The Ruler of Ruin

The dull, empty yellow sun shone down upon the sand and rock formations of the Silver Arena. I hadn’t gotten much sleep, but I felt refreshed. I hoped to get through enough gladiators to earn the right to challenge Miyuki today. I already stood in the arena, called out first by the gnomish announcer who emphasized my confidence for showing up in my dark fey clothes.

“You really need a second outfit, Emery. People are going to talk if you wear the same thing every day,” Arx Maxima half chided, half suggested.

I didn’t respond to her. I felt like I shouldn’t need to point out that I didn’t own any other clothes that hadn’t yet been destroyed. Maybe I could ask Chrys to make me something stylish, or raid Arx Maxima’s vaults, but there was the danger of anything from Arx possibly being cursed or transformative in nature.

“…and fighting the Elegant Dragon, we have Howlister, the Drake of Disaster!”

The large portcullis on the other side of the arena opened, and my hopes grew. Would I be fighting a wyrm? A wyvern? Drake could be many different creatures, couldn’t it? When the six-foot-tall humanoid scrambled onto the sand, my hearts both skipped a beat. Covered in white and brown feathers with a pair of wings on his back, and two hugely muscled arms, I beheld something I had never thought I would see.

It was a duck.

Howlister’s head was dark green, his eyes a beady orange, and he had a long bill. In both the drake’s hands were well worn metal truncheons about one foot long. Specks of blood from the foul fowl’s previous victims had dried on the ends, and Howlister clenched and unclenched his hands as he stared me down in an attempt at intimidation.

Yes, the duck was built like a brick house. I’m sure it was a skilled fighter, but I had a hard time taking it seriously, and I found my mouth flooded with saliva. Was duck a particularly tasty meal for dragons? I’d never heard any legends of the like, but Howlister’s scent made my stomach growl, and my watered more than it ever had before. Were there rules about eating your opponent? The arenas were a place of anything goes, by and large, so surely I wouldn’t get in trouble for taking a bite or ten.

A brief flicker of terror flooded across Howlister’s face, as if he picked up on my thoughts. However, it disappeared when the drake shook his head, as if dispelling a crazy idea. After all, what kind of mad-man took a bite out of their opponent in honorable combat?

“Begin!”

“You’re waddling into dangerous waters, pal. I’m going to duck you up!” Howlister proclaimed grandly at me and unfurled his large wings. He beat them furiously, again and again, and generated a series of whirlwinds that spread away from him. The dust-devils didn’t appear to be diminishing and, in fact, grew larger the more they bounced around the arena floor. While this did draw some sand into the air, what it really accomplished was to fill the arena with his delicious, musky, oily, and inviting scent.

None of the dust devils came close to me. I let him create more, while I focused on Howlister and read his conceptual bindings. Smash, Vortex, Draku, and Quack. Smash, straightforwardly, was hitting things very hard. Vortex was a subset of air, and worked with tornados, dust devils, and other air phenomena. Draku was a sapient concept, a Duckman Hero of myth and legend that dealt with empowering Howlister against non-fowl foes. Quack, like so many racial types of concepts, dealt with the noise ducks made. Senses, attacks, even self-buffing, it had a lot in common with the Roar concept held by so many animal-like peoples.

“Thirteen gusts of Gustov!” Howlister screamed and drew my attention back to the fight when Instincts of the Gossamyr warned me of minor danger.

There were, indeed, thirteen of the dust devils churning around the arena floor now, and they all converged on me. I wondered how much control the duck had over each of his creations, how much of an obstacle each might be, and if I could slow play this long enough to take a bite out of one of his juicy looking thighs. Maybe a wing would be better, but his arms were so well muscled, they would probably offer the most satisfying bite.

I could see dozens of different trajectories I could take to avoid the vortexes and bring the fight straight to Howlister. Before I could take a step, though, the immensely muscular duck vanished in a poof of smoke. The winds of the arena quickly dispersed the flash of smoke as if it had never been, unfortunately Howlister remained out of sight. I cast my gaze around the arena looking for immediate signs of his presence but found none. Not even any indication of his vectors showed up to reveal him. Maybe that was due to the technological nature of the scavs armor, compared to the enkindled concept origin of Howlister’s stealth?

The one thing I couldn’t do was sacrifice control of the fight to someone with invisibility. Vector Sense wouldn’t let me find him, the wind had pushed his scent everywhere, and the dust devils drowned out most audio. What were my options here? Lightning wouldn’t help. I was holding my own winds back for Miyuki. Should I simply sit back and trust I could reflect an attack from stealth?

No. I refused to give control of the fight to Howlister. If only I had some kind of hunting skills, or tracking skills, I could find the bastard. I almost bit my tongue when I remembered I did have a tracking skill.

I focused on tracking Howlister, and a barely discernable set of foot prints glowed to my vision across the arena. The Belt of Diana’s tracking powers came in useful as I quickly located the freshest set of his rapidly concealed tracks.

I launched myself between three of the dust-devils and thrust Delirium of Ruin where I thought Howlister would step next.

Howlister’s surprised quack when two inches of my spear-tip pierced his chest knocked me backwards a few feet and saved him from a follow-up thrust. I had been tempted to ignore the warnings from Instincts of the Gossamyr about his knock-back quack, but I played it safe and focused on countering the forced movement. I regained my stance, while Howlister trembled in fury, blood soaked his chest. I couldn’t tell if he was more upset about the wound or being seen while invisible.

“How’d you flapping see me?” Howlister demanded, playing up the blood flowing over his feathers and keeping my attention on himself. Instincts of the Gossamyr tingled dully, reminding me of the converging pillars of wind. What kind of moron would forget they were in an arena with thirteen vortexes?

I flung a Bedlam Bolt at Howlister and darted between the oncoming wall of winds, only this time I made swift thrusts with Delirium of Ruin as I darted across the arena. It would have been much faster to use Lex Talionis or Modify Vector to take out the whirlwinds, but Delirium of Ruin cut the vortexes as efficiently as it did flesh, and each of the vortexes I hit sputtered out and died while I slid to a stop.

Howlister quacked loudly and then grew larger. Seven feet, eight feet, he grew and grew until he reached twelve feet tall. His musculature grew with him, and he looked ready to smash something, as he lumbered towards me. Those large beady orange eyes shone with malice.

“If I can’t fool you, I’ll just smash you flat!” Howlister bellowed in a much deeper voice.

Howlister threw the truncheons at me. They were much too small to use as weapons in his larger form, but why would he throw them? Instincts of the Gossamyr warned me, so I invoked Lex Talionis and sent them back at Howlister. Unprepared for the sudden reversal of his weapons, and too slowed by his own greatly enhanced muscle mass, the truncheons struck him in the torso and exploded on impact.

When the haze of the explosion cleared there were feathers missing, and a faint scent of cooked duck forced me to swallow or risk drooling on the ground. The undeniable scent of caramelized fat tantalized my nose while the mental image of crispy skin filled my mind.

I took the initiative to enter melee with the much larger duck. The few vortexes that remained circled us, but I knew I could simply destroy them, they were no longer a threat.

Howlister lifted both of his arms above his head and slammed the ground between us as I closed the distance. Born from his overhead attacks were four pillars of wind, each of which immediately launched blades of air at me. I reflected them at Howlister, but the wind blades hit his feathers and vanished.

“My own wind doesn’t hurt me, you moron!” Howlister mocked and launched one of his huge fists straight at my face. I narrowly dodged the fist with a mixture of spinning, contortion, and rapid movement of my tail. All I had to do was thrust once into his throat, heart, or head with Delirium of Ruin and the fight would be over.

Instead, I found myself drop my spear, grasp his overextended arm, and I bit him. The taste of coppery blood and succulent duck filled my mouth as my draconic teeth ripped his flesh off the bone. It almost felt like he had been left to cook in a pot for days, the meat practically leaped off his body into my mouth thanks to the sharpness of the apex predator dragonoid teeth. Howlister quacked with all his might, and bashed me with his other arm.

I failed to dodge it. I contorted enough to reduce the hit to a glancing blow, and managed to land ten feet away on my feet. Delirium of Ruin reappeared in my hand even as the duck tried to grab it from where I had dropped the spear.

“What the fuck is wrong with yo—” Howlister shouted at me, the wounds I had given him had gone down to the bone. Unfortunately, he had a hard time finishing his sentence when Bedlam Bolt struck him once, then twice.

Howlister seemed to understand the imminent danger he faced. There was a primal terror in his eyes, the look of dread a prey species shows only before the certain death and consumption by a powerful predator. What species didn’t bow before the mightiest of all legends? Who didn’t quail before the hungry, gaping maw of a dragon?

“I yield!!!!!” the giant duck screamed, terror fueling his lungs to work even as his body twitched. He smelled divine. The lightning added a crispy, robust scent to his flesh. The crowd booed. I couldn’t be sure if it was him or me they booed.

I looked at the announcer for if that was even acceptable, since every other opponent had refused to yield and fought to their death, relying on the power of resurrection to let them fight another day. Howlister seemed incapable of moving, he stood shaking and twitching, one arm trying to staunch the flow of blood from the severed vein.

“Emery, the Ravenous Dragon wins, and Howlister earns the great shame of surrender,” the gnome’s voice echoed across the arena. People booed more, and some even threw empty mugs at the duckman.

I heard more than a few shouts of ‘eat him!’, but Howlister fled towards the pit.

Arena people emerged and helped the duckman get to healing. I assumed. It didn’t really matter. I had been denied a glorious meal, but I flicked my long tongue to ensure I hadn’t missed any flesh or juices in my teeth and mouth. Without Howlister the last of the winds died out, and the smell of succulent, juicy duck faded from the arena. Sadly, even the blood Howlister had spilled all over the sand, and quite a lot on me, remained to tease me.

“Azazel had problems with duck people, too.” Arx Maxima commented. “The largest problem he had with them was that we needed to clone more after he ate them all.”

My partner did not seem to understand the severity of the crisis of self this fight had awoken in me. I was a man. A human. I didn’t bite and consume my opponent’s mid-battle. I fought with technique and showed mercy to the weak. Yet, I was no longer a human. I had scales, a tail, the impossibly sharp claws and fangs of a dragon. I had almost devoured a foe while they were still alive, for pleasure.

What, then, had I become?

Arx Maxima.. I don’t feel great about what just happened, but I could also really go for another bite of that guy. Is this a Tenebrous Dragon thing, or a I’m losing my mind thing?

“Do you know that the word for other races in the tongue of the Tenebrous Dragons also meant food?” Arx Maxima answered airily, as if she were quoting me an interesting fact.