A king of snow and flame

Chapter 1

All around the colosseum, the snow sang.

Elean gripped the hilt of her sword with one four-fingered hand. She was exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the ground and let her opponent win. She felt the sword slipping from her blood-slicked hand, but forced herself to keep gripping it.

She couldn't die now. Just one more fight and she'd reach her goal. Her eyes searched around the rows and rows of seats, filled with spectators eagerly anticipating what would happen next. She found the column above the entrance gates where the richest viewers would be sat. Her eyes found the face she was looking for at the very front of the crowd: the face of emperor Azheas. For a moment, she thought he met her gaze, but she was snapped back to reality when she noticed her opponent's mace swinging towards her.

She ducked down, stepped closer and thrust her sword out, managing to get it under his shield. She smiled as she felt it dig into something solid, but her confidence was quickly broken when the man slammed his shield down onto her arm, knocking her to the ground. After managing not to drop her sword she rolled between his legs and stood up behind him, swinging down into his back.

She had him.

He was turning, but he wouldn't be fast enough.

Her sword collided with something hard, too hard to be armour and definitely too hard to be skin. She blinked as she tried to take in what she saw; a mass of jagged white crystal had shot out of her opponent's shield, blocking her sword strike. She jumped back, avoiding a sharp spike of the crystal swinging into her head.

She hadn't planned for this. She'd never seen anyone use a white dragonscale in gladiator combat, even in a high-profile fight like this.

He can't keep that up, she thought. They consume soul really quickly, from what I've heard. I just have to outlast him. She tried and failed again and again to get close, each time repulsed by another spear of crystal. She smacked her sword into one of the spikes, feeling it shatter as she pushed her hand underneath it to catch one of the larger fragments. They wouldn't last long without being connected to the dragonscale, which she assumed was in his shield, so she had to act fast. She pulled her hand back and threw the fragment straight into his face.

It didn't seem to hurt him, but that wasn't her objective. She just had to distract him long enough that she could throw a kick into the mass of crystal, shattering it and exposing the dragonscale. You had to focus to use a dragonscale's power, and white dragonscale crystal became extremely brittle when you stopped focusing. It shattered under her foot and she followed it up with a strike of her sword into the small white square in the centre of the shield. She hit the frame holding it in place and it dislodged itself from the shield, falling somewhere onto the snowy ground below.

She had to pick that up later. It would be useful if she needed to use plan B.

Her opponent fell backwards, landing on the ground. This was her chance. She pounced, ready to deliver a killing blow, but narrowly dodged a swing of his mace that was far too hard to be natural, which stopped an inch above the ground, just holding in place.

How many dragonscales did this guy have?

He had managed to get back up and kept attacking. She could only narrowly avoid the swings, and she couldn't keep it up for much longer. Either the mace had to go, or she had to last until the dragonscale ran out of power. From what she could tell, his mace was far too heavy for him to use well without the scales. He was relying on them too much. Letting a red scale push the mace head for him, and a purple scale to stop the swings before they sent him too far off-balance.

She waited for him to use the purple scale to stop another swing. The mace stopped in mid air, perfectly in place. She swung her sword down and cleaved straight through its shaft, sending splinters everywhere as the mace-head hung in the air, held in place by a purple dragonscale. He looked around in confusion for a moment, then jumped at her, knocking her sword out of her hand as he fell on top of her, pinning her to the ground.