Author's Nightmare: Chapter 124 (Patreon)

Beam POV: Day 101

Current Wealth: 216 gold 16 silver 45 copper

Arthur was easier to fight, at first. Oh part of that was me becoming more powerful of course- but I’m not egotistical enough to have believed for an instant that I was meaningfully closer to him. His soreness was what did most of the heavy lifting, lowering his physical abilities to a level more akin to the Challenger or Aja the Pithound, and that combined with my progression of power to just barely let me fight him in such a way that was almost not embarrassing. 

Well, we all had to take whatever victories we could, I supposed. Particularly when they were against a man capable of snapping bricks in half with grip strength alone. 

It was made worse, too, by the fact that I was only sometimes fighting with my weapon of choice. Helena’s healing had gotten along quite some length over the course of the tourney, and though it would still be a while before she was actually fighting, the woman could properly exercise again. When she wasn’t doing laps, or practice-thrusts to re-sharpen the corded musculature of her body after weeks of watching it soften, she was tutoring me on spearwork in preparation for the next bout. 

“You’re doing it too shallowly.” She’d snap. When I wasn’t gripping it too hard and thus throwing off my accuracy, or holding the shaft at the wrong points for ideal control, or any number of other imperfections which the King of Blades would surely punish me for. I came to think I was an idiot, eventually, until she let it slip one day that I was apparently the fastest learner she’d ever seen. Apparently her standards were just ridiculously high. 

Helena wasn’t the sort of teacher to be gentle as she broke hard facts to a student in any case. I appreciated that, because it meant that when she told me I’d improved by a lot, I actually had cause to believe her. I wasn’t nearly as good with a spear as a sword still, of course, and I probably wouldn’t ever be, but in any case it was progress. A small victory, and I’d be taking every victory I could get. 

My training was more of a coping mechanism than anything else as the days trickled by and my worries grew, but it wasn’t the only thing restoring my confidence. Shango returned one day with a broad grin on his face and a new light in his eyes, which I only understood the context for after having it explained. 

“I’ve levelled up.”

It was the sort of news that takes a moment to sink in, which in retrospect is disturbing. It was very, very good news, sure, but also fairly simple and certainly not unprecedented. That I had such a hard time letting it actually solidify in my mind probably says more about the sort of week we’d been having than anything else. 

“How much?” I asked, instantly. 

“One level.” He shrugged. “But it’s better than no levels. Some of those alchemists were tough, and very scared. I’d not gone in expecting to sway them. Then I did.” He was grinning more openly than I’d seen in days, and damn if it wasn’t a refreshing sight. 

“Equally balanced stats, now.” He continued. “I’m sitting at elevens for everything. Huh. Remember when that was impressive?”

God, I did remember. When we used comparisons to real-world athletes as measuring sticks and milestones. As of this moment, Shango was the only one of us that even really worked to do justice, not counting our subordinates. And I had a feeling he’d be growing soon enough as well. 

Even if I might not be getting much farther than where I already was. That thought stung, lowering my just-barely raised mood all over again. 

“Good for you.” I smiled, weakly, and Shango was nice enough not to embarrass me by pointing it out. 

Soon enough, the time had come for me to march out into the tournament. My every step towards it felt heavier than the last. It was strange. I’d fought in more matches than I could count, over the years, and within the last few months I’d tested myself in more than one fight to the death. None of them struck me as fearfully as my approach did now.

I suppose I’d never been waiting to fight an enemy so clearly beyond me, before. No matter who I fought today, I’d be the underdog, and I didn’t have any friends to help even the playing field either. It was a horrible novelty. 

“You’ll do fine.” Solitaire told me, unprompted. I turned to stare at him, and found that he was already staring far more intensely. I nodded, somewhat disconcerted, and forced a smile. If he was speaking like this, worrying like this…Well, I’d never seen him do so before. He must have been unnerved. 

How terrified did I look to inspire that sort of response? 

Soon, he was at my back and I was waiting in the stands for my name to be called. I wasn’t kept waiting for long. 

And neither was Aja the Pithound. 

Armoured, armed and trembling with a mix of terror and adrenal strength, I entered the arena ready for blood and any other fluids which might find themselves painting the place. He did much the same, writ stiller. 

I realised, then, that I’d never actually been that close to the Pithound. My first time experiencing it was a shaking one. He was big, very big. Taller than Solitaire, broader than Argar. The plate armour strapped about him made it difficult to gauge anything concrete about his physical proportions, the outer shell of steel had to be an inch thick at least, but there was clearly no lack of musculature beneath. Staring into his visor, I felt like I was locking eyes with a black hole.

The match’s start was declared, and Aja drew his khopesh. I drew my own weapon.

A spear. The new one, made by Solitaire, measuring easily ten feet in total length and made of dense tool steels and light woods across its entire body. With luck, even my current opponent wouldn’t be able to hack it in half with that Draconian Bronze edge of his weapon. 

But when had we ever been lucky?

The Pithound was charging, and I backed away, jabbing low and high, testing his guard. Well, there wasn’t much to be desired in it. His sword was everywhere my speartip was, mostly through skill but partially from the great weight at the end of my weapon. The Pithound was barely forced to halt his rush, which is all that saved me. If he got past my weapon’s length, he might be on me before I could swap to my sword.

He circled, cautious now, and I realised why. He wasn’t seeing any reason to charge in after me. 

So I had to sweeten the deal. I thrust again, stepping forwards now and throwing my whole weight behind it, an over-committed stab which would leave me too open to possibly answer any counter attacks he might manage after the fact. The khopesh knocked my spear aside, but not entirely off-kilter, and its tip crunched into the edge of Aja’s breastplate.

Had Solitaire been a normal person, that might have been all she wrote. He’d have shrugged off the impact, come flying at me and hacked me to pieces in moments. Fortunately, my friend was nuttier than squirrel shit. 

The tip of my spear, which I’d been told was crammed absolutely full of something called mercury fulminate, detonated the moment its metal blade met strong enough resistance to be pushed back into the section of shaft behind it. I looked away just in time to spare my retinas, but even from over three yards away I felt the concussive force of the blast and was sent stumbling by it. My heels scraped the ground, head shaking, vision blurry.

But I was just peachy compared to poor Aja, who seemed to be simultaneously attempting a new world record for both clumsiest and longest backflip. Looked like he succeeded, too, as he only came down face-first onto the stone after flying a good ten or so feet. 

There was a big, blackened section to his plate armour which was still spitting out thick smoke as he tried to sit up, and I could just barely make out dents and cracks along the sheet. He moved slowly, dazed, and with no excess of vigour after his little impromptu gymnastics as well. He’d been hurt, he’d been worn down.

I’d been given an opportunity, and I closed in to make full use of it. 

By the time I was on the Pithound, he seemed mostly recovered, but still favoured one side as he moved to parry my swing. His return stroke almost caught me, but I just barely ducked back from it. 

He was taking the offensive, then, trying to force me back and keep me running. I had no intention of allowing that of course, twisting into one of his swings and letting it slide over my sword as I braced it against myself.

God, I still almost got disarmed. It was like trying to block a cavalryman’s lance, sheer, inhuman force placed behind a single mass. I stumbled away, forced myself to regain my balance, and shot in. Jab jab jab, quick, light feints at his face followed by a bigger swing down at the damaged section of his armour.

Predictably, he moved to block the blow. That was fine, because I’d been ready to twist it down into his thigh at the last second. The plate there quivered and cracked under my enhanced weapon.

I backed off again, eying the damage, looking for any flecks of blood. Little, and none. That was fine. I’d just have to keep chipping away at him. 

Clearly, Aja knew too. He was attacking again. God, did he attack. 

Left, right. His swings were like scything swipes, threatening to behead me as easily as a blade of grass. Down, up. His sword was a falling guillotine, a roaring volcanic jet, all mass and speed and deadly, mutilating precision. My arm was numbing with every blow I guarded, strength too little by far to contest the sheer pneumatic might driving his every swing. 

Scared, champion?

It was a familiar voice, one I’d not heard for a long time. The one who apparently gave me my magic and lived in my head.

Piss off, I thought, and I heard laughter echo through my thoughts.

That’s the spirit, now aim it at him.

I did, though there was a big difference between the right spirit and the strength to back it up. I made an opening I knew Aja would go for, and twisted from the path of his blow before letting one of my own catch his arm mid-swing.

Blood. Finally, blood. Crimson and sticky, hot and dribbling down the crook of his elbow where my sword had bitten down. Aja stepped back, clearly surprised, and I closed in to capitalise. I managed two more swings before he regathered his wits. One was parried entirely, the second, though.

The second came down on another section of his breastplate, further torturing the metal. 

Whatever the vampire’s rapier was made of, it was at least as good as the tool steel Ardin was working. That, and my enhanced cutting edge courtesy of my own ethereal conjurations, meant that it was just armour-piercing enough to threaten Aja. 

He knew it, too, but he didn’t get panicky and overly cautious like most men did once they started losing. Just focused more. A new assault struck me, and this time I found my fatigue had grown too much to continue blocking for long. 

His khopesh came down on a pauldron, cutting through and nicking the flesh beneath. Another slice took the plating over my stomach. I was bleeding more than him, now, which meant time had just taken my enemy’s side, and things were only worsening from there. I couldn’t beat him. 

So I changed styles entirely, abandoning defence. I waited for the moment of his swing, then stabbed for him. His sword came down first, hitting my backplate and leaving the deepest cut I’d felt so far on my body below. 

My strike, though, was the deadlier one. I felt the tip of my rapier go through Aja’s plate armour, the chainmail beneath and bypass the padded underclothes like they weighed nothing. It buried itself in his chest like a shovel in dirt. 

Both of us fell at once, blood leaking everywhere. The stadium’s noise became distant and incoherent, like buzzing insects in my ears. I groaned, shifted, thrashed slightly as I felt my body protest at the slightest motions, fell still.

They are about to declare you a beaten man.

It was all I got from my friendly little voice, and it was all I needed. Aja and I had fallen at once, would they decide the victor based on which of us was most damaged?

No. This tournament would use any excuse they could to hand me the loss. So I needed to get the fuck up, and take it from them. 

My newly acquired injuries screamed as I moved, reminding me with every inch that my body was falling apart at the seams. I ignored them, just as I ignored the growing weakness in my core left by absent blood now pooling around me. Moment by moment, I got up. 

Standing upright, I could see that Aja was still twitching, but barely. I held myself aloft just long enough to have it all declared my win, smiling as I did. Then, the moment it was all over, I collapsed. 

Funnily enough, I thought I remembered being like this once before as well. It had…Yes, it had been right after arrival, I thought. Right after we first got attacked by that bear. I did hope we didn’t get dropped into crippling medical debt again this time.

Then again, that would just be bloody typical of this world. When had we ever been lucky here? When had we ever had the easier time of things?

Strong hands came to grasp me, carefully hauling me from the arena, and I let myself drift off.