"Done," Chainer said. The starting horn sounded. Devon's squad spread out, with the megolith in front and the troopers flanking it. The mage touched the lieutenant's wings, which burst into bright, glowing light. Devon yelled, "Attack!" and sprang into the air, trailing white light behind him. The mage stayed where she was, safely out of harm's way.
Or so she thought.
Chainer hardly needed the Dragon's Blood smoke at all anymore, but he liked starting the match with it because it partially hid his actions. While Devon was soaring overhead, looking for an avenue of attack, and the ground troops were marching forward, Chainer shuddered and unleashed a razor-clawed harpy with his metal arm. The filthy, screeching bird-woman dropped greasy feathers as it rose into the air, rushing to meet Devon headlong.
Chainer then dropped his real arm down by his side and let a foot-long spider fall onto the arena floor. Chainer was sure no one noticed the arachnid as it scuttled to the edge of the pit and began making a wide arc toward the white-robed mage. In the pits, he thought, there is no place to avoid the match. Kamahl, meanwhile, had charged into the advancing wedge of Order members and started hacking. His blade bounced off the megolith with no visible effect, but Kamahl was fast enough and his strokes wide enough to keep both foot soldiers at bay while he tried to find a seam in the stone thing's hide.
Chainer's harpy was doing better than he had expected. It had latched onto Devon's pike below the blade and was using its weight to drag the lieutenant down to the ground while it struck at him with her other claws. Devon tried to pound the harpy's grip loose, but it only clenched tighter. Chainer thought he knew why the officer hadn't simply dropped the pike.
Right on schedule, Devon waved his hand and cast a spell on his weapon. The point of his pike burst into white-hot flame, which blinded the harpy and seared its flesh. It screamed and reflexively released Devon's pike. The aven warrior promptly drove the weapon clean through the harpy's body. The harpy twitched, and Devon let gravity tear the gruesome husk loose. En route to the ground, the harpy disappeared. The crowd roared.
Devon wasted no time in celebration. He raised his pike overhead, screeched out a triumphant war cry, and dived toward Kamahl. As Devon dived, the megolith caught Kamahl's blade and then lowered its shoulder into Kamahl's chest. Kamahl grunted and staggered backward, but he managed to drop one of the foot soldiers as he went with an elbow across the bridge of the nose. Kamahl was now five feet away from the megolith and the remaining trooper, with Devon bearing down on him from above.
"Any time you're ready, partner," he shouted angrily. Chainer laughed, and then there was a scream from the Order mage at the far end of the floor. Chainer's spider had leaped onto her face, and she was struggling to keep its inch-long fangs from piercing her flesh. Without the mage's assistance, Devon lost control of his forward motion. Instead of swooping down at Kamahl, Devon was now simply falling out of the sky. There was a ripple of laughter and applause from the spectators.
"Leave the bird-man to me," Chainer readied a weighted chain. He whipped a smooth, rounded weight toward the falling aven. Devon tried to block the incoming chain with his pike, but he was off balance and out of position. The weight would have slammed into the point of his elongated chin, but Devon jerked his head aside at the last moment, and the heavy ball buried itself in his temple. Even Chainer winced at the sound.
The rest of the squad hesitated as Devon crashed lifeless to the arena floor. Kamahl drew a throwing axe from his back, charged it, and let it fly. It slammed into the megolith's chest and exploded, knocking the megolith back a step and the remaining foot soldier off his feet. Kamahl weathered the blast like an oak in a summer squall.
When the smoke and debris from the blast had settled, Chainer saw that the megolith was missing a huge scoop of stone from its chest. It was otherwise unaffected, however, and it resumed its exchange of blocks and blows with Kamahl. Annoyed, the barbarian sent a stream of liquid fire shooting from the end of his sword into the megolith's face, melting and distorting it. The stone beast pressed on. Like the golem that had killed Deidre, it really didn't need its eyes to fight.
Kamahl inexplicably dropped his sword then, and Chainer saw a look of confusion cross his partner's face. Both foot soldiers were on their feet again, and Kamahl made one last effort to pick his sword up, but it wouldn't budge. He was forced to dive away from it as the foot soldiers slashed at him with their weapons.
Chainer saw that the mage had managed to neutralize the spider and was in a prayer stance once more. She must have done something to Kamahl's sword. Chainer grew angry, both at himself for going easy on the mage, and at her for taking advantage of it. He positioned both hands and sent an eighteen-foot long python shooting across the arena. It latched onto the mage's arm with its venomless fangs and quickly wrapped her head and torso in its crushing coils.
Kamahl seemed angry, too, angrier than Chainer could remember. Most things that made Kamahl angry didn't last long enough to make him really angry, but the megolith seemed to have driven him over the edge. With flames shooting from his hands, he grabbed one of the foot soldiers by the throat and lifted him off the ground. The man's flesh sizzled and popped until Kamahl threw him into his fellow trooper, tangling both men into a painful, confused heap. The crowd oohed. Then Kamahl leaped onto the megolith and wrapped his huge hands around the thing's head. "Kamahl, get off!" Chainer shook off visions of Deidre and readied another weighted chain. Kamahl was much faster than the megolith, however. He dug his superheated fingers into the stone giant's jawline, and Chainer saw two axe-shaped bursts of red form inside the megolith's torso. Kamahl dropped off just as the megolith reached up to crush him. Kamahl dove away, rolled, and conjured a large warhammer in each hand. He charged back at the megolith, ducked under its crushing fists, and brought both hammers together with a boom.
There was a seismic shudder that cracked the stone floor, and the axes planted in the megolith's chest exploded.
This blast was different from the previous one. It was three times as strong, for one, and doubly constrained by the megolith's own body and the powerful vibrations caused by the hammers. There was a muted flash and a muffled boom, and a network of cracks raced across the whole of its body. Smoke poured from its half-melted mouth. It was standing completely still. The crowd was silent.
"Chainer," Kamahl called. He pointed at the frozen warrior. "Give that thing one last tap, will you?"
Chainer sent his weight straight into the thing's chest without hesitation. The dense crystalline creature had been transformed by the intense heat and pressure of Kamahl's magic into something far more brittle. When Chainer's weight struck it, the husk of the defeated megolith shattered into a fine, white sand that was littered with a few larger shards of broken glass.
For a moment, there was no motion or sound on the arena floor. The foot soldiers were unconscious, Devon was dead, and the megolith was dust. Even the mage was completely helpless in the python's grip. If Chainer didn't call it off, she'd soon be a meal for a nightmare. A single pair of hands started clapping from the stands. The applause grew, louder and louder until it was a roar. The competing chants of "Chainer!" and "Kamahl!" began.
"Your winners, ladies and gentlemen… Chainer and Kamahl! This marks their twelfth consecutive win!"
As the announcer prattled on, Chainer went over to his partner. Kamahl looked at him sullenly.
"That was fun," the barbarian said, "but next time, you get the megolith."
Chainer laughed and slapped Kamahl on the shoulder. "Agreed." As the crowd continued to cheer and chant, he took Kamahl's hand in his and raised them both high in the air.