Gauntlet

Splinters of the locked doors standing in Hyde’s way ricocheted off the glass floor as Alizar’s army charged through every entranceway, up every staircase, all in the pursuit of finding San and the others. Terrified faces of noblemen and women shopping in the upper half of the Capital dotted every corner of every hat store and cafe the rich enjoyed, but their pale, rounded faces soon left their view as they stormed the castle.

Alizar tried to take this time to regain some of her strength, sipping down some of the medic’s potions from Flint’s arena proved to be more challenging than she thought as the bumpy ride of being carried up staircases and jogging down hallways left her hand-eye coordination less than acceptable as the first potion was uncorked and spilled all over her robes, the second was much closer but just before it touched her lips a sudden bump caused the vial to jump forward, bashing her front teeth then meeting the same fate to be spilled and dropped as the broken glass crunched under the warrior’s many feet.

Licking her front teeth, Alizar confirmed her incisors hadn’t chipped but the pulsing pain on the top of her gums showed she would need another method of consumption. Using the utmost care this time, she inched the cork off in a twisting motion, as it popped from its place, Alizar formed a ring with her index finger and thumb as if she was about to breath fire, but she had a much less magical use as she placed her finger ring over the lid as a safety buffer. Opening her mouth as large as she possibly could, the bitter, citric fluid finally found her throat.

Gagging as her puckering face felt the satisfaction of finally taking the potion over such treacherous terrain, an unfortunate doorknob found its way to her frown, bashing her teeth again. It was more shock than anything as the hollow metal bulb bounced from her lips but Alizar tried her best to lay in the arms of the twenty-some warriors running out of breath as they had been running through the Capital for far too long without a break.

Tackling, shoving, slapping, and punching his way through anybody who hadn’t already seen how easily he could mangle a human form, Hyde only hesitated when a sealed steel door blocked their path.

♮

“You do realize impersonating a commander is a major offense, miss?” the fellow commander asked as he clinked the handcuffs behind Matilda’s back. Waiting for her response, he seemed to grow ever more frustrated at her nodding.

“Speak, you insolent imposter!” the partially dressed commander ordered, slapping her across the face

“She can’t you twit, she’s a mute, that’s why I needed to do the talking,” Tyson said as Matilda opened her mouth to show her absent tongue.

“And what’s your story then?” the commander asked Tyson, interrupted by the steel door behind them, as an echoing tone of welted metal filled the small corridor outside the boiler room. One after another, the dents appeared like boiling water, except these metal bubbles didn’t pop, only ominously sitting on the surface as they multiplied. A chanting could be heard growing on the other side until finally, a gap was created.

It appeared as though two massive stone hands had cut their way through the thinned metal welt, tearing through it like a child would take apart the wrapping on a present, the jagged shards of metal chipped off as most piled to make the least welcoming welcome mat in the world as the jagged creature who made the hole stepped through his opening to the waiting soldiers with raised weapons.

Behind him, an angry mob of warriors chanted, now unmuted by the steel door, their yelling filled the small space.

“Don’t even bother!”

“Weapons won’t work!”

“Run for your lives!”

And the rest of the inaudible chatter boiled down to most just laughing and cheering as they were certain they were on the winning side of any battle now. But the guards didn’t listen, those who had spears extended them to Hyde’s face. He reached out and grabbed the blades in a bundle, squeezing them together and snapping them to make a beautiful bouquet of sharpened spearheads which he then handed to the most regal looking commander there who was watching, while the others failed to subdue the foe.

Smacking away Hyde’s offering, the commander drew his greatsword. Gripping it in both hands, he took an overhead chop at hyde, but his speed with the mighty blade was laughable, Hyde merely caught the blade between his calloused palms and extended his leg, booting the man in the chest and he shot backward, his back meeting the wall, with a dent behind him as proof, the noble commander failing to rise for round two.

“Is anyone else feeling as brave as they are stupid?” Hyde huffed, looking out at the group of soiled soldiers and spying a man who looked to be freshly cut in half, smiling in the arms of a female wearing the commander’s armor.

“Alizar, you came back for us!”

Grunting as she sat up in her throne of muscular arms, Alizar was happy to see that they had made it in time “Of course I did, where are San and Marko?”

“Crawling around in the vents, trying to find the armory.”

“Well come on then,” Alizar said as Matilda turned her cuffed hands toward one of the freed arena fighters. They severed her chains with one swing of their axe. And with that, the party was almost fully reunited. At the doorstep of the Prince, they charged forward, now more powerful and unstoppable as ever as Alizar’s body had at least regained half its strength while Matilda and Tyson got spare weapons from the other saved warriors in their group.

♮

“I can’t believe your heavy armor hasn’t gotten us caught yet,” Marko grunted behind San as they snaked their way thru the vents, San was using the remaining scraps of clothing on her pants while her trusted cloak padded her elbows so the metal of her armor didn’t scrape against the metal of the vent. Luckily, the leather bind on her dagger gave enough friction for her to pull her body weight through the tin catacombs of ventilated dust.

Marko’s only complication was that wooden leg of his. He tried his best to keep it extended so it wouldn’t bang around. The two had a hard time without a map finding the armory, checking through the grates below them to try and get a clue, San passed over an old man reading a book without hesitation. But something about him caught Marko’s eye.

♮

The momentum was strong as Alizar’s army trampled grunts and decimated doors coming to their final barricade at the end of an enormous sprint. The group, desperately trying to catch their breath, left Hyde to attempt turning the doorknob, just this once, despite every other door being locked with some kind of heavy lock, he had thought he would attempt to preserve some strength and just try, just on a whim, and with that—the door squeaked open.

A massive library sprawled with every book ever written on its shelves, rolling ladders on every aisle, and one small raisin of a man in the middle. His spine looked to be permanently bent as he craned over his text. His glasses rested at the porous bulb at the end of his nose, the glass thicker than any armor. And the text he was reading, despite being split almost down the middle, had to be as thick as his arm was long.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your reading, sir,” Hyde said through bated breaths as his cardio was not his top physical aspect. But he wasn’t stressed, thinking there was no way this man could pose a threat, “do you know where the armory is?”

The man’s wrinkled head tilted up to size up his intruders

“Please, if you could tell us, we would really appreciate it,” Hyde asked, walking forward into the middle of the library, unsure if the old man was hard of hearing.

But the man understood perfectly well. Raising his shaking, shriveled hand, he made a familiar hand sign.

Sitting up and scolding the bodies that blocked her line of view of a recognized room, Alizar sat up, seeing a familiar face.

“BRACE YOURSELVES!” she yelled when she recognized him, but it was too late. A gale of wind so strong it would have knocked the massive gate that defended the Capital off with the rest of the stone wall holding it in place with a single use shot forth out of the aged, weathered wizard.

The bodies of Alizar’s army flew like leaves in an autumn breeze, leaving her unfortunately buried in bodies when the many felt the familiar call of gravity. Hyde took the majority of the blast, sliding across the room with his forearms crossed to bear the pressure as his wide stance glided on the dust-coated floor, but he didn’t topple. As his sliding came to a halt, he saw his opportunity to charge the distance between him and the underestimated foe.

Unfortunately, the grand library had such an open space, in the time it took Hyde to run from one side of the room to the frail old man, the great wizard was able to make a circle with his index finger and thumb while lifting his pinky, placing his hand sign over his shriveled lips he blew a transparent bubble, refracting the light like an oil stain as rainbow swirls danced between its transparency.

The bubble took form inches from Hyde’s face, skidding in his attempt to stop, his arm was the first to be caught. Grabbing onto his captured shoulder he tried tugging, but the spell only continued to consume him, soon taking his head and the rest of his body.

Amazingly, it was able to lift his heavy body up, far above the bookshelves, the metal air ducts that ran around the perimeter, past the stained glass windows and into the cobwebs that lined the vaulted ceiling, despite his relentless pounding from the inside of the orb. It rippled and shook, absorbing his impacts and his rough skin that should have been perfect for puncturing such a thin magic shell.

But for now, he had an unfortunate sky box seat to watch his friends die.

Finding the physical strength to heave her unconscious warrior’s bodies off of hers, Alizar huffed the unsettled dust as she tried to face her master.

“Quinton, please stop,” she begged, knowing even if she was well-rested the fossil could best her in a duel any day of the week.

“I am proud to call you my student, Alizar,” the ancient man struggled to say through a trembling jaw, as he raised his hand again, pressing his ring, and middle finger into the pads of his thumb, raising his pinky and index fingers as arks of lightning soon jumped between his pronged digits.

“He has my grandchildren, I need to do what that brat asks of me,” Quinton said begrudgingly as he looked away, firing a bolt of lightning at his pupil who had already raised a thick wall of the stone tiles to block his shot.

Quickly, Alizar palmed the wall she raised to protect herself, sending the massive chunk of stone at the wizard, but her efforts seemed futile. His raised hand dropped like a guillotine as a thin jet of water shot out, dividing the speeding stone wall down the middle as he flicked his ring finger up, making his own stone wedge in front of him to send the pieces of Alizar’s stone wall off in different directions.

Knowing she at least had physicality over her teacher, Alizar took to her feet, creating her small balls of fire as she ran, placing each one to float at her hip height, waiting until she completed twenty. Evasively dodging the laser thin strips of water the old man conjured to try and end her struggles painlessly, she used her wind blasts to position herself like a coiled spring, leaping to attack a clock.

As she placed her final orb of flame, she shot a gust of wind, launching her up over Quinton’s head, the old man giving a toothless smile at her ingenuity as he struggled to bend his neck to watch her finish him off.

Spinning as she soared through the air, the orbs seemed to link together. Interlocking her fingers as each ball of flame tethered to one another, finally shooting out a massive geyser of flame from each orb, all twenty firing in toward her master. As if that wasn’t enough, she continued to blast down on him with gusts of air to stay aloft.

If you had blinked, you would have missed the miserable old man’s regretful action. In the seconds before he was roasted alive and Alizar’s second blast of wind crumpled his fragile bones he sent a final arrow of lightning from his fingertips, piercing the young witch’s lung. Her focus was broken, and her orbs of fire petered off, the geysers, no longer fueled, ended in a size no bigger than a match. The old man’s sweating body was filled with grief, watching his student plummet to the earth, belly-flopping in a dissatisfied crunch on the battleground that used to be a library.