The assailant spun as she darted at Sandra, her daggers glowing as she twirled. Sandra brought her arms up close to her, cringing away from the spinning slash. The dagger bit into her side and Sandra cried out silently in pain. She twisted away further, tripping over herself.

She landed with a rough crash on the ground, the collision causing another lance of pain from her side, as well as her arms. Her party! She had to get to her party. She turned, trying to pull herself up, looking toward the sounds of combat behind her, and her heart fell. The crowd was wild with excitement, savoring the battle between two hated foes. Whoever lost, they would win in the end.

Between herself and the chaotic sounds of combat stood the assassin who turned around as she flipped a dagger, her hip cocked. She snapped the dagger out of the air, pointing it at Sandra with obvious malice in her eyes.

Sandra stared at it, unable to breathe. At least, until the assassin came for her, when she found herself scrambling backward without even thinking, trying to create distance. Not enough distance, though, and the assassin's sudden slice nicked her leg in a shallow cut. A second set of slashes hit her legs, the blow landing true and cutting deep. It was as if the assassin were toying with her prey, hobbling her intentionally.

She knew she had to do something. She still had spells! She propped herself up with one arm, the other pointing her staff, and she silently summoned her spell, her raging fireball.

The assassin’s eyes widened as the tip of Sandra's staff started glowing, and she darted to the side… only for a rather small fireball to go very wide. She assassin watched it fly past her, looking back, her eyes half lidded, before that sparkle of amusement came back.

Sandra stared down at her staff. ‘Did she not have access to her best fire spells anymore?’ she thought. When the assassin stepped forward again, though, Sandra squinted her eyes and gathered her will into a fresh fireball, just for the assassin to sidestep in a lackadaisy way, a smug smile on their face.

Sandra fired a third time, trying to scramble to her feet, only as soon as she tried to pull herself up her legs surged in pain, and she collapsed back onto her rear end with a pained but silent grunt. The assassin looked like she was ready to quit playing around, brandishing her daggers with deadly purpose. The crowd whooped and celebrated Sandra's fall and the successful play of the assassin. Their words were lost, but their pounding excitement was impossible to miss.

Sandra cringed away, squeezing her eyes as the assassin raised her daggers, only to see just a crack of gold light from behind them, and her eyes snapped open to see the aftermath of some kind of magic attack, with the assassin being knocked off to the side apparently by Spike’s glowing staff.

"Seems the challengers are even tougher than we gave them credit for. What teamwork, what spirit! It almost makes you root for them." There was a noise of paper shuffling. "Oh, reading the wrong cards. A stunning save turns things around. Can anything stop these lunatics from rising to the top?!"

Spike looked down at Sandra, taking a moment to pose. He had the perfect line, too, and opened his mouth. But no sound came out. He tried again, with no avail. He pursed his lips, his perfect moment ruined. He still held out his staff though, and green light rained down from his staff onto Sandra, healing her wounds, at least enough that the pulsing pain went away and the blood stopped escaping her.

Sandra smiled, and Spike returned the gesture, only for his eyes to widen and he leapt away from the assassin slashing at his side. He grit his teeth and swung his glowing staff, it pulsed with gold runes as it arced through the air. He didn’t land the hit, but the momentary lull was enough to give Sandra time to scramble to her feet as Spike and the Assassin traded ineffective blows.

Sandra took a deep breath as she watched Spike fight, nobody bearing down on her or menacing her anymore. Glancing over, she could see her golem had not gone dormant during her silence. It was locked in combat with the stoutly armored knight of the enemy group, neither side accepting defeat as stone and metal clashed with faint sparks and ringing steel. It was all very interesting, but she quickly discarded it in favor of returning her attention to the assassin Spike was tangling with.

"That summoner looks stumped. Will their friend carry the day for her?" Sandra burned at the announcer's words, trying to get herself back into things. She had to help!

Her fireball had gone wide, but that wasn't… That unusual for her. So her aim stank, but she could… maybe? She tried to call on her connection with fire, but it felt sluggish and distant, as if she was trying to manipulate it with great mittens on. That was not the summoner's way, until it was. Bursting free of her flexing hands, Aiden appeared brilliantly, exploding in a flash of heat and light and fading just as quickly, as if the firebird had been a spell instead of a discrete creature.

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The blast of the spell, silent but real, spread outwards from her, hurtling towards both assassin and noble dragon lord. Spike turned around just in time to see the wave of flame washing toward him, and the assassin noticed too, but only one of them panicked. The assassin twisted away, putting her hands together and beginning to emit smoke around her.

Spike, however, didn’t hesitate, and before she was consumed by smoke, he smacked her with his staff again, and the smoke immediately dissipated. The flames washed over the two of them, the assassin letting out a shriek as the flames knocked her off of her feet. Spike was, as expected, unaffected, and he brought his staff down onto her again.

He stood over her, brandishing his staff, ready for her to rise again, but when a moment passed and she did not, he turned back and give a smiling thumbs up to Sandra. "We did it!" he announced. "And we can talk again!"

Sandra nodded, but looked over to the rest of the fight, which was still going. “Should we…”

Spike matched Sandra's view and saw Smolder and Garble were back to back, with what seemed like the last three of the enemy team pressing in. Without hesitation, he began running towards them, staff clenched firmly in hand.

Garble bashed an incoming sword aside. "Last chance, no dance." He ducked at the last word and a dagger flew through the space where his back had just been, Smolder hurling it over him as if the two were in sync. The knight staggered back, the sharp weapon piercing through his stout, but stout enough, armor and embedded in his chest.

An arrow thunked into her side before she could savor the moment. "Gargar!" A line of red ran down her scales, but she resisted doing much with the wound, one other melee combatant still menacing her. "I'll cook up this one."

"On it." He slid in a turn towards the archer that had kept some distance. "You've been harassing us all fight. Time to say good night!"

"This is coming to a stunning finish. Plucky upstarts or crazed monsters? Only time could tell. Outnumbered and outranked, they're cleaning shop! What brutality!"

Sandra peered in the vague direction of the announcer, only to realize she was still standing over the bleeding form of the assassin. "Was this to the death?" she asked no one, the others far away from her.

Smolder deflected the short sword of her foe with the only dagger she had left. Pity he had two of the dang blades and wasn't shy about pressing in, creating opportunities with every parry Smolder made to swing where she had no metal of her own to protect herself. She was being forced back step by step. Glancing towards Garble showed him chasing after the archer, shouting and fuming.

That arrow in her side was slowing her down. She was still bleeding. There was no time to prepare a snack. There was barely time to keep herself from being carved up instead.

Her attacker suddenly rolled to the side and a glowing staff came down where he had been. Spike was there, already bringing the staff up and around towards the swordsman. "Get away!" he shouted, bright golden magic lancing from the end of his staff. The human brought his blades up in an x formation to catch it and avoided being directly smashed, but the force of it wasn't lost, sending him back several feet and crashing to his back on the ground.

"Good…" The remaining words didn't get out as she staggered forward. She tried to say something, anything, but everything was spinning. She hit the sand heavily, unmoving.

"The challengers aren't going down without taking at least one with them," boomed the announcer excitedly. The crowd was eager to join in his excitement, savoring in the fall of one of the team.

It was at that moment that Sandra thought to see where her golem was, but it was nowhere in sight. What had happened to it? Had her spell dismissed it? More likely, she quickly reasoned, her inexperience had. "Stop him!" She pointed at the standing swordman meaningfully, and the rocks understood that meaning.

The ground behind him surged upwards, taking the form of a short, squat, elemental made of gems and stone. It swung a heavy fist even as the swordsman dodged and fought with Spike. He didn't even get to know what hit him as the golem smashed him forward into the ground. "Spike! Help Smolder!" Sandra was pointing desperately at the fallen dragon.

"Smolder?" Garble craned his head away from the desperately fleeing archer to see Smolder's still form. "Sis! You bastard!" He launched himself forward with a surge of angry energy. "Hurry up and die." Flames erupted from his mouth in concert with the word, washing over the human. With a grunt, the archer raised his bow as if for a final shot, but the rope broke as he drew it, burnt along with the bow.

Garble landed on him and began beating him with his fists. There was no swordplay or poetry to the pummeling, just unintelligible shouting and the uneven tempo of his fists mashing into the form of what had been his combatant.

"What a display! Hey, you want a job? We're always looking for a few good monsters." The crowd roared, laughing and cheering as one, roses showering down from the aisles from all directions. "You don't even need me to say this, but we have a winner! Leaving none standing and with no holds barred, this team could go to the top."

Spike scrambled over to Smolder, leaving his staff in the sand in the frantic rush to reach her side. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" He willed the green life energy to his hands, made more difficult with his missing staff, but he wasn't going to go back for it, just focusing on his fallen friend. "We won, you can't go now. C'mon!"

Sandra let Spike tend to Smolder, instead approaching Garble who was still pounding the human he was on top of, though the archer had long since stopped offering even a hint of a fight. "It's okay." She reached for his shoulder, only to have her hand roughly slapped away.

"Back off," he growled, hissing with teeth bore, flames gusting from his mouth with each breath a few inches. His eyes came into sudden focus. "Sandra?" It was only then that he saw the roses, and several large gilded boxes in the center of the arena as if they had always been there. "We won?"

"We won," she gently assured, rubbing where her wrist stung. "Spike's seeing to Smolder. She'll be alright." Or so Sandra hoped.