The Tournament [A Non-Traditional Fantasy]

A bell chimed, and without waiting, Picayune lifted his main wand and fired. A dark cloud launched backwards obscuring his face, and immediately following, a blinding corona blossomed from the wand's tip, flooding the arena in white.

The sudden light sent the Vampire staggering with a scream, his glaive and trident clattering to the floor as he shielded his sightless eyes.

Flicking through his large pockets, Picayune had already switched his wand's spell cover and dashed out from the dark cloud, skating across the cobblestone floor. The pointed stilettos of his boots carving very particular grooves into the stone as he wove toward his target.

Arriving next to the Vampire, Picayune danced around his opponent, his legs twisted in sharp, intricate patterns that seemed erratic to the untrained eye but drew perfect geometry into the ground. As he spun, his wand sang, loosing rapid bursts of prismatic light—Poetaster's signature spell, repurposed and accelerated by the Apprentice's own hand.

The Vampire, still blinded, swatted helplessly at the air. Picayune easily dodged the lazy attack and gave a final shove, toppling the Vampire backward over the rune web he had carved upon the stone floor. His skates hissed to a halt.

A heartbeat's pause—then Picayune jumped back and triggered the spell.

The world ignited.

A tower of fire roared upward, consuming the runic sigil and everything within it. The blaze was so dense that not even a silhouette remained visible through the conflagration. The heat reached the branches of the arena's great tree, catching its low leaves and reducing them to drifting ash.

It took a few seconds for the inferno to finally burn itself out, leaving nothing but scorched stone in its wake.

"Very imprezzive."

Picayune spun on his heels. The Vampire's smile greeted him, clothes completely unmarked.

Only the reflexes drilled into him by Liederkranz saved him—the Vampire's fist cut through the space where Picayune's head had been a moment earlier. Picayune slid aside and thrust his offhand wand forward, conjuring a physical barrier. The opaque wall of dark violet energy absorbed the Vampire's follow-up strike with a thunderous crack.

He countered immediately, raising his main wand and unleashing a rapid volley of Flare Repeater shots as he dashed for cover behind the colossal tree.

Picayune switched spell covers mid-stride and in the same motion, flicked open the tiny blade hidden in his ring.

"Quite ze runner, aren't ve?" the Vampire called, circling after him.

He rounded the trunk just in time to see Picayune carve a quick rune into the bark with his ring-blade and fire his wand to launch himself skyward. As the young boy shot upward, the rune began to hiss—a foul-smelling vapor leaking out in thick curls.

The Vampire gagged as the stench reached him. "Ugh! Vhat—!"

Picayune manually casted a spark shot, but the gagging Vampire cleared the pungent cloud moments before it struck the gas.

The spark ignited the gas in a silent explosion. Fire blossomed in every direction, forcing the Vampire to dodge further back or risk singeing his bib. When the flames died, the Vampire glared up through the smoke. Picayune perched on a thick branch above, calmly changing spell covers again.

The Vampire plugged his nose more irritated at the smell than the attempted barbequing, "Vhat a low blow human."

The Vampire leapt with inhuman strength, landing effortlessly on a low-hanging branch. The wood groaned beneath his weight but did not splinter.

Above, Picayune was already sprinting higher through the tree's sprawling lattice. Sensing the Vampire closing in, Picayune turned and fired a switch spell from his offhand wand. The two whipped through the air at painful speeds as they exchanged positions—Picayune now below, the Vampire suddenly perched several branches higher. Picayune ignored the strain in his knees crashing into the lower branch and angled his wand skyward to unleash a flurry of Flare Repeater shots.

The Vampire wobbled theatrically on his branch. "Uwah! you'll make me dizzy." he cried, spinning about in mock panic. Yet despite his antics, every burst of arcana sailed past him harmlessly. If Picayune hadn't known better, he might have thought the dodging accidental.

The Vampire twirled until he found his target again. "Oh, there are two of you now." The Vampire smiled at his enemy, and then with a before unseen speed he dove down.

Picayune barely ducked—the blow grazed his head and punched clean through the enchanted wood behind him. The impact sent a shudder through the entire tree, bark cracking, sap hissing from the wound.

That old fear—the one Picayune had fought to suppress—surged back. His footing slipped and he fell from the branch. Quickly recouping himself, Picayune twisted midair to fire another wild barrage of flares.

The Vampire sidestepped along his precarious branch, the radiant blasts scorching spirals of light across the bark. "Don't zlip now," he teased. "You vere doing zo vell."

Picayune ignored the taunt. Mid-fall, he swapped out his primary spell cover and cast Propulsion Up with Glider Coat, his body angling into a controlled drift. He caught the updraft and landed gracefully on a lower bough before he could splatter against the hard arena floor.

Balancing on the narrow branch, he ignored his ready-made tools and improvised a new spell manually weaved directly from his root. The atmospheric essence coalesced so densely that the colour of magic flared to sight even before the spell was cast. The Vampire quirked a brow at the impressively complicated spell far beyond what one mage should be able to manage alone. Intrigued, the Vampire crossed his arms and simply waited for his enemy to finish the spell.

Finally readied, Picayune launched a gargantuan mass of pure arcane energy at the Vampire, easily eviscerating any branches in the way. "Vow," the Vampire congratulated, too impressed to dodge. "I've never zeen zuch a denze zpell before." Just before being struck, the Vampire copied the spell, replicating the same intricate casting in a fraction of the time. His own version exploded forth, devouring Picayune's attack midair and continuing its course straight toward him.

Unable to escape the blast radius in time, Picayune yanked a cracked handheld mirror from one of his belt pockets and hid behind it like a shield. The titanic beam condensed into a single pinpoint of light as it shrunk into the glass—and vanished.

A beat later, the mirror shattered. Shards exploded outward, slicing into Picayune's palm. Blood dripped down his wrist and he hissed through clenched teeth, but didn't let the injury slow him as he traced a rune in his own blood. The glowing mark pulsed once, expelling the embedded shards and numbing his mangled hand.

The Vampire laughed above him. "How dizzapointing," he said. "I vas at leazt hoping for a boom."

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Picayune hurriedly finagled with his one good limb to swap rune covers once more and used his primary wand to attempt to overwhelm his opponent with an incessant volley of flare repeaters while simultaneously weaving a separate spell in his other bloodied, shaking hand.

The moment it finished, he flung it wide—a storm of microscopic arcane pellets that fanned out across the canopy, the spread of the countless magical shots was so grand in scale it were like a monsoon of shrapnel.

Unable to dodge so many densely packed bullets, the Vampire simply covered his face with his hand and accepted the hits. Once the assault ended, the Vampire took his time dislodging the arcane bullets from his skin and glanced down at his outfit. The once-elegant fabric was riddled with smoldering holes.

The Vampire brought his attention back to Picayune to see the young boy squinting passed his raised thumb, aligning something in the distance. Curious, the Vampire turned and followed his gaze.

There, high above, the tree's sprawling network of branches was fractured with thin, scorched grooves—each a remnant of the flare barrage and shrapnel rain. When viewed from the right angle, they aligned into a massive, sigil-like pattern etched across the canopy.

Picayune pressed his bloodied palm to the tree's trunk and flared his magic.

The tree shuddered. Every leaf on its vast body disintegrated in a single wave of light, revealing the open sky above. The revealed day star shined unabated onto the Vampire, enticing a horrendous screech that sent him tumbling off his branch and plummeting to the ground so hard that he bounced upon landing.

In a panic, the Vampire scrambled across the ground, diving for the umbrella he'd left behind. With shaking hands he snapped it open and collapsed beneath its shadow, panting, smoke rising from his blistered skin.

Picayune followed through on his long-laid plan. From his belt, he drew a second cracked mirror. He gripped it by both ends and snapped it clean in half.

From the splintered glass burst the spell its mirrored twin had once devoured—the same titanic artillery the Vampire had copied earlier. It erupted forward in a blinding surge of light, tearing through the air toward its new target.

The Vampire, crouched beneath his umbrella, tilted it just enough to peer out—and instead of spotting Picayune, found himself staring straight into the oncoming blast.

"...Ah."

He dove aside, just barely managing to avoid the attack. The beam roared past him and slammed into the colossal tree at the arena's center. The impact hollowed a tunnel through the trunk, and for a breathless instant, the entire arena fell silent.

Then came the explosion.

A concussive bloom of magic and splintered wood exploded out. Shards of bark and chunks of branches rained down in every direction. The entire tree wobbled on its fragmented support.

The Vampire, landing several paces away, brushed splinters from his coat and adjusted his umbrella. Around him, the nearest spectators were already scrambling to the far stands away from the wobbling tree. He waited a moment, watching the tree creak under its own weight. But it held.

The Vampire frowned and turned to face his opponent "Now zat vas unnezzeza-"

A sudden barrage of flare fire cut him off.

The Vampire ducked and spun, protecting his sole refuge from the day star's merciless glare, his refined composure eroding into something close to panic as the human's relentless assault closed in once more.

The Vampire, finally feeling threatened, moved on the offensive. He lunged forward unleashing a maelstrom of blows so rapid that Picayune could only dodge half of the attacks. The other half he managed to block with the barrier spell equipped in his offhand wand, but each impact struck with such monstrous force that the defenses only slowed the hits, not stopped them.

Every second compounded his suffering. The steady rhythm of attacks eroded his composure—his body grew sluggish, his rune-stitched armor dimmed and cracked under the strain. Even with one arm occupied holding his umbrella, the Vampire's onslaught utterly eclipsed anything Liederkranz's training had prepared him for.

The difference between them became undeniable. Behind each incoming strike, Picayune began to see:

With every proceeding strike came an echo of a soul lost, of entire nations burned beneath that same casual cruelty, a reminder of what monstrosity masqueraded in the form of a man. With every bruise and ache came the surety of his deficiency, his disappointment to humanity, his failure, not just as a Tournament contestant but as a saviour of humanity. Every incoming knuckle, and knee, and elbow, and foot, and pain, and assault, and everything that bore down on him from this imposing monster, this enemy undaunted by any attack that Picayune had thrown at him: a reminder. A reminder of what need be stopped.

He didn't have much strength left to fight, Picayune rallied the last of his will and drove a desperate kick into the Vampire's chest, buying himself the space of a single breath.

It was all he needed.

Picayune searched deep within himself, diving into an introspection of his own spiritual presence within the grand soul sea and grasped his root: the very foundation of his magic. With one simple push he could ignite the bomb, he could shatter the root, destroy his magic, destroy his career, his life, everything he lived for, with one simple push he could save humanity.

There was no hesitation.

Picayune pushed his essential flux to its utmost limit.

Then pushed beyond.

His root ignited.

The energy was so incredible his root bloomed like a beacon, a massive twisted tree of light and fractal geometries seeded within seeded geometries. Picayune's true form laid bare to the world, a great hydra barely contained within the confines of the arena walls, extra-planar limbs phasing in and out of the stands, the breath of a being beyond mere flesh, the breath of humanity itself.

The shape of Picayune's essence seared itself into the mind of all who watched, his entire existence unfolded for only a fraction of a moment.

And after that-

The blast was instantaneous. The incredible attack so monumentally massive in power that the arena wards flared to life, straining to contain the surge from consuming the audience. Poetaster and Arete leapt from their seats to add their magics to the failing wards; Belabor and the entire Tournament staff joined them, but even their combined strength barely held. The dome of magic visibly trembled on the brink of collapse. The city shook, a quake threatening to tear the whole building.

Inside the arena shields, the explosion raged. Its visceral power rending the very fabric of the magically created tree apart; the cobblestone floor melted to slag then further still to vapour. The incredible arcane eruption lasted for minutes before it finally subsided leaving nothing but a scorch mark in a newly formed crater.

At its centre floated a single rusted pendant—Picayune's. It hovered for a moment before melting, the liquefied metal pooling at the crater's base.

And from that pool came flesh.

The pool was no deeper than a finger's width but still a column of flesh rose high up from it, rising to the height of a man and soon taking the form of one too.

Picayune stood reborn—naked and unmarred by any memories of age. His skin gleamed like untouched marble, free of scars or nevi. Yet within the soul sea, where his root once anchored him to the world, there was now only silence.

In the gobsmacked silence of the arena, the dust—born from eviscerated stone and flung by sonic fury—slowly resettled. The storm of light and sound died away, and the world returned to view, allowing everyone to see what remained from the violence.

Across the blasted floor, Picayune saw, he knew not how, but the Vampire, smiling back at him and clapping. "Bravo! Bravo! That vas incredible! You've truly exzeeded my exzpectationz."

Picayune collapsed on all fours, the magic bomb had destroyed any essential flux he could ever muster, there was no more for him to do, no more for him to save, he would never cast magic again, and he would have no response for his challenger.

Dionysus saw that the fight was over. Not even he knew how the Vampire managed to evade such an attack. Regardless it was not his place to question such a thing but instead to declare, "The Apprentice is no longer capable of fighting. The winner is the Vampire!"

No one cheered, and the only one clapping was the Vampire; though the Vampire wasn't clapping for himself, but for Picayune. "You shouldn't feel zo bad zat you lozt. You really did better zan I thought you vould."

The Vampire approached Picayune and helped the boy up to his feet, having to support a fair share of the weak-kneed boy's weight.

The Vampire patted away any dust that had clung to the boy's newly formed body and he eyed his surprisingly capable opponent up and down before finally smiling upon a decision. "You know vhat? Maybe you are vorthy."

The Vampire thrusted his hand into Picayune's chest and ripped out his heart, letting the lifeless corpse flop to his side. He took a large lustful chomp of the still beating treat.

The Vampire chewed his snack ignoring the cries around him before spitting the hearty chunk back out in disgust. "Ugh nope, another dud."