Freebie: Avalon - The Fallen King: Chapter 2

Enjoy another free chapter to my newest novel, Avalon: The Fallen King!

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Chapter Two -

Twelve minutes into the match and Theo still had his first sprite but it was on its last leg. Therresa lost her basilisk, as well as her next one, an elephant. She was currently on a rhinoceros. It rampaged across the arena, glistening with a bright, chrome sheen. His fingers flew over the magical interface wrapped around his arms. He pulled up his attack spells now and rapidly swiped through them until he found the one he wanted. He threw it out in front of him and it came to a stop just past his platform, gaining clarity and definition. The other players saw what he was about to use and immediately reacted by diving behind obstructions, throwing one up if they didn’t already have one.

“Vance makes a power move and casts Lightning Storm,” the announcer calls.

The card burst into bright light as bolts of lightning arced out and across the entire arena below. Nothing was safe, not even his phoenix. It took several hits and then burst apart into fiery red sparkles. He tapped his left forearm twice and then watched as a wolf with dark fur and glowing, purple eyes appeared. It fell onto the arena floor, bounding across the ground in search of prey.

“What a devastating spell!” the announcer calls out. “Both of the Kos’ sprites have suffered significant damage with Victor’s salamander down to less than five hitpoints. Vivienne’s second sprite has just been eliminated as well as Williams’s gorilla. Weston has faced unfortunate luck this match and just lost yet another sprite. He is now on his fifth and final one, a jellyfish with his first move being an assault on Vance’s wolf.”

Theo watched the ethereal, amorphous jellyfish come for his wolf. It was a bad play by Arnold. His wolf was a lot quicker than the jellyfish and its dark elemental attacks packed a heavy punch. Already, it chewed off several of the thing’s tentacles. At the same time the wolf and jellyfish clashed, Vivienne went after Therresa with her third sprite, a cyclops. It swung heavily muscled arms as soon as it got close enough to Therresa’s sprite but the rhino’s thick, natural armor deflected most of the blows. It became clear that she never expected her cyclops to do any lasting damage. Vivienne wanted to draw the rhino out and Therresa obliged. She had it charge headlong, right at the cyclops. Its long, slender horn speared right through its lower body.

“A direct hit!” the announcer shouted, his voice filled with pride. “Weyd is showing, yet again, why they are at the top of the district’s rankings.”

Therresa tried to jerk her arm back and have her rhino disengage from Vivienne’s sprite but it didn’t budge. It was stuck there. A quick glance at the Ko sister’s platform showed a trap card start to flip up.

“Thorned Bramble activates! It has Nillen’s rhino stuck with no way out.”

Twisting vines almost a foot wide with piercing thorns started growing out of the cyclops’s wound. They shot forward and wound all around the rhino, leaving long scratches that oozed gray-white light. Then they squeezed and the thorns actually forced their way past the rhino’s thick skin. Its hitpoints just kept going down.

Theo watched, knowing the rhino wasn’t going to last much longer. He swung his left arm around and his wolf responded. It broke free of the jellyfish sprite and headed straight for the twisted mess of rhino, cyclops, and vines. Victor Ko’s salamander tried to get in his way but a quick swipe of a paw, coupled with a surge of dark energy, took care of its last bit of hitpoints and it was eliminated. Miles also tried to stop him using his fourth sprite, a thunderbird. That was not an ideal matchup against his wolf. It kept divebombing from the air which made Theo have to continually dodge. When it became apparent that his aerial attacks weren’t effective, Miles activated an attack card. Theo manipulated his wolf perfectly though, operating on a combination of skill and instinct. At times, it was almost like he could see or feel the attacks coming before they actually did. Because of that, he was able to stay out of range of both the thunderbird and spell with relative ease.

The wolf finally got to the rhino and immediately started to swipe at the brambles with its claws. They parted as if made from paper, but there were a lot of them and it took some time. The cyclops itself was still trying to bash both the rhino and wolf but its heavy muscles and enormous bulk made it one of the slower sprites. And then there was the fact that most of its movements were still being hampered by all the brambles coming out of its gaping wound.

“Ko’s cyclops is running out of steam. It won’t be much longer before it’s eliminated,” the announcer explained. “On the other side of the arena, Weston’s jellyfish is facing off against Williams and the other Ko. And it is not faring well folks.”

One of Arnold’s trap cards activated. Theo looked over, mildly curious, and saw that it was a card called Healing Hands. It gave a sprite twenty hitpoints back and judging by the sad state his sprite was in, it could use them. Several of the gashes the jellyfish suffered sealed themselves and a few tentacles even regrew. Arnold made a few adjustments and had his sprite float into the air to get away from Ko, but it ran right into a vicious attack by Miles’s thunderbird. The sprite’s talons raked across the jellyfish, splitting it open. A watery blue light spilled out and then it was torn to shreds. It dissipated into sparkles and was gone a second later.

“And that is all she wrote for Weston. He takes a brutal loss with no sprites left to call,” the announcer said. 

Arnold slammed a fist against the railing in frustration. With his final sprite’s elimination, he was done with the match. He turned and stormed back down the walkway, his steps stiff and rigid. Eventually, he sat down on a seat next to Coach Kelts.

Artemis turned toward him.

“Pathetic display,” she said. Then she let out a harsh, cawing laughter.

“Shut up, bird!”

Artemis snapped her beak at him and he jerked back. Then he went into a sullen, angry silence and refused to acknowledge the crow.

Back in the arena, Williams’s sprite continued its blitz attacks by going after Vivienne’s cyclops, probably because it had already been heavily weakened by Therresa’s rhino and Theo’s wolf. Slashes of air erupted out of the thunderbird and hit the cyclops right in the back. Its hitpoints came very close to zeroing out. It tried to fight back but the thunderbird came in for a followup attack and eliminated the cyclops in a burst of brownish sparkles. Then it burst through the dissipating sprite and tried to take on the rhino. Therresa fought back but her sprite had taken severe damage from the Thorned Bramble trap card. Again, Williams went for the weakened sprite, hoping for an easy kill.

The thunderbird ripped the rhino savagely across one of its sides with its talons. Then it soared back up into the air, gaining height as an advantage. Slashes of condensed air rained down next but the rhino took cover behind a forest obstruction Therresa called up. They thunked harmlessly into thick tree trunks. Theo tried to help her out with his wolf but Williams kept his thunderbird out of reach. He thought about attacking more directly with an attack card but he knew his cooldown hadn’t quite finished yet. If he tried to use one before that was over, he would be penalized. He did what he could to help her but despite everything he tried, the rhino ended up getting exposed after Therresa’s obstruction was destroyed. The slashes weren’t effective against the rhino but with its low hitpoints, they were enough to eliminate it. Therresa’s rhino burst into a cloud of silver sparkles.

Theo shot Therresa a quick look. She glanced back at him and he mouthed the word sorry. She smiled and gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders. Then she pulled out her fourth sprite, an eagle. Immediately, she sent it rocketing into the air with plumes of white vapor coming off its wings. It crashed into the thunderbird and the two went careening end over end across the sky.

“Nillen comes back from losing her rhino with a vicious attack from her fourth sprite,” the announcer called out. “It’s getting intense out there. The attacks are coming fast and visibility on the field keeps dropping.”

Elemental energies of varying types and degrees swirled around the arena. There were fires that kept blazing. Gusts of wind that screamed across the field. Dust and bits of debris clouded things, making it hard to see. Victor Ko had thrown up an obstruction made of water, hoping to keep his current sprite, a kraken, safe for a time. Vivienne joined him with her fourth sprite, an ogre. Therresa and Miles kept up their fight between their two airborne sprites. Theo, who was still on his second sprite, had the advantage over everyone else.

Now. It’s time, he thought to himself. The attack card cooldown just expired. He hadn’t been timing it, of course. Not really anyway. Instead, an inner gauge he possessed told him when the cooldown period was over. It was a skill called chrono awareness that essentially meant a person had an innate ability to know how much time has passed. It was a subset of the divination discipline that had been developed by the First King of Avalon himself. Being a huge fan of his, he felt special for showing such an aptitude for a skill found and developed by his idol.

Quickly, he swiped through his attack cards. He found the one he wanted quickly and activated it. His spell blasted into the Kos’ obstruction and vaporized it into nothingness with no trouble at all. The second it was gone, he sent in his wolf.

The match raged on, each player fighting furiously to be the last one standing. Theo and Therresa kept backing each other up, both of them complementing the other so well it was like they could read each other’s minds. When one attacked a sprite, the other would fend off the players left and vice versa. It was an excellent system. A working system. With it, they managed to eliminate Miles’s thunderbird as well as his final sprite, a sphinx, and took him out of the match completely. They also teamed up and eliminated Victor Ko’s kraken. They tried the same thing with the Ko twins’ remaining sprites but eventually, the combination of traps, spells, and elemental sprite assaults activating all over the arena forced Theo and Therresa apart and they had to fight on their own for a while.

“It’s coming down to the wire now,” the announcer chimed in. “Williams has just been knocked out. Vance still has three remaining sprites to draw on while Nillen and the Kos only have one apiece.”

After listening to the announcer, Theo decided to use a more aggressive style of play. He sent his wolf in to do as much damage as it could, knowing full well it was a sacrifice play. The risk was low for him though. With three sprites left, he felt confident the wolf could do some damage before the Kos took it out.

He was right.

He managed to take out Victor’s fourth sprite, his orca, but Vivienne’s ogre finished off his wolf. Therresa’s eagle took a direct hit from an attack spell but Theo managed to time his wolf’s elimination just right and had no sprites on the field when that devastating spell hit. It was a particularly nasty one named Volcanic Eruption that pretty much took out any sprite on the field when it went off.

He tapped his left forearm twice. Sparkles of green light swirled together and formed into a tiger that dropped onto the field just as the last effects of the Volcanic Eruption card faded away.

“On full display yet again are Vance’s impressive instincts and timing.” The announcer was supposed to remain impartial but it was clear he had a bias toward Theo. “Just look how effortlessly he timed the calculated elimination of his wolf with the entrance of his tiger. I’ll say it again folks, this young man has a very bright future-”

The announcer’s voice suddenly cut out but Theo was too involved in the match to really notice.

The next few moments went by in a seeming blur. Therresa’s eagle sprite was eliminated but she used an attack spell of her own, coupled with a trap card, to finish off Victor’s last sprite. Unfortunately, this left her final sprite, a shark, vulnerable and Vivienne took merciless advantage of that. She sent her sprite in to attack and eliminated the shark within a few minutes. Therresa took the loss gracefully, walking away from the platform with her held high. Eventually, she came to sit next to Coach Kelts and Arnold.

Theo still had the advantage. Vivienne was on her last sprite but he still had two waiting in the wings. The match was all but over now. He pushed ahead, his tiger darting toward Vivienne’s last sprite, which happened to be a phoenix.

But just as the two sprites were about to clash, something happened. A bright, painful light bloomed out of nowhere. Theo shielded his eyes and so did everyone else. There were murmurs of whispered conversation.

“Uh…hello everyone. The previous announcer left for some reason. I guess I will be filling in for him. It does appear, however, that there is some kind of…um…interference with the match,” the new announcer explained. This one was not nearly as boisterous as the first one.

The weird light eventually died down and when it did, Theo’s eyes widened in shock. Hovering above the arena, its wings spread out to either side was the most impressive and beautiful phoenix he’d ever seen, but this one was not a sprite. It was something else. Something much more powerful.

Theo recognized it immediately and a wash of excitement slammed into him. His eyes widened in complete awe.

“Uh…,” the announcer stammered. “I’m sorry everyone. I…uh…don’t quite know what is happening right now.”

The phoenix turned its head and stared directly at Theo. Its glowing, yellow-orange eyes wouldn’t look at anyone or anything else. The extremely important Proelia match, and everything concerning it, suddenly faded away for Theo as that inner excitement grew so much he could no longer keep it off his face. He smiled broadly and raised his hand in an awkward gesture of hello.

“H-hi Jeks.”

The phoenix was a foci. A familiar to be exact and its bondsmate was the First King himself. Micah-freaking-Pantheon. It was widely known as one of the most powerful focis in the entire, freaking world. He could barely contain himself.

Wait. That means he’s here, right?

Theo looked around, trying to spot the incredibly famous king but the man didn’t appear to be anywhere in sight.

Did the First King of Avalon actually come all the way out here to watch my match? Theo shook his head, feeling foolish. No. That’s stupid. Why would he?

He stared again at the fiery familiar.

But there’s Jeks right freaking there. He’s right in front of me. I know it’s him.

With everything going on, he stood frozen. His overtaxed mind worked hard just to make sure he kept breathing regularly.

“I believe, and this might sound crazy everyone, but I truly believe that is the real, genuine familiar of First King Micah Pantheon,” the announcer said, shocked. “I am looking around and have yet to see the king. Which is very uh…strange.”

The enormous phoenix drifted closer to Theo, its body blazing with flames. When it was just a foot or so away from him, it stopped and just hovered in midair. Its wings didn’t flap. Its eyes never wavered. There was a deep silence that filled the entire stadium as they all watched and waited. Then, with everyone watching, Jeks bowed deeply in midair, ducking its head in reverence.

To Theo.

There was a collected gasp of shock across the entire stadium. Whispers of conversation exploded all throughout the bleachers. Some were shouting. One person screamed out what the hell is this? Therresa even got up at one point and tried to go to Theo but Coach Kelts held her back, gently grasping her arm and quietly shaking his head no. She hesitated, still wanting to go to her boyfriend, but Kelts was insistent that she stay put. Eventually, she sat back down.

There was no question about what just happened. The familiar bowing to Theo meant only one thing. It was a wild, unbelievable thing that Theo couldn’t believe just happened, but there was no mistaking it either.

Jeks just marked him.

As an heir to a throne of Avalon. And not just any throne.

The First King’s throne.