Date: 86 AP

Author: [Spellsword Ungi’F of the commoner family Dazal’U, born in the Mar’Dant Nest on planet Malvi’D] Dazal’U Ken’Zair Ungi’F Dazal’U Tor Mar’Dant-Malvi’D

Officer Skaleki’s long ears perked at the suggestion, and Q’Idon Mazala’F leaned back and steepled his fingers. “A duel? With one of my boys? Haha!” Skaleki slammed his fist down on his knee. “I’ll have to put in my report that your kind love your jokes.”

“Not a joke,” Mazala’F spoke calmly. “You’ve come such a long way; your entourage must be tired. Why not a bit of late-night entertainment to punctuate your arrival?”

Skaleki’s chuckle was deep, and resounded in his broad chest. “I hardly think a casualty in the arena would make for a good start to a diplomatic mission.”

“I’ll tell my warrior to hold back.”

“Ha! Well I can’t refuse if you put it like that!” He looked over his shoulder and gestured one of his subordinates to approach. “Roszak will take part then.” A giant of a man, though I suppose all peldaks are. Standing at 7’6, with a body covered in discolored lines where scar tissue long since healed. A prominent line went down his left eye, and another diagonal across his lips.

Mazala’F spoke to me telepathically, “[Ungi’F.]” Without a word, I stepped forward. “Ungi’F will be my champion.”

Roszak looked down his nose at me, folded his arms, and sorted. I stood with my hands hidden in my sleeves; my face expressionless. I’m only 5’7, almost two feet shorter than him, and it would take nearly six of my arms bundled together to reach the girth of his bicep. Still, he seemed dull. Straightforward, overconfident, no different than any other beast.

Skaleki leaned back, “should we go now, or does your boy need time to prepare?”

I spoke clearly and concisely in his alien tongue. “A spellsword is always ready for his master’s orders.”

“Oooh,” Roszak mocked, “a spellsword? How terrifying.”

It was a quick jaunt over to the arena. Across a raised hallway with windows on both sides, allowing our guests to see the layered buildings of the nest, and the arid beauty of the surrounding countryside.

Q’Idon Mazala’F led our guests to a special seating near the top of the enclosed arena, while I led Roszak down to the ground floor, where we entered the arena from the same entrance. There were already about 10,000 in attendance, politely clapping upon our approach. Mazala’F planned this showcase of our might for weeks prior to the arrival of the peldaks, he wanted to make it a spectacle. Surrounding the sand-covered fighting pit, on eight marble pedestals, were sacred white flames -portals so even the dead could witness.

Roszak puffed out his chest when he noticed the audience and proudly took his position on the far side.

“We start by bowing to the eight fires,” I said.

“Then by all means, do so. I won’t adhere to your pagan traditions.”

I frowned, but disregarded his taunt, and bowed to each fire. Then I returned to face Roszak and drew my blade. Left foot back, left hand up by my chest and mimicking a talon, right hand gripping the straight, thin sword. My opponent held a great axe which must have been nearly a hundred pounds. He casually twirled the hunk of metal in his hand, then lent it on his shoulder.

“Any other preparations, ‘spellsword’?”

“None. We’ve started.”

He gestured his off hand, holding a smug expression as if to say I was allowed to make the first move.

At his request, the middle and ring fingers on my left hand tapped my palm to signal fire. When I opened my hand, a ball of purple flame erupted as if my fingers were flint. Quickly extending my arm, the blazing purple fireball shot out on a collision course for his chest. A simple spell to test his reflexes as he inevitably dodged.

But he didn’t move. Roszak simply raised an eyebrow, and let the flames burst against his chest.

The luxurious fabric of his uniform was scorched immediately, but his flesh was undamaged.

He frowned, patting down the purple embers. “What the… hell was that?”

I stared at him for a moment and felt the swirl of telepathic murmurs from the audience. We could all sense that these peldaks were soulless, similar to mindless animals. But even a beast’s body would be burnt when hit with a fireball, so what gives? Was his muscle not just for show, or did his soulless nature give him some sort of innate resistance to spells?

There was no time to guess as Roszak sensed my confusion and charged. He was surprisingly quick for someone of his bulk, and he swung that axe with a similar dexterity to my wielding a straight blade.

It was pointless to try and parry such a monster. No matter how practiced my technique, he’d simply cleave through my blade, then slice my flesh and bones in half.

Raising my left hand, my face flickered with effort as my eyes and hand glowed a vibrant purple. The aura surrounded his axe, and it was halted.

Roszak’s feet slipped in the sand as his axe was suspended in the air. He tugged it with both flexing arms, but to no avail.

The crowd cheered, and the flames burned vibrantly as the ancestors watched my bout.

Roszak’s mighty arms bulged against his uniform, strained the light blue fabric, but he couldn’t move his axe an inch. My power was simply stronger than his.

While he was so preoccupied, I pulled my straight blade back and rammed it into his stomach. The resistance provided by his abdominal muscles was surprising, but I shoved it down to the hilt thanks to the many enchantments that come standard with spellsword weaponry. My crimson blade poked out the other side, brilliantly reflecting the light of the white flames.

The crowd psychically cheered, of course, but it was a moment before Mazala’F reminded them that they needed to make audible noise or else our guests wouldn’t hear them. As I held the handle of my blade, his blood ran down my fingers.

I smiled, but I looked up just in time to see his right arm reel back.

Primal fear ran through my limbs, and my eyes flashed a deep purple. I spun a ward before me, a large glowing disk that protected me from head to toe. The ward spun slightly and should have been able to block even the force of a waterfall, but Roszak’s fist passed straight through without even slowing. The ward didn’t shatter as if it was too weak, his flesh simply phased through.

Wham!

A devastating blow, right in my face. My head whipped back, and my front teeth were knocked out.

The audience gasped, I was launched a dozen feet away, piling the sand behind me as I slid. I’m amazed I didn’t break my neck. My eyes stopped registering light, so I needed to focus my powers to sense my surroundings.

“You still alive?” Roszak’s mocking voice resounded in the otherwise silent hall. “I held back a bit, didn’t want to knock your head off, but you’re a bit lighter than I thought.”

It was a struggle just to sit up. My neck ached and my abs burned.

Through my psychic lense, I only barely registered the outline of his body. It was more like I felt where the air particles were absent and saw him via the negative space.

He grabbed the hilt of my sword and pulled it out without a hint of discomfort. The blade was slick red, and the wound dripped slightly for only a moment. He inspected my sword up and down. “Doesn’t seem too special.” He gripped the handle between his thumb and index finger of his right hand and the fingers of his left hand gripped the end of the blade. Flicking his wrists up, he easily snapped the metal and tossed the pieces to the side. “Still wanna go?” He raised his hands and rolled his fingers into tightened fists.

I grit my bloody teeth and rose to my feet. The white flames burned in jubilance, and the audience cheered to show our guests our fighting spirit.

But it would be rough. Spells didn’t work on him, wards couldn’t protect me, and I didn’t have my sword anymore. I could use my powers to strengthen my body, but would that even work? Could he simply ignore it? I sensed past him to his axe, now laying in the sand, and my feathers perked. Earlier, I held his axe in place and even his great muscles couldn’t do anything about it.

So my powers could not interact with the peldak. But my powers did burn his clothes, and it held his axe in place. So, supposedly, I needed a degree of separation. Interact with object A, then use object A to interact with the peldak. Similarly, the enchantments on my sword seemingly worked to strengthen the blade so I could stab him.

I smiled, and nodded, raising my fists. “Heh… you’re not actually that tough.” My face ached all the way down to my shoulders, and the bruise that spread out from my nose was growing so large that I could have been mistaken for a purple-faced Ol’Kro. “You just have a little trick that I needed to figure out.” I slid my feet through the sand, back and to the left, to get the angle right.

He walked forward, proud, confident strides. “Oh? And have you figured it out? I’ll admit, the fire and the levitation caught me off guard, but it was within my expectations. I was told you guys were weird.”

My eyes flashed purple, and I raised his axe. Calm, even motions, a gentle increase or decrease in momentum, no jitters or sudden shifts. The air around his pointed ears shifted as they perked. I tried to read his mind but, naturally, his soulless nature deprived me of that ability.

“Yeah, I learned I need to go for the brain.” A slight, involuntary twitch of my upper lip, and I sent his greataxe spinning towards the back of his head!

But his axe slightly whistled through the air, and I suspect the man already realized my glowing eyes were the indicator of psychic activation. He spun, yanked his axe out of the air, then returned to face me, all in one clean motion. The audience gasped, his friends in the VIP section clapped.

Roszak leaned to one side, hand on his hip, and tossed the axe up in the air, spinning it and catching it by the handle every time. “You’re far from the first ‘weird’ thing I’ve killed, boy. Well, not that I’ll kill you. Vampires, demons, abominations, beastmen, you lot always have some nonsense going on. I just need to figure out how it works.” He shrugged, “but now that I have? All that’s left to figure out it how to end this without taking your life.”

That hurt my pride a bit.

If this was a real fight, he wouldn’t have held back that first punch and I’d have died. Though, thankfully, it wasn’t a real fight so I’m able to live long enough to figure out how to beat these strange creatures with immunity to Palela Energy.

My back hit the wall of the arena, and I closed my eyes to sigh. “That… was basically my trump card.” We have thick eyelids to protect against sandstorms, and since mine were closed, he couldn’t see my pupils glow.

“So you surrender?” He grabbed his axe and placed it on his shoulder.

Reaching out with my soul, I felt the two halves of my broken sword, and gripped them tight. It’s normally difficult to levitate two separate objects, but my training allows me to hold up to five before it starts causing strain. “Surrender… that really depends,” I spit out blood, a delaying tactic to get the angles right, “on if I can’t think of some way to beat you in the next few seconds.” The enchantment on the sword broke when the metal did, so I had to throw it strong enough to pierce his flesh.

“Haha!” He raised his axe straight up. “I’ll give you until gravity takes-“

I launched the two sections of blade as fast as I could straight at his back.

The hilt-half impacted his back, but the broken blade didn’t have a sharp enough point. It cut through his shirt and flesh, but bounced off his shoulder blade.

The point-half was launched with all my might and dug into his flesh, slipping between his ribs and stopping a little less than half the way through.

“Khgk!” He frowned and his immense body jolted. His axe, held high, almost slipped out of his hand and fell on me, but, even in such a moment of stress, he had the willpower to toss it aside.

I opened my eyes as vision slowly started to return. “That get ‘ya?”

From up above, I saw Officer Skaleki rise from his VIP seat, furrow his brow, then grimace. He promptly sat back down and shook his head. Q’Idon Mazala’F turned to him and spoke quietly.

“Ghuugh,” Roszak groaned. “Alright, fair enough.” His voice strained. “You just ripped a hole in my left heart.”

I raised an eyebrow, “left?”

“Peldaks have two.” He looked down at me, but I saw no hatred in his strained eyes. Granted I couldn’t sense this soulless creature’s emotions, but that’s what I gathered from his face. “If we continue, I’ll end up killing you.” He calmly raised his right hand, “it’s my loss. Got overconfident.” Personally, I feel like that was just to save face, and his wound was far more severe than he let on.

Ten thousand voiced echoed in the hall at once, each amplified by their psychic might, and the flames joined in, casting bright white lights across the arena until no shadow remained.

Roszak clicked his tongue and turned to walk away, his torso stiff. He didn’t sway his arms as he walked. “Ugh, let’s get this looked at before it gets too bad.”

I pushed off the wall and followed. My blade was still stuck in his back, his clothes were discolored from all the blood pouring out. “I’ll need my sword back.”

“Ha ha,” his laugh was forced, and he brought his right hand to the side. His hand was arranged in a fist, and only his middle finger was extended. I’ve since learned that that’s a rude gesture, which is funny in hindsight. “Gloat while you can. If we ever meet on a real battlefield, you won’t get to walk away.”

Even with my sword stuck in his heart, I can’t exaggerate how intimidating that threat was.

What makes it worse is that, if we were on the battlefield, he’d be wearing armor.

Later, as if to drive the point home and soothe their bruised ego, Officer Skaleki showed off what peldak armor looks like. Thick steel, with interlocked chains underneath. That little trick of mine wouldn’t have worked if he was fitted for real combat, and I’m not sure what else I could have done to win.

We need to figure out some method to reliably deal with these monsters.

But still: the first time I fought a peldak, I won.