Wizard Tournament: Chapter 122 (Patreon)

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          “Draevin. Draevin!” Somebody was shaking Draevin roughly by the shoulders. He popped his eyes open.

          “Peter? Where are we—” Draevin looked around at his surroundings. Everything was gold. The floor was gold, the ceiling, the walls… There were a few windows letting in some light, but other than that there wasn’t much more to the space. Peter was standing over him and behind him were the rest of those that had come through to Tel’Andrid. Grrbraa, Sylnya, Wixerna, and most surprisingly Istven. The eldrin’s appearance was the most shocking in that he didn’t have his crown on a chain around his neck and his eyes actually weren’t glowing.

          “Draevin is awake!” Grrbraa barked. His tail went to work wagging immediately.

          “They said they were going to erase my memory,” Draevin said as he sat up. “Why do I still remember what happened?”

          Peter smirked and reached up to presumably adjust his glasses like he so often did, but they weren’t on his face for once. “That was me. I did a little tinkering with Diana’s mind while I was in there. I don’t think they noticed yet.”

          “Where are we?” Draevin asked.

          “The fuck do you think we are?” Sylnya said. “We’re in jail.”

          Peter nodded. “She’s right. This is the same cell they’ve been keeping me in all this time. It’s got a great view of the city.” Peter gestured to one of the four windows evenly spaced around the room.

          Draevin rose to his feet and walked over to one. As he did Grrbraa snuffled up to him and gave his face a small lick. Draevin didn’t even notice as he took in the view. “Great view? No kidding. This is incredible.” A bustling landscape of golden spires fanned out before them. It seemed they were at the highest level of one such tower. Tiny people walked through the streets below and across walkways. More of those strange blue people swam through the sky above. Only a few patches of greenery could even be noticed through all that gold. Every spare span of space appeared to be efficiently used up until the edge of the city where it all just stopped. They were surrounded in a dome of magically-sourced blue light.

          “Place gives me the creeps,” Sylnya said. She pointed over Draevin’s shoulder out the window to a spot at the very top of the dome where the artificial light was noticeably brighter than elsewhere. “Their fake sun barely gives me a trickle of mana. I don’t think I can stay here too much longer.”

          “Peter was getting us all up to speed while you were out,” Wixerna said. Draevin turned away from the view of the city and faced his friends. It looked like it was going to be the six of them against this entire city.

          “And what did he tell you?” Draevin asked.

          “That the Guild back in Eldira is controlled by the rulers of this city, who are in turn controlled by one man.”

          “Elder Jaelyn,” Draevin answered. “Yeah, I saw him at that meeting. He certainly commands a lot of respect.”

          “Well he should,” Peter cut in. They looked at him and he shrugged. “Guy’s like at least ten thousand years old. I heard he helped found this whole place.”

          “Anyway,” Wix continued, “it sounds like they’re planning to make you and Peter still finish your match tomorrow. We haven’t heard a thing about what they plan to do with the rest of us.”

          “Probably keep you here,” Peter guessed. “At least until after the Conflux. If they let you out at all it will only be after extensively purging all memory of this place from your minds.”

          “Shit, they said that?” Draevin asked.

          Peter rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Not exactly. It’s just an educated guess.”

          “Okay, well what about him,” Draevin asked. He pointed over at the stony-silent eldrin prince who hadn’t spoken a word yet. “I thought we left you behind, Istven. How’d you get in here with the rest of us?”

          “I followed after you,” Istven said simply, “and was captured as soon as I arrived.”

          Peter nodded. “He only showed up a few minutes ago. They threw him in here and left without saying anything. They… uhhh…” Peter coughed into his hand, clearly avoiding saying something.

          “They took his damn crown,” Sylnya finished. “He’s been sulking over it since he got here. I don’t know what he’s so pissy about. They took shit from all of us.”

          “Not my circlet!” Grrbraa said proudly. It was true. The artifact was still firmly mounted to the werebeast’s head.

          “They even took my glasses,” Peter said with a frown. “They actually did try to take Grrbraa’s circlet but decided he was too hard to manage with it off, so here we are. The rest of us only have the clothes on our backs.”

          Draevin held out his hand and tried to summon even the smallest shard of ice. It didn’t work. He felt nearly completely drained of mana. “I assume we’re all equally devoid of mana?” Draevin asked.

          Peter nodded. “It’s the floor. It functions as some kind of finely-tuned mana sink. It seems to pull mana out of your body when you touch it, but it somehow knows not to pull out any vital mana. The result is an empty mana pool, but all of us are very much alive.”

          “And the window?” Draevin asked. “I noticed there aren’t any bars on it.” Peter walked over to the window when Draevin mentioned it and poked at a sharp bit of gold sticking up around the opening.

          “We already tried that,” Wix said. “Grrbraa ripped the bars out easy enough, but it’s still a long way down. You can jump out of it if you want, but I don’t recommend it.”

          “We are very high off the ground,” Grrbraa said matter-of-factly. He actually sounded excited about the whole thing. “I’ve never been this high before! Even trees don’t get this high!”

          “Some do,” Sylnya corrected him.

          Grrbraa turned to her and his eyes went wide. “They do?” His tail thumped away happily. “You must show me trees like that someday, friend-Sylnya.”

          Peter cleared his throat. “Guys? I think something’s going on.” He beckoned them over to the window he was at and everyone but Istven came over to investigate. Peter pointed down towards the ground. Draevin noticed that on this side of the city there was a single tower that looked dark like it was made of stone. It was much taller than any of the golden spires. The place Peter was pointing to was down by the foot of that tower. “There, you see that?”

          “Yes!” Grrbraa said.

          “No,” Draevin said. “What are you pointing at?”

          “See that dome down there by the dark tower?”

          “That… kind of looks familiar,” Draevin said. “Is that the same one—”

          “Yes, where we had the meeting with the Guild members. Don’t you remember being led out of the base of that tower?”

          Draevin blinked. The tower was certainly different-looking than the rest of the buildings around the city. “I… didn’t turn around after they led me outside,” Draevin admitted.

          “Well trust me,” Peter insisted, “that’s the same dome. It looks like there are people going in there.”

          “Yes!” Grrbraa said. “That man has a big beard! And look! That girl looks like friend-Sylnya.”

          Peter cocked his head back and looked at Grrbraa. “You can see that well?”

          Grrbraa leaned forward and squinted. “Yes,” he said. He raised one of his paws and started counting off claws. “There are one, two, three… Oh no. They went inside before I could count them. I think there was at least three of them.”

          Peter nodded. “That confirms it. They must be having another meeting with the Guild. Thanks, Grrbraa.”

          “How did you get all that from a few people entering a building?” Wix asked.

          “It’s what Grrbraa said,” Peter explained. “If one of them looked like Sylnya it must have been a dryad. There are no dryads in this city. Trust me, I’ve been studying the people that come and go for a while. If a dryad just walked into the meeting hall it had to be the dryad judge Lavidia.”

          “What races do they have in here?” Draevin asked. Curiosity was getting the better of him.

          Peter pulled away and leaned against the window’s railing. He started counting off fingers as he answered. “Well they definitely have humans and eldrin. They’ve also got these tall bearded people that I think are related to dwarves. Then there’s two I haven’t seen anywhere else. There are those blue flying people you can see out in the sky and these strange people whose skin is covered in gold. I think that last group is probably somehow responsible for all the gold they make everything from.”

          “That’s it?” Draevin asked. “What about elves, orcs, gnomes… there’s really nothing else in here?”

          Peter shrugged. “I didn’t exactly get a grand tour. That’s all I’ve noticed so far from the few times they’ve pulled me out of my cell and what I’ve been able to see looking out the window around here. It hardly matters; it’s not like we’re going to be staying much longer.”

          “Right, because they need to let us out to finish the tournament.”

          Peter chuckled. “If they think that’s still going to happen they’re in for a surprise.”

          “What do you mean?” Draevin asked. “I still had my heart set on winning this year, assuming I can avoid getting brainwashed in the meantime. I, uhh”—his memory flashed back to what he’d learned about Leyline Collapse—“happen to think my winning this year might be very very important for reasons I can’t discuss.”

          “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Peter assured him. “We’ll still be doing the tournament, but if this ‘Elder Jaelyn’ still thinks controlling the outcome is going to be as easy as it has been in past years he’s got another thing coming. Alex should be out there right now shaking things up.”

          “Shaking things up how?” Wix asked. She was the only one in the group directing a skeptical look at Peter. By now he’d earned the respect of the rest of them.

          Peter looked at Draevin. “Did you tell her about Tarrish?”

          “Who?” Istven asked. The black prince was still sulking on the other side of the room, but his comment made it apparent he was still listening.

          “I did,” Sylnya said. “I told her everything I know about him.” She looked back at Istven. “I sure as shit didn’t tell him though.”

          Peter sighed. “It’s just as well.” He looked at Istven. “You’re a hard one to trust, but it probably doesn’t matter if we tell you now. We met a dragon that claims to be a leader among their kind. One of the contestants this year worked for him. If everything is going according to plan on the outside they should be helping Alex overthrow the Guild.”

          “Wait, what?” Draevin asked. “Is that what they’re up to? Why didn’t you tell me?”

          Peter shrugged. “It was on a need-to-know and you didn’t need to know. It’s too late to do anything about it anyway. Either they’ve been successful or they haven’t. We already had a plan in motion before we met Tarrish so it was lucky happenstance that our goals aligned.”

          Sylnya chuckled. “It can’t have been that hard to find allies. The Guild’s been fucking a lot of people for a long time.”

          “It was harder than you’d think. Most of the major nations didn’t take us humans seriously.”

          “So what do you think that meeting is about?” Draevin asked Peter.

          “If I had to guess? Maybe the top brass at the Guild tried to leave Tel’Andrid and realized it wasn’t safe. They’re probably going to try to recruit that Elder Jaelyn to send an army back with them. I have to admit, nothing in our plans accounted for the Guild having access to these kinds of resources.” Peter gestured vaguely out the window.

          “It is a bit overwhelming,” Wix agreed. “The population of this one city probably rivals all of Trenal. And that’s not even taking into account their superior knowledge of magic.”

          “We can’t let that happen,” Peter said firmly. “We’ve got to get out of here and throw this damn city into the deepest hole we can find until the Conflux has passed. That’s our only hope.”

          “Let?” Draevin asked. “I thought we were in prison.” He rapped the solid gold wall next to him with a knuckle. It made very little noise and actually kind of hurt. “How are we supposed to do anything without any mana?”

          “Well I’ve got a plan to break us out,” Peter explained, “and if we’re willing to get a little creative we might be able to get our hands on some mana as well. We’ll have to move quickly though. If they just went in to have another meeting this might be our best chance.”

          “I’m willing to get creative,” Sylnya said. “I was actually thinking about jumping out that window. I wouldn’t exactly be very mobile when I got to the bottom but I think there’s a good chance the fall wouldn’t crack my heartseed.”

          Peter shook his head. “I was actually thinking we could feed Draevin the remains of those gold bars to get some usable mana.”

          Draevin shook his head firmly. “No. No way. Do you have any idea what kind of indigestion that would give me? Not to mention if the edges cut the inside of my—”

          Bam, bam, bam!

          A metallic clanging rang through the room. “What was that?” Wix asked.

          “The door,” Peter said. “And just in time too.” He gave them all a wink. “I left a compulsion in the mind of that guard from earlier.”

          “Stand back from the door,” someone yelled from behind a section of featureless wall. Their voice was a bit distorted from the distance it had to travel. Peter beckoned them away while grinning smugly and the group huddled around the far side of the room. All except Istven, who refused to move, but was already sulking in the corner anyways. A moment later a rectangle of golden wall separated from the rest and swung open.

          Behind the door was a platform that connected to a set of stairs that circled off to the right, hugging the outside wall of their little spire. Standing on that platform was the eldrin leader Draevin had seen at the meeting with the Guild. He had glowing white eyes, a thin nose and bright yellow hair that he wore slicked back. His robe was a solid featureless black, in stark contrast to all the sparkly gold that covered nearly every surface of the city.

          “So,” Elder Jaelyn addressed the group, “A compulsion in one of our guards and a coup against the Guild. Very interesting.” A smile spread across the eldrin leader’s face.

          Peter’s smug grin melted away and was replaced by a look of wide-eyed horror.

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