by Griffith, KF
“That’s some good fortune, there,” she said. “That’s for sure.”
She spun around quickly and faced the rest of the team. “You all know the rules. We aren’t allowed to know anythin’ about what we’re goin’ to face in the qualifyin’ rounds. It’s top secret. But . . . I’ve been doin some recon.”
Everyone laughed.
“So, I have an idea about what you might be facing,” she continued. “Judging by what I’ve heard from down here, it sounds like most of the teams before us have fought two rounds. It sounded like some of them only lasted one round, and one team lasted long enough to make it to a third round. I don’t know what kind of an enemy the team that made it to the third round faced, but whatever it was scared the audience.”
“That must’ve been what we heard back at the scoring harness station,” said Baerwald. He shivered.
“Whatever it was, only one team lasted long enough to face it,” Brunda said. “What that means is that there are at least a few weak teams, lots of average teams, and at least one really good team.”
“And that they’re makin’ us do some kind of elimination rounds,” said Elganbok. “Probably startin’ with somethin’ fairly easy and gettin’ harder each round.”
“That’s what it sounded like to me,” said Brunda.
“So, there’s a finite number of opponents in each round, and once you clear them, you move on to the next level?” I said.
They all turned to stare at me.
“I thought you said you’d never played ogreball before,” Baerwald said.
“I haven’t,” I said. “But we have these things where I come from called video games. Some of them operate under the same principles.” I shrugged my shoulder.
“The kid’s full of surprises,” said the shrunken head.
Brunda looked at the head and smiled. “Looks like you’ve got a little strategic assistant, there, Grady Burr.”
A horn blew from above. “Last team up!” shouted one of the attendants.
“That’s our cue,” said Brunda. “Time to play some ogreball!”
We raised our weapons, roared our battle cry, and charged up the ramp towards playing field.
Chapter 23: Qualifying
We burst out of the lower levels and onto the playing field. The announcer bellowed, “The Flaming Goat Ogreball Club!” The crowd went wild. Cannons fired above us and fireworks went off. We had our weapons raised as we ran down a series of chutes with bars over them that lead us towards the center of the stadium. There was a giant sunken pit there with doors along the far wall. Our chute ended right at the edge of the pit. It was a long way down.
“Looks like we jump in,” said Elganbok. And he did.
The others followed. I stood there for a second looking around. The crowd grew silent suddenly. I saw my image pop up on all of the giant video monitors positioned throughout the stadium. It was creepy seeing myself like that, huge, glowing, projected above the waiting crowd.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said the announcer. “Say it with me . . . ‘No children allowed in the player areas’” The crowd said it along with him.
“But this player is . . . officially . . . not a child.” The crowd gasped.
“He sure looks like a child to me,” he said. “But according to his official documentation – approved and stamped by B.O.R.I.A.L. itself – he is not a child.” The audience ooohed and then murmured suspiciously.
“Ladies and gentleorges, let me introduce to you Grady Burr,” he said. Dead silence.
“Raise your hammer! Raise your hammer!” said the shrunken head.
The glove lifted my war hammer up and waved it slowly back and forth.
“Turn around slowly,” said the head. “And smile!’
I did as it said, and there was a small round of applause that started at one side of the stadium and grew to include most of the crowd.
“Wave your hammer around really fast, and then slam it down really hard,” said the head.
I did.
“Now wave it around over your head again and roar . . . as loud as you can.”
I did, and the crowd roared their approval back at me. I could see a meter on one of the scoreboards flash green. The number beside the meter read 90%. My octozurl wriggled its tenatcles in my scoring harness.
“Looks like he’s quite the showman,” said the announcer. “An approval rating that high always makes for entertaining ogreball. Let me take this opportunity to remind you that all ratings will be added together to determine each team’s final score. That includes Approval, Kills, Number of Survivors, and Rounds Completed.”
Just then the doors at the far end of the pit creaked open on their hinges, and Elganbok shouted, “Better get down here, kid, I think we’re gonna need your help.”
The crowd roared again. The qualifying round had begun.
I swallowed hard, pulled down my goggles, and jumped down into the pit.
“Skeletons!” cried the announcer with glee. “Provided for your pleasure by the fine folks at Skel-O-Works.”
From out of the darkness behind the doors came hordes of skeletons, wave after wave of them. They were each armed with a staff that had one end crackling with electric blue energy and the other end connected to a cable that ran to a power pack that they wore on their backs. They waved their staff back and forth in front of them as they advanced.
An ogre from my team called Bonecrack dashed forward to take a hammer swing at the skeletons closest to him. He maneuvered around the crackling staff of one skeleton and struck a solid blow to two nearby skeletons, sending them tumbling backwards. Before he could do anything else, another skeleton struck him from behind. He lit up like a cartoon character that’s been hit by lightning. He was covered in little bolts of electricity, and I could actually see his skeleton – like an x-ray. He let out a strangled cry and fell to his knees. The crowd gasped.
I looked up at the nearest scoreboard, and I could tell by the display that his health meter was about halfway gone.
He got back up and, dodging the skeleton that had just hit him, took another swing at the two skeletons he’d knocked to the ground seconds ago. He struck one, knocking it down, but the other one managed to avoid his hammer. He quickly struck a third blow to the downed skeleton, and it flashed and disappeared. The crowd cheered.
“Score!” shouted the announcer.
But before Bonecrack could take another step, a skeleton hit him from behind. He disappeared in a blinding flash.
“Oh! Too bad for the Flaming Goat Ogreball Club,” said the announcer. “That player will be spending the rest of the qualifying rounds in the Eliminated Player’s Box. The FGOC is down one team member. Can they go on to victory?”
Elganbok stepped forward and shouted above the crowd noise, “So, we know it takes three hits to kill a skeleton and two hits to kill one of us. We’re gonna need to be careful. If you get hit, find some cover and wait until your health meter fills back up.”
“Are those skeletons powered by those power packs they’re wearing,” I shouted.
“Most likely,” said Baerwald. “Why?”
“If they are and we knock the packs off of them, maybe they’ll just die,” I said. They all stared at me.
“It’s just an idea,” I said.
“It’s brilliant, kid,” said Elganbok. “Let’s test it out.”
“I’ll throw you into the middle of them,” said Baerwald to Elganbok. “See if you can catch them off guard and knock off one of their power packs.”
“Let’s do it!” said Elganbok. “In the meantime you guys do as much damage as you can.”
We turned and faced the oncoming horde of amped up skeletons. Baerwald hoisted Elganbok and hurled him high above them. The rest of us charged with our weapons swinging.
The crowd cheered as we clashed with our boney opponents. Skeletons went flying. Ogres went flying. There were hundreds of them and only ten of us now that Bonecrack had been sidelined, so we needed to
make every hit count. My glove went crazy, smashing skeletons left and right with my giant war hammer. It didn’t take me three hits, either. One good strike took them down. The ogres fighting alongside me nodded their approval.
“Go for the power packs!” Elganbok’s voice came from deep inside the mass of fighting skeletons. “They die the instant you kill their power packs!” He broke through the front line of skeletons from behind, smashing a skeleton’s power pack on either side of him as did. The skeletons dropped instantly to the ground. He leaped in the air, did a somersault, and landed on his feet in front of Baerwald.
“Now it’s fun time!” he shouted.
He turned and faced the army of skeletons and ran at them with a blood-curdling scream.
Within minutes we had beaten every last skeleton. The crowd cheered for us.
We stood on the floor of the pit breathing heavily, waiting for the next round to start. I did a quick head count; we’d lost three more ogres. There were seven of us left, now.
“Get ready for Round 2!” said the announcer.
“What’s it gonna be this time?” asked Elganbok.
“Mechanical insects!” cried the announcer, obviously enjoying himself.
The doors into the pit opened again and a swarm of mechanical beetles tottered out into the light on spindly metal legs. There were twelve of them, and each bug was about the size of small car.
“He forgot to say giant mechanical insects,” I said.
“Those things are huge,” said the shrunken head.
One of my teammates fired a shot from his slingshot at the head of one of the robot insects. It made a loud clunk and bounced off it without doing any damage at all. The insect turned its head slowly in the direction that the shot had come from and leaped into the air. The instant it was airborne metal plates on its back rotated out, and a set of wings sprang out and began to whir.
“Oh great!” said Elganbok. “They fly.”
Then a sharp, pointed blade popped out from its underbelly.
“And they’ve got stingers,” I said.
“I say you tear off their wing covers and use them as shields to protect yourself from their stingers,” said the shrunken head.
“Great idea,” said Elganbok.
“I wonder if we could rip their wings off, too,” I said. “They’ll probably be less dangerous if they can’t fly.”
“Another great idea,” said Baerwald.
The insects all launched themselves into the air and flew in circles over us. The hum from their wings made the air vibrate, and a smell like a warm engine surrounded us. From below I could see that each one of them had a small blue light protected by a cage of small metal bars on their undercarriage.
“Do you think that blue light means anything?” I asked.
“It probably has something do with their power supply,” said Baerwald. “I’ll bet that’s why they’ve got that cage over them.”
One of the bugs dove at Elganbok, and when one of my other teammates swung his club at it, it spun around and stung him in the chest. He disappeared in a flash of light and the bug zipped back up out of reach. It had happened so quickly that no one had a chance to react.
“They fly pretty fast,” said Elganbok.
“They sure do,” said Baerwald.
All at once the insects began to dive at us. We dodged and rolled and ducked out of their way as best we could, but within a few minutes most of my team had been stung and had disappeared. We managed to pull the wings off of most of the bugs by that time, but there were still two of them left flying. And it was just me, Elganbok and Baerwald left in the pit.
“I’m going to pretend to fall,” said Elganbok. “When a bug comes for me, see if you can grab it and hold it down long enough for me to try something.”
“Sure,” said Baerwald.
Elganbok limped out to the center of the pit and pretended to fall. The audience reacted, and so did the insects. The ones left flying hovered over Elganbok as the wingless ones scampered towards him.
Baerwald grabbed the wingless insect nearest to him, flipped it over, and held it to the ground. Elganbok jumped up, raced over to him, flipped one of his bludgeons around, and tried to jam the handle end of it through the protective cage to smash the light, but the handle was too thick to fit between the cage bars.
“Ah, crap!” he said. “I was really hopin’ that was gonna work.” One of the flying bugs dropped at him from behind and stung him before I could say a word. He flashed and vanished.
Baerwald stood there still gripping the wingless bug with a look of despair on his face.
I dashed over to him, and using the giant glove, I snapped the wingless bug’s stinger off and stabbed its light right through its metal cage. It shuddered and went dead.
“Grab the wingless ones first,” I said. “We’ll get the flying ones last.”
He had no problem at all grabbing the wingless ones. He’d grab one, turn its bottom side towards me, and I’d stab it in the light with the broken stinger. We made quick work of them and managed to kill off one of the flying ones, too. We were down to one last wingless bug, and the last flying bug was still swooping down at us, trying to sting us.
I made a run for the last wingless bug. I used the glove to flip it over on its back, and just as I stabbed it, the flying one dove at me. The wingless one was dead, so I jumped over it and ducked down behind it, using it as a shield. The flying one kept diving at me, stabbing and poking. Its stinger clanged against the shell of the dead wingless bug and threw sparks every time it struck at me.
The attack stopped suddenly and, as I peeked out over the edge of my shield, I saw that Baerwald had grabbed the flying insect and was struggling to tear its wings off. They thrashed around on the ground and then lifted up together into the air for a moment before finally falling back to the ground. Baerwald stood up slowly with both of the wings in his hands. He looked exhausted.
I stood up and took a step towards him.
Before I could react, the bug that he had just pulled the wings from jerked upright and stabbed him in the middle of the chest. He disappeared in a flash.
I was stunned. I thought we’d won. I stumbled over to the last mechanical insect and, as it lay there twitching and jerking, I drove the stinger that I still had in my hand straight into its heart.
The crowd roared.
“Amazing!” crowed the announcer. “For only the second time in this competition, we have a team moving on to the third round, or what’s left of a team.”
The crowd was chanting my name over and over. And then the main stadium lights went out, only the safety lights remained on. The crowd fell silent. The air filled with the overpowering smell of flogiston energy, and my skin tingled. Tiny sparks flitted across my skin and my octozurl pulled itself as far back into my scoring harness as it could.
There was an unmistakable sense of fear in the air. Judging by everything going on around me now, I probably should have been scared, but I wasn’t.
The shrunken head seemed disturbed. It was spinning around in every direction in a panic, like it was looking for something. “I hope this isn’t what I think it is,” it said.
“What do you think it is?”
That’s when the sound of flogiston crackling came out of the darkness of one of the open doors on the far wall. I stepped closer and could see a dim blue glow moving towards me from deep in the tunnel. It got brighter and brighter until it took shape. It looked like the ghost of a zombie ogre covered in a tattered player’s uniform. It floated above the ground and was gliding in my direction.
“It’s a flogiston wraith,” said the shrunken head, a chill in his voice.
“Is that bad?” I asked.
“Not as bad as it could be,” the head said. “Because this is just an ogreball game, when it touches you it’ll probably just end this round. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s gonna hurt really bad, but at least you’ll live. If you ran into one out in the real world, it would kill you. For
real. Without any hesitation”
As soon as it came out of the door, the crowd screamed and shrieked. They were obviously terrified of it.
“Third and final round,” said the announcer. His voice trembled. “The Flogiston Wraith,” he squeeked.
It floated around me slowly, sizing me up. I noticed that every time it got close to one of the flogiston pipes it got brighter, and the farther away it moved from them, the dimmer it appeared.
“So, it’s made of flogiston?” I asked.
“Yeah, they’re what happens when an ogre gets killed in a flogiston accident during a game,” the head said. “It’s like an ogre spirit that’s trapped between two worlds, living and dead. They usually haunt the stadium they died in. I can’t even imagine how the ogres running the game can get it to do what they want. The wraiths are usually pretty violent.”
“Actually, I think this might be pretty easy,” I said. “Does dead ogre skin conduct flogiston energy?”
“Do you mean natural dead ogre skin or re-animated dead ogre skin . . . like mine?”
“Like yours,” I said. “Or like the kind lining my glove.”
“No, re-animated dead ogre skin doesn’t conduct much of anything,” it said.
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
I pretended to stumble back against the nearest wall in fear. That drew the flogiston wraith towards me. It was probably used to that kind of response.
“Oh, dear,” said the announcer. “This does not look good for Grady Burr.”
It floated right up to me and hovered there, inches from my face. I got the feeling that it enjoyed seeing the look of fear in its victim’s eyes. It lifted its ghostly hand and raised a single finger to touch my face. That’s when I reached over my head with Hardgrim’s glove and ripped the flogiston pipe that ran above my head from the wall. In an instant, I pulled it free and jammed the open, sparking end into the wraith’s chest.
The wraith throbbed brightly for a second and then exploded with a flash and a boom and fell to the floor as a shower of crackling metallic confetti. I fell forward on top of the ashes, exhausted.
“Unbelievable!” shouted the announcer. “No one has ever survived Round 3 before! Amazing!”