Level One God

[Vitus]

The frozen gauntlet caught Julius across the ribs, and I heard the crack of ice forming on his armor. He rolled with the blow, twin swords already moving to sever the animated armor's elbow joint. We all knew by now that the ice would keep spreading unless the beast was killed.

"Flank! Pincer it!" I barked, bringing my greataxe down in an overhead strike that split another suit of armor from helm to groin. The pieces shattered like glass, trailing wisps of condensed air as they clattered to the frost-covered stones.

These things were a nightmare. Empty suits of ancient armor, each wielding weapons of pure ice that froze flesh and armor on contact. We'd already seen what happened to the contestants who'd tried to clear this castle before us. A group of slaves had tried to find shelter here, and now the only thing left of them were corpses frozen solid with blackened and rotting skin.

Marcia and Thalor pincered the armor that caught Julius, dismantling it in short order.

More armor rushed from a pair of double doors, the ground turning to white ice in their wake.

Marcia jabbed her spearpoint beneath one of their helms, then wrenched hard and popped it off, severing the magic connection. Thalor swept in, one-handed axes flashing as he broke apart their armor piece by piece, dodging blows with ease. Julius laughed, twin swords flashing in his trademark style, which was far too damn showy for my tastes.

One of the suits of armor tried to stab me, but I stepped aside, bashed its helmet apart with the butt of my axe, and then overcharged my muscles for a upward, diagonal strike.

The frozen bits of it bounced off the ceiling and landed in the suddenly quiet room. We all looked around as if surprised it was over already. Julius yawned, sheathing both swords in a cross pattern on his back, then folded his arms and leaned against a wall.

"I think that's the last of them in this hall," Marcia said.

"Form up," I commanded, scanning the corridor ahead. "Thalor, check that door. Isarona, check Julius' armor and make sure that ice isn't spreading."

Thalor Khenti pressed his palm against the ancient wood, closing his eyes. His earth magic wasn't flashy, but it had its uses. "Stone and metal behind it," he reported. "Thick. Reinforced."

"Vault?" Julius asked, wincing as Isarona used her unique flavor of vibration magic to generate heat and melt the ice in the center of his breastplate. The air shuddered and shook, making it look as though Isarona and Julius were behind a blurry cloud.

"Or another trap." I approached the door, a small smile playing at the edges of my mouth. "Are we afraid of a trap?"

There were smirks and chuckles behind me. It was answer enough for me.

We tried magic and then Julius gave picking the locks a try. After a minute, I grew impatient. "Move," I said.

Julius, who was crouched in front of the lock, cocked his head and looked my way. "Oh, no. Vitus is going to do the thing again, isn't he?"

"He's definitely going to do the thing," Marcia said. "You should move."

Julius removed his lockpicking tools and jogged out of the way.

I channeled mana, letting instinct guide the spell. I felt the energy building in my body. My legs. My shoulders.

Power swelled within me. My skin hardened on one side and the urge to move became almost impossible to ignore, but I held, letting it build.

It was always a test of will. How long could I fight the impulse to charge. How long could I let it grow before I unleashed the spell?

The answer was about two minutes. It was the longest I'd ever held it off, and by the time I took the first step, my body hummed with so much energy I could barely stand it.

What felt like one small step was an explosion. The stones cracked beneath my lead foot. The wind lifted the hair of my allies, then rushed against my back. And I was charging.

Gods, was I charging.

I ran toward the door, one shoulder raised for impact and turned my face to the side. The door was thick steel, but I hardly felt it.

There was a terrible wrenching sound and then a boom. Dust surrounded me and the bliss of power began to leak from my body.

Marcia whistled low as she sauntered through the destruction to stand at my side. "A little overkill, maybe?"

Thalor clapped me on my shoulder, smiling. "Don't listen to her, boss. That door deserved it."

"Where is the door, anyway?" Julius asked, coughing delicately as he stepped over the rubble in the archway, squinting against the dusty mess.

"Here," Isarona said, voice high and light. She had somehow moved past all of us and was several dozen feet deeper in the room. She stood where the circular door was crumpled and embedded so deeply in the stone wall it was almost flush. "Remind me never to lock a door on Vitus."

The dust began to clear and I could see what the vault door protected.

Racks of frost-touched armor gleamed in the torchlight. Bracers, greaves, chest pieces. All of it emanated a cold that made our breath fog.

"Frost-walker enchantments," Marcia said, running her fingers over a vambrace. "I've seen this before. Mild protection against cold for the wearer and a nasty little curse that slows your attackers every time they land a hit on you. Cumulative, too."

I began pulling pieces from the racks, tossing them to my team. "Take what fits. Leave vanity for later."

Julius caught a set of pauldrons, examining them with the eye of someone who'd grown up surrounded by enchanted gear. "Tournament-grade temporary enchantments. They'll last perhaps a week before the magic fades." He shrugged, already fastening them. "How wonderfully democratic of the committee. Giving commoners a taste of what we wear to formal dinners."

"An edge is still an edge," I said, strapping on my own pieces. The cold was uncomfortable but manageable. Julius was right about these only being tournament-grade temporary enchantments. A real piece of frost-walker gear wouldn't feel cold to wear. "We take every advantage we can get."

"Even small ones," Thalor agreed, his tone carefully neutral. He was always the most practical of us.

Once equipped, we made our way to the keep's great hall where a viewing portal had been established. Every structure in this tournament held some kind of advantage for those who maintained control. Our first castle had given us the enchanted map that showed the location and status of every structure in the tournament grounds. It was incredibly useful, and how we'd known to head for this keep next.

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This keep, it seemed, had some kind of permanent viewing portal. Tactical information.

We all stared at the massive disc of magic humming in front of the far wall, showing a view of other contestants.

"Think this is happening right now?" Marcia asked as we watched a pair of aspirants who seemed to be scouting and chatting. One was a big bald slave, based on the tattoos, and he was talking excitedly about soup.

"Yes," I said. "They wouldn't show something this mundane for a daily review."

I settled onto a broken stone bench, the others arranging themselves nearby. We all quietly started recovering mana and eating rations as we waited, watching the portal to see if we could gather anything useful.

For nearly half an hour, the view just followed the slave who somehow managed to talk about nothing but soup the entire time. His companion seemed exhausted by it.

"If we meet him," Marcia said as she chewed a chunk of meat we'd hunted and cooked earlier. "I want to try his soup."

"Agreed," Thalor said. "Then we can kill him."

"Enough of that," I snapped. "We're not here to be savages."

Thalor shrugged. "Someone has to eliminate them. We can be merciful about it, but there's no use pretending the slaves can stay alive till the end."

I didn't need to look to know viewing portals were hovering in the room. They always followed us. We were, after all, the designated crowd favorites. "There's just no need to be so callous about it," I said after a brief delay.

I felt Marcia watching me, but I didn't meet her eyes.

To my relief, the viewing portal shifted suddenly. It was showing us the day's highlights, now.

"Oh, great. It's the propaganda reel," Julius yawned.

The editing was obvious. Every noble's victory was shown from multiple angles, with dramatic slow-motion captures of finishing blows.

I kept my expression neutral as my own image appeared, leading the charge against the frozen armors. They'd managed to capture the moment I'd torn one apart with my bare hands, making it look far more impressive than it had felt.

"They do love their narratives," Julius murmured.

The image shifted, and I straightened. A figure in a simple iron helmet with horns. I knew that man.

"Look who it is," Marcia said, leaning forward. "Our favorite mystery…"

The scene showed Brynn facing something that made my blood run cold. A void crawler. The view we saw showed it as a semi-transparent cat-like thing with a two-pronged tail. I knew from stories Brynn wouldn't have been able to see a thing. If there were shadows around, a void crawler could wreathe itself in them, becoming completely invisible.

They were notoriously deadly.

Most were Iron Rank classification, but it was common knowledge that a Silver or stronger was needed to take one on without excessive risk. And that was assuming the adventurer went in prepared.

I felt my stomach sink because I knew how this would end. There was no chance in all the hells that Brynn could survive that thing, especially not alone.

The editing didn't hide what happened next. Claws of nothingness tore through armor and flesh, blood spraying in arterial gouts. Brynn went down hard, the creature falling on him in a frenzy of violence.

The portal cut away just as the blood pool was spreading.

"Gods," Isarona breathed. "That was pretty twisted of them to put a void crawler in here with us. Do you think there are more of them out there?"

"Let's hope not," Marcia said, hugging her arms to her chest and shivering slightly.

"Well," Julius said, biting a chunk from the meat in his hand. "He's probably done. Think they stasis evaced him? Or think they let him die?"

"Definitely dead," Thalor said.

Isarona was frowning. "They didn't show the end. Just cut away. If he died, you'd think they'd want everyone to see it, right? They really hate him."

"There was nothing left to show," Marcia said. "You saw those wounds."

I stayed quiet, remembering. That same helmeted figure walking through the corpse-filled tunnel in Beastden. The whispers afterward, about a single Iron taking down an Eclipsed.

"You're thinking about Beastden," Julius said, reading my expression.

"Aren't you?" I asked.

He shrugged. "The man was... unusual. But you saw that," he said, gesturing toward the view portal which was showing moments of the other nobles taking keeps now that they had secured their main castles."

Thalor tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I suppose if you are willing to believe the rumors about him are true, then—"

"They're not," Marcia interrupted. "No one solos an Eclipsed. No fresh Iron walks away from that kind of fight." She paused, doubt creeping into her voice. "Right?"

"My mother said they sent in an investigation team. Someone didn't just kill an Eclipsed. They took down the dungeon boss with what looked like a single spell, too. Like beams of heat had cut it clean in half."

Julius was frowning and fidgeting with the new frosty bracers he wore. "He'd have to be more than Iron, then."

"He can't be," I said. "He could hide his rank from us if he was Gold, maybe. But not from the intake process for the tournament. Everybody is screened using official artifacts. There's no fooling them."

"Then it's not possible. There's some other explanation," Marcia said.

"Is there?" I stood, pacing to the portal. "We all felt it when we met him. That weight. Like standing next to barely leashed violence."

"You sound like you're defending him," Marcia said.

"I'm acknowledging what we saw. A man walks out of a dungeon's heart, covered in gore, having apparently done the impossible. We meet him. Now we see him torn apart by a void creature." I turned back to them. "But they cut the scene. Why?"

"Because he died," Marcia said, but she sounded uncertain.

"Or because what happened next didn't fit their narrative." I let that hang for a moment.

"Dead or alive, he's not our primary concern at the moment," Thalor said. "We have five other factions to worry about."

"Not our primary concern?" Marcia asked. "His mongrel army is expanding quietly while all the nobility fights in the center over the keeps. They took their second outpost just yesterday and we know they took a third right before we pushed on this keep. At the rate they're going, they'll have claimed the entire outer map while we all claw for control of the central keeps."

"She's right," Thalor said. "If we keep engaging other nobility here in the center and worrying about our castle and taking more keeps, we'll look up and find a significant threat has us surrounded. We'd be playing right into their hands if we let it continue."

"What are you suggesting?" I asked.

Marcia shrugged. "Send me and Julius to start claiming their territory. Thin their resources. At the rate they're expanding, I doubt they're leaving strong numbers behind to defend. They are probably betting on going unnoticed and don't realize we have a map—that we're on to them."

"We stay together," I said firmly. "What happens if I send you and Julius away and Kalcus pushes in on our territories? What if they forge an alliance with the Bone Choir?"

Thalor snorted. "The Bone Choir are fucking insane. They're not forming an alliance with anyone."

"I wouldn't be so certain," I said softly.

"You're going soft on them," Marcia accused. "You like Brynn. You have since we first met him."

Maybe I was, and maybe I did. There was something admirable about commoners and slaves banding together, trying to flip the tournament's design on its head. It wouldn't work, of course. The system itself was stacked too firmly against them. Still, part of me wanted to let their story play out. To see how far they could get.

"I'm being practical," I said instead. "The Gemini Twins have aspirants with them. Kalcus has been recruiting. The Tempest Maiden hasn't shown her hand yet. And the Bone Choir..." I shook my head. "Even if they don't ally with Kalcus, we know they'll be out in the wilds farming corpses as we speak. In a few days, they'll be able to send small attack squads of minions to probe for weaknesses. We don't split our forces."

"The twins are children playing at war," Julius said dismissively.

I gathered my axe. "Don't underestimate anyone in this tournament. The committee chose every contestant for a reason."

"Sir!" A voice called from outside. One of the aspirants we'd stationed as a lookout. "The Gemini Twins are approaching!"

I sighed, hefting my weapon.

"Want us to—" Thalor started.

"No. I'll greet them. The rest of you rest. Check the perimeter. We might need to move soon." I started for the door, then paused. "And keep watching that portal. There's no telling what it might let us glimpse. I don't want to miss it if there's something we can use."

The cold air hit me as I stepped outside, my new frosted breastplate and pauldrons humming with power. In the distance, I could see the twins approaching without their allies.

I planted my axe hilt on the stones atop the wall and waited. Whatever game they wanted to play, I'd hear them out. But my thoughts kept drifting back to that scene of Brynn and the void crawler, to blood spreading across stone, to a man who might have done the impossible twice now.

If he was alive, this tournament had just become far more interesting than anyone expected. Because if he survived that, I was ready to believe every fucking rumor about him was true. And if the rumors about him were true, I wasn't sure the tournament makers could stack the odds high enough to stop a man like that from having his way.

I felt myself smiling at the thought.