by Dante King
Iowyn shook her blue-furred head and grinned at me with her bright white, pointed teeth. “Oh, babe, you are such a—such a…”
“Male,” Kryn said, and giggled again.
“Trust us to have some sweet-ass sponsorships already in the bag,” Iowyn said. She gave me a little twirl on the spot, flaunting her curvy, furry assets. “If you’ve got it, you may as well flaunt it.”
I just had the presence of mind to close my mouth before it became too rude. “Well, I can’t argue with that.”
Kryn batted her eyelids at me.
“Look,” I said, “you know that this really does mean a lot to me, you offering your help and everything. But I don't want to compromise anything you have going on. If you find yourself in a position to help Cecilia and me out then, of course, I’m not going to be churlish enough to refuse it. Any help you might want to give I will endeavor to repay in, uh, anyway I can.”
I locked eyes with the two Elementals, one after another, hoping that my meaning was clear.
“But don’t go out of your way,” I continued. “It’s all just a bit of fun and games at the end of the day, isn’t it?”
At that moment, Chaosbane’s voice reverberated through the stadium yet again. “Ladies and gentlefolk, if I may so describe this gathering of reprobates and wildlings, Round Two is almost ready to begin!”
Yet another roar shook the stadium to its foundations.
Chaosbane continued. “While the final tweaks are made to the arena, allow me the liberty of going through the rules of the next and final round. It is, as I said before—if my memory serves—a round in which our contestants must kill monsters to gain points. The scoring is a simple system, thank the gods, devised by yours truly. There are three monster species, represented by the different colored portals, up for slaughter. Monsters emerging from the yellow portals—or waygates, as my subordinates tell me they are technically called—are worth one point apiece. Green creatures are worth three points. Red creatures are worth the succulent sum of fifteen points. Each pair of combatants are fighting for themselves and are in direct competition with the other students. There are no consolation prizes, and no winning prize, for that matter, save for glory and adulation. Additionally, there are no rules. You can use whatever spells or tactics you like to gain those points. Contestants may even, if they are feeling particularly despicable, liquidate their fellow students.”
There was a lusty bellow of delight by the crowd at this.
“However, this will incur a deduction of two points,” Chaosbane said. “This means, of course, that pairs will need to make tactical decisions when it comes to sacrificing points for better positions within the arena.”
The rumbling idle that was the crowd’s voice rose a level or five.
“Ah, yes, it seems that our brainiacs—those most skilled thaumaturgical engineers of ours—have made the final tweaks to our next arena configuration. Without further ado, let us welcome back our victorious sixteen who made it through that last, high-adrenaline, blood-spattered round!”
The wall of opaque white glass dissipated once more like fog on a warm day. Again, we were revealed to the fans in the arena, at the same time that we clapped eyes on the freshly reworked arena course.
Cecilia and I exchanged intrigued looks.
The layout of this one seemed simple enough at first glance. On the ground level of the football field-sized arena were a number of yellow waygates, swirling mystically and occasionally firing out arcane tentacles that were then sucked back into their centers.
Each waygate was currently manned by a mage, whose sole purpose seemed to be to stop whatever was on the other side from getting through. They were wrestling with the waygates, using their various vectors as lion tamers might use a chair and a whip to beat back a recalcitrant lion that was intent on eating them.
Around the edges of the stadium, set close to the crowd and about twenty-five feet in the air, was the first set of platforms. They ringed the arena in a broken circle. They could be accessed by a series of rope ladders or tumbled blocks that acted as steps. Around this floating level was a number of green waygates, also manned by a single mage.
The final level was in the very center of the stadium and was a clear fifty feet above the ground—twenty-five feet above the platforms below. This platform was a single large circle, with a diameter of about twenty-five yards. In the center of it stood a pair of red waygates.
These red waygates were the fifteen pointers, guarded by two mages apiece. From the amount of magic coming from the mages’ vectors, it looked to be heavy going, keeping whatever the hell was trying to get through from busting out into the arena.
“Combatants!” bellowed Chaosbane over the magical loudspeakers. “Take your positions anywhere on the lowest level and await the klaxon!”
Cecilia and I jogged over to the far side of the grassy area, a stone’s throw from one of the yellow waygates. A couple of other pairs came with us, one of them being Kryn and Iowyn.
The noise of the crowd died down to the level of elevator music inside my head as my focus sharpened. The crowd tossed and swayed like a field of wheat; faceless, indistinct smudges of color. I took a breath.
“What are your thoughts?” Cecilia asked me.
I breathed out and looked over to where Arun and Qildro were hanging around like a couple of hyenas practically right next to a waygate. They had their heads together and were muttering. Nearby were a halfling and a dwarf that I didn’t know. They were focused on the same waygate as the boys from Frat Douche.
“I reckon we try and nail as many of these one-pointers as we can,” I said. “Chaosbane said that winning doesn’t give anything except glory, but the Rune Mystic told me I have to win if I want his runes in my dungeon. The low-hanging fruit is probably the best, unless something changes.”
Cecilia nodded. “I think you’ll find that that’s exactly what everyone else is thinking, darling.”
There was no time for a discussion because just then the klaxon blared, the crowd screamed its approval, and the mages that were keeping the waygates under guard lifted their vectors and ran from the arena. The four mages located on the top level—responsible for holding back the most powerful waygates—actually flung themselves from the platform. They were stopped from spreading themselves messily over the ground below by shimmering golden supernatural rappel cords. These slowed them before they hit the arena floor and then disappeared with soft pops as their feet touched down.
The waygates all around the arena began to ripple. It was a strange sight, these horizontal doorways that looked as if they were constructed of liquid, moving and dancing as the denizens on the other side started to emerge.
My eyes were locked on the portal nearest to us, so I saw the snout of the very first creature come through. The snout was a bony thing, reptilian and about three feet off the ground. It snuffed cautiously at the air.
“Watch my back,” I told Cecilia. Then I conjured a bunch of Arcane Mines and tossed them around the waygate, flinging them with the sort of abandon that I usually reserved for chucking proximity mines on GoldenEye on the N64.
I thought this was a particularly cunning move. Firstly, it meant that whatever came out of the portal was going to get smoked. But it also ensured that the two other pairs of students competing with us on this particular waygate couldn’t get too close. It also gave me time to check what the other fourteen competitors were doing.
My eyes were drawn—like flies to shit—to Arun and Qildro. When the klaxon had sounded, the two assholes had backed off from the waygate they were watching and allowed the halfling and the dwarf to edge in closer. At first, I thought it was because they were chickenshits and didn’t want to be the first to engage with an unknown entity. What they were actually doing was far more cowardly and absolutely the sort of thing that I should have expected from them.
Arun pulled his cupped hand from the depths of his long robes, opened it, and blew into it. A silver dove blossomed
into the air. At the same time, Qildro made a wide, encompassing gesture. Something that looked very much like a jackal suddenly dug its way out of the ground and pelted toward the halfling. The little woman had her back to the Frat Douche boys and so had no chance of seeing the supernatural jackal run and leap at her.
“Look out!” I cried, but my voice was lost in the general clamor of the stadium.
The jackal hit the little woman in the back of the neck and bore her to the ground. It opened its mouth, revealing bright red teeth like filleting knives. In a heartbeat, it had sunk these teeth into the halfling’s neck and ripped out her throat. Arterial spray fountained into the air. The halfling thrashed, helpless in her death throes.
Her dwarf partner turned, but he only got so far as yelling in outrage before Arun’s dove hit him gently in the face and vanished in a puff of steam. The dwarf wobbled, teetered as if he had just been struck a thunderous left hook by a heavyweight champion and collapsed backward. He wasn’t dead, but he was definitely unconscious and now vulnerable to whatever decided to venture out from the waygates.
Those little pieces of shit…
Half of me was tempted to go over there and rain hell on Arun and Qildro, but my attention was snared by Chaosbane’s voice as it echoed around the stadium.
“Ah, and here we are! Yes, it seems that our one-point monsters are… raptors!”
The little creatures that came flooding out of every single one of the yellow waygates certainly looked like raptors. They were bony, spiny little brutes, with chicken-like eyes and a jerky gait. Where they differed from anything that I had seen in the Jurassic Parks movies though, was that they had a crest of dull bronze feathers running from their foreheads right down their spines to the tips of their tails.
They came chattering out like a horde of reptilian locusts. My Arcane Mines burst in showers of earth and lightning, pulverizing clumps of the little creatures, spreading globules of frazzled meat in all directions like bloody confetti. I untensed a little, thinking that these things weren’t going to prove much of a challenge at all.
No wonder they’re only worth the single point.
It was then that I looked over and saw a bunch of the raptors climbing all over the prostrate form of the dwarf that Arun had apparently stunned. Two of the little monsters bent down and pulled the dwarf’s eyeballs from his head. The halfling had disappeared—obviously sent back to the regeneration station—but the Dwarf was still there. Being eaten alive.
I couldn’t help but give Arun and Qildro a little kudos for this. They had taken out the halfling, but only stunned the dwarf and left him for the magical beasts. This, I presumed, would mean that they would be deducted only a single point, instead of two.
Inspired—though I’d rather self-circumcise than admit it to them—by Qildro and Arun conjuring magical entities, I summoned a Lightning Skink and gave it freerange on the little raptors.
“Cecilia,” I said, grabbing the Elven Frost Mage by the arm, “I don't think that killing these little fuckers is going to bring home the gravy. Not when we have to compete with everyone else for scraps.”
Cecilia flicked her blonde hair out of her eyes then, without even looking, stabbed her icicle spear backward and impaled a raptor that was chewing on the back of her thigh-high leather boot.
“I suspect you’re right, darling. Onward and upward?”
I grinned, marveling once again at how this elegant and graceful noblewoman was such a fucking badass.
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We headed for the nearest rope ladder, while my Lightning Skink continued to run rampant amongst the raptors, slashing, ripping and hitting them with miniature lightning strikes. Nearby, Kryn and Iowyn weaved and danced around one another, performing an intricate and lethal ballet in which they laid waste to the raptors that clustered about them while making sure that neither one of their backs were ever unguarded. It was quite a sight; two beautiful Elementals electrifying or tearing apart monsters while their athletic, taut bodies moved with the grace of hunting cats.
“Come on, darling,” Cecilia urged me and got my head back in the game.
As we made our way up the rope ladder that led to the platform above, I heard Chaosbane’s voice boom out once more.
“Deary me, a couple of our combatants were not expecting such a warm welcome from our level two creatures. For those not in the know, these quite revolting creatures are called Puss-toads and they are just as amiable and delightful as their name suggests…”
I didn’t pause in my ascent, as I wouldn’t have known what the fuck a Puss-toad was if it had been served up to me on a silver platter with microgreens sprinkled around it. Instead, I redoubled my efforts to gain the platform.
It sounded—hopefully—as if Arun and Qildro might have made a quick run for the next platform and been slain in their haste. That wouldn’t have surprised me in the least; the ruthlessness of those two pricks was matched only by their impatience.
I darted up the last five feet and sprang onto the stone platform, my vector at the ready in my hand.
I was just in time to find out exactly what the hell a Puss-toad was. It was, essentially, a giant toad as tall as a man and as wide as a Toyota Corolla. It was like the most heinous example of a toad that you might ever care to see—warty, slimy, rancid. It looked and smelled like it didn’t want visitors.
As Cecilia came up the ladder behind me, the toad released the corpse of one of the other combatants and spat it to one side. Before the dead body disappeared and the owner was returned to the regeneration station, I noticed that she’d been turned into a husk by the two pointed tusks that protruded from the toad’s bottom jaw.
Puss-toads were also, it seemed, vampirical.
“Gods, but that thing is ugly,” Cecilia said, screwing up her face in disgust.
“I dunno,” I muttered, “I’d probably still fuck that over Amy Schumer.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
The toad was about ten yards away. It started to waddle toward us.
“Ugly and slow,” Cecilia said.
“So fucking slow that it must gain weight walking,” I agreed. “How the hell did this thing get its tusks into that dumbass, I wonder?” I lowered my black crystal staff, ready to blast this Puss-toad into a thousand pieces with a well-placed Blazing Bolt.
The toad took another squelching step. It must have weighed a ton. It let out a long croak.
“Three points in the bag,” I said.
I was going to give the sponsors something to think about here, so I cast my Flame Barrier spell and bent the Fire spell into the shape of a scimitar. Flaming scimitar and staff in hand, I advanced upon the Puss-toad.
But the toad let loose a croak that sent me stumbling back a pace or two with its sheer volume before the monster launched itself high into the air. I watched it, mouth agape, as it hit the zenith of its jump, a mere speck in the sky. Then, the creature descended with alarming speed, plummeting like a meteoric booger.
“Bit showy,” Cecilia said, conjuring one of her icicle spears into her hands.
“Like a mosquito that says grace just a little bit too loudly before its meal,” I said.
A millisecond before the toad would have landed on us, Cecilia and I darted to either side—she rolled right, I rolled left—leaving my flaming scimitar and her icicle spear standing upright.
The Puss-toad impaled itself with applaudable gusto on both of our weapons. It let out a burbling screech of pain and deflated slightly, then it ruptured like a disgusting amphibious boil. Toad guts flowed across the platform. The stench was appalling.
“That wasn’t so hard,” I said, fighting the urge to vomit into my own mouth.
Cecilia tapped me on the shoulder and pointed down the platform. Five more of the Puss-toads were lumbering toward us.
“I hope you’re not attached to that outfit,” I said, “because after we take this lot down, the
smell will never come out of your clothes.”
These five Puss-toads had clearly seen the demise of their fellow and had been incensed by it. They leapt into the air—all at different times and different heights—and staggered their attack. Their size, number, and the limited width of the curving platform meant that dealing with them would be difficult to say the least.
I dodged out of the way of the first one, only to almost succeed in getting squashed flat by another landing nearby. Cecilia twirled out of a third toad’s way as it landed with a gross splatting sound. A fourth toad opened its mouth and fired a bright purple tongue at Cecilia. The tongue wrapped around her as neatly as an anaconda, pinning her arms to her sides and causing her to cry out as it cinched tight.
The last Puss-toad was falling, aiming to crush Cecilia as its fellow held her. With a great effort of mind—the toad was a chunky motherfucker afterall—I used a burst of Telekinesis spell to move the vamphibian slightly off course. With a little croak of surprise, the juicy blob fell off the platform, tumbled fifty feet, and exploded on the ground below in a shower of viscera and custard-colored blood.
It would have been a clean three points, I later learned, if only Torros the Wood Elf had not happened to be chasing a raptor across the arena at that moment. As it was, I was deducted a point for inadvertently crushing him to death with an ill-aimed giant toad and sending him back to the regeneration station.
I didn’t see any of this take place, but was filled in on it later by my fraternity brothers.
As the Puss-toad fell to the arena floor far below, I cast my versatile Flame Barrier spell. This time, I formed a floating flaming guillotine blade in the air and brought it down on the tongue of the Puss-toad slowly squeezing Cecilia to death. The vile purple protuberance was severed, and Cecilia took a deep, grateful breath of air as she uncoiled the slimy tongue from around her.
With a snarl, she sent a spray of ice needles at the offending toad as it lumbered around in agony. However, amphibians, even those of the vampire persuasion, are adept at surviving frosts and this only gave the Puss-toad a target to vent its spleen at.