Final Fite I: A Floaty Fite

[Hailwing Of The Citadel]

The creature had never experienced such clean, pure air, rushing over his pinkish skin. Were he capable of the feeling, Hailwing would have been elated.

Instead he stood with arms crossed near the rim of a grassy plot of land. Beyond him was an endless drop, for he stood on a flying mound of earth - a floating mass, as it were, suspended among the clouds and surrounded by the bluest of skies. He had only been here for a moment, having been transferred into the Citadel arena by will of the monks therein, but he had taken measure of his surroundings very carefully.

The ground he stood on floated high in the air, a thirty yard wide surface of terrain with no boundaries about its perimeter. Continuously, bits of stone and dirt cracked off of the jagged bottom of the platform and drifted down through the sky, as if the foothold threatened to erode over time.

Beyond the platform Hailwing stood on, dozens upon dozens of similar spaces existed. Some were smaller, a few were bigger, but there always seemed to be at least one platform nearby enough from another that Hailwing could transfer over with a moderate leap. He observed them for a moment and noted, or at least suspected, that they were not degenerating the same way that the one he currently stood upon was.

He hummed at this, considering it and whether or not he was overthinking the significance of the difference.

Then, a sudden gust of wind took him by surprise. If he hadn't responded so quickly, Hailwing would have been pulled from the side of the flying platform before the battle had even started. He planted his feet hard into the soil and knelt down, countering the push.

Then the gust ended, and he stood. With a grimace, he moved away from the edge and closer to the center of the platform. An icy mist wafted out of his mouth as he exhaled, turned, and awaited his opponent.