Chapter 19: The God of Flames

Barbados stared down the Erk as the crowd cheered from the stands. The events leading up to this moment were still hazy, but Barbatos remembered being sat on a bench in the academy courtyard enjoying some raspberry tea. Then the little annoyance approached him with intent to disrupt his peace. The Erk lifted his hand and smacked the cup out of his hands. The cup slowly moved away in a gentle manner; the pink liquid swirling around until it hit the floor. Shards of ceramic were sprayed across the concrete and delicious blood poured into the crevices. He remembered blacking out and being held back by Erven.

"I will make you obedient and understand that your immortality is a simple fad." A burning vine whip crackled as flames of blues and purples formed exotic flowers.

"And I believed Dragons were petty. What may your name be Erk?"

"You have no right to know. Refer to me as the Chief of Combustion." The man grinned, expecting an expression full of terror. Barbados burst out laughing.

"Let me guess. It's some sort of tradition to not give out your name. I'm not criticising that, but," he paused to take a breather, "The Chief of Combustion? Really?" Before the Erk could respond, the ground split apart and a man dressed in a yellow suit slowly rose up.

"HELLO STUDENTS! WELCOME TO THE BEGINNING OF THIS WONDERFUL EVENT!"

"Hey Okia, what does he mean?" mouthed Barbados to his good dead friend. She wrote back using mana saying that this was the beginning of the collaboration between the academy and the Arcanists, although their fight was a last minute addition. She wrote one last question asking why he didn't check the email sent out. "I don't know what an email is." he mouthed back.

"THE FIRST FIGHT DURING THIS TOURNAMENT WILL BE ONE FOR SHOW! THE SELF-PROCLAIMED IMMORTAL OF THE PAST VERSUS THE CHIEF OF COMBUSTION! Now gentlemen, I want a good fight. START!"

Barbados put on a pair of gauntlets and smacked his knuckles together. His glorious eyes turned maroon and little trickles of blood poured from his gauntlets, changing their colour from rustic brown to crimson red.

Barbados charged at the Chief and delivered a heavy blow to the abdomen, sending the Erk into the arena wall. He missed his vitals.

Erks were known to possess healing capabilities, although it varied for each individual.

"Good hit," laughed the Erk as they got back up, "Old man."

"I punched a hole through your gut. Don't try acting tough now." Barbados said in response.

"Not quite." The Erk stripped off the leather armour and revealed multiple layers of roots and leaves protecting his torso. "It had no effect." they said as he gagged yellow sap.

"Then you'll be able to handle the next hit." Barbados said as he prepared the next attack. The Erk stopped his movement using vines that sprouted from the ground. Those vines gripped his skin and shot a paralysing venom so strong it could put an Orc to sleep. Barbados collapsed to one knee and was hit by a flurry of whip lashes, each strike leaving a smouldering pile of flesh. But something else began to irritate him. He looked down to see embers of fire erupt and swallow his body.

"Spontaneous human combustion. You may not be human, but the principles still apply." The Erk looked with a childish grin. "Do you see the difference in skill-" Before he could finish his monologue, Barbados's burned hand grabbed ahold of the vines and ripped them out of the ground.

The venom gushed out of his legs in a simple spray.

"Do you believe a bit of fire will be able to put me down? I'm sorry to say but your flames are rather weak." The taunt worked and the Erk charged, growing a myriad of carnivorous plants to surround and attack Barbados. The Sinborn punched the ground with his fist and a large misshapen crystal grew out, carrying him above the attacks. "I had once tried to turn my own body into a weapon. I was unsuccessful. But then I received an idea in the middle of a battle. What if I was to use my own body as the source of the weapon?" Barbados laughed as he jumped, crouched and uppercut the Erk with the gauntlets covered in sharp crystals. The Erk was barely able to dodge the attack. He had a tree root pull him to one side. A single droplet of sweat fell onto the root. The Erk launched giant seeds at Barbados and set them on fire, causing large explosions.

Barbados pushed through the smoke, swinging attacks with the intent to hit and possibly injure. He was torched some more from behind by a flame-breathing plant but kept marching onwards.

"A Fire-spitter won't be able to do much." he lied as he could feel his regeneration exponentially dropping. All the mana amplified attacks were leaving visible injuries, forcing him to put priorities on what to heal first.

"Maybe, but it's given me time for this." The Erk conjured multiple living flames, giving them simple yet efficient bodies of wood. Each step they took set the ground ablaze.

"Mere puppets is your answer? Ha." he laughed, keeping up the confident facade while preparing for the worst. One of the puppets burned away, but formed once again on the Sinborn's arm.

With a flick from his wrist, the Erk made the puppet pierce the heart of the immortal with a mystical stake burning on fire and causing a large explosion that destroyed his chest. But to his surprise, the false immortal still breathed with half his respiratory system destroyed.

"Erven," whispered Adam, "Is the censoring module working fine?"

"Yes. The gruesome detail is being blurred to only show a mess of colours."

Back to the Erk, he witnessed Barbados dawned an emotion of anger. Unknown to the Erk, he had just destroyed all the mana the Sinborn had been storing for his fight with Erven. In a fit of blind rage, he tore a bit of his flesh and launched it at the Chief, transforming it into a gigantic spike ball. Not only that, he also clenched his fist to draw more blood out and sprayed it across the ground, forming a battlefield of red crystals.

The Erk tried to grow more roots and branches to protect himself, but the impact was devastating. He could feel himself become nauseous from the sap loss. Barbados ran and punched the pillars of crystal, sending them into the weakened foe. Thousands of sharp pieces of glass were flying through the air, and all the Erk could do was set a barrier of flame to protect himself. He stared in awe at the opponent he had foolishly challenged.

"That is an inferior being?" he asked himself.

Asher Brumin was born in a traditionalist family that believed in the tradition of keeping your given name secret from anyone. The reason? They believed they were superior to other families. Not even their own children or significant others knew their names.

"Inferior?" Asher questioned himself once again as he stared at the incoming crystal punch. "That is considered inferior and mediocre in the eyes of my tribe?" His heart started accelerating in beats, feeling a sudden sense of despair, questioning how he could kill something he hasn't been able to knock out. Through the wave of pessimism, there was also a glimmer of excitement.

Euphoria had begun to spread through his veins at the sight of a strong foe. "I'll show you something equal!" he yelled as happiness overtook his body. Yellow mana overflowed from his fiery constructs. Asher's mana colour was yellow which is often associated with happiness, and in this moment, the mana limitations placed on his human part were lifted. The fire charred away the vines and ate away at his skin.

"What?" the Sinborn said as he saw the colourful mana enveloping the Erk.

"I will show you the God of Fire!" he yelled as the euphoria had reached his brain.

A fire vortex grew outward from Asher's body and condensed into a solid.

"How is that possible?" yelled Barbados to Okia.

"We don't know. I assume Grog told you that mana is still full of mysteries."

"You useless mortals. You have had access to mana for more than a thousand years and still haven't figured it out?!"

"Pretty much." yelled Okia while sipping on a cup of coffee. From the mass of flame, a figure distorted by flames emerged. Its legs were replaced by glowing white spikes of fire and its torse resembled a blooming rose. The head had taken the shape of a candle flame: a gentle flicker at the top of a catastrophic entity. It held a complex beauty in the eyes of Barbados, but the little amount of admiration he had simply disappeared as he remembered the wasted mana.

He once again regained his fury and jumped to attack, holding the left gauntlet down to let blood flow downwards. He tried piercing the living embodiment of fire, but his crystal spike was easily stopped by a single palm. The immense heat generated caused the crystals to melt. Heat began to condense in the other fist, turning the red flames to a pure white, and then to a concentrated oceanic blue. It no longer resembled a simple fire, but the blue molten lava of a volcano. With a slow and delicate wind up, the punch had destroyed his right hand and the gauntlet. The flesh had fully melted away, only leaving scorched bone.