by Simon Archer
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gerry denied while still not looking at the announcer.
“Just say thank you, Gerry,” Barth scolded. “He knows, okay?”
Gerry sighed. “Thank you.”
“Regardless of the ‘magic,’” Tenjer put the word in quotation marks, “Rico performed so well in the first few fights, the administration didn’t know how to take the news. Eventually, we managed to convince them that he should get at least this one fight because it puts Warpin’s title win into question. It certainly helped that Rico won his final match with no magic at all.”
“And Warpin agrees to this?” Barth asked with a skeptical eyebrow.
“There may have been some rumors started about him getting Rico thrown out of the tournament because he was scared of fighting him,” Nyah said while she rubbed the back of her neck.
“While those rumors were just rumors,” Tenjer said as he looked sternly at his daughter, “Warpin has agreed to fight. He wants everyone to know he won the North title fair and square.”
I wanted to say something, but no words would come. My eyes bounced from Barth to Gerry to Nyah to Tenjer. My thoughts raced at such an alarming rate, I couldn’t keep up with them. Just moments ago, I settled with the idea that I would never fight again. However, I couldn’t just let this opportunity pass me by. It was easy to hop right back in the ring again, after some more training. I would have to go back on my diet and stop eating Deity’s pastries.
Deity…
My eyes landed on the love of my life. Deity’s eyes were wide, and her face was white as a sheet. Her mouth hung slightly open, but she closed it and swallowed when she caught me looking. The baker folded her hands in her lap and wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I gazed about the room and sensed Deity’s displeasure and discomfort. I reached down and took her hand. She let me and floated up to her feet, all the while not looking at me.
“Thank you all for this opportunity,” I said to everyone, “but I need some time to think about this.”
“Rico!” Barth all but shouted. “What do you mean ‘think about this’? What is there to think about?”
“A lot, actually,” I countered. “Deity and I are going to talk about it and do what’s best for us.”
When I said her name, Deity looked up at me. This time her eyes were full of surprise mixed with disbelief. Color returned to her face, almost too fast that her cheeks flushed.
“I don’t understand,” Barth interjected. “This is all you’ve ever wanted, and you’re not going to take it?”
“It’s not all I’ve ever wanted,” I answered. “I have lots of wants and desires and dreams. Fighting was always one of them, but I’ve realized that it’s not the only one. It’s not the only thing that will make me happy.”
Barth rubbed his hand over his face. He grumbled something, his hand muffling the sound. But he didn’t voice his protests aloud. Instead, he sat back down on the couch and kept a hand over his mouth, as if needing to restrain his words physically.
“You have every right to think about it, Rico,” Tenjer said gently. “But we will need to know before tomorrow.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know if I would have an answer by then. I knew this would require a lot of thought and consideration. Deity and I had a life here now, and this interrupted everything.
“If you need an answer that quickly, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to say--”
“Yes!” Deity shouted eagerly. “He’ll do it.”
“What?” I spun Deity to face me. “Deity, you don’t have to do that.”
“And you don’t have to give up your dream for me,” Deity said urgently. “I know that’s what you were about to do, and that’s sweet and all, but it’s stupid, Rico.”
“I agree with Deity!” Barth finally removed his hand from his mouth, freeing his words. However, Gerry leaned over and put his own hands on Barth’s mouth to stop him from talking more.
“Deity,” I said softly, “I don’t want to lose you. I love our life here.”
“I know you do,” she answered with a smile, “but I also know you love fighting. I’m not going to let you throw that away from me. Not when you’ve done so much to help me achieve my dream of running a bakery. I’m here to support you, not stop you.”
Before I had the chance to, Deity stood on her tiptoes and kissed me. It was a simple kiss, nothing more than a peck. Then, she turned to Nyah, who was beaming and Tenjer, who had a twinkle in his eye.
“He’ll do it,” Deity said affirmatively.
I sighed. “What she said.”
28
Despite Nyah’s previous hesitations, she ended up staying in order to help me train. Tenjer returned to the city to drum up publicity for the upcoming match and get everything squared away on the administrative end of things.
Training started that same afternoon that Nyah and Tenjer visited. We didn’t jump into the ring right away. My endurance and stamina had to be built back up after weeks of slacking off. Barth put Nyah and me through a series of work-out routines to start things off.
Training me for the upcoming match became a group effort. Everyone fell into their respective roles. Deity handled things at the inn and corrected my diet. She filled my stomach with proteins and made them as delicious as she could. One night, when I tried to sneak down for a delicious cinnamon-and-sugar cookie she’d made earlier that day, she caught me in the kitchen and sentenced me to two dozen one-handed push-ups, twelve per arm.
Nyah was my partner in crime. She brought out the competitiveness in me by doing every training exercise along with me. The half-elf was by my side the whole time. She taunted and teased along the way. The first time we ran a mile, she beat me by a whole minute and didn’t let me live it down for four days after that.
She was also my main competition in the ring. Gerry would use his illusion magic on both of us, and with Nyah’s extensive knowledge of the MFL, she was even better at fighting than Barth had been.
Barth organized everything. He created our training schedule and kept us to it as strict as a schoolteacher. We had a sample fight at the end of every week since I didn’t heal as fast as Nyah, but we continued to train every day, regardless of how beat up I was. We would focus on various muscles and techniques to round my body out.
I shaved off the excess weight quickly. My headspace was consumed with various combinations and routines. I ate, slept, and drank fighting… and I loved every minute of it.
The one thing we did pause training for was dinner. The five of us always ate dinner together. The conversation mostly focused on the fight, the training that day, or the plan for tomorrow. However, every so often, Deity would talk about something going on in town, or Gerry would bring up something funny that one of the animals did.
Despite all of the energy we spent training for the fight, these moments when the four creatures I cared most for in the world gathered to share a meal were my favorite. I knew I couldn’t get close to being ready for this fight without any of them. I tried to tell them one night how grateful I was, but they blew me off.
“You think this is only about you, Rico?” Nyah asked in response.
“What do you mean?” I wondered, thoroughly confused.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate your gratitude, but we’re not only doing this for you,” the half-elf explained. “We’re doing this for us too.”
“You two are the best fighters I have ever trained,” Barth said, nodding at Nyah and me. “I love watching you two go at it.”
“Same here,” Gerry added. “Though you two are the only fighters I’ve trained, so I don’t know how much that means to anyone.”
“It means a lot,” I confirmed, and Gerry smiled his appreciation.
“I told you from the beginning that I wanted to be a fighter too,” Nyah said plainly. “And if you, a human, can do it, then I can get a fight of my own one day. We’re making history here, Rico, and we all want to be a part of
that.”
“We believe in you too, though,” Deity tacked on with a chuckle. “I think what Nyah is trying to say is that you can thank us all you want, but we want to thank you too.”
“I mean,” Nyah rolled her eyes playfully, “that’s part of it.”
“Well,” I said with a grin, “either way, I still appreciate all you are doing.”
“Here.” Deity held up a glass. “We’re going to toast our appreciation to one another, so we all know how grateful we are.”
“And so we never have to do it again,” Gerry chimed in as he held up his own glass.
“Exactly,” Deity agreed. She held her glass higher up. “To us, Team Resilient.”
“Team Resilient!” we chorused and then drank from our various cups.
The evening after our toast, I couldn’t sleep. Normally, I was so tired at the end of the day that I collapsed into bed right after dinner. Something about the conversation that night kept me up. Nyah’s words about making history tossed and turned in my brain. I rolled around the bed, making it rattle.
Deity groaned and elbowed me in the gut. “Stop moving.”
“Sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t sleep.”
“Is something bothering you?” Deity asked as her eyes fluttered open.
“Yes,” I said suddenly. “No, I don’t know.”
Deity lifted herself up onto her elbow and looked at me with a bleary gaze. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I gazed at her soft face that I could barely see in the dark. Her round cheeks were lined with deep marks from her pillow. I must have woken her from a heavy sleep. As much as I wanted to lament to her, I figured she needed the rest as much as I did.
I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “No, I don’t. Just go back to sleep.”
“I won’t sleep if you keep moving around like that,” she grumbled as she lay back flat.
“I’m going to take a walk,” I decided.
Deity mumbled her approval and rolled over away from me.
I walked softly out of the room. The stairs creaked on my way down, and I hoped my late-night stroll wasn’t going to wake anyone else in the inn. We didn’t have any guests that night, thank Walden, but I knew Nyah, Gerry, and Barth wouldn’t appreciate their sleep being disturbed. At the very least, they wouldn’t be as understanding as Deity.
I made my way out the door and into the moonlit night. My feet wandered and so did my thoughts.
I found myself agreeing with Nyah. We were making history, the group of us. We were the team behind the first-ever human competing in the MFL. That was no small feat, we knew. It was something none of us ever thought we’d live to see.
The same went for the rest of the public. Most of the responses had been positive when Tenjer made the announcement.
“The MLF will welcome its first-ever human fighter,” he had said. “Recently, it was discovered that Rico the Resilient was not a half-giant, but indeed a full-blooded human.”
Harvey looked surprised at the news as if that was the first time he ever heard that information. “Well, Tenjer, doesn’t that eliminate him from ever competing?”
“The MFL thought so at first,” Tenjer explained. “However, after further consideration, Rico the Resilient was able to pass all of our physical tests and technically won his first three matches by knockout. And he was facing Erol the Dissipater in that last match, so there was no chance for him to use magic. He was a formidable fighter, and the MFL thought we couldn’t afford to lose a powerhouse like that.”
“So, what does this mean?” Harvey prompted.
“It means, Harvey,” Tenjer said, continuing their bit, “that the MFL will be sponsoring a one-night-only match between Rico the Resilient and Warpin the Relentless in just three weeks.”
Now, the fight was only three days away. Creatures of all kinds came to the inn to congratulate me. We had to stop accepting guests for a little while since everyone only came to watch me train. I wasn’t comfortable with that, but with the publicity, it made it difficult to make the training sessions closed without closing the inn temporarily.
Deity and I agreed it was best. We would reopen after the fight and figure out a new plan from there. The MFL didn’t promise me any more matches after this one, but if they did, we knew we would cross that bridge when it came. Right now, we only had enough focus, time, and energy for this one fight.
There was also a whole other group of creatures wholly opposed to a human fighting in the MFL. These were typically the same people who rejected Warpin when he first became a regular, seasoned fighter.
Those creatures boycotted the match altogether, claiming that watching a half-giant and a human fight was not what they expected from the MFL. Luckily, those creatures were in the minority.
Excitement swirled around this match, so much so that sometimes I thought I could hear people whispering about me when I went into town. I had to start asking one of the others to get groceries or run errands because I couldn’t handle the stares or the creatures wanting to talk to me all the time.
I always thought I would be okay with the fame that came from being a fighter, but I was slowly but surely realizing that it was the worst part of the whole ordeal. I wanted to be left alone to train and focus on the fight. I didn’t want to sign autographs or listen to fans gush.
In the beginning, I was gracious and kind, my habitual manners kicking in. Over time, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I became a recluse on the farm. It was quieter out here, safer. I could wander the fields, lost in my own thoughts, without fear of anyone bombarding me.
Or so I thought.
I traveled along the edge of the property, out by where I first found Nyah. Recently, she told me that her attackers had been fellow racers who sought to knock her out of the race because she was such a contender. Another one of the strings Tenjer had pulled was to catch those perpetrators and sentence them to some serious jail time.
My thoughts of Nyah’s plight with the jealous racers were interrupted by the ominous shape of a figure standing atop a hill in front of me. The creature wasn’t exactly on my property, but standing just on the line separating my farm from the next one over.
A small wire fence stood between him and me, but all this large figure had to do was take one giant step over the fence and then he would be on my land.
“Hey!” I called out.
The figure didn’t move. He continued to stare straight out like there was something on the horizon that caught his eye.
“Hey!” I repeated. “What are you doing all the way out here? You lost?”
“No,” the gruff voice replied. “I think I found exactly what I was looking for. Even more than I anticipated, actually.”
The voice stopped me in my tracks. I approached the figure with a caution I didn’t have before, my guard raised all the way up.
What I found was Warpin, standing on the edge of my farm with his back straight and his arms crossed over his chest.
“What are you doing here?” I grunted, staying more than ten feet away from the half-giant.
“I thought I would come and check out this amazing new inn out here in the countryside,” Warpin said casually. “But I heard it was closed.”
“You knew this was my inn,” I jumped in, not giving him any more room to lie. “You came out here for me.”
“That was a perk, I swear,” he said unconvincingly. “I forgot you were a country creature.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I countered. I put my hands on my hips and stared down the half-giant. “What do you want, Warpin?”
“Fine.” Warpin shrugged, and his voice grew hard, all false niceness leaving it instantly. “I wanted to see how you were faring.”
“Just fine, thank you,” I said, my words clipped. “You can leave now.”
“I don’t have to go anywhere,” Warpin said. “I have permission to be on this property, which I am pretty sure isn’t yours.”
I rolled my eyes. “Good for you, Warp
in, but if you came here hoping to see me train or something, then I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time.”
“I don’t need to see you train,” Warpin sneered. “I’ve seen you fight. I’m actually one of the few that has seen you fight.”
“Plenty of people have seen me fight,” I said. “That’s how I earned a rematch with you.”
“It may be true that you snuck your way through the ranks, but I’m one of the few who has seen every blow you’ve made, illusion or no illusion,” Warpin threatened, his voice low.
“Good to know your x-ray vision is good for something,” I joshed back at him with more confidence than I had.
“I know we’re not allowed to use magic for this upcoming fight,” Warpin informed me as if I didn’t already know the custom rules for our match. “But I know how you fight. I know you, Rico, and I am not afraid.”
“Oh, really?” I challenged. I took a step closer to the half-giant, knowing that if he dared to make a move, he’d cross onto my property and I could have him arrested for trespassing. “See, I don’t believe that. I think you are scared of me, or you would have just fought me in the first place instead of ratting me out to the MFL.”
“I told the administration about a fighter who was breaking the rules,” Warpin defended. “I refuse to fight cheaters.”
“I never cheated,” I said, now on the defensive myself. “I won those fights fair and square.”
“You forget I trained with Barth,” Warpin said, seeming to change the subject. “I know all about Gerry’s skills in illusion. You cheated by hiding behind his magic when you didn’t have any of your own. But this fight, it’s just going to be you and me. No tricks, no traps, just a straight-up fight.”
“I won against Erol the Dissipator in my last fight, if you remember,” I said, raising my eyebrows but keeping my gaze icy. “Which you’ve never had to do. You’ve never had the chance to fight without magic, but I’ve done it and won.”
Warpin growled at me. “I’ll still beat you. You think just because you’ve tricked the MFL to letting you back in the ring that you’ll be able to beat me?”