Wizard Tournament: Chapter 14 (Patreon)

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          There was a sweet taste on Draevin’s tongue. It was almost enough to offset the throbbing pain in his head. He recognized the taste as the nectar of a Healing Lotus: one of Sylnya’s no doubt. He swallowed.

          Within moments he noticed a change. His hearing was the first thing to return. A ringing he hadn’t noticed faded away. He could hear talking.

          “…sorry Sylnya. There’s nothing you can do, he’s already dead.” It was a female voice he couldn’t quite recognize.

          “What good is seeing the future if you couldn’t see this coming in time to actually do anything about it?” Sylnya demanded. That settled it. Sylnya had to be talking to Caelnaste. Draevin tried to move but his body wasn’t yet responding. He felt something like lightning pulsing through his head: he hoped whatever was wrong was getting fixed by the Healing Lotus.

          “I got here as fast as I could,” Caelnaste insisted. Draevin heard some pained sounds from Sylnya. “There there,” Caelnaste continued. “Umm, Sylnya? Was Draevin sitting all the way on the left side of the bench for some reason?”

          “Mmm!” Draevin managed to say. The pain in his head was lessening. He tried to open his eyes again and managed to get one of his eyelids to obey.

          “Draevin! You’re awake!” Sylnya practically screeched. She gave him a stiff squeeze with her wooden arms. “Do you need another lotus? I can get you another lotus. Caelnaste said you were dead!”

          With jerking movements Draevin sat up. His head throbbed some more but it was getting noticeably better. Caelnaste was standing in the doorway to their booth with her purple hair spilling down onto the floor in a pool around her. Her teeth were clenched in a tight smile.

          “Draevin!” she said. “I could have sworn you were going to die right there on the floor. I’m so glad you’re okay!”

          “I think you might be losing your touch Caelnaste,” Draevin groaned. He felt like shit but hearing that Caelnaste had gotten something wrong took some of the sting away. He didn’t understand why Sylnya was such good friends with her.

          Sylnya handed Draevin another Healing Lotus. This time he didn’t even bother drinking the nectar: he just threw the whole flower in his mouth and chewed it down. It didn’t taste half bad. “What the Hell happened?” he asked when he was done chewing. “It looked like the wards broke.” The last bit of tingles to his extremities subsided with the second Lotus and Draevin felt a little disoriented, but perfectly fine physically.

          Sylnya pushed Draevin’s head to the side with one finger until he noticed the giant piece of masonry that had crushed the bench he was sitting on. Part of the ceiling had collapsed. “It barely missed crushing you completely,” Sylnya told him. “It’s a good thing Peter wasn’t in here when it came down.”

           “Who?” Caelnaste asked.

          Draevin brushed off her question. “What’s the rest of the arena like? How big was the damage?”

          Sylnya shook her head. “It was just us. Just this one booth. Some kind of interaction between that goblin’s item and Deekek’s mirror shield.”

          “What was that item?”

          “I can explain,” Caelnaste volunteered. “There was a break in at the Eldesian armory last night. A few items were stolen. I believe whoever broke in gave Boom’ba that item he’s using. The Queen tasked me with recovering everything but I didn’t even consider that some goblin might have registered with it.” She tsked in annoyance.

          “Yes, but what was the item?” Draevin asked again. He was pretty sure he already knew, but he needed to hear it out loud.

          “Archmage Caladin’s Pyroclastic Rod of Destruction.”

          “You’re-fucking-kidding-me!” Sylnya blurted out. “No one’s been stupid enough to use that thing for centuries!”

          “How is that even allowed?” Draevin demanded. “The Guild doesn’t allow wizards to register with stolen items.”

          Caelnaste frowned. “It wasn’t reported stolen yet at the time the goblin registered. Boom’ba has disputed our claim of ownership and is saying it’s his and always has been. The Guild has insisted that the issue of the artifact’s ownership be settled after Boom’ba is eliminated.”

          “Wait, he wasn’t eliminated?”

          Sylnya shook her head. “No, Boom’ba won. The explosion threw both contestants out of the arena but Deekek crossed the boundary line first.”

          “Sounds like quite the coincidence,” a voice said from the doorway just behind Caelnaste. It was Peter. He finished writing down a note then tucked his little notepad away.

          Caelnaste sneered down at him. “Who are you supposed to be?”

          Peter’s eyes shot alarmingly to his leather pack that lay on the ground partially crushed under fallen masonry. Rather than answer Caelnaste’s question he shouldered past her to reach it.

          “You don’t recognize him?” Sylnya asked. “He was the human that beat Korack this morning.”

          “The little trickster?” Caelnaste invested a lifetime of disdain in that last word.

          Peter opened his pack to the sound of jostling broken glass. He carefully extricated his Fireball scroll from within the mess. It looked to be strangely intact despite the damage the pack had suffered. Peter’s creased brow relaxed when he saw it was unharmed. “That’s the last time I let you out of my sight,” he told the little roll of paper.

          Caelnaste narrowed her eyes at the human. “Was he sitting there?” She pointed to the right side of the bench where Peter’s pack had been.

          “Yeah but not when the boulder fell,” Sylnya answered. “Good thing you weren’t here, huh Peter?”

          Caelnaste scowled and spun around to leave. “I’ve got to go interview a certain fulgramancer whose location can’t be accounted for last night.” She left without a proper goodbye to anyone in the room.

          A pair of engineers appeared in the doorway as soon after she was gone. “We was sent to clean up this here mess,” one of them said—a dwarf wearing the bronze-trimmed purple robes of a Guild engineer. The dwarf whistled when he saw the damage. “Ouch. Anyone die?”

          “No we’re all fine,” Sylnya answered for the group.

          “Then clear outta here for a minute so’s we can work,” he told them.

          “I hit my head pretty hard,” Draevin grumbled while being shooed out. No one offered him sympathy.

          “You’re fine,” Sylnya assured him. She studied his face then reached out and scratched something on his forehead. “You might want to wipe up some of that blood though. And your hair is shattered in a few places.”

          Draevin shook out his hand and conjured a small cloth of woven frost. He scrubbed his face and flecks of dried blood fell off. To fix his hair he waved his hand over it and restored the cryomancy wards to full power. He felt the fibers rise again and harden with magical ice. “Better?”

          “Much,” Sylnya agreed. “It’s lucky you had those wards in your hair when you got hit.”

          “Not luck,” Draevin disagreed. “I always keep them up.”

          The flow of their conversation was interrupted as Peter dumped his bag of broken glass on the ground just inside the entryway where the Guild engineer was working. The dwarf gave him a level look but swept the glass up with the rest of the debris he was magically clearing anyways. “So Peter,” Sylnya asked while they waited, “what was so coincidental?”

          Peter pursed his lips. “Just how our booth was the only place where the wards gave out. Didn’t you say Caelnaste reserved that booth for us as an apology?”

          “Yeah.”

          “And isn’t she a seer? Isn’t it possible she could have known that the booth would be hit before she reserved it for us?”

           Sylnya firmly shook her head. “Caelnaste would never do that, she’s a friend.”

          “She is?” Peter asked. “You seemed less sure of that—”

          “Even if this was arranged,” Draevin interrupted, “there are other seers who could have done it. Whoever gave Caladin’s wand to that goblin is the real culprit, and Caelnaste is the one trying to track the thief down. It couldn’t be her.”

           “I’m sure she’ll have it all figured out by the end of the day.” Sylnya agreed. “It sounded like she was saying Zolt was a suspect just as she was leaving, unless you know any other likely fulgramancers.”

          “I knew it!” Draevin said. “That slimy eldrin will do anything to win.”

          Peter frowned deeply, but didn’t say anything more.

          “All fixed up,” the engineer announced as he exited the booth.

          “You guys go ahead,” Sylnya said. “I want to use The Pot before my match now that I blew a bunch of my mana on Lotuses.”

          “About that,” Peter said. “I think there’s something you should know about your opponent.”

          Sylnya raised a curious eyebrow. “You’re gathering intel now? Should I start paying you?” She signaled Peter to follow her. “Come with me. You can tell me on the way.”

          Draevin waved them goodbye and settled gingerly back onto his bench for a minute. It looked like the Guild engineers were in the process of repairing the delicate warding runes that powered the barrier around the arena. Most of the crowd was wandering around freely during the intermission.

          Thinking back to his near-death experience, Draevin got out of his seat and looked up at the curve of masonry above their bench. It looked sturdy enough now after being repaired but he wasn’t about to take any chances. He reached down and tried to drag the bench forward a few paces but it wouldn’t budge.

          “Need some help with that?” a cheery voice asked.

          Draevin looked toward the doorway. “Tenna. What are you doing here?”

          Tenna looked around the room but her face registered only confusion. She’d made herself a skirted version of Draevin’s own Frost Armor but aside from that she was copying his look pretty faithfully this year. “There was a rumor going around that you’d died but…”

          “Oh that. Yeah, it was pretty close for a minute there. Big rock fell on my head.” Draevin kicked the bench with his foot. “You were going to help?”

          “Yes!” Tenna squeaked. She jogged over and grabbed the opposite side of the bench. Together they slowly pushed it forward. “So you look pretty good for someone that just got… what did you say? Hit with a rock?”

          Draevin sat down and tested out the new arrangement. He had slightly less leg space but the chances of a second rock crashing down on him had lessened enough to let him focus his attention on the upcoming matches. “Well Sylnya was here,” he explained, “and she gave me two Healing Lotuses.”

          “That seems lucky.” Tenna slapped her hands over her mouth. “To have her close by I mean! Not the rock thing!”

          “Well it wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t had the frost armor woven into my hair.” Draevin wasn’t about to let Sylnya get all the credit. “That reminds me, I came up with a modification to that spell since the last time I taught it to you that works as a defense against cerebromancy. I call it Brain Freeze Armor: made it myself. I’ll have to teach it to you some time. Us cryomancers need to stick together, right Tenna?”

          Tenna nodded. She was blushing again for some reason. “I-I have some free time after today’s matches if you want to teach it to me today,” she said. She really needed to get a handle on that stuttering problem.

          “Sure,” Draevin agreed. It looked like the engineers were almost done, and down on the field Tomrha and Grrbraa were standing by. He tried to get a good look at the item Tomrha was carrying. He knew it couldn’t be the same as last year since Trundle was obviously using that item this time. It looked like a mundane… Tenna was standing next to him trying to figure out what he was looking at. “Do you still need something?” He asked her.

          “N-no I was just.” She flinched for some reason. “I can go!”

          Draevin didn’t get a chance to get another word in edgewise before she was out the doorway. There was something off about that girl. He might have given her up as a hopeless case years ago if she wasn’t such a talented cryomancer.  

          “I’m getting the signal from engineering that clean-up is done,” Maeve announced. “Patrons, please make your way to your seats. The match between Tomrha and Grrbraa is about to begin.”

          Sylnya came rushing in with Peter on her heels shortly after the announcement. “Oh good, we didn’t miss it!” She slid into her spot and started digging in her pocket for something. “Did that engineer move our damn bench?”

          Draevin shrugged. “He probably just wanted to avoid another near-death experience if I had to guess.”

          “Can you believe,” Sylnya said as she fished out a ticket stub from her pocket, “that Tomrha was paying out at 1.3? A past champion! It’s like they’re giving out free money.”

          “Syl!” Draevin chastised. It was as though she’d learned nothing.

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