by B. H. Savage
The crowd’s reaction to Anye taking her position was substantially less energetic than that of Yarik’s, but she expected it. The boy was the son of a prominent admiral, close to the king and known throughout Belrun. Anye was a no-profile mercenary, and a woman at that. Had she not been thoroughly trained in swordplay and warfare the odds of her winning the tournament, let alone the first round, would be much lower. Luckily only Byron knew of her training, and she doubted if even he believed her yet, regardless of his sponsorship.
“Are the contestants ready?” the announcer asked. “Let me remind you that the death of the defeated is frowned upon, but not entirely unexpected. Should the defeated not yield to the blade of the victor, the victor may choose to finalize duel with blood. Only a yield, unconsciousness, or death will end the match. Understood?”
Both fighters nodded their heads as they pulled their blades from their sides.
“Then let the fight…begin!”
Anye took a step to begin running towards the boy but he was much quicker and got in front of her unexpectedly fast. He skidded to a stop while slashing rapidly and accurately. The crowd erupted into a mixture of cheers and laughter.
Anye deflected the attacks, realizing that his previous fidgetiness wasn’t out of nervousness but rather magic enhancing his ability. It wasn’t against the rules. Anye just hadn’t detected it due to her focusing on the boy from the frontier. It looked like Yarik hadn’t expected her to still be standing at that point either though, as his facial expression betrayed his surprise.
Luckily for Anye, part of her training growing up was defense against all forms of magic. Provided she could focus on a counter spell she could dispel the boy’s enhancements and hopefully force him to yield.
Using her opponent’s momentum against him, Anye used her two blades to force him to the side and tumble out of reach. She used the time to separate herself from him even more and begin the spell. She only needed a few seconds of concentration, but the boy’s reaction time made that difficult.
Yarik was back on her with his swords, swinging wildly like a human cyclone. Anye could barely keep up with the assault, but the fact that she could confirmed her suspicion that the boy was inexperienced and likely scared out of his mind. If he had been a hardened fighter she would have been cut down just as the match started due to her not paying attention. Knowing of his lack of actual skill bolstered her confidence enough to continue defending herself while she gathered the magic needed for the counter spell. What he did next made it even easier.
Yarik backed away and stared angrily at his opponent. “How are you still standing!?” he yelled at her.
Anye simply smiled through her tired breathing. Her spell was nearly ready, and talking to him now would only slow the process. She couldn’t afford that kind of risk.
“Yah, fine!” he yelled back at her. “A woman doesn’t belong on the battlefield anyway!” Yarik poised, holding his swords down at a wide angle as he prepared to sprint towards her. The blades of each weapon started to emanate a light green color, signifying his enchanting of the weapons with the power he was using for himself. That made his strikes more dangerous, but that also meant he was going to be slower, if only slightly.
Anye held her swords up defensively, waiting for her attacker to make his move. The spell was just about ready. When it was, all she needed to do was unleash the power while near him and he would be practically defenseless.
The boy ran, still faster than what would be natural, but noticeably slower than he was before. His momentum aided him in a jump towards Anye as he raised the blades behind his back in preparation for a downward strike. The green glow of the weapons left behind a transparent streak that quickly disappeared.
Yarik came down on top of her, bringing the weapons down from overhead. Anye raised her swords up in a cross formation to block the strike. The magical energy had just finished gathering, and as their steel met she let it loose in a brilliant display of color and light. The boy was thrown backwards, pushed by the magical explosion away from Anye as the energy left her body, and landed on his back in a loud metallic thud. The green glow of his swords’ enchantments dissipated from the effects of the counter spell and his body stopped shaking.
Anye uncrossed her swords quickly. Dust and dirt swirled around her as the spell’s effects faded. The crowd had gone silent in anticipation while watching. Nobody had expected her to succeed fending the boy off it seemed, and if anyone had realized he was using speed enchantments they likely doubted she would be able to dispel them.
Without a word she ran towards the boy with her weapons at her sides.
“Yield!” Yarik shouted as she approached. “I yield, woman!”
Anye stopped short of the boy, accepting his surrender. The crowd went ecstatic and the announcer walked in to the arena and towards Anye. He grabbed her hand holding her sword from Delrich and raised it skyward.
“The winner, Amy Karst!” he yelled.
The crowd’s cheers grew louder. Anye couldn’t help but smile as she placed the other sword back into its sheath. She had finally proven herself as a capable fighter to the people around her. All that was left for her to do was win the tournament and she would have enough money to finance her new life and, with hope, eventually return to Delrich to clear her name.
______
From what Anye could tell from sounds alone, the matches following hers played out the same as the one before hers with minor differences. The foreign boy, whom Anye had learned was named Amadi from seeing him rise when the announcer called the name, participated in the final match of the first round and had won in seconds. The crowd’s cheers had changed to a barely audible murmur as he returned inside.
The second round was unremarkable. Anye had been paired against a man with no magical ability that used a single sword in combat. His fighting style appeared to be more for show than survival but there was some merit to the fact that he was agile. When she grew tired of putting on a show for the people she swiftly and skillfully knocked the sword from her opponent’s hand, forcing a submission and granting her passage to the semi-final round.
Now only four competitors remained; Anye, Amadi, the brute who had tried to pick a fight with Anye before whose name had turned out to be Nitram Illenas, and a slender, yet very toned, man who claimed to be a member of a clan of warrior monks from the islands across the western sea who fought with his fists rather than a blade, named Tao Long.
Byron remained outside along with the other coaches as they were still prohibited from going back into the prep area. When Anye left the stage after her first match he stared at her with a wild, but cheery, disbelief. She knew that whatever doubts he had of her abilities before had completely evaporated along with the Yarik’s speed spell. He laughed like a young girl after her second victory, but there wasn’t really much to that one. Anye assumed he was just happy she was winning.
Anye sat on the bench near the opening leading back outside. Nitram and the monk stood in opposite corners waiting for the third round to begin. The boy from the frontier however was walking towards Anye. She didn’t know why, but by the way he was looking at her she assumed he had something he wanted to tell her. Amadi sat next to her. “I wasn’t sure if my senses were right about you earlier,” he said to her. “I’m glad that I was right.”
The boy’s accent was especially thick, but not so much that she couldn’t understand him. She didn’t trust him though, based on her intuition. There was definitely something about him she couldn’t place, but interrogating him then wouldn’t get her anywhere. She figured she needed to act normal if there was to be any chance of learning anything. “What are you talking about?” Anye replied simply.
“Do you know about my people?” he asked.
“The people of the Frontier?” she said. “I know you’re dangerous, using black magic wildly without a care.”
Amadi laughed at the remark and looked down at his sandaled feet. “A common misconception, I assure you. W
e are very much attuned to the natural forces of our world. There is no such thing as white or black magic like your people believe. Magic is simply a force of nature we are able to use. The labels you place on it are simply labels. At its core all of it is the same, it is only different based on how you utilize it.”
Anye stared at the boy suspiciously. She had been trained, raised to believe that the use of darker magic would warp your mind and that the people of the frontier were dangerous savages, but Amadi wasn’t acting like that at all. In fact he seemed to be the exact opposite.
“I can tell you are hesitant to believe me,” he said to her. “I could feel your connection to magic the moment I entered this room, as well as that of the boy you defeated…but yours was different,” he explained. “You have a gift, a natural talent to easily harness magic in ways our elders strive to do through lifetimes of study and training. The way you stopped that boy’s enchantment is proof of it.”
“How did you know about that?” she asked as she got to her feet. “You’re not supposed to be able to see the other fights.”
“I can see many things, Anye,” he answered quietly. “Being physically present, to use your eyes, is only one way to see.”
Anye was speechless. Nobody in Belrun was supposed to know what her real name was. She had been extremely careful about making sure she never said it to anyone, anywhere, or even wrote it down on anything, including her journal.
“Anye? I think you’re mistaken,” she eventually told him. “My name is Amy Karst.”
Amadi laughed again. “Of course it is,” he said. He got to his feet using his staff as leverage and looked into her eyes. “I too was affected by what your people call the Sky Fire,” he said as he walked away from her.
Anye was speechless. How did he know her name? And how did he know she was trying to find out about the Sky Fire? She had been asking the people around town what they knew about it since she had arrived, but Amadi hadn’t appeared in town until the day of the tournament. A chill ran up her spine at the thought that someone from Delrich had tracked her down and had hired him to bring her back, but if that were the case why would he have mentioned the Sky Fire at all?
“Amy Karst and Tao Long!” the announcer yelled. He must have entered the room when Anye was being distracted by the conversation. “You two will be starting the semi-final round. Be ready when I call you to the arena!”
Anye shook away the thought that she had been discovered by Delrich and readied her gear. The chances of such a thing were remote, even if she was staying near the border for the time being. And if the boy really was an agent of Delrich he would have already detained her, or at least tried. Right now she needed to focus on the tournament and beating her opponent, the monk from the west.
Tao Long was dressed in bright orange robes bearing markings of what Anye assumed to be the temple his brethren and he trained in. His jet-black hair was tied back in a long thick braid that reached halfway down his back. He also appeared to be extremely calm, but that was likely due to him concentrating on his training. He had won his first two matches just as Anye had, and now they were both vying for the spot in the final round.
The announcer called the two of them outside and the crowd went ecstatic. Tao Long’s match had apparently been quite the spectacle. Unarmed combat wasn’t very common on the continent and very few people from there had ever been in the western islands long enough to learn their methods. The only person she knew personally who had done so was Glenn, and he returned to Delrich because he preferred the use of his lance.
"Ladies and gentlemen, lords and ladies!" the announcer shouted through his cone. "Returning for the semi-final round ...Tao Long of the Western Isles, and Amy Karst, the wandering mercenary!" The crowd chanted both of their names against one another. Apparently Anye's surprise victory had earned her some fans and hopefully some reputation. "Would the competitors please take their positions?"
Both fighters walked to their corners and readied themselves. Anye drew her swords while the western martial artist entered some sort of fighting stance.
Anye was nervous. She'd never had much training against an unarmed opponent. She knew, from some very short sparring matches with Glenn, that a trained monk from the Western Isles was much more agile than an armored foe holding metal in their hands. Fortunately it also generally meant that her armor, however thin, would help her more than usual as the punches of her opponent would have to strike extra hard to do any real damage unless he landed a blow directly to her face. She also hoped that he wouldn't be very adept at using magic since she hadn’t really felt a strong presence of it within him. If he could he was masking its presence expertly.
The announcer called the match and the two fighters ran at each other. Tao Long was slower than Yarik had been, but that wasn't necessarily indicative of his agility. When the two approached each other he jumped off the ground and stuck his foot forward, attempting to land a hard kick to her chest. Anye side-stepped the attack and immediately began a counter assault as her opponent landed.
The man was as agile as she had predicted. Each swing of her blade was avoided with some sort of odd bend at his waist. Each punch or kick he sent her way was caught with her armor, resulting in her only briefly being nudged back and forth. She thought something seemed odd though; as toned and disciplined as he seemed to be his attacks felt amateurish.
The thought passed from her mind and was immediately replaced with panic. Anye had decided to try and out maneuver her foe with a one-handed overhead slice, which he had caught with his bare hands mere inches from his face. She felt a surge of power come from him, inducing her panicked reaction, and used her second hand to attempt a horizontal slash.
Tao Long used the weight of Anye's vertical strike to accelerate a drop to the ground. That resulted in her arms colliding and the monk dodging the stumbled attack. Before Anye could react he’d flipped on his back and kicked his legs around, spinning on the ground. His foot met Anye's offhand, kicking her newly acquired sword away from her and out of the boundaries of the fighting area.
When he spun to his feet in front of Anye the surge of energy from the man gathered again. Anye's reflexes simply weren't fast enough to react to his next attack; a single foot slammed to the ground in front of Anye and both of his fists came from his sides with the force of a battering ram. The impact forced the air out of her lungs and knocked her skidding on her back to the edge of the arena.
Anye coughed as the dust around her settled, grasping for air to refill her lungs. The force of the attack was extraordinary, and she now understood the reason for the sudden surges of power. The man didn't use magical energy the way everyone she knew usually did. Depending on the spell and its strength, the user would usually be summoning the power constantly, channeling it to suit their needs. But Tao Long gathered the energy lightly while fighting and stored it for specific tasks, using it for extremely powerful attacks when it was used.
Anye had barely managed to stop coughing when she felt the surge of power again. She looked up past her feet towards where her adversary stood. He looked like he was getting ready to jump. A second later, he did with an amazing display of strength.
Anye and the crowd watched in suspense. The foreign fighter had seemingly leaped twenty feet in the air before she felt the power surge again and knew she had to act. She forced herself to roll to the side and get to her feet just has the man came down blindingly fast, burying his arm elbow-deep into the ground where she had been laying.
The show of power was terrifying, but the crowd loved it. Fear was starting to settle within Anye. She had lost one of her swords, had a feeling of intense pain in her chest from the previous hit, and had come to the realization that she hadn't managed to even wind her opponent even slightly.
Tao Long turned his head and stared at the woman as he pulled his arm from the ground and focused his strength again. The surges of power Anye had felt earlier now felt constant. She assumed it was because Tao Long had assu
med she would either be out-cold or dead by that point and was becoming frustrated. That didn't make her feel any better.
And then he was on her, swinging his leg with incredible force at her side. For the first time since she was a squire in training with the sword, she didn’t know what to do, and did the first thing she could think of; she held her sword vertically with her hand flat against the side of the blade and clenched her eyes shut.
Everyone in the audience went silent. Anye remained standing, pushing back against the force of Tao Long’s leg. The energy she felt coming from him was astounding, but what was even more shocking was the fact that she remained on her feet. She felt something happening within her, but she wasn't controlling it. It felt primal, like her body was no longer her own. She opened her eyes to see Tao Long staring at her with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and fear.
Swirling air spun the dust around the two in a violent cyclone. Anye's eyes glowed brightly with the uncontrolled magical power she was somehow channeling. The crowd of people had to shield their faces from the flying debris being flung around.
“What's going on?” she tried to say, but her mouth remained shut and the words simply echoed in her mind.
Tao Long focused himself again and quickly lowered his foot to attempt another finishing blow against the comparatively small swords-woman with his fists. Anye reacted with lightning speed, using the flat edge of her blade to meet the monk's punches. Small white fragments of pure energy exploded from the metal, halting his punch instantly.
The two of them continued their enchanted dance for another minute, astonishing everyone in attendance. Nobody cheered or even whispered to the person next to them about the exemplary skill of the two fighters. The small explosions of magic from each contact of fist, foot, and blade never ceased to temporarily blind everyone who watched, and Anye's luminous eyes amazed them all. Nobody in living memory had ever seen someone channel such power, they had only read about it in history books and fairy tales.