hungry.”
“Oh, I love those toys!” Rose says. “Ever since I got one for my little sister, I just couldn’t keep her apart from it!”
“Ignore Daren,” Kate says. “He was just being a smartass. What Barry has there is a stat booster. He’s using it to harness magical energy from the a
ir which he can then use to augment his physical abilities.”
Rose looks impressed.
“Wow,” she says. “I did not know such a thing was possible. So, that device is basically turning you into a mage?”
I never thought about it this way. It’s true that there are some mages that actually use their magic to augment their powers, in a similar way that this device does. Does that make me one of them?
“I suppose…” I answer her. “But it’s only temporary. The device will run out of energy once I’m no longer surrounded by all these powerful mages to extract it from.”
I take a look at my stat booster and start to think about what I should spend my newly acquired points on. There’s something that has been troubling me for a while. When the crossbowmen ambushed us this morning, I can’t help but think that if I had my hearing stat maxed out instead of ancient languages, I might have been able to hear them before they attacked us, and I could have saved Kate from that sleep dart. I can’t remove the points that I’ve already spent on ancient languages, and I can’t deny that they’ve been useful so far, but now that I’ve been given exactly four points, I’m going to spend them all on improving my hearing, to make sure that I’ll never be caught by surprise like that ever again.
As soon as I invest my points, I can immediately feel the effect this has on my sense of hearing. It’s not that everything seems louder now, but I can focus much more clearly on sounds from very far away. I can hear a bird flapping its wings above, in the sky, and I can also hear some small critter running through the grass, somewhere within the forest. Hopefully, this will give me an edge against other people that will try to ambush us in the future.
Not long after I finish using my device, Rose asks me another question.
“Wait, so if your stat booster extracts magical energy from other mages,” she says, “does that mean it’s also eating away at Daren and Kate’s powers?”
“It’s getting a bit of energy from every mage in a thirty mile radius,” I say, “but the amount it takes from each of them is barely enough to mildly inconvenience them. Most of the energy it’s getting is from the powerful spells that have been cast all around us since the beginning of this tournament, and that energy would have just dissipated into thin air anyway, so you could just say I’m recycling it, rather than stealing it. I think that—”
I get interrupted by a very loud roar that echoes all around us.
“What was that?” Rose asks, visibly scared.
A second, louder roar now booms through the air, as I can feel my hair stand up on the back of my neck. I’ve never heard this sound before in my life. I have no idea what beast might be causing it. So then what is this feeling of dread I’m getting all of a sudden? Why do I find myself wanting to run as fast as I can, in any direction, as long as it gets me as far away from this place as possible?
Shortly after the second roar ended, a very powerful wind started to blow towards us. I can almost feel it trying to lift me in the air. The trees are barely holding up, and it looks as if they could get pulled out of their roots at any moment. We’re lucky that this happened while we were in a clearing, because otherwise we would have had to also protect ourselves from falling trees, while trying to hold our ground against the relentless force of the wind.
As some of the trees start to fall, a monstrous figure makes its appearance high above us. It’s at least fifty foot tall, with very tough looking red scales covering its entire body, and wings the size of sails on a longship. Its claws look as sharp as blades, and its fangs are bared at us menacingly, but its overall appearance is not much different from that of an overgrown lizard.
A dragon. They really existed. Is this all happening because of my disappointment for not encountering any mythical creatures so far? If that’s the case, then I take it back. I take it all back, just, please, let this all be a dream. Let this all just be the end of a bad dream, before I wake up back in our cave, and then we can start our journey anew.
“Get down!” Daren shouts to us, as the dragon gets closer and then lands a few dozen feet in front of us, making the whole ground tremble violently under its weight.
“No…” Rose says, unable to control her shivering, and barely able to keep her balance anymore. “This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening…”
The dragon looks all around us, as if it were trying to find something, and then it shouts loudly, in the common tongue:
“Where is he?”
Seeing that none of us are answering, the dragon asks us again, this time giving us a few more details.
“The stillwater!” the dragon shouts. “Where is he? You reek of his stench. Where are you hiding him?”
“Who, Eiden?” I say. “We’re not working with him. We only just met him a few hours ago.”
“Lies,” the dragon says. “What reason would he have had to leave you alive if he didn’t have a use for you?”
“I, uh… Well, he did ask us to deliver a message for him,” I say.
“A message?” the dragon says.
He laughs.
“I see that Eiden’s reduced himself to using lowborn mongrels to do his menial tasks nowadays,” the dragon says. “If you’re just lowly messengers, then you are useless to me.”
The dragon growls before he continues.
“I should have known that I’d be wasting my time by trying to communicate with the likes of you,” he says. “If only that stillwater would have minded his own business after he returned to the continent instead of writing that accursed message in the sky, I’d have left him be. But he had the incredible nerve to involve the dragon hunters in all of this?”
“Wait, we’re not dragon hunters,” I say. “Please, if you could just let us explain—”
“Silence, mongrel!” the dragon shouts. “I’ve watched your pathetic human race fumble their way through life ever since they stopped walking on four legs. I could have killed or enslaved you all at any point in your miserable existence, if it weren’t beneath me. But now your kind dares to rise against me? Your charred remains will serve as my gift for Eiden, to welcome him back to my realm.”
The dragon soars to the sky, as it shouts its final words to us.
“Pray to your gods, humans!” the dragon says. “They’re the only ones that can save you from the onslaught that will follow.”
“Quick, everyone get behind me!” Daren shouts, as he raises his shield, and a semi-transparent magical barrier starts to form around us.
Kate doubles up our protection by also making a dome of thick ice to surround us. The dragon, who has now raised himself to a sufficiently high altitude, unleashes a downpour of flames upon us. As the flames collide with our protections, we start to feel the air heating up all around us. Kate’s ice has already melted away, and all that’s standing between us and the torrent of fire is Daren’s magical barrier.
Rose is now sitting on the ground, with a terrified look in her eyes, hugging her legs and shaking violently.
“Rose!” Kate yells at her. “Snap out of it! We’ll need to be ready to get out of here as soon as Daren’s barrier breaks. Do you hear me?”
The dragon’s flames have suddenly stopped. Looking up to see what happened, I am terrified to learn that the monster is now quickly diving towards us. Kate tries to make another wall of ice between us and the dragon, but he breaks through it in a second, and then he clashes with Daren’s magical barrier, shattering it in an instant. The dragon then grabs Daren in one of his claws, and he soars back up into the sky. We can hear Daren’s screams as the giant lizard tries to crush him.
Kate launches several hundred sharp ice blades towards the dragon, but they simply bounce off his armored scales.
“Kate!” Daren shouts from the distance. “Can you— NGHHH— Can you make a slide for me?”
“Yes,” Kate shouts back, as she quickly builds an ice slide that starts below him and ends on the ground next to us.
Once he sees the slide finished, Dare
n furiously thrusts his sword into the dragon’s claw, as the creature starts to scream in pain and drops him right on the slide that’s been custom made for him. Just as Daren finishes sliding down, the dragon uses his fire breath again, this time aiming directly for Kate. She makes a large thick shield of ice float above her in order to provide her cover. As the flames and the ice clash, I can see that Kate is making a great effort to keep the fire back.
Daren quickly rushes to her position and provides her with cover before her ice melts away. Unfortunately, the fight has weakened him as well, and he does not manage to hold the barrier for long. His barrier breaks, and his shield drops to the ground, right when the dragon finishes his attack. The explosion of air generated by the destruction of Daren’s barrier sends Rose flying, and she hits her head on a rock. She is now lying on the ground, motionless.
Think, Barry. Think. What can you do to turn the tide? There has to be something. There has to be a way to use everything you know to your advantage. There has to be a way. Think!
“It’s over, humans,” the dragon shouts triumphantly from high above. “Your era is at an end. I am going to exterminate every single one of you, until all that remains of your race is a forgotten memory. And I’m saving Eiden for last.”
It’s no use. My stat device is worthless here. Even if I had all of my stats maxed out I wouldn’t stand a chance. This was all over before it began.
As the dragon’s flames pour down on us, I close my eyes, waiting for my impending doom. After a few seconds of keeping my eyes closed, I realize that I’m still alive. I open my eyes back up and find out to my surprise that the dragon’s flames have stopped in mid-air, a few inches before reaching us, as if they were frozen. But that is not all. Looking around me, I see that everything else is frozen too. Daren, Kate and Rose are all standing completely still, and I can’t even feel the wind anymore.
“Seriously, now,” I hear a familiar voice behind me. “How could I have let him win after saying a line like that?”
I quickly turn around and see Eiden standing behind me, with his eyes closed as usual and a smile on his face.
Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1 Page 9