Chapter 27: The Hero's Gauntlet: Death EditionTM

The midday sun beat down on the wide, open arena of the Colosseum, blinding and relentless. Dust swirled dramatically in the air, and a crowd of onlookers filled the stone bleachers with a rising wave of murmurs and laughter.

And right in the middle of the pit stood the party—our so-called heroes—looking extremely out of place and wildly unprepared.

Thorne grinned like a man who had no regrets and too much bicep confidence. "So… good news! I signed us up for The Hero's Gauntlet: Death Edition™!"

Silence.

Everyone turned to him in perfect chaotic sync.

"You what?" Lys asked, already trying to teleport out of her skin.

Cael lowered his book slowly. "Thorne, that sounds like a game designed by someone with brain damage and a license to kill."

"I thought it was a challenge! And it had such cool branding!" Thorne held up the scorched sign-up form, which read in bold blood-red ink.

"The Hero's Gauntlet: DEATH EDITION™ – Because normal suffering just isn't enough."

Renna clutched her head. "Oh my god, he legally trademarked a death wish—this is what happens when rich kids are left unsupervised!"

"I was lured in by the glitter pen," Thorne defended.

From the stands, a booming voice echoed, "LET THE HERO'S GAUNTLET: DEATH EDITION™… BEGIN!"

A loud GONG rang across the arena.

The floor beneath them rumbled.

A giant mechanical crab claw emerged from the sands.

A trebuchet launched flaming sheep into the air.

A series of whirling blades sprouted from nowhere like angry salad spinners.

Alaric blinked at the rising mayhem. "Okay, yeah. This is... definitely not OSHA compliant."

Thorne summoned his lance. "Boys, girls, and everyone between—this is what we trained for!"

"We never trained for this!!" Lys shouted, summoning her bow in pure panic.

"I don't even remember the sign-up sheet!!" Renna screamed as she dodged a sheep mid-air.

"I forged your signature with glitter ink!" Thorne admitted proudly, just before parrying a spring-loaded punch-glove that came out of the wall.

Cael, eerily calm, activated his sigil like someone flipping open a lawn chair. "Well. Might as well die in style."

From the stands, the announcer yelled, "ROUND ONE: ESCAPE THE UNNECESSARY SPIKES!"

The group ran like cartoon characters trying to avoid the consequences of their own actions, laughter and chaos echoing through the Colosseum.

And so began the dumbest, deadliest game they had never agreed to.

The ground exploded in a puff of confetti.

Yes, confetti.

"Is this blood-colored?" Alaric asked as a blast of crimson sparkles slapped his face.

"They're flavor-coded!" Renna shouted after licking one. "This one's strawberry!"

"GUYS," Lys screamed, pointing at the thirty-foot tall boulder chicken rolling toward them. "WHY IS THAT A THING?!"

"Welcome to The Hero's Gauntlet: Death Edition™!" a disembodied announcer's voice shouted from the heavens. "Sponsored by PainSprinkles™! For when regular death just doesn't pop!"

Cael was dodging flaming hula hoops now, his sigil used like a shield. "This isn't a battle—it's a circus run by a war criminal!"

Thorne leapt into the air, stabbed the chicken boulder in mid-roll, and yelled, "I AM THE PROTAGONIST NOW!"

The chicken exploded into perfectly cooked rotisserie pieces.

"Oh, dang," Alaric muttered. "That's lunch sorted."

A wall spun around to reveal a set of upside-down stairs, a slime DJ, and a rotating fire pit shaped like a goose.

Mio, from the crowd, blinked. "What... what are they doing?"

"Dying flamboyantly, I think," another spectator muttered, throwing confetti of their own.

"ROUND TWO: SCREAM AND SLIDE!"

The ground tilted at a 45-degree angle, becoming a massive, oily slide with what appeared to be banana peels and plushy toy landmines.

"Oh no," Lys deadpanned.

"Oh yes," Thorne grinned.

Before they could plan, the floor gave out—and they slid.

Screaming.

Spinning.

Flailing.

Renna somehow did a backflip and high-fived herself. "THIS IS SO DUMB I'M HAVING FUN!"

Alaric surfed the slime with his sword like a skateboard. "I'M REDEFINING COOL RIGHT NOW."

Cael tumbled sideways and crashed into a sign that said "YOU TRIED."

Lys screamed, "THIS IS WHY I WANT TO GO BACK TO UNIVERSITY!"

At the bottom of the slide, the group landed in a pile—arms, legs, weapons, one roast chicken, and five broken egos.

A long silence.

Then Thorne slowly raised his hand. "I give this ride a 9 out of 10."

"Needs more explosions," Renna muttered from under a slime pillow.

Suddenly—ding!—a giant scoreboard lit up over the arena:

"CHAOTIC ENERGY: MAXED OUT. HERO CANDIDATES: PASSED"

A large mechanical door opened, revealing a hallway filled with suspiciously happy music.

Thorne stood up and cracked his neck. "Let's go team. We got more death traps to emotionally scar us."

The others groaned in sync, picking themselves up.

"Honestly," Lys muttered, brushing sparkles out of her hair, "this might be more exhausting than the dungeon."

"Yeah," Cael agreed, staring up at the ceiling. "But at least in the dungeon, the walls didn't yell at us with marketing slogans."

The next room slammed shut behind them with an ominous ka-chunk, leaving the party staring into an arena filled with monsters—goblins riding wolves, ogres wearing sunglasses, a snake with six arms, and what looked suspiciously like a mimic disguised as a tax collector.

"Alright, everyone," Cael said calmly, summoning his floating sigil. "Let's approach this strategically—"

"BLOOD FOR STYLE!" Thorne roared, already vaulting through the air like a caffeinated gazelle with his lance out, stabbing three goblin wolves in one spiral flip.

Renna appeared behind a snake-arm monster, whispering, "Hey, wanna hear a secret?"

Then she backflipped off its head and threw her dagger like a boomerang.

It bounced off three skulls and came back like a polite assassin.

Alaric ran at an ogre, swung his glowing sword, and shouted, "You're illegally parked in my heart!"

The ogre was too confused to defend itself.

Lys, standing elegantly in the middle of the chaos, sang into her bow like it was a karaoke mic. "This place is nuts."

She fired an arrow—then five more at once, each one ricocheting off a wall, ceiling, Thorne's head, and into a row of goblins trying to file taxes.

"NOOO! NOT MY RETURNS!" one goblin screamed before poofing into glitter.

Cael, surrounded by chaos, lifted his sigil and kicked it like a soccer ball into a troll's face, shouting, "Messi this, you creep!"

The sigil ricocheted like a pinball through enemies, knocking helmets off, setting off a random bomb trap, and somehow launching one goblin skyward like a rocket.

Meanwhile, Renna and Thorne teamed up to ride an ogre like a rodeo bull, each trying to last longer without falling off.

"THIS IS MY EMOTIONAL HEALING!" Thorne yelled.

Alaric, catching a spear midair, chucked it like a javelin and nailed a shadow creature to the wall. "10 points to the arson house!"

"...Arson isn't a house, Alaric," Cael muttered.

"It should be."

Lys floated into the air using her summoned wind arrows and began performing a soft jazz remix of her lofi destruction beat, and monsters below started holding their heads in confusion.

Within ten minutes, the arena looked like a discount buffet where everything had gone terribly, terribly wrong. Goblins lay twitching. Wolves played dead. The ogre was doing taxes now, just for fun.

A massive bell tolled above them.

"COMPLETED!" the announcer declared, stunned.

"Also, what the actual hell just happened?"

The group stood in the middle of the chaos, panting, sweaty, blood-splattered—and high-fived each other like absolute maniacs.

"Teamwork makes the scream work," Renna grinned.

Thorne flexed. "I carried emotionally and physically."

"Did anyone else feel like we were the monsters?" Cael asked, staring at the battlefield.

"Bro, we are the monsters," Alaric said, licking duck grease off his fingers.

Lys nodded. "But fashionable ones."

The ground rumbled beneath their feet.

"Uh-oh," Cael muttered, adjusting his glasses.

The center of the arena cracked open with the most dramatic crunch imaginable, and smoke billowed out like someone had overcooked their evil casserole. From the depths emerged a towering Golem—taller than a cathedral.

It let out a deep, gravel-throated roar that sounded like a landslide choking on another landslide.

Lys blinked. "Okay… fashionably terrifying."

The Golem stomped forward, each step shaking the entire colosseum. Its arms were like battering rams, its eyes glowing like molten lava, and its chest had the word "REGRET" carved into it like a motivational tattoo gone wrong.

"WHY DOES IT HAVE ABS?" Thorne shouted. "IT'S A ROCK! WHY DOES IT NEED ABS?!"

Cael raised his hands slowly. "Alright. Calm, logical approach. We observe. Analyze. Plan—"

The Golem punched the air so hard it created a shockwave that sent half the party flying backwards.

"PLAN CANCELLED!" Alaric screamed mid-air before crashing into a pillar like a very heroic ragdoll.

Renna tumbled next to him, her hood spinning like a blender. "Okay, ow. New plan. Less 'analyze'—more 'stab things.'"

"I got this!" Thorne roared, charging the Golem full speed. He slammed his lance into its knee.

CLANG.

The lance bent.

"...I don't got this."

The Golem didn't even flinch. Instead, it raised both of its massive fists and prepared for a double hammer slam of annihilation.

Lys summoned her bow and started launching arrows like her mixtape just dropped. Each impact sparked with magical energy, but the Golem barely seemed to notice.

"THIS ISN'T WORKING!" she shouted. "HE'S BUILT DIFFERENT!"

"His armor is too thick!" Cael yelled from behind a conveniently placed piece of fallen wall.

Alaric stumbled to his feet, sword in hand, yelling dramatically. "I'll hold him off! Everyone else—do something clever and anime!"

"What does that even mean!?" Cael called back, panic-hurling his sigil at the Golem's face.

The sigil boinked the Golem's forehead with a faint "ding!" It did absolutely nothing.

Renna appeared behind the Golem, flicking her dagger at its ankle joints, muttering, "I'm emotionally over this rock. I just want a bath again…"

Suddenly, Thorne leapt onto the Golem's back, clinging on like a determined lizard. "I'M GONNA STICK THIS LANCE WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE, BOULDER BOY!"

"THORNE NO—"

"THORNE YES—"

The Golem reached behind, trying to swat Thorne off like a gnat with an ego problem. Cael's sigil flew up again, smacking it in the eye at just the right moment—just enough of a distraction for Thorne to jam his lance into a glowing spot near its shoulder.

CRACK—BOOM!

A huge chunk of rock exploded from the Golem's side.

It roared in fury and began spinning its arms wildly, smacking itself into nearby pillars and chunks of arena like it was playing Whack-A-Mole with no target in mind.

Lys ducked behind Cael. "So… do we have a real plan now?"

Cael deadpanned. "Yes. Plan: survive Thorne's ego trip and then improvise."

Renna, now perched on a ledge above the Golem, flicked her dagger like a wand. "Improvising? That's my entire personality."

Alaric, dust-covered and dramatic as ever, screamed, "Let's cook this boulder!"

They all moved in sync—if chaos could be considered a type of choreography—and with every hit, they began to chip away at the seemingly indestructible beast.

And in the stands above, the audience roared with approval.

Because clearly… this was no ordinary party of heroes.

This was a catastrophe in motion. A disaster with friendship bracelets.

And the Golem?

It never stood a chance.

The Golem finally collapsed with the grace of a collapsing skyscraper—falling face-first into the dust with a thunderous BOOM that shook the arena one last time. A final puff of smoke exploded from its core like a sigh of defeat, and a little victory jingle played somewhere off in the distance.

A glowing sign burst into the sky, made of sparkly magical fireworks:

THE HERO'S GAUNTLET: DEATH EDITION™ – CLEARED!

Congratulations, you survived... somehow.

The arena went wild—the audience there was screaming, crying, laughing, possibly throwing someone's grandma into the air in celebration.

The group stood in the crater they'd helped make, panting, bruised, covered in dust, and grinning like idiots.

"Well," Cael coughed, brushing ash from his hair, "that was needlessly excessive."

"Ten outta ten," Thorne said, raising his bent lance in triumph. "Would traumatize myself again."

Cael turned to Alaric, narrowing his eyes. "Wait a second. You didn't use your white flame at all."

Alaric blinked innocently. "Well, yeah. It didn't feel... sporting."

"SPORTING!? It tried to hit us with a mountain."

Alaric shrugged. "It just didn't feel right roasting it too fast, you know? Sometimes you gotta let the chaos breathe."

Cael looked personally offended on behalf of logic.

He turned sharply to Lys. "Okay then—you. Why didn't you use that one super shot thing? The bravery arrow blast of poetic justice?"

Lys, who was currently eating a granola bar she had somehow summoned mid-fight, simply replied, "Where's the drama if I one-shot it? I was building suspense."

"We almost DIED!"

She nodded solemnly. "Exactly. Suspense."

Renna sat on the Golem's still-smoking back, swinging her legs like a child on a park bench. "I think it builds character. I screamed at least five times today."

Thorne flopped onto the ground like a victorious war hero. "That was the most fun I've had since the goblin dunking tournament in that cursed cave. I'm alive. You're alive. That rock ain't. I'm good."

Cael stared at them all in disbelief.

And then sighed.

"…This group is going to be the death of me."

"Death Edition™," Renna added with a wink, finger guns blazing.

"STOP QUOTING THE NAME OF THE GAUNTLET!"

She did not stop. In fact, she whispered it again with extra dramatic flair just to annoy him.

As the dust finally settled and the announcer declared them certified Gauntlet survivors, the group stood victorious—tired, messy, slightly traumatized—but very much alive.

As the magical confetti slowly settled and the group dragged themselves out of the center of the arena, Thorne suddenly clapped his hands together with a grin that should've been illegal.

"Alright!" he declared. "So, fun news—I signed up for the Tournament of Unrelenting Dominance"

Everyone froze.

"…You signed up for what?" Cael asked, blinking.

"The Tournament of Unrelenting Dominance," Thorne repeated proudly, puffing out his chest like a smug peacock with biceps. "It's, like, the main event here. Winner becomes the official Champion of the Colosseum. They get a mountain of gold and some ancient artifact thing. Real mysterious. Could be a sword, could be a fork of destiny. Doesn't matter. I'm winning it."

Alaric tilted his head. "Wait—you signed yourself up today? While we were running the Death Gauntlet?"

"Multitasking," Thorne replied, flexing unnecessarily.

Renna put a hand on her hip. "Okay, but, like… you do realize that people with giant egos like yours are usually the first to lose in anime, right?"

"Yep," Alaric nodded. "First round. Boom. Smoked. It's always the guy who says, 'No one can defeat me' and then gets uppercut into the sky by some background character with a tragic backstory and a fishing rod."

Lys joined in, poking at Thorne's arm. "You're literally setting yourself up for a humbling experience. This is classic foreshadowing."

Cael adjusted his glasses. "Narratively speaking, your odds are grim. This is the setup of a comedy arc where you either get punched through a wall or have to fight a kid with a spoon."

Thorne looked unbothered. "Pfft. Please. I'm not just some anime ego guy. I'm me. I've got the stats, the skills, the charisma, and a winning smile."

"You have a concussion," Cael muttered.

"Exactly! And I'm still standing! That's how unstoppable I am."

Renna leaned over to Lys and whispered, "I give him five minutes before he either gets disqualified for excessive flexing or loses to an old man with a broom."

"I'd pay to see both," Lys whispered back.

Thorne dramatically pointed toward the arena's towering gates. "Mark my words! I will crush every single challenger in that tournament!"

Suddenly, in the far distance, a tiny child tripped, dropped their bread, and the loaf rolled perfectly down the hill… smacking Thorne in the face.

The group stared.

Renna raised a brow. "Is that your first opponent?"

Thorne spit out crumbs. "You mock me now. But when I'm swimming in gold and ancient artifacts, I'll be laughing from the top of the Colosseum."

"You'll be laughing while being punted off of it," Cael mumbled.

And just like that, the chaos shifted gears yet again—because whether he won or got hilariously body-slammed in round one, they were definitely going to watch.