The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (24 page)

Everyone gathered to watch after Povon, Kragorram, and Karzog surprised all by announcing that they would take a turn for the tournament.  Since the dice were too small for them to manipulate with their hands and no magic was allowed, Nek allowed that they could roll the dice by cupping their hand over the dice table and shaking the whole table like a dice cup.  When they took their turns, each laid down on their bellies with their chins on the throwing line.

Displaying amazing dexterity, Kragorram took a ball from Nek’s hand between the claw-tips of his forefinger and thumb, closed one eye, and made his toss with a short flick of his wrist.  Both his throws were very close to their targets, but both missed the hole.

“I am satisfied.” he stated with a smile as he accepted congratulations for his effort.  “My throws were comparable with most others who are trying the game for the first time.  I think with some practice, I could be competitive.”

“Considering that your throw was like me trying to throw a grain of fine salt, I think you did pretty good!” Nek laughed.

“Set one on the floor for me please?” Povon asked, then showed that her hands were so much smaller than Kragorram’s that she could pick up the five centimeter wide ivory ball between the pads of her fingertip and thumb, and she threw with a motion similar to his.  She made both of her throws, but had only rolled a six and a three.

Karzog’s hands were small enough that he could throw in an almost-human manner, and he made his throw at the six hole, but narrowly missed the eight.

Then Silaran and three other unicorns queued up for their turns.  Silaran delicately shook the dice in a cup with his mouth and tipped it onto the table, showing a one and a seven.  He dried his lips on the towel provided for people’s hands, picked up the ball in his mouth, sealed his lips around it, and blew it toward the wall with a sudden puff of breath.  It popped out of his mouth with significant velocity, and into the one hole, but his shot at the seven missed so high that it went into the six hole.

After taking their turn at the badra wall, the twins spent an hour and a half circulating, saying hello to everyone, accepting their thanks for the party, and offering their own thanks when everyone wished them happy birthday.

Then they spent an hour playing darts, and showed that they were competitive with some of the best players there.  Though they didn’t run up to the line for their throws, since that officially wasn’t allowed in the rules, their full-armed motion like throwing a spear was still very unique and surprising to see, given their sizes and that most humans didn’t take up the game until their teens.

Everyone made further inroads in the bounteous feast for their evening meal, then Reggie and Helemia rose to speak again.

“We’d now like to show you an entertainment, by casting an Illusion on that quarter of the wall on that side, so everyone close to there will want to move back a bit so they can see the whole thing.” Reggie instructed.

“What we’re gonna show you is known among the dragons as The Greatest Challenge Ever Fought.  Way, way back about forty-five million years ago, when the only intelligent races were the dragons and the unicorns, the two races fought a war, and after the war, some of the dragons wanted to change the way their government worked, and make a permanent peace treaty with the unicorns.  Some of the other dragons didn’t want that, and there were a lot of fights about it.

“Even back then Somonik, who is Most Noble, was already twenty-four million years old.  He was already one of the most famous dragons, and he was one of the best fighters.  He was in favor of the peace treaty, and he let everyone know he was ready to fight about it.

“Kergok was a brown dragon who was the toughest fighter that was against the treaty, and he accepted Somonik’s challenge.  He was about the same size as Somonik, and was thought to be a little stronger with his fire, but a little weaker with his magic.  He was thirty-one million years old, so he had the edge in experience, but he wasn’t as aggressive as Somonik was then.  They were well-matched, and no one could say who would win.

“They both knew that whoever won, it would make a big difference on whether all the dragons agreed with the treaty or not.  So they agreed to fight on the plains of Xervia a month after Kergok accepted the challenge, so everyone could go there and watch.  But no one got to watch the whole fight, because it lasted for three years straight!  Every week they stopped fighting for half a day so they could hunt and eat and get a drink of water, and maybe take a quick nap, but other than that they fought continuously for one thousand, one hundred and five days.  The dragon who was Eldest when they fought made all the spectators go home to hunt, or they’d have eaten everything in central Xervia by the time the fight was over, and that’s why no one got to see the whole thing.  But almost all of them watched as much of it as they could, and they stayed about four hundred meters away from the fighters all the time so everyone knew there was no interference.  After it was over, Readings were taken from almost everyone that watched it, and a continuous record of the whole fight was edited together from the best views available at any given moment.  Because of that, the view of the fight changes a lot, and it’s mostly a flying fight seen by flying spectators, so be careful if you haven’t flown much or you have a weak stomach, because parts of it might make you dizzy.

“Millions of years after the fight, Somonik watched the edited Reading of the spectators’ views, and Quewanak got that memory from him at the founding of The Just Alliance, and we got it from Quewanak.

“Now since it lasted for three years, we can’t show very much of it.  We’re going to show the first nine minutes, the best ninety-three minute sequence, and the last twenty-one minutes.

“We begin.”

He and Helemia floated back to their seats and closed their eyes in concentration as the Illusion began, and a window covering a quarter of the interior wall of the hall opened into elsewhere and elsewhen.

Somonik was soaring about a hundred and fifty meters above the rolling plains, and Kergok approached from the north, flying hard and making good speed.  Millions of other dragons surrounded them, keeping their distance.  First there was only the sound of the wind and their wings, then Somonik growled menacingly, Kergok snarled in reply, and as the distance between them closed to thirty meters, both cast spells while making short-range Translocations to avoid the other’s attack.  That set the tone for the entire first sequence.  The hall was filled with the cacophonous sound of mighty energies released; the roar of fire, the crack and crackle of lightning, the boom of great explosions, and the indescribable report of unidentifiable magics.  The nine-minute sequence was spectacular, but neither dragon managed to injure the other due to their phenomenal abilities to Shield from attacks, to dodge and duck with amazing and sinuous agility, and to Translocate almost instantly.  Both were incredibly fit, healthy, and vigorous.  At a moment when they’d paused for a few seconds to catch their breath and let their power recover a bit, the sequence ended.

“The next sequence was about nineteen months later.” Helemia announced, and the Illusion resumed.

Their battle was rejoined after a hunting break, and both dragons were covered in wounds; a few fresh, most in various stages of healing, but both still seemed mostly unimpaired.  The fight was no longer over plains, and had moved to a region of rocky foothills.  They cast far fewer spells than they had at the beginning, and never Translocated, instead relying on their fire, their flying skills, their claws, and their teeth.  When they came close to the ground they often snatched up boulders to throw at one another.  The skill and agility they displayed in both fighting and flying was awesome, and everyone in the hall was captivated.  Finally the combatants’ post-break burst of energy was expended, and it became a slower-paced and more grueling battle.  The sequence ended.

As the next sequence began it was seen that both dragons were covered in blood and horrible wounds.  Neither flew, or had any energy left for spells, or fuel for their fire.  They bit and clawed and wrestled as they rolled across the ground in a furious tangle, desperate to finally finish their conflict.  Every once in a while they held each other at bay for a few seconds as they panted and struggled to overcome their almost-debilitating fatigue, then suddenly the thrashing, roaring, snarling fight would resume.  Even at this late stage of the fight, the incredible toughness of dragons was readily apparent, and most of the bites and claw strikes failed to penetrate the other’s scales, unless they scored on a previous wound.

Finally Somonik managed to get a good bite on Kergok’s entire muzzle, clamping the brown dragon’s mouth closed and blocking his nostrils.  Kergok frantically thrashed and clawed for more than four minutes before he lost consciousness from lack of breath.  To administer the coup de grace, Somonik held his fallen opponent’s mouth wide open with one foot and one hand, summoned the last dregs of his magical energy, and cast a small explosion straight down Kergok’s throat that blew out the back of his neck.

Somonik raised his head and roared his victory to all the dragons who were watching, and they roared back in almost-hysterical approval.  Then he slowly collapsed to the ground in bone-deep exhaustion, panting as fast and as deep as it seemed possible for him to do.

The sequence ended, the window faded, and there was not a sound in the gathering hall of Hiliani.

Helemia spoke into the silence.  “Somonik.  He is Most Noble.”

Another moment passed, as just as someone started to clap, Reggie made a strange sound like: “Heeack!” as he experienced a shuddering cringe.  His voice was still being magically augmented, so no one could fail to notice it, and the surprising sound interrupted the beginning applause.

“Wow!  I just had a prophecy!” he laughed a second later.

“And it’s a good one!” Helemia giggled.  “Let’s make it special!”

“Okay!  Just a second…” he said as he closed his eyes in concentration.

“Yah, that’s good!  But with this!” Helemia enthused.

“Nice!” he nodded as his eyes opened and he grinned.

They rose to four meters above the floor and moved apart and across the great room, , until they faced each other and the center of the great room with a third of the room’s width between them.

Reggie altered the properties of his voice’s magical re-enforcement, giving it the reverberating and echoing quality heard in Quewanak’s lair, and increasing the volume by half.

“Know that our enemies will name her The Fire,” he announced with all the grim dignity his infant’s voice could deliver.

As he spoke Helemia raised her arms, threw her head back, and cast the Illusion of a roiling Fireball two meter wide directly above her, complete with an initial crackling sound and the roar of a blast furnace pulsing at its limits.

“For she shall incinerate their multitudes in the conflagration of her wrath!” Reggie continued as the fireball grew quickly, gaining width faster than height, until it was a boiling cloud of fire above her filling half the room to the ceiling.  Images appeared in the swirling inferno; a burning dragon striking at prey, a herd of flaming unicorns galloping across plains of fire, the Strike Force of The Just Alliance assembled before the Wards of Venak.

“Know that our enemies will name me The Storm,” Reggie intoned as he matched Helemia’s movement and cast a perfectly realistic Illusion of an undulating two meter high tornado that grew as quickly as her fire had.  “For I shall destroy their hordes with the hurricane of my vengeance!”  The tornado became a mighty cyclone, filling half the room, with smaller tornadoes dropping down from the swirling, black, lightning-shot cloud. 

Then the edge of the fire met the edge of the hurricane.  The fire seemed to ignite a spreading blaze at the edge of the storm, while the cyclone seemed to suck the fire into itself.  The sound of their display was quite loud now, and he raised his voice to match it.

“Together, we will be The FireStorm, for we will pursue those who would slay us unto their very homeworld, and we will destroy it utterly!”

The fire and the cyclone joined completely, becoming a hurricane of fire and lightning that filled most of the volume of the huge hall.  It roared and swirled and pulsed and crackled for five more seconds, then abruptly disappeared with a loud ‘POP’ that left silence in its wake.

This time the applause and amazed cries swept the room without interruption, and the twins bowed in the air with huge grins, then floated over to the badra wall and stopped in mid-air beside their parents.

Eventually the applause faded as Nek handed Reggie the paper with the tournament results, which he held up over his head.

“Okay, we have two people who scored fifteen, and they’ll play another turn to determine first and second place.” he announced.  “We have six people who scored fourteen, and they’ll each play a turn to determine third, fourth, and fifth.  And just so they know what they’re playing for, Helemia will now reveal the prizes.”

“We’re giving away these five diamonds, with the biggest for first place and the smallest for fifth.” Helemia announced as she held up the five glittering stones on the palm of her hand.  Mark cast a Revealing to focus closely on them and display them to the room, and the crowd murmured in appreciation of the value of the prizes.  The largest was almost a centimeter and a half wide, the smallest a third that size.  “We’ve found a place where there’s a lot of these, and after we’ve picked up all the easy ones we’ll tell everyone where it is, in case they want to dig a mine or something.  We’re using some of the small ones to pay for the feast tonight.  And we’d like to thank Kragorram for helping us with cutting and polishing these.

“Now, could we have the eight finalists step to the wall please?”

Everyone watched the playoffs, aided by a Revealing of the badra wall that Mark cast at three times life-size above the playing area.  The crowd cheered the high rolls and the good shots, groaned at the low rolls and the missed shots, and enjoyed the tension and excitement.