Then, despite our father’s clear warnings and dictate, he went to that fetid origin for material to try again. Once they had been revived again, we could not allow him to continue in his meddling. His interpretation of the supreme directive was false. We had to end him for it. They still live now. I don’t know why Exeter allows it, but I am not one to question my father’s wisdom.
-Excerpt from “My Talks with Glis’Merinda, Daughter of Exeter”
Written by Dak of Kell
I feel uncomfortably sober as we wind up the paved path cut through the grass an hour later. Gone are my beautiful dress and slightly blood-stained gloves, replaced with bands of steel armor that fit tightly to my extremities and the hand-enchanted coat. The thrum of the magic in the armor washes through me as I assemble my battle equipment, though I keep the staves stored away, my only apparent weapon the mageblade dagger on my hip.
Another man accompanies the slightly intoxicated four of us. Jor’Mari stopped before we made it to the training yard to wake an older elven man, his step-brother, or some such. The nobleman has the messiest hair I have ever seen on an elf, platinum blonde curls cut short and sticking in clumps every which way. The bags beneath the man’s eyes and the constant scowl confirm that he is long past these childish and late-night adventures, but hearing that there was going to be a duel, he sighed and put on some boots to join us. He is quite the healer to hear Jor’Mari tell it. The fact that Jor felt the need to wake a healer for this says a lot to me.
We come upon the place where the duel is to be held, a big pitch set onto the cleared scalp of a hill. The chalk lines decorating the short-cut grass remind me of the stoneball arena I had seen all those months ago, but it is different in a few ways. Jor’Mari had mentioned something about aristocrats favoring the game.
Priscilla and her groupies stand near the center of the field or lounge in large chairs that look completely out of place on the night grass. Honestly, I don’t know any of the people and it is a bit uncharitable to simply call them groupies, but I can’t bring myself to care about that at the moment. The elven woman who is to be my opponent visibly seethes as we crest the hill and start walking out onto the field, grabbing the sleeves of her coat so tight I imagine she might rip them off. There is a white bandage on her face across her nose, hilarious.
“With Priscilla?” the man Jor’Mari brought along complains, looking at Jor and shaking his head. “Really?”
“This will be more interesting than any dream you were having,” Jor’Mari assures him, patting him on the back. “All you have to do is sit back and make certain that no one dies.”
The man looks at Jor a little longer before turning his skeptical gaze on me, looking me up and down. “You should know that you will likely lose,” the man says. “Priscilla has been taught the sword by her father for years. The man is a champion duelist.”
I shrug. “I’ve never fought a duel.”
The man simply sighs, shaking his head, and walking toward the center of the field, not stopping with the rest of us as we form a line opposite Priscilla’s entourage.
“Sir Relz,” Priscilla says, removing her stare from me long enough to dip a courteous bow to the man, before immediately going back to staring dagger at me. “I thought the young lord might fetch you to referee.”
“I don’t know what happened, but can’t everyone put this matter behind them and go back to whatever it was you were doing? Youthful mistakes are all well and good, but someone could be seriously injured here,” he pleads.
“I am afraid not, sir. This woman has assaulted me and shown grievous disrespect. Our duel is lawful, and if someone does not teach her proper manners and her place soon, a greater disaster could occur,” Priscilla says.
The man whose name is Sir Relz, looks over at me, not much hope on his face. I realize that, again, I have forgotten to identify the man as soon as I met him. That coupled with the lingering tingle in my fingers reminds me that I am not exceptionally sober.
“She called me a whore,” I tell Sir Relz. “I think that a round of place putting is in order.”
The man shakes his head, looking between us. “If you are set on it then. Clear the field,” he commands, sudden authority entering his voice as he looks to the onlookers. As if they were expecting the command, the two groups head in opposite directions toward the sides of the field, Priscilla’s entourage dragging their plush chairs. Sir Relz takes a calming breath, at me. “Can I assume that you were the challenged?”
“I was,” I say.
“Then, choice of weapon is up to you,” he says.
Priscilla stands before me, one hand having moved to the hilt of a scabbard blade that hangs from her hip while her other holds an old-looking brown book. I heard earlier when she originally called for the weapons that she asked for a grimoire. This is my first time seeing one, though I am vaguely familiar with them. They are books of notes employed by those specializing in spellcraft, containing representations of the spells that they need to access quickly as creating the intricate runic patterns from memory in an instant is far beyond the skill of most who specialize in the art. It goes to show just how especially impressive Corinth is, as I never once saw him need to refer to any reference to create a spell in an instant.
“Anything goes,” I say back to him.
He nods, likely expecting the answer. I might not know much about duels, but I can guess a few things. I know that the endowed do not generally express magic outwardly, relying on the power infusing their bodies to push those bodies to limits far beyond what a magician is capable of. They often fight using weapons, dedicating huge stretches of their lives to mastering a single instrument of war.
Jor’Mari told me before that the Mari clan has a focus on summoning and controlling demons, which sets them a bit apart. Regardless, as the endowed daughter of a baron, Priscilla’s attributes likely far outpace my own, and entering into a close bout with her will be suicide. Magic must be on the table then, and if we are already going to enter that realm, I may as well allow anything, as I don’t know what these people will consider to be inside or outside of the rules if I try to draw a line.
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Despite knowing that the woman is stronger than me in probably every attribute other than recovery, that she has experience in these kinds of fights, and that she is about to employ spellcraft, an art that I have never combatted, I do not feel the least bit fearful as I stare back at her. Maybe it is just the alcohol, but I don’t think so.
“Take a moment to prepare yourselves,” Sir Relz says, taking a few steps away.
Priscilla looks me up and down, sneering. “Do you really think that little kitchen knife will allow you to defeat me? You don’t understand what you are up against.”
Shrugging, I pull the knife from my waist and turn it over in my hand. “I doubt I will need to use this,” I say. If my words reinforce her thinking that I am some kind of knife combatant, so be it. “How does the duel end?” I ask Sir Relz.
“That is for the issuer of the challenge to decide,” he says, nodding at Priscilla.
“How does a combat to the death sound to you?” she asks.
“I didn’t start the night wanting to kill someone,” I reply, shrugging. It is only beginning to dawn on me at this moment that I am talking to a real elven noble, a woman who is part of those who have fed me lies my entire life.
A part of my mind is screaming for me to apologize, to beg forgiveness, afraid that the powerful arm of the Duchy will be turned on me and my family because of my actions tonight. The greater part of my mind is more indifferent. Perhaps that too is from the drink. If so, I need Jor’Mari to give me more.
I hit this woman. Gods, that scared little girl inside of me cringes at the thought of that. Somehow, that moment of rash action has ripped away something that has been plastered over my soul, a vague fear and certainty that to defy these people would mean nothing but tortuous pain and death. But here I am, standing in front of a woman who looks like she wants to kill me, feeling no closer to death than I did sitting in the theatre. What was the threat?
“If I kill you, you won’t learn anything,” Priscilla answers, standing tall, her voice self-assured, as if she is offering me some incredible favor. “We will go until you yield.”
“Until yield,” Sir Relz says, nodding. “The first to yield or to be rendered incapable of continuing will be declared the loser of the bout. Prepare yourselves.”
At his command to prepare ourselves, Priscilla opens her grimoire and begins to infuse power into it. I stare in fascination as an intricate rune of hundreds of lines begins to lift off the page, leaving a blank sheet behind inside the book as it floats into the air. I see a swirl of uncolored magic float from her hand and begin to enter the rune, the air around the construction of spellcraft warping as the power builds.
“Hasn’t she already begun?” I ask Sir Relz.
“Lady Cla’Mari has launched no attack against you,” he says, shaking his head. Sir Relz pulls the handkerchief from his breast pocket and holds it up. “I shall only allow a few more seconds before I throw the flag to start. When this cloth touches the ground, the duel will have commenced.”
Turning my attention back to the woman in front of me, I find that the rune she is working with has almost readied itself. It is difficult to say how I know, just that it appears to be nearing its full capacity. A dark fascination with seeing what will come of it infects me. It probably isn’t a good idea to let her complete the spell, but I will anyway.
It only occurs to me as Sir Relz throws his handkerchief into the air that I should have spent the last few seconds preparing myself, probably charging a dragonfire bolt to its full capacity and blasting Priscilla to bits before she can react. I’ve been told that the endowed nobility are like attribute specialists but with every attribute, so it is unlikely that a single blast would be enough to kill her. I don’t think that a single blast would even deal all that much damage to Dovik for instance.
The urge to ask Dovik about that very thing comes over me before I force myself to focus. Perhaps there is a downside to the intoxication as well.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the handkerchief begin its downward trajectory. I should at least do something. In a flash, a wave of red and gold mana explodes away from me, washing over the field like the water from a broken dam, a pressure settling on everything other than my opponent. I am not looking to cheat after all.
Despite not being directly affected by my soul presence erupting across the field, I watch as Priscilla’s concentration slips for a moment, the spellwork hovering in the air in front of her shuddering for a moment. She asserts control over it once again after only the slightest slip, but the mere fact that she was unsettled at all tells me all I need to know about this woman. No, she can’t beat me.
The handkerchief lands on the grass, a little splash of lavender among the green. The rune floating in front of Priscilla beats a loud and whining note that cuts through the air, the vibrations around it stilling for a moment as it turns a bright red that almost disappears against the color of my soul. I don’t blink, but I also don’t catch the moment that the huge creature appears in front of me.
The first thing that I think, is that it reminds me of Jor’Mari when he has become huge. The creature is humanoid, with two arms and two legs, but at almost eight feet tall, its arms are as thick around as tree trunks and reach well past its knees. Its skin is a muddy red, and a tail with thorny spikes hangs behind it, the slight shiver shaking through it warning me of how dangerous it might be. The forehead of the monster’s face is big and flat, making it not look all that bright, and two beady red eyes stare out from its lop-sided face.
Canker Demon
I do end up looking over at Dovik, calling to him. “You said demons weren’t real!”
“To the right,” Galea warns in my head, making me jump back on instinct.
The ground where my left foot had been just an instant before sprays into the air as the spiked tail of the Canker Demon crashes down, chewing up the dirt. The demon chases after me, following up the swing of its tail with a slash of its claws that whistle as they cut through the air. The demon might be huge, but it isn’t all that fast or precise with its attacks. Instead of jumping back, I move forward, ducking into its range and stepping past it.
The flashing glint of steel nearly impales me as I make it past the demon. Priscilla is there, already following up from the swing of her saber that I sidestep, setting her feet and cutting up toward my face with the edge of the sword.
A burning line of pain slices across my cheek as I spring back from her, unleashing a torrent of flames as I put distance between us. My aura crashes down on the woman and the demon simultaneously. The demon’s fist crashes into the ground far ahead of me, the sudden weight pressing down on it making the clumsy swing miss wildly. Priscilla recovers faster than her summoned creature, a wispy white light bleeding off of her skin and shrouding her.
She looks up at me, smirking, and stands tall, the effect of my soul presence completely nullified by the field of magic surrounding her. Instead of puzzling that out, I put my energy into summoning my draconic wings, leaping up into the air, soaring a good forty feet upward.
Staring down at the two opponents on the field below, I begin to pull black sand from my vault, pooling it into globes of darkness floating around me. I was aware that the endowed could exhibit soul presences of their own, but I am only now beginning to suspect they are different from the ones magicians possess. The presences of magicians overlap when they are brought together, the effects mingling together, but I feel a physical resistance from the light surrounding Priscilla. Some force pushes against my presence, not allowing it to enter that area; it is as if she is wearing a shining shield.
“Left,” Galea warns.
My black sand slides away from its sphere, forming a wall of darkness on my left side in an instant. Instead of the expected slap of magic against the forming shield, a tendril of pink flesh spears through the wall. I only have time to widen my eyes before the spike on the end of the tendril stabs into my gut.
Air is forced from my lungs and I feel the barb expand in my stomach, locking the tendril to me. Magic is drawn away from me, flooding out of my body, sucked back through the length of flesh. This is bad.
“Oh.” That is all I manage to say.
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