The Storyteller sighed in relief. They had, to a degree, eliminated the other contestants. While most of them were taken away by the hosts of the deathmatch, it was gratifying to still be standing at the end of all things. He looked down at the fowl blade in his hand, nothing more but another toy to add to his collection. With a quiet rush of air it slipped up into his sleeve, and was quickly replaced by his staff.
"So here we are, mage. I do not recall hearing your name, even after what we have done together."
"Miranda Tyranius would be my name, old one," the archmage responded with a coy smile, brushing off the dust that had accumulated on her clothes after the demise of Kuren. "You never gave a name yourself, you know." At present, her Lexicon had shrunk down to the size of a pocket journal, which Miranda now held delicately to her breast with one hand, her other arm hanging unused for the moment. She knew what was to come next, but the momentary lapse in carnage was welcome... for now.
"You may call me The Storyteller," mused the deity, even as his staff began to flex and bend. "The name was born with me, for as long as there have been stories to tell." Even now the head of the staff had all but transfigured into the head of a cobra, and the rest of the wooden staff was growing scales and coiling around The Storyteller's arm. He softly crooned the snake, stroking its hood with his thumb as the creature quested about and began to slither onto his other arm, flicking its tongue about to get a bearing on its surroundings.
"Just between you and me," he whispered, "well actually, quite publicly, I prefer to disassociate myself from our courteous hosts, who now eagerly await some brand of gruesome carnage, as always. Sometimes they try to label me as 'one of them', but we gods do not all belong in the same bucket. They brought me here to prevent teams and alliances from forming, for all the good that did." He chuckled, then he tilted his head at Miranda despite having no visible face behind the hood of his cloak.
"How did the hosts persuade you to join? I doubt someone of your abilities could simply be summoned here without any resistance. Did they offer you a prize for contending in this tournament?"
"Surely there were no alliances that I overlooked, my worthy adversary," Miranda exclaimed with a light laugh, her feigned ignorance almost bafflingly see-through. "The gracious gods of this deathmatch said that they would grant me a wish should I emerge victorious. I had not suspected that they would be so foresighted as to expect their competitors to... bond on the battlefield," she continued with a wry grin.
"Regardless, my immortal opponent, I suppose it is time we put on a show for them, no?" Miranda stated slowly, uncurling her arms from around her and allowing her Lexicon to float in front of her, closed but poised to open. "According to you from before, this will be rather one-sided... I'm expecting to be surprised."
"It is well of you to expect that, dear Miranda," The Storyteller said, as the snake straightened out and solidified into his wooden staff with a loud CRACK. "I am full of surprises, so you had best be prepared."
There was a tense moment of silence, made bearable by the omnipresent tremor of the observatory perpetually toppling, wherein Miranda kept her Lexicon poised to open and The Storyteller gripped his staff with two hands. There was the ever prevalent question as to who would move first; Miranda had the disadvantage of not only having to locate a spell in her book but also recite it, which took any degree of time.
However, it was The Storyteller who acted first. A leaf blade of the dark substance of his realm emerged from the head of his staff, and with massive, sweeping figure-eight motions The Storyteller spun around and swung his staff around by the lower end, carving two long, deep gashes into the ground beneath him as if it was made of butter and his blade a hot knife. The gashes instantly became gash-shaped rifts to his realm, wherein summons waited to reveal themselves and carry out his will.
The long, serpentine neck of another Hydra emerged from one portal while a flying mechanical squid-like machine with almost a dozen piercing red optical sensors emerged from the other. As The Storyteller brandished his flight wings, the Hydra lunged forward with an open maw full of needle-sharp teeth while the Sentinel machine reared a glowing diode and fired an intense, red cutting laser at the mage.
Miranda yelped as the laser burned across her right half, narrowly managing to be double-teamed by the creatures as she avoided the hydra's snapping teeth. Wincing in pain and nursing her right arm, the archmage managed to smirk in anticipation as she floated backwards quickly, putting distance between herself and the summons. She needed to figure out a plan and take them all out at once... If possible.
The robot constantly fired its laser beam at her as she fled, continuing the trend of scorching her extremities for her lack of capable dodging ability. The hydra, lunging after her, had a slightly harder time keeping up with her speed and small frame, snapping at air each time it closed its mouth. As the Chosen prepared her spell, she slowly began to drift to the side to get the correct angle she wanted, her face the picture of concentrated determination.
A spiel of words rushed from her lips as she channelled her powers, a large formation of shining material forming in front of her, incorporeal up until the point that the spell was finished. As it coalesced into a physical form, it became apparent to the Storyteller that it was a mirror of some sort, circular and bending inward like an inverse contact lens. Upon completion, the shield of glass became solid and Miranda's quickly hatched plan came to fruition.
The latest of the robot's lasers hit the mirror full force and reflected, bouncing off the inside of the mirror's walls and a few more times again, gaining power with each reflection. It was only a few seconds before the laser bounced out again, aimed directly towards its point of origin. However, the bonus to this was that both the Hydra AND the Storyteller were on this new path of destruction that the laser was carving.
"Ha!" The Storyteller barked as he procured a domed shield of his solid light, protecting himself as the intense beam of photons blasted and scattered against the pale translucent surface but leaving his summons exposed to the laser. The robot took superficial damage, given its design, but the Hydra's head was incinerated by the intense beam. What remained when the robot learned to stop firing was a broad stump of orange glowing embers.
Of course, the embers divulged as a growth emerged from the centre of the stump: the beginning of two more heads. The Storyteller cast his shield forward and tilted it backwards to completely cover the Hydra under a solid dome while its heads grew, and commanded the robot to attack the mage as a dozen more swarmed out of the portal beneath it. They flew quickly, their mechanical tendrils flowing behind them as they charged the archmage in a singular, curving river of dark metal and red lights. Once the robots converged on Miranda, they took to attacking with an array of sharp claws tucked away under their bodies, rather than fire lasers against her mirror-like dish.
The Hydra's heads had gained reptilian form but were still tiny, soft and pink. The Storyteller inserted the black and purple blade of his staff into the portal from which the monster came and dragged it along the ground, tearing through the hard stone and widening the portal so that it would have room to fully emerge.
The Storyteller took to the air as well, his eye-like wings arching high above his head like those of a Greek sphinx. He held his staff defensively in both hands, watching the robots circle and swarm the archmage.
During this time, however, Miranda had quickly switched to yet another spell, her eyes glowing white and pupiless as the magic flowed through her. Her mouth uttered the words in a focused monotone, ignoring the incoming threat as she prepared her answer.
The Hydra's heads grew ever larger, and began to grow silver-black scales and extruded their needle sharp teeth, and the domed shield over them expanded to make room for their growth. Their eyes opened and they began snapping at each other.
The first of the robots managed to get close to her and slice at her body before her spell was complete. Red lines appeared on her pale skin that was visible through the tears in her robes, blood dripping slowly from superficial wounds. Barking the last few syllables, Miranda felt her arms drop numbly as her strength began to fade from the wounds she had taken. Luckily, she had finished her spell...
Reality around her warped as suddenly everything within a few hundred yards of her suddenly was subjected to massively increased gravity. Only the mage herself was unaffected, leaving room for quite a few robots to suddenly flatten and crumple into tiny, ultra-dense spheres of metal. The effect was quite instantaneous, causing the air to ring with the sound of trillions upon trillions of particles squeezing together in the span of a millisecond.
The Hydra's heads completed their growth and the shield faded away. Together they turned their gazes towards the archmage, and pulling its forelegs out of the portal and gaining a firm footing on the ground beside it, it lunged out of the rift and both heads bit down ferociously on Miranda, who was occupied with her spell.
The spell only lasted the span of a single second, but its work completely annihilated all of the robots... Leaving the Hydra with free reign over the poor Chosen. Unable to even manage a scream, Miranda disappeared down the beast's gullet in a flash of teeth and tongue. The reptile's triumphant roar echoed lowly as it relished its victory.
"Oooooh, he got you good, didn't he?"
Why must I continually put up with this...? Miranda thought grimly.
"Welp, you're down to one life, let's hope you make the most of it!"
"Cause if you don't, you don't get that wish!"
"Yes, yes, about that..." Miranda started before she was quickly interrupted.
"Ah ah ah, time's a wastin', we can talk about that late-"
"I want in."
"In? In where? The battle? We were about to get to that before you rudely interrup-"
"I want in on this," ("There she goes again, interrupting!") Miranda said, gesturing to the viewing 'screen' that the gods had off to the side. "I want to join your little... game. Except from on high instead of participating, mind you."
"You.... what? You want to join-"
"Ah-bup-bup-bup! Time's a-wastin'! We can talk about this after you 'kill' that guy! Go on! Teach him that he's not so high and mighty!"
"I'll teach you something about being high and mighty..." Miranda muttered right before she felt herself come back into existence.
"An impressive display, Storyteller..." Miranda's voice rang from behind the man, a wide smirk on the newly reborn woman's face. "But do you not do anything yourself?" She laughed lightly, her lexicon opening in front of her as she absently looked for a spell, her eyes on The Storyteller.
The Storyteller turned around slowly, his visible mouth bearing a sinister grin.
"I do take pleasure in telling stories, dear Miranda, but I most certainly do many things myself."
He took his left hand off his staff and flung it sideways, and a long red object darted out of his sleeve. He caught it be the end. It was a sword with a blood red blade three and a half feet long, with a wire-wrapped hilt and a tear-drop shaped ruby in the pommel.
"En garde." Said The Storyteller, before swinging both the crimson bladed sword and the dark bladed staff over his head and, seemingly without any physical impulse, shot towards Miranda with an incredible burst of speed. He brought both weapons around for a sideways strike, although out of the two, the staff's blade was more dangerous; as he had demonstrated, its substance created rifts when it cut into something, rather than cleave like a normal blade. Landing a strike could have disastrous but nonetheless creative effects on the mage.
"... Diasos myabres!!" Miranda cried, one of the few times her secret language was spoken loudly enough to be heard. There had been a short sentence before it to complete the spell, which now resulted in two flashes of light on either side of the mage. On her right side, a massive golden shield the shape of an oak leaf formed, strapping to her arm and quickly allowing her to defend against the blood red blade. In her left hand formed a long, thin poleaxe that oozed dark shadows, the entire construct seemingly made of obsidian. Wielding the weapon as if it was nothing, the mage effortlessly maneuvered it to deflect the staff-blade, knocking it aside and avoiding damage.
Laughing as she rushed forward, the mage-turned-warrior began an impressive display of skill with her weapon set, beginning with a shield bash that turned into a thrust with the poleaxe, followed by a twirl that brought the weapon down from overhead. The Storyteller was able to deflect the obsidian polearm with his own dark blade, and parried the weapon with his crimson rider's blade when it was brought down from above. She finished with an attack with the shield's edge striking The Storyteller's neck, as he was left open from blocking her attacks. She then quickly backed up.
The Storyteller took his hand off his staff — which remained by his side without falling — and rubbed his neck. "Very well done! You make a fine warrior! But was your expertise physically or magically gained? It all comes down to your experience of fighting, not just experience with the weapons themselves!"
Miranda chuckled lightly. "Perhaps it's a little of both. You'll have to test me to find out!"
As if in answer, the deity plucked his staff out of the air and once again charged the archmage. Spinning the staff twice overhead, he committed wholly to a sideways strike with the dark blade. Assuming the defensive, Miranda twirled the poleaxe to catch the staff-blade between the tip and the axe-head. Dark construct met stone in a crash and, due to the nature of the two weapons, reality seemed to shift visibly around the point of impact. Nothing else seemed to happen, however, as now the two weapons were locked. Miranda began muttering a spell under her breath, seemingly a small phrase over and over again. Her lexicon floated behind her, open to the page that the spell was on. Due to this spell, she seemed fully capable of matching strength with the Storyteller... but for how long?
The Storyteller couldn't react immediately due to putting all of his force into the strike, but nonetheless struck away the poleaxe with the blade in his left hand and spun backwards through the air, with the intention of slashing at Miranda with the triangular eyelash markings under his eye-like wings. Coming out of the flip, he moved backwards, holding his staff and sword at the ready.
Miranda recoiled a bit as the attack threw her left arm wide, forcing her to bring her shield arm up to defend herself. The bladed wings drew fine grooves in the golden metal, but it was an otherwise effective block. With a bit of distance between themselves, Miranda allowed her spellbook to swivel in front of her, allowing her to read the next spell she had in mind. Snarling the words, the archmage spun on her heel clockwise and released her shield upon reaching the complete circle. The golden disc hummed with energy as the spell infused it with power, reaching the Storyteller in a second's time and threatening to split him in twine.
That wasn't all, however. Immediately after she threw the shield, Miranda inserted another spell into the mix, thrusting her poleaxe forward despite being quite out of range for a melee attack. Instead, a beam of darkness shot forth from the ebon weapon, following the shield's trajectory like an unholy shadow.
The Storyteller extended both hands, clenching his weapons, and revealing a set of rings upon his fingers, with large Sunstones set in each one. Bands of colour flowed out of each Sunstone like spectral ribbons, which wove together to form large, disproportionate hands. They rushed forward and caught the shield, but with the energy and force put into it, the hands were forced towards The Storyteller before they could arrest the shield's movement. He held it fast in front of himself, protecting himself from the dark beam the archmage fired at him. Shadows splayed across the gleaming surface of the shield, causing the light-based fingers that gripped the edges to flicker and fade as the shadows cancelled them out. Eventually, the hands failed altogether and the shield fell from his grip, decapitating one of the Hydra's heads and slipping into the portal beneath it on the way down.
While he concealed it well, The Storyteller was all but exhausted. Taking hits and dealing them wore down on what little energy he lad left, but using the Sunstones was unwise; they required a delicate, artistic, and even scientific expertise to properly use, which in and of itself required lots of effort and concentration. He should have at least limited himself to a more simple attack from them, like a Red Ray of Destruction. He knew his time with the mage would be short, so he withdrew the rider's blade and Sunstone rings and began to fly backwards, towards the toppling observatory.
Panting from the effort of the maneuver she had just completed, Miranda grunted sourly as she watched the golden shield fall into the crevice of one of the Storyteller's portals. She half-wondered if she would ever be able to conjure it again once it was in that dimension. Refocusing on the task at hand, however, the archmage twirled her weapon into a two handed grip, hands gripping the shaft at around the standard two feet apart. Breathing slowly to steady herself, Miranda began to read the lengthy spell that was now open before her, marching forward at a reserved pace.
The Storyteller flew close to the ground at the base of the tower and, holding his staff upside down in one hand, put both feet against the lower end as if he were grinding with it. He flew low enough that the blade at the end of the staff sank into the ground and began to carve a long, curved rift into it as The Storyteller began to circumnavigate the tower.
This is it... our final clash... Miranda thought to herself as the words spilled from her lips. As she walked forward, her stride began to slope upward into the air, walking on invisible ground that lifted her skyward as she proceeded towards her opponent. As this happened, Miranda began to slowly spin her weapon in circles to her sides, each rotation completing on a different side of her body as she moved. At first it was mechanically in tempo with her own steps, the whisking of the wind counting the time of her otherwise soundless footfalls. Slowly it began to accelerate, however, her hands deftly spinning the weapon about as if it were a foot-long baton. Energy began to build up about her as this happened...
But her spell was still not ready.
The Storyteller zoomed around the base of the tower on his staff, well aware that time was short for him. He would conjure but one more spectacle for the mage before his final round in the deathmatch ended. He increased his speed, and upon finding the starting point of his dimension tearing grind, brought his blade up to it and completed the circuit.
The effect was slow to reveal itself, at first, but it was obvious that The Storyteller had done the same thing that brought the Tripod out of the ground earlier: he had cut a circular rift into the ground, causing the entire tower and the stone it stood upon to fall into the Dark Realm.
The air shook and the ground rattled as the impeccably tall structure sank into the ground, its replayed explosions and electrical surges continuing as it accelerated into the portal. The Storyteller lifted into the air and alighted on the top of the observatory, as he had done before, and grabbed onto a protruding bar of steel to keep himself there. He looked at Miranda, and despite the building's height the distance it fell had him level with the mage. She was preparing an attack with her polearm, but she was some distance away; he would have time.
The tower continued to pick up speed, and soon after, it passed completely through the portal and into the Dark Realm. The portal closed, leaving behind a large crater where a chunk of the ground beneath the tower had been removed. For a while it seemed that The Storyteller had disappeared, taking the tower with him. There was a moment of quiet, without the tower's perpetual chaos resonating through the air.
Then, high above the former place of the structure, a portal began to open. A tiny circle of swirling black and purple facing Miranda began to expand, rippling the light around it as if it were wrinkling the fabric of the world. It grew and grew, until it was even wider than the crater below it. There was another moment of suspense, before with a howling rush of air, the tower emerged from its dark surface.
It charged bottom first, sideways, out of the portal at the speed of a bullet train. As gravity began to take its toll on the now sideways building, the metal that comprised it began to groan like a roaring monster and the tower began to bend and arc downwards, right towards Miranda. And crouched on the top side of the flaming column of steel wreathed in crackling electricity was The Storyteller.
Miranda was impressed, to say the least. The god quite literally just turned most of the battlefield into a massive projectile that would inevitably finish her in a single blow...
That is, if she was anyone but Miranda Tyranius, High Archmage of the Chosen.
Her spell reached a fever pitch as the twirling of her polearm reached speeds that blurred its trajectory into a dark mass at her sides. Words poured from her mouth and the book flipped to the next page of its own accord, allowing her to continue uninterrupted. Closing her eyes, Miranda finished the last few words by memory as her feet picked up the pace. She was now running straight towards the building, her angled ascent still continuing with no visible platform. There was a thunderclap as her spinning polearm suddenly snapped to side, left arm holding it down at an angle with its lower shaft across her back.
Barking a word of power, Miranda lept as she came close to the tower's base, her feet lightly landing on the building as she began to race against its downward velocity. She began to move faster and faster, her eyes locked on her opponent that was sparkling lightning bolts from his body. There was a moment where time seemed to stand still as they closed on one another, faces mirroring each other's determination. Miranda felt an appreciation for her opponent in that moment, causing her to smile ever so briefly.
That momentary lapse of time seemed all the slower compared to the burst of action that followed. Crying out, both entities swung their weapons at each other, readying for the end. Reality once again warped as the ebon axe and the rift-making blade met. There was another moment of suspension... And then the Storyteller's staff was ripped from his hands.
Another blur of motion, and Miranda's staff went through his abdomen, pinning him to the side of the still-falling building. The archmage braced herself for impact.
The tower met the ground with an earthquake inducing collision that assaulted the ear drums. The Storyteller and Miranda were barely able to hold onto the toppling behemoth. The clump of earth still attached to its lower end exploded into a nebula of flying dirt and dust as the building ground along the earth, tearing a deep trench through the hard stone. But the building itself experienced a far worse fate. Falling to the ground at a near vertical angle, the impeccable force applied to it ran through the entire length of the structure.
Several dozen floors were destroyed as the building collapsed in on itself like an unwilling accordion and gave a steel-rending, ear-splitting metallic shriek that made speech impossible. But bent by its fall, and even more so by the collision with the ground, the building bowed and outright snapped in half.
The breaking point burst with an explosion of metal and debris, and while the bottom half continued to plummet forward, the top half tilted backwards and threatened to fall onto the bottom half, which both archmage and deity were desperately holding onto. Soon both were engulfed by the choking cloud of dust and their world went dark.
The Storyteller tried to say something to Miranda, despite the poleaxe skewering him to the toppling monument, but his words were lost on the wind and dust that rushed past them. The shapeless darkness below them solidified into the inevitable form of the ground, rushing up to meet them. Just as it seemed that they would both be crushed under both halves of the building, The Storyteller cast his hand forward and opened a portal on the ground beneath them. The tower slammed into the ground with a mighty crash, but neither of the combatants felt it as they were flung into The Storyteller's personal dimension.
The tower's impact with the ground dislodged the poleaxe through the Storyteller's abdomen and sent both him and Miranda into the Dark Realm, along with a host of metal debris and rocks. The roaring tumult of the tower's destruction faded away to be replaced by the soft wind that rushed by their ears. Together they floated through an unimaginably vast spherical space, bordered by swirling black and purple and lit by intermittent flashes of lightning. There were other things floating distantly in the void, too. Various weapons and tools taken from previous encounters, an assortment of monsters peacefully hovering through the private universe, and even a few fighter drones. But by far the most common objects in the Dark Realm were books. Hundreds of books in all shaped and sizes, and even languages, drifted in solitude. Miranda was fascinated, to be sure. Even breathing heavily through her exhaustion, the look of wonder lighting up her face was unmistakable.
After a while, The Storyteller opened another portal in front of the two and they passed through, Miranda only taking a moment to look back forlornly.
They once again felt gravity take a hold of their bodies and they toppled out onto hard stone. They were back in the arena, deposited on a rocky outcrop about a kilometre from the tower that lay in two parts, and some small distance above it, where the deity's staff rested. It did not reset; its removal from the arena had alleviated the time-looping effect placed upon it by the gods. Now its explosions occurred simply by way of chain reactions, not by supernatural forces. The two metre wide portal standing vertically to their side deposited a few bits of rock, some shrapnel, a severed head of a Hydra and the shield that removed it from its body before closing again.
The Storyteller coughed. "Well done, Miranda." He wheezed, sitting up against a raised piece of stone behind him. He put a hand on the obsidian weapon lodged in his abdomen and began to pull it out.
"You truly... have... earned-" He yanked the weapon free. "-dominion over the other combatants. You fought well."
He placed the poleaxe by the shield and picked up his staff. Whether by luck or by intent, he had brought them to its resting place after their final clash. He withdrew the dark blade at its head and indicated the weapons.
"These belong to you, of course. As does that." Pointing to a point between their raised platform and the tower, The Storyteller indicated the Golem that was lumbering towards them.
"I just hope that our hosts let you take souvenirs with you." He chuckled. There was no blood on the wound on his chest, but it was obvious that The Storyteller was dying, in a sense. He had taken all the hits the tournament would allow, but he held off his withdrawal from the arena.
"It was such a pleasure to share a hellish deathmatch with you, Miranda." He reflected. "But I must ask: what wish did you implore the hosts grant you upon your victory?"
Miranda smiled coyly at the diety, watching as her book materialized in front of her, still shining from the power of the spell she still yet held. Murmuring a single word, the book's glow faded, a few small sparks discharging from her body indicating a spell's dispersal. The fact that there was any visible discharge at all told the story of just how powerful the spell she had ready was. With that same sly smile, Miranda looked up at the Storyteller and answered him.
"Immortality... in a sense," she began, looking down at the cuts she had earned from the flying debris of the falling tower. "I've basically asked them to allow me to join their little... pantheon, I suppose you'd call it. This deathmatch fascinates me to no end... I would enjoy having a part in it throughout its discourse... preferably from a more... controlled environment, however." Her smile never wavered as she watched the Storyteller's face.
"I pray you won't think any less of me for stooping to their level, friend," she said with a wink.
"I couldn't." Dismissed The Storyteller. "Here I am, participating in the tournament itself. You chose a wise reward. You have all the time in the universe now, which will grant you more than any one wish could. But it also means that we will meet again."
With that, The Storyteller shuddered, and vanished completely.
Miranda frags The Storyteller
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