Gatekeepers Book 2: Galeforce

Draycos slowly opened his eyes. When he did, he found himself staring up at the ceiling of his cell placed in Poseidon’s office. The crystals sticking out of the walls of the cell, which were once dark and gave of no light, now glowed in many different shades of blue and green. These crystals react and light up in the presence of magic. Draycos, whose magic had only awakened less than a week ago, was still not used to waking up to see all the crystals alight.

What the hell? Draycos sat up and looked around, still half asleep. How did I get here? Last thing I remember was knocking that Falmento guy unconscious... He threw the sheets off his body and stood up out of bed. He noticed that he was still completely clothed.

“Are you awake now, Draycos?” a voice called from outside the cell door. Draycos walked over to the door and looked out through the bars. As always, Poseidon was sitting at his desk, working on his never ending pile of paperwork. Soft scratching sounds filled the air as he wrote on the parchment with his ink-tipped talons.

Draycos pushed the door open with a creak and walked out of his cell, rubbing the back of his head as he yawned. He felt thoroughly exhausted. “Yeah, I’m here,” he yawned, covering his mouth. “What happened to me? Last thing I remember is knocking out Falmento earlier.”

Poseidon sighed as he paused with his writing. He put one elbow on the desk and rested his head on his palm as he gazed at Draycos with half-closed eyes. “You blacked out yourself right after knocking Falmento out,” he informed Draycos. “Theravor told me to bring you back here so you could get some rest. Don’t worry; it’s only been about an hour since the end of the match. It’s still early in the evening.”

Draycos yawned again. “Really? That’s good,” he commented. “I hate blacking out and not knowing how long I’ve been out of it whenever I come to.”

Poseidon narrowed his eyes even further upon hearing this. His tail twitched slightly as he glared at Draycos with a rather serious expression on his face. “I don’t think you understand the severity of the situation you were in, Draycos,” he growled.

Startled by the sudden change in Poseidon’s demeanor, Draycos stared at the old golden dragon. “What are you going on about?”

“You came very near to dying on us after that match just now.”

Draycos face paled as he broke out in a cold sweat at these words. “I almost died?” he said in a hushed tone. “What do you mean by that?”

Poseidon closed his eyes as he lifted his head off his hand and rubbed his forehead with his thumb and index talons, sighing with pent-up worry and irritation. “I doubt anyone told you this yet since you’ve not been able to use magic for even a week yet, but the moment you try to cast a spell when you’ve completely spent all your magic beforehand is the moment when a magic user dies. Magic has a very strong link to our physical bodies; it’s pretty much like blood. If you don’t have enough of it for what you require for a spell, your body goes into shock from trying to provide the magic from the spell and you end up losing consciousness. If you didn’t receive any help from us in the first minute or two after you passed out, you’d be dead.”

Draycos could only stare in shocked silence after hearing Poseidon’s statement. He shook his head as he tried to compose himself.

“I understand now that I’d die if I use up all my magic, but I don’t get how I could’ve already been running on empty by the time I threw that last Dragon Impact spell. I think you don’t get what--”

“Idiot!” Poseidon suddenly snarled in a loud voice, cutting off Draycos. “Have you already forgotten about that stunt of yours when you concentrated all that magic throughout your whole body?! Do you have any idea how much magic such an action would consume?! It requires a large amount just to keep that going for a second, but you recklessly stayed in that state for almost three minutes! That’s a feat no being except dragons can pull off, and on top of that, you used Dragon Impact when you were right at your limit! You went too far in that fight!”

Draycos had no response to Poseidon’s reprimands and remained silent while staring at the dragon with wide eyes. Poseidon eventually dropped his aggressive attitude and relaxed.

“Sorry,” he sighed. “I know you didn’t know about how close you were to your limit at the end of that match, but you ended up getting so close to dying that it was worrisome. As much as I’d rather not admit it to you, I’d miss having you around in my office if you ended up killing yourself recklessly using your magic. Don’t scare me like that again.”

Draycos blinked in surprise after hearing that. Regaining his composure after Poseidon’s scolding, he gave Poseidon a deep bow.

“Thanks for expressing your concern for me, Poseidon,” he said, staring at the ground. “I’m sorry for worrying you so much. I’ll keep my limits in mind from now on while I fight.”

“It’s fine,” Poseidon waved off Draycos’s apology. “Just don’t cause the Council trouble like that again. They had to siphon quite a bit of their own magic power into you to stabilize your condition. Injecting foreign magic into your body is the only way to prevent death after exceeding one’s magical limits.”

“Huh, interesting,” Draycos responded. He gave a big yawn. “I think I’m going back to sleep. I’m still exhausted.”

“Using up all your magic at once does do that to a magic user,” Poseidon called after Draycos as he turned around and walked back into his cell. “If you sleep well, your magic should be completely restored by the time you wake up. Good night.”

Draycos raised his right hand in farewell as he entered his cell and closed the door behind him. A minute hadn’t even passed before Poseidon could hear him snoring.

It was the fourth morning after Draycos’s victory in the second round. Draycos had been able to win match after match the last three days, making it all the way to the semi-finals of the Prisoners’ Games. All of his opponents in the last three rounds had been dragons, but none of them had been exactly on Falmento’s level, so Draycos had managed to win each time by hitting them all in their pressure point between the eyes. The matches have felt more like practice to Draycos, as he was able to clearly determine the limit on his magic during the fights. He was also able to increase the efficiency of his boosted physical state up to five minutes by getting better control of his magic. Boosting one’s overall physical abilities was not an original idea, according to what Poseidon told him the morning after his second match. It was apparently a widely known skill most magic users were capable of performing, but was rarely used due to the high rate at which magic was consumed. The ability is called Mana Focus.

“Your opponent is going to be somewhat different today, Draycos,” Vertex informed him as they waited inside Draycos’s waiting room at the coliseum. “I’ve been told that your opponent is a pure-bred human this time.”

Astonished, Draycos gave Vertex a shocked look. “Really?” he exclaimed. “I didn’t think anyone but other dragons and myself would make it this far in the games!”

“Your line of thinking would ordinarily be correct. Usually, there are nothing but dragons participating at this point in the games; almost all the other races are weeded out in the first three or four rounds. This year, though, we have you and one human that managed to make their way to the semi-finals, and the other semi-final match is between two dragons. That one’s a throwaway match, though; Balara is the one participating in it, so it’s obvious that the victory is going to him.”

“I’ve heard that name before,” Draycos spoke, perking up as he remembered it. “Yeah, that MC mentioned him and me during the first day of the games when he was trying to get the spectators all hyped up. Who is he?”

“Don’t concern yourself with him for now,” Vertex reprimanded. “Your focus should be on who your next opponent is. Now let’s see... if I recall correctly, the human’s name is Clyad Hemah. He’s a conjurer-type magic user who creates blades with his magic, although he was provided with a katana by someone in the stands during the second round. He’s been able to make it this far by slashing at the leg tendons in the dragons he’s fought nonstop since the first round, immobilizing them and giving him the win. That’s different from your style, since all you do is knock out your opponents with brute force.”

“Hey, watch it!” Draycos snapped in annoyance. “I’ve only been able to use magic for a week now; I haven’t been taught anything other than the basic Dragon Impact spell!”

“Alright, alright,” Vertex soothed. “I just hope you can come out on top of this fight. If he manages to cut your tendons, it’s over. You’ll have to be on guard during the entire match.”

Just then, Draycos and Vertex heard the announcer getting started on the day’s introductions and upcoming matches.

“That’s your cue,” Vertex commented as the gate slowly opened. “Don’t screw this up; remember that you’ve made it to the semi-finals now. Go out there and win this so you can fight and win again tomorrow.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” Draycos sighed as he stood up from the bench. The lower half of his coat fluttered in the wind like a cape as he walked towards the gate. “See ya later.”

The bright morning sunlight hit Draycos’s eyes as he walked out onto the arena. Draycos paused as he took a moment to shield his eyes and look around the arena to see which gate the Clyad person was coming out from. To Draycos’s surprise, the gate directly to his left was opened, and Draycos watched as the figure walked out into the sunlight.

Draycos’s first impression of the middle-aged man was that of a swordsman from Edo-period Japan or something like that. He wore a dark blue robe that was called a kimono with a purple sash around his waist with gold embroidery. The open kimono revealed a lean and muscular, aibet hairy, chest, and a red mantle hung from his shoulders like a cape. He had narrow blue eyes, and his black hair was tied up in a long ponytail at the back of his head with a white piece of cloth, save for a single dark blue bang that hung all the way down to his sharp chin, partially covering his right eye. His left arm was inside his robe, with the hand hanging out just above the sash around his waist. In his right hand he held a katana that he swung over his right shoulder when he entered the arena. The narrow blade was at least as long as Draycos was tall, the back of the blade black while the edge was chrome-blue. It had a gold star-shaped guard with a red and gold diamond-shaped pattern woven into the hilt. Two blue strings hung off the bottom of the hilt.

The swordsman noticed Draycos standing there and looked his way. He remained silent as he glared at Draycos for a moment before withdrawing his left hand completely into his robe. He pulled a long stalk of grass out from somewhere in his robe and stuck it into his mouth before returning his left hand to its previous position.

What the hell is he supposed to be?! He looks like the most cliche Japanese samurai I’ve ever seen! And why the hell did he have grass in his robe?! Was he trying to intimidate me with that?!

Clyad turned away and moved on to the middle of the arena. Each step was accompanied by a clack from the wooden clogs he wore on his feet. Shaking his head in amazement, Draycos went after him.