by Ben Johnston
Anniya shook her head. “Device? What are you talking about? Look, how do I get out of here? I’m not even supposed to be here.” She pointed off towards the wall. “I fell through a roof.”
“A roof?” The bald man gave her a confused look. “Get out of here? There is only one way out of the Golden Tournament.”
“Really? Where?” Anniya’s eyes were wide. “Can you show me.”
A thin smile appeared on the man’s rough face under thin, narrow eyes. “Gladly.”
Anniya threw herself to the side as the man leapt at her, dodging his flying kick. Clenching her jaw, watching his boot sail past her, then, with a flash, her hands clapped together in front of her. A sharp, blinding blast was thrown out, striking the man in mid-air, throwing his stocky form out and away from Anniya, and throwing Anniya back and away from him.
As the man spun through the air away from Anniya, he was hit mid-air by a brilliant bolt of sapphire light, causing him to fly off in a completely different direction. Tumbling limply across the dusty floor of the arena, his body rolled to a messy stop, his lifeless eyes staring past Anniya.
Landing in a gentle burst of lime light which sprayed the dust out and away from her like water before the bow of a ship, Anniya slid to a stop. Staring wide-eyed at the man’s body, she turned her head in the direction her now-dead attacker was looking just in time to glimpse a fluorescent blue bolt heading directly at her face.
She dodged it, watching the bright thing roar past, then whipped back to face the direction from which the bolt had come. A swarm of blinding white flechettes was shooting directly at her.
Again Anniya dodged, this time with a quick burst of raspberry light. The flechettes all zipped-through the burst of light where she had been standing. Then the white darts turned and with a series of loud cracks all shot towards Anniya again.
Anniya’s eyes flashed neon crimson.
Several of the flechettes in the swarm suddenly flashed with their own crimson light before suddenly cracking and ramming themselves into their fellow flechettes. For a moment, the swarm of needle darts fought with itself, allowing Anniya to turn her attention to a tall woman in mirror-green armor who was coming down at her pointing a barreled weapon.
The weapon blew itself apart as the green-armored woman landed a short distance from Anniya. Staring in confusion at the remnants of the gun in her hand, the woman looked up to glimpse a flash of light followed immediately by a foot swinging directly at her face.
Anniya’s kick threw the armored woman off her feet to roll unconscious across the dusty ground, her flechette swarm suddenly all flying straight up towards the sun. As they collided with the force field above, the darts all exploded brilliantly against the blue sky. Anniya looked down from the little detonations to take in her surroundings and to take in a breath.
The dusty colosseum floor was littered with random objects intended to provide cover, mostly broken-structures, twisted machine parts, and boulders. She looked up at the stadium. Rushing cheers rose and fell from the endless crowd, undulating with the cracks and booms and slaps accompanied with shouts, screams, and horrible wailings from the floor all around her. She smelled burnt things and dust. A few stray bolts flew out from the arena floor towards the crowd, colliding with the force field.
She turned away from the bolt collisions to face three new attackers. Suddenly the three had flechettes erupt from out of their chests and fell to the ground dead.
The three attackers fell to reveal a blonde woman standing behind them, a swarm of flechettes orbiting around her angrily. The woman’s clear blue eyes went wide as she pointed at Anniya.
“Shadow!”
Anniya smiled. “It’s you! The lightmaker from the Phoenix federation outpost that I saw the other night… Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
Seeing Jennifer’s eyes suddenly narrow, Anniya instinctively dropped to the ground just in time to watch a shining bolt sail over her, heading towards Jennifer.
Jennifer held up her forearm. The blinding blue bolt struck her lightshield, throwing out a circular burst of an explosion, the bottom of which sliced a groove into the dusty ground. Jennifer was knocked backwards, her boots skidding along the dusty ground.
As Jennifer slid backwards, three silver flechettes flashed of her shoulder with a crack, shooting off in the direction from which the bolt had come, towards a woman in a black bodysuit.
Seeing the flechettes flying towards her, the woman in black held up a small circular coppery disc then threw it to the ground. It disintegrated in a flash of hornet yellow, throwing the woman away, out of the path of Jennifer’s flechettes.
Jennifer’s three silver darts all snapped to face the direction the woman had flown-off in. The flechettes began to brighten, looking ready to flash and crack off in that direction, before the little needles suddenly dimmed.
The flechettes all turned quietly to sail back to Jennifer.
Anniya watched the woman in black as she sailed off somersaulting to land somewhere out of sight. Turning slowly, she took in the enormous stadium.
The noise from the massive audience rushed and pulsed, the cheering and chanting mixed with sharp metal clanking and clinks. Occasionally an occasional shout or scream would add to the symphony of combat.
Anniya turned away from the cracking, booming, percussive sounds of bolts and explosions to Jennifer. “We’ve gotta get out of here! I’ve got to get out of here!”
Jennifer scanned their surroundings. “We can’t get out. We’re trapped under a dome of umpteenth order shieldlight.”
Anniya stared directly upwards as a bolt struck the invisible force field overhead. Exploding, it spread out an azure wave across the shield like a ripple on a lake. Anniya nodded, her mouth slightly open. “So that’s shieldlight. A really strong type of it.”
Anniya stared at the shield, her eyes momentarily sparkling like the surface of the ocean.
Jennifer glanced sidelong at Anniya. “Shadow, how do your eyes glow like that? What is that? Some kind of technique, or device, or kanna?”
Anniya looked at Jennifer, her eyes returning to normal. “What do you mean? You’re a lightmaker. Don’t you… You know…”
Jennifer looked at Anniya confused. “Don’t I, what?” Her blue eyes looked almost angry. “Make yellow thrustlight and red inertialight like I was a flecking spaceship.”
Anniya shook her head. “Thrustlight? Like a spaceship?”
They turned their heads as they heard a shout from nearby. “Whilhelm! Watch out!” A blue bolt struck beyond some twisted metal, followed by a scream.
Jennifer grabbed Anniya by the arm, running with her into temporary cover behind some dead brush.
“Lightmakers make lightmaker light. Devices make all the other sets of light. But you seem able to make both. How?”
Eyebrows low, Anniya shook her head. “Both sets of light? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Before Jennifer had the chance to say any more, a fanfare blasted out from giant horns around the colosseum. At the same time, the shieldlight dome began to shrink and contract.
Jennifer’s flechettes all flashed then cracked as they returned to land back on her shoulders. She made a weak spitting sound. “Battle royals.”
She pointed towards the center of the huge dusty floor. “Come on, Shadow. We gotta move the middle.”
Anniya looked at the wall of shieldlight closing-in towards them. “What’s going on? Is the shield shrinking? Are they forcing us together?”
Jennifer was already running away. “Come on!”
Anniya ran after her. “Who thinks-up stuff like this? A fracted competition where the arena itself kills you.”
The giant horns sounded-out again, this time with a dropping note. The shieldlight dome halted.
“Get ready.” Jennifer’s eyes scanned the floor around them. “Round two.”
Anniya flashed and dashed, rending various colorful fighters unconscious. Jennifer’s flechettes ruthlessly
cracked and flashed through the air and her enemies' chests.
Then, following Anniya’s launching herself and several fighters apart from each other in an especially bright flash of dirty, peach-colored light, as she landed to come to a sliding stop with her back facing a fallen opponent, in one fluid-movement, the fallen man spun and trained his weapon on Anniya’s back.
He fired.
Jennifer sprang between Anniya and the blinding emerald-colored bolt, her forearm’s disc of shieldlight flared out.
The green round struck Jennifer’s shield.
The messy explosion threw her backwards into the unaware Anniya, both of them rolling to a dusty stop. They scrambled behind a pile of building sections. Jennifer looked at Anniya angrily. “You can’t keep just knocking these guys out! They get back up.”
Anniya had the fingers of both hands on her forehead, shaking her head back and forth. “This whole situation is such a fracted, fracting, splintered shard of a sliving piece of!...”
Before Anniya could finish, a bolt struck the ground, throwing her and Jennifer away from one another. Anniya scrambled back to her feet to see a well-built, striking man with a sharp, strong nose and thick, straight black hair. He held a flat expression as he pointed his dark eyes and his weapon at Jennifer who was still lying on the ground.
Anniya’s eyes flashed, staring at the man.
He pulled the trigger. His weapon disintegrated.
Tossing the remains of his weapon away, the man held up his left forearm, bringing-up a disc of shieldlight. He then reached into the sheath on his side and withdrew a gleaming, golden sword.
Jennifer, lying on the ground, turned her head to face the man. Three of her flechettes flashed, snapping towards the dark eyed man with the golden sword. The man clenched his square jaw. His sword flashed blindingly, slicing three, rapid, ear-splitting cracks through the air.
Jennifer’s silver flechettes were gone, pulverized by the man’s golden sword into three clouds of powdered metal and crystal fragments. The man strode forward through the glittering dust, approaching Jennifer who was struggling to get onto her feet.
Smiling cruelly, he looked down at his gleaming sword, then at Jennifer. Then he stopped.
Suddenly the great horns from around the colloseum rim blasted-out the rising fanfare. The dome shield above them shined icy blue, more brightly this time. Again the shield began to contract, this time with greater speed.
Suddenly three bright bolts shot at the man.
With another butterscotch flash and three ground-slamming bangs, he blocked the bolts, knocking their explosions down and away from him to throw out a chaotic cloud of smoke and dust.
As the man with the golden sword stood in the midst of the thinning smoke with the scorched ground sizzling before his feet, several attackers burst out from where the bolts had come, sprinting towards him.
The strong man with the golden sword tossed a small copper disc at his approaching attackers. Striking the ground at their feet, it exploded in a brilliant, honey-colored flash. His three opponents were flung back and away to impact with the icy blue wall of the shrinking dome in a gritty, crimson flash, instantly disintegrating with a whooping slamming bang.
Jennifer ran to Anniya, helping her to her feet. “We gotta go! Let’s go, let’s go! We’ve got to get away from that shield wall!” They ran away from the dark-haired man and the approaching shield wall, towards the center of the colosseum floor.
The man with the golden sword threw another of his coppery disks to the ground by his own feet, and in a great burst of lemony light was hurled up and away from the approaching wall.
Jennifer’s blue eyes fixed upwards, tracking the man as he soared over them. Her gaze then snapped back over her shoulder at the wall of deadly blue approaching them. “Oh fracted Ruin! The perimeter is speeding up! It’s accelerating towards us!”
Anniya looked back. A man with curly blue hair was running a short distance behind screamed as the wall overtook him, flashing him away with a sucking bang of painfully sparkling light the color of a rose in the desert.
Seeing the same thing Anniya just saw, Jennifer sprinted, shouting. “Run, Shadow!” Run!”
Jennifer was surprised as suddenly, in an all-encompassing flash of buttercup light, with no feeling of motion or acceleration, it appeared as if the arena floor suddenly fell away. She turned to see Anniya flying with her through the air away from the deadly icy-blue wall, smiling.
Anniya looked around as they sailed through the air. “It’s cool I can do this, right? I’ve never had the need to throw anyone but myself.”
Anniya turned to where their throw was taking them, the direct center of the arena. The man with the golden sword was already there.
She frowned. “I think it’s just us and that shard with the sword.”
They landed, Jennifer rolling to a dusty stop, and Anniya with a gentle, luminous skid. Jennifer glanced at Anniya. Her eyes were glowing like embers.
“Shadow. What are you doing now?”
Anniya stared intensely at the large man with the golden sword. “I’m trying to grok that guy’s sword.”
Jennifer shook her head. “Grock his sword? What do you mean?”
Anniya looked at Jennifer. “You know. Oh, maybe you don’t. I’m trying to look at it, or look inside the sword. Trying to see what it’s made of. You know. So I can break it.”
Jennifer gave a single blink and shook her head. “Break it?”
Anniya nodded as she bore her glowing gaze down on the golden sword in the strong, dark-haired man’s hand.
“I’ve never seen any light material like that. What in the Ruin is that sword made of. What kind of fracted stuff is that?”
Jennifer stood next to Anniya. “Shadow. That’s a blinding goldenlight sword. It’s indestructible. It happens to actually be gold-colored too, which is misleading since goldenlight is not actually that color. Well, goldenlight-imbued materials aren’t golden, at least. Nobody really knows what goldenlight looks like since nobody knows how to make it anymore.”
Anniya tilted her head. “Goldenlight isn’t golden?” She looked back at the man with the sword. “But his sword is?” She shook her head. “That’s confusing.”
Jennifer swallowed as the man approached. “It’s bad. That’s what it is.” Her few remaining flechettes circled above her head.
Anniya looked at Jennifer. “What’s so bad? Just give me a second and I’ll break it.” She stared at the man’s sword, squinting hard, beads of sweat forming around her temples.
Jennifer dropped her head with a weak shake. “Did you not hear what I just said? It’s indestructible. You can’t break goldenlight.”
She squinted at Anniya. “You really have been isolated, haven’t you?”
The horns sounded a descending, unified note, the shieldlight dome turned invisible, and the muscular man turned his sharp nose and dark eyes to face Anniya and Jennifer again.
Jennifer took in a deep breath, her eyes scanning their powerful opponent. “We learn this stuff when we’re kids.” Her blue eyes fixed on his sword. “Goldenlight can not be destroyed.” She looked at Anniya again. “It’s eternal. Indestructible. You know, like the Towers.”
Jennifer turned back to the man who was now grinning widely. Holding his golden sword to the sky, he turned around slowly for the cheering crowd. “That’s gotta be the Premier’s champion. That’s why he has that sword.”
The sound of the enormous crowd had risen to a ground-shaking roar. Jennifer looked at Anniya. Her eyes were sparkling again, staring at the sword.
“Shadow, give it up! Nobody understands goldenlight. Not even the Academy or the flecking School itself. Goldenlight has been lost since the First Age.”
Anniya tilted her head. “But I’ve seen that light before. I know I have. I just saw it. Where did I?”
With a start, Anniya gave a single blink, then reached into one of her inner pockets, withdrawing the goldenlight sunstone. “It was this. I
saw it in this.”
Jennifer looked nervously away from the grinning man holding the gleaming sword in the air to the roaring crowd’s delight. She stared down at the little sparkling stone. “What is that? Is that a sunstone?”
Anniya looked at Jennifer, then back to the stone in her hand. “I think this sunstone has...”
Before Anniya could finish, there was a flash. Jennifer’s eyes shot up to see the man who had been facing away from them now flying towards them, swinging the sword. “Shadow! Look out!”
Jennifer bumped Anniya to the side, holding up her forearm, her disc of shieldlight flaring out to block the swing of the man’s sword. When the sword met the shield, there was an arena-covering flash as with a sharp boom, Jennifer’s shieldlight device, a metallidescent band wrapped around her forearm, blew apart in an outward explosion of fine sparks and spinning little components.
Thrown back and away, Jennifer slammed into a rough rock face, falling to the ground, unconscious. The cheers from the crowd, already chest-rattling, rose to a deafening maelstrom of noise.
Tears welled in Anniya’s eyes as she stared in horror at the immobile Jennifer, then back to the man with the goldenlight sword. The man stood there, back to Anniya, the last bits of sparking dust from Jennifer’s obliterated shield device falling around him like a fine metallic snow.
Standing to his full height, he turned to look Anniya in the eye. Then, with a grin, his gaze fell to the inert form of Jennifer on the ground. Giving a quick glance back to Anniya, he flashed his perfect teeth, letting out a single cruel laugh before turning to walk towards Jennifer’s unconscious body.
Anniya’s eyes were wide under clenched eyebrows. Gritting her teeth, tears streamed down her face. “You fracted slavemaking sliv! Leave her alone!”
He turned his head slightly as he continued to walk towards Jennifer. “I’ll finish you next, Miss Second Place.”
He grinned wickedly as he raised his golden sword above Jennifer. Then, still looking at Anniya, with a smirk, he brought it down.