Chapter 7: Blood of the Worthy

Dionysus gazed into his backstage mirror bearing his many sets of sharp teeth and delicately threading a fine string betwixt the gaps of his pearly white weapons. The floating head slowly revolved in place so that each mouth had its turn at the mirror. He wanted to look perfect for his finale.----------------------------------------------------For the last time for quite a while the arena was packed with a dense warmth of thralled people. These few lucky people who managed to reserve live seating were now sat in their arena seats for the last time. The last fight to present at this arena was none the least in interest for the insatiable audience.Dionysus felt a bittersweetness come over him as he walked out on to his raised podium for the last time of the first round. "Welcome back!" An honest explosion of cheers excitedly ripped through the arid morning air. "I am so glad to have been able to spend this month with you all. I loved being here at the start of perhaps the most historically significant piece of media that anyone has ever witnessed!" A raucous chorus of agreement followed after. "I loved sitting with you and witnessing together that outstanding performance by Poetaster and Liederkranz. I loved resting mouths agape at the baffling wonder that was the match between Palmer and the Game. I loved feeling that cloudy haze lift from our minds as the Mogwai Queen, a supposedly monstrous entity, mercifully reintroduced the Animal to the soul sea."Emotions ran unfiltered through the crowd. For some average citizen or sheltered noble, the past month had been the most violent, energetic, terrifying, inspiring, powerful moment they had ever experienced or may ever experience."I am truly thankful that I could have been through those moments along with you. But our adventure isn't over! We have one last farewell before you all flock to your incessant fireboxes to view the rest of the Tournament through that small insignificant lens.""And fret not, because I can guarantee that we did not leave the weakest showing to the end. Before now you all have bore witness to some truly outstanding battles; but alas, that was all they were: battles. Today is different, today you witness no mere spectacle, today is history! And no mere history such as witnessing the first televised Tournament, but monumental history as in the maps may need be redrawn upon our fights conclusion." Even with some already expecting it, to hear the gravity so succinctly pointed out drew gasps from the crowd."I am bounding with excitement to introduce today, not two individuals, but icons, symbols. For the first time in this, the sixth centennial Tournament, we have a battle between a human and a mogwai." Shock coursed through the audience. "And we have with us not just any mogwai, but one of the oldest, most terrifying, aggressive, and certainly the most successful mogwai to ever live. That's right, I don't even need to go through the rest of my written intro. You know who he is, you know who was the only mogwai to storm through your continent, you know who still to this day runs an entire country surrounded by his enemies. You know who fought back a whole eight invasion attempts with worrisome ease. You know who graces the front of many bulletin board warnings for frequently traipsing across your borders without consequence. You know the Vampire!"The crowd stilled as the bordering arena entrance opened and an unfortunately familiar face revealed itself. The Vampire formed an imposing figure, taller than any man had a right to be. Leaning off his shoulder, the Vampire carried a gargantuan rose umbrella whose incredible brim easily shaded the pale mogwai. Equipped within either hand he wielded a glaive and a trident, an unconventional combo being as it was a pair of two-handed weapons. The oddity of the Vampire's combat gear did not end there. The strangest part of his get up was without a doubt his pastel blue bib; on the right of his bib was the letter 'I' stacked over the word 'your' while on the left of the bib was a large cartoonish drawing of a heart.Seeing that the obnoxiously interruptive tree that was placed by the Game was still planted and permitting ample shade, the Vampire closed his umbrella resting it along the trunk. A single brave rebel from the stands rose from her seat and through her half-eaten apple which managed to land and roll right to the Vampire's feet. The rallying protest instilled a courage in the audience who cocked their arms back en masse prepared for a major assault of whatever they could get their hands on.Before the first of the secondary attacks could be thrown, the Vampire looked down to the apple at his feet and easily identified its source. He cracked an entertained smile at the woman which immediately crushed any rallied protest from manifesting.Dionysus, the ever-prepared host that he was, was quick to reclaim focus and bring back the once present fervent excitement. "But fear not my friends for we have not been left alone with this beast of human form. Representing the entirety of the human race we have none other than one of the best. For those untethered to the going ons of the academic world, this name may prove foreign to your ears. To the rest of you, you are keenly familiar with the second of the legendary Ken Ream the preeminent's apprentices, some may even say his second coming. A prodigy the likes of which have only been seen before with the legendary Ken himself. I present to you the sword of humanity, Picayune distingué the Apprentice!"The crowd ruptured with near hysteric glee as Picayune entered the arena. He wore the tight fitting garbs usually saved for rune experiments; the pale white of the clothes easily showcasing the dark ink stains of drawn runes. On his face, the extra-dimensional threads of his drawn blood rune circled around his eye and rose up off the side of his head and off his flesh forming about his hair like a grand half crown, the magic of the crown so brilliant it ignited to the sights of even the peasants most unfamiliar with magic.Strapped to the underside of his left arm was a large offhand wand equipped with a physical barrier rune. In his right hand, he held his usual smaller primary wand in a white knuckling death grip. The walk to the center of the arena felt like an agonizing eternity. His eyes scanned around the audience in search of familiar faces. In the VIP contestant stands he found the strange collection of giants he somehow came to know as friends. It appeared that the Game had used his power to somehow grant the three of them magical billboards in which they could compete to be the most supportive. Liederkranz's sign had 'knock'em dead' with an animated winking face on it; Poetaster's sign said, 'Make it flashy!'; while the Game's read 'I have a lot of money on this, and you owe me.' The sight lifted his spirit and he moved on his gaze through the crowd for who he really wanted to see. Just as he was about to arrive at the arena's center, he found her. With the ubiquitous chorus of the crowd, he knew that he could hear nothing distinct, but somehow, he felt that Belabor's cheers could pierce through the noise and whisper directly to him. Emboldened, Picayune brought his gaze off from the audience and towards his opponent, and this time he did not cower."I will not hold you any further. Let the arena of Dionysus's final battle begin!"A bell chimed and with a practiced perfection, 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 end and engulfed the entire arena. The Vampire screeched in unmitigated agony dropping his large weapons to cover his eyes. Before his self-inflicted blindness even subsided Picayune switched his wand's rune cover as he charged towards his weakened opponent, somehow skating over the cobblestone floor and ensuring that the stilettos on his boots' heels carved very particular grooves into it. Arriving next to the Vampire, Picayune danced around his opponent weaving his legs in strange seemingly unnecessary patterns all while bombarding the Vampire with some manually casted prismatic blasts that Poetaster had taught him. Picayune pushed the still blinded Vampire making him stumble over an intricate series of circles that Picayune had just carved onto the ground. Picayune's sliding stopped and he quickly ran away then imbued magic into his created rune setting off a towering inferno to completely consume the Vampire. The raging pyre was so thick that not even a charred shadow of a corpse could shine through the light. The rising licks of flame caught a few low hanging leaves of the Game's arena tree and incinerating them to ash.With time the inferno subsided, leaving nothing in its place. "Very imprezzive." Picayune quickly span on his heels seeing the Vampire completely unmarked behind him. Only his constant training with Liederkranz allowed him to dodge the incoming fist. Using his offhand wand, Picayune cast a physical barrier, the opaque wall of dark purple energy blocking the Vampire's follow up strike. Aiming his other wand, Picayune released the rapid barrage of the flare repeater spell as he ran behind the giant tree.Picayune switched out his primary spell cover again and flicked open the small blade hidden in his ring. "Quite ze runner aren't ve?" The Vampire managed to turn around the tree just in time to see the human finish carving a rune into the trunk of the tree with his ring and activating his primary wand which sent him flying up into the air. A spray of vile smelling gas seeped out from the rune work on the tree. The Vampire cried out in disgust as his nostrils took the aromatic insult. Picayune hadn't expected his opponent to flee the gas so quickly managing to escape it before the spark shot he fired could ignite it. Upon the spark shot striking the cloud of gas, a completely silent explosion blew a flume of fire in every which way forcing the Vampire to take a few steps back else he singe his bib. The Vampire glared up at Picayune who was perched on a thick tree branch 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 jumped up with inhuman strength easily landing on a low hanging branch. Picayune started running higher up the tree. As he felt the Vampire approach, he turned around and fired from his offhand wand a switch spell which made the two spontaneously exchange positions. Now with the Vampire higher than him, Picayune unleashed his flare repeater upwards.The Vampire dramatically wobbled in place, "Uwah! you'll make me dizzy." Despite his comedic exaggerations, the Vampire perfectly dodged every spell fired at him, if Picayune didn't know any better he would even guess it was done accidentally.The Vampire span around in place until he found Picayune, "Oh, there are two of you now." The Vampire smiled at his enemy and then with a before unseen speed he dove down to strike him. Still dizzy, rather than hit its target, the Vampire's punch grazed by the side of Picayune's head and pierced cleanly through the magical tree behind him.That fear which Picayune tried so hard to supress rebounded to the forefront of his mind and he slipped off the branch though with still the wits about him to shoot another barrage of flares.The Vampire dashed to the side of the flare barrage and frowned at the Apprentice, "Don't zlip now, you vere doing zo vell."Picayune ignored the taunt while quickly swapping out his primary spell cover casting his propulsion with glider coat and elegantly landing on a nearby branch before he could splatter on the hard arena floor. Ignoring any of his available tools, Picayune quickly started to manually fabricate a spell directly from his root. For a brief second, the Vampire quirked an eyebrow at the impressively complicated spell; it was so large that it would usually take a whole group of wizards to cast. Intrigued, the Vampire waited for his enemy to finish the spell.Finally readied, Picayune launched a gargantuan mass of pure arcane energy towards the Vampire easily eviscerating any branches in the way. Too impressed to dodge, the Vampire simply congratulated, "Vow, I've never zeen zuch a denze zpell before." Just before being struck, the Vampire copied the spell, taking a fraction the time to craft it and sent back his own arcane artillery that easily overpowered Picayune's, obliterating it and continuing forth to charge towards him. Unable to escape the blast radius in time, Picayune pulled out a cracked handheld mirror and pointed it at the incoming attack. The terrifying artillery weakly shrunk to a mere speck and sunk into the mirror face. Intaking such an incredible force proved too much for the fragile mirror and it shattered in Picayune's hand. The exploding mirror sent a series of jagged glass shards to slice his hand to a bloody mess. Picayune bit back against the pain and used his own flowing blood to draw a rune over his hand to magically discard the shards of glass and numb the injury.The Vampire bursts into laughter, "How dizzapointing, I vas atleazt hoping for a boom." Picayune hurriedly fenagled 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 flares while simultaneously weaving a separate spell in his other hand. Completing the spell, Picayune fired out from his hand a wide spray of miniscule arcane pellets, the spread of the countless magical shots was so grand in scale that it started raining shrapnel. Unable to dodge so many densely packed bullets, the Vampire simply covered his face with his hand and accepted the hits.The Vampire took his time dislodging the arcane bullets from his skin and investigating his handcrafted clothes for damage, unfortunately for him, there was a lot of damage. The Vampire brought his attention back to Picayune to see the young boy squinting passed his raised thumb at something in the distance. Curious, the Vampire turned around, looking up at the tree above. He saw that the combination of flare repeater shots and that shrapnel rain created thin carved grooves all over the tree branches. If he tilted his head just right and lined up all the branches, he could turn the three dimensional canopy into an apparent canvas with which an odd shape had been carved into.Picayune imbued his magic into the painstakingly crafted rune and immediately every leaf of the tree disintegrated. The revealed day star shined unabated onto the Vampire enticing a horrendous screech of shear torment from him. The screaming mogwai fell from his branch and plummeted to the ground so hard that he bounced upon landing. Back on the ground, the Vampire scurried over to his umbrella in a terrified rush and hid under its reopened cover.Picayune followed upon his long since crafted plan and pulled out his second shattered mirror. With a firm grip, he took hold of either end of the mirror and snapped it in half. Upon breaking, the previously captured artillery spell spawned from the mirror's debris and flew towards the recuperating Vampire. The Vampire tilted his umbrella so he could see his opponent, but rather than finding Picayune he was greeted by the gigantic artillery spell. The Vampire desperately dove to the side just barely managing to avoid it. The artillery spell crashed into the giant tree, nearly carving a hole entirely through it: and then it exploded.  The entire trunk splinted outwards and wooden shrapnel spewed out of the arboreal wound at a terrifying speed, though still not quick enough to catch the Vampire. The entire tree wobbled on its fragmented support, the nearest audience members relocating across the stands in a panic. Everyone stood in wait including the Vampire but the tree held firm. The Vampire frowned and turned to face his opponent "Now zat vas unnezzeza-" he was abruptly interrupted by another barrage of spells forcing the Vampire to hurriedly duck and weave desperately protecting his umbrella from shearing, his last bastion from the day star's ire.Feeling a little threatened, the Vampire finally took the initiative and charged at Picayune unleashing a maelstrom of strikes so rapid that Picayune could only dodge half of the attacks. The other half he managed to block with his barrier spell equipped in his offhand wand, though the strength behind each strike was so great that the barriers could only slow rather than stop the hits.With every passing second Picayune was collecting more damage, his movement slowed and grew sluggish, his warded armor slowly breaking down. Picayune was being entirely overwhelmed by the assault. Even with one arm preoccupied with holding the umbrella over his head, the Vampire's offensive had entirely outclassed Liederkranz's training. And soon as the attacks kept coming the true disparity in skill unveiled itself and Picayune started seeing.With every proceeding strike came an echo of a soul lost, a reminder of the darkness and cruelty that masqueraded as a man behind those incoming fists. 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 time left in the fight, with a final rally of will, Picayune threw every last ounce of physical strength he could muster into kicking the Vampire away and using those scant gained seconds to unleash a full magic bomb. Picayune searched deep within himself, diving into an introspection of his own spiritual presence within the grand soul sea and took ahold of 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 it's utmost limit and then pushed beyond, igniting his own magical root in the most spiritually debilitating sacrifice imaginable. The incredible attack so monumentally massive in power that the arena wards flared to life safeguarding the audience from its fury. Poetaster and Arete both stood to add their magics to the failing wards, as did Belabor and all of the Tournament staff. Still with all their mustered magic the defensive barrier visibly warbled with uncertain stability.Within the confines of the arena barrier the explosion raged over, its visceral power rending the very fabric of the magically created tree apart, it eviscerated the mundane cobblestone floor carving unfathomably deep into the ground. The incredible arcane eruption lasted for minutes before finally subsisting and leaving nothing but a scorch mark in a newly formed crater.Picayune was gone, the only thing left floating where he once stood was the pendant once dangling from his neck. A second after the explosion faltered and the surrounding heat dissipated the floating pendent melted away with an unimpressive whimper, the melted metal pooling at the base of the crater 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 form of one too. Picayune, as nude and defenseless as the day he was born. His skin was turned to a pristine beauty unmarred by any ails of age. There were no scars, no runic tattoos -- and if one looked into the soul sea they would see no root -- adorned to his new body.In the gobbesmacked silence of the arena, the dust once birthed from eviscerated stone and flung by sonic fury resettled to the ground. the arena came back to whole sight, allowing everyone to see what remained from the violence. Across from him, 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; but 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 him 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 newly formed body and he eyed his surprisingly capable opponent up and down before finally smiling upon a decision. "You know? Maybe you are vorthy of eating." The Vampire thrusted his hand into Picayune's chest ripping out his heart. He let the lifeless corpse flop to his side and took a large lustful chomp of the still beating treat. He chewed the snack for a while ignoring the cries around him before spitting the hearty chunk back out in disgust. "Ugh nope, another dud."