Year 783 Octavus, day 19 of the seventh month of Domorus
Sidastir watched all the participants, most of them send him nervous glances before eyes turned to the ground before he could meet them. Seems like that damn guard had spread the rumors around that he was the culprit. Not that Sidastir cared too much since fear wasn’t something that he was unsure about.
Servants ran around, giving all the participants a strange orb. One was handed to Sidastir, who stared down into the orb, translucent in color.
“Have you never seen a Sagniergia before?” asked a familiar, and irking voice. Sidastir looked up to see that bastard, Egnion stands there with a smirk. His eyes spied around Sidastir and Sidastir wanted to growl when he heard Egnion’s words. “Aren’t your lovely Rial Caraid here? Or isn’t he interested in you making a fool out of yourself?”
“He didn’t want to see me destroy my rivals,” Sidastir said, trying to calm his mind. A young girl, what had been her name? Lucara? had snuck up on Sidastir, her eyes wide with happiness when she saw him.
“Sagniergia means pool of energy. It is a tool specially made for this part of the Trinetournament. It can drain one's mana, the more mana the longer you are able to feed it. When you cannot stand it anymore, you drop the Sagniergia and you are out of this phase,” Lucara explained eagerly while holding up her own orb. “Only the fifty last to hold the Sagniergia are allowed to go on to the next phase.”
Sidastir had wondered how they were going to cut down all these mages. There were at least five hundred mages in the arena, it would be hard to allow all of them for the last phase when they were going to fight each other. They will most likely cut another forty in the second phase so only ten would fight in the last phase.
“I’m sure this will be a walk in the park for our Rial of Eitir,” said a cheery voice that always made Sidastir clench his teeth. The Mayin had walked over, Lucara looked like she was ready to faint and Egnion was stiff, not sure how to react to a man more powerful than most men in the Nine Kingdoms. Only very few were his equal, all of them could be counted on one hand.
“Your fate in me is honoring,” Sidastir said, staring at the Sagniergia. “Will it just start on itself?”
“No, you start by pushing your mana inside it, then it will continue to drain your mana until you let it go. Simple and effective,” the Mayin said with a shrug. Sidastir frowned, who created such a thing, and for what exactly was its original purpose.
As if he was able to read his mind, the Mayin smirked. “Punishment. You tied the Sagniergia around the mage neck, then cut him or her until they started to use their mana to try and heal, often done unconsciously, and then the Sagniergia activated. Draining the mage dry until they are dead. Not very effective, but the Sagniergia store the mana that could then be used by the mage council of Domor. A filled Sagniergia was a rare and desired among the high mages of the Northern countries.”
“The Domorans are delightful,” Sidastir said with a grim smile.
“Is you adoring consort here?” asked the Mayin, asking what he really wanted to know. Sidastir wanted to just ignore the question, but considering Akana’s plan to befriend the Curare and the Mayin was the easiest way to do that…
“He decided to investigate the thing you talked about to him last time you met.”
The Mayin’s eyes turned to him, narrowing. “Alone?”
“No.”
“Excellent. I wouldn’t want to save him again,” the Mayin teased and Sidastir’s face fell, glaring at the man who just didn’t care.
The crowd went quiet, eyes turning to the center of the arena. Adorned with five seats. Each was slowly filled, one was an old dwarf with a long grey beard, one was a huzhidian, stern and proud. One was a little smiling girl with curly white hair, not that far off from Ceva’s looks. The seat of the Mayin was empty of course, but the center seat, more embellished than the others, was soon filled by a brown-skinned man with golden hair and eyes. His long hair was pulled back to show the pointy ears and the piercing eyes on the handsome face watched the participants with a distance that only made him seem far away from ordinary mortals. Which to many, the Keiser was.
“He looks like a full-blooded sun elf,” Sidastir muttered.”Hard to believe that he is only descendant of one.”
“His sun elf blood is strong. It runs high in his veins, but you can see some differences,” the Mayin chuckled. “The ears aren’t as long and pointy as yours for example, and his skin is brown but lacks the golden tint of the sun elves. His skin color looks more human.”
Sidastir hadn’t seen a sun elf so he couldn’t comment but since most elven races have a more ashen color than the humans. Ice elves' skin being white as snow, dark elves being black as coal, mountain elves being grey, only the forest elves and the sun elves had the humans brown skin, but that might have to do with forest elves being heavily mixed with humans. Sun elves apparently originally had a golden tint on them so maybe the forest elves had a tint on them as well. Some of them seem to have a greenish tint on their skin so maybe a pureblooded forest elf was green. It matters little now since there were so few purebloods left in Noterra.
The Keiser held up his hand in a greeting to the old lady across from him in the arena. The Fire Empress did the same. The old lady pretended to be pleased to see him, though everyone could see the stiffness of her gestured. Besides the Empress sat the phoenix princess, her eyes darted eagerly towards the place reserved for the Eitiran consort, but looked disappointed when it was vacant.
For once, Sidastir was happy that Akana wasn’t here to be harassed by the princess while he wanted to rip her head off. He wasn’t sure such a gesture was going to go over well with the council.
“I welcome all of the participants to the Trinetournament. Your participation is a testament to your courage and noble nature. It is to be honored today and my heart soars in pride for each and every one of you,” the Keiser said, his voice carried out over the crowd.
All looked proud, except Sidastir who snorted. “A comfort to those who are about to be thrown out in the first phase.”
Some threw him some angry glare while others just ignored his obvious mockery. “The judges-“a bunch of people dressed in an entire white attire raised their hands,” will catch all who drop their Stagniergia and showed them to the door. I hope you can all do so with honor for when the Stagniergia falls, so does your participation in this competition. No second tries.”
The Keiser raised his hands, all participants readied themselves, holding out their Stagniergia. The Keiser’s golden eyes perused them for a second before his hand fell, and all participants started.
Sidastir filled his Stagniergia for just a second before it started to glow in a bright light, a snowstorm raging inside it. Looking up he noticed that all the Stagniergia had lit up, showcasing their element. Lucara’s was filled with a storm, clouds swirling around. Egnion’s showed a mountain crackling and moving.
Glancing over at the Mayin who was looking rather bored, holding his Stagniergia, Sidastir saw thunder twist and crack inside the Mayin’s Stagniergia. It was far brighter than any of the surrounding orbs being held by other participants. Whether that meant that he was putting more mana into it than the others or if it was draining his mana faster was beyond Sidastir, but he did notice that his own was also rather bright compared to other’s mana.
Slowly, participants started to gasp and sweat, and one by one they dropped their orb that grew dark and they moved off the field. Looking around, Sidastir had started to notice that several Stagniergias had started to flicker, most likely because the person who was holding it started to reach their limit. Soon after they dropped it with a gasp as if the orb had burned them.
Not knowing how long it had been, but Sidastir had noticed that it went far quicker now. The judges rushed around, trying to get all the people who had dropped their orb. Some tried to grab hold of it again but were hindered by the judges who threw them out with a grim expression on their faces.
Both Lucara and Egnion looked strained. Lucara more than Egnion. She was sweating and grimacing, closing her eyes trying to focus while her Stagniergia had started to flicker. Looking around once more, Sidastir could count that it was around twenty people left.
“You can drop it if you want to,” he said to her. Lucara opened her eyes and watched her surroundings, with a relieved sigh, she dropped it.
“Aren’t you even going to try to compete for the win?” snorted Egnion in disdain.
“I will never defeat the Mayin when it comes to the matter of the amount of mana. I better save the little I have for the other phases,” Lucara said, a bit uncertain but still determined. A judge rushed forward and gave her a coin that showed that she was qualified for the next phase. He also wrote up her name, to ensure that someone wouldn’t just steal the coin.
Sidastir had heard that had in earlier years been a problem.
“Are you getting tired?” asked Egnion, giving Sidastir a cocky smirk. Raising an eyebrow, Sidastir watched the boy. Pale and trembling.
“Not really,” he just said casually, not really boasting. He could feel his mana supply being depleted but he still had quite a lot left to give. He wasn’t even sweating. Egnion grimaced, clearly realizing the truth as he watched Sidastir walk over to the Mayin with no trembling in his steps.
“Is this normal?” Sidastir asked the Mayin. “Most people were thrown out early.”
The Mayin peered at him, glancing at his Stagniergia before smiling. “Five hundred years ago, this competition could take days. This is why we had to make the Stagniergia stronger. They drain the mana faster. Back then there were so many with strong elven blood, their mana storage was ridiculous, but as the time went by the blood was diluted and people's natural ability for large storage was gone.”
“Oh,” Sidastir hummed, as he inspected the rest of the participants. Several of them dropped out, including Egnion who glared furiously at him.
“Well, most of them,” the Mayin said, giving Sidastir a meaningful look.
“How is the Keiser’s mana storage?”
“On par with yours I suspect, though he is useless at using the magic,” the Mayin admitted, smiling up at the Keiser who frowned at him. “It would have been far more interesting if your consort would have participated. We have never studied the mana storage of a dragon, but if the legends are to be true then not even our strengthened Stagniergias would be able to drain him in a few hours.”
The sun moved across the sky, as only Sidastir and the Mayin were left. People had started to whisper, staring at Sidastir. Now Sidastir started to feel it, a burning sensation running in his veins like his blood was being drained. With a grimace, Sidastir leaned over.
He glanced at the Mayin who hadn’t broken a sweat, he just glanced up at the sky. Seemingly trying to decipher the clouds. “Well, he is not dropping his anytime soon.”
Sidastir’s stagniergia had started to flicker, showing that he soon was about to reach his limit.
“Time to let go?” asked the Mayin, peering down at it. The council had also started to move, all knew it was only a matter of time now.
“Indeed, I don’t think I can win this anyway,” Sidastir sighed, and let go… Or at least he tried to, but the damn orb was pasted to his hand. He started to shake it but the damn thing refused to let go.
The Mayin’s calm expression turned into a frown. “Let it go, it's about to-“
“I can’t! The damn thing won’t let go,” Sidastir hissed, trying to rip off the Stagniergia with his hand only to have the other hand get stuck as well.
Sidastir’s troubles had not gone unnoticed, several judges walked over and the Keiser had risen from his seat. “Get it off me!” Sidastir hissed between clenched teeth as he felt his mana draining at a higher speed.
A judge reached out, but a flash of light hit him. Sending him across the arena. That made the Keiser run down, his light feet almost made him look as if he was flying. In a mere second, he had reached the Mayin.
“What is going on?” He said, watching Sidastir struggle.
“The damn thing won’t let go. It's killing me!” Sidastir’s stagniergia had started to flicker erratically as he was panicking trying to freeze the damn thing. Shockwaves of frostgales, erupted from him, freezing the ground and making the air crackle with electricity.
“You have to let us get to you,” the Keiser called over to him as he backed away when the ice came closer. Sidastir tried but his mana was out of control, erupting like a volcano as it was trying to stop the theft, but nothing worked.
Sidastir shouted in rage. Screams echoed as the ice started to form into spears, dangerously pointing towards the crowd. “All Gods be damned!”
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