Zi-Lor looked to Henry askew,

“You’re late.”

He didn’t respond, but by the time Henry reached his desk the others had left him behind, standing and walking and slithering to leave disgusting slime and produce disturbing flesh-on-flesh noise that made him think of a meat-grinder filled with countless squirming octopi. At the door was no longer the near-endless hallway he had just left Chen-Thai at, instead replaced with an ink-black portal that students disappeared into in an orderly, silent line at their teacher’s direction.

The sensation of falling wasn’t that bad, but vertigo experienced without sight was much worse, as was the constant lurching stop-start movement that ended with his skull slamming into a sandy pit. None of his classmates seemed to mind, floating cancer-skull the least, so Henry supposed he should have accentuated the trip with flight, though it didn’t come to his mind at the time as it’s hard to brace for something so unknown.

“Oh well,” Henry thought to himself, any perceived injuries quickly fading.

“Now,” Zi-Lor’s voice projected.

A shudder went up Henry’s spine, and he turned to her at complete attention. Her command demanded nothing less than complete obedience.

“It’s time for you to learn what “applied combat” means.”

Students were teleported one-by-one into the position of floating spectator outside the medium-high stone walls that surrounded a sandy arena above the starless abyss beneath and surrounding them all. Henry was one of them, allowing himself to snap up and then out of reality before popping back in without any effects of special note.

Remaining in the pit were “Z̶̻̯͌͝’̸̛͎́̚͠e̶̖̹̳̮̅͌͋̿’̶̨̒́̇͘ͅf̴̧̺̂̓͠’̸̧̥̩̮̒̐͘͠a̴̱̠̐̿͑̄�̶̖͙̞͍̈́̐͠�̶̮̠́�̷͔̮͎͆͂̚�̵͈͋̇͆͊�̷̝͖͖̥͌e̷̩̽̒́j̵̻̟̗̙͗̒̀͆ē̷͖͌̈́͝’̷̪̻̭̱̀̏͑́’̴̮̉̈́͝’̴̙͓̟͆͂ͅ’̷͙͇̍͋’̶̝̒’̷̪́̈́’̵̢̘̀�̶̬̲͔̃͌͝͝’̴̛̣̦̯̽’̷̧̱̲͌’̴̟̎͂͝’̶̙͉̄̆̌̀�̵̻͙̙̜̆͛̚ĕ̵̹̽͋i̶̥̜̫̘̓̉̓͒e̵̖̭̮̐̋�̷̨̪̾͌̇̓ĕ̷̺̹̹͛̾̒ä̶̺ẗ̶̨͖͉̘́́̎̇,” whose name came out of Zi-Lor’s mouth an unpronounceable mess and she quickly simplified to Jeff, and Andromedus, floating half-skull, whose name needed no such shortening but Zi-Lor shortened to Andy anyway. The mass of tongue-like tentacles made no acknowledgment of its new name, but the skull began to object with a disembodied voice that sounded like a chorus of dead cherubs, but she side-eyed him and he shut his decayed half-face as much as the lacking and rotting flesh would allow.

“There will be no deaths or wounds sustained in this arena, nor will you be capable of harming the spectators, so fight with everything you have. I will be judging you closely. Begin when ready.”

She turned to the spectators immediately after, and the fighters seemed to pause as if both to avoid annoying their absolute master by distracting those she now spoke to and to learn the tempo of their own fate.

“During this period I expect you all to watch attentively. We will perform these matches weekly, and you will study how best to perform in them outside of class. Whoever performs best and worst will be given special treatment, though the details of this will differ between them.”

Ten seconds after she fell silent Henry watched as reality unfolded.

The floating skull unleashed a wave of yellow light that rippled brighter than the sun, and though the other spectators’ eyes were charred beyond the loss of sight, vision was swiftly restored to all. It seemed the martial dimension healed those not in its central arena.

This did not help the tentacle tongue-monster, though it wasn’t like he had eyes to blind to begin with. Though unclear in how he was able to detect the attack without sight, he suddenly appeared below the floating skull. Surrounding the hole in the arena where sand now poured down was a mass of slime, but it too was quickly drained.

The spine of eyes that hung like a ponytail from the skull turned to observe the tongues, but they were already in its maw by the time a beam of red light tore through the air and burned Henry’s eyebrows off for the ten seconds it took to replace them.

Another beam of light shone, but it was again meaningless. The tongues were never within range, no matter how close they came to the skull and its rays of absolute death. Despite this lack of harm to its opponent, the arena continued to deteriorate. There was almost no sand remaining in the arena, having leaked out into the void, and it didn’t seem like the arena itself would be repaired mid-fight. Another ray of red light shot out without effect on the tongues, but where it appeared it stopped the lurching, writhing, squirming acts that were characteristic to its monstrous appearance.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Below it the sand had turned to glass and trapped it in place. Henry could have sworn the skull flashed a half-smile when it fired a green ball of slow light. The tongues writhed, but it was to no avail. The light pierced its position, and Henry watched closely as the spot it had been in disappeared, but Zi-Lor made no sound, and the arena did not begin to repair itself.

A thousand individual leeches with the texture of tongues and appearance of tentacles had scattered throughout the arena, and though there was a reddish-purple mass of fluid where the original creature had once been, it was not yet defeated.

The skull cackled as the thousand leeches began to swirl around it, but a second disembodied voice laughed in its ear and the ears of all those present with the voice of ten-thousand buzzing flies.

“Do you think that is enough?”

“For one such as you? Yes.”

The tongues began to writhe and their spastic movement propelled them around the arena like a thousand springs of flesh. Some came near to and almost struck the floating skull, but its spinal-column of a dozen or more eyes kept a full 360-degree view of the arena and was thus more than capable of the pinpoint accuracy necessary to track and destroy any of its enemies that approached too closely.

The fleshy part of the skull smiled wider as the holes in the bottom of the arena grew more numerous. Though the tongue-leeches were agile enough to avoid jumping to their demise there was ever-less space for them to land on. When the last of the space was gone, however, they did not fall out, rather continuing in flight against the rough stone walls surrounding the arena and invisible barrier beyond them.

Inside the arena a cloud of green smoke or perhaps mist had made it difficult to see the happenings within. Zi-Lor did not outline the participants with magic light, nor did she make any effort for those watching to have an easier time in their task of spectating. Henry, however, did not care. He could sense the presence of those within as clearly as if the mist was not there at all.

The skull’s life force— or perhaps death or undeath force— was weakening by the second, and its outline was being chiseled into like the cloud was eroding its flesh and bone in equal measure. Just when it seemed all hope was lost an explosion rang out in orange fire and the smoke dissipated.

Half or a third of the leeches remained, and the bone side of the skull was missing its jaw. No, there was no flesh remaining on it, and the spinal column of eyes was entirely gone. Where before its right side was a mass of bone spurs it was now smooth, and where once were the flat parts of its head were now divots inwards and a mesh of holes. Beneath them was no longer a brain, nor even a collection of mush to drip out slowly, but rather an empty dome with nothing inside. Even the tongue in its eye socket was charred and half-missing.

With every passing second the skull sank closer to the empty world below, but this slow fall into decay did not stop it from attempting to destroy the foe which had forced it into this state. Rays of light shone out in oh so many meaningless variations of the exact same attack, but the tongues did not appear to have lost any stamina. This time the attacks were avoided with ease, and not a single tentacle-tongue succumbed.

“Do you still think this is enough?” rang out the voice of perhaps a hundred flies.

“For you? Yes.” was the response of perhaps two or three beaten infants, each rasping with the voice of the near-dead.

The skull began to glow as mist once more filled the chamber.

Its light was perhaps most accurately described as intensity of color and pain of the eyes originating from all points than a flame or beam.

Its power continued to dim as its body sank, but just before falling out of the arena the saturation of color reached a breaking-point, and all light turned white. Every ray of light in this world had lost its hue and became indistinguishable from all the rest. There was no sound. There was no smell— no, as the single second of climax wore on the smell of putrid flesh burned with acid wafted to Henry’s nose. His eyes, too, began to burn, along with the rest of his skin.

None of this stopped him from tracking the two temporary foes inside the arena.

The skull fell out just as it let its attack loose, but in the same moment the tongue-leeches were incinerated.

Zi-Lor declared Andy the victor on account of his driving the fight.

“While Jeff did play Andy into his hands, he did not control the initiative, which is often more important than strength or tactics. Unfortunately, Andy was still defeated and a pyrrhic victory is almost never worth the cost. One must strive for total domination; to make their enemies tremble and beg for mercy while giving none. The goal of combat is not merely to win, it’s to drive the message that defeat was never a possibility and to cause others who would oppose you in the future to think twice about what fate will meet them in such folly.”

But it seemed the next fight would not be so even-sided.