Illdan disliked being part of the crowd almost as much as he suffered in front of it. The group shuffled down the narrow aisles to their seats, moving past groups excitedly talking with or at one another at demonstrably excessive levels of volume. But Illdan couldn’t deny that the anticipation in the air was palpable; this match felt different than those that had come previously. While before the crowd had seemed content to whip themselves up into a frenzy for any fighter that put on a show, this time it was acknowledged to be the first great face-off.
Now everyone could have opinions.
As far as Illdan could tell, these two were extremely famous across Expira. Every member of the audience had an anecdote that explained how this fight would play out and was only too happy to loudly expound on their theories, whether someone was listening or not.
That had been in the days leading up to this match. At the event itself, everything buzzed with the infectious frenzy of a spectacle.
It was a relief to finally plop down in their seats, even if it now meant they were fair game for particularly opinionated individuals around them to target for conversation. Illdan looked at Krum next to him and Zeta beyond him. Merrick, after his loss, was too occupied with his intense training regimen to join them. Illdan privately wondered whether his friend was actually training, or still just recovering from the setback.
He cleared his throat. Neither of his companions looked at him; anything less than a shout was meaningless in this environment. Illdan raised his voice. “These two are powerful?”
Krum hesitated for a few seconds before nodding. “They can’t be considered the top warriors of Expira. However, they have stably been around the top warriors for a long time. Training and interacting with them. Took part in Dungeon hunting and the First Calamity. Definitely, we will see more images in this fight than we have in the other matches.”
Illdan nodded and faced forward. He had noticed that while Expirans seemed to have endlessly varied inspiration for their images, most of them lacked a cutting edge that could be wielded to deadly effect on a battlefield. The spirit of this planet was still developing. After his first match, Illdan had used this fact to reassure himself that he would go far in the tournament. For all Tellus’ other drawbacks, the images they created had been honed by violence and years of tradition. They would not falter easily before these weed-like varieties of images.
But during the second match, Illdan witnessed how much those ephemeral and recently created images grew in strength in just a short time. Battle honed them to more usable tools. And most of those images were then struck down, by fighters that already possessed extremely solid images and hadn’t felt the need to reveal them early in the tournament.
That was why Illdan had agreed to come and watch. Because he hoped that these two being forced to clash against one another would finally reveal the depths of Expira’s power. He could perhaps have a better gauge of his own chances to emerge victorious.
“Sir Spearman!”
Even through the babbled of voices in the surrounding crowd, that call cut through and made Illdan flinch forward. Zeta gave him a sidelong glance, but said nothing; by now, his new friends understood the complex and unsaid dynamics he had with his people. Illdan decided to ignore the shout, raising his chin and hoping the voice was smoothed away by the other conversations.
“Sir Spearman! Hope of Tellus!”
Of course, this speaker wasn’t so easily dissuaded. Sighing inwardly, Illdan pivoted in his seat and looked behind him. Five rows back, three Tellus warriors sat amidst a group of strange frogpeople. All three’s eyes brightened when they saw him. They waved furiously and started chanting ‘progress at any cost’.
Submerged in the rest of the audience, no one else even seemed to notice.
Illdan offered a wan smile, waved back, then turned to the stage. Because everything did get smoothed away in the crush of sound as the two contestants walked out onto the arena.
Tykes was an extremely muscled and dark-skinned man with a mild expression on his face. His head was shaved. He carried a massive iron ball the size of a lazy-boy recliner, covered in small grooves to allow his fingers to grip and lift the weapon with his raw physical power. Illdan’s eyes narrowed as he saw a shimmer of writing covering the entire blunt instrument. Some portion of Tykes image had shaped the ball into a dangerous force of destruction.
This man was no stranger to the battlefield.
Opposite him, Glendel had dark hair down to his shoulders, immaculately parted in the middle to reveal his pale face. He was thin, but his eyes were alight with intensity acutely at odds with the calm expression on Tykes face. He didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon. The two moved to their respective positions, neither looking at each other. Only when both had settled did their gazes meet.
Glendel’s nostrils flared. Tykes clapped a hand against his chest twice, the noise lost in the cheering.
“Begin.” The Ghosthound leaned sideways in his chair, chin propped up on a fist. His voice hummed with the electric potential, a boundary between the present and the future. The match started.
The first movement was Glendel’s hands. Illdan almost had to admire his long and graceful fingers, splayed out so quickly they blurred. Then the digits twitched and began to flex and manipulate the air like an instrument. From the ground in front of Glendel, giant spectral bodies began to rise. First was a massive rhinoceros with additional horns curling from its shoulders. Then came a wolf-sized spider, its body glimmering with a royal purple hue. Finally, an ominous and hard to identify third ghost rose from the ground next to Glendel. Yet even Illdan stiffened as he felt its power.
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The strange being had long arms and sharp fingers. A thick tail flicked from its waist, although it stood on two legs like a human. It had no visible eyes, just a thick plate of armor that covered the space over its wide and weirdly hinged jaw. A tongue lolled almost drunkenly outside of its mouth. The joints of its legs were backward, like a raptor.
Zeta hummed along with the rest of the crowd. Everyone at once seemed to be reacting to this powerful beast’s arrival. “A chimera. One of significant power. Impossible. How could he capture such a being and create a ghost? If Allowaen sees it-”
“She’s too practical to let it bother her,” Krum shook his head. “Honestly, expect her to spend all night talking about how much of the original’s power was retained in the ghost.”
Compared to Glendel’s display, Tykes had no complex preparations of his own to counter the summoned minions. He hefted his massive iron ball. He began to walk forward, his gaze calm and his footsteps heavy against the arena floor.
The ghastly spider reached down with its legs and began pulling spectral silk out of its abdomen. Its scythe-thin forelegs rapidly wove a completed item from the sticky materials. The rhinoceros bellowed and began rumbling forward, its legs creating an even louder din than Tykes’ footsteps as it charged to meet the muscular man. The chimera stood back, swaying like it listened to an inaudible song. Strange grey flames sprang to life around its head and hands, dancing little candle tips that followed its movements.
Tykes raised his massive iron ball, settled into a half-crouch, and then brought his weapon sharply down on the charging rhinoceros. It was a palm thrust with all the power of a cannon. In that swift and brutal movement, Tykes’s weapon crunched through the skull and shoulders of the ghost, leaving a spectral corpse twitching on the ground.
The ball dropped to the ground with a rumbling thump.
Tykes straightened and continued walking forward. His image of unrivaled strength unfurled from him, rising like a howling wind at his back, pushing him forward. His ball served as a point of resonance, seeming to feast on the destroyed rhinoceros to croon a violent song of power.
Glendel snorted and raised his hands like a puppetmaster a single moment before a heart-stopping performance. From the ground, three more ghosts clawed their way out of the ground with eyes alight with indignation that their sovereign was challenged. One was an enormous eagle with four wings, one a waddling badger on steroids, and the final was a massive sea-dwelling Kraken, its long tentacles slamming the stage and shaking the entire arena.
The chimera began to walk slowly forward amongst its fellow ghosts. More and more little grey flames sprang into being around its body. Meanwhile, the small spider began tossing out spectral webs in Tykes’ path, hemming in his methods of advancement. They laid like unassuming rugs on the tiled ground, but obviously, they could not be underestimated.
Tykes didn’t bother to change his vector, walking straight toward the heavyset badger, the eagle hovering above, the long arms of the Kraken curling around and behind him. No path of retreat remained open to him. He beckoned and the iron ball rolled a few meters back to his hand. He plucked it from the ground like it was made of wax paper.
The muscular man planted his foot, that image of strength so vast and overwhelming that even Illdan couldn’t help but have a grudging respect for him, and then launched his iron ball up at a speed that shattered the sound barrier. Before it could even flap a wing, the eagle was spectral mush.
The departure of the weapon finally added a horrifying grin to the elongated mouth of the chimera. It lowered its shoulders and charged forward, even as the Kraken began slamming its thick and rubbery tentacles against Tykes body. With a grimace, he stoically endured the blows, staggering slightly from the first and wrapping his arm around the tentacle on the second. Small cracks began to form beneath Tykes’ feet, the empowered arena unable to handle their confrontation.
Even more than the physical force, it was the rising presence of the two images that set Illdan’s teeth on edge. Staring directly at the fighting felt uncomfortable, like standing too close to a burning building. A crown of blue-green flame formed above Glendel’s head, hiding a shadowy set of cheekbones drawn with the jagged edge of shattered glass and eyes that seethed with unending resentment for the living.
Meanwhile, Tykes radiated enough power to reach out and squeeze the world. The iron ball rolling through the air hummed with that overwhelming strength.
The muscles of Tykes’ arms bulged as he gripped the massive tentacle, dragging the Kraken several meters toward him. The monster shrieked in rage and fear as Tykes raised his free hand and jerked his thumb downward. Far above, the metal orb reversed its direction and accelerated, ripping a hole in the Kraken's body and obliterating the rest with sheer velocity as it cratered into the stage.
Tykes was still holding that tentacle when the chimera arrived next to him, its finger ripping at his throat. He jerked his head backward to avoid the strike and whipped the tentacle sideways to knock the chimera away. A sharp slash from one of its long arms severed the weapon before it hit, the remaining portion of the ghost’s body dispersing harmlessly.
Then those small flames around its body exploded like little missile turrets, buzzing and unpredictable small projectiles zipping out and slamming into Tykes body. Despite his previous unflappable attitude, he grimaced and took a step back before this onslaught. Each time the small bits of energy landed on his body, his skin around the impact point turned grey and began to dry and flake.
With his small retreat, his image of invulnerable strength rapidly lost momentum. Glendel gestured again, summoning two massive werewolves from the ground that loped forward to join the fray.
The badger spear tackled Tykes, aiming to apply even more pressure while he struggled. Tykes flashed his teeth, using his left shoulder to endure a slash from the chimera while he dropped the dissipating tentacle and used his right fist to deliver a downward strike to the badger’s thick forehead.
As with his other strikes, it left the ghost’s body pulped and helpless; the body collapsed without a sound. Yet even as it dissipated, the chimera whipped its leg around and slashed with a gnarled toe across Tykes’ face. Illdan watched the stoic man’s eyeball rupture and burst, pus and blood leaking down his face and dripping onto the stage.
Tykes roared and lowered his shoulders. He charged forward to try and grapple the chimera but it danced sideways into his blindspot. He drew up and twisted around to seize upon the two loping werewolves. Their claws opened gashes across Tykes’ torso, but he physically reached out, grabbed their arms and legs, and simply tore them to shreds. Their muscular and skeletal structures were tissues before those large hands.
In the process, the chimera gathered more grey flames and Tykes stepped into one of the increasingly dense network of webs spread across the arena. When he tried to take another step, the web stretched for a second but held his foot fast to the ground. He was forced to take another half-second to rip his way out.
Across the arena, Glendel and Tykes eyes met. Glendel’s long fingers beckoned and another two werewolves rose from the ground, these taller, meander, and more dangerous looking than the previous group. They raised their heads and howled before launching themselves forward to hunt their master’s enemy.