Dravon kept his chin up and walked with a confident stride as his team approached the arena. He could hear several people calling him a traitor for leaving the royal team. Chren had told him that people would think he only left the royals to jump over to a winning team, but Dravon was starting care less and less what people thought of him.
When his team had positioned themselves on their side of the arena, a loud buzzer went off to indicate they could begin the match. Combatants would often spring into action. No one was quick to make a first move in this match-up, however.
“Alright, Diamond!” Kortro yelled after what he thought was a brief enough silence. “Let’s you and I get this party started!” Then he made his way to the center of the ring.
Kolzer looked over to Jessa and she nodded approvingly. “Be careful.” She said as he walked forward.
“Always!” He said back. He approached the center of the arena several paces away from Kortro. Even though Kortro was a last-year, he was a little lacking in stature. He barely came up to Kolzer’s shoulder, though Kolzer knew better than to underestimate his smaller adversary. He had seen Kortro pull off some incredible victories in past tournaments.
“Kind of a little fellow for being Onyxian, don’t you think?” Hiali asked her team from their side of the arena.
“Kortro is the 4th ranked student right now. Only a handful of Onyxians have ever become number one.” Jessa explained. “It’s unfortunate for him that he had so many royals close to the same age as him. Still, he’s held his own amongst them.”
“It’ll be tough, but if any first-year could take him it’d be Kolzer Diamond!” Jraken said optimistically. Then his eyes met with his brother, Dravon. He knew that Dravon most likely told his team to not engage with him. Just as Jraken had told his team to leave Dravon to him. When the time came, the brothers would finally have their uninterrupted showdown.
Kortro lifted the stone floor of the arena to encase himself in armor. He put on so much armor that he grew to twice his original height. Rather than the traditional armor most Onyxians used, Kortro’s armor made him look like an extremely muscular man with only under garments on.
He then dashed forward and shook the arena with each step.
Kolzer buckled down and braced himself for impact. Sparks flew as Kortro’s armor scraped against Kolzer’s diamond skin. Kolzer slid back a couple paces but was eventually able to put all of Kortro’s momentum to a complete halt.
“Pretty strong, kid!” Kortro yelled as he kept trying to push Kolzer back.
Kolzer gave a loud battle cry and slowly started to lift the heavily armored Kortro off the ground.
“That’s impossible!” Bonette yelled from her team’s side of the arena.
“He’s not going to let us help him so don’t get too worked up.” Tyke reminded her. “Besides, you know Kortro has more tricks up his sleeve.”
“I should hope so! Showing any sign that they might be our equals will greatly taint this victory!” Dravon boasted loudly. “Don’t forget that we are now scored on only one match!”
“Relax, Dravon,” said Bonette in a snobby stuck up voice. “Kortro’s parents are ex-agents and they used their connections to find out how the judging would go down. Yes, the five judges are instructors from the academy. However, they have virtually no say on who the top two teams will be. A few Jhori leaders are supposedly here and will pick which two teams they will let compete at the Jhori Finals.”
Kolzer had lifted Kortro completely over his head when Kortro suddenly popped out of the top of his stone armor. He waved his hands through the air and the armor opened up and formed into several small boulders that surrounded Kolzer. Kortro waved his hands again as he landed on the ground a few paces away. Just as quickly as the stone armor had separated and surrounded Kolzer, it smashed together encasing him inside a large pillar of stone. The stones melded together until the outside appeared to be a solid smooth surface.
The crowd cheered as Kortro started bowing in different directions.
“Kolzer!” Hiali yelled. She had sprung forward to assist him, but Jessa held her back.
“He’s got this.” Said Jessa. She could sense the stone that surrounded Kolzer was still being manipulated. “Kortro is too busy celebrating to notice it, but Kolzer is definitely up to something in there.”
“Those rocks collided in on him with a lot of force.” Said Jraken. “I don’t know the extent of damage his diamond skin can take, but that had to hurt.”
“And what if he’s immobile in there? I feel like you should get him out of there before they decide to count!” Hiali suggested, pointing at the pillar.
Jessa smiled and gestured her eyes toward the pillar.
Kortro looked over at the judges table. “Might as well start counting! I don’t think he’s getting out of there!” He shouted with a laugh.
“Kortro! Keep your eyes on the fight!” Dravon yelled.
Kortro looked back at the stone pillar that Kolzer was encased in and noticed it started to move. Suddenly the pillar quickly began to grow arms and legs. It stood up and started running for Kortro.
“Nice try, kid!” Kortro yelled as he lifted a large stone wall up out of the ground and sent it toward Kolzer. The two objects smashed together into a large dust cloud. A pile of rubble could be seen on the ground as the dust started to clear.
“Did I get you?” Kortro asked trying to see through the dust cloud. “Sorry, kid. Thought you’d have been a little denser than that!”
A large rock flew out of the dust cloud and Kortro barely had time to dodge it.
“You weren’t even inside that crude rock golem you sent at me, were you?” He asked as he put on more rock armor. This time his armor was much smaller and only covered his head, chest, and forearms. It was made so dense it appeared to glisten in the sunlight.
“Well, I must say I’m impressed, young Diamond! A rock golem of that size and you’re only a first-year!”
“Thanks!” Kolzer yelled back. The dust had mostly cleared and Kolzer slowly circled around his opponent.
“You’re trying to close in on me, aren’t you?” Kortro asked. “You know I would win if we had ourselves a rock throwing contest. Hand-to-hand though. You might have a chance, right?”
Kolzer shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”
Kortro put his hands in his pockets and started walking towards Kolzer. “I don’t want you going home with any what-ifs. You need to know how ridiculously outmatched you were here today.”
“We’ll see!” Kolzer yelled. As soon as Kortro was close enough, Kolzer leapt forward with a right hook.
Kortro ducked it and grabbed Kolzer’s wrist. With his other hand he gathered all the armor on his forearm and concentrated it to harden around his knuckles. Then he punched Kolzer in the abdomen extremely hard.
Kolzer fell to his knees and tried to regain the breath that had been knocked out of him.
“I don’t care how tough your skin is, Diamond!” Kortro yelled. He pulled Kolzer up by the wrist he still had ahold of. Kolzer stumbled a bit and tried to shake off the hit he had just endured. Then he was struck down by another hit square to the jaw.
“Go time!” Jessa yelled out.
Hiali was already ahead of her. She threw her razorwinds at Kortro aiming for his exposed areas. Bonette blew her attacks away with a large gust of wind. With the ability to levitate, she rose up into the sky and bombarded Jessa and Hiali with more vicious gusts of wind.
Jessa put on her armor to help her from getting knocked around by Bonette’s attacks. She saw that Hiali was getting pushed closer and closer to the edge of the arena with every gust of wind. She charged for Bonette hoping to force her levitating opponent’s attention onto herself.
Tyke jumped in Jessa’s way before she could get within attacking distance of Bonette or close enough to assist Kolzer. He gathered mist in between his hands and threw it at Jessa’s legs.
She tried to jump over it, but it spread as it sailed through the air and managed to brush against her feet. When she landed, her armor had turned so cold it crumbled from the impact. She quickly lifted more stone to replace the armor she had lost.
“Ah, ah, ah.” Tyke mocked as he threw an even larger amount of mist. “Don’t be modest! Show a little skin!”
As soon as the mist touched her armor it became so cold to the touch that Jessa had no choice but to release it.
Hiali kept trying to put up wind barriers to keep from getting knocked around by Bonette’s gusts, but she was not quick enough.
“What a joke!” Bonette laughed. She levitated herself closer to deal the finishing blow.
Hiali, in an act of desperation threw one more of her razorwind attacks at Bonette. The attack went wide left and quickly went out of her field of view.
“That was it?” Bonette asked between laughter.
Suddenly, the razorwind curled back around toward its unaware target. Missing its mark, the razorwind harmlessly whizzed by. It did however cut off one of Bonette’s braids.
“That’s it!” She screamed. Her voice cracked as angry tears started to gather in her eyes. Then she hurled enough wind at Hiali to finally knock her outside the arena.
“Little twerp!” She screamed as she examined her missing hair.
Hiali got up with a smile and proceeded to walk over to her team’s bench.
Jessa soon realized that any armor she tried to put on would just be frozen by Tyke’s mist and rendered useless. If she kept creating more armor, she would exhaust all of her energy. So, she instead manipulated the stone armor she had left into her hands to form daggers. She focused intently to make them as dense and sharp as possible.
“Now we’re talking!” Tyke replied. He extended ice from the tips of his fingers into long sharp blades. “May I have this dance?”
“Ugh,” was all Jessa felt the need to reply with. She had heard that Tyke was a first-class creep when it came to women. She never imagined he would be this insufferable though. She charged at him and ice clashed against stone as the blades met.
Jessa had to keep her distance as Tyke’s blades were a bit longer than her own. She would have increased their length if she felt like she would not have had to sacrifice their durability. As she looked around, she felt like she saw more stone fragments from her blades on the ground than she did any ice chips or wet spots from Tyke’s blades. It was not a comforting realization.
Dravon and Jraken had walked around where the others were fighting and met on the edge of the arena between the two starting points.
“No one to stop us now, little brother.” Dravon said while igniting his fists into flames.
“How long will you hate me when I beat you today?” Jraken asked before getting in a stance.
“We don’t need to deal in hypotheticals that will never come to fruition!” Dravon yelled as he rushed towards Jraken. Just as the last time they fought, the two exchanged blows without one or the other gaining a clear advantage. The crowd cheered loudly as the two brothers put on a fiery display.
Dravon was quick to anticipate his brother’s movements and capitalized with a back flip that kicked Jraken high into the air in the process. He then threw an onslaught of small fireballs at his airborne brother.
Jraken recovered quickly while in mid-air and deflected fireballs away from himself while falling upside down. He maneuvered around to land on his feet and continued to block every single one of the fiery attacks that would have hit him. Dravon slapped his hands together and threw a larger mass of flame. Jraken sent the flame back at him with a high spinning kick. Dravon was already on his way to attack Jraken head on after he sent the large flame. When that flame was sent back, Dravon was nowhere near ready and took the full force of the attack.
The flame exploded as it struck Dravon’s chest and sent him back several paces. He stood up grinding his teeth. Smoke rose from the charred mark on his chest.
I can’t lose! He thought to himself. Not again!
“Kneel, young Diamond!” Kortro said as he delivered another jab to the side of Kolzer’s head. “Kneel before a true warrior!” He then released the hold he had on Kolzer and he fell to the ground.
Kolzer knew he was spent. He could barely move, and his face was a bloody mess. Kortro had done just as he had intended. He now knew for certain that he never had a chance in this fight, but he wasn’t going to let himself get knocked out of the fight without his dignity intact. He mustered every bit of strength he had left in him and slowly stood up before his opponent.
Kortro nodded approvingly. “Good for you, Diamond. You have my respect.” Then he kicked Kolzer in the chest hard enough to send him flying out of the arena. Large X’s appeared over both Kolzer and Hiali’s picture on the large displays around the arena.
“Two down, two to go.” He said as he looked up at the screens.
