Shield snorted as he rose to his feet, blood dripping from his chin.
“Oh, I’m sorry, was that yours?” Storgen asked, cradling his injured arm as the water splashed about his waist.
Shield spat. “Human trash. Where is martial pride?”
Shield clapped his hands together, and the water around Storgen shifted to ice. Storgen panicked as he fought to free himself, thrashing about and pulling. He could feel his vision narrowing, his heart slowing.
The ice.
The ice was taking him again.
Shield took advantage of Storgen’s lapse, charging in with his horns and impaling him through the shoulder. Storgen screamed in agony as he was lifted free of the ice, his hands gripping feebly on the barbs, cutting his fingers.
No.
Storgen’s eyes trembled as he was bucked aloft, droplets of his own blood spraying around him as he hollered. The sounds of the crowd warbled like water.
No, not again!
Many in the crowd looked away, too horrified to watch.
I won’t be put to sleep again!
Storgen lashed out furiously, jamming his thumb through the vision slit of Shield’s helmet and ramming it into his eye as hard as he could.
Shield bellowed in pain, flicking Storgen free and gripping his face with his hands.
“Ahhhh! My eye. Again, you attack my eyes! What kind of duelist are you?”
Storgen picked himself up, his body shaking with pain as he held his shoulder, the barbed tip of Shield’s horn lodged in his shoulder. Slowly his vision widened and his hearing returned. He focused on the pain, held it close, allowed it to consume his attention as his fears slowly sloughed off of him.
“I’m not a duelist,” Storgen coughed.
He forced himself to move, slowly at first, but gaining speed, his legs splashing through the water.
“I don’t have any martial pride.”
Storgen jumped up into the air. Shield swung at him with his fist and sliced at him with his horns, but lost him in the glare of the sun. His voice bellowed through the air.
“I’m a street fighter!”
Storgen kicked Shield in the chest with both feet, knocking him backwards.
Shield stumbled at the edge of the sea shelf, the material giving way beneath his hooves. With a mighty howl Shield fell backwards, plunging down into the deep waters, his heavy armor dragging him down into the depths with frightening speed.
Nisi’s camp was horrified.
Ambera’s camp was awestruck.
In panic, Acantha stood up in her chair. “Is he…trying to drown him? Did he lure him out there on purpose?” She turned to Erolina for conformation. “Could that actually work?”
Erolina covered her face. “He’s an idiot. He doesn’t know the first thing about minotaur magic.”
The artificial ocean began to bubble and steam. Storgen made for the shoreline, the water moving from a simmer to a boil in a matter of seconds. He leapt clear of the water, his legs red and burnt as the water reached a full rolling boil, then vaporized into a mushroom cloud of superheated steam.
Shield rose up out of the now-empty seafloor, steam condensing into a column of ice that lifted him aloft.
The heat gathered around his right hand and Shield fired a jet of scalding vapor. Storgen forced himself to his feet and jumped free, the sand withering and melting from the heat.
The cold gathered around his left fist and Shield released an icy gale. Storgen jinked sideways and barely avoided being frozen solid, the blast hitting a rock and encasing it in ice.
Nisi’s disciples cheered wildly, relieved to finally witness a proper duel as their champion fired blast after blast, alternating heat and cold, as Storgen zigged, scrambled, and zagged across the beach, barely avoiding each attack.
“Do you see now, human?” Shield taunted. “You never had chance. Not even close. Look at you, like pathetic bug scuttling about. Just like all your kind, race of cockroaches.”
Storgen managed to dive behind a large boulder just as a jet of cold covered it in ice.
“Now we finish this!!!”
Shield lifted his hands above his head and gathered up huge amounts of energy. The entire colosseum began to vibrate, the air growing sour and acrid.
The minotaur punched forward, releasing an enormous blast of heat, the boulder searing red-hot and blanketing the beach in a cloud of steam. He punched again immediately, freezing the boulder solid and coating the beach with a supercooled mist.
Again and again he punched, freezing then heating the boulder, stepping forward as he fired. The crowd went nuts, whooping and wailing as Shield kept his opponent completely pinned down. The earth trembled the air hissed. The harpy vendors shrieked in fright. The crowd had to shield their faces from the heat and the cold. The people in the skybox seats had to step back from the intensity of it. Even the dirigibles were forced to back away, their delicate control surfaces warping from exposure.
Finally, he fired both at the same time, and the boulder shattered to pieces with a titanic crack. It echoed off the vouná then again off the east hills, rebounding over and over again across the city. Bits of steaming and icy rock thudded all about the arena like hail.
Nisi stood up and raised her goblet in salutation to her familia and they stomped their feet like mad, shaking the entire colosseum like a rumbling earthquake.
Shield stepped up confidently as the steam cleared. There, fluttering out between the rubble was the remains of Storgen’s blood-stained tunic. Shield snatched it free and held it aloft, pumping his fists and encouraging the crowd to yell louder.
Acantha breathed deeply. “I guess that’s it, then.” She signaled to her priestesses, and they began to gather their things. “I’ll go inform the goddess.”
Shield held up the tunic and tore it in half, laughing maniacally and stomping his hooves.
Suddenly the sand beside him erupted upwards, and Storgen emerged, raising his foot for a powerful kick.
Shield turned to react, but it was too late. With every ounce of his strength, Storgen stomped his heel into the side of the minotaur’s knee. The joint popped with a disgusting snap, and his leg crumpled sideways, toppling the mighty champion to the ground.
The crowd was awestruck.
Erolina stood up in her seat. “Impossible.”
Acantha looked up in shock. “He dug underneath the sand to shield himself?”
Shield bawled like a wounded animal, reaching back and grabbing Storgen about the waist with a hand coated in heat. Storgen screamed as he was picked up, his skin searing from the touch. Grabbing Shield’s little finger, he yanked as hard as he could and the joint snapped with a horrible pop.
The crowd groaned to hear it.
The minotaur dropped him to the ground, then punched with his free hand, but Storgen ducked beneath it, grabbing his wrist and punching upwards. He hit Shield’s elbow and it bent the wrong way with a sickly crunch.
Shield fell over on his belly, writhing from the pain of his ruined limbs. Storgen stood over him, his body battered and burned, his mane of blonde hair scorched and smoking. “You know, it’s a funny thing they never tell you about armor. It doesn’t protect your joints. It can’t. If it did you wouldn’t be able to move.”
“Human scum,” the minotaur spat.
Storgen’s eyes became dark, and he jumped up atop Shield’s back. “You know, I’m getting real sick and tired of listening to you beastmen dump on humans all the time.”
Storgen grabbed his wrist and pinned it behind his back, straining the joint. “You’re born with magic, and you act like that makes you better than us.”
Shield bayed in misery as Storgen pushed harder, wrenching the limb further and further.
“So let me ask you something, minotaur: If humans are garbage, then what does that make someone who goes up against garbage and loses?”
Shield’s shoulder cracked out of joint. His body convulsed as he screamed, and his eyes rolled back into their so
ckets. Even the most jaded spectators winced at the horrible sound.
Just before Shield lost consciousness, a single thought passed through his mind:
I was wrong. Humans are…terrifying.
His body went still. The colosseum went completely silent.
Storgen threw the limp limb aside. “I don’t have any oh-so-special magic, and I don’t need it either.”
He grabbed a piece of glass created by the melting sands and cut Shield’s braid from his chin. Storgen stood up and held it aloft in his fist.
“I have everything I need right here!”
The crowd began to applaud. It was scattered at first, but grew steadily louder as people slowly processed what they had just witnessed. People looked at one another, as if to make sure others had seen it too, and then they began to cheer.
Acantha looked around in horror. “What just happened?”
The announcer flew over, and Storgen tossed the silver lock over to him. The man dabbed his bald head with it, brought nearly to tears.
“Ambera is triumphant!”
The crowd’s cheer became louder. Even some of Nisi’s followers began to cheer, too caught up in the moment of one of their own standing in triumph to care that they were cheering for the wrong side.
Erolina sat back down, thunderstruck. “I can’t believe it.”
Storgen pumped his fist one more time, and the crowd really began to roar, celebrating in elation, ecstatic at something that they couldn’t even really put into words. They had witnessed a miracle, something impossible, or at least, something that was thought to be impossible. A refutation of everything that they had been taught from the time they were born, a demonstrable proof that what they believed about themselves wasn’t true.
A human had stood alone, stood on his own, and won.
The humans cheered louder than seemed possible. It was like the releasing of long locked-away feelings only now given freedom and expression. Many found tears on their cheeks, though they could not yet fully understand why.
Nisi stood up in her throne, dumbfounded. “It can’t be…”
Only when he had pumped his fist three more times, calling for three more rounds of cheering, did Storgen allow himself to pass out. He collapsed into the sand beside his fallen opponent.
Chapter Nine
The Great Betrayal was a harmony of strategic precision. It was Sirend’s magnum opus, flawless, sublime. A legion of demigods and gorgons crossed Kalosýni, the river of benevolence, which circles the heavens seven times, and began their attack up the Eternal Staircase, slaying the great sentries Infinity and Oblivion, and stripping them of their light, for the Isle of the Blessed is as far above the heavens as the heavens are from Garralos, and cannot be reached save by following the departed spirits of those bound for it.
They took control of Eiríni, the river of peace, through which the ferryman Zontanós carries the souls of the great and noble to the Elysium fields, isolating the Fates from their fortress beyond time, and cutting them off from their allies.
There on the banks of the Miními, the river of memory, they laid siege, but the Fates were prepared. A phalanx of titans emerged from their hiding places, crossing the Chará, the river of joy, and there the armies clashed. The stars were shattered, the ether of the cosmos torn. Will fought will, mind clashed with mind, and the Elysium Fields were ravaged and left desolate.
At the height of the battle, the mighty elm Mitéra, mother of all celestial trees, where dreams cling under every leaf, was split in twain by Aga herself, the light spilling forth from the ruined wood into the darkness of the night sky, where it can be seen to this day, a milky trail of tears among the stars.
The light of creation lost, the gods and their allies were forced to retreat, for without the light of Mitéra to shield them, they could not exist so near to the Isle of the Blessed. The Fates had won the battle at terrible price, but they had not won the war. It was Reinala who first suggested an unholy alliance with Fovos, the god of the underworld. With the combined forces of heaven and hell, light and darkness working together as one, it was thought the mighty Fates could finally be dethroned for all time.
- The Epoch of the Night Sky, oral history recorded in H.B. 212
Ambera spat out her wine. “HE WHAT?!”
High Priestess Acantha stood there, dripping from head to toe. “He won the duel.”
The bottle fell from the goddess’ hand and shattered to the floor. “No! No, he wasn’t supposed to win the duel. How did he win the duel? He’s just a pathetic little human. A nothing, a zero.”
Acantha frowned. “You do realize I am a human too, don’t you?”
“Oh, shut up. This is a disaster, what am I going to do?”
Acantha checked her slate. “Well, from the preliminary records they just gave me, Kólasi is where Nisi kept her treasury, so we do stand to inherit a substantial amount of ambrosia.”
Ambera looked hopeful. “Will it be enough to pay our tithes next month?”
Acantha winced. “It would have been…”
Ambera’s eyes jittered in panic. “Would have been?”
“…If you hadn’t spent so much extra ambrosia over the last week.”
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
The goddess began thrashing around, smashing tables and toppling walls.
“I’m ruined! Ruined! I emptied my coffers moving all those people off the territories I planned to lose, but now I haven’t lost them. And what’s worse, now I have even more territories I don’t even want! The entrance to the underworld and three temples, what the crap am I supposed to do with those? Nisi had whole armies stationed there; I don’t even have the manpower to guard the eternal gate!”
Acantha bit her thumb. “It did seem strange for Storgen to wager that island in particular.”
Ambera paused, slowly turning around, her eyes glowing red. “Him…I’m going to kill him! This is all his fault! He did this. He did this on purpose! Where is he?”
“He’s in the apothecium. He was hurt pretty badly.”
Ambera floated towards the gates. “I’m going to pull his head off like a wine cork!”
Acantha leapt, grabbing the train of Ambera’s dress. “Wait, my goddess!”
Ambera floated up to the door, dragging Acantha along with her. “I’m going to run a stick through him and roast him like a marshmallow in the fires of the underworld!”
“My goddess, he just won a great victory for you. You can’t kill him now.”
“I’m a goddess, I can do whatever I want! I’m going to reach down his throat and pull him inside out by his feet!”
“Please, my goddess, what would the other gods say?”
Ambera stood there, panting, her eyes flicking about animalistically.
“You’re right, I’d be a laughing stock.”
“And then there’s the matter of the contract.”
“That’s right! I forgot. I never actually thought I’d have to find his stupid girl.”
Flashes of golden light began spilling from the High Priestess’ attaché. She pulled out the contract and the two of them looked at it ominously.
“We better start looking,” Acantha warned. “The countdown to default has already begun.”
Ambera stepped back, tugging on her floating hair. “No! No, No, No, No, NOOOOOOOOO!”
“What’s the problem?”
“Sirend and Reinala decreed that Tharros and Estia must never find each other. If I help them reunite I’ll be stripped of everything!”
Acantha’s eyes went wide. “This is bad.”
“YOU THINK? I am NOT going back to being the goddess of marital disputes. You hear me? I am NOT going back to that job!”
“But, what can we do?”
Ambera thought for a moment. “We’ll have to find an excuse to dismiss him, then dispose of him quietly. That will nullify the contract.”
The goddess picked up a fallen urn and crushed it in her palm.
“Sick the weasel on hi
m.”
* * *
“Good morning, great champion. I am Justicar Nyfitsa, and I have been assigned by the goddess herself as legal counsel to the corporation that bears your name.”
“Wha?”
Storgen weakly opened his eyes. He was bandaged nearly from head to toe, a weasely-looking man with oversized glasses standing over him.
“If this is heaven, I’ve been screwed.”
“Ah, ha, no I’m afraid you are quite alive, though it was very touch and go there for a while.”
Storgen tried to sit up, but a sharp jolt of pain convinced him to reconsider. “How long was I out?”
“Two days, and I must say that has put us behind schedule.”
“Schedule?”
“Oh yes, we simply must get you your champion’s certificate, catalogue you with the dueling registry, and begin your core course work post-haste.”
Storgen licked his dry lips. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, but you’ll love it, I’ve put together a full itinerary for you.”
“Itinerary?”
“Yes, of course. You cannot fight unless you comply with the proper government certifications. Now, we must get your novice I.D. at the local academy. You must pass Dueling Etiquette 101, Champion History 110, Advanced Dueling Etiquette 220, Divine Weapon Maintenance 105, Ambrosia Safety 101, Great Voices in Dueling Critique 115, Dueling History 205, oh, and then we get into the electives. Those are always my favorite part. For you, since you are a human, I was thinking something simple to start with like Southern Philosophy, Music and Statuary Appreciation in the Modern Age, Comparative Religion, and Women’s Studies.”
Nyfitsa produced a stack of course syllabi from his satchel and set them down on Storgen’s chest, humming happily to himself.
Storgen eyed them suspiciously. “Is all this really necessary?
“Oh my, but of course it is. You simply cannot fight without the proper permits.”
Storgen lifted the cast that encased his right hand. “I believe I already did.”
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