Wizard Tournament: Chapter 126 (Patreon)

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          “Hold up,” Peter whispered furiously. “Nobody make any sudden moves. Draevin, that means you too. I know you have some kind of issue with—”

          “Haenor!” Draevin shouted as soon as he saw the man. Caelnaste had tried to send him on a warpath against Haenor not so long ago. There had to have been some truth to her implications. It was time to find out.

          The five Guild judges formed a line to face them. Dag stood at the center. He had his purple robes bunched up past his elbows to expose arms bulging with muscle. His great brown beard was in a single braid down the middle of his chest. To his right was Haenor. The elf judge stood a pace behind Dag almost like he was trying his best to cower behind him despite the massive height difference. He stretched his thin lips in a hesitant smile at Draevin. Lavidia, the dryad judge, stood to Haenor’s right. The slender vines that grew from her head still had their pink flowers but it looked like none of the bees she normally had milling around her were present. She looked to be studying the group, but was keeping her thoughts to herself.

          At Dag’s left shoulder Srazux licked the air with his thin tongue. He was the tallest of the group and didn’t look at all concerned. The only one of them that did was the eldrin judge Fonia. She had already dropped to an athletic stance. Her hands glowed with a ready armamancy spell. “Who sset thosse prissonerss free?” Master Srazux asked.

          “Don’t matter,” Dag grunted. “They’re going back into a cell right now. We don’t have time fer this shite.”

          Draevin only had eyes for one person. The latent wisps of his earlier magics gathered around him as he advanced across the room, coalescing around him as a veil of mist. “Haenor!” he repeated. “You’re going to tell me everything you know right the fuck now!”

          “Know about what? What are you talking about?” Haenor shouted back.

          Draevin could hear Wix, Sylnya and Peter muttering behind him. He didn’t pay attention. If they wanted to coordinate something, that was on them. They would either back him up or they wouldn’t.

          “You know exactly what I’m talking about!” Draevin roared back. “Tell me what happened to Aelaniss”—he opened his hand and a crystal of ice formed—“or I’ll kill you right here.”

          “Is this about that wife of yours again?” Haenor asked. He didn’t look scared, he just looked annoyed.

          “This might not be the best time, Drae,” Sylnya said from behind him.

          “No,” Peter said. “Now is the perfect time. If Draevin wants to confront his nation’s judge right now, I say let him. It will make this next part easier.”

          “Next part?” Wix asked.

          “It’s them or us,” Peter explained loud enough for the party of Guild officials across the room to hear. “They’re not going to let us out of here if we’re not firmly under their control. And we can’t really afford to let them leave this city either. They’d report back to their home nations about everything we know.”

          “Oy!” Judge Dag shouted. “I’ve had about enough o’ this. Nobody talks to a judge that way. Let us leave? Are you thick, boy? There’s five ‘o us, and we’re all masters.” His hands shifted through a few quick hand signs. He held it out in front of him and chunks of rubble floated up from the ground and assembled themselves into a giant battle axe. It had a shaft taller than his body and a head that looked like it weighed a ton. It was rough at first, but when he slammed the butt of the haft on the ground a ripple passed over the surface of the new weapon. Gravel became polished stone in moments and he slung it over his shoulder with casual ease. “We don’t gotta fight,” he told them. “But if you make us, people are gonna die.”

          “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Haenor waved his hands back and forth. “We can’t kill them. That’s Draevin! We need him alive. Peter too.”

          “That’s how it’s always been with you, isn’t it?” Draevin asked darkly. “Draevin’s too valuable to kill. Draevin’s too valuable to be allowed to retire.” His mind flashed through images of Aelaniss. She’d insisted his job was too dangerous and she wouldn’t have kids until he stopped. Then the shadowmen attack had happened. She’d died in front of him. He’d been forced to watch. Helpless. Well, he wasn’t helpless now.

          Caelnaste’s words echoed in Draevin’s mind. Didn’t you ever wonder why the assassins weren’t eldrin? It was so obvious, and yet it was so terrible Draevin hadn’t wanted to believe it. Who stood to gain the most?

          One death and Draevin was back in the games.

          One death and Caldenia had their champion back.

          Haenor had his champion back.

          “Did you have her killed?” Draevin demanded.

          Haenor hesitated. He looked uncertainly at Dag for guidance, but the dwarf only stared grimly at Draevin as he slowly advanced towards them.

          “So, I think we can let Draevin take care of the elf judge,” Peter said. “If Sylnya can take care of the dryad, and Istven that eldrin woman, then I think I can take care of the dwarf as long as Wix can keep those engineers from interfering. Grrbraa. That lizard-kin is a chronomancer. Do you think you’re fast enough to take him on?”

          “I don’t want to kill anyone,” Grrbraa whimpered.

          A mighty bang reverberated through the room from the golden doors. “We don’t have a choice, Grrbraa,” Peter insisted. “When those people we just ran past get inside here, we’re done for.”

          Dag turned his head over his shoulder. “How long until that thing gets fixed?” he demanded of the engineers in the back of the room. Draevin only vaguely remembered seeing the Mana Converter when he’d first arrived and it had looked nothing like it did now. Massive sections of the delicate gears and pipes were melted to slag. The silver doorway where people manifested when they arrived had a suspiciously crown-shaped hole in it.

          One of the engineers spoke up. “We’ve only just now figured out what the real problem is,” the man said. He held out a jagged black crown. It seemed Peter’s guess had been right, Istven had caused the damage. “It will take at least—”

          “Unhand that crown!” Istven ordered as soon as he saw it. He ran forward several steps before diving into the ground to become a black blur of shadow. His shape zipped across the room many times faster than even Grrbraa could run.

          “Stop him!” Dag shouted.

          Fonia, the eldrin judge, shot her hands out and formed a purple barrier of light to block in the confused engineers at the back of the room. Istven’s shadow crashed against the barrier. He rose out of the ground with his teeth bared like fangs and turned to look at Fonia. The shadows at his feet boiled with his rage.

          “Try not to hurt Draevin or the human too badly,” Dag directed his fellow judges. “Everyone else dies.”

          “I guess we’re really doing this then,” Peter said. He pulled the dagger from his belt and ran forward. An instant later he vanished from sight.

          Draevin crushed the ice crystal in his hand. It exploded outward into a cloud of jagged particles. He harnessed them. Each crystal—too small to see—grew rapidly into fist-sized daggers of ice. Draevin sent them forward to pelt Haenor with a hundred different attacks at once. Haenor brought up his arms to defend himself and Draevin’s barrage slammed into a wall of shimmery air. Each crystal melted back to water as it hit Haenor’s defenses and dripped to the ground.

          Draevin roared and sprinted forwards on a slick of ice. An avalanche of ice and snow emerged at his back as he slid forward. It swept forward and drowned the judges in an overwhelming force. Istven’s shadows reached Fonia at the same time. The arrayed judges were caught between an avalanche of ice on one side and tendrils of shadows on the other.

          The dwarf judge, Dag, swirled his large stone battle axe in a circle over his head and the snow that was threatening to crush the judges suspended in a dome above them instead. Draevin clenched his fist and tried to push his glacier forward. He could feel an opposing force pushing against him. The glacier held where it was.

          Istven’s attack didn’t stop. Fonia was grabbed by the leg and hurled into the air. A purple bubble of light wrapped around her body as she was engulfed by a wave of angry shadows and disappeared from sight.

          Peter appeared behind Dag’s back. He let out a wordless cry as he fell on the dwarf with his dagger held high. Dag twisted around and shot a ripple of energy at Peter. He disappeared as suddenly as he’d appeared. Dag’s defense faltered for just a moment. Draevin sent every ounce of power he had into his attack. This time his ice broke through in a few places.

          Draevin formed the ice he had to work with into spikes and directed them straight for Haenor. Before the attack could connect, Dag turned back around and his defenses kicked back in. The icy projectiles slowed to a stop, then fell backwards into the edge of the glacier.

          Draevin was still trying to figure out some kind of workaround when the lizard-kin judge, Srazux, darted forward in a blur of speed. He looked like a smear of gold light as he skirted around the edge of the glacier of ice and came straight for Draevin. Before Draevin could even react though, an equally-fast red blur intercepted the lizard-kin. The resulting ball of scales and teeth and claws and fur tumbled together. Grrbraa’s claws lashed out, then Srazux darted around them, then Grrbraa around that in an endless cascade of attacks and counter attacks too fast for Draevin’s eyes to follow. He hoped Grrbraa was winning.

          Draevin raised himself up to better see the battlefield. He saw that behind Dag nearly half the room was cut off by a barrier of purple light. Shadows swirled behind it. Wix flew up next to Draevin in a crouch. Wind whipped the hair out of her face as she got close. “That barrier can’t keep both of us out,” she said. “Remember the battle in Gailen? It’s just gravity. All you need is more speed.”

          “Right,” Draevin nodded. “More speed.” He remembered what they had done the last time the two of them had fought a wizard with gravimancy. He formed a spear of ice next to him and made the ice as thick as he could. He brought it back and Wix made a few quick signs with her hands. She brought her arm back, and in perfect time with her, Draevin sent his spear forward while she slammed a glowing fist into the back of it. The projectile made a clap in the air as it launched. It punched through Dag's barrier like it wasn’t even there. Dag saw the attack coming and brushed it aside with a wave of his hand. Just when Draevin was sure he’d missed, his view of the scene shifted.

          Dag was on the ground with a spear of ice in his shoulder and Draevin’s attack hadn’t missed! Dag looked as surprised as Draevin felt. “Quickly!” Peter shouted from some hidden place. “While he’s down.”

          This was the chance he needed. Draevin pushed his avalanche forward and smothered the three remaining judges. Lavidia hopped backwards in a somersault and flew out of the way of Draevin’s attack. Haenor conjured a cloud of thick smoke in front of himself to try and block the attack. Dag didn’t react in time. Draevin’s ice swallowed the two of them whole. The first thing Draevin did once his mountain covered Dag and Haenor was to try to find Haenor and crush the life out of him. He couldn’t sense him though. There was a blank spot under the ice where Haenor should have been. When Draevin tried to collapse more ice onto that spot it simply disappeared from his senses instead.

          Draevin squeezed his fist closed to compress a section of ice just above where Haenor should have been. He brought it down like a hammer. It disappeared like the rest. That was fine. Draevin decided he’d just overwhelm him instead. He turned the entire glacier into a coffin of ice with Haenor at its center. He squeezed. Rather than reduce Haenor to a splatter of gore, Draevin’s glacier turned into a whirlpool centered on the elven judge. Haenor’s form appeared after a moment, in between eddies of ice. He had a determined look on his face and was absolutely drenched in water.

          Draevin’s ice was swallowed up and disappeared, but he didn’t care. Haenor couldn’t hold him off forever. He pressed the attack with everything he had. He rained daggers of ice from the sky while crushing Haenor from the sides with a mountain’s worth of ice. Dag was probably under there somewhere, but Draevin didn’t care.

          As Draevin’s ice receded he saw a tree had grown out of the stone on the right side of the room. Kot bounded through the branches, then stopped and started to scratch at the bark like he was trying to sharpen his claws. Branches twined around branches, trying to choke each other out. It appeared Sylnya and Lavidia were locked in a struggle of some kind that was so far from Draevin’s kind of combat he couldn’t really follow. He had no idea who was winning, or even which parts were Sylnya and which parts weren’t. He tore his eyes away.

          Haenor spread his arms and the tight cloud of smoke around him spread out in a wave. All the ice it touched melted on contact and dropped harmlessly to the ground. As the ice turned to water Dag’s unconscious body emerged on the ground as a massive puddle formed around Haenor. Draevin immediately tried to freeze that water, but it didn’t respond to his magic. It was only when he tried to summon more ice for his next attack that Draevin realized how dry the air had become. His next attack fizzled. He needed water to create ice. In a limited space like this room it seemed Haenor had rendered nearly all the available water inert.

          Haenor was soaking wet, and yet Draevin couldn't touch him. It was so frustrating! He wanted to turn the traitor into a frozen statue. He tried to cast a Subzero Freeze. The water on the ground only rippled slightly at the attack, but it didn’t change to ice. It was the only spell Draevin had that didn’t require any water. Haenor still resisted it.

          “I always knew if it came down to it,” Haenor said, “you wouldn’t stand a chance against me. You only know one trick. Without that, you’re powerless.” He was panting and looked exhausted.

          Draevin stalked closer. “One trick,” Draevin repeated. “How about this for a trick?” He threw his arms wide and his robes flew off his body. The layers upon layers of magic unfurled. Crystals of ice grew outward. They expanded and expanded. They kept growing and shifting until the small robes had become a towering behemoth of ice. It was more than all the ice Draevin had used thus far. “What’s the matter, Haenor?” Draevin asked. “You look tired. I’m just getting started.”

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