by Dante King
“Well said, man,” I said, giving the Wood Elf the thumbs-up.
I cleared my throat, and the attention of the team switched to me.
Alright, man, all those hours on Unreal Tournament 2004 are about to pay dividends, I thought.
“The key here,” I said, with as much authority as a man could whose sole experience of this sort of proper, lethal Capture the Flag battle was a PC game over a decade and a half old, “is discipline, yeah? The discipline to stick to a specific role, come hell or high water.”
The others nodded for me to continue.
“All right,” I said. My eyes ran quickly through our team’s ranks, mentally dividing the assembled mages into three groups. The bigger, slower-looking team members I put into defense.
“Your sole purpose is to defend the flag at all costs,” I said. “That’s it. Defend, defend, defend.”
The next group consisted of the faster, more nimble-looking mages, including a couple capable of flying. This was the assault group.
The third group, which Cecilia and I were a part of, was the stealth group.
“Now, here’s the plan,” I said, pulling the team in tighter. “The stealth team is going to sneak in and grab the flag while the assault team engages in an obvious frontal attack. Then, when the stealth team has the flag, the assault team will collapse around the stealth team, protecting them and sacrificing themselves so that they can get the flag back to their base.”
There was some muttering among those I’d put into the assault team at this. I assumed it was because I was basically sentencing them to act as cannon fodder.
“Look,” I said sharply, “take your goddamn worries about self-preservation out of this—you’ll regenerate. If you were worried about getting iced, then you wouldn’t have joined up for this, would you? The goal is to get the flag. Dying is a mere inconvenience. What is crucial is that we trust each other to do our allotted jobs. Everything hinges on that. If you’re guarding the base, then you should do that—don’t switch things up, even if you think you have an opportunity to track. You get through this match, and you’ll all have a better opportunity and more time to showcase your skills to potential sponsors.”
It seemed that after this little bit of tough love-cum-peptalk the team were happy with the arrangement. Even Arun and Qildro voiced no objections. Cecilia gave me a look that was somewhere between admiration and rampant eye-fucking.
Chaosbane’s voice boomed out again, shaking the stadium.
“I say again, a team wins after having the opposing team’s flag is in their own base for one minute. Any spells and tactics can be used. Nothing is out of bounds. Victory is all that matters.”
The opaque glass dissolved before our eyes. The arena’s environment had completely changed.
The battleground wasn’t the flat area that I had expected. It was a sadist’s wet dream, composed of numerous pitfalls, a small lava lake, spiked traps, and many other terminally dangerous obstacles.
That wasn’t all. The arena was now multi-leveled. Floating platforms were all around the battleground—most with other traps or things that could be used as weapons or dropped onto the heads of unwary foes. It looked like a level from Super Mario Maker designed by the devil.
A klaxon sounded, shaking the very air.
And the first round of the Exhibition Match Day games began.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The prospect of fighting to the death—even on the proviso that you’ll be regenerated—gets the blood pumping, let me tell you. Doing it in front of ten-thousand people… Yeah, that’ll get your pulse jacked and your hands sweating.
As I walked out into the arena with my fifteen team members, the roar that greeted us sent shivers through me from head to toe. It felt like the lovechild of a Viagra pill and a line of Columbian blow; it was electrifying, nerve-jangling, and epic.
As we took to the battleground, the two teams were divided by a couple of officials wearing flowing robes of bright orange that made them look like a couple of stern traffic cones.
“Blue team to the left,” shouted one over the noise of the crowd, “and yellows to the right. Take up positions by your flags and wait for the klaxon.”
I led the way to the far westward point of the arena. The traps and other deadly devices were currently inactive, so we didn’t have to worry about dodging them before our match even began.
The adrenaline was pounding through my system now. I was itching to get underway, and I could feel the same sense of bottled up keenness emanating from the black crystal staff in my hand—a subtle buzzing that mirrored my own pulse.
“All right, guys,” I yelled, fixing my team with a smoldering eye, “remember the fucking plan! Stick to your positions. On no account leave your posts or deviate from your own individual missions. Assault team, I want you to come out charging. Make them think that we’re going for the quick rush. Try not to get killed because we need numbers to keep their defense busy.”
Cecilia gave a little snort of determination and smiled at me, bearing her pearly white teeth. Seeing the look in her eye, I felt sorry for the poor bastards who crossed her path once that klaxon sounded.
“Speaking of defense,” I continued, “you guys need to stay in position. If you crumble, if you stray, and they get our flag before our stealth team can get theirs… well, you know how good a match-maker I am when it comes to farmyard animals. If you fuck up, there’s a special sow waiting for you.”
This elicited more than a few chuckles except, unsurprisingly, from Qildro, whom I had put into the defensive lineup, as well as introduced to a charming sow.
There was a last bit of backslapping and some concentrated looks as people ran through their spell arsenal in their heads. I found myself sorting through all the spells that I might need. I had a good selection of different elemental magic on hand, as well as a nice mix of defensive and offensive enchantments.
The lyrics from Iron Maiden’s 1983 ripper, The Trooper, popped organically into my head as I waited with gritted teeth for the klaxon to sound. They were apt words. There’d be no turning back for me. I was going to be doing the attacking, sometimes by inches and sometimes by yards, but I’d be the one pressing. That was my style. It was what had brought me this far.
The klaxon blared.
The game began.
The assault team, all five of them, pelted off in the straightest direction to the enemy’s flag. I saw the Wood Elf, whose name was Toross, unslinging a piece of equipment that he’d told me was a spell-cannon from his shoulder and pumping it like a shotgun as he ran off. Apparently, it was his vector, and all his spells were fired from it. I thought that was pretty goddamn awesome, and I wondered if you could get one of those even if you already had a vector.
The six defenders of my blue team were positioning themselves behind various pieces of cover that littered the immediate area, making sure that they could see our blue flag without being seen by attackers. The flag itself was fluttering and snapping as if it was caught in a high breeze, though this must have been an enchantment because the stadium protected the arena from even the slightest breath of wind.
“All right,” I said, turning to Cecilia and and the three others that I’d designated to be part of the stealth team, “let’s hit those floating platforms and see if we can’t drop in and ice a few of those lemon-colored jackasses.”
We took off, with me leading the way. We ran toward a stack of boulders, skirting an area of knee-high grass, which I suspected hid a sinkhole or quicksand or something equally fatal.
I leapt onto the boulders and launched myself up onto the first platform. I managed to grip the edge and hauled myself up, though my muscles burned with the exertion. I checked the coast was clear—and it was that little bit of caution that saved me from a potentially early demise.
At the far end of the platform, which was only about three yards wide and ten yards long, was a set of crates. Out from one of these crates, a sinuous form crept. It was, ess
entially, a venomous green, seven-foot long, segmented worm. It had white eye spots, which detected the faintest light in the dark caverns that this creature habitually called home. How did I know this? Bestiary classes, my friends. Justin pays attention at least ten percent of the time. Thanks to my classes, I knew the name of this particularly ugly phallic specimen.
“Hold up,” I called down to my four stealth companions, “I’ve got a wyrm to deal with.”
The wyrm was not quick. The danger of the wyrm lay in its extraordinary venom. Firstly, it paralyzed you, then it slowly turned your intestines into liquid, then the poison made you vomit out your liquidy innards. Then, if you were lucky, you died before the wyrm started to feed on you.
I turned back to the wyrm. It was creeping toward me with something that almost approached stealth, considering that it was glowing like the bollocks of a man with an unhealthy addiction to Mountain Dew.
I was keen on keeping a low profile and not giving our positions away, so I hit the wyrm with a Paralyzing Zap, knowing that that particular spell was minimal when it came to noise. As the wyrm homed in toward my body heat, it was struck stiff and stopped in mid slither.
“All right, hurry,” I said, bending down and reaching out my hand so that I could pull the other four up behind me.
Before we moved on, Cecilia dispatched the wyrm by shooting a needle-thin icicle through its brain. Then, for good measure, she crushed its chunky head under her heel. The sound was what you might get if you stood on a box of eggs.
One of the crystal ball broadcasters swept through the air to hover over our heads.
A series of explosions sounded from off to our left. There was a single long scream, which was quickly cut off. I glanced over at the iron-barred cages which were serving as regeneration stations and saw an unfamiliar halfling sitting in one of them. She wore a yellow shirt, so she was on the yellow team. She was also the game’s first casualty.
Once all five of us were on the platform, we moved on. At the end of this platform we had two options. The first was dropping back to the arena floor. The second option was running along a swaying rope ladder that led to a platform that was suspended in the air twenty feet above us. I signaled that we should go up.
One of the Storm Elementals in our group—a bright-eyed, gray-skinned woman with legs that you might see amongst the catwalks of Milan—stepped up and started making her way across the rope ladder. With those thin, slender stems of hers, she looked like a willowy spider climbing a web. The ladder was a wobbly affair and care was needed.
“She’s going too fast,” Cecilia muttered in my ear, peering down below us to see if there was any sign of the enemy.
The Storm Mage might have been trying to impress me—and I’d say that the view of her rounded backside did strike a chord with me—but she was going a little too fast. When she slipped, my heart plummeted, but not as fast as the Storm Mage did.
To her credit, she only gave a brief shriek as the rope ladder twisted under her and tipped her sideways. She was about thirty feet up, so when she hit the arena floor on the back of her neck, it was no surprise that she broke her neck. It was still pretty gross though. Her broken spine bulged out of the side of her neck, and her feet drummed a silent tattoo on the grass.
For a moment, her body flickered, and then she was gone.
“Goddamn it,” I hissed, “let’s keep moving, but be careful!”
Off to our left, the assault team had obviously encountered some sort of resistance. There was the rushing sound of flame followed by some unidentifiable heavy thudding noises coming from a small section of tumbled ruins.
I chanced a look down in that direction. I recognized one of our assault team—a Wind Mage who was completely hairless except for one very stylish eyebrow, and had assured me that he could fly like no one’s business. This Wind Mage dodged, with the speed of a swallow, in and out of the ruins. A stream of piercingly bright pink spellfire followed him, pummeling into the stone work of the ruins like tracer fire, blowing chunks out of it.
The crowd was going completely bananas, and it was evident, even from our vantage point, that things were heating up. It seemed like the assault team was doing exactly what was required.
“Let’s keep moving and get this over with,” I said to my stealth team.
“Agreed,” Cecilia said. “We don’t know how long our assault team is going to last. If they all get wiped out, then the other side will have a clear run to the flag.”
I put my head down and ran across the platform, leaping heedlessly across the gap that separated this one from the next. The next platform was within easy jumping distance, but, as I sprung into the air, the last two feet of my target platform flickered and vanished.
“Oh shi—” I started to say.
I cast my Crystalize spell, and my flailing arm that wasn’t holding my staff hardened into a crystal-like substance and elongated. My hand—now an inanimate claw under the influence of the hastily cast spell—cracked into the stone of the edge of the platform. My stiffened crystal fingers found a crack and bit into it.
With a shoulder-wrenching jerk, I found myself swinging high above the arena floor by one hand. I looked down between my dangling feet. Below me, a pool of caustic, boiling acid bubbled.
Things couldn’t have been much worse.
“So, you try da sneaky sneaky on us, eh?” a voice asked from above me.
I looked up and saw that there was an Elven mage standing above me. He held a club in his hands and wore a yellow shirt. He was also smiling at me as though he was about to do me a mischief.
The Elf hefted the club. “You don’t do da sneaky sneaky on me, you stupid—”
Cecilia leapt with the grace and athleticism that only an elf could manage. across the gap. I hoped it looked fucking good, because it hurt like hell when she used my head as a stepping stone to make the last six inches. She crashed into the elf standing over me, screeching like a wildcat. It looked to be a promising start, but unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the encore because my grip slipped and I plummeted downward.
Heading toward that pool of burning deadly acid, the old noodle did a freeze for a second or two. Luckily, my vector seemed to have its wits about it. It pulsed in my hand, shooting a burst of inspiration into my skull that jolted the inert lump of gray matter between my ears.
My new Flame Flight spell. I raced to cast the spell before I was boiled alive in acid.
My body was encased in the gravity-defying, spectral flames, and my fall was arrested.
I might have overcompensated somewhat though, because I shot upward like a cork and crashed unceremoniously into the underside of the platform. Thankfully, I didn’t lose control of the spell, even as I heard the crowd give a collective groan.
I managed to get myself under some semblance of control and pulled off quite a sexy little sideways flip that brought me back over the platform. Cecilia was wrestling with the elf that had almost got the jump on me.
As I landed, the elf swung his club and caught Cecilia a blow in the ribs that threw her off him. Cecilia flicked out her scepter and sprayed ice needles back in retaliation.
But she noticed too late that I too was standing in the arc of fire.
I localized my Metamorphosis spell with a thought, and my instantaneously armored legs deflected the icy darts.
Our Wood Elf opponent was not so lucky.
Cecilia’s frost magic caught him clean across the thighs, dozens of miniature icicles burying themselves into his flesh. With a cry, the elf staggered toward the left edge of the platform. I took a step forward and, channeling my inner Gerard Butler, delivered a devastating Spartan kick to our yellow foe.
I might have tried my best to capture the essence of King Leonidas in that kick, but it definitely wasn’t as aesthetically pleasing as that famous slo-mo kick from 300.
For one, I connected with the elf in the small of the back, not the chest. It propelled him nicely off the edge, but it lacked that choreograph
ed symmetry that I’d appreciated in the movie.
Secondly, in 300, the bad guy fell down a well. The elf somersaulted through the air and then landed in a patch of needle-sharp stalagmites—well, not so much in as on. One of the rocky points looked as if it went clean up his ass and ripped through his abdomen. Blood showered out, and I could clearly see a couple of coils of his intestines caught around the rocky point of the stalagmite.
The elf’s burbling screams rose even above the bloodthirsty yells of the audience.
“You two, keep going to the flag, but stay out of sight as much as you can!” I ordered my two blue teammates. Cecilia and I were cut off from the other two by the suddenly expanded platform gap. I grabbed Cecilia’s hand and hauled her to her feet. She winced and clutched her ribs.
“Go easy, darling,” she said.
“There’s no time for easy. Come on!” I said.
There was less noise coming from the direction the assault team had gone and, from our current position, my view of the regeneration stations was impeded by another platform that was stacked with barrels.
We ran across the platform and jumped onto another. Below, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of yellow team members shadowing us. I figured that they must have peeled off from the forces that had gone to deal with our blue assault team. Even as I clocked them, they seemed to think that discretion was no longer the better part of valor and started shooting Fireballs and Storm Bolts in our direction.
Chunks were blown off the edges of the stone platforms as Cecilia and I sprinted along. Stone chips and fragments flew like shrapnel under the barrage of ill-aimed spellfire from down below on the arena floor. The surrounding air sizzled under the sheer weight of the incantations being cast by the two mage’s pursuing us.
“Fuck!” I yelled as, still holding Cecilia’s hand, we dashed along the last platform.
Casting an eye downward, I conjured a Crystal Magma Bomb and dropped it over the side. Just for good measure, I released Cecilai’s hand and conjured another two of the little elemental grenades, cooked them for a couple of seconds in my hands, and tossed them after the first.