Wizard Tournament: Chapter 144 (Patreon)

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Four Minutes Before the Conflux

          Draevin found himself floating through empty space. He had the niggling sense in the back of his mind that he’d been doing something important, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what it had been. His ears were ringing like a bell. Around him he saw only darkness but then something tickled his left ear. A familiar voice whispered to him.

          “Draevin!” it said. It sounded like… no, it was her. She sounded so very far away.

          “Tenna? Can you hear me? I thought you’d died.”

          “You have to stop him, Draevin. You can’t let him go through with it.”

          “Stop who? From doing what?”

          “Peter! He’s going to—”

          “Draevin? Draevin, are you okay? Can you hear me?” It was Peter’s voice.

          The comforting blank nothingness that had been blanketing Draevin just moments before was pulled away. His body was left aching. He opened his eyes to see Peter looking down on him. Behind the familiar human’s face were two more people he knew: Sylnya and Grrbraa. Their faces were darkened by a strange shadow covering everything. “What happened?” Draevin asked groggily. Then it all came back to him in a rush. “The match!” he shouted. He tried to sit up from where he was lying on the ground but as he did his head swam dangerously. He very nearly returned to unconsciousness. A thorny hand held him firmly by the shoulder.

          “Don’t move,” Sylnya said. She shoved a pink flower in his face that was flecked with gold. “Not until you’ve eaten this,” she finished.

          “You were sleeping, friend-Draevin,” Grrbraa said. His mouth lulled open in a lazy smile. “But now you are okay again!”

          Draevin shoved the sugary-sweet flower in his mouth and looked around at the field while he chewed. His hands burned. He had a throbbing pain in his left calf. Minor cuts and scrapes practically covered his whole body. All that began to melt away as he chewed Sylnya’s flower. Draevin found that he was lying close to the middle of the arena’s floor, surrounded on all sides by sparkly ice crystals. There were only a few interruptions to the ice, including a melted section across the field and a ring of disturbed earth where Peter had emerged from the ground.

          “I lost, didn’t I?” Draevin asked. He didn’t want to acknowledge it, but that did little to change the reality of the situation. What was it that Tenna had been trying to tell him in that dream? It all felt so fuzzy now…

          “I knew you wouldn’t go down voluntarily,” Peter said. “I stopped choking you as soon as Istven said I’d won.” He looked down and gave a sort of awkward half-smile. The glasses that normally rested so comfortably on his nose were missing. His eyes looked strangely sunken without them.

          Draevin felt a white-hot flash of rage at realizing he’d lost but it was quickly smothered in the bone weary ache of loss. It was a feeling very familiar to him now. How would he face Graevin when he got home? How would he come back without Aelaniss at his side once again? A shudder ran through him at the brief thought that maybe she was really going to stay dead. “My wish!” Draevin cursed aloud. “I was so damn close!”

          Peter’s face slackened. “If it makes you feel any better, I would have let you win with me if there could be two winners.”

          “It doesn’t,” Draevin said glumly.

          Peter stuck out his hand. “It wasn’t personal,” he said simply.

          Draevin was still sitting on the ground. He grabbed the proffered hand and heaved himself to unsteady feet. It seemed like everything had been personal this year, but when Peter insisted it hadn’t been for him, Draevin actually believed him. “You fought pretty ruthlessly,” Draevin complained. “And I knew that shit about being an elemental was a damn lie.”

          Sylnya let out a short bark of laughter. “Yeah, who knew he had it in him?” She gave Peter a slap on the shoulder. “You sure didn’t hold back, did you?”

          Peter reached up to his face absentmindedly but stopped his hand halfway. He no longer had any glasses to adjust. “I did hold back,” he insisted. He pointed to Draevin’s wrists where burn scars were receding even now as Sylnya’s Healing Lotus worked its way through his system. “I could have burned your hands clean off with that Solar Lens.”

          Draevin rubbed his wrists self-consciously and glared at the human. “Fair enough, but that still doesn’t explain how you got me right at the end there. What kind of magic was that? What did you choke me with?”

          “Oh,” Peter said in surprise. “You mean you didn’t figure that out already?” He held up his hands. “I was just choking you with my hands. What else?”

          Draevin blinked. “But how could you? I had you covered in ice. You didn’t have any mana. I saw you with True Sight!”

          “You did drop your True Sight right at the end there, Drae,” Sylnya said.

          Draevin glared at her. “He was out of mana!” He turned his glare at Peter. “You were out of mana!” he repeated.

          Peter took a step aside and pointed at the ground. “I wasn’t out of mana,” he said. “I was waiting for you to drop your guard the whole time. Everything I did the whole match was just an attempt to drain your mana so you would turn off True Sight.” Sitting on the ground right where Peter pointed was a hand-carved pair of box-rimmed wooden glasses. They were broken into three pieces with burn marks at the breaks.

          “Your… glasses?” Draevin asked. It didn’t make… “Shit! Your glasses!”

          Peter nodded. “Yup. They were invested with sensomancy enchantments. It was a simple thing to break the enchantment to get at the mana. Glad I saved them. I almost burned them up when I was stuck in that time trap.”

          “But that’s… that’s cheating! That’s an outside mana source!”

          Peter scrunched his face together. “So?” he asked.

          Draevin pushed him aside with one arm and shouted up at the judge stands. Alex, Istven, and a few of the new members of the ruling council were huddled together chatting about something. “Hey!” Draevin yelled. “Peter cheated!”

          Alex turned to look down at Draevin. “You sure about that?” Alex asked. “We didn’t have a rule about weather conditions outside of the battlefield. If the Guild was fine makin’ things cloudy for him it only seems fair he could pay someone else to clear it up.”

          Draevin shook his head. “Not that.” He pointed down at the burned frames. “It was his glasses. He just told me he used them to beat me!”

          “Drae,” Sylnya groaned. “Does it really matter?”

          Alex threw up his hands. “Whaddya want me to do about it?”

          “He just—I just—” Draevin sputtered off ineffectually. Everyone was against him. The new Council, his friends. Nobody cared. As if to drive that point home, the very sky darkened. Daylight had been replaced with twilight as the moon moved into position.

          “There’s nothing that can be done,” Peter said from Draevin’s side. “The rule about outside mana sources was a made up rule anyways. The arena has already recognized me as the new Champion.” Draevin turned back to Peter to find his body had started to glow with a slight white aura. Peter held up his hands and looked at them. “What is this?” he asked. “I swear I’m not doing this.”

          Draevin let out a heavy sigh. “I know. You’re not. It’s the arena.” Even though Draevin had never gone out-of-bounds or died it seemed Peter was right that he’d been accepted as the new Champion. Draevin glanced up at the sky and his eyes were scalded by a tiny crescent of light. It wasn’t quite in place yet but it was only moments away. “You’ll need to go stand over there,” Draevin said. He pointed to a platform of glowing runes that was pushing its way up through the dirt as he spoke. It was positioned at the very center of the arena. A frozen demon happened to be standing on the spot where the platform raised up from the ground. It was burned to wisps of black dust in an instant.

          “That doesn’t look safe,” Peter said.

          “It’s not,” Draevin said. “But just the same, that’s where you’ll need to stand. It probably won’t burn you to ash.”

          Peter turned back to Draevin. His lips were drawn tight. “Well I guess this is it,” he said.

          “Don’t sweat it, Pete,” Sylnya said. “If Drae can do it, anyone can do it.”

          Grrbraa leaned down and wiped a big pink tongue across Peter’s cheek. “Mother-Taelshin says you just have to believe you’re being a good boy and the Conflux will do what you ask.” His tail lolled lazily.

          Peter wiped at his cheek with the back of his hand. “I’ll try to remember that,” he promised.

          Draevin offered a hand. Peter clasped it. “Steel yourself,” he advised. “Nothing can prepare you for it.” It wasn’t much in the way of advice, but it was truthful. Either Peter would master it or he wouldn’t. Ultimately it was in his hands now.

          Peter stepped forward and started to cross the distance to the center of the arena. The platform began to glow with more and more light as he got closer. The glow surrounding his body responded in kind. Draevin had to throw a hand up to brace himself against the waves of energy pouring out. He’d never been so close to the Conflux as a non-Champion before. He was surprised how hard it was to stay on his feet. He leaned forward and wrapped himself in a new layer of Frost Armor, for all the good it would do. With all the mana funneling through the space it was the simplest thing in the world.

          Six hooded figures rose up from the ground with tall black staves as Peter reached the central platform. It was hard to even look that way anymore, but the black figures blocked some of the light. He hadn’t been expecting to see them. When he’d learned this year how much of the supposed power the Guild flaunted didn’t belong to them Draevin had assumed the Conflux ritual wouldn’t happen. The judges were supposed to walk down in their ceremonial garb and say the words. But… there were no judges.

          Sylnya grabbed Draevin by the shoulder. He needed to see this. He pushed her hand away. A much larger pair of clawed hands then grabbed Draevin by both shoulders and lifted him off the ground. “What the hell?” Draevin asked. Grrbraa tossed him over his shoulder and loped off toward the judge’s stand.

          “We can’t be this close!” Sylnya shouted over the rush of wind that had started up. She kept pace with Grrbraa as he hauled the both of them up off the field. As soon as they were off the ground Draevin felt the pressure from all that mana significantly slacken. It was only then that he realized his limbs had gone numb. He should have realized. After everything he’d been through today, Draevin was probably lucky he wouldn’t be stepping into the Conflux. It seemed his body didn’t have the least bit of interest in taking in any more mana.

          All around the arena powerful gusts of wind were throwing up clouds of dust. All of it was headed away from the platform at the center where Peter’s glowing form stood. He had his hand against the barrier around the platform. When the ritual was complete and the Conflux was in totality, the barrier would let the Champion in.

          The hooded figures began to crack their staves against the ground in a rhythmic pattern. Draevin felt a chill run through him at that. If they weren’t members of the Guild playing dress-up, who were they? What were they? Six figures standing at even positions around the central platform.

          Crack, crack, crack.

          The unmistakable beat of wings from behind turned Draevin’s head. Tarrish was there. Perched on the edge of the arena’s walls. “We must go,” the dragon-emperor bellowed to the field below.

          Alex cupped his hands and shouted back up at him. “What about all those zombies?” he asked.

          Crack, crack, crack.

          “They will not reach you in time. My people must depart. We will return to this plane when it is done.” He opened his jaws wide and blew out a small vortex of swirling snow and ice. It suspended in the air in front of him. One-by-one the other larger dragons that had come with him dived into that vortex. They didn’t come out the other side. The last dragon was the small black one that had acted so often as a messenger. Before Tarrish joined them, a handful of lizard-kin from among the stands ran up. Tarrish nodded his long neck to signal to them that they were free to come along.

          Crack, crack, crack.

          The icy realm that Draevin had first met the dragon emperor in had seemed like a hostile place. He couldn’t imagine why they’d want to go back to that. Once the dozen or so lizard-kin had jumped through, Tarrish flew into the swirling vortex and disappeared. Draevin felt strangely vulnerable without him around.

          The old gods are dead, a many-throated voice thrummed through Draevin’s mind. The ritual was finishing. He looked down on the field. The hooded figures standing around Peter had their staves upheld.

          The old gods are dead, the voices repeated. Only Sho’tan remains.

                    remains

                              remains

          A monument to sins of the past.

                    past

                              past

          Wish for power and be destroyed.

                    destroyed

                              destroyed

          Wish for godhood and be consumed.

                    consumed

                              consumed

          Speak your wish and have it granted.

                    granted

                              granted

          Only the Champion may enter.

                    enter

                              enter

          In unison, the shadowy shapes brought their staves down in one final ker-ack! and the barrier around the platform dissolved. Draevin’s attention focused completely on the display before him even as the ice that made up his Frost Armor began to vibrate annoyingly. The next few moments would possibly shape their world for years to come.

          The last dregs of sunlight disappeared from the sky. For a moment they were in total darkness, then a beam of bright white light shot down from the heavens.

          Peter stepped forward.

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