Vraxious- Dragon’s Maw VIP Room

  Vrax looked around the now surprisingly crowded room. All his chosen knight commanders were here. As well as their fighters. Stereos was off in a corner knitting, something…And Torvald still hadn’t left the free buffet table. Now he and Rogar and Rogar’s fighter Renault, a massive fat bastard with a beard halfway to his knees, were all seemingly competing to see who could eat the most meat in the shortest amount of time.

  Sul had nestled into a corner with a bottle of wine and was softly exchanging words with Phillis. Dorn was next to Vrax, presenting his fighter. He slapped a wall of bleak grey metal and red runes in the rough shape of a man on the shoulder.

  “This is Crixus! He hates the paladins probably more than you do, and he’s a damned good fighter for his level. I’m trying to train him to become one of my captains.” Vrax looked up into the thin slit of the man’s helmet. It was covered with a mostly opaque red glass. Gods, is this how people feel when I pop out of the damned trees and jump scare them with my armor? This guy looks like he’s a second-tier death knight or something, equally terrifying, not a fiftieth-level fighter like me.

  A bleak, almost rattling voice came from Crixus. “Lord, am I allowed to kill them?” He asked Vrax and looked down at him intensely.

  “I mean...it’s a no-holds-barred arena fight, so you can try? The staff will try and save them though.” This guy has seen some shit…

  Crixus rumbled out a response, “Very well, overkill is needed then.” He turned and went to gaze out the window without saying another word. Vrax looked at Dorn with the most ‘What the hell?’ Expression he could manage. Dorn just shook his head.

  Phillis hadn’t been able to bring one of her fighters apparently, so Sul had lent a pair of his. How did I manage to align myself with the only people scarer than me? Currently they were engaging in one of the most dizzying sparring sessions Vrax had ever had the pleasure of witnessing. Both wielded light swords and used them with an ungodly fluid grace that rivaled how Jonathan fought. They were also both wearing those insane invisibility cloaks.

  What that meant in practice was that two nearly invisible figures were dashing back and forth, clashing blades near the center of the room. Occasionally a dagger would whiz from one of the near-invisible bundles of movement and ping across the room. Hell, I guess Stereos is probably the only person in the room that a normal dagger would even be a threat to at this point.

  Vrax didn’t know their names, so he was referring to them mentally as “ghost” and “specter.” It was a bit on the nose, but it made him chuckle. So he had the pair of woodland assassins. A still moderately drunk bruiser of some kind and Crixus. Vrax nervously looked at Crixus again; he was still staring out the window, not even at the battlefield below but straight at the neighboring booth. A Rembrand priest and paladin were barely visible through the glass, merrily drinking and gesturing at the fight below.

  “Alright, everyone in the room who doesn’t have one already, come get a mark of Vurune and let me fill you in on the battle plan.” Vrax took nearly twenty minutes to outline for everyone the general idea of what he wanted to do and what to expect from his creatures.

  If it all went as planned, odds are the paladins wouldn’t even know why they lost so badly. And well, if it didn’t work out, there was always just pointing Crixus in their general direction and getting the hell out of the way. After talking with him in the planning phase, Vrax was more scared of him than he was of Dorn.

  Apparently, he hated the Order of Rembrand so much because their inaction had gotten him dragged into a portal by some hellish creature during his first week at Hellmaw. They could have helped him but didn’t. He was on a joint patrol with them on the beach when a new splinter rift spilled open. He and his squad stayed to close it…the paladins fled the moment people started dying. The fact that he survived that said a lot about him.

  Vrax summoned his armor and made sure he had everything as the announcer started to boom across the arena.

  “Alright, folks, today we have a very special match. There is a new king in town! You heard that right, folks, a new kingdom has been established, and that sovereign is with us tonight!” The audience went wild in conversation. Vrax could see the adventurers' bar across the arena practically explode into motion as people began discussing the news. And almost certainly trying to figure out where it was because a new country meant new quests.

  “Entering the arena now is the requested opposing team! You are all in for a treat today; we have an honest-to-god full paladin of Rembrand named Corvus leading a squad of faith militants!” The audience oohed and ahhed, and many adventurers leaned forward in excitement; seeing paladins fight was rare.

  Vrax only focused on the opposition. The leader looked scarily like the paladin he had fought in the forsaken lands at the fey circle. His entourage included two other men in golden breastplates and mail. Similar to what Arthur had worn as an initiate paladin. Before he had his whole "I switch sides and renounce my god" midlife crisis, behind them were two of the warriors of Rembrand Vrax had become familiar with. He flinched a bit; he always felt bad for those guys.

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  The arena was different than last time. The center was a raised platform with a single lonely brickwork tower jutting upward. It had entrances on both sides and balconies at the midpoint and just below its flat top.

  Man, that thing is absolutely getting knocked down before this fight is over…

  The left side of the arena was a dense cornfield that wound around the tower. It had neat rows that were occasionally broken by lines of barbed fence meant to slow combatants sneaking through down. The dead center of it was a heavily tilled fenced-off patch of ground that had a massive chicken coop and a literal flock of chickens wandering around.

  No Vrax, as funny as that would be, not mid-fight…

  The right side of the arena was the most similar to last time. It still contained the three islands of land connected by bridges. This time the bridges were of a much sturdier make, arching pieces of stone crafted from a single slab by a mage. The islands themselves were bordered by a swamp-like morass of murky water and vile-looking water plants.

  That absolutely looks like the kind of terrain where you take one wrong step and the ground itself tries to eat you. Vrax’s attention snapped back to the announcer.

  “Alright, folks, I’ve got a fancy sealed letter here I’m opening. Just had a knight commander of all people hand it to me. This event was really quite hush-hush, so I don’t even know who’s fighting.” There was a notable paper-tearing noise broadcast over the magically enhanced audio.

  Followed by a very poignant pause. “Uhh…is this right?”

  “Read the damned letter.” Dorn's voice growled across the arena. Vrax looked around the VIP room in amusement. He knew Dorn was going to deliver the letter; he just thought he would have done it hours ago, not mid-introduction.

  The announcer's voice continued with a nervous timbre. “The…the new sovereign’s team is led by King Vraxious of the Forsaken Lands… You heard that right, folks, the king is going to fight in front of us all today. Some of you might recognize that name! He fought here before and utterly destroyed a crowd favorite.” The cheering in the audience at getting to see one of their betters down in the mud and blood with them was so loud that the announcer had to wait for it to die down.

  Vrax started making his way down to the arena along with his team for the night.

  “The...the new sovereign is also known by another name you might be familiar with... Introducing Vraxious, the Paladin of the Forsaken Lands!” The announcer finished nervously.

  The crowd was stunned into silence as Vrax stalked through the small arena door and cast his gaze around the room. He saw faces filled with anticipation and shock all across the room. The most pervasive among the common folk was intense curiosity.

  His eyes met Corvus’s stare; they could just barely see each other past the tower in the center. Even beneath the helm, Corvus’s features were twisted in sheer hate.

  Vrax’s armor began seeping flame from between the seams of his wooden plate. Dull emerald flames licked at his cloak, burning it from around him in a malevolent hiss. His motions felt lighter, freer, and more powerful. The paladin in the distance glimmered in his vision like a candle begging to be snuffed out.

  Oh... That’s what it does. I was going to drop the cloak for a dramatic reveal, but this definitely works too… I'm going to have to buy so many cloaks…

  The announcer started again. “Alright folks, this is a no-holds-barred match, and, uhm…there may be some casualties, but we will do our best to remove any incapacitated fighters. Are both sides ready?”

  Corvus drew his sword, and it burst into righteous golden flames that dripped onto the earth. In his free hand he summoned a shield made of interlocking plates of golden energy that crackled as they ground against each other.

  Vrax raised his left hand, and a swath of the cornfield nearest him shriveled in on itself violently. Stalks toppled and churned as clawed hands rose from the devastation. Duchess pulled herself free slowly. One claw at a time before her head and body followed. Then she slowly lifted off the ground.

  It was a horrible sight, her whole body curved inwards in the shape of a crescent with her tail just inches from the ground as she rose above the corn. Shadows spilled from her maws and wafted through the cornfield. Finally, as her very existence brought enough fear to the room, the eldritch patterning ignited line by line until she hovered there. Her flesh both drinking the light and somehow simultaneously casting an unfathomable glow.

  Duchess arched her head back and began mimicking Kelis, the Rembrand Priests last moments. Even Vrax paled; he hadn’t heard this before. This was after she dragged him into that horrible portal. “Lord…Lord, please, please do not let me die like this. Why, why have you forsaken me? AAGhhhhh…gods, please just end it!” Gnashing of teeth and tearing flesh followed along with demonic chatter. “Rembrand…why… I gave you everything…am I to die alone in the dark?” His voice had a hopeless tinge, and moments later the sound of bones being torn from meat silenced his words.

  Utter silence fell across the arena except for Duchess’s trilling, chuffing, bestial laughter. The audience looked a mix of entranced and utterly horrified. Silence continued to reign for another ten heartbeats until the paladin Screamed across the distance towards Vrax, “I’m going to fucking gut you!” And charged

  The announcer quickly interjected, “Umm…start…begin? Fight!”

  “Sorry, man, I don’t think this is going to go how you wanted.” Vrax nodded to his team, and everyone started fanning out.

  The assassin duo and duchess utterly disappeared into the cornfield. Renault swung right and planted his massive frame at the end of the closest bridge to make sure no one could flank them that way. He pulled a great sword out and leaned it against the bridge rail before unslinging the biggest crossbow Vrax had ever seen in his life and kneeling down, bracing it against the same bridge railing, and tossing a thumbs up Vrax’s way.

  Crixus and Vrax rushed towards the central tower, skirting just along the edge of the cornfield. When they got to the edge of the platform it sat upon, Vrax devastated a massive swath of the vegetation with his stigmata. In its place two devourers happily bobbed into the air, and a single roiling oval doorway sat just above the ground.

  Crixus looked at the portal and nodded. “Let’s see how these cowards like being dragged into hell.”

  They were about to continue onto the platform and try to engage the paladin before he could spot the portal when a confused Scream pulled everyone’s attention. Duchess was rising like a shroud of fear from the cornfield in the distance. She had one of the warriors of Rembrand spread wide a claw, pulling on each arm and leg as she rose higher and higher.

  She looked towards the devourers with a clever glint in her eyes and drew a claw across the man’s chest in a ragged cut, spilling the first blood of the match.

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