Character Event: Wolf & Raven

The gold-leafed scroll that announced William’s first round match-up arrived at his door with instructions to burn it to open a portal to the battlefield. William whistled for his raven familiar, Viggo, to perch on his arm, then used a match to set the scroll ablaze. As it burned, the portal opened, and William stepped through with Viggo. On the other side, the two arrived on an empty field save for two people. The first was one of those robed figures from the Academic Collective that had their identity obscured by magic. Next to them was a grey and white wyfex in a brown jacket with torn black pants. William had heard rumors about these species of sentient bipedal cyborgs but had never met one in person.

 

“Oh good, you’ve made it.” the robed figure called out as William approached the two. “William, this is Icarus. Icarus, this is William. You two will be facing off in the first round.”

 

“Nice to meet you,” William offered as he extended his hand. Icarus’ eyes darted between looking at Williams's hand and back up at his face.

 

“I don’t shake hands with losers,” Icarus laughed sadistically. William, mad, had to physically stop himself from punching the wyfex till his skull shattered.

 

“To Hel with you then!” William shouted instead of using his fists. Insults flew back and forth for a few moments till the robed figure from the Academic Collective managed to get between the two now antagonistic opponents.

 

“Each of you to opposite sides of the field and get ready,” the robed figure struggled to yell over William and Icarus. “For this round, each of you will summon constructs made of your elements to clash with your opponent, and remember, NO KILLING EACH OTHER!” With that, William growled at his opponent before he stormed off to his side of the field, Viggo on his shoulder.

 

William had never summoned an elemental construct before but knew the theory about how to do so. On his signal, Viggo flew high into the air, William’s talisman dagger held in his talons. After he counted to fourteen, William began to whistle a long series of notes of various pitches and tempos from the Winter Song. Clouds swirled overhead as howling winds circled William. William started to whistle faster and faster, causing two sets of runes to form in the air with his hands. William could feel the sheer power of elemental sky around him as the power he gathered grew. As he flicked his wrist's palm towards the clouds, the power William had collected shot up into the clouds. There was a brief moment of silence before a deep, loud raven call split the clouds to reveal a massive living cyclone shaped like Viggo. Icey blue musical notes swirled around the new elemental construct, each of which echoed their runic sounds.

 

As the ground shook, William looked across the field to see his opponent had completed his spell. A crack in the earth turned into a fissure as a vaguely canine-looking claw made of naturally occurring glass appeared in the ground. A moment passed when a second claw pushed up through the dirt. Being made of natural glass gave the wolf construct a cloudy translucent color as the individual pieces that made it up shifted and changed. William was reasonably sure his opponent shouted something vulgar as his construct charged forward. However, drowned out by the notes that played overhead on repeat, they circled the cyclone.

 

Harsh winds blew across the battlefield as the colossal raven-shaped cyclone swooped down on the glass wolf. Talons made of pure wind clawed at the glass wolf but didn’t leave even a scratch on the glass. Glass shifted and screeched as the wolf-shaped construct reared to attack the sky construct, but the cyclone was much faster and nimbly dodged out of the way. William held the spells that powered his elemental construct as he watched the battle unfold. His corvid cyclone couldn’t scratch the glass wolf, and the crystalline canine was too slow to land a solid hit. Suddenly William was hit by an idea as the glass shifted and shrieked across the wolf-like construct.

 

At first, the glass pieces of the wolf construct appeared to shift and change randomly but there was an underlying pattern. There was a finite amount of pieces so every couple of moments the glass rearranged itself temporarily to form a hollow space on the inside of the wolf. William waited and watched until he had the opening he needed. Once it presented itself, William whistled a note that rose in pitch until it was all but inaudible. As the pitch rose the raven-shaped cyclone shrunk in size until it was all but a speck. The speck of a wind elemental flew in and between the glass till it was nestled safely in the hollow amongst the glass. William released the note which caused his elemental to explosively regain its original size. Glass pieces flew all over the field as the massive corvid cyclone sat on the battlefield.

 

“Was that your whole plan,” Icarus mockingly laughed as the pieces of glass began to float, “the magic is still in the glass if they are separated or not.” Slowly the glass began to float back toward the center of the battlefield. William didn’t respond to his opponent's taunts except to slowly rotate his right hand upwards to give the wyfex the middle finger. One of the icy blue notes that floated around the raven-shaped cyclone rose to the construct’s beak. As it did the corvid cyclone opened its beak and sang the note at increasingly higher frequencies till it became a painful inaudible noise. Icarus and the representative from the Academic Collective collapsed in pain as they grasped at their ears. All the pieces of glass that formerly made up the wyfex’s construct shattered into tiny pieces as they expelled the magic that held them.

 

“I think that means I win,” William shouted as the glass failed to reform into its former wolf-shaped being. With a snap, he released the spells that formed his construct. William walked across the field as the cyclone disappeared and Viggo flew back to rest on the folf’s arm. He resheathed his talisman dagger as he stood over Icarus and asked, “Should we offer him a hand up?”

 

“Losers belong in the dirt,” Viggo croaked several times before William walked away.