They made it in to the arena just in time to see the opening tryouts, but to be frank with most of those it really wasn’t worth the rush. First off came the match between two self proclaimed brawlers. Whose entire tactic seemed to be to run in screaming and have what can only be described as a slap-fight in the middle of the ring, punctuated by what we will generously call “grappling” which looked more like a gentle hug. Followed by two amateurish swordsmen who basically insisted on jabbing at each other from a full lunge away, punctuated by ha ha’s whenever one thought they’d got passed the others guards. (Of course since they seemed to think the point of a sword-fight was to hit the other persons sword that match went on for ages. Until one tripped over a rock, at which point the other could have helped their foe up, if they believed all that chivalry crap they spouted. Instead he kicked his opponent in the head and claimed victory.

There was also a fire mage who seemed to not get that fancy looking lace robes weren’t used for a reason, they were flammable. After that match ended it took twenty minutes to put them out.

Of course there were halfway competent fighters as well, and those matches went on a little longer. Then every once in a while somebody genuinely good came up too. But as amusing as the catastrophic clashes earlier were they at least had evenly matched fights. The problem there is when you put a skilled arena fighter up against what amounts to some pillock with a stick the matches are, to say the least, brief.

These matches were usually 3 seconds of unavoidable stomping, and half a second of screaming as horrific violence is inflicted, match end. Lather, rinse, repeat. It seemed that getting a halfway decent opponent would take some waiting. Rosalind let out a sigh, she would never admit this to her mother, but she was as much a battle obsessed freak as Gidea herself sometimes, she had rather a big grudge against boredom, and every single adventure had made it grow just a teeny, tiny bit.

Finally it was time for their first match, against a guy who looked to be built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Sadly that description turned out to be truer than they thought, as ten seconds into the match they figured out all that overgrown muscle was bloody useless in a real match, and this proved he was absolutely full of shit. One pommel strike from Choppy further verified this, as he started blubbering too loud to even be coherent, which made getting enough words out of him to extract the needed yield to make her victory possible. Of course dragging him around to write his own surrender face-first in the arena sand may have been a little bit of an overkill, but it was the only way they could figure out to get the message through to the judges completely unambiguously.

Luckily the second match was more challenging, some kind of poleaxe user, it took them a few minutes of hopping about before they figured out he slightly over-committed on every swing, when he got mad. Which tended to happen when your opponent hops all over, comes into the match skipping. Then uses your weapon as a spring-board.

From there it was only a matter of time before he got mad enough to wedge the blade in the dirt far enough that a well placed landing on the shaft embedded it thoroughly then a well placed rebound landing flattened the now disarmed warrior. (Well technically not disarmed as he managed to keep a grip on his weapon while unconscious that was akin to that grip a kid keeps on their teddy when their mother tries to put it in the wash, (which puts a pitbull’s jaw lock to shame.)

after that they got a break to watch a few matches, during which a few people stood out. The first was a heavily armoured individual, swinging what may as well have been a small planet around on the end of a chain. Their matches were usually brief as having a spiked ball as big as ones head hit you in the opening moment of a match isn’t usually something you just walk off. Especially not as the chain tended to wrap itself two or three times around the opponent before the ball hit. (Luckily the arenas all used a safety spell, that if an injury would result that was un- healable by the white mages on standby would teleport the recipient out of the match, a measure that had apparently followed the results of one fighter in a long past match threatening to shove their opponents weapon somewhere unpleasant. Then upon losing finding out that the other guy wanted to see if that was physically possible. Unfortunately for him it turns out it was.)

The second was a former dancer who thanks to their work, and extensive experience with handsy clientele had learned every place to hit men, and more than a few to take down her fellow women. She didn’t wear a lot armour wise, but did carry a lot of veils, which she used to trap her opponents. She also carried stilettos, both the knives and the shoes, though which she put to most brutal and creative use would be tough to decide. (Surprising nobody here she was something of a fan favourite in this tournament, and only partially because when it comes to a dancer men are pigs.)

The next one worthy of mention was some kind of martial artist. They went by the name Matthias, and from their matches so far all that could be said of them is the matches were brief. Apparently cats claws as an actual weapon were far more effective than you would think. They used them to trap their opponents blades.

“Seems you have some interesting opponents ahead sweetie, oh and remember I fight the winner, and for everybodies sake I hope it’s you” Gidea chimed in, as Mibbet felt her stomach do back-flips from the nerves.