Harlan saw the second of the champions.

According to the woman, it was a wind golem.

His mundane sight could not see it, but he could just barely feel a breeze before it rent a layer of skin from his bones through his armor.

Harlan jumped back whenever he felt the wind on his skin under his armor, but he didn’t know how to fight the wind.

Blowing it away didn’t do anything, it just added more wind to it.

When he punched, it was always right there next to him.

“Is it hunting by movement?”

“Perhaps. Think, what does this woman want?”

“This is a game to her.”

“Perhaps, but if that was the case, why heal you and offer gifts?”

“Because she is Fae. There must be a rule that tells us how to avoid dying even if we forsake whatever rewards she has planned.”

“I’ll keep thinking about how to handle this, just dodge.”

A glaive of wind severed Harlan’s legs at the knee, but between his own healing and his armor, he put himself back together quickly.

He thought back to the first champion. The woman didn’t say that brute force wasn’t the answer, but that Harlan had used the wrong brute force. So he cast two spells, first, a spell to redirect heat so he didn’t kill himself, and secondly, a fire nova.

Heat rises, so perhaps a large enough influx would blow the monster away.

A golem needed something to power it, assuming that the Fae’s idea of a golem was at all based around sense, so if it thinned out too much, it would lose cohesion.

When Harlan saw that the creature had not grown in size or power, he realized how stupid he was.

He cut the fire, since it didn’t seem to do anything anyway, and let out a mist.

Much like the friendly water fight so many years ago, he tracked the creature through its displacement.

Oddly it was not fast, always seeming to maintain an exact distance from Harlan, but when Harlan made fast movements it got closer until it attacked.

“So, each champion is a different test then.”

“What’s the plan?”

Harlan sat on the ground and breathed slowly, a near death meditative state Tau once taught him.

The creature also sat and breathed.

When they synced their breath, Harlan felt it enter into his body as it was simply air.

“Perhaps she wanted me to learn to avoid-”

The golem rapidly expanded inside of his lungs, spreading Harlan across 50 feet of grass.

Death was… not something he had truly experienced.

He floated upwards in the sky, a light guiding him towards a horned woman.

She reached her hand to him with a gentle smile, Harlan reached his hand back, and struck her.

He didn’t even know if he had a body or arms for that matter, but his will would not be held back by something so minor as being nothing but a ball of energy.

He would give himself to death without hesitation someday, but he would not let it take him first.

The horned woman laughed as Harlan was pulled back into his reformed body.

“An interesting approach. But these are fights of life and death, a warrior does not simply accept his enemy into himself.”

Harlan saw his armor unravel and one of the bracelets from Periwinkle snapped.

“Again.”

30 minutes passed, with Harlan simply casting every spell he had.

“Fuck. How do we fight a golem with no core? Everything I’ve done doesn’t show any effect.”

”You hit it with a tornado made using a fire and ice nova and it seemed to not actually gain anything from it. Perhaps he is an elemental of some kind, the mana is what he feeds on, not the element? ”

“Now that you mention it.”

Harlan looked at the creature, it seemed to be nothing but a soul given a somewhat physical form.

As he looked and looked and looked, it didn’t make sense. Air hated being in such a defined shape as this thing. But what looked like air and yet had no issue with physicality?

He walked close to the ‘golem’ and clad himself with aura.

His first strike made a loud boom from the auras overlapping and clashing.

It looked at Harlan, and tried to flee.

Harlan smiled cruelly as he pursued, pouncing from behind Harlan grabbed its legs, the thing trying pitifully to claw the ground to get just another inch away.

Harlan slammed it overhead as if he was using a mace.

Again, again, again.

When the thing no longer had the strength to fight back Harlan grabbed and put it in a choke hold, it struggled and struck at him, but as with telekinesis, even with a large gap in power, aura disliked attacking aura. Finally Harlan felt the ‘neck’ snap and it faded into the nothing from whence it came.

Harlan staggered toward the woman.

“Wind Golem, huh.”

“Deception is just another part of war. When I needed to kill a great hero, I came to him as a crone and tricked him into eating the flesh of dogs.”

“Do I get a rest between fights?”

Harlan skipped past how eating dog meat would weaken a man.

“You have five lives remaining, each time I remake you, you shall be as if you’ve rested.”

“Do you have a connection to Periwinkle? Why are these bracelets worth a life each?”

“To gain such favor from a Fae is a judgment of your character.”

“Fine, next fight.”

It looked like Harlan.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“A mirror match?

“Which of us is the copy though?”

“Look in your head.”

“Ah, so she couldn’t replicate that.”

The copy Harlan took his own head off.

The Fae looked on in confusion.

“What was that?”

“I won.”

“That trial was to face your greatest nightmare as an enemy.”

“I did.”

“I am unsure if I’m disappointed or not. You took your own life without a moment's hesitation, but you didn’t fight.”

“If the enemy army was trapped in a blizzard and froze, it would still be a win.”

“Hmm… a warrior must win, and you have done so. Next.”

The creature seemed to be a ball of meat, then a match to the Fae woman, then it grew into a form not unlike a werewolf.

Harlan caught the clawed hand that swiped at him this time, tearing off three of the fingers.

Yet when he looked back, her hand was already whole again. At least, from the soul he could gather that it was female.

She retaliated with a jumping axe kick. Harlan blocked it, but she managed to actually break the arm that caught it.

With his free hand, he let out a torrent of flames that saw her flesh bubble and blister only to reform in the blink of an eye. He did have some morbid curiosity about what the limits of the healing were.

After an hour Harlan still looked human, but his opponent had turned into a mass of bone blades and tentacles not unlike a mix of Harlan’s own flesh golem design and a porcupine.

It had turned to monotony some time ago, both sides could hold the other off, Harlan with the power his body gave him, and the creature through its form.

He could break off dozens of spear like hands, but whatever was broken simply got pulled back in to rebuild the thing, seemingly without limit. Though he did notice it was slowing down slightly.

Harlan intended to test this limit as a way to find his own. He knew that he could’ve ended this some time ago, but he was adjusting to this body still and nothing had been able to push him like this until now.

After another half an hour Harlan was feeling tired, so as he thought of how to end it, he finally got hit by a spiked ball of a fist. The creature already knew that a smaller attack wouldn’t hurt him, he’d just grab the tentacle and use it to spread acid blood to the main body.

She reached down into the small crater and thought to grab one of the eyes, his punishment for not being creative enough to fight her as she wanted.

Harlan breathed deeply, trying to regain the air knocked out of his lungs, staring in horror as the clawed hands got nearer to his face. Instinct overcame sense as Harlan did something he knew he shouldn’t.

Then she heard a very, very distinct sound, but not from a source she thought possible.

Click, click, click. The flint-like tonsil stones of the dragonoids, the biological component to activating their breaths.

The scent of charred flesh from both sides filled the air and the creature screamed.

Dragons fire was abnormal, though Harlan actually got these parts from a Wyrm, and when it was its original flaming form, it could melt and sear regardless of how much heat it let off. Yet Harlan was no dragon, and was hurt just as much as his enemy, even still, the screams as its body burned at near the same rate that it healed were worth it.

The Fae was quite looking forward to how this would go from here.

“Wonderful work.”

Bone and flesh thing regrew in seconds for the monster, but Harlan would need longer to heal his throat.

She went forward, shrinking herself down to his size and shape

The pair clashed, both gripping the hands of the other in a pure contest of strength.

But as she started losing she grew another arm, jabbing Harlan in the face and breaking his nose, nearly his neck as well.

Dawn returned the favor with a hammer fist that turned her head into ground meat, yet it didn’t slow her down. She grew a large gnashing mouth from her chest and grabbed Harlan.

He tried to resist the maw, forcing it open, then the jaws separated into a hard carapace and a soft inside. The inner leapt forward like some terrible fish were known to do. The teeth slowly punctured his armor, but with Dawn moving it around to thicken it where it was needed, nothing vital was hit. Even still he was forced to a knee.

The crow landed on his head.

“Two against one isn’t very fair.”

“Dawn? Hey, are you there? I can’t feel you? Dawn? Dawn?”

Harlan tried to speak, but his throat was still burned up, yet the bird understood him anyway.

“I evened the odds, she was already dead anyway, what’s the harm in returning to that?”

He couldn't move an inch, the powerful jaws were driving themselves deeper inside.

He understood that this was likely the end for his life, so why not use every last drop still left inside of it?

Harlan screamed in pain as he flooded himself with imbibing.

His skin went red from the heat burning inside of him, then his breath went cold and his skin blackened, turning into a pseudo chitin.

Harlan began to stand again, lifting the beast that scrambled to force him back down by anchoring its feet into the earth, but no matter how deeply it spread its roots, Harlan pushed and pushed.

She began sending out tendrils to pick up the flesh of the orc left from the battle before Harlan arrived and added that weight to herself.

When Harlan’s legs were about to give out, he just made new legs for more support.

When his arms felt like they were going to lose their grip, he made more fingers and arms and lengthened the ones he had.

Each new eye moved without regard to the other, taking in every detail of the monster.

He tightened his grip and felt cartilage bend and snap as it howled in pain.

More hands appeared on the creature, so Harlan bit them; when he couldn’t get through the bone, he enhanced his teeth and jaw to snap them.

When he couldn’t reach, he just made more mouths and rearranged his organs so they could reach his stomach.

He swallowed flesh and bone whole, uncaring as they cut his insides up and his gums bleed from the splinters.

He swallowed his own blood to avoid losing the nutrients that could be better used for healing.

He grew tendrils like her, fighting for the scraps of flesh that came off of her and the bodies that were still scattered from the orcs.

Free of the jaws, Harlan leapt into its side for the organs inside.

When hard scales and bone plates blocked him, he smashed down with his arms, each of his dozen fingers hardened like hammerheads.

Neither side looked human, nor did they look like animals, they were just malformed flesh in the shape of living things.

Harlan’s body was beyond anything he could’ve expected. With a simple jump a sonic boom was formed and as he struck creature. Her body exploded as he passed though, only to reform seconds later.

But it was sluggish, if Harlan knew anything about the orcs, this meant they would be nearing death.

While this thing was not an orc, or at lesat Harlan believed this to be the case, healing was healing, if it could do it faster, it would.

He jumped up in the air, made a platform of void, and kicked off of it, boosting his speed with gravity magic.

He shaped his armor and his rod to turn him into a living meteor.

The crow which had seen the entire fight flew into the cloud of earth which had been upturned by the final blow of terrible proportions.

It traded its feathers for pearly white skin, its talons for feet.

She walked into the cloud of dust to look at the damage to the body she had been controlling.

“He certainly made a mess of things.”

She pulled the blood and meat together, and Harlan's body was reformed once more.

With a snap of her fingers, life returned to the body.

“We are not enemies, we just have different methods.”

He snarled, ready to continue the fight.

Harlan leapt at the woman who simply tapped him on the head, causing his body to go limp.

“A warrior must know loss.”

Tears ran down his black and blue skin, he shouldn’t have been able to move towards her even the first time.

“Defeat my champions four, and receive magic of yore.”

She tapped his head again, and he knew the spells.

“Magic to uncurdle milk, magic to cause a wind at your back, magic to make an object glow in presence of what you desire, and lastly, the magic to overcome truth telling.”

Harlan overcame the paralysis, magical and mundane, though sheer force of will, and touched her foot, the connection just barely enough for him to try to assault her soul.

One toe, her smallest, was all of the damage he could do using everything he had in one horribly inefficient but powerful attack.

The Fae had a look of fear as she vanished into thin air, leaving blood and flesh behind.

Harlan laid there looking at the sky, mourning his friend.

It hurt to lose his mother again, first the one he never knew, then finding out that knowing was worse, and finally, to come to love her as family only to lose her again.

He felt the lockdown on his communication end and The Darkness did as well.

The sky went black and a multitude of powerful people arrived.

But they didn’t matter in the slightest to Harlan. With the lifting of the lockdown, he felt a presence back in his head. How she got away, or how his amulet survived when everything else was turned to scrap after that last attack, he had no idea.