With Bryzax having sixteen banners on hand, of which two can be exposed on sockets on each side of Enno’s box at any time, the main event begins in earnest. And the crowd, sitting on wooden, covered grandstands, is awaiting the start of the main event, with both Yutolio and Saronium standing ready to tend to injuries sustained by the participants.
“The tournament consists of duels fought to the first blood. Now, because none of the champions are really known competitors in the tournament world, the first round will prove to be unpredictable!” Bryzax announces to the attendees, before announcing the competitors in first round of dueling, along with their home communities.
The first duel pits a mentalist, who uses illusions to lure her opponent into tricking him to attack the illusory copies, against a vandal who wastes no time getting invisible. And simply gets behind each illusion, wondering which one is real.
At the same time, it seems like, after failing to land a hit on the mentalist, the vandal starts hearing voices from nowhere:
“You represent… a community… unworthy of the haunted park!” the vandal starts hearing a ghostly voice and, for some reason, some other spectators near the vandal also hear that ghostly voice.
Why? Why! the vandal starts questioning not only whether the voice was real, but also himself. But as the mentalist is about to use the confusion she created to cast another spell on him, he goes invisible, turning the entire duel into a game of hide-and-seek. Which is about to degenerate.
And yet, the mentalist seems to hear another ghostly voice herself, but not the one she made the vandal hear in an attempt to disorient him.
“You can’t hide!” the second ghostly voice tells the mentalist in a creepy tone.
Where does that voice come from? The mentalist starts thinking, not knowing where the vandal is, and not wanting to cast spells indiscriminately to locate him. No more than she might want to resort to such means to locate the source of this ghostly voice, if external to herself. It seems like some outside forces might interfere, and I might not want to anger what that outside force is!
But even though the mentalist hears it, the vandal hears it too, even with him still staying cloaked. This ghost is right: I can’t stay hidden to attack when this tournament is held in broad daylight!
The vandal tries to get behind the mentalist, but is quickly reminded that the duel isn’t fought to the death. He draws his wakizashi and settles for a small cut down her back. Which isn’t deep enough to hit her spine. Poor mentalist, who rushes to the exit of the pitch, with a cut in the back.
“And the winner is…” Bryzax removes the banner of the mentalist’s community from its socket while he announces the vandal’s name and community, as he sees the mentalist’s open back injury.
“Why am I hearing voices out of nowhere? It doesn’t sound like her! There must be someone, or something else somewhere!” Enno is puzzled by the voices heard all over the place.
Meanwhile, the mentalist is carried off the pitch by the two healers on hand tending to whoever gets injured in these duels. They take her to a tent where the mentalist lies flat on her belly. Against a cot.
“I know what you did…” a ghostly voice directed at Saronium blabbers.
“What do you mean?” a confused Saronium asks. “Is it in relation to haunted parks?”
While Yutolio casts some magic on the mentalist’s back injury, the ghost, who, up to this point, had no visual form, starts appearing at the entrance of the tent. And a cloud of fog surrounds the entrance of the tent, making way for a phantom cataphract wearing lamellar armor, along with his horse.
“You were there for the protests in Upper Perseria!” Marzban, the phantom horseman, keeps blabbering.
“All I did was heal the people going into Upper Perseria! When you’re a rental healer going through the haunted parks of the world…” Saronium retorts before being interrupted by her fellow healer.
“Saronium, this ghost is a danger to the wounded, and to you!” Yutolio screams in her direction, urging her to flee, sensing that the phantom horseman could be a threat to both her and her patient.
Saronium leaves the tent with the cataphract ghost watching her every move. A little concerned with brusque moves, she slowly crawls out of the tent to protect the patient, just as the second duel is about to start on the pitch.
When the second duel, pitting a lancer against a berserker wielding an axe, gets underway, the duel gets much more entertaining than the previous one to the eyes of the spectators, since at least the combatants don’t engage in a game of hide-and-seek.
As the duel unfolds under the cheers of the crowd, and there’s good back-and-forth, blow-by-blow, they are oblivious to what is going on outside of the pitch. Especially not when more ghost cataphracts start appearing out of nowhere, pinning Saronium, whose back is now on the ground.
Marzban then points his xyston, a long, heavy lance, at her chest, while two more ghost cataphracts instead point their xystons at her legs. The other two ghost cataphracts appear ready to thrust their xystons into her body at any time.
“What’s happening?” Saronium is screaming at the ghost cataphracts, whom she recognizes by being the strongest trash in Upper Perseria. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“You traipsed through… Upper Perseria… with those responsible… for the slaughter of innocents… in Lower Perseria!” Marzban mumbled at her in a creepy voice.
“I ran Upper Perseria several times, I might be wondering which run you’re referring to!” Saronium’s heart pounds in her chest while she only seemed to have fragmentary memories of who she ran Upper Perseria with, and when.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Oh boy. Why is it that these cataphracts have found their way all the way here? What happened to the Perserian haunted parks? the rental healer hyperventilates when the cataphracts pin her in place.
“It seems like… the new regime… in Perseria” a phantom cataphract gets interrupted.
“Wait a minute… new regime?” Saronium then gets xystons thrust at her feet, piercing them. “Ouch!”
“Quiet!” an annoyed Marzban shouts. “The people responsible… for slaughtering innocents in Lower Perseria… now rule the city!”
“They were doing this under the influence of angelic beacons! They wouldn’t have killed innocents otherwise!” her tone of voice hints at the pain she’s under from the phantom cataphracts thrusting xystons at her feet.
“What do angelic beacons do… to their wearers?” Tissaphernes, an oblivious phantom cataphract, asks her, in a creepy Persian accent, while removing the xyston from her right foot.
“Did you wear one yourself?” Ermahgerd, the other subordinate cataphract, asks her, in a strident voice, while both feet bleed from the two horsemen having pierced her feet with xystons.
“Yes!”
The phantom cataphracts, ex-Perserian from how they talk about the events in the city, simply vanish out of Saronium’s sight.
While Yutolio has the mentalist rest in another box where she could watch the remaining duels to be fought, he rushes to Saronium’s aid, casting healing spells on her feet. Sure enough, her feet begin to return to normal.
At the same time, the second duel ends, and the victor is announced, with the loser being carried off the pitch by Yutolio and Bryzax since Saronium is not yet in condition to carry off the wounded lancer to the tent. Therefore, Enno must announce the result.
“And the winner is…” Enno announces the winner of the duel by name, removing the banner of the community the lancer represents from its socket.
The combatants scheduled for the third duel are two magic-users, a vicar and an electricity wizard. However, as per usual, they must wait until Bryzax returns to Enno’s box before they can enter the pitch.
Once they enter the pitch, after the combatants are duly announced, they are in for a most unpleasant surprise.
The cataphracts who, moments ago, were tormenting Saronium, even thrusting xystons into her feet, now reappear in the middle of the pitch as the battle starts.
“What’s going on here?” a startled spectator asks in horror.
“Stop the duel!” Bryzax screams in the direction of the flesh-and-blood combatants, before turning to the audience. “There appears to be some irregularities in this duel, and the duel shall be postponed until the irregularities are corrected!”
Now that we’re no longer fighting each other, time to fend off the ghosts together! The electricity wizard thinks, now faced with the prospect of fighting 3 phantom cataphracts.
“Justice for Lower Perseria!” Marzban shouts, in a creepy voice, before getting into position to skewer the vicar with his xyston.
Speaking of xyston, the electricity wizard casts a lightning bolt spell on one of the phantom cataphracts’ xystons. And the lightning bolt arcs from the spearhead of the xyston to the horse’s barding, the cataphract gets hit by the spell, but remains in condition to fight. However, the electricity wizard runs away in an attempt to avoid getting hit by the xyston.
Meanwhile, the vicar casts a flare spell that engulfs all three cataphracts, in hopes of blinding the ghosts, or to otherwise hurt them. However, what he does not realize is that these ghosts’ armor offer little openings for the light to filter through. And mostly through their helmets.
“What do you mean, justice for Lower Perseria?” Bryzax shouts in the direction of Marzban. “What Kaeshanian could possibly have committed crimes in Lower Perseria?”
But both magic-users run around the pitch in hopes of causing the phantom riders to collide on each other. However, as much as they try to do so, charging at full speed towards the magic-users made it more difficult for the ghosts to maneuver. And they crash into the stands, with the collision happening the same as if real horses were involved, narrowly missing them both. And, of course, the spectators on the aswarans’, or cataphracts’, collision course only had a few seconds to get out of the way.
Yet the impact of the crash caused spectators around the crash site to scream in horror at the sheer force of the impact, especially when the xystons remain stuck on the stands. Thanks to their phantom horses disappearing on impact, their armors now litter the ground at the impact site. With the cataphracts being unhorsed, they draw their shamshirs to continue the fight, because they find xystons to be unwieldy at close-quarters.
It's only now that the mentalist appears to be sufficiently recovered from the shock of the ghosts appearing in the middle of the duel to use mind control magic on one of the ghosts. One who crashed on the stands. And the spell goes off, causing one of the subordinate ghosts to be under the mentalist’s control.
The cataphracts’ crash upon the stands actually caused nearly all of the attendees to flee the arena in panic, leaving only three spellcasters to fend them off. However, this means that Enno dashes to the armory, where he put his assault rifle. And Bryzax reaches for his dha, also in the armory, since there was no time to put on his armor.
“What are these ghosts doing?” Enno asks a frightened Bryzax, who saw the ghost horsemen crash against the stands.
“I don’t think they crashed on the stands on purpose! And they haven’t answered our questions about asking for justice for Lower Perseria!” Bryzax then dashes for the armory, the same as Enno.
Back at the arena, the remaining 10 champions who have yet to duel each other stand ready to start fighting the unhorsed cataphracts. Whom they quickly realize, along with the berserker and the vandal from earlier, that they need to work together to take down such formidable opponents.
Even with the mentalist making a mind-controlled Tissaphernes go for the chinks of the armors of the other two left behind by them being unhorsed at full gallop. Even with the berserker going mad from battle lust and charging head-on towards the enemy, holding their attention. This buys some time for the spellcasters to get their magic on hand.
This forced both Saronium and Yutolio to step in and using their healing magic to keep everyone in the arena up. As this scene starts to play out like a melee, the Kaeshanian champions fight on one side and the Perserian cataphracts on the other.
By the time the crowd’s nerves return to normal, some of them want to see how this nightmare is about to end. However, others don’t seem to be too enamored of seeing ghosts recklessly fighting to the point of crashing their phantom horses to disappearance against the stands.
But while the mind-controlled aswaran (Perserian dialect for cataphract) couldn’t quite exploit the chinks in the armors of the other two aswarans as effectively as the mentalist hoped, the electricity wizard casts a chain lightning spell. This stuns all 3 unhorsed cataphracts for a few seconds. Which the others mercilessly exploit, smashing through the joints in their armors, and tearing these ghosts’ limbs apart in just a few seconds.
Marzban then raises the white flag, prompting all the Kaeshanian champions to stop fighting them.
“I surrender! My arms, and my comrades-in-arms’ weapons, and horse armors, are yours as you see fit!” Marzban drops his weapons, just as Enno arrives on the scene with his assault rifle in hand.
“Your comrades-in-arms are seriously maimed. I accept your surrender. However, the proceeds from the sale of your equipment shall be used to pay for repairs to the stands first and any remaining money will go towards building the haunted park!” Enno rules on Marzban’s surrender.
I guess, if it took 17 Kaeshanian warriors to defeat these ghost cataphracts, maybe I ought to consider other means to decide where to build the haunted park. However, unarmed, they don’t pose nearly as much of a threat to other prisoners, Enno starts thinking of an alternate method to designate the community that will host the realm’s haunted park.