The Fourth Gate: Chapter Two

“Welcome to the top sixteen of the Spellbinder Division of the Elysian Mastery Tournament.” 

The words seemed to echo through the entire world as the Patriarch of the Silent River Sect floated in the sky above us. Once again, we were in one of the large arenas that was often used for sports, but unlike before, we hadn’t been let out into the field or sequestered in a waiting room. No, we were staying in a private box, somewhat like the one that Ikki had invited me to, with servers swirling around. There were glasses of wine and spirits, as well as a dozen different small appetizers. Many of the top thirty-two were indulging, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t that I thought I was too good for it, or anything of the sort. My stomach was simply too tied up in knots for anything to stay down right now. 

“For those of you who are unaware, this will be held as single elimination combat rounds, to the – simulated – death. Injuries can and will happen. I know many members of our tournament have held back their power so far. Now is the time for this to end. Do not underestimate your opponents, no matter how confident you are. And now, with the world watching, I will draw our first match.”

He held his hand out, and purple serpentine mana erupted from his hand. Moments later, light flashed around the arena as an illusion was projected into the sky overhead. The first image up was Galo Sandina, and my stomach clenched again. Then the second image appeared: Cai Dao. I hadn’t known his name before now, but he had been the swordsman with so much raw physical strength that he could knock me through a wall, and the one who had landed the final blow against Kamal in the first round. The illusion overhead began to play some of the highlights of the first two rounds. I saw Galo Sandina teleporting through the misty maze, knocking out four opponents with one pulse of mana, while Cai Dao cut through a hardlight construct with his sword held in one hand, while blocking hammer blows from someone in a full suit of strength enhancing armor with his open palm. The images continued for about thirty seconds before going dark, and then the opponents appeared on the field. They were equidistant from one another, as well as from the walls of the arena.

In less than a blink, Galo moved. He teleported feet away from Cai Dao, punching the air and releasing a shockwave so powerful that the Arcanist-level grass beneath their feet popped and exploded. Cai Dao didn’t even have the time to draw one of his three blades. Then Cai Dao took a step forward, and then another, pushing through the waves of force as if they weren’t even there. Galo teleported, launching a kick that blazed with power at the man’s head from the side, but Cai Dao caught the kick with his bare hand. Through the sound amplification spells, I could hear the sharp sound of bone cracking. 

Galo vanished, appearing some ways away, probably hoping to let his foot recover under the power of his impressive full-gate healing magic. Cai Dao continued walking forward, Galo teleporting away each time he got remotely close, before Galo launched another attack at the back of Cai Dao’s head. The power in that blow was finely honed, rather than a massive wave. There was practically no gap between them, as the teleport had brought Galo as close as possible without overlapping their spatial energy.

A simple first gate force armor flared to life, and the blow did nothing. In the same instant, Cai Dao’s domain weapon had slid out of its scabbard, and he twisted, aiming the blow at Galo’s center. A spherical dome of force popped up around Galo, followed by a complex hexagon shielding spell, an aura of kinetic dampening magic, Galo’s own force armor, and then an ordinary force shield. There were so many layers of defense that if I’d encountered it, I’d have had to use some trickery to get through, using Foxfyre to open holes in the dome and hexagons, then punching through the aura, armor, and shield with Mantle Dragonfyre. 

Cai Dao’s blade moved through the dome like it wasn’t even there, sliced the hexagons in half like they were paper, slowed for a quarter of a second while it passed through the armor, reduced the shield to dust, and shredded the armor. Then it sliced clean through Galo’s entire body. Galo vanished, and Cai Dao removed a handkerchief, then began to wipe down his sword. 

One cut. He’d torn apart an opponent that I considered to be roughly on my level with one cut. It was possible that his domain weapon was specialized in cutting through constructs, like Foxfyre was, but even if that was the case, he had still cut through Galo’s reinforced body like nothing. Even if I was right about his domain weapon’s ability, and he’d gotten lucky, and he’d been using such a tightly controlled body boosting spell that I couldn’t notice – something I didn’t think was true – he had still been able to take a focused blow on just basic force armor. 

I did not want to meet Cai Dao in a future round.

The Patriarch floated down and asked Cai Dao a handful of personal questions, before shepherding him over to the reporters who had flocked to ask questions. I saw light spells going off, and shook my head before turning my attention up to the illusion above. It swirled and hummed, before displaying the next two fighters. I hadn’t personally encountered either of them yet, but one of them was a wiry young man from Aergarde using telluric mana, while the other was a stocky person with desolation and creation mana, wielding a hammer domain weapon. I wondered if that was the result of a choice legacy, or even a dualistic legacy like my own, or if they’d simply been one of the rare few to be born with opposing mana types, like Orykson had been. 

The battle between the pair lasted significantly longer than the fight between Galo and Cai Dao had, which let me relax, at least a little bit. Upon watching that, I’d started to wonder if I was just fodder. I might still be fodder to someone like Cai Dao or Ivy, but I was confident that I’d be able to hold my own. 

Oh, both of these fighters were good. The man from Aergarde had clearly taken the skysheep sash, but the interesting thing was that it didn’t seem to be the main way he moved. He was using it as an additive, rather than a core part of his ability. Instead, he seemed to use a combination of gravity magic and magical minerals that had integrated in with his body in a rather unique way. I thought he might actually have woven them into his bones, nails, teeth, and even the iron in his blood. That made him faster and more maneuverable than most gravity based fliers, but when the sash was thrown in, he was able to blitz through the sky to dodge all sorts of attacks. The dualistic mage, on the other hand, seemed to be creating single-use enchantments out of forged mana, and then launching them at the flyer. 

I knew of talismans, of course, but those were usually made by enchanters beforehand, not made on the fly. I had to wonder what exactly their angle was, and why they fought this way. It was cool, sure, but unless they had something like a crafter legacy or weird spellbond, it should be many times more effective to just cast the spells normally, rather than creating them in such an impromptu fashion. 

In the end, the man from Aergarde won, as the craftsperson’s reserves were clearly starting to dip. The talismans they created were less and less complex, though they remained just as powerful. The lowered complexity made it easier for the man to dodge around, and he finally flew in and unleashed an explosion of overloaded sunsteel in their face, which won him the round.

After that was a fight between the woman who had the powerful black lightning magic with abnegation mana, and the moth-guy archer that I’d spoken to briefly in the second round. He was now wearing the archer’s reticle, and I felt a pang of longing. For all that I was still convinced I’d made the right choice with the arrows, I still wished I’d been able to take both. The woman, on the other hand, was wrapped in the dreamcloak – yet another item I wished I’d been able to pick up. 

I wondered about some of the contestants who hadn’t shown off their prize. It was possible that Galo simply hadn’t had time to use it. Maybe the talisman crafter had taken an item related to enchanting? It was possible – I hadn’t exactly deeply explored that section of the vault. 

Their fight wasn’t a one sided curbstop, and it was much more intense than I’d expected. The curses and aim-locking spells thrown around by the humanoid moth seemed to struggle to land firmly on the combination of dreamcloak and defensive spells that the woman was throwing around, which I thought might have been enough to win her the competition, but the moth wasn’t out just from having that one trick nullified. His ability to slide in and out of mana senses combined with a handful of movement spells that weren’t quite teleports, but certainly seemed to bend space, let him dodge out of the way of her black lightning bolts. As soon as he had the range, he peppered her with arrows, and even with the curses less effective, they still hit hard, and even without the aiming spells, he was a good shot. When she closed the distance, he used the same spike spell that had hit me in that round, stabbing at her with more curses and strange dust motes while fleeing her attacks. 

I started to think that he was going to be the winner when she switched her tactics. So far, she’d used a handful of black lightning spells, but it seemed like she’d specialized her desolation mana into that particular elemental style. But when an arrow nearly took her in the neck, and she only dodged due to good luck, something in her seemed to change, and she stopped holding back. Needles of acid, just as dark as the lightning bolts she cast, erupted from her hands and nearly took the moth guy in the stomach. They did punch through one of his wings, which elicited a cry of pain, before he thrust his hand and created an arrow of light, revealing a trick of his own. With such a heavy component of lunar in his mana, I’d not expected a light arrow, and neither had his opponent. Her spells diverted it, but it still punched through her hand, getting a hiss as well. 

With both of them revealing their full strength, or at least more of their real power, the battle heated up. The inky acid was horrifically dangerous, but the light arrows seemed able to punch through most defenses. The final blow of the battle resulted in themoth taking her arm off at the elbow, while she hit his face with acid, making her the winner, but not by much. 

The next match was another one-sided beatdown, as Ivy took the stage against one of the competitors from Vinopae. He didn’t even have to do anything particularly cool, he simply sparked the golden light of forest dragon’s breath in his hands and eliminated his opponent in a single blast. 

That was when my name popped up on the list. I felt my stomach tighten into a knot as the Shepherd’s power took hold of me, preparing to teleport me down into the arena. I stared at the sky and let out a curse, before both Liz and I vanished.