by Dante King
I was right.
As the Lightning Skink appeared out of the ether, Qildro waved his scythe about like a windmill and mustered a band of thirteen tennis ball-sized fire imps. My Lightning Skink slipped under a hammer swing from Dhor and went for Qildro. One of the imps threw itself in front of my neon beast and took the bite that should have gotten Qildro on his scythe arm.
While the Lightning Skink attempted to get to Qildro through the dozen remaining fire imps, Cecilia arrived on the scene. She hit Dhor with her Ice Shards spell, and a torrent of icy razor blades struck the dwarf full in the chest. He cried out in pain as they sliced through the thick muscle of his chest and shoulders. One ice shard hit him in the neck, sending blood spraying.
The crowd roared and hollered.
Dhor staggered back, clutching at his neck. Lucky for him, the Fireball I’d shot at him from mid-air sizzled past his face and exploded against the protective barrier that was shielding the crowd.
After freefalling from twenty feet in the air, I hit the deck hard and rolled to absorb the impact. Ike and Qildro had followed my descent and both had their eyes pinned on me, watching to see what I was going to do next.
At least one of them should have spared a thought for Enwyn. By the time she had turned Ike’s big block of a head into a burning marshmallow, it was too late.
The Frost Elemental went down clutching at his melting head, gurgling and spitting blood and bits of his liquified lips. He writhed for a few seconds, and then he stilled.
Qildro let Ike’s grizzly demise get to him, that much was certain. His face contorted into a rictus of rage, and he swung his scythe at Enwyn who had strayed into range when she had cast her Fireball.
I conjured a rod-shaped Flame Barrier in response, which deflected a blow that would have taken Enwyn’s arm off at the elbow. Enwyn wheeled away at the same moment that the Lightning Skink nailed the last of Qildro’s defensive imps, slicing it in half with its glassy claws.
Qildro began to summon something else, his scythe drawing arcane symbols in the air. I pointed my staff at him, starting to conjure a Blazing Bolt, but then Qildro shifted his scythe and aimed it for me instead. The blade suddenly lengthened, like some kind of ultra sharp Go Go Gadget Arm.
I dived sideways, feeling the scythe’s blade hiss through the air only an inch or so over my head.
And I felt something else ruffle my hair too. Something solid that whispered past my ear at almost the same time as the scythe blade. I landed on my shoulder and rolled. Dhor’s boot was visible from the corner of my eye. I came up into a neat kneeling position and let loose with a humdinger of a Blazing Bolt that left a gaping hole in the injured, bleeding dwarf’s chest.
As Dhor keeled over dead, I whirled around, ready to hit Qildro with a Storm Bolt, but I needn’t have worried.
Qildro was standing with Cecilia’s spear through his chest and blinking stupidly.
I understood, then, what the second thing passing by my head had been.
Qildro dropped to his knees, then fell sideways with a dull thump.
Dead.
“One to our host and his lovely companions!” Barry’s voice boomed out, and the spectators went wild.
The girls and I turned and walked arm in arm back to our starting point—after Cecilia had wrenched her icicle spear out of Qildro’s chest—while the three d-bags regenerated over in a corner.
Chapter Three
Barry gave the three losers a couple of minutes to get organized before he started round two. This time, when he announced the beginning of the fight, our two sides came together like a pair of merging thunderstorms.
Qildro summoned the Ethereal Steed, which we had last seen when the Dark Elf Summoner had gotten his ass handed to him in a class led by Madame Scaleblade. Atop this magical horse, he charged with his scythe over his head.
His face was set and cold. His enormous horse, with its golden hide and mane of white fire, snorted as it thundered toward us.
Cecilia, as quick and nimble as only an elf can be, was off and running to meet Qildro before I could stop her.
“Wait!” I yelled, but I may as well have been talking to the tide.
Cecilia held her spear aloft as she ran. A twinkling, misty fog flowed out from the vector’s tip. I recognized the spell. It was one that shrouded the target and slowly froze them, sapping energy from limb and mind.
Or, at least, it would have done, had it not been for the little fire imps that Qildro summoned from horseback. They swarmed about him, gobbling up Cecilia’s frost spell until the imps dropped, frozen solid out of the air and disappeared in little puffs of pure magic.
It seemed that Cecilia had not been quite ready for this.
She managed to get her spear halfway ready, but then Qildro’s Ethereal Steed plowed into her like a semi running down a rabbit.
Cecilia was tough, but she was slight as a willow switch. She went down under the hooves of the horse and was mashed into the dungeon floor. Trampled. Broken. Torn up.
Qildro crowed with delight as one of his mount’s front feet crunched down onto the back of Cecilia’s neck.
“Shit!” Enwyn cried and fired off a Fireball as Qildro cantered away. Her hands were shaking though, and the flaming sphere flashed past his pointed ear.
I was on the verge of giving the motherfucker the hairdryer in the bath treatment with a Storm Bolt, but Ike cannoned into me with his broad shoulder and sent me flying.
On instinct, I rolled backward and narrowly avoided having my gray matter strewn about the place by Ike and his icepick.
I was in no mood for playing nice just then, so I lashed out with a kick and caught the Frost Elemental a beauty right in the plums. Ike assumed the position—hands clasped to nuggets, top half bent over—and I rolled over the top of him. I conjured up a Magma Bomb as I did this and dropped it behind me as I straightened.
I sprinted hard for Qildro when the Magma Bomb went off, cutting Ike neatly in half in a spray of molten rock and spreading his entrails around like a grizzly streamer.
A cry halted me in my tracks, and I swung my head around to see Enwyn engaged with Dhor. The dwarf had managed to get in close to my girlfriend, so she was unable to get the room she needed to cast a spell that might have been able to save her. As I watched, Dhor blocked a savage jab from Enwyn and hit her hard in the thigh with his lump hammer.
Enwyn cried out and dropped to one knee.
“Fuck you!” I yelled and fired off a Storm Bolt at Dhor. It hit the dwarf in the chest, but didn’t take him down.
A second later, I realized it was because Dhor had used his Rock Skin spell and his stony skin had absorbed the impact. He laughed in my face.
“Better luck next time, fucker!” he said in his gravelly voice.
Next time came sooner than he’d thought when I hit him with a Paralyzing Zap. The Storm Magic froze him just long enough for Enwyn to pull the lump hammer out of his hand and stove his face in.
A fierce smile lit my features as I watched Enwyn pound Dhor’s head into a purplish mush, but it wasn’t on my mug for long.
The sound of hooves approaching made both myself and Enwyn look around.
Qildro was galloping across the dungeon floor toward us.
The dungeon floor was large, but it wasn’t that large. Qildro was going to be on top of me, his horse using me as a doormat, in a matter of seconds.
My mind flicked numbly through the spells I could use in the time that it was going to take him to run me down. I selected the Crystallize spell, figuring that I’d try and dive out of the way and crack him with my staff as he passed by. It was risky but—
—then a translucent orange dome appeared around Qildro and his mount. It was like the rider and steed were a fly and they had just been trapped under a giant, fiery cup.
I looked over my shoulder and saw Enwyn, her face rigid with concentration, staring intently at Qildro with her hands raised in front of her. She brought her palms together in a slow clap, and the
dome that surrounded Qildro and his thaumaturgical horse contracted and contracted and contracted…
Qildro screamed, and then his face seemed to melt. His hair caught fire. His skin crisped as the glowing orange fire dome roasted him alive. His magical steed flickered and vanished.
Then he was gone. Merely a pile of smoldering ash and running fat on the floor.
“You’re a fucking crazy bitch,” I said to Enwyn as the crowd went bonkers. Drinks and bits of meat were thrown into the air. “And I mean that in the best way possible.”
Enwyn smiled at me. “I take it as a compliment.” She pointed over to where we had started out from at the beginning of the two rounds, and I saw Cecilia getting shakily from her feet in the middle of a regeneration rune.
The fight had begun and ended so quickly, that I hadn’t even had time to check to make sure she was okay. Not to mention the fact that the presence of regeneration runes made you less concerned for the health and safety of your team members. Even when one of them was a member of your growing girlfriend brigade.
Enwyn and I hurried over to Cecilia.
“Are you all right?” I asked the elven aristocrat as Enwyn and I came to a halt.
Cecilia looked at me. Her face was pale, but her blue eyes burned with a cold fire.
“Tell me, Justin,” she said, her voice shaking only a little, “how’s my hair?”
I grinned and pulled her to me in a quick hug.
“Your hair looks terrible,” I said into her ear. “Couldn’t you have at least made some effort? Jeez...”
I wasn’t ashamed to say it, but the sight of Cecilia lying dead upon the dungeon floor, limbs twisted and broken and eyes staring sightlessly, had rattled me. Not to mention having Enwyn take a severe knock like she had. It made me question how I would feel if I was looking at one of them dead for real—fallen in battle or something.
It was not a nice thought. It made me realize just how much I had come to care about them. Not just as lovers, but as friends too. They were hot as hell, yes, but they were also the rarest breed of hotties; they were actually cool, humble, and considerate too.
Yeah, losing them was not a nice thought.
Not nice at all.
My eyes narrowed as I regarded the three regenerated dudes standing at the other end of the dungeon. My gaze focused on Qildro. The noise of the drunken spectators faded away until it was just a dull roar on the edge of hearing.
“And begin!” Barry yelled.
I was away like Usain Bolt with a firework up his ass.
Enwyn, what with the injury she had taken to her thigh, was never going to be able to keep up. Even Cecilia, with her elven nimbleness and pace, couldn’t stick with me. My head was full of the image of my two girlfriends lying broken and buckled on the ground, blood surrounding them.
Uh-uh, not on my watch, I thought. Not if I can help it.
Misdirection can serve you pretty well in a fight to the death, as can making the most of someone’s inherent arrogance. That was something that I had learned during the Exhibition Matches and from Odette Scaleblade and Ragnar Ironskin’s training.
What I had also learned from them—in particular, Madame Scaleblade—was that you didn’t fuck around. You didn’t try to get all over-elaborate and show off. You didn’t run unnecessary risks or do something complicated when something simple would suffice.
I was sprinting hard at the three buddies, who were bunched up rather conveniently, looking at me as if I had gone the way of Britney Spears circa the year 2000 and completely lost my marbles.
Qildro was in the middle of the trio, Dhor on the left, and Ike on the right.
I headed for the dwarf, changing the angle of my sprint so that I was bearing down on him.
Ike stabbed at the ground with his icepick. A crack appeared in the floor and fired out in my direction, the ground splitting as his spell shot toward me. Without changing direction or altering my speed, I jumped into the air and gave myself a little extra boost by using Flame Flight.
A finger of ice punched out of the ground exactly where I would have been had I continued on my course. I sailed over it, landed with barely a hitch in my step and charged on.
I was on Dhor before he knew it. The dwarf swung at me with his hammer; a great sweeping side-swipe that would have resulted in my nose pointing out of the back of my head had it connected.
Qildro’s face was a picture of delight in my peripheral vision. No doubt he thought that I’d let my ego get the better of me and was now no better than a lamb to the slaughter.
I dropped to my knees just in time, cruising across the floor in a powerslide, traveling in the direction of Qildro. Dhor’s lump hammer whistled over my head. I raised my crystal staff and—
—conjured a Flame Barrier Spell in the shape of a three-foot long pecker complete with an especially sharp tip. Using my Telekinesis spell, I punched it clean through Qildro Feybreaker’s head.
Part of me almost wished that I’d aimed that flaming dildo of death at something a little less terminal than Qildro’s head. Just so the asshole could have realized how I’d killed him.
C’est la vie, eh?
Qildro dropped as only a man who has been slain by a flaming, razor-tipped dong could.
Ike let out a bellow of rage.
I popped up to my feet, conjured an Arcane Mine, and threw it over my shoulder at Dhor, who was standing only a couple of feet behind me and still wondering what in the world had just happened. It stuck to his back with a reassuring thud.
I sprinted at Ike, just as the Frost Elemental raised his icepick and cast a frosty mist in my direction. I narrowed my eyes and braced for the biting, stinging chill.
A wall of ice suddenly appeared in front of me, soaking up Ike’s thaumaturgical attack. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Cecilia had joined the fray and, what was more, had probably just saved my ass.
Still, there was no time for gratitude just yet.
I blasted the Ice Wall apart with a crackling red ball of energy. The Blazing Bolt reduced the frigid obstacle to ice-cubes, and I boosted through the gap.
The look on Ike’s face as I emerged out of the fog and smoke was a picture.
“Oh, crap,” he said, with real feeling.
I hit him full in the face with my staff and used my Crystallize spell to turn the big Frost Elemental into a giant statue. Then, I spun on my heel and shot a Fireball at the still form, blasting Ike to smithereens.
At the exact same time as I reduced Ike to a sack of gravel, the Arcane Mine on Dhor’s back went off. The explosion spread the dwarf across the nearest crowd-protecting barrier like a bucket of macabre paint being thrown at a wall in some weird art exhibition.
There was a ringing silence, in which the only sound was me panting.
Then the crowd went off like a bomb.
This time, when the three members of Frat Douche regenerated, they did so without their pants and underwear. Each of them was bare-assed. It being their third regeneration in fairly quick succession, it took them a little while to register this fact.
“The losers must go forth in shame, as is only right!” Barry cackled with glee, his magically enhanced voice thundering over the din caused by the audience, who were now spilling onto the fighting floor.
It looked like Barry the poltergeist had worked his magic to have the trio regenerate in this rather embarrassing state. I grinned at the magnificent bastard.
Although I was surrounded by cheering people, I thought I heard Dhor say, “Let’s get the bloody hell out of here!” before the defeated trio made a break for the dungeon door with their tails between their legs and on show for all to see.
Cecilia, Enwyn, and I were born up the dungeon stairs on a tide of sweaty, excited, drunken people and deposited in the entrance hall.
“That was fucking unbelievable, bro!” said some red-skinned ifrit who worked the forges in the village as he stumbled through the crowd.
“Baby, you were incredible!” a curvy
faery with a pair of deep violet wings and curly silver hair crooned in my ear. “The way you finished off all three of those chumps in the final round…” She ran a hand down her own body. Her long-nailed fingers trailed across a pair of chesticles that could have stopped a bar fight. They came to rest in the waistband of a pair of denim cut-offs. “It made me feel… funny.”
Cecilia flicked the girl in the shoulder, and the faery recoiled slightly.
“Daphne, honey,” she said, “I overheard you not two days ago saying that you’d rather sleep with the barrel than the Earthlings that inhabited the bottom of it.”
The faery, Daphne, blushed.
“Daphne dearest,” Cecilia said, in her sweetest and most dangerous voice, “if you’re going to be two-faced, the least you can do is make sure that one of them is pretty.”
She leaned forward and peeled a long fake eyelash from the young woman’s eyelid. Daphne gasped.
“Now, run along and grab yourself a drink and think about what a naughty girl you’ve been,” Cecilia said.
The faery trotted off in the direction of the kitchen.
“My apologies, darling,” Cecilia said to me, flicking the eyelash away, “but sometimes these young girls just need a firm hand to stop them turning into total slatterns.”
I grinned at her and gave her a playful dig in the ribs with a finger. “That was my first look at Cecilia Chillgrave, the woman at the top of the pecking order.”
“Pecking order?” Cecilia said, giving Enwyn a knowing look. “Darling, it’s more like the competition which occurs within a pride of lionesses.”
A cough sounded at my ear, and a powerful waft of cooking cherry and burning herbs washed over me. I turned and found myself nose to nose with Reginald Chaosbane.
“Hello, Headmaster,” I said. “Did you enjoy the fight?”
“Yes, yes, yes indeed, mate,” Chaosbane said, running a finger across one of his immaculately styled mustaches. “Only one thing would have improved it for me.”
I raised an eyebrow and looked at Cecilia and Enwyn. I thought that we’d done pretty well, considering our opponents, the closeness of the quarters, the fact that all three of us were coming off the back of the battle at the Eldritch prison, and that we were all half drunk.