Both sides men formed a ring. I and Pontos stood ten cubits from each other, shields out, Xiphos bared.

We eyed each other intently, waiting for the first move. Pontos went first. He threw a conch at me, from which he spewed a tidal wave, sweeping me off my feet and making me crash land on the ground.

Pontos’s men dared snicker, I would show those anneggkefalos who they messed with in due time.

I wiped the water off my eyes and charged at Pontos. Pontos blocked my first strike, but failed to meet my roundhouse kick. He went stumbling to the side, coughing out Saliva.

He then bought a big conch out from his pocket and…spewed water at me? I raised my shield to block but to my surprise, the water dented the bronze. Pontos kept spewing water at me when I realized… these weren’t just mere handfuls of water! These were shaped like arrows! Some power of Thallasoi, perhaps.

Just when I had made the connection, Pontos managed to chip my shoulder off with a clean fire of a water arrow. I grunted, a sharp, searing pain slipping into my shield hand.

I tried to advance, but when I did so, Pontos fired a large balls of water at me, cracking my shield and flying me backwards. I suppose he formed a Boulder of water.

When I looked back at Pontos, He was sneering at me. Tartarus knows why I agreed to this stupid duel.

Pontos advanced at me, and he drew his Xiphos. “Surrender, Foreigner.”

I suddenly saw red. Surrender… I had surrendered my home, my parents, my relatives and many of my men to this cruel world. I would not surrender this duel. I stood up, shaking but defiant. “Thank you, but no thanks, Smelly dude.”

Pontos glared at me. “So be it, Foreigner.” He then aimed the conch at me.

My eyes darted around, Xiphos, random helm, an axe, a corpse, and….fire… I suddenly felt a tug of familiarity in my core, Like I just grabbed a Xiphos and was dueling. I willed the fire to change form into 50 metre long serpentine monstrosity of destruction with fiery scales with thee head of a line, scaly wings with four limbs, It was a Drakon, and I willed it to charge Pontos.

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Unfortunately, One of his guys gasped in alarm. Pontos looked behind, jumped in fear, whipped his conch at my charging Fire Drakon, and responded with a Drakon of his own. But this time, made of water.

The Drakons clashed with each other, clawing, slashing, biting each other futilely, creating loads of steam and vapour in each exchangement.

While Pontos was busy manipulating his Drakon, I was slowly conjuring another smaller drakon behind him (My men had gagged his men so they couldn’t alert Pontos this time.) and it edged slowly but surely up behind him.

I stopped manipulating my previous drakon just as Pontos’s Drakon bit into my drakon’s neck, creating an trick that made it seemed that I lost the fight.

Pontos, his once confident bellow reduced to a strangled gasp, whirled around. A flash of crimson fury filled his vision – a colossal Drakon, scales the color of embers erupting into the night sky. Its eyes, molten gold orbs, fixated on Pontos with a predatory hunger.

A deafening shriek tore through the air as the Drakon lunged. Time seemed to slow around Pontos. He saw, in agonizing detail, the rows of razor-sharp teeth glinting in the firelight, a cavernous maw lined with molten heat. Then, a searing agony erupted in his shoulder as the Drakon's jaws slammed shut, tearing through his armor like it was tissue paper.

Pontos roared, a primal sound ripped from his very core. His world dissolved into a maelstrom of pain and agony. He thrashed wildly, flinging mud and his own blood in a desperate attempt to dislodge the beast. The Drakon, unfazed, shook its head with a sickening crunch, the sound of shattered bone mingling with Pontos' screams.

He clawed at the Drakon's face, his fingers finding only searing scales. He could feel his life draining away, stolen by the flames and the savage bites. His cries for mercy, on which he only ever heard from others, came out from his own throat, dissolved into pathetic whimpers lost in the night.

Then, with a final, earth-shaking tremor, the Drakon flung Pontos aside. His broken body lay crumpled and still, a smoking pyre in the moonlight. The Drakon itself dissolving into steam.

That was when a old but stern voice called out from behind me, “What are you doing to one of my aristoi?”

I turned around and saw the old but toned form of the King of Athens, Aegeus II, descendant of Zeus.