Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-One - I'm Not Touching You!

Awen returned to our little waiting room after a sylph in white robes fussed over her on the edge of the ring. There was some magic used there, but Amaryllis assured me it was nothing but healing magic. Members of the Healing Sentinels swore an oath to only heal, so there was nothing to worry about.

“Are you okay?” I asked anyway as soon as she was close. Then, when she slipped into hugging range, I pounced and squeezed her tight.

Awen giggled, and wrapped her arms around me to return the hug. “I’m fine, Broc. Well, mostly fine.”

“Mostly?” I asked as I pulled back a little.

She narrowed her eyes. “Yes, mostly. I had a few more tricks I could have used in there. I shouldn’t have held back as much as I did. He was a much better fighter than I am, but I think I could have made him bleed a lot more if I just pushed myself a little harder.”

“But you did great out there,” I said.

Awen pulled out of the hug entirely while shaking her head. “I lost, Broccoli. I’m not going to beat myself up over it, you don’t need to worry about that.” She glanced back into the arena. “But I could have done better. I should have. I... I think I need to think a little bit about it.”

I sighed, but let her pass. Amaryllis hesitated next to her, then carefully gave Awen a hug too. I couldn’t help but smile at that. It was nice seeing Amaryllis opening up, at least.

“When I next write to Rose, I’ll tell her that you were spectacular out there,” Amaryllis said.

“Awa! N-no!”

Maybe Awen was right too. I’d been thinking of the fights as games more than anything else.

“Representing Lord Francisco Hawk...” Augustus was already in the centre of the arena. “Flein Bocking!”

That was the other sylph, the Hardened. I didn’t know what that class could do, and that was pretty worrisome. Plus, he was level 16. That was a good chunk ahead of me.

The sylph stepped into the arena and glanced over to our side of it. He didn’t have any weapons on him that I noticed. Did that mean he was a magic user? Or something else?

“Representing Lady Amaryllis Albatross... Captain Broccoli Bunch!”

I paused for a moment, only moving when I felt talons and a hand touching my back. “You can do it,” Amaryllis said.

“Kick his butt,” Awen suggested quite seriously.

I nodded, my resolve made up, then I grabbed my broom and dustpan and moved into the arena.

I came to stand across from Flein. “Heya,” I said.

He nodded to me. “Greetings.”

I took only one moment to glance up and around. The stadium seating was full. Nobles and a few more modestly dressed sylph, all packing in as close as they could. The only exception was a small box where I saw the princesses and Francisco looking down on us.

Looking up was a distraction I couldn’t afford, so I refocused on Flein again. “Usually I’d try to make friends, Mister Flein, but I really-really have to win this, okay? So, ah, maybe we can chat after the fight? No hard feelings?”

The sylph smiled. “No hard feelings, Captain Bunch,” he said.

The referee glanced at us both, then started an abridged version of the speech he’d given before the last fight.

“Uh, I have a question,” I said when he was nearing the end.

“Yes?” the referee asked.

“Is there an out of bounds?”

He nodded. “Going too far up, above the level of the first row of seats, will activate a barrier. Leaving the arena through the side-doors is forbidden as well, though those will remain closed for the duration of the fight.”

“Alright, thank you,” I said.

“Good.” The referee made a show of looking around. “The arena is cleared. There is no magic in the air. Testing the magelights now.”

I blinked as the arena turned red. It made the open space a whole lot more sinister for a moment.

“If you see those lights come on again, you stop,” the referee said. He turned to me. “Repeat my instructions about the lights,” he said.

“If the lights turn red, I have to stop,” I said.

He nodded, then turned to Flein who repeated the instructions without looking away from me.

I bounced on the spot. I should have stretched more, I realized.

“Are both combatants ready?”

We nodded. I shifted my grip on my broom and turned just a bit so that I was side-on to Flein in case he launched a spell at me. I had a plan forming in the back of my head already. I adjusted my gladiator’s helmet one last time.

“Dropping the kerchief now,” the referee said.

The handkerchief fluttered down and landed gently onto the sand.

That sand instantly shifted up and started to move of its own volition.

Cleaning magic gathered on my broom as I stepped to the side and flicked it out, firing a bright cleansing bolt toward Flein.

Could I negate his sand control? If so, this would be an easy win!

I wasn’t so lucky.

Flein ducked to the side, then spun around on the spot.

The sand around him leapt up from the ground and clung to him, two long tendrils formed past his arms and snapped towards me with twin cracks.

I hopped to the side, narrowly avoiding the two sandy whips. They rammed into the arena wall behind where I had been standing with two echoing thumps. That... would have hurt.

Flein wasn’t going to give me any time to come up with a plan. He spun around and two more whips swung out at me, one slicing the air horizontally, the other snaking out right at my face.

I jumped to the side, ears back to keep them safe, and rolled over the horizontal strike while the other cracked at empty air.

I landed in a roll and bounced back to my feet. I needed to react! Pushing my mana out, I created a burst of cleaning magic as another pair of whips approached.

They kept coming, only a small portion shimmering away. The sand itself wasn’t something that was dirty, it was just plain sand.

One of the whips slashed past my side and I hissed as it grated open a thin streak on my arm.

I couldn’t stand still.

Flein started to walk towards the middle of the arena, arms still spinning around to form new whips. He was going to cut the distance and give me no time to react.

I flung a large fireball at him while backing up, then, in the pause where he ducked out of the way, I brought my foot back and kicked forwards. The end of my shoes met my dustpan in mid-air, and Flein cursed as he redirected his whips to bat it out of the air.

The dustpan went sailing far out of reach, and before he could reset, I darted toward the wall, sprinting all out with Stamina coursing through my legs. A whip snapped behind me a moment before I leapt up and landed feet-first on the wall.

My legs sprung out, and I shot across the arena on a straight path for Flein, broom held wooden-end out towards the sylph.

Flein flung his arm out towards me, a fresh whip forming in the air.

So I kicked out with one leg, a fireball streaking out of the tip of my foot on a straight path for his arm.

He rolled to the side, but in doing so his newest whips fell apart into so much sand.

I was close!

I landed, rolled, scrapped across the ground, then shot out in the opposite direction right towards Flein who was recovering from his own dodge.

He swung his arm out toward me, and half a dozen ropey tendrils of sand formed in the air between us. They weren’t moving whip-fast, but there would be no dodging them.

So I swung my broom at them. The haft glowed with cleaning magic as I put my Makeshift Weapons Proficiency to work. The thin wood smacked though the sand, and the magic glue on it wrapped around Flein’s, disrupting the shapes where it hit them and turning the ropes into so much loose sand in the air.

Flein didn’t shy away from my charge. He ran right up to me and, abandoning his ranged strikes, threw a punch at my head.

I ducked out of the way of his punch, then smacked him in the side with my broom.

The broom made a nice ‘thawp’ sound, and little else.

His clothes and skin were covered in a layer of caked-on sand.

I side-stepped another punch, then started to back away as Flein kept swinging at me. He had a simple stance, legs a bit apart, arms cocked before him, hips swaying to give his punches more force. Like a boxer. But boxers didn’t have fists enclosed in rocky lumps of hard-packed sand.

I blasted him with fireballs, but that didn’t seem to do anything at all.

Flein ducked in towards me and swung an uppercut towards my chin. It was only the fact that I was taller than him that let me bend back and out of the way of the blow, but then he was right up in front of me, and he brought a knee up to smack me in the thigh.

I stumbled back, making some space between us.

I was losing.

He had the advantage at range. He was tougher up close, and hit harder too. All I had was speed and a broom. I was faster, more agile too, but no amount of cartwheels would help here.

I had to try something else. Fire didn’t work. It wasn’t hot or hard-hitting enough. Cleaning wasn’t doing anything other than to wash his sand out. My broom with Makeshift Weapons Proficiency could disrupt his whips and sand but not much else.

Way of the Mystic Bun...

I nodded to myself. That could be a solution, maybe, but I’d need to get in close.

I spun my broom around, holding it by the haft while the bristles were interposed between Flein and I.

When he took his next swing, I pushed it aside with the broom. I didn’t just push my mana though my broom though, I pushed it into him.

There was a weird moment there, like touching a carpet a moment after shuffling on it with big wooly slippers. Not a shock, but the impression that a shock was due.

Nothing happened except that I shoved the punch aside enough to dodge it. But I had felt something.

My new level in Way of the Mystic Bun allowed me to control an opponent’s mana, but it didn’t come with an instruction manual.

Flein swung his free hand around, and I squeaked as a rope of sand snaked out and almost caught me around the throat. My face almost met his rising knee eye-first as he jumped up into a kick.

Acting on reflex, I placed a hand on his knee and pushed it back. At the moment the contact was made, I felt his magic moving. It wasn’t like my own, all friendly and clean. His was coarse and rough, and it felt like it wanted to pack itself in tight.

Pushing off his knee strike was enough to launch me into a backflip. The sense of his magic vanished as I broke contact, but despite the distraction, I still stuck the landing.

I didn’t pause, circling around him close enough that I could move in if he tried to make another whip and far enough that he couldn’t punch my lights out.

Only two dozen seconds had passed since the fight started, and I think we each had a measure of the other.

I was in so much trouble.

But I had a really bad idea, and sometimes bad ideas were a great way to get out of a bind.

It was a reckless idea too, but that’s how I fought most of the time anyway.

Flein was the first to move. Sliding towards me on a wave of sand, his fist punched out and released a big poof of loose sand that filled the air before me.

I countered with a blast of cleaning magic that didn’t do much. Some of that sand splashed through the front of my helmet and against my face. I had to blink fast to keep it out of my eyes.

Flein’s quick motion ended with a heavy punch towards my middle. His fist had gained a long narrow bar at the end of it, giving him a bit more reach. I stepped back, grabbed his wrist, and pulled. At the same time, I grabbed onto his magic and cast a spell.

It wasn’t anything fancy. It was the sort of thing I’d done a thousand times before. A wave of pure Cleaning magic.

The wave burst out of him and washed over me to no effect.

I grinned.

I’d just cast a spell with his magic!

Better yet, the sandy construct around his fist fell apart.

Flein pulled his arm back in a hurry, and I hopped forwards and followed.

I saw his eyes filled with confusion behind a sandy mask as I jumped towards him. “This might tickle!” I shouted.

I darted in and started to poke at him with my free hand while shoving my broom between his legs and behind his knee. Every poke turned his Sand-aspect mana into more Clean-aspect, and with the change his armour fell apart in big clumps.

Flein wasn’t going to let me off so easily though. He reached out and grabbed my broom handle. I lost my grip on it as he tugged it away and immediately let it fall to the side.

I might have been out of a weapon, but I had just gained a second hand to poke him with!

“Annoying,” he said.

“Thanks, I’m trying really hard,” I said.

And then Flein exploded, a burst of sand shoving off of him hard enough to send me reeling.

I guessed that it wouldn’t be so easy to win here.

***