Curse of the Crystals

Chapter 14: Preparing for Battle - part 1

Almost three weeks later, they were summoned to the palace in the capital. Maiara had spent the time investigating the rumours about the final irregularity near the Dwarven border, but she had only learned that official reports kept calling it 'under control' and 'stable' with 'no new developments', which were all suspicious enough statements to her. Sadly enough, they had a tournament to deal with first, and she had to deal with Ezer's scheming as well. Itzal and Luna had been mostly off the radar, working with Arethusa and Nereus to talk down Liberators into laying down their arms before they were needed in the tournament. Ambrose had immediately returned to the capital with Maiara and Qadir, living in Maiara's mansion and spending his days healing people in the hospitals while working on increasing his mana. He realized that pushing his boundaries, without breaking them, was slowly starting to give him more and more of the magical energy. Upon telling Maiara about this, she started to go through a similar training, slowly learning to reflect more and heavier objects. To that extend, the magic was fairly similar to muscles. The more they used their magic without pushing their limits until they fainted, the stronger it got and the more stamina, or rather, mana, they seemed to be able to use.

Now, at one of the meeting rooms in the palace, Ezer was informing them of the tournament. "First of all, the preliminary round is going to be held in teams of three. Furthermore, crown-prince Adelmar insisted that the three of you were to be split up into different teams due to having the advantage of your eh... magic." Although Ezer had been somewhat informed of what they'd learned from their dream, he was clearly not all that familiar with it. "These preliminary rounds will be open to anyone, but only ten teams will make it to the main tournament."

Ezer took out a map and laid it on the table in the middle of the room. "Are you at all familiar with the lost city of Hillforte?"

They all nodded. Hillforte used to be one of the busiest and most populated cities in the Human Kingdom, but it was razed after facing a humiliating defeat in the war with the Elven Empire. Its ruins were now part of the empire, like a monument to the Elven victory and Human defeat, so nobody had been willing to rebuild it. The city was in the slow process of being taken back by nature, as buildings were crumbling and growing over.

Ezer spoke up. "The entire city is going to be the arena for the preliminary round, which will be a match that lasts until there are only ten teams left. You lose by leaving the boundaries of the city or by surrendering at one of the locations at which we'll station our observers. They will also be monitoring the area to help avoid foul play or to provide medical assistance to surrendering teams. The moment you rely on them for help, your team automatically loses its right to continue."

"Wait." Maiara spoke up. "Isn't that far too cruel?"

While Ambrose was still trying to figure out what exactly this rule entailed, Itzal figured out why Maiara was upset. "She's right. This means that individual team members won't be able to surrender without forcing their team to lose, which is likely to stimulate people to risk their lives to continue. In fact, it might even make some of the teams force their teammates to continue fighting despite their wish to surrender."

Ezer nodded. "You are correct, but I'm afraid this was one of the rules that the crown-prince insisted on."

Maiara sighed. "I take it this tournament is likely to end up being a deadly one?"

Ezer nodded. "I'm afraid so. Even with our best efforts, we won't be able to monitor everything, and with the invitation being open to everyone willing to join, we'll have a lot of bloodthirsty participants joining. There's going to be an extremely high risk of death compared to normal tournaments."

Ambrose couldn't quite grasp it. "Why should we be fighting each-other to the death in a time like this? Shouldn't we band together against our common enemy?"