Wizard Tournament: Chapter 12 (Patreon)
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“Gayooru?” Peter asked. He was taking notes again. “How do you spell that?”
“Gear-you is close enough,” Sylnya answered. “And don’t ask me to spell it. He's been around longer than any recorded history so nobody knows where he came from.”
“That old?” Peter’s eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t mention that when we were reviewing his details. Is he some kind of ancient repository of lost wisdom from before the Purge?”
Draevin chuckled. “Oh yeah, that’s Giryuoru for you… always dispensing wisdom.”
Sylnya smiled along and added, “What’s your favorite, the part about his swamp?”
“Oh definitely,” Draevin agreed, “but for me more specifically I’m more partial to the part where he tells us to leave.”
Peter stopped taking notes. He looked from Sylnya to Draevin. “So he's not…?”
“Not full of wisdom?” Sylnya finished for him. “Not particularly, no.”
“But he sure does like to talk,” Draevin added. “Oh look, here he comes now.”
On the field below a procession of purple-robed acolytes dragged a large metal box to the field and left it within the wards of the fighter’s box. The box was etched all over with the runes needed to contain the creature inside and chains connected the side of the box facing the arena grounds to a pair of acolytes that stood just outside the boundary line. It made for quite the show for both contestants of this match to arrive under armed guard, and as Trundle had his chains removed a hush came over the crowd.
Maeve began with Trundle. “Trundle is a gnome sanguimancer from Trenal representing the Cult of the Burning Eye. He is carrying the Belt of 10,000 Strikes and his wish is to ascend the members of the Cult of the Burning Eye to a higher state of being greater than mortal or demon-kind. Trundle wants everyone to know that he has seen the deepest reaches of Hell and he would still rather take a vacation there than Shashena.” Trundle ran a hand over his slick red hair before removing the golden belt he was wearing to hold up for the crowd. He cracked a grin along with the crowd when they laughed at his dig at Shashena. Draevin suspected there was a story behind that comment.
“The belt is a defensive item,” Sylnya explained to Peter. “Blood magic works a little differently from most other kinds of magic so he uses the belt to buy enough time for his rituals.”
“Differently how?” Peter asked her. “How is a ritual different from an incantation?”
“I’m not really an expert,” she told him, “but I can try to explain a little after the match.”
“It’s not that complicated,” Draevin spoke up. “It just uses blood instead of mana.”
Sylnya shot Draevin a dirty look. He wasn’t sure why. It might have had something to do with the look of excitement on Peter’s face though. Peter scribbled down some notes.
“Giryuoru is a swamp elemental that just wants to get this arena out of his swamp.” Maeve announced next. It was the shortest introduction any contestant was going to get. Giryuoru didn’t have a sponsor or an item and didn’t even register with the regular contestants. He just had a standing arrangement with the Guild that he would be allowed to fight each year in exchange for not attacking travelers on the road.
A chant of, “Get out! Get out!” started up around the arena. Giryuoru had somehow accumulated some fans over the years; something Draevin would never understand.
“I thought we were in a jungle, not a swamp,” Peter pointed out.
Draevin chuckled. “Don’t tell Giryuoru that.”
“Like anyone misses that dumb swamp,” Sylnya commented dryly. “Everyone loves jungles.” Draevin begged to differ, but not enough to say so out loud in front of his dryad friend.
Down on the field the unlucky acolytes tasked with letting Giryuoru out of its box got ready to pull on the chain. Maeve passed on the signal to the judges that they were ready. The bell chimed.
The two acolytes heaved on their chain and Giryuoru’s box flung open. There was an explosion of thick brown mud that splattered the acolytes and everything else in the vicinity. The mud flooded out of the metal box in a veritable landslide that made it all the way across the field to where Trundle was standing. There was a small circle of clean dirt around Trundle’s feet.
“GET OUT OF MY SWAMP!” A booming voice cried out from somewhere deep within the mountain of sludge. Fans all over lost their minds at hearing the iconic phrase. Draevin even spotted a small group down in the front row who had removed their shirt and gotten splattered with Giryuoru’s mud on purpose. It seemed very exciting to them for some reason and they were waving their arms wildly while they cheered.
Trundle paid no mind to any of it. He simply slashed the palm of his hand open with a dagger and started chanting in the throaty language of demons. A bright red glow emanated from his bloody hand in response to his chanting.
The mud on the field gathered back together into a massive hill with a face and arms. It looked towards Trundle and bellowed once more. “GET OUT!” It heaved a blob of mud at Trundle which merely splashed harmlessly against the invisible egg-shaped barrier his enchanted belt provided.
A bright spot of red hellfire appeared in the air before Trundle. He kept chanting and the spot of red began to expand into a Hell rift. Giryuoru was at least intelligent enough to understand this was a bad thing. It sprayed Trundle down with a concentrated blast of mud that splashed just as uselessly against his barrier. Smoke rose from the growing Hell rift when it got wet, but it kept expanding wider. Giryuoru tried to rush at Trundle instead. Its whole body became a tidal wave of mud that buried Trundle and his barrier entirely.
Considering how useless Giryuoru’s mud was against that belt of Trundle’s, burying him in mud actually wasn’t the worst strategy. Giryuoru typically employed two basic strategies; throw his opponent out, or suffocate them.
The mud swirled into a whirlpool centered over where Trundle had been standing. An angry face the size of a wagon appeared over Trundle’s spot in the mud and shouted, “GET OUT! GET OOOUT!” The gear-heads in the audience took up the chant once again. Draevin groaned in annoyance.
The mud where Giryuoru had covered the Hell rift was bubbling and smoking. A turn of the wind brought a few of the fumes in Draevin’s direction and he and Peter started gagging. “Oh gods!” Peter moaned. The human shoved his face under his collar. It smelled like Draevin imagined a pile of human feces would if someone lit it on fire and wafted the smoke in his direction with a rotting cow carcass. He tried to speak the incantation for Clean Object, but just ended up coughing ineffectually.
Thankfully Sylnya noticed what was happening, and though she couldn’t smell it herself, she ran her fingers through a quick series of woven hand signs and sprouted four fuzzy little purple flowers from the palm of her hand. She plucked them off and offered two to Draevin. He shoved them up his nose and sucked in a blessedly-fresh breath through them. Peter followed his lead.
“Dadth wuzz boul,” Draevin said through his blocked nostrils.
On the field below the hellfire portal had boiled off a circular trench in Giryuoru’s mud. A humanoid shape began to rise to the surface from its center.
“A new contestant has entered the arena,” Maeve announced.
“Dew conessnand?” Peter asked. “Wuhd dee…” His question trailed off as a demon emerged from the mud. The creature had the head of a goat with two curly horns on its head and long flexible fingers with needle sharp claws. Hellfire dripped from the demon’s mouth and it let out a wide torrent of red flames at Giryuoru’s mud. Everywhere the flames hit mud turned to clay.
“I forgot to tell you,” Sylnya shouted over boos from the gear-heads in the crowd. “There are some special rules regarding demon summoning. There’s a reason Trundle is the only one who tries it.”
Giryuoru’s face appeared near the goat demon. “YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE, DARK ONE,” he shouted. “GET OUT!” The swamp elemental spat a dark ball of mud directly into the goat demon’s mouth, which cut off the flames. He followed that up with a tide of swamp mud that buried the demon. The crowd whooped in delight at the sudden change.
A black claw broke from the surface and tried to get traction, but was just sucked under the surface once again. Giryuoru’s face emerged near the dried-out clay the demon had left behind and broke the pieces off and threw them away. Chunks of powdery earth smacked against the wards and several gear-heads had to be restrained by Guild acolytes as they tried to lean down over the railing and scoop up pieces.
“Come on!” Sylnya shouted into the air while clapping her hands. “Let’s see some action!”
The demon was sucked under the mud once. Twice. The third time its head came up there was a flame burning within its maw again. It went under once more, then the mud began to glow red and rapidly boiled away. The mud was quickly cooked into a solid shell of dirt. The demon clawed its way to the surface and emerged from the fiery hole in the ground surrounded by red flames, molten earth and black smoke. It looked like the creature had crawled right out of Hell, and that wasn’t far from the truth either.
Giryuoru’s form rose up from behind the demon, ready to bury it once more. The demon turned on the elemental with another red flame ready. It shot a fireball from its jaws that crashed into Giryuoru’s face and splashed over it. An impression of the elemental’s face solidified on the field in a rictus of pain.
Its face emerged again several paces away somewhat smaller in size than before. “FIRE NO!” Giryuoru shouted at the demon. In response to the fire, Giryuoru employed a novel strategy; he pooled up a small pond of swamp water behind his face and spat it through his mouth out at the demon in a powerful stream. The goat demon threw up its arms to block the attack and bleated angrily. As the swamp water dribbled off the demon’s body, Giryuoru formed rivulets that led the water back to his pond where it could be recycled into a never-ending loop.
It was hard to make out what was happening to the demon from beneath the water, but it seemed more annoyed than threatened by the elemental’s attack. After enduring the attack for a few seconds a red light began to glow within the stream and the water began to evaporate away into huge clouds of steam. Draevin was glad of his flowery nose-filters as a gust of the steam wafted in their direction once again and the nearby fans groaned and retched in disgust. Only a few crazy gear-heads—many of whom were dryads anyway—seemed undisturbed by the stench.
Once their swamp water started evaporating it didn’t take long for Giryuoru to run out of moisture. His stream of water sputtered out and the mud that was left was much less malleable than before. The goat demon bleated in triumph and charged Giryuoru’s face and blasted it with another flame. “NO! GET—” the swamp elemental tried to say. This time when the face hardened into clay it didn’t reform elsewhere. The demon stomped its hooved feet on the dried out husk and crushed the face to powder.
A bell chimed and Maeve announced, “Giryuoru has been eliminated.” She did not, however, announce that Trundle had won. The demon didn’t relax either, merely going down on all fours and sniffing around warily. When it found what it was looking for it drew in a large breath and shot a burst of hellfire towards a nondescript mound of cooked mud.
The mud quickly burned away to reveal Trundle, who had been buried during Giryuoru’s opening salvo and not seen since. The fireball splashed against his barrier harmlessly. Trundle was red-faced and panting and had a look of relief as soon as the mud surrounding him cleared away.
His own demon rushed at Trundle and shot another gout of flames against his barrier. On this second attack a purple shimmer started to become visible: a sign that his barrier was reaching its limit. Trundle slashed his still bloody hand with his knife and went back to chanting in demonic once more. A section of dried mud nearby crumbled away to reveal that the Hell rift from earlier was—at least partially—still open. There was now a force sucking dust and dirt inwards towards the Hell rift.
“Good job Kreath’zint, but now it’s time to get the fuck outta here!” Trundle shouted at the demon.
The demon did not seem interested in what Trundle wanted it to do. It dug its claws into the scorched mud and pulled itself towards Trundle with its back hooves flapping in the pull of the rift. Slowly and steadily it clawed closer to him while he focused on his banishment ritual. More and more loose debris started getting sucked into the rift and Trundle’s hand began to glow from the strain but the demon stubbornly refused to be sucked in.
“Since the demon was summoned into the battle,” Sylnya added helpfully for Peter’s benefit, “Trundle can’t win until it’s defeated.” The demon tried to breathe another gout of hellfire at Trundle, but the force of the rift was so strong at this point that the fireball left its mouth and got sucked backwards instead. Trundle was dripping with sweat and blood and kept up his chanting within his barrier.
The demon kept clawing its way steadily closer to Trundle. When it finally reached him it started clawing its way up the barrier. Its claws hit the edge of the barrier and sent cracks of bright purple light out around the point of contact. The goat demon pulled back one claw and jabbed it at the barrier sharply and the cracks flared and expanded all the way around until Trundle almost couldn’t be seen behind them. The glow of hellfire returned to the demon’s maw.
Trundle didn’t look concerned. In fact, he smiled at the demon.
“Buh-bye dipshit!” Trundle said with a little waggle of his fingers. He touched his belt and the barrier disappeared. With nothing left to hold onto, the demon tumbled backwards into the rift and vanished.
“The demon has left the arena,” Maeve announced as the bell chimed a second time, “Trundle wins.”