Dialysis Book: Chapter 19: A honest adventurer

I stood before the massive guild hall and couldn’t help but be impressed.  I’d seen my share of stately buildings back on Earth, but this one had by far the best landscaping.  The actual guild hall was neat, but was nothing truly special.

The main building was in the center of four of the trees that the elves seemed to prefer for their construction.  The structure was about five stories tall and featured more windows than I’d seen in any of the tree based structures.  It was made of a light gray stone that had been polished to a sheen.

There were pendants applied liberally to the outside of the building, far more than any structure I’d seen on Earth though that appeared to be more of a style choice than to serve any architectural purpose.

As I stood examining it I watched a dozen elves shuffle in and out of the main entrance, along with a few non-elves.  “Good to see that the casual racism of the elves doesn’t apply here.”

“Adventuring guild charter makes them treat all adventurers the same,” said a small rodent from a nearby tree.

The rodent was sitting there patiently, and if one wasn’t carefully looking at it you’d miss the cuts where someone had skinned it.  “You didn’t.”

“I told you, I needed a squibbit,” said Spivy in her disguise.

“You murdered a small defenseless animal,” I said.

“Yeah, it's really easy to do,” said Shade.

“He is correct,” said Spivy, who bounded off a tree and landed on my head.

I was about to argue, but I’d been killing animals left and right ever since I got here.  Mostly giant rats, but giant rats were animals too.  So were goblins.  I didn’t have a right to complain and no one was going to miss one of those.

“So you are going to follow me,” I asked.

“I’ll be around, If you ever go inside,” said Spivy as she wiggled her little puffy tail.  “In the meantime, you two have fun and remember ‘it's magic.’”

“What,” I asked.

“Magic,” said Spivy.

She shook her rear end over my head for a long moment in what I supposed was some sort of squirbit dance, before hopping off and bounding away.  I grumbled as I marched forward, Shade in tow, and walked proudly towards the adventuring guild.  Eighteen steps later I walked up to the big door.

I stared at my face in the warped reflection and realized my facial hair was gone.  Spivy had done something to my face.  Grumbling, I stepped inside, looking at the splendor of a very nicely appointed waiting room and a bored elf watched me enter.

“Name,” said the elf, a short blond woman wearing an official looking uniform with sharp blue shoulderpads.  Elf women tended to look like competitive cheerleaders, both in size and physique and she was no different.  She was wearing a nametag that read Galisa.

“M… Heywood,” I replied.

Galisa spent a moment looking at a stone tablet, then nodded.  “Do you have your ID?”

I handed it over and she glanced at it before looking back up and examining my face closely, “You don’t look like Heywood.”

“But I am,” I said, then remembered, “I shaved.”

“No, Heywood was several inches shorter than you,” said Galisa, she was standing now and her expression was rapidly circling up towards violence.  A second elf stepped out from the backroom.  He was wearing a green and black robe that looked reasonably fashionable, considering it was a robe.  He was another blond haired elf, but his ears were longer than Galisa’s, though still far shorter than other elves I’d seen.  Mark also had a mustache, though it  was more a hint of a mustache than a proper one.  He was holding a staff and looked concerned.  He was not wearing a nametag.

“Who’s that,” I asked.

“Mark, the wizard,” said Galisa, glancing over at the other elf.  He looked foreboding for a guy named Mark.

“Do you know what happened to you,” asked Mark, the wizard.

“Magic,” I said.

Galisa paused, “Magic?  Did you go into a dungeon?”

“Yes,” I said as both elves examined me cautiously.  “There were goblins, and bugbears.”

Galisa sat down, “Mark, check him please.”

The elf wizard, Mark, stepped over and waved his staff at me while incanting some words that my language shard couldn’t translate.  Within seconds he was finished and shook his head, “Heywood has residual polymorphic magic on him.”

“Polymorph?” I asked.

“It's a spell, a very complicated one, that completely changes the target inside and out,” said Mark, horror dawning on his face.  “You appear to be fully polymorphed.”

“A full polymorph, that’s so rare!” said Galisa, pulling out a mirror.  Unlike the window, the image I was now seeing was clear, “Do you recognize yourself?”

“No,” I said looking at my head of shiny blond hair.  Considering it was brown this morning, the change was glaring.

“Can you reverse it,” asked Galisa to Mark, a desperate tone in her voice.

“The amount of remaining mana is trivial, there’s barely enough left to change his hair color,” said Mark waving around his stick.  “Everything else has pretty much set.  They should have caught this at the airport.  Where did you come from?”

“Darven,” I said.

Mark glanced down at Galisa who groaned.

“Nothing there works, it is a podunk lo-tai town,” said Galisa.  Then her eyes widened as Mark exhaled loudly.  “Sorry, I meant to say it is on the backside of nowhere.”

“I don’t disagree, there is a pretty big shift between Darven and Dominus,” I said.

“Some elven farm towns I’ve visited are nearly as primitive,” said Mark, watching Galisa carefully.

“Yes, of course, I’m sorry for my hu… er, quick words,” she said.

“It's fine,” I said, accepting her apology.  She is at least cognizant of her casual racism.  I supposed that would have to be enough.  The Darven was downright primitive compared to Dominus.

“So there’s no hope for Heywood,” said Galisa after a moment.

“None, if we’d caught him yesterday or the day before I could probably have reserved it, or at least minimized the damage,” said Mark, the wizard.

“Do you at least remember the guild,” asked Galisa.

“Not really,” I replied.

Galisa looked distraught, “What do we do here?”

Mark stepped back into his office and came back with a slate, he flipped through it for several seconds, “Okay, a full polymorph is rare, but possibly particularly if exploring in dungeons or dealing with goblins.”

“Why would goblins,” began Galisa before her shoulders slumped, “Slaves.”

“Yes,” said Mark.  “Heywood’s memories are still muddled, if we can lock down the guild before his mind finishes resetting we should be able to at least keep some of his core memories intact.”

“Is he still Heywood,” asked Galisa.

Mark scrolled several times, “Adventurer, what is your name?”

“Heywood,” I replied uncomfortably.  “And this is Shade.”

“Shade is such a cute animal, what is that,” asked Galisa.

“A dog,” I said.

“That looks like the rear half of a Caog attached to the front half of a doat,” she grinned and patted Shade on the head.

“I think he looks like a mutant doat,” said Mark, the evil wizard.

“Thank you, nice lady,” said Shade cautiously.

“You are welcome,” said Galisa.  “He is so polite, is he your companion?”

“Yes, ever since the dungeon,” I said.

“Well, at least you got something out of it,” said Galisa sadly.

“What is your real name,” asked Mark casually.

“Max,” I said.

Mark held up his tablet, “Interesting, I’m going to do a full scan.”

Before I had a chance to protest, Mark lowered the tablet and then glanced over at Galisa’s screen.

“Even his cores have changed,” said Galisa.  “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“There really isn’t that much of a difference between striking cores,” said Mark.  “He even got a companion core, that’s very uncommon.”

“It's just so unusual,” said Galisa. “Do you think he will explode?”

“I’m right here,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” said Galisa quickly.  Then she whispered something to Mark who shrugged, but took a step back.  Galisa continued to speak.   “It's just you hear about someone getting polymorphed but that sort of thing is obviously pretty rare."

"You seem to have a process for it," I offered.

Galisa shrugged, "It depends on how badly your memory is affected.  Usually we can just get the affected back with their family and at least their memories will remain intact."

"So if I didn't remember my family," I said.

“It's worse than I thought, we need to get him integrated quickly so he retains the maximum amount of his previous memories, was Heywood married?” asked Mark.

“He was a lone wolf orphan with no attachments,” said Galisa.

“Really?” asked Mark.

“No, but his girlfriend broke up with him before he left and his parents disowned him,” said Galisa.  “Heywood was kind of a jerk.”

“Seriously,” I asked.

“Yeah, he was voted the most likely to get his head bitten off by a king rat last year,” said Galisa.  “I understand there was a lottery.”

“Why do you know so much about Heywood,” I asked.

“I like to gossip,” said Galisa who looked at me quizzically.

Whatever spell he was currently working on finished and Mark wiggled his hands at me for several more seconds before shrugging.  “Well, great time to reinvent yourself, Max.”

“Thank you,” I replied.

“I have another idea how we can get your memories locked in,” said Mark as he grabbed his staff.  “Max and Shade, will you follow me?  Galisa, could you get the paperwork completed for a companion pass?”

She nodded, “You’ll have to update his badge.”

Mark considered that, “Well, I suppose I can run by the hall of records after I drop him off.”

With that, Mark dragged me into the guild hall with Shade in tow.  Following the old adage of look like you know where you were going, Mark blazed a trail through the first hall which was a massive, mostly open thing with several mezzanine levels above it.

Unsurprisingly the inside of the hall was as well landscaped as the outside and a single large tree dominated the center, though that tree was simply large rather than the giants that were outside.  There were a number of elves sitting on the grass, some playing instruments, others reading.

We walked down a stone path through the massive central garden and came out on the east side before Mark said anything.

“This is the training hall, you can practice here to improve your skills,” said Mark pushing open a door.

We walked into the rather small room.  There was a fine wooden desk with two doors behind it.  One was on the same side as a small door in the desk, where a sign in book was heavily written into.  The smell of a gym was the same everywhere and it wafted out of that doorway.  The other door was on the opposite side, and was closed.  It had a lock on it, so I suspected that’s where the supplies were kept.

“Did Heywood spend a lot of time here?” I asked.

"I sure hope so because otherwise this isn't going to work," said Mark, the wizard as he waved at another elf.  The elf he was signaling was another short eared elf with the faintest hint of a five o'clock shadow standing behind the desk, looking annoyed.  He was the broadest, angriest looking elf I'd seen so far, and in general that race seemed pretty upset at the world.

"What are you bothering me with now," said the elf as he stomped over.  "I'm about to run an exercise, and you know I hate being interrupted."

"Gulwing, this is Max," said Mark, the wizard, causing the angry elf to look at me.

"So," replied Gulwing dryly.  He glanced at me then over his shoulder at the obviously more important goings on back there.

"He used to be Heywood, he was polymorphed," said Mark, the wizard.

Gulwing deflated slightly, "That is unfortunate.  I'm sorry to hear that Max.  Upshot, Heywood was kind of terrible so I hope you do better now."

"You sound nice," I said.

"Nothing I said should have given you that impression," said Gulwing.  "We are doing a training tournament, do you want in or not.”

I started to speak but Mark, the terrible wizard, cut in, “He needs to fight.  It will help him acclimate to the guild.”

“I do?” I said.

“Very much so, don’t worry there is no risk of actual injury in the training grounds,” said Mark, the wizard, as he turned to leave.  “I’ll get your ID reassigned.”

Gulwing watched him go, then looked over at me again, “Well, I get left to pick up the pieces again, come on ‘max’.”

“Yes, it's Max,” I said, and glanced down, “and that is my companion Shade.”

“Cute,” said Gulwing as he turned to walk into a small room, “I think I still have your training crystal.”

As he left I looked down at Shade, “Are you okay?”

“No, this place feels angry.  I do not like it,” said Shade.

“Well stay close then, I’ll see if you can avoid fighting,” I said.

“I don’t have a crystal for your animal,” said Gulwing, stepping back out and looking down at Shade.  “What the hell is he anyway?”

“A dog,” I said.

“That looks like the rear half of a caog attached to the front half of a doat,” said Gulwing.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, what is a caog, or a doat for that matter,” I asked.

“House pets,” said Gulwing, shaking his head.  “Man, your brain is rattled, do you at least remember how to use a training crystal?”

“If I told you no, would you be upset,” I asked.

“I’m always upset,” said Gulwing, walking around and placing the crystal on my forehead.  It flashed red for several seconds so I pushed some essence into it.  Gulwing fiddled with it and it finally flashed green.  “That was strange.  Your essence has changed so much that the crystal was having issues getting a read.”

“I was polymorphed,” I said.

“That’s unusual even for a polymorph,” replied Gulwing.

“I also shaved,” I said.

He looked at me for several seconds, confusion flashed through his eyes, “Ah, that must be it.  Anyway, the crystal is attuned now so follow me.  Standard rules, no weapons outside the fighting areas.”

“Okay,” I replied.

“That means put on your armor,” said Gulwing.

“Ah,” I said, summoning up my armor.  I still wasn’t fully comfortable about bringing stuff in and out of my inventory around others.  It felt too much like changing in public, but nothing showed so I had to get over that.

“At least I remember your armor, you even cleaned it, that’s an improvement,” said Gulwing as he walked into the gym, I followed and instantly realized I was wrong.

This was a dojo, or some sort of fighting training hall.  There wasn’t a single piece of normal gym equipment here, but there were dummies for beating on, and a large variety of weapons in racks on the walls.  There were four fighting pits in the middle of the room with good views from all sides as well as several smaller training areas on the outskirts.

The far wall had several cages that showed signs of use.  They were large enough to hold a full sized cage match.

“Monsters were in there,” hissed Shade.

That made sense, if  you were going to train adventures then they would need to fight monsters.  You could get a pretty big monster in one of those cages, and it looked like they could be merged together for one big battle.

Gulwing snorted, “We aren’t doing that today. Today we are doing a practice tournament.”

“Do we fight people often,” I asked as Gulwing stopped at a weapons rack and pulled out two short swords.

“Not normally, but it can happen if we are hunting down criminals or goblins, and the guild master wanted everyone to be ready,” said Gulwing, handing me the swords.  I looked at them as Gulwing walked over to a group of adventures and started yelling at everyone to get ready.

I set the flat tipped dummy short swords down and grabbed a spear.  I summoned it into my inventory but it felt weird.

“That’s because it isn’t yours,” said Shade knowingly.  “If something is not yours and you take it, it usually does not matter.  But if there is magic on it, then you either need to break that spell or have an ability to suppress the effect while you keep it in your butt.”

I looked down at the dog.  “Spivy.”

“She is helpful,” said my dog, who apparently knew all about stealing stuff.  I didn’t want to steal the spear, and I quickly took one of the swords just to check.  I had the same sensation, so obviously it was just a method of getting you to return the training weapons back to the racks when you were done with them.

Dozens of adventurers were here, and had gathered at Gulwing’s bellowing scream for them to do so.  If they didn’t right away, his continued screaming until everyone got close.  Finally he stopped and looked around, glaring at all of us.

I had not seen a crowd of adventures before, and certainly not one that was mainly composed of elves.  There were just under forty adventures here, and I could tell everyone here but Gulwing had a mortal core.  There was just something about a person with a mortal class core that you could immediately tell.

More than half of the adventures were elves, with most of those favoring lighter armor.  A few wore entirely cloth based outfits, and they had crystals on the backs of both of their hands as well as their foreheads.  One elf was wearing full on heavy armor, and he looked out of place with his helmet off as he was sipping from a bottle of water.

One thing that struck me was the racial diversity among the elves, as well as the short ear length.  Elves were fair skinned, but by that I meant their skin was nearly flawless.  They had a variety of different variations but tended towards olive skinned with at least half of the group with the same shade of color.  After that they went through the full gambit of human skin colors, though they tended darker overall.

The non-elves were the minority, and the second largest group were dwarves.  There were five of them.  Dwarves as a whole were lighter skinned, probably due to that whole living in the mountains stereotype.  Each of the dwarves seemed to favor heavier weapons and armor, with the tallest, though not largest dwarf, brandishing a heavy two handed sword.  He spotted me looking around but said nothing.

The next group was humans, represent, and there were four of us including me.  We looked like crappy versions of the elven fighters, and everyone but me was the same shade of tan I’d seen in Darven.

After that there were several halflings, a gnome and a person that looked like a cat.

My cat girl fantasies were shattered when she turned around and was about the most muscular woman I’d ever seen in my life.  She looked like she ate a lioness.  The face got me the most, she looked somewhat human, but the nose and cheeks were like a big cat.  The bright green eyes almost glowed in this light.

She did not have a tail, and I was concerned calling her cute would get my face ripped off.

“Alright, four of you get in the pit.  The rest of you get in line.  If you win, you stay in the pit and get 30 seconds to recover.  If you lose, you go to the next pit.  Elves clockwise like god intended.  Everyone else, counter clockwise you weirdos.”

There was a chuckle from the non-humans.  What Gulwing said could have been taken offensively, but he struck me as the kind of guy who didn’t care as long as you could fight.  I wondered who got to start off in the pit, but it turned out that was already predetermined.

Four of the most capable looking adventures walked into their slots in the pits and no one complained.  Two elves, including the one in heavy armor, a dwarf and the catgirl all prepared themselves as the rest of us got in line.

I got towards the back, and Shade stayed next to me.

“What happened to your doat,” asked a halfling as she held up her hand for Shade to sniff.  He did so and wagged his tail.

“He’s a dog,” I said.  “He’s supposed to look like that.”

“He’s exotic, he must be from somewhere really strange,” said the halfling.

“Quite true, he’s from Ohio,” I said.

“The exotic land of Ohio,” said the halfling, tasting the word.  Several of the people in line looked at each other and then shrugged, the halfling continued, “I’m Misel, I don’t recognize you, but I recognize the armor.”

“I’m Max, Heywood was polymorphed,” I said.

“Oh, I hoped you killed him,” said Misel, stepping away.

“Or found him dead,” said a human nearby as he stepped away from me.  Heywood was not popular.

“Hey everybody, Heywood got polymorphed,” yelled the human behind me.  There was a loud, obvious chuckle except for one person.

“Shit, I thought he’d get decapitated by that rat,” yelled a gnome.

Then the first person, an elf, walked in to fight our pitboss, the dwarf.  The dwarf had his helmet down, but the crystal still glowed right through the metal.  It was green.  The elf was wearing lighter armor, and only slapped on his helmet right as he got into the pit.

The two circled each other for a moment, then the elf dashed forward with his longsword which started glowing.  The dwarf swung his greatsword around, beating the elf to the side and removing his entire arm in the same motion.  The elf stumbled to the ground staring at his missing hand.

“Point, Madox,” said the pit.  The dwarf reached over and helped the elf to his feet, he picked up his sword with fully attached hand and started walking clockwise to the next arena like nothing had happened.

“How do the crystals work,” I asked.

“For crying out, seriously Heywood?” said Misel.  “It protects you from damage while using the stored values for your weapons to determine what would have happened if you weren’t wielding a training weapon.  Then it lets everyone see what happened.  Feel free to use all of your power when fighting against Madox.  You might get lucky.”

“It is bound to happen eventually, you are like 0 and 99 with those deadly short swords of yours,” said another adventurer.

“Remember to chop,” yelled another.

People started to chuckle.  Not even to my back, like honorable folks.  They were laughing right at my face, and I was up after Misel.

The guy in front of her tried an overhand chop and was entirely disemboweled by Madox.  He was trying to pull his guts back into his armor when the arena awarded Madox the point.  The human laughed and stood up.

“I’ll get you next time,” he said.

“Like hell, I’m going to live here,” said Madox, looking around.  “You hear me, none of you feckers is moving the great Madox!”

Misel sighed, eyeing her daggers as she stepped into the pit, “This should be fun.  Heywood, watch this is how you should fight with two weapons.  Two.  They work together.”

Madox looked up at me, he was the dwarf I’d seen before.  He rolled his eyes and then focused back on Misel.  She charged forward as Madox slashed, she split in two.  The right copy took the hit, and disappeared leaving Misel free to stab at the dwarf.

She went for his helmet, trying to get a dagger into the visor but Madox was quick and used his gauntleted hand to shield his eyes.  She managed to get a dagger into a seam of his armor, but it didn’t go in very deep.  A moment later Misel stumbled backward, spitting out blood as Madox drove his spiked knee into her midsection.

She collapsed to the ground, gurgling and spluttering.  “Avenge me, Heywood.”

Everyone laughed.

“Point, Madox,” said the arena and her wounds instantly vanished.  She did a kip up and left for another fighting pit.

I stepped in, summoning up my spear.

“Heywood, that’s not two swords,” said an adventurer.

“It can’t hurt.”

“But all his skills were in waving around two swords uselessly.”

“Remember to chop!”

I exhaled, trying to ignore them.  I started channeling my essence.  I deactivated my link to my mapper and even dropped the language shard down to the minimum causing the conversations behind me to fall away.  I held my spear at the ready and waited for the sound.

The arena barked and I thrust forward with maximum speed on my spear, slamming it right into the visor of the surprised dwarf’s helmet.  His own slash was knocked off course by the hit and instead of finding my tender flesh, it slammed into my light shield and deflected.

That should have killed him.  The visor slit was thin, but my laser thrust was also thin and long enough that it should have gone right into his eyeball.  Instead, I couldn’t see anything worse than a scuff to the helmet.

Still, the dwarf was off balance and I continued thrusting forward, tagging his armor several more times until the dwarf toppled backwards.  He landed in a roll bringing his sword to bear in a defensive position.

“Almost,” I muttered and the dwarf paused then realized how close to the edge of the arena he was.  He charged, his sword glowing red for the first time since he’d been fighting and he swung it at me, knocking my spear away.

As he came back for another slash I thrust, jamming the spear into his armor for no damage.  Now he was on balance and didn’t seem to care that I was poking him.  He swung his sword and I moved my shield into the path of the attack.

When the sword struck the light shield shattered instantly and the sword severed my arm before burying itself into my torso.  Except the sword wasn’t in my torso, it was stopped by the armor and none of it hurt.

I brought the langage shard back to medium power.  “Nice armor.”

“Yeah, my father made it,” said the dwarf, confused and panting.

“Point Madox.”

I moved counter clockwise to the next arena, finding Misel two people away from me.  I relaxed until someone pushed me from behind.

“Heywood, amazed to hear you are still alive,” said an elf.  She smirked at me, and there was a hint of something behind the smirk.  “At least I know your turn is going to be short.”

I grumbled, I couldn’t really respond to this without giving away the ghost and I needed Heywood’s credentials if I was going to be able to sell the treasure.  Still, since I knew I wasn’t Heywood, nothing they said should bother me.

But getting ragged on was annoying.

Thankfully, the elf stopped with her mocking once it became apparent I wasn’t going to respond.  I turned to see Misel behind the elf, driving a dagger into the side of his knee and then a second one into his armpit.

“Point Misel.”

The elf rolled to his feet looking down at the tiny halfling.  Then he extended a fist and she bumped it.  The former pit boss went clockwise to battle Madox while Misel took a moment to recover.

“It's the half minute that gets them,” said the elf behind me.

I glanced back, “How so?”

She snorted, “Heywood, can you fully recover from a battle in half a minute?  What am I saying, you never spend enough essence to get tired.  Madox is the best at holding, because he never uses his flaming sword power unless he gets desperate.”

“Yeah, that tore right through my shield,” I muttered.

The elf looked at me for a moment, and then laughed again as Misel destroyed her opponent quickly.

The next opponent was a gnome, and she wasn’t armed.  She had the crystals on either hand, and she started waving them around.

Misel pointed, “So Fizzy, you think you have a new strategy that is going to work to overcome a shear?”

“I have run the calculations, and this time I’ve got you,” said Fizzy, the gnome.

“Your pre battle smack talk needs work,” said Misel.

“You’re short,” said Fizzy.

“I’m taller than you are,” replied Misel.

“And I’m really short,” said Fizzy.  “And comfortable in my own skin.

Misel frowned and split into two copies and charged towards her, and the gnome fired two magical blasts at either image.  Misel was the left one, and took the hits but the two energy missiles were not enough to drop the halfling.  With surprising speed, she closed the gap and stabbed the gnome in the chest multiple times.

Obviously the cloth armor did not hold up.

“Ouch,” groaned the gnome, getting to her feet.

“My daggers didn’t hurt,” said Misel.

“You tackled me,” said the gnome, holding out a cube.  “I landed on my keys.”

Misel and the gnome laughed.  The gnome ran off the field towards the side where apparently people stored their personal belongings.

“Phew, I needed a rest break, get in here Heywood,” said Misel.

I stepped in, “Don’t you want your thirty seconds?”

“I’m not gonna need 'em,” she said, bringing her daggers up to get ready.

Summoning up my spear, I started reducing my essence spending but realized that I only really needed a trickle to maintain the language shard.  I was learning the language, like Spivy said.

Misel looked at my spear questioningly, “Well, you gave up on the swords.  I can’t say I don’t blame you.”

Then the arena said go and she split into two copies.  Both started circling around me, but I paid attention and struck at the one on the left.  My spear drove deeply into the shocked halfling’s side as I slammed her to the ground.

“Psyc,” uttered the halfling as the image faded and she appeared behind me, slamming into my light shield.  I had been paying attention, she liked to go for the back not the legs, so she jumped and I had the light shield positioned to block.

Misel landed on her feet and pulled away as I advanced on her with my spear.  She was on the defensive?  If her power of copies was like mine, she needed a moment to reset that power.  Then I realized she hadn’t rested between fights, she might not even be able to use the copy ability again in this fight.

“Clever, you trying to break your streak, Heywood,” she laughed, activating her other power.  Four daggers appeared in her hands.  She either knew of or figured out my light shield very quickly.  She knew it could only block so many times and while she might have guessed how many the answer was certainly less than four.

She flung all four daggers in unison and my light shield swung around, blocking one.  I smacked the second one out of the air with my spear all by myself.  I also tapped the third one with my spear, but that just unbalanced it.

The unbalanced dagger bounced off my thigh uselessly.  The other one slammed through my chest armor and buried itself in my abdomen.  Then all four daggers vanished, which was the worst option here because that left a hole in my chest that was free to bleed.

However, I was wearing armor and the chain mail wasn’t fully dagger proof considering how Misel’s daggers were made, but it was enough to turn a debilitating wound into something I could ignore for the moment with essence.

“Neat trick,” said Misel, her original daggers in hand as I advanced towards her, shield between us.

“That’s not a trick, this is a trick,” I said, activating my flash spell, it caused the light shield to blast out light mostly towards her, and she screamed as the light blinded her.  Then I drove my spear right through the shield and into her open mouth.  It punched through the back of her skull.

The spell ended, Misel was staring at me with my whole spear sticking through her head.

“Point Heywood.”

My spear was suddenly inches from her face and Misel was uninjured, at least physically.  She stared at me for a terribly long moment.

“Hey, you broke my streak,” I said.

“But,” she stammered.

“I’ll always remember that you popped my victory cherry,” I said.  “Whenever someone thinks of my string of losses, they’ll always remember you were the one who stopped my dry spell.”

“Mac, you are evil,” said Misel, pushing the tip of my spear away.  “I love it.”

Shade ran over and barked happily and the elven woman paused at the edge of the arena, “What’s wrong with your doat?”

“He’s fine,” I said.  “Who are you again?”

“Aria,” she said, glancing at the elf girl behind her.  “You don’t remember me?”

“No,” I said.

“Alright, well, I was going to tell you now’s the time to see a real two weapon fighter work, but clearly you don’t do that anymore,” Aria said uncertainly.

Shade left the pit and I held up my spear.  I wasn’t quite topped back off, and I realized it was going to get worse as more people watched me and picked up my tricks.  I looked over and realized the elf that was the original pit boss over here had defeated Madox.

The arena said go and Aria moved with inhuman speed towards me, spinning around like a dervish as she did so.  However, my combination of spear and shield ruined her initial approach.  She still managed to knock my spear away and thrust into my side but the crystal judged she hadn’t done any serious damage.

The instant she pulled back I slammed her on her back with the haft of my spear, sending her sprawling forward.  She rolled, then flipped into position with her weapons at the ready while I started thrusting the spear at her.

She blocked the first two strikes, but the third laser thrust was a solid hit to her shoulder and she stumbled back, flexing both arms.  I prepared for another strike when she held up her hand and touched her crystal.

Gulwing was there almost instantly, “What’s the issue.”

“He stabbed me with his spear,” said Aria flatly.

“Spears do that,” said Gulwing.

“My armor caught it,” she said, thumping her shoulder.  “My leather armor stopped it dead.”

Gulwing was about to say something, then looked over at my spear.  “Maybe he just tagged you?”

“I nearly fell over,” she replied.

“Fine, Heywood, follow me, Aria gets the floor,” he said.

“I was winning,” I said.

“You aren’t calibrated for a spear, dumbass,” said Gulwing, taking my training spear, “That’s on you for not being prepared.  For Heywood, at least that makes sense.”

I stomped after him.  Aria just cheated me out of a win, I’d have to get back at her later somehow.

“Quit your bitchin, this will only take a minute and I’ll let you cut in front of a line,” said Gulwing as we reached one of the side training areas.  He pointed towards a dummy.

“You have my spear,” I said.

“I have my spear, use yours,” said Gulwing.

I summoned my personal spear out of inventory and thrust it into the helmet of the dummy as Gulwing checked his tablet.

“Happy,” I asked.

“Not really, that was a good thrust but it wouldn’t have disabled her, were you using your ability,” he asked.

“No,” I said, causing the elf to reach his palm up to massage his forehead.

“You daft bugger, you will hit that dummy as hard as you can,” he said.

“Alright,” I replied, preparing to strike.  He held up a hand.

“I do not mean, almost as hard as you can, or some arbitrary percentage of hardness.  I want you to put everything you have into that strike, like it matters.  Like I’m going to kill your mutant doat if you fail,” said Gulwing causing Shade to whimper.

“Oh no!” said Shade, “Quick, pretend it is the mailman.”

“You mutant doat can talk,” asked Gulwing as I activated Laser Thrust and jammed the spear into the dummy’s helmet as hard as I possibly could.  The tip of the spear penetrated fully into the helmet, burying itself so far in that there was a dimple on the back side.

“Happy,” I asked.

“No, your mutant doat can talk,” said Gulwing, looking harrowed.  “I wonder if my non-mutant doat could talk.  He’s seen some stuff.  Terrible stuff.”

“Did I attack right?” I said.

“Yeah, your previous attacks were rated for a chopping short sword, so whenever you thruted the training crystal though you were using a large, flat tipped object.  Now you have a point, a very sharp point,” said Gulwing.

My crystal flashed a few times as Gulwing pushed some buttons on his tablet.  I was getting much better at sensing light.  I could tell that the light on my gem was green just from the light on my skin.  The ability didn’t work with non-illuminated objects, but it was still strange.

“Alright, get back in there.  Go try Madox again,” said Gulwing as he shooed me off.

I walked over and was allowed to go right after the first person in line.  I would have complained, but being the next person to go in put you in a headspace that I didn’t think was worth disrupting.

Madox dispatched the elf with relative ease and waited for me, holding up his hand.

“I’m taking the full thirty with you,” said the dwarf.

“Alright,” I replied.

“So you weren’t calibrated right,” said Madox.

“No,” I replied.

“Interesting, I should have said something but it was you,” said Madox.

“Well, it's still me,” I replied, preparing my spear for thirty seconds.

“Wouldn’t be honorable.  We start off just like we did last time,” said Madox, lining up his sword in the same stance from our first encounter.

He could be tricking me, but it was just training and he told everyone.  I glanced behind me and people were watching.  I shrugged, going after the helmet made sense at least.

The arena said go and I thrust for all I was worth right at the dwarf’s visor while he chopped down with his sword exactly like we did in the first battle.  My laser thrust hit the helmet and tore through the visor, dimpling the metal on the other side.

“I knew it,” said Madox from the bottom half of his now detached head.

***

Mark, the Wizard, walked back into the training grounds to see Gulwing sitting at the side of the arena with the casters and more than a few of the specialty adventures that weren’t well suited for tournaments like this.

Aria, the archer, was sitting down watching the fighting.  The pair of short swords she favored for close in work was out and she was checking the edges on them.  The gnomish caster was sitting with Misel playing cards.

“Spears aren’t sexy,” said Gulwing as a cheer rose up.

“What,” asked Mark, the wizard.

“It's just that they are really damn effective, but they aren’t sexy so no one uses them,” said Gulwing.

“Where is Max,” asked Mark, the wizard.

“He’s over there, fighting Sharbi, I still say she’s gonna win, but I’m not confident like normal,” said Gulwing.

“Max made it to the semi-finals,” said Mark, the wizard.

“No,” said Gulwing.  “Those are the finals.”

“Impressive,” said Mark, the Wizard, as Sharbi danced backward away from Max’s spear and then swung her heavy whip at him.  It wrapped around the spear, but as she tried to pull a glowing disk locked over the whip.  Shabi’s impressive muscles flexed, but she still struggled.  Sharbi was nearly ready to go to the heroic level and she was struggling against someone.  That was interesting.  “I officially changed his name in the guild logs.”

“Well, at least Heywood went out on a winning streak,” said Gulwing as a mighty thud filled the room.  “But it looks like Max is starting out on a losing one.”

“Point Sharbi.”

The cat girl walked proudly out of the fighting pit where she’d just claimed her win, stumbling only slightly from essence withdrawal from the fight.  Max was laying face down on the ground until the training crystal reset at which point he sat back up to the cheers.

“That wasn’t something I ever expected,” said Gulwing looking up at the wall tablet where Max was listed at 0 wins and 1 loss.  He was also in second place for the entire tournament.

“People cheering for him” said Mark, who shrugged.  “Max is different.  “

“It seems so,” said Gulwing, glancing over at Aria who was putting away her weapons as she cheered.

“You wanna tell him that second place has to buy the first round,” said Mark, the wizard.

“It is a sacred duty,” replied Gulwing.