Tarragon (v1)

Chapter Seven: The Hellbent Coral

-Mantis
-February 29th, 2024

I headed into the Skytreaders gym as usual. Everyone was unusually formal. They weren't in formal clothes, but they seemed less unkempt than usual. I didn't see any stray bits of hair sticking up, and they seemed... formal.

Adrian was sitting on a small tower of two wooden boxes, while the others were on benches in a semicircle around him.

"Mantis! You're just on time." Adrian welcomed me, "We're going to be joining a tournament. You'll get a firsthand glimpse into how we play, how we train, and the strategies we use."

I sat down on one of the benches, and listened to what he was saying.

"Now, which tournament are we joining, you all might be wondering?" Adrian started, "it's just a tiny, microscopic, fairly unknown tournament," he described it sarcastically, "It's just a little skirmish tournament called the World Colosseum."

The World Colosseum. I took a moment to let that sink in.

"Now, we've been selected as one of the sixteen top teams in the world. You all know how this works. Each weekend, we're put up against one other team of the sixteen. We get five weeks for the qualifiers, so we get five games. In order to get in, we have to win three of them, and that's assuming that all eight slots aren't already filled." Adrian explained. I already knew how the tournament worked, but it was so much more terrifying being on the receiving end of it.

To be fair, though, I wouldn't be playing, I would just be watching.

"Also, I had some... issues getting us into the tournament, so the first game is tomorrow. Good luck!"

It took me a minute to comprehend what had just been said. Everyone dispersed, and I was left sitting there, in shock.

I wouldn't be playing, and I didn't want to get in the way, so...

I looked for something that wasn't occupied. I eventually came to the precision course. It was one of the only things I hadn't practiced.

I climbed up the ladder to it, and turned it on. A small, elastic net stretched out below it. I had seen Aliya, and Adrian run this course, but I had never done it myself.

That was because of just how precise this course required you to be. The spots you could land on were the size of my heel, and later on in the course, those spots were spinning, and even later on, they weren't even staying still.

I took the first leap onto one, and tried balancing. It didn't work, though, so I leaped to the next one, across the alley. I figured out pretty quickly that I was not going to be able to stay on one for long. I kept moving, putting in just the right amount of power, and landing perfectly on my destination.

It felt more natural than expected, and as I picked up the pace, I fell into a bit of a rhythm with it. Land, jump, estimate how much you need to get to the next spot while in the air, and repeat.

In just a few minutes, I reached the final stretch. The tiny rotating platforms, on spinning structures, moving up and down. It hurt my brain to estimate how much force I needed to put in, but I tried anyway.

I overshot a bit on the first one, and barely caught myself, before leaping to the next perfectly, and then the final one.

I took the last jump, and landed safely on the ledge at the end.

"That was way easier than expected." I muttered, before putting in my name on the little console.

A list of times popped up.

Hermes: 1:01.362
Adrian: 1:42.936
Monica: 1:43.107
Aliya: 1:43.216
Hester: 1:48.831
Arvel: 1:52:106
Felix: 2:02.910
Mantis: 8:04.633

I was all the way at the bottom. Hermes had managed to run the course eight times faster than I had. To be fair, all of them had probably run this course thousands of times, and there was a clearly visible competition between Adrian, Monica and Aliya for second. I set my goal to at least not be in last on this course.

I walked the path over to the start, and reset the course. I launched into action, carefully propelling myself from one platform to the next. I bolted through the course, being careful not to fall as I ran. After a short while, I finished it.

I checked my time. 3:42.124. It was certainly a huge improvement. I ran the course a few more times, and somehow perfectly timed it to get a 3:00.104 time. I was 104 milliseconds from a sub-3 minute time.

I continued running the course for as long as my Energy would allow, and eventually got the time down to 2:16.418.

I had exhausted my Energy, though, so I stopped on the course, and went to work on my endurance. And by working on my endurance, I mean see how long I could sprint before running out of breath. I did see improvements with that, though.

I saw everyone else finishing up, but they didn't leave. Instead, they switched into their Tarragon gear. Aliya explained to me that they would be doing last minute strategy and combat practice. She told me to put on my gear, so I did.

I walked into the combat room, and it was, to say the least, vastly different than it usually was. There was terrain, buildings, and it seemed like a start and finish.

"This is the map we'll be playing on, or at least a scaled down version. Tight corners, long hallways, open rooftops, rooms you can hide in, and so on. We'll be playing defense here." Adrian explained, "The first flag is here." he ran over to a small, but clear circle a few feet across, with a flag in the center. It was right in front of the entrance to the building. He walked into the building. It looked like a reception area, "You can hide behind this desk to take someone by surprise," he pointed to the small reception desk. There were hallways on either side of the desk. He showed us the rooms in both hallways. At the end of each hallway was an open area with a tree in the center. It was a tall room, with several small balconies you could hide on and take the attackers by surprise from. Two flags sat in the center of the room, though they would both count for the second flag.

He gave us a few tips as to what to do here, and we moved onto the next flag. In the middle of a thick hallway, right after the second flag, this one was practically guaranteed to go to the attackers. There were no crevices to hide in to defend it, it would be a fool's gambit to put more than two people protecting it. Because if they could team wipe, and take that flag, they'd be almost guaranteed to be able to take the next flag, or get close.

After the third flag, there was a heavy pair of doors, in a kind of storage-like area. You could hide in the towers of boxes, behind the forklift, or on one of the catwalks. In the middle of the room was the flag.

Finally, if you headed out the back, you could find the most defender-biased flag on the map, as the last flag usually was. It was out of the building, and in a small artificial forest. Bridges connected treehouses, and the architecture looked like the images I had seen of the dragons' forest gate towns. In the furthest part of it was an open town hall building, resting within the trees. The flag was in the center of the room, while there were balconies around the perimeter, and bookshelves on the floor. I understood the gist of what to do here- fight with everything you could to stop them from taking the flag.

"Now, all of you go home, get some sleep. The first game is tomorrow."

-Tykranaea, March 1st, 2024

I slammed my claw into the ground. Trees shook, and my servants flinched, "I have tried. He's not natural. I don't know what you did to him!" I shouted at him.

He looked up at me, and raised himself up on a pillar of rock, to be up on my level. He raised a small throne for himself from the rock, and sat down, "How do you, a Titan of the world, with power so far beyond his, fail to kill him? Are you that incompetent?"

"NO!" I roared at him, "I TOLD YOU," I took a moment to calm down, and lowered my voice, "he's not natural. Humans don't get that strong."

He smirked, "You sure? I'm standing right here."

"You're not human. At least, not anymore." I retorted. He seemed insulted.

"Now, go kill him." he ordered me, coldly.

"I'm occupied right now with rebels. I'll do it in a week." I shrugged his order off.

"Fine. Don't make me have to come down there myself and execute him." he threatened me.

"Really? You weren't too successful last time you-" I tried mocking him, before he cut me off.

"I SPARED HIM!" he shouted, amplifying his voice, "I let him live so I could use him later! He's not a lost cause. Not yet."

-Mantis, March 1st, 2024

I opened up the back entrance to the Raleigh Tarragon Arena. Aliya showed me basically everything that the players did before a game. From stretching, putting on the gear, calibrating it, and so on.

We had about half an hour until the game started. The atmosphere was tense, but excited.

I noticed Hermes sitting in a corner, looking at something. I walked over to check out what he was holding.

It was a trophy. The number 2020 was visible on the trophy. I recognized this to be his MVP trophy from a 2020 tournament. That year, I remember vividly. It was a smaller tournament, but still had a lot of major teams. They were in the last minute of the final game, and he was the only one in the game. He stood against a full five member team, with two other members ready to come in the moment any other members fell. He just barely managed to team-wipe, in a historical fight.

I read the inscription on his trophy. The first name was scratched out, with 'Hermes' scribbled over it in marker. Then his last name, Sharp.

"I'm gonna do it again. The scratched out bit is not aesthetically pleasing." he told me.

(Writer's note: This segment of the chapter contains some possibly bad imagery of minor gore, reader discretion is advised. Skim ahead until you see the next writer's note if you don't want to read that, it'll have a description of what happened with minimal detail.)

I heard a scream. I turned around to see Aliya collapsed on the ground. Everyone was panicking, and Adrian was trying to get a hold of the situation, "Calm down, everyone. Hermes, go get people to help! Felix, call an ambulance!" he shouted. Hermes bolted out of the room, and Felix was on the phone." I was frozen in place, I didn't know what to do.