The gates to the enclosure are opened. Senior runeknights wrestle the bzathletic through. Its pincers are tied—I know it's too much to hope they'll remain that way. A deft flick of an enruned sword slices the ties apart, and the bzathletic is loose. It dashes around to grab at the swordsdwarf, but she's already out, and the gates are slamming shut.
The bell rings. Faces of both beast and dwarf, contorted by death's agony, appear then fade. This time the crowd does not cheer.
The bzathletic grips the bars in its pincers and begins to pull. The metal seems to be bending—though only very slightly. I cross my fingers as much as I can in gauntlets. If it breaks apart the enruned steel, maybe they'll call off the fight.
Guthah's already striding forward though, spear leveled at the monster's rear. Will it sense him? Like most beasts that make a life in absolute blackness, it relies on its hearing, just like the dwarves of the deep do also. The noise of the crowd should drown that out.
Nevertheless, it turns. I curse. It probably sensed the vibrations through its many pointed feet, even if half of them aren't in contact with the ground. It opens its needle-toothed maw at Guthah, who flinches, though only for a moment. Then he continues his advance.
The other initiates follow behind him. None of them are from the Association of Steel, and to my eyes their equipment is poorer than average. I can see mistakes on their over-large, clumsy runes. Their metal plates are beaten badly, and mostly plain iron.
“Cowards,” I hiss under my breath. “Don't leave him to do everything!”
As if they hear me, one rushes past Guthah with his longsword held high. Maybe he's imagining himself severing the pincer now reaching out to grab him. He hits it, and sparks jump as his blade bounces off.
The pincer grabs him by the upper arm and pulls down, forcing him to his knees. The crowd gasps. Guthah yells out and charges. He stabs his spear right into the bzathletic's maw, pulls it out, stained with streaks of dark blood. The bzathletic doesn't seem to care. It batters his spear away with its free pincer, then clamps it around the other brave initiate's neck.
Shouts of horror rise from the crowd.
“I said so, didn't I!” I spit. “I bloody said so!”
A few initiates run forward to stand beside Guthah, but they stop short of actually attacking the beast. It strengthens its grip on the captured initiate's arm and neck. His iron armor is bending now. Blood starts to pour from his upper right arm. He's grasping his longsword in his left hand and battering feebly at the beast's carapace, but to no effect.
Guthah's shouting something, though I can't make out what. Is he encouraging the others on? He seems frustrated by them. He strides forward again, jabs out a few times. The bzathletic twists its wormish body to avoid. It releases its grip on the initiate's neck to snap at Guthah's spear.
He only just manages to angle it out the way. He steps back, starts shouting again. The initiates who aren't cowering at the rear of the cage fan out to surround the beast. Some with hand-and-half or two-handed swords slash at the monster's many legs. The limbs barely twitch at the impacts.
“He's leading them,” says Braztak approvingly.
“That won't matter if it kills them all.”
“It won't.”
“It could!”
The braver initiates, twelve in total, have now fully encircled the monster. Guthah has the longest range. The rest will have to step in closer if they want to inflict any kind of damage.
I quickly glance over to the other fights. Several are finished already; salamanders and troglodytes lie bleeding on the sand. Pellas is in one of these triumphant groups—she stands on top of a dead troglodyte, armor and shield and sword drenched in red blood. I ought to be happy for her, take a moment to celebrate her victory, and the victories of our other initiates, but I can't. My eyes are pulled back to Guthah and the bzathletic.
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It wasn't meant to be this hard, thinks Calrat, initiate of the Copperblood League. His instructor told him that once the first three trials were the main challenge and the last only a formality. That back in his day there'd been deaths every time, but now only one in a thousand lost their life. If you could clear the endurance, runic, and weapon trials, that meant you were easily strong enough to kill whatever they sent your way.
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He'd seemed almost disappointed when he'd explained this, had instructor Yolok. Calrat wonders what he's thinking right now.
The pain around his upper right arm is growing more intense. The monster's claw hasn't yet pierced the iron, but it's bent the iron around it so that his own armor's become a blunt blade. He can feel blood running down toward his shoulder.
He cries out, batters the monster with his sword again. It hits—the monster doesn't care. Its armor, bone scales, whatever they are, are far too tough to be pierced by the weapon of a mere initiate.
“Help me!” he screams, again. “Help me, please!”
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“Pick a target,” Guthah yells. “Aim for between the legs!”
Shit! What in hell is this thing? It looks like one of the deep monsters Zathar was always boasting of slaying. Guthah had doubted his tales of the dangers lurking down there, but he doesn't any more. How in hell is anyone meant to hurt this thing?
Its legs and pincers are too long, too fast. Its armor is impregnable. And even stabbing right into its weak point did nothing! Weren't all monsters meant to have a weak point? Somewhere you could strike to instantly kill them?
That's just another myth, it seems. Fighting isn't so easy as the stories make it out to be. You must batter down your opponent, exhaust them, break their defences. Only then can you go for the kill.
The captured initiate with blood pouring down his arm screams again. The monster's second pincer grasps his neck again.
“Ready yourselves!” Guthah yells.
What the hell is he playing at? Pretending to be a commander? Yet no one else is doing anything—that means he has to.
“Charge!”
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I watch Guthah and the initiates charge. Is it bravery or suicide? The bzathletic stabs its legs out at all angles. Sparks shower from shields and parrying weapons. Dwarves stagger back, fall down, blood pouring from their armor. Cries of despair ring out from the stands.
The runeknights outside the arena are looking panicked. They didn't expect the monster to be able to penetrate metal so easily. Will they stop the fight? Up in the main box, the head examiner is nowhere to be seen. Is he hurrying down?
Forces reduced by half, the initiates retreat several steps. The bzathletic crushes down harder on the captured dwarf's arm. The pincers close fully as the iron gives way. He screams as his arm is severed. It falls down. Blood gushes like a waterfall, runs along the sand in a river.
Two more initiates flee to the back of the enclosure and join the rest in screaming and begging to be let out. The injured ones redouble their crawling away. Guthah, though, stands his ground.
“Fool!” I yell. “Get out of there!”
“Sit down, Zathar!” Braztak snaps. “Guthah is no coward.”
“He can't win this!”
“I thought you had faith in him!” comes a roar from behind me.
I turn, shrink under the gaze of Guildmaster Wharoth.
“Well? Do you?”
“I... I do,” I say, and sink back into my seat.
I do have faith in him. But I don't have faith in the examiners. Even now the runeknights outside the cage are refusing to let them out. I can't see their faces, but I can tell, somehow, that they're disgusted.
The one-armed initiate screams in rage and pain and slashes at the bzathletic. It's a hard slash, and fast. It has the strength of revenge behind it. The wormish monster twists its body out the way, grabs his sword in the same moment, tosses it away, and snatches its other pincer out to grab the initiate's throat. It begins to crush. The initiate wails.
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“Charge!” Guthah yells to the three other initiates still facing the beast. “Charge!”
“You fucking charge!” one of them yells.
“We need to go at the same time!”
“What difference will that make?” another one yells.
“It... Oh, fuck you then!”
Guthah jumps forward. He jabs at the monster's maw again—if he gets it in then draws back at an angle, he figures he can cut the inside of its throat more deeply. But the beast knocks his spear away with one of its front legs, then grabs at it with its free pincer. He angles it away, twists and stabs again. The steel is battered away.
Shit! He hasn't trained for this. Or has he? What are its pointed legs but spears like Zathar's? They've practiced spear on spear before, haven't they? As for the pincer, he can think of it as Zathar's war-pick, trying to hook his weapon and pull him close.
He has trained for this. And however fierce this monster may be, it's not as fierce as Zathar. Guthah once thought the black-bearded, angry-eyed dwarf's boasts to be nothing but empty fumes. Not anymore. Facing this monster here and now is the final proof that Zathar, the disdained, delusional, hated traitor, is a force to be reckoned with. A guild member to be respected.
Guthah unleashes a flurry of stabs. He focuses—he's not striking at random—sees where each is headed. His spear weaves through the blocking legs, curves around the grasping pincer. It slides into the monster's maw.
He wrenches his weapon sideways, turning the blade inside the monster's throat. It makes no reaction—but Zathar said the monsters from the deep felt little pain. Guthah rips the blade out. Dark blood sprays across the one-armed initiate kneeling before it, and over Guthah's armor too.
The monster twitches, loosens its grip on the initiate's neck. The other initiates charge, hacking and slashing. One falls, pierced twice through the chest, but the others parry their way past the chitinous spines and their weapons fall again and again, cutting deep.
Guthah stabs a dozen more times and each blow is unopposed, cutting deep. The monster's maw becomes a mess of blood and flaps of flesh holding needle-teeth at wrong angles. Its legs and pincers fall still.
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I leap from my seat and lead the cheer. They've done it—Guthah's done it. I turn to Guildmaster Wharoth.
“I told you he could do it,” I say. “And I'm sorry for doubting him at the end there.”
“You should be,” he snaps. Then, shockingly, he bows his head a touch. “But you were right about the spear.”
The guildmaster, bowing to me? I'm too shocked to reply.
“Now, everyone!” Wharoth shouts. “Let's go down and congratulate them.”