At a loss for what else to do for the day, Xander decided he might as well sign up for the tournament that Gabrelle had mentioned. If he won, then he’d be happy, and a little richer. If he lost, it was still valuable experience fighting higher leveled skill users. His experience with the assassin the previous night still weighed on him. If someone was going to be putting a bounty on his head he needed to learn to fight people that were on a similar level or even higher than he was. The lack of lethality would be hard, though. He’d never fought someone in any type of duel before. Only in life-or-death circumstances. He’d have to make sure he didn’t go overboard, and maybe come up with some ideas for nonlethal fights. Definitely no grenades. Flashbangs should be okay, though.
Making his way to the guild hall alone, he watched as the morning foot traffic began in earnest. People were coming out of houses and inns and heading to jobs or running morning errands much like Xander. He liked watching a city wake up, he found, more and more people appearing and joining him on the street as the sun rose higher. He should take more morning strolls, he thought.
The mercenary’s guild was still relatively empty, which suited Xander just fine. Less time to spend waiting in line. He was helped by the next available clerk, a bearded dwarf with a polished brass monocle. He was perched upon a tall stool that brought him to the proper height for the counter. “What can the mercenary’s guild do for you today, hmm? Here to put in a contract?”
Xander realized that he must not look much like a merc at the moment, wearing a maroon doublet and black pants. “Oh, no, I’m actually looking to register ahead of time for the tournament next month, if I’m able to.”
“Ah! I see, apologies for the mix-up. We find that most of the contracts we get are posted in the early hours of the day. That’s what I get for assuming, I ‘spose,” the dwarf said with a small laugh. “But yes, you can certainly go ahead and register for the tournament. It’s twenty gold, and just so you know, there’s a mandatory status inspection that is done before you begin the tournament. Not that that should be a problem, if you’re already a guild member.”
“Nope, shouldn’t be an issue. Let’s see, twenty gold…” Xander fished the money out of his inventory, “here you are.”
The clerk scribbled Xander’s name down on a sheet of paper and said, “Excellent, I’ll ensure that you’re registered, and you won’t have to wait in line the day of the tournament.”
Strolling slowly through the city, Xander considered what kind of weapon he should use for the tournament. His mace was a little… lethal for an event where you weren’t supposed to kill your opponent. He imagined that breaking all their bones and subjecting them to a powerful acid would not go over well. He wanted something that had some range, too, since his rifle was also out. A chain with a small weight at the end could work… His [Weapons of War] would presumably allow him to use the weapon, and he could also use [Ferrokinesis] to move the chain as well. Rune it up with some lighting runes, now that he could more easily engrave smaller runes, and he could taze an opponent as he whipped them with the chain, or even try to wrap them up.
He kept his pace slow as he walked back to the inn, turning the idea of the new weapon over in his head. He was liking it more and more. It had the potential for reach, while also being able to be reeled in and used at close distance. If an opponent was faster than him, he could make wide attacks with the chain and combine the attacks with [Ferrokinesis] to try and tangle them up and electrocute them. Plus, it would be flashy, surely the crowd would enjoy it. For some reason he felt the need to try and be entertaining for the crowd that he assumed would be watching.
At the inn, he made his way up to his shared room, knocking before entering, just in case Gabrelle was changing.
“Come in,” came her muffled reply. “Oh, hi, Xander.”
“Hey,” he greeted back. “Got any plans for the day?” Xander asked.
Gabrelle sighed. “Not a thing. I don’t think I’ve had this much down time since I became a mercenary! I don’t know what to do with myself!”
Xander laughed. “I know what you mean. But Frazay’s right, the wait will be worth it if we can hatch even one of those eggs. I signed up for the tournament for a spot of excitement. Plus, I figure it’s a good training opportunity, get to go up against highly skilled individuals. If you’re not going to join and fight, you think they’re hiring healers for the tournament?”
“Oh, that’s a good idea! I’ll have to check and see. Would get me some good experience for my class, and some coin, too.”
“Mmhm! Well, since you’ve got no plans for the day, want to help me test out a new weapon and do some sparring once I get it made?”
“I think that sounds a hell of a lot better than just laying around!”
Xander first made himself the weapon, roughly twenty feet of chain made of devil’s iron, that he capped off with a small, round ball of the same material. He’d hold off on runing it until after he’d sparred with Gabrelle. Not that he wasn’t confident in the elemental protection arrays he’d layered into her armor, but better to be safe than sorry.
“Is there a good place to spar around here?” He asked Gabrelle.
“Mm, we can either head outside the city a bit and find an open space, or we can use the communal guild area.”
“Which do you think is better?”
“Well, considering you’ve got quite a bit of chain there, I’d say it might be better to do it outside the city. You’d take up too much space in the guild area, I think.”
“That’s fair.”
A half hour’s walk after armoring up, the two mercenaries found themselves past the outskirts of Rock’s Bay. There were still houses and buildings dotting the landscape around the city, but open spaces and fields were easy enough to find. Xander and Gabrelle found a relatively flat, open area were Xander’s new chain wasn’t going to hit anything important and started to set up.
“So how do you wanna do this?” Gabrelle called out, roughly ten feet away from Xander.
“Uhh, I just want to practice using it, so just a regular spar? It’s not got any runes on it, so I doubt that it will be able to do much through your armor.”
“Alright, well I’ll let you start!”
Xander nodded, and held the excess coils of the chain in his left hand. Using his right hand, he began to spin the head of the chain the round ball was attached to, bringing it up to speed. He was glad that he could feel [Weapons of War] activating as he aimed center mass at Gabrelle’s torso, giving him the sense of the perfect time to release the chain from its spin, and shooting the ball and chain towards Gabrelle.
Gabrelle, prepared for just such an occurrence, quickly hopped out of the way as she began to advance on Xander, drawing her mace. Xander yanked on the chain, drawing it taught and pulling the ball back in direction, then activated [Ferrokinesis], drawing the ball back towards him and Gabrelle with even greater force. Gabrelle was not expecting the ball to make such a sudden change in direction and was struck soundly on the back, forcing her to stumble forward a few steps. Taking advantage of her stumble, Xander used his ability to snake the chain around her legs, and then yanked it back towards him, pulling her feet off the ground and dropping her as he reeled her in, dragging her through the dirt. Once he pulled her through the dirt to be laying next to him, he asked, “So, whatcha think?”
“I don’t like it. Not one bit,” She replied with a huff.
The two of them continued sparring for another couple of hours, Gabrelle beginning to fare better once she got a handle on what Xander could and couldn’t do with the length of chain in his hands. Xander, for his part, found that if Gabrelle could manage to close the distance between them, he struggled to land hits by throwing the head of the chain out. He learned that he was better off grabbing chain close to the ball and using it like a flail to beat on her armor, while using the other free end to try and tangle her up with his [Ferrokinesis] skill. Gabrelle was able to land plenty of hits on him as well, but neither was out to injure the other.
“Phew,” Gabrelle said at the end of their training session, wiping the sweat from her brow. “That was good exercise. We should do this more often! I’d forgotten how fun it was to get out and have a good spar.”
“You’re right,” Xander said. “This has been nice. I think I’ll take you up on doing this more often. I need all the practice I can get before the tournament.”
The rest of the month until the tournament passed slowly for the mercenaries. They were not used to such an excess of idle time, and it chafed at them, with the exception of Atrax, who was using the time to conduct his own esoteric research in accordance with his [Scholar of the Ancient] class. Frazay at least had her drakeling to look forward to, and Gabrelle had picked up sparring with Xander most afternoons. Graffus, however, seemed to be the one that was most affected by the standstill pace. Once Xander and Gabrelle noticed that the dwarf was beginning to become irritable, they began making a point to include him in their sparring sessions. For Xander, it was a humbling experience regarding his own shield work, as the dwarf was far and away better than he was with a shield. He was even able to deflect Xander’s ball and chain at specific angles, making it harder for Xander to recover the momentum of the weapon.
A week before the tournament, Xander got down to runing the chain, using his improved runecarving abilities to densely cover the chain links in strengthening runes and lightning runes, each individual link beginning to look like a hand carved work of art. For the head of the chain, Xander engraved the momentum enhancement arrays in conjunction with lightning and strengthening. Practicing out in the field, the weapon now crackled with electricity as he swung it around, and the head of the chain traveled further and faster with each throw. It took him a little bit to get used to the difference in momentum, but overall, it was an improvement.
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Soon enough, despite the glacial pace of activity the mercs were suffering through, the day of the tournament came. Gabrelle had managed to secure a position as a healer for the matches, so she and Xander decided to walk to the tournament together. Xander was surprised when he made his way down, suited up in his armor, to see his three other teammates waiting for him.
“What?” Frazay had asked. “You didn’t think we wouldn’t come watch, did you?”
“I guess I hadn’t really thought about it…” Xander said, rubbing the back of his helm, a little embarrassed. Having his teammates watching him seemed a lot more important than having a bunch of random people watching his matches.
“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Graffus encouraged him.
“And if you don’t… we’ll let you live it down. Eventually.” Atrax joked. “Just have the decency not to go down in the first round!”
The tournament was clearly a yearly event. Xander had noticed the stands being set up on the outskirts of the town, rows of wooden, stadium-like seating being taken out of storage from some warehouse and placed in a large ring. Vendors were hawking trinkets and food. Some of them even had carved figures of contestants that had made an impact last year that were competing again. All around, people filled the space around the arena. Most of them were just there for the show, slowly filing into seats that were set far behind raised walls. Behind these walls, were robed figures that Gabrelle told him were skill users that focused on barrier type skills, so as to prevent any accidental injuries to the crowd should a contestant’s ability or attack go wide, or a broken weapon fly too far.
Xander was glad he had registered early, as there was a long line of hopeful entrants queued up and slowly entering the waiting area outside the arena for contestants. It was here the team split, Atrax, Graffus, Frazay, and even Freyja, who Frazay had insisted would enjoy watching the fights, made their way to get seats while there were still any left, paying their entry fee. Gabrelle waved goodbye as she moved to join the growing crowd of healers that were congregating in a separate waiting area. Xander was left to head over to the representative that was letting contestants pass into the designated zone for them. The man had a stack of papers containing names and what looked to be brackets for the beginning of the tournament.
“Um, hello,” Xander offered to the tournament representative, who appeared to be rather annoyed to be standing out in the cool air directing foot traffic.
“Yes?” The man said rather testily.
“I preregistered for the tournament, do I need to go see someone or can I just go wait with the others?”
“I can check you off here,” the man replied. “Name?”
“Xander Jones.”
The man spent a few seconds leafing through his papers until he reached Xander’s name, and nodded to himself. “I found you, you’re alright to go wait.”
“Thanks.”
Xander found himself on the outskirts of a milling group of variously armed and armored contestants. Some of them evidently knew each other, while others, like him, had no one to talk to in the crowd. He didn’t mind too much, he wasn’t sure how he’d even be able to hold a conversation without shouting over the din of voices in the area. He could still hear one particular merchant crying over the noise about how he had the finest necklaces for sale. Perhaps the man had some kind of vocal skill?
After a couple very boring hours, the same man who had been directing contestants to their waiting areas made his way over to the mass of contestants, where he shouted over the noise to gain everyone’s attention.
“Contestants! The official cut off time for tournament registration has come. Those of you that are here will be competing throughout the day and, if necessary, the following days, to determine which of you is worthy of the prize of first place! You will be called up during the match directly before yours, where you can wait to compete. In the interim, you may wait there,” the representative indicated behind him where a section of the stands had been reserved for the contestants. Now, without further ado, I’ll be calling up the first two contestants. Dravus Vartek! Hildren Breen! You will be the first match, assemble in the middle of the ring. The following fighters will be Bartek Frode and Carlisle Promb! That’s Bartek and Carlisle! The rest of you, make your way to the stands.”
Xander shuffled along with the rest of the crowd to the reserved seating and found himself roughly in the middle of the stand. The two first contestants, Dravus and Hildren, were facing each other near the center of the field, with roughly thirty feet between them. The field itself was ovular, fifty feet wide in the center, and about one hundred feet long, giving the combatants plenty of space to use their skills. A gong that Xander hadn’t noticed, set near one of the protective walls, was struck, and the fighters held their weapons at the ready and began to close the distance between themselves.
One of them, Dravus, Xander thought, was wearing leather armor and brandished two short swords. He circled the other fighter widely, assessing them. The other was dressed in scale armor, wielding a flail in one hand and a shield in the other. She kept her shield pointed at her opponent, turning to face him as he circled closer and closer. Dravus, having circled just outside of striking range of Hildren’s flail, made the first move. Xander thought he must have activated some kind of skill, like his own [Sprint], because the way he went from a seemingly slow and controlled circle to dashing straight for Hildren seemed like it would be impossible without the aid of a skill. He aimed high with one of his swords, baiting Hildren into blocking it as he swung his other blade low, catching his opponent on the side of the knee. Hildren’s leg buckled for a moment, but her armor saved her from any serious damage, and she returned Dravus’s slash with an elbow to his face, the man not able to create distance fast enough to prevent her smashing his face.
A little dazed, Dravus stagged backward out of reach and spat a mouthful of blood. Hildren didn’t let up, though, rushing forwards and slamming him with her shield, staggering him even further. The woman swung her flail at him, but only scored a glancing hit as Dravus tumbled out of the way. The fight continued on much the same, with Hildren refusing to let Dravus fully recover, battering the man around the field, much to the excitement of the crowd. Every time she scored another hit on Dravus, there was a chorus of cheers from the stands, as people shouted and whooped in encouragement. Dravus was finally knocked out cold with a vicious slam to the side of his head with Hildren’s shield. It had proved to be a more effective weapon for the woman than her flail. The man collapsed in onto the dirt of the field in a heap as the gong rang again and two healers rushed out from their waiting area. Draven was quickly back on his feet, though still unsteady, as the crowd continued cheering for Hildren.
Once the cheering had died down, the next fighters were ushered onto the field. The contestants after them were called down from the stands to wait as the second fight started. Xander was called up to the stands after the fifth fight ended, making him the seventh fight of the day. There had been a range of skills and skill levels on display already. While most of the contestants seemed to be more martial in nature, there were a few robed figures amongst them, and one had already won their match by pummeling their opponent with stones and then encasing them in dirt and stones as they hit the ground. Most of the bouts had been short, with one fighter quickly overpowering the other, though one had dragged on to the point where even the crowd seemed to get bored, as the fighters had been very evenly matched.
Xander made his way down from the stands and stood next to his opponent. He would be going against a mountain of a man, easily head and shoulders taller than him, and half again as wide. The chainmail wearing man had a claymore strapped to his back and was already standing in the waiting area when Xander arrived.
“Hi,” Xander said, trying to be polite.
He got an uninterested grunt in reply.
Right, then, Xander thought. I’m electrocuting him straight away.
Xander found himself spending more time considering how he was going to fight the man standing next to him rather than watching the fight that was currently happening. In fact, he was scrutinizing his opponent so much that he was surprised to hear the gong ring out, signaling the end of the match. The attendant who had been calling out names said, “Alright you two, go on out there and get ready!”
As Xander made his way out to the center of the makeshift arena, he indistinctly heard the attendant call out the names of the next two contestants, but it was hard to hear over the sounds of the watching crowd. It appeared that he had been matched against someone who already had at least some popularity in the city, as cheers and cries of “Jarnel the Giant” were being called out before the match had even officially begun.
Xander and his opponent, Jarnel, met in the center of the arena, Jarnel finally giving Xander the courtesy of a nod before the two of them backed away from each other to create some distance. Jarnel pulled the massive claymore from its place on his back, and Xander uncoiled a length of his chain, beginning to spin it, both fighters taking a stance at the ready. Jarnel’s posture was wide, almost like that of a sumo wrestler, while Xander had his left foot forward, right arm twirling his length of chain.
The gong rang, and both of them made their first move. Xander released his chain, aiming to strike his opponent in the gut, while Jarnel produced a thunderous stomp, which churned the earth beneath him. From his stomp, jagged spikes of stone began to protrude from the ground, and they suddenly launched themselves at Xander, shattering on his armor and obscuring his vision a little from the dust they created. Jarnel took the physical hit to the gut easily enough, but he wasn’t expecting the weapon to electrocute him so severely, causing his muscles to spasm and clamp, ruining his stance before the head of the chain bounced off of him.
The large man made the decision that he would be best served by getting closer to Xander and using his claymore rather than let Xander try to pummel him from a distance. He started off with another stomp, which caused the ground to ripple outward from his foot. As the ripple reached Xander, who was currently yanking the chain of his weapon to cause the head to fly back towards him, he was startled to find that it caused his feet to sink several inches into the soil. He was forced to drop his [Ferrokinesis] on his weapon – he’d intended to guide the chain back at Jarnel as it returned to Xander – and use his [Improved Manipulation] to loosen the hold of the stone that had formed around his boots before he finished the job by yanking his feet free.
There was no more time to get another throw off, as Jarnel had been sprinting towards Xander the entire time that he’d been dealing with his feet being bound to the ground. The head of his chain had managed to reach Xander, though, from his earlier pull on it, and so he gripped his weapon like a flail in one hand and wrapped a few lengths of the excess chain around his other fist. Jarnel had reached striking distance at this point, and his claymore was swinging towards Xander’s armored thigh.
Jarnel was startled when what appeared to be an additional arm appeared from Xander’s back, followed by several more. The first arm to appear had been one of Xander’s rune powered, shield bearing arms from his backpack, which slammed into Jarnel’s two handed sword, deflecting it towards the ground. The blow was slowed and disrupted enough by the sudden appearance of these extra arms that he was left open to a hit from Xander, who swung his improvised flail at Jarnel’s shoulder. The man seized up as the ball hit him, despite the impact being cushioned by his chainmail and the gambeson underneath it. Xander didn’t let up, and lashed out with his left fist, uppercutting into Jarnel’s stomach, though he was careful not to fully power the runes that moved his skeleton; he didn’t want to end up killing the man by rupturing an organ. As the chain made contact again, Jarnel’s muscles intermittently locked and spasmed again, preventing him from reacting or retaliating against Xander. Xander used this opportunity to wrap some of the excess chain he had around the man, keeping him in constant contact with it, and fully disabling him as his body seized up.
Xander stepped away from the prone form of Jarnel, and the gong rang. He slowly realized that he’d tuned the crowd out, and that they had been cheering, roaring, and stomping their feet as they watched the two men fight. The cheering continued a short while after the gong was rung, as Xander did his best to remove the chain from Jarnel as quickly as possible so that the man would stop being electrocuted. The big man just laid on the ground, groaning, as another pair of healers rushed out to tend to him. Xander left him to them as he jogged off the field. Jarnel soon followed, though he made a detour to exit the stadium rather than to the waiting area that the six other victors were at.