The Mage Tournament

Robert awoke in the same position he had entered the crystal in. Logan was standing over him and the crystals seemed to have lost some of their lustre.

"Where in the actual hell did you get that thing?" Robert asked, confused as to why this random mage had such a powerful artifact.

"Err, I found it." Logan said.

"Where?" Robert asked, still confused and disoriented from his trip to the fire realm.

"In an ancient tomb, in the hands of an ancient undead and guarded by countless traps -well, sixty seven traps." Logan said straightforwardly.

Robert realised that, despite Logan's straightforwardness, the more he talked, the more confused Robert became.

"Ok then, anything else?" Robert asked.

"Nope, just get ready for the mage tournament tomorrow." Logan said jovially.

That night Robert tried to use his magic again, but he found it far harder this time. Robert was only able to summon handfuls of flame at a time and his spear was a dull orange instead of it's original white-blue colour.

[Well that's hardly surprising]

"How so" asked Robert.

[That place you were fighting in was filled with boundless mana, also your fire affinity was increased to the level of the being who is one with fire. It's only natural that controlling and gathering flame would be way harder now, compared to how it was before.]

"I guess that makes sense." Robert thought.

Robert spent the entire night playing with his fire and touching up on his spear skills. When morning finally came... Robert was ready.

Robert was led to a gladiatorial arena and scanned with a strange device -the device seemed to send and receive data through beams of light that it shot at and absorbed from an ancient looking runic magic circle- that App told him was checking whether Robert's mage level was higher than twelve. After the device showed that Robert had passed its level test, he was allowed into a room with the other mages. Robert was informed by a guard that there was another hour before the tournament began and that it was not unusual for people to forge alliances in this room for the first few free-for-all rounds.

Robert looked around to see if he could find some allies, he twirled his staff of the archmage and headed towards the centre of the room.

"App, can you tell me who would make a good ally?" Robert asked internally.

[Sure, but I must warn you, those that call themselves mages tend to be outcasts who act in solitude and they oft develop strange character traits. Anyway, I believe that if you look to your right you should be able to determine your best shot at an ally.]

Robert looked to his right, confused at App's obscure language, after turning he only became even more confused. He walked over to the person, who finally noticed him.

"Stella?" Robert asked, showing his confusion "What are you doing here?"

Stella looked over and smiled at him. "Oh, hey Robert, what's up."

"Er, nothing much. Why are you here?" Robert asked again, his confusion growing.

Stella raised one eyebrow at him. "To compete in the tournament. Obviously." Stella said, waving her hand around to indicate their current location.

"Okay then." Robert said, accepting that his life in this world was probably going to be strange by earth standards. "So, wanna team up for the free-for-all?" Robert asked nonchalantly.

Stella looked Robert over, her eyes roving over his cloak and staff. "Sure, this is gonna be fun." Stella replied with a smile.

Robert looked at the other mages and decided that he would probably be better off avoiding them. He saw some dressed in strange robes covered in runes, while other muttered incessantly to themselves.

"Well, App was right about that, most of these people are definitely crazy." Robert muttered to himself, his eyes drifted to Stella as he remembered what Logan had said about her. "But maybe it's the sane ones that I need to look out for..." Robert continued with his muttering.

Suddenly a booming voice rang out in the room. "Ladies and gentlemen! Are you ready for this years eclipse mage tournament?" A resounding "Yes!" rang out from a cacophony of voices. "Good! As you all know our little border town attracts attention from many of the solitary mages of the living wastes during this great tournament! As always we will start with a free-for-all until there are only eight contestants left and the top three will receive prizes from the town elder. With all that in mind, let's begin this tournament!"

As the announcer finished his speech, the gates to the coliseum like structure opened and the mages were pushed out by the guards. For a short moment after the gates closed back over and the tournament officially began there was a silence, a moment of tranquility, a calm before the storm and then... all hell broke loose.

Suddenly, countless formations filled the air above the mages heads and elemental fury rained down upon them. Robert conjured his mana armour and began to pour mana into his staff, while Stella summoned a shield of ice to protect her. Robert was shocked to see that all kinds of attacks were present, from lightning to clouds of poison to shadows that fell upon the crowd and began to rip their way through the weaker mages. The mages all had artifacts on them, these artifacts teleported the mages out of the coliseum if they detected an attack that would be fatal.

Many of the hundreds of mages were teleported out immediately. Some groups had formed, the first was one composed of five of those runic robe wearing mages, they were all chanting and above their heads was a gigantic magic array that those shadow creatures were pouring out of. For a second Robert considered trying to take them out, but he quickly realised that they were helping him eliminate a load of competition. Apart from them Robert also saw two other groups of about five people, the first was a regiment wearing priestly robes and wielding light magic to defeat the surrounding mages with ruthless efficiency, while the second was a ragtag adventurer group that played off of each other and were slowly expanding out and defeating the single mages opposing them. Robert suddenly had an idea.

"Stella? Can you cast any light magic?" Robert asked, as they continued to fend off the attacks with ease.

"Only a few common ones. Why?" Stella asked.

"Just ready one and do the opposite of what I do." Robert said.

Robert ran over to a few metres away from the cultish mages, while Stella did the same with the priests. Robert channeled a wisp of mana from his staff and released a bolt of darkness from his staff towards the priests, while Stella shot a bolt of light at the cultists. Both of them then ran back to their original positions while keeping their attacks as slow as they could. Once Robert and Stella reached their original position they pushed their attacks forward as quickly as possible until they collided with the light and dark mages forces. While these attacks did minor damage, the priests began to unleash a variety of light spells at the cultists, whilst the shadows set upon the priests.

At this point there were only about a hundred mages left and the defeat rate had sharply declined due to two of the groups facing off. Many mages seemed to be easily weaving through the crowd, avoiding all of the attacks and defeating anyone who slipped up with ease.

As Robert and Stella were not feeling endangered by the attacks coming at them, they decided to simply wait until the battle had evolved more to make any more moves. A few more minutes went by and Robert and Stella faced no huge threat. The number of mages remaining dropped to around fifty and the cultists were eventually vanquished after heavy losses from the priests, of whom only their leader now remained. Robert decided that him and Stella should take out the adventurer team, who were now unopposed.

Robert told Stella that they should try and ambush them from behind but Stella replied that it would be better if she ambushed them while Robert distracted them. Robert agreed with this because his staff was at fifteen crystals of charge at the moment and he was only feeling the tiniest bit pressured. Robert approached the group from the front and shouted out a challenge at them, while Stella snuck in behind the group. The leader of the group was wearing a full set of knights armour and was holding a staff in one hand and a shield in the other.

Robert began to push mana through his staff. He decided that a level thirteen spell should be able to deal with this if it could destroy a small village. Robert imagined a wall of fire spears appearing and impaling the party. The fifteenth crystal's incandescence faded as wall of dozens of bright orange flaming spears appeared in front of Robert and shot at the leader of the adventurers. On the way the spears removed three mages from the tournament. The adventurers leader braced his shield at the wall of spears, it began to glow with a golden light and suddenly a huge, ethereal lion's head appeared and roared at the spears, making around twenty dissipate. Robert controlled the remaining spears to plunge at the leader as the lion's head and the golden glow faded.

The leader expertly blocked and dodged the spears, but as he did Stella bombarded his party with a wave of ice crystals that took them by surprise and eliminated them all. The leader looked enraged and charged at Stella. Robert began to draw fire elementals away from the leader and the joints of his armour quickly froze over and limited his movement. Robert held a ball of blue flames in his hand, but he couldn't control it and elementals were continually leaking away from it. Robert threw the fireball to the side and blew up two dueling mages. Stella cast a spell and summoned an ice warhammer with a head on the bottom and the top, but just before Stella sent the ice warhammer flying at the frozen leader... the announcer's voice rung out again.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the free-for-all has ended and we have our eight final contestants!"

At this point, the remaining contestants began to size up their competition and see each other as serious threats. Robert could see that the remaining eight were: himself, Stella, the priest's leader, the adventurer's leader, the mage he had seen mumbling to himself at the beginning, two large robed men with swords and a mage in red robes that seemed to be... rolling a joint. Robert shook his head in disbelief, this really was a strange world Robert thought. Some of the things from Robert's world seemed to have... crossed over at some point. But now... was the time for battle!