The solid silhouette went down in a confusing blur of flailing limbs and displaced water. Droplets of rainwater were thrown in every direction, and when the skulk impacted the surface he sank with a quiet plunk, and then bobbed and bounced to the surface again. Flint allowed himself a small, predatory smile and quickly went to circle the prone ghost. He decided he would grab the unbalanced wizard by the ankles and flip him over to negate the danger of whatever bladed things he still had in his possession, which would allow him to pummel his foe with impunity.
Unfortunately, that was the moment Flint Skovik was to acquire a completely new life experience.
He felt a tingling buzz from his legs, which quickly, alarmingly, and inexplicably became something improbable: a sort of pain he hadn’t experienced before. The muscles of his legs tensed involuntarily, and the effect traveled up his body, weakening by degrees as it went. It was a whole-body charley horse, but worse, stealing from the brute what was most precious to him and turning it against him – his physical might. There was suction in his intestines, his heart itself ached, and his vision blurred even as it turned red at the edges.
And then, as suddenly as the attack had come, it faded again. Flint swayed on his feet, let out a short, low, grumbly moan, and then he promptly fell face-first into the water.
A week before he was nearly electrocuted and drowned, Flint had been somewhere a great deal warmer, dryer, and safer. Unlike certain other combatants, he was not one to visit the drinking dens and the houses of ill repute, nor did he gamble or carouse. Though he would certainly tell the opposite, it had been quite some time since Flint had awoken in the morning surrounded by unexplained corpses or next to satisfied young ladies he did not recognize.
In fact, until today he’d been waking up next to a scribe, after spending the previous day reading beside an unending cup of tea. He hadn’t felt bones break beneath his knuckles since returning from Salvar. Indeed, of late he was more accustomed to caresses and sighs than beatings and battle cries. He had so determinedly shifted favor from violence to voracious lovemaking that he was beginning to distract Luned Bleddyn from her newfound duties in the library and abroad, since she’d helped found the organization called Chronicle.
It had been her suggestion that he join The Cell. It suited him, after all, and it was a much-needed outlet for his passions. He had heard of it, of course, but a man having been raised on manmade battlefields has little use for yet another one, much less one in a foreign land. What better place to test the thing he had become?
“I’m not good at athletic competitions,” he’d told her. “I kill people.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Luned said. “It’s a fight to the death. It’s really your kind of thing; people have been calling for a ban for years.”
“Your country openly sponsors death matches?”
“You don’t stay dead. The monks from The Citadel are affiliated with it, I think?”
“Wizards,” Flint said with a frown.
“Flint,” she said, “you’re in bed with a wizard right now.”
The brute widened his eyes and searched the sheets, but there was only Luned there. She raised an eyebrow and gave him a wry grin.
“It seems you are mistaken,” the brute said, satisfied that his search bore no bearded skulks. “We are alone.”
“I’m being serious,” Luned said, and she gave his shoulder a little shove. Her smile said otherwise.
“There is a wizard in the bed?”
“About the tournament. I feel bad for neglecting you and keeping you from Fet and…”
“I do not feel neglected,” Flint said. “But I concede your point. It has been too long since I’ve…plied my trade. Tell me more of this well.”
“Cell.”
“Whatever.”
“It’s pretty simple. A bunch of people enter the competition and are divided out into big groups, and each group is locked inside some kind of arena, usually with some sort of magic.”
Flint made a face.
“I know. Anyway, it’s a death match. Once it starts, nothing and no one is allowed in or out of the arena until there’s only one person left alive.”
The brute opened his eyes and exhaled a cloud of bubbles into the murky water. Nothing could leave the arena, he realized – not the water, and not him, even if the water continued filling the invisible dome. The ground was already saturated, how long could this enchanted rain continue to fall? Forever? Flint remembered being dragged into the infinite depths by a dying leviathan. He remembered the horrors suffered by Muir during the search for Carcosa. He would not die by drowning.
Flint regained his feet and surged up out of the water with a roar, right beside the ghost’s still-prone, half-electrocuted body. He raised one fist and brought it viciously down toward the transparent head, intending to snap the wizard’s neck or crush his trachea. This was no longer a test of his strength and abilities; he knew he was capable of drowning. This was now a fight for survival, and every one of these people stood between him and a dwindling supply of air.
They all had to die.
Out of Character:
Just a note here. I did some research on lightning striking bodies of water and electrocution (thanks Numbers, now I know what electrical burns look like and I can never un-know it). The rough consensus is that if lightning were to strike a body of water, it would dissipate over like 20 feet. I imagine Flint as being well over twenty feet away from Josh, but the discharge was also described as being like chain lightning. I basically wrote my post with the assumption that the discharge DID travel better than your typical bolt of lightning, but was much diminished before it reached Flint. He suffered a low to moderate brief electric shock, and then overreacted to it like a sissy because he'd never experienced it before. Fucking wizards.