Alkalians (52 page)

Grinding across the ground to a stop,
he focuses on James as he landed, unsure of how he is going to get
close without being harmed or repelled, and watches him cut the air
again, forming that odd black magic before him. His focus switches
to the magic rip, afraid of what else it might do to him, and so he
does not notice the Reaper’s large figure vanish behind it. By the
time he does, it is too late as the sickle emerges in his abdomen,
bright green energy splashing from the wound.

The crowd in the gym’s stands, as well
as Sean, gasps after James had instantly appeared behind him,
swinging the scythe down into him. But he isn’t done with his
assault. Some of the runes upon his body and blade activate,
glowing an electric blue, and volts of energy spill out of them and
soak Sean, still stuck on the blade. With a mighty swing, he then
launches him away, high through the air, and takes his right hand
off his scythe’s rod to clench it in a fist. In response, the
static magic in Sean discharges, zapping him in mid-air before he
hits the floor limp.

***

Yet smoldering with yellow wounds
across his body, the largest one a gaping hole in his abdomen, Sean
twitches while rolling over and pushing himself up on his hands and
knees, glaring at James strolling towards him, a crow moving in on
a corpse, the scythe casually held in his hands. After he sighs in
bitter reproach to his situation, he suddenly realizes two things
while looking at James.

The first was how that black magic,
the traced cuts in the air, work. James could use them to warp
himself or something else that touches them through time and space
to another location. The second, as he watches James raise his
weapon in a wide whirl, with other runes on him and his blade
glowing a burning red, was that those runic tattoos and patterns
act like real runes. Taking note of these two facts, Sean grins as
he comes up with a plan to use them against his foe.

Pausing in his stride towards him,
James hammers his scythe down to the floor before him, releasing a
flash flood of fire from the point of impact through his runes
towards Sean. Before the furrow of flames consumes him, he rolls
like a log to his right, clear of the spell’s path, then pushes
himself up and swiftly skates on air towards James. Seeing him
coming, James smirks again before another slash forms the black
magic in front of him like a shield.

This time, however, Sean
is prepared for, had even
expected
, it. Instead of barreling
into it again, he spirals out of the way with a twist of his air
balance, rushing past it and James, and drifts across the floor in
a wide arc to turn around and dash back at him from behind. James,
having been looking to a spot nearby and expecting him there,
barely has time to realize Sean avoided the trap and whirl around
to him. The Brawler rams his shoulder into him and shoves him
backwards, into the warping portal.

In the next instant, James hits the
ground hard a few yards away, wincing from his wings being crushed
beneath him, and tries to sit up until Sean smashes him from above,
his elbow dive bombing his chest to leave a large crack of green
energy across his indigo armor.

The look on James’ face mirrors those
in the audience around the arena before he scowls, getting ready to
sit up and strike back, when to his puzzlement Sean runs his hands
all over him, in seemingly random paths, petting and poking at his
armor and face. Growling like a mad dog, he bites at Sean, grabbing
for him so he could sink his sickle into him, but Sean pulls back
from his reach and springs away backwards, a great leap putting
distance between them.

Rising onto his talons,
James is about to continue the combat between them with spells when
he notices his runes are already active. To his growing horror, he
realizes
all
of
his runes had been activated in chain sequences, and he can only
stand there as huge plumes, flashes, and blasts of arcane,
lightning, and fire magic burst out of him without control, the
sight startling and blinding some of the spectators.

When the aftermath of the explosion of
spells fades out, James is still where he stands. He hasn’t been
harmed by his own spells, but the problem is his magic system, the
runes, were overloaded and wasted all of his energy to use his
spells, temporarily preventing him from using any while it
recharged. He yet reflects on his bad situation when a yell yanks
his attention to Sean incoming through the air at high speed. He
raises his scythe in time to block Sean’s lunging punch when he
reaches him, the rod parrying his fist, but James is not prepared
for the rest of Sean’s wild assault.

With a forward flip, he kicks James’
rod down, exposing his face, then spins like a twister with fists
out to rapidly, repeatedly whack James in the face, marking a
darkening yellow bruise across his right cheek and nose. Exiting
the spinning, Sean flips backwards in mid-air, his foot hooking the
rod of James’ scythe and flinging it out of his hands, straight up
into the air, and becomes a twister again, but with his left leg
out to roundhouse kick James in the face a few times, his left
cheek and neck bruising dark orange from the impacts. He then
concludes when he stops spinning after James falls over, catches
the scythe when it falls back to them, and slams it down into
James, burying the blade in the crack across his chest and spraying
red energy out of him.

***

Leaving James pinned by his own
weapon, Sean hovers back a good distance from him, lands on his
feet, and takes a moment to accept applause from the audience,
grinning while flexing and posing. Not all of the audience responds
in favor of him, but some students whoop and cheer for him,
building up his confidence that he has pulled it off and won the
fight. However, the crowd’s unanimous gaping at something brings
his attention back to James, and he comes to not like what he
sees.

After pulling the scythe
out of him, James pushes himself up while his mangled wings flex
before their feathers peel off of them, gray butterflies scattering
from hedges, and swirl around him before diving into his wounds,
their color turning from red to green as they nearly or completely
close up. With James’ colors becoming brighter, the color in Sean’s
face darkens. James had
healed
himself.

If that isn’t bad enough, James’
figure has also dramatically altered. Then lacking feathers, his
naked wings are large, jointed limbs, their ends appearing as
sharp, spear-sized scalpels, flexing like alien mandibles behind
him. Meanwhile, with his scythe in hand, the runes all over his
face and body activate again, this time in coordinated control to
cover him in a static aura of his magic, white lightning, blue
arcane, and red fire crackling across his frame. Staring at his
empowered, more savage appearance, Sean shakes his head with a
cringing grimace, knowing that he is still deep in the
woods.

With his runes burning and surging
over him, there is cold fury in James’ face when he raises his
scythe, bending it back over his shoulder, and flings it with great
force, arcing through the air and across the arena towards Sean,
the runes on its blade glowing blue. As Sean side-thrusts to his
right to dodge it, the sickle sticks itself to the floor, and a
massive blast of arcane energy sprouts from the point of impact,
its shockwave barely reaching him.

Recoiling from the blast in a mid-air
roll, he has only a split second to flip backwards and avoid the
lunge of James’ mandibles in their attempt to seize him in a pincer
grip. For the next several seconds, Sean once again finds himself
on the evasive, desperately staying out of reach of a surprisingly
swift James, his hands, talons, and wing blades lashing after him
with searing and bursting energies from his runes.

After they make a tight, zigzagging
circuit around the arena, Sean finally decides, after a close call
of a fiery slash from James singes his beard, to fight back.
Scowling, he puts both his legs up and kicks at James, and, instead
of his feet, a direct, booming blast of air hits him, stopping his
pursuit and knocking him back. Staggering from the brief,
disorienting blow, his talons dragged across the floor, James is
about to resume the chase when he notices the green glow on him,
and looks to find his chest and neck are wounded.

Blinking, he wonders how
it happened, since Sean had not touched him, before he realizes
something with a jolt. Had Sean used his own air balance to harm
him? In theory, that should be impossible. Air balance is a method
of movement for Alkalians in battle morph, and because the
substance is simply air, it shouldn’t be capable of hurting other
battle morphs. Whatever happened, it happens again when Sean dashes
by him, a quick thrust shooting him past James to the right instead
of colliding into him, and instead an unseen force slams into him,
leaving brighter green across his shoulder and arm. Nearly falling
over from the blow, James has to believe it was true, Sean
is
attacking him with
air balance, but he is too slow to counter as Sean’s assault
continues, each dash pass or over him followed by another blast
pounding him.

By the time the accumulating wounds on
James’ whole figure have become a darkening yellow, he comes up
with a response. Reaching out with his left hand, he mentally calls
his scythe back to him, the weapon flinging across the arena and
into his grasp. In the next instant, he turns and swings out in
time to catch Sean in mid-dash, impaling him upon the blade with a
slick, ripping sound. He sneers at the wounded look on his face
until Sean suddenly grabs the rod of the scythe, generates more air
balance, and then with a twist and yank pulls him off the floor and
into a rapid spin in mid-air, Sean its center and James the
propeller wing.

The audience of the arena, having been
cheering in swells at the battle, gasps in awe at the spectacle
below, the two fighters locked in a funnel of fury. Within the
twister, each one refuses to let go, for fear that they would be
thrown and off guard long enough to be finished off. James hangs on
to his weapon fiercely, snarling as fire, lightning, and arcane
flows from him to Sean, damaging him with burns breaking out all
over him as he keeps a grip on the scythe still hooked to him. In
quick time, James’ snarl becomes a smirk as he sees the branching
wounds burning red, knowing Sean will have to demorph at any
moment.

His sense of victory is brief, though,
when he picks up on Sean grinning back at him. He tries to think of
why he could be grinning like that when he collides a few times
with stone, his armored body bashed brutally by each impact and
turning his wound energy to red. By the time he understands, that
in their whirlwind Sean had guided them over to a wall of the arena
to smash him against it, James is already launched away, his grip
loosened from the hits to the wall, and in the midst of tumbling
across the floor demorphs, his human form lying sprawled and still
when he stops.

***

Landing, and still standing, on the
arena floor, Sean huffs in his battle morph’s fatigue, his armor
tattered by stripes of red across him, while the audience stares in
silence for a moment. Then, the overhead speaker announces to break
the silence, “The winner is Sean Wyseinburg.” Following immediately
is the most of the freshmen students standing up and cheering,
whooping and whistling, and the applause spreads through more of
the crowd with claps and bravos.

Sean is slow to respond, but once he
realizes he really is hearing applause for him his huffing becomes
laughing when he gets into the moment, flexing and posing in
victory. In the midst of his celebration, he notices some officials
appear to put James on a cot to carry him out and to the infirmary.
Oddly, he frowns, feeling sorry for beating James so badly, and he
himself is not looking forward to demorphing after all the damage
he has endured. He puts the dread out of his mind, though, and
returns to waving and grinning at the spectators, his sense of
pride and glee overwhelming him as he soaks up as much praise as he
can.

***

A few minutes later, after Sean was
dismissed, the next pair of fighters enters the gym. They are
similar in the fact they are wearing kinds of uniforms, but
different in their genders. Amelia strides across the floor in her
black bolero and pants with green stripes while Buster marches in a
thick military suit of gray and black. Each has a badge gleaming
upon their chests to further set them apart, Buster’s being the
coat-of-arms for his clan and Amelia’s her well-exposed cleavage.
Most of the audience cheers for the well-known King of the Pit, and
he acknowledges, waving his arms and grinning at them. As for
Amelia, seemingly oblivious to them, some of the students, male or
female, either stare in wonder or scorn at her.

The two fellow seniors put themselves
a few yards apart in the center of the arena and look to each
other. Buster takes a deep breath, lets it out, and then says,
“Well, here we are, finally. I’ve been waiting all week for this.
No, I’ve been waiting the whole semester for this! I was very sure
that I would get here, but to be honest, I didn’t expect to find
myself facing-off with you, Amelia!”