Floating around me, three balls of black sand burn brightly with dragonfire as they slowly orbit. My wings extend out to either side of me, their brilliant crimson scales looking almost wet in the harsh light. I stand on the platform created by my new boots, my hands held to either side of me. In my left, a pillar of emerald flame blazes, while my right hand holds the blue dragonfire of my cold affix. As the Lady explained this farce to me, and as Mr. Mox had reiterated, what happens in the arena is a show.
Only a second or two of silence passes before the trickling sound of applause begins to spread through the onlookers. They came here to be entertained. As much as that makes my stomach churn, that fact is one of the few things that I have to work toward. For a moment, I think that the Lady might have been wrong. The elated looks on the faces I see in the darkness don’t appear hostile. Time will tell if they will turn mean like she promised me they would. I have little faith that they won’t, but there is a bit of room for hope.
“What an entrance!” A woman’s voice rings out above all the noise.
Peering down, I see her walking across the stone. An elven woman in a brilliant silver dress with a strange lizard on her shoulder gestures wildly. This must be the judge of the fight, but she looks more like a woman I might see sitting in the high balconies of a theatre.
“I can tell that we are going to have quite a show tonight!” she calls. As she speaks, the voices of the crowd grow more wild. The woman soaks up the enthusiasm like a man dying of thirst. “Come down, stranger. Let me get to know you better.”
With all of the cheering going on throughout the room, I understand that this must be a part of the performance. The platform beneath my feet disappears, and slowly I descend toward the ground. The woman walks my way, smiling radiantly and cupping a hand over the lizard’s mouth.
Galla Meridin
Her name flashes above her head. Despite not being a magician or having any indication that she might be an endowed noble in hiding, there is a magic to the woman. Multiple auras from protective jewelry hang over her. I can’t help but appreciate that. At least I don’t have to worry about accidentally harming this woman. My eyes turn toward the lizard on her shoulder, but I fail to find a threat there either.
Loudmouth Lizard
“Whew.” The woman, Galla, looks around the chamber while blowing out a breath. “We have a real crowd tonight. Don’t feel nervous about all of them. I can tell by looking, but you are an adventurer, right?”
“I am,” I say. “Why?”
“I like to know who I am working with out here. I don’t know if they told you in the understage, but Hart is not going to be making an appearance tonight. That’s good news for you, as you only have to win nine fights to beat the Run.”
“Then I get my million suns, right?” I ask.
Galla’s smile grows wider. “That’s right, sweetheart. Now, I know you adventurers have your special names. Do you have something you want me to announce you as?”
I hardly need a second to think about it. “My name is Charlene Devardem. They call me Nightmare at the league.”
“Nightmare,” she repeats, scrunching up her nose. “Not a very good moniker.” I shrug in response. “Alright, you seem ready. Let’s get this show moving.” Turning, the woman removes her hand from the lizard’s face, and it dumbly opens its mouth wide once more, projecting her voice throughout the huge chamber. “Tonight’s challenger on the Run is another young adventurer. Those of you who were here last night might notice something similar between this young woman and the man last night. That’s right! For two nights in a row, we have a human fighting in the Pit! Everyone, help me in welcoming tonight’s fighter, Charlene Devardem, The Nightmare Artist!”
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The distraction of having the woman change the name I gave her irks me for only a second before I catch it. The crowd overhead cheers loudly, obeying the woman’s commands, but there is discord in the sound. Not everyone is cheering. Some actively boo me. Ah, there it is. Just as Lady Talagast promised it would be.
Galla turns, pointing her hand toward the pool of light on the stone the furthest away from me. On cue, a man begins to walk from the stone that ripples like water around him. The first thing I see of him is the strange, golden antenna that stick up from the top of his head. They flop as he sways, a part of his costume with hardly any rigidity to it. The elven woman begins to go on about the canid wearing the flamboyant white and gold costume in front of me, but I tune her out, relying on my own senses to tell me about my opponent.
Raez Ca
Golden Ray Conflux
I blink, reading the information over again as the man raises his arms and waves to the cheering crowd.
“Galea,” I ask in my mind, “is that correct?”
“It wounds me that you would even ask, Mistress,” the fey spirit replies.
I nod at her response. This man in front of me is more than twenty levels below me. By rights, that means that I easily have more than twice as many attribute points as he does. This will be a slaughter.
While the woman goes on, launching into an impromptu retelling of the holiday myth that these fights are supposed to pay homage to, I look around the arena. To my dragon’s eye, the magic supporting the enchantments ringing the wall of the cylinder I find myself in stands out. The array is extensive, covering every single part of the wall I can see; its only purpose tis o keep stray attacks and blasts of magic from reaching the audience. The array itself isn’t anything special; I could probably create a more advanced interplay, but there are a significant number of them layered atop each other. At least sixteen barriers have been enchanted across the wall, more than enough to stop anything that anyone inside should be able to produce.
“I see that you can take to the air before rank three as well,” Raez says, breaking me from my survey of the arena’s wall.
“What?” Then I notice that he is gesturing to my wings with one hand while showing off his golden cape with the other. “Oh, yes.”
“Perhaps we should take our bout to the skies,” Raez suggests. “The crowd loves aerial battles.”
“If that is what you prefer,” I say, shrugging. Really, it won’t matter to me.
The man winces as he reaches down and grabs his cape with both hands. I notice now the bandages wrapping his arms. With the thick fur that covers his body, I can’t see any bruises, but he moves like they are all over. Raez fought Dovik yesterday. The healers this arena employs must be at least somewhat competent to allow the man to fight again after being beaten yesterday..
Raez crouches and leaps into the air, the cape he holds with both hands stretching out behind him. He flaps his arms a few times, slowly rising until he comes to a hover fifteen feet above the ground. I flex my draconic wings, allowing the magic within to carry me to the same height as the man before I create a new platform beneath my feet with the power in my obsidianate boots. I can’t help but smile to myself, I am exactly where I was just a few minutes ago.
Below, Galla finally ends her recitation of the holiday myth and continues to whip the crowd into a frenzy. She works with excitement like a painter does oil. When the woman has the crowd at a fever pitch, she turns and begins to count down from ten.
At the first number, Raez’s face beneath his mask loses all of its joviality as the man becomes deadly serious. He flexes his hands, the claws on the ends almost gleaming in the light. The man is a close-ranged fighter, it would seem. I wonder how he plans to close the sixty-foot distance between us.
I feel the moment the woman below reaches zero rather than hear it, the pulsing voice of the audience is just that loud. As the last number tumbles away, I let myself dip into the battle fever, watching as the world slows around me for just a second. As the world seems to hang suspended for a second, I take in as much as I can. The air around Raez has grown distorted, almost rippling like water as it gathers around his legs. Does he have some sort of ability to control the air?
To my surprise, I never get the answer. In the same second that the match begins and Raez starts to gather his power, I do the same. Seven hundred points of mana pool into the palm of my hand in the form of gray dragonfire. When the attack leaps from my fingers, it blurs away so fast that the fire becomes a bar of light connecting my hand to Raez’s chest.
The man doesn’t even have time for his eyes to grow wide before the steel-infused dragonfire detonates against his chest. With a detonation that sounds like thunder and emits no smoke, the man known as the Golden Ray is smote from the air. He sails away from me in an arc, hitting and rolling across the stone for a good twelve feet before finally sliding to a stop. He chokes, holding his heart, and struggles to force a breath into his lungs. Failing, he reaches vaguely in my direction with his right hand, his left arm lies at an awkward angle under him, and then he passes out. Black-clad figures appear in the arena a moment later, moving toward the man, faint magic glowing in the hands of two of them.
The chamber around me is silent as people struggle to take in just what they witnessed. I cast aside the battle fever, nearly a third of my healing points spent on just those two seconds of the strange trance, and look up at the crowd. When they start to get over their silence, the elation and good cheer are gone from their eyes.
Boos and jeers fill the arena as the audience turns hostile. Even though I knew it would be coming, it is still hard to stand in the middle of a thousand voices yelling their bad intent down at me. Yet, I keep myself controlled and let their yelling wash over me. Without blinking or bending, I look up at them, throwing a radiant smile at their boos. That only seems to piss them off more. I can’t help but take a little bit of satisfaction in that.
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