Chapter 10
Ten
Danny was our first to fight. He fought about as well as a pimple-faced, gangly, teenage rank one could be expected to… As in, he lost in under a minute.
For tonight’s earlier fights, which didn’t have as much crowd interest, the goblins were using protective charms that had only two charges.
When the user got hit with a blow sufficient to pass his own magical defenses and still maim or kill, the goblin enchantment kicked in, enveloping them in a magical shield.
Of course, for the enjoyment of the crowd, those charms had the extra bonus of making it so the user still felt all the pain of the injury, even if they didn’t receive any of the actual damage.
I was just proud that poor young Danny didn’t wet his pants in public when he got nailed with a minor lightning spell.
It was a snap and pop and then he’d gone flying back into a big white stone so hard that the goblin charm activated to keep him from breaking his spine.
He’d tried to come back from that by hitting his opponent with his icy slow spell, but once again, his aim was off, and an empty patch of ground was frosted instead.
Then he’d gotten clobbered over the head with a sword that bounced off the goblin charm’s second activation.
That ended the match, but not Danny’s life.
Rade was sitting next to me on the scaffolding. “You know, I’ve never thought to check the lad’s eyesight. Danny might actually be part blind.”
Having just felt a terrible shock of electricity and a blow to the noggin that would’ve spilled out his brains had it been real, four goblins were having to carry the incoherent Outcast from the arena.
I shouted, “Hey, Danny! How many fingers am I holding up?”
He looked up at me, blinking rapidly, as if he might cry. “I can’t rightly tell, Mr. Carnavon.”
The correct answer had been three. “You might be onto something, Rade.” Then I shouted at Danny again, “Good try. Excellent show.”
We awaited our turn with the rest of the night’s fighters staged on the platforms, while our opponents waited on the other side of the pit across from us.
On the bookie’s chalkboard, I’d seen that I was up against someone named Dathka Shadow Walker, which was an ostentatious name belonging to a fighter I’d never heard of.
That was most certainly a fake name like many of us amateur gladiators used in the arenas.
Though he had one more win than I did, the current odds favored me slightly, which made me suspicious.
“Do you know Dathka Shadow Walker?”
“I don’t, which is odd, as there’s not that many of us deadlanders foolhardy enough to do this.
A ring name like that has got to be from my realm.
” Rade’s people had a lot of spells based on manipulating darkness and causing fear, and they really liked to lean into that.
“He’s got you both as rank ones on the board, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Clotz intends to give you some payback for squeezing him.
He might be serving you up to some professional killer who’s really a three or four. ”
Because I’d finagled an extra percent out of Bookie Clotz, bringing in a ringer to teach me a lesson sounded like something he’d do. “Vindictive little bastards, goblins.”
“You know, if you’re destined for defeat, we could take advantage of this treachery, Carnavon.”
“You going to go bet against me, Rade?” That might be the savvy thing to do, but I had too much pride for that.
In any fight, I’d do my honest best and take my honest loss.
I wouldn’t sully it with even a suggestion that I’d thrown it.
I was the only Carnavon in the Core, and my family were in an entirely different plane of existence.
Despite that, if I did such a thing, they’d surely hear about it somehow and I’d never live down the indignity.
Among my people, it was more respectable to be a thieving murderer than to take a fall in a brawl.
“I was just thinking through the mathematical possibilities.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
Rade feigned offense. “It was merely an idea. I would never do such a thing.”
“Good. I’d hate for my victory to be the reason you go broke again.”
Several different-colored light charms drifted to the center of the arena to place extra eye-catching illumination upon the announcer, who was using some kind of enchantment to magnify his voice so the entire crowd above could hear him.
“Ladies and gentlemen, our next combatant is homegrown from the Slump above, joining us in his debut appearance, a rank-one conjurer, knowing potent spells of earth and water, I give you, Big Bognar!”
The announcer was so good at his job, he even made Bognar sound like a real contender.
In reality, Bognar was a bit of a schlump.
He lived up to his nickname by being big, but it was that awkward, chunky, tripping-over-his-own-feet sort of bigness.
To be fair, Bognar was strong, as he’d been a carpenter’s assistant before deciding to follow his dreams of becoming a wizard.
He knew a grand total of two spells, neither very well, so if he pulled this match out, it would be through beating the other fellow with his mace.
And he’d even had to borrow the mace from Krachma.
The crowd clapped a bit for him, probably out of pity.
“What’re the odds on this match?” I asked Rade.
“Five to one against Bognar.”
“You didn’t bet on him, did you?”
“Oh, saints no. I wouldn’t bet on Bognar tying his shoes correctly.”
“And upon the south scaffold, coming all the way from the wild Sajetti of the Elemental Plane of Air, a rank-one transmuter, with a Slump fight record of two wins and zero losses, follower of the Saint of Storms, Garshab ‘Griffon Slayer’ Falamazarian!”
That name was a mouthful, and the spectators reacted with only mild enthusiasm. Except then the airlander dove from the top of the scaffold, plummeted headfirst toward the ground, to stop in midair only a few feet from impact, do a flip, and land on his feet, which caused the crowd to go wild.
“Bognar’s about to die,” Rade stated.
“You never know. This other guy might be all flash, no meat to him.”
The airlander got a running start, leapt ten feet into the air, and threw a weirdly shaped knife that smacked Bognar right in the face.
“Or, maybe not.”
Twenty seconds later, Bognar was getting used as a pin cushion by some spell that turned the air into a cloud of stabbing needles. It looked like a remarkably painful way to end the match.
“There’s no way that’s a low-level spell,” I muttered. “Rank one, my ass.”
“To be fair, my friend, you yourself know a disturbing number of exceedingly destructive spells for a rank one.”
Rade had me there, and the way this night was looking, I might be busting out a snail grenade before it was over, but I was still suspicious. “When we get a tester, I bet I’ll make it to two now. But how come none of our recruits show up with talent like that guy?”
“Give it time. Soon, our academy will be famous throughout all the realms, and the best of the best will come, hat in hand, eager to train with us.”
Up next was a dwarf against a gnome. As soon as the announcer said fight, the gnome immediately pulled a small handgun and shot at the dwarf.
When I’d first heard about mage fights, I’d been surprised that firearms were allowed, but the rules said any regular weapons or spells were useable.
With magical enchantments that protected against bullets being relatively common and popular in the Core, anybody who was serious about making it in the arena invested in one, so guns weren’t as big of an advantage as you’d think.
Which the dwarf demonstrated, as the bullet fragmented off the shield created by one of his enchanted items. It didn’t even get close enough to his skin to activate the goblin charm.
Then the dwarf conjured a water spout out of thin air that spun the gnome until he nearly drowned, before cutting it and slamming the poor little fellow against the ground.
The dwarf didn’t even use magic to finish the fight.
He simply walked over while the gnome was coughing up water, picked him up by the ankles and started slamming him back and forth between two stone blocks, like he was beating the dust out of a rug.
Sifuso’s match was next. And it was… underwhelming.
Lacertians have a reputation for being vicious ambush killers, taking down prey with fangs and claws, and they are really scary to look at, all scaley and reptilian, with their weird hungry eyes. I didn’t know if that mystique was a lie and if it was all lacertians who were cowardly, or just ours.
When Sifuso walked into the arena, with so many eyes upon him, his knees started to shake.
It was clear he had already lost his nerve.
His yellow eyes were darting about wildly, like he was overwhelmed by the crowd watching him.
Normally, our lacertian stood tall, but he was currently crouched, like he wanted to hide.
“Oh, that’s not looking good,” Rade said.
Sifuso had drawn a young man from the Cantor District, which was somewhere on the other side of the market.
The announcer said he was an unleashed descendent, which was some kind of disciple of Saint Violence, but I wasn’t really a church-going sort, and didn’t know much about the various sects.
It turned out this kid had picked the appropriate saint to follow, because he was so mean that he spent the next ten minutes chasing our lacertian all over the quarry.