Today would be the day, the day of my combat trial. I prepared as much as I could with the time I was given, but even with that I feel extremely nervous. Hopefully everything I’ve done so far will pay off.

I eat breakfast with Vegter and Clara like I always do, except this time there’s an air of dread to the meal somehow. Although that could just be me projecting, since Vegter and Clara always eat their breakfasts quietly. They’re not exactly morning people.

When me and Vegter finish up our meals we say goodbye to Clara and leave for the chieftain. We walk together silently, each thinking our own thoughts, having our own worries. It takes half an hour of walking or so, before we finally reach the chieftains place. When we get there we see the chieftain himself, his daughter, and Flaminius waiting, presumably for us. “you’ve made it” the chieftain yells, as we come into view.

“for this trial we’ve decided that you’re going to have to perform it somewhere outside the village, considering the way you fight and all” the chieftain says. “my daughter, Vegter, Flaminius and me are going to be the only ones watching, so don’t be shy to do whatever you can to win the fight.” the chieftain explains. “come along now” he says gesturing for me to follow him along. Deciding that it would be a little too much effort to ask any questions, I decide to just follow the chieftain, and see what’s in store for me.

And so our little group ventures out, out into the plains near the village. expansive green pastures as far as the eye can see, with the only thing blocking the horizon being our little village, and the forest behind us. After what feels like an hour of hiking, the chieftain finally stops.

“me and Flaminius set up something special for you here boy” he says, before motioning for Flaminius. Flaminius then waves his hands around a bit, various strange, markedly unknown runes floating around as he does so. After a second, a cage starts getting dragged into view.

Inside the cage is a monstrous beast, the size of a grown ork, with four thick, fit legs that look ready pounce on prey. The beast has three giant scaled snake heads shifting about, with fangs teeming with venom. In the end the monster looks like a snake headed hydra, with fur covering it’s torso and scales covering it’s heads. the thing roars and flails around in it’s cage, seeming ready to kill.

“we prepared a hydra for your combat trial because of your outstanding performance in the other trials” the chieftain says. Vegter and the chieftains daughter look a little surprised, but after a minute both seem to accept that this is my opponent for this trial.

“you can do it boy, remember how we covered hydras in training” Vegter encourages. Yeah, we did cover hydras, but only very lightly since Vegter said it wasn’t really a possibility that I would be fighting any. Guess he was wrong about that.

I take a deep breath, can’t have nerves clouding my brain for this. You can do this, you can do this, you can do this I repeat to myself.

“okay chief, let’s start” I say. The chief smirks, then motions for Flaminius again. Flaminius then opens the hydras cage, and moves everyone that isn’t me away with wind magic.

The hydra instantly starts charging at me, making me panic slightly. I summon a couple stone spears that I throw at the hydra. They slow down and nearly stop when they get a to within a couple feet of the hydra, serving only to slow it down.

Oh yeah, hydras have barriers, and extremely tough skin. Realizing that offense won’t really do much right now I instead decide to flee to the air, summoning balls of air for me to balance on and to lift me up. This buys me some time, but I know that I can’t keep myself up forever, since doing this takes a lot of concentration and effort, and I’ve only ever gotten to stay on here for ten minutes tops, and that was under far better conditions.

Okay so now that I have the high ground advantage, and I know how the hydras barrier and tough skin work, what should I do?. I brainstorm for a little bit, trying to balance on air as the hydra snaps at my heels. After a bit of this though, I realize that I need to gather a bit more information before I can do anything. I instantly maneuver around a little bit, and start summoning a ball of air. I throw the air at the hydra not expecting much to happen, just trying to get some information.

The ball, as expected, dissipates the second it gets into the hydras barrier. Oh well. Next I summon a decent sized ball of stone and levitate it up with air, high into the sky. Once it reaches a height where I start to feel my connection with my magic start to falter a little, I drop the ball on the hydra. The ball falls from the sky, generating more and more force as it goes by, until it reaches the hydra. The ball hits the hydra with a tremendous crack, but even with that the hydra just shrugs it off and goes back to harassing me. Guess stone just won’t do it.

For my final piece of information gathering I summon up a ball of concentrated heat, that I set into some kindling I’ve been gathering with tiny balls of air. The kindling burns up nicely, giving me a good source of fire to start making fireballs and spears from. I summon up a decent amount of fire and hurl at the beast, hoping that this might have some effect so as to end this fight. Instead of accomplishing anything though, the fire dissipates the instant it reaches the hydras barrier. Lot a good that did me.

I start thinking up a couple strategies to deal with the hydra now that I have some usable information. The hydra then gets tired of my waiting and jumps up to swipe at me while I’m distracted. The thing manages to land a pretty good scratch right down my thigh, nearly catching my manhood in the swipe. “AHH” I yell.

Crap. That hurts. The beasts attack manages to annoy me a lot. Annoy me enough to just use the old tried and true method of flinging as many things as possible at the beast till it drops.

Summoning up spears of wood, and metal, and tiny pellets of thorns I start my attack on the hydra. I set the wood on fire, knowing that the beasts barrier can’t dispel that. And so I throw the wood in it’s fur, and the metal at it’s legs, and the thorns in it’s eyes and heads.

The thorns manage to only somewhat blind the beast, the beasts eyelids being tougher than any eyelid has any right to be. the metal only granting it light scratches, the force behind the attack not strong enough to truly wound it. The flaming wood does the most damage though, charring the beast slightly, burning it’s hide, and making it wail and hiss with it’s snake heads. All of this manages to enrage the beast even more making it double it’s efforts to get at me.

The hydra pounces on me, dragging it’s giant paws through my chest. I scream, and almost drop from my position in the sky from the pain.

Knowing that I’ll probably die from the blood loss if I don’t patch myself up I summon two life-energy balls and pump them into myself. I feel a quick and sudden rush of energy all through my body, patching up all my wounds for me.

In the time that I was distracted the hydra was setting up a final attack to end this fight, backing up under me so as to give it’s heads an opportunity to bite me. Fortunately I notice this though and maneuver out of the hydras clutches. Thoroughly annoyed by now from the hydras attacks, I set up my own final attack, summoning a metal spear around my hand.

I gather massive balls and spears of wind all around me, readying myself for my final attack. Taking a moment to center myself before the charge, I breath for a second. Then I Charge.

Launching all the air at my back, I move at speeds that feels supersonic. I move so fast that the air whistles around me. When I reach the hydras barrier, my wind magic stops, but with all the excess momentum I stab my metal covered arm into the hydras chest. The spear goes straight through the beasts flesh, going right into it’s heart.

The hydra, I guess realizing it was about to die, decides to use throw one final attack at me before it dies. A final hurrah of some sort.

It bites with all three heads right down at me .An important thing to note about hydras is that they have extremely potent venom.

The two heads on the side have paralytic venom, while the head in the middle has a deadly venom that is a lot more effective if the paralytic venom has already been injected.

The feeling of two different venoms spreading throughout my body, one through two different injection points, can be mostly summed up in one word.

BURN.

The caustic venom spreads all throughout my body. With this pain though comes an anger and a fury so strong that it blows everything else out of my mind, clearing my head. I coalesce as many balls and spikes of pure life as I possibly can. As the energy enters my body it clears out the poison running through it. The energy feels a lot angrier this time than it was the last time.

With the poison streaming out of my body, and the life streaming out of the hydras body, the fight is finally over. But unlike last time the anger doesn’t leave me with the winning of the fight. No. instead it decides to stick around a little more, to fulfill one final request.

I feel, more than see, my body move to summon up an inferno. Hundreds of little fireballs getting summoned up at once make a pretty unique, beautiful looking scene. What the inferno is going to be used for though is… not as beautiful.

The fury, my fury, sends down hell on earth down upon the hydras corpse, incinerating it. *BOOM*. The shockwave that the blast produces is strong enough to blast my body straight off it’s feet, making for a less than pleasant experience.

When I look back onto the place where the hydra was all I see are the fragments of a skeleton, sitting in a charred, barren crater. At the sight of this I feel a shiver roll down my back. Even I am a little scared of myself.

Looking around for the chieftain and all the other people that came here with me I feel a sudden gust of wind. Looking over I see that Flaminius whooshed the group back over. They all look stunned, Flaminius is the least stunned of the group, probably because he’s a fellow mage, and is familiar with the effects of magic.

The chieftain is one of the first to recover saying “well boy, I can bet that none of us expected that, but with this your combat trial is over” his words carrying an air of finality.

I breath a sigh of relief. That was difficult