“You want to know about the duels? It’s simple, really. If one dragonfolk dishonors another, that other has the right to challenge him [or her]. Each of them must produce a witness, called a second, for the duel to take place. If either of them cannot, then it is an automatic forfeit, and he or she is considered the loser. The seconds also fight, so the duel is really a two-on-two contest. The loser must make reparations to the winner of whatever they ask–within reason of course. No firstborn children or anything.”
Professor Alamon finished his statement with a hearty laugh.
To the question of whether he considers the practice barbaric, he answers: “Oh never! In a way, it’s all very civil. They are very strict about not injuring one another. To win while grievously injuring another is worse than to lose. At that point, martial law takes effect, and he’s wanted for a blood ransom. No, no, that doesn’t happen often–almost never. Like I said, it’s all civil. Really, if men could do the same, the prisons would be a lot emptier!”
-Interview with Georg Alamon
The Explorer’s Magazine
Fenn tied the end of their last rope around the final tree and stepped back. With that, they had a makeshift “fence” marking an incomplete boundary. In all, the “arena” was perhaps eight of his paces in diameter. That was large enough to fit two fights, but small enough to be tricky. There would be no hiding, much to his partner’s annoyance.
They were allowed to use whatever tools were at their disposal, including magic, so long as they did not attack to maim or kill. Three clear hits or a blade-point yield counted as a defeat and sent the loser outside of the ring. It was over when both teammates left the ring. He fingered his long dagger’s hilt. It was cold in his hand, but not as cold as the dread in his belly.
Across the ring, Gale and Krid strategized in whispers.
“I guess you don’t have anything to see in magical darkness?” Syrdin asked from his elbow.
He startled. “Y-y. Well, sort-of. I should be able to see sources of magic. So Krid may not be visible, but Gale will be using hers.”
Syrdin’s white brows shot up. “Really? Like a magic-sense spell?”
“It’s not quite the same. I usually use it to read enchantments because I can see how the energy is organized. Nevertheless, I doubt that a darkness spell would disrupt it.”
“Perfect.” Syrdin’s teeth glistened under pale gums. “Then I’ll cast that dark spell–the one that scared your Everguard. But first I’ll try to tag them with magic for you. Either way, you go for Gale. You two are a better matchup. I’ll try to beat Krid fast and come to help you.”
Fenn gritted his teeth. Even Syrdin didn’t believe he could defeat her. Do I?
It seemed doubtful. She’d been the one to help him practice during their conscription years because she’d been his better–even when using his first choice weapon of a sword. But he did have more practical experience in self-defence. That had to count for something.
Syrdin handed him a shortsword. It was a fine blade, curved sickly with a double point on the end. The metal shone darkly.
“What’s this?” he grabbed the hilt.
“You’ll have reach on her with this. Use it.”
He swung the blade stiffly through old forms his body had nearly forgotten. His arms were long, and with a sword in place of his dagger, he could easily outreach Gale. Their strength might be well matched, for their sizes, but he had leverage with his limbs. He stared at the weapon.
It was light; it was sharp; it was a weapon made to kill easily and swiftly, without remorse. Dare I raise it against Galendria? Dare I raise this weapon at all?
He watched her confer with Krid, nodding her golden-fringed hair as Krid whispered. She glanced his direction and glowered. Her cheek flushed with the heat of her anger.
“What if I can’t fight her?”
Syrdin searched him up and down, reading him. “You aren’t going to hurt her.”
“Not physically..”
“What? You want to save her feelings now? Kinda late for that.”
Fenn winced. “But this isn’t about her.”
“Oh stuff it. She wanted to challenge you for her honor or some crap Krid put in her head. You don’t want to apologize to her, do you?”
He didn’t. Maybe he should, for misleading her about Syrdin’s race. Frosts, she didn’t even know that he’d never intended to fulfill their matronage. But Gale owed Syrdin an apology for assuming zheir motives based on ethnicity alone. She had only proven correct his decision to withhold Syrdin’s nationality. “But it’s just the idea I want to fight, the assumptions, not the person.”
“The person who holds the idea. Is there really a difference?”
He considered this. Wars were fought and peoples killed over ideological differences. But they were people. They had farms and friends and spouses and children and homes. Futures were cut off in those wars. Could I lift a sword over mere ideas? There was no reason people couldn’t change their minds, or just agree to disagree and work toward a common goal. Gale could change her mind, if she’d just stop and talk–really talk. If she wanted peace enough–if he did–they could resolve this without weapons.
Syrdin huffed. “Stop overthinking it. This is simple: you want to allow me along, and you want them to stop putting up a fuss about it. This is the method. Simple. You aren’t hurting anyone.”
“But winning by strength and cunning does not make her change her mind, or make us right, objectively.”
“No, it just decides what everyone acts on directly. Now are you with me?”
He sheathed the sword and studied zheir expression, zheir jaw set sharp and determined under lowered brows.
If he backed off, Syrdin would be set loose in the Wildlands alone, and Gale would forever hate all Night Elves without differentiating, and he’d have to make an apology he didn’t mean. She might even add in a demand about the matronage, if she had figured him out. The papers were signed. All she had to do was demand he shared her tent, and Etnfrandian law would consider him tied to her until they bore children. He didn’t even need to sleep with her–just share, which was a bit ridiculous. Of course, there were no Entrandians here to witness their “shared residence,” and they’d never be there long enough to legally declare it, and—in the end, she’d only have his word at the risk of his “honor.” That was essentially the situation already.
Except in that he'd been blackmailed into signing the papers in the first place, and she still didn't know that.
Fenn shoved away his spinning thoughts. Zhe was right: he was overthinking. And Gale had already chosen the sword, as had Syrdin. He’d only chosen a side. The side he believed in, just as he’d once believed in Krid when his family didn’t. Thus, he discovered he could raise a sword over ideas–or at least over consequences–even against his friends. He tied his scabbard to his belt. “Alright. What’s the contingency strategy?”
Syrdin spoke low as zhe instructed him. There were a lot of contingencies, mostly things he would never need. They discussed what he knew of Krid’s strengths and of Galendria’s magic–her invisibility and the limits of her conjurations. They even discussed a plan where they double teamed Krid briefly if Gale ran off to cast spells.
Syrdin pointed out that Gale could probably charm him and turn him to their side.
He glanced at her. Surely she wouldn’t. If she had wanted to resort to that, she would have already. Right?
A bolt of realization ran through him, chilling him from head to toe. Syrdin was an elf. Syrdin could charm him, too. He wouldn’t even have noticed.
He squinted at zhem. Zhe had shown genuine surprise, however, when he had chosen to fight for zhem. And Mell would have realized. If no one else, she would have seen dilation in his pupils, or noticed him fawning too much over zhem.
He shook loose of the thought as he followed zhem to the center of the ring.
He reached a hand out and clasped Gale’s forearm. Her eyes burned in their amber flecks as she glared outrage into him.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“For the record, I don’t want to fight you.” That’s what he wanted to say. But his mouth had gone dry and the words grew jumbled in his brain. His body vibrated with the nerves of a competition. He’d never been a great fighter.
He gripped Krid’s forearm next, his own similarly gripped. “With honor,” Krid said. Fenn nodded, mute.
At a word from Mell, who stood just outside the ring, they backed away four steps each into a square. Gale took her stance across from him with Krid at a corner. They had chosen the same matchups as Syrdin and him.
With another word, their hands were on their weapons. Or rather, Gale’s hands were outstretched, and the rest of them placed hands on hilts.
Finally, Mell called, “begin,” and he drew his sword. Gale disappeared, just as he predicted. A spell splashed over the ground in dancing, flamelike lights that licked at Krid’s heels while he leaped away. Gale was not standing in that fire, either, or the flames would have flickered harmlessly around her silhouette.
He called upon his one great power: Trueseeing. Magic flamed and flashed in front of him. It flared from the trees and bushes, and from Gale. Her form, not but wisps of pale yellow light, bore down on him with her blunt sword, an astral glimmer. He gasped and raised his to meet it, deflecting her sloppily. She uttered a cry of surprise, not expecting to be seen.
Then there was blackness. In it, he could still see her, but as he stepped aside, her face no longer tracked him. He met her shoulder with the flat of his blade, and she yelped her hit number, “one,” and backed away.
If she were a touch quicker, or more experienced with magic, she would have cast her own magic-sensing spell and known his location–or at least that of his enchanted glasses. But she didn’t.
He couldn’t perceive her expression in that state, with toughness glaring in his glasses and her form wispy, but she must have been irate. She swung wildly for him. He deflected one cross-body swing, running around her, out of the path of her anger. Over her shoulder, another form glowed.
She was a woman in draping cloth that tied around her middle, much like the style of clothes the Brikhvarnni elf colonists had worn. She glowed a blue-white, her form misting with spiritual magic, unstable and intangible. She watched the place where the magic darkness originated. Fenn noticed her ear: round at the bottom, like a human’s, but pointed at the top corner: a half-elf. He gasped. She doesn’t belong in the Fae.
At the sound, Gale’s round “blade” found his arm, and he was bruised solidly in the bicep.
“Got you!” Gale yelled, lunging for him again.
“Hit one!” he informed Mell as he dashed around Gale, her blade once again swinging through empty air.
“Come back here!” Gale yelled into the darkness, thrashing around without much form. She was panicking.
A few paces away, Krid yelled in frustration. “Fight me in the light you coward!”
“Gale, please calm down,” Fenn whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“And I’m not going to lose to a traitor!” Her sword swung at where his voice had been. He wasn’t that foolish. He deflected the predictable swing with his blade in his left hand, then grabbed her wrist with his right, twisting it behind her. Her sword disappeared from that hand.
For a moment, he was confused, but then the butt end of a dagger met his side, and he grunted, “hit two.” But he did not relent, pressing her backward as he laid his blade against the top of her shoulder, against her neck.
“Now yield,” he reminded her, bumping her off-balance toward the rope with his knee against hers. She stumbled back as the darkness disappeared with the sound of a metallic crunch. Her back was to the rope, her wrist in his hand, and her neck at his blade. The sudden imagof her pinned at blade's edge alarmed him. He glanced to double check, but--yes, the blunt side faced her skin.
Then her eyes found his. Hers were wide, awed. Almost enough to make him pull away. He held fast, meeting her gaze. I didn't want this. You did.
“Gale’s out!” Mell announced, finally seeing them.
Gale’s eyes flicked over his shoulder to where sounds of metal clashed from the other half of the duel, then back to his, and then away, her cheeks red. He backed away, confused.
She was angry, right? Flustered?
She ducked under the rope and out of the ring. He’d defeated her, he realized. It washed over him. Another success he couldn’t have achieved without Syrdin’s help.
He turned, slowly realizing that the battle was not over. He had needed to request this contingency from Syrdin. He was supposed to come in fast and distract Krid just long enough for Syrdin to gain a hit on him.
He readied his stance. Krid was consumed by his focus on Syrdin, who danced around him on light feet, dodging as much as deflecting his blows.
He advanced step by steady step. The urge to sneak attack Krid tempted him, but he knew his movements were tracked, even if only by Krid’s instincts. He charged forward in Krid’s blind spot. Just as the flat of his blade lowered to Krid’s shoulder, Krid swung the full strength of his sword down on Fenn’s. It swept away not only the weapon, but Fenn along with it. They were tossed, side by side, onto the ground.
“Three!” He choked as soon as breath returned to him. He plucked himself up from the earth and retreated to where Mell stood, dirt and leaves sticking to his back.
He turned to watch, Toughness runes still glaring at him. He nearly dismissed his spell. Then he looked where Syrdin dodged. The woman, the half-elf who had been standing near zhem, was gone, but her energy remained. It rippled like light in water inside of Syrdin’s center, captured in zheir soul like a vase.
Krid roared, sparks cracking from behind his snarled teeth. Fenn gaped. Krid would not use his breath. He could not–not without forfeiting. He could kill Syrdin with that.
Krid swung with abandon, and Syrdin was forced away by a blunt blow that crashed against zheir daggers. Zhe skidded to a halt at the edge of the rope and pulled another dagger from the folds of zheir clothes, the spiritual energy still rippling inside. The air smelled of ozone. Krid opened his throat. Fenn drew the only bit of metal he had on him: the sword. Syrdin was in danger, and for once, he knew what to do.
With Fenn thrown by a decisive swing, he spun to where he was sure Syrdin would run. Zhe had a quirk for the spot at his thigh, or so he’d thought. His blade met air. Boots stomped on his tail and a dagger’s hilt met his back.
“Two!” He roared with frustration, barely holding in the crackling anger that rose in his throat.
A second hit! He had yet to land any except the one that had busted zheir dagger which had sourced the darkness. Breaking a weapon didn’t count as a hit. It just made it easier to hit. Zhe had replaced it with another in a blink.
He tried to feint left, then right, then thrusted and tried to claw where zhe would dodge. Zhe never fell for it. Not once. It was as though his intentions were as obvious to zhem as a cactus in a salt flat.
He gave up on cunning and returned to brute strength, beating zhem back slowly toward the edge. But he got no more than three steps away when zhe ducked around him and he had to chase zhem the other way. It was an absurdly even match. If it had not been for the darkness and for Fenn, zheir strikes would not land either.
His anger grew, and the thunder rose higher in his throat. He struck at zhem for tricking Fenn. And it grew and he struck for claiming a right to a Brikhvarnni tradition. Zhe stomped on his toes and threw off his next attack. Dirty! He slammed zhem aside, throwing zhem across the arena for it. He realized a moment too late his mistake.
Zheir grip shifted to a throwing one. Zhe had tricked him, too, into giving zhem distance. He should’ve tried to close it immediately, but death-instinct enthralled him. Zheir teeth flashed white, eyes glinting like the knife zhe aimed for his neck. Zhe knew zhe had him.
He released his power against the dagger coming for his life.
Thunder cracked. Syrdin leaped. A sword gleamed in the air.
A lightweight impact, heated from the lightning, thudded dully against his neck. It was the butt of the thrown dagger. Zhe had never intended to kill him.
When the flashing stopped, Fenn stood in front of Mell, an arm outstretched. The dark sword Syrdin had given him stood in the ground, point-down, the earth around it smoldering. Smoke rose, too, from Syrdin’s clothes at a couple points.
Zhe was crouched, teeth gritted, just outside the ring.
It was cheating for Fenn to interfere. Forfeiting for Syrdin to leave the ring. Taboo for him to unleash his power. And he’d been hit a third time.
“Um,” Mell glanced between them. “Did anyone see if Syrdin’s dagger landed?”
“The rules are broken, ” Krid growled. “It’s null.” All that fighting had been for nothing.
“Krid,” Fenn gawped at him, unbelieving. “You broke the rules.”
At once, the anger flared again. “So did you!”
“To save my life, you bastard!” Syrdin hissed, patting a smoking hole in zheir sleeve.
“Zhe made me do it!” he growled. “Zhe angered me on purpose. Stomping on a drakeman’s tail! Creating darkness! Zhe drove me to it!”
Fenn shook his head, just staring with those soft, shadowed eyes. “People only have the influence on you that you give them.”
He’d heard those words from Fenn before. Once, he had spoken them at a time when Krid had felt powerless, trapped in a fate he could not fulfill, unable to challenge his own family. It had been an encouragement then. Now, it was painfully ironic when Fenn had been so influenced by the gut-spiller. He snarled, “I was only trying to stop zhem!”
“From what?” Syrdin hissed. “Winning? Or perhaps taking my next breath? If Fenn hadn’t thrown that sword–!” Zheir body tensed, a shudder rippling over zhem.
He could’ve killed zhem.
“Somehow I suspect you’d live, you poison-spitting cobra!” Syrdin had never magicked Fenn, probably. Zhe had never charmed him. But zhe had whispered poison in his ear. Zhe had befriended him all while making enemies with Krid. They were in danger. He stomped away. They were all in danger. Why can’t Fenn see that? Syrdin was not honest. Zhe was not safe.
“I declare the match a win for Syrdin and Fenn,” Mell said calmly, “On account of the first rule, never to maim or kill, has been broken, and Gale defeated fairly.”
Krid snarled. “It’s NULL, I tell you.”
“You made me the referee.” Mell rebutted. “I think it’s pretty clear who won here.”
Krid raised himself up, “No, we will re–”
“She’s right, Krid.” Gale stood on the opposite side of the rope, arms held across her stomach, her gaze averted. “We lost. They get to make their demands.”
A shiver shot down him. That did not mean he couldn’t defeat Syrdin in a fight to the death, if he needed to. He could find comfort in that. “Fine!” he growled. “What do you want?!”
