OW Tournament: Schrecken vs. Kuzma, Part 5 (END)

Once Schrecken recovered from his injuries and bid farewell once more to the Knights of the Ever-Flowing Cauldron, he went back to his dormitory with Zombie Joe and thought about what had happened in the last battle against Kuzma. Schrecken may have just won the tournament, becoming the sole undefeated student thanks to his victory against Kuzma. But he really didn’t feel different at all. It was almost like a dream, something that he had only imagined had happened. But everything around him indicated that yes, he had indeed just defeated Kuzma. It was just taking a while for it to sink in. Kuzma had been in the infirmary with Schrecken, having survived cuts, bruises, burns, broken bones, and literally having his soul pulled out and rather unceremoniously stuffed back into his body. Schrecken’s scythe, as well, seemed to have a vague sense of power about it that was not there before, a power that had come from reaping Kuzma’s soul even though Schrecken had chosen to put it back instead of harvesting it. It just felt so strange to Schrecken that he had won. He had, honestly, not expected to do that well, but he had decided to try his best anyway.

It turned out that his best was actually quite good.

First, there had been Cordelia. Schrecken had gone into that battle with little information besides the fact that she was a witch, and that she had an umbrella that could shoot fire out of it (and Schrecken thought, even now, that it was one of the coolest things he had ever seen in his 100+ year lifespan). As such, he had called her the ‘Fire Umbrella Witch’. Once he actually fought her and witnessed the extent of her draconic illusion powers, he had chosen to call her the ‘Super Fire Dragon Witch’ instead. Cordelia had been a clever opponent, and despite the fact that she was rather weak when it came to sheer power, she had put up a tough fight. Well, for the most part, at least. She had illusion powers much like Schrecken’s own, though it seemed to be limited to dragons, and once Schrecken had realized that the small dragon that Cordelia had seemingly created from nowhere was actually an illusion, he was quite impressed and happy. Both of them had a general interest in entertaining people and/or showing off, so Schrecken and Cordelia had actually temporarily stopped their battle to put on a show with their illusion powers – which had also taken the form of a battle, albeit between Cordelia’s illusory dragon and Schrecken’s own illusion of a far more cartoony and less detailed dragon.

Cordelia’s illusions beat Schrecken’s illusions, but Schrecken had emerged the actual victor of the battle. Once Cordelia had been weakened enough by the reversed rune spells he cast and the ghosts he had summoned, he just ran up and punched her in the face. He had literally punched a witch in the face. It had been the attack that knocked Cordelia out and won Schrecken the battle, too.

He had lost his first Zombie Joe in that battle, when Cordelia set it on fire. He had gone through quite a few Zombie Joes by the time the final round of the tournament had been announced. Cordelia had dropped out of the tournament later on, as far as Schrecken could tell. Schrecken was kind of disappointed, as he had wanted to see her fight some other people.

In the second round, Schrecken had been matched up against Apple, who he had decided to call the ‘Tree-Summoning Forest Kid”. He had known even less about her than he did about Cordelia, and it had taken him about half of the time of the match to realize that she did not actually have exploding apple bombs and that had just been Schrecken’s own imagination running away with him. What she did have, however, was a huge treant companion, which had given him a lot more trouble than Apple herself had. Schrecken had figured out what Apple was afraid of – chainsaws and bed bugs – though this was partially because he had been trying to think from the perspective of a tree, determining what a tree might be afraid of. The chainsaw part made enough sense, but he had really only figured out the bed bugs when he conjured an illusion of giant termites and Apple had mistaken them for bed bugs. He had a lot of fun scaring Apple, but he actually quite liked her. He had saved her from sinking into the tar that covered the arena floor in the middle of their battle, and after he had defeated her, he secretly checked on her in the infirmary to make sure she was okay after all she had been through. She had thrown up all over the arena at one point, after all.

The battle with Apple had been the first time that Schrecken had tried to use a spell involving Isa, the rune of ice, which he had successfully used to temporarily trap the treant so it wouldn’t keep attacking him. It had hit him with its branches in the middle of one of his fun dramatic speeches, and he did not like that at all. It was not Isa that had been the spell that had allowed Schrecken to win against the little forest spirit, however. The battle had dragged on and on, and Apple’s strength had been quite drained by all of Schrecken’s nasty runic spells, and she was also quite a lazy person. Schrecken won the match because Apple had ended up falling asleep in the middle of the battle.

Unlike Cordelia, Apple was still participating in the tournament, apparently facing off against Ianthe in the final round. Schrecken decided he would go see the battle, if it was not actually already over. Though burns and broken bones were rather easily healed when magic was involved, Schrecken had still been in the infirmary for quite a while, and he had a bad sense of time in addition to that.

The third round had been against Shaya, also known as the ‘Spell-Casting Fighting Vampire’, and she was definitely a tough opponent to fight. With an arsenal that included shadow manipulation, blood magic, swordfighting skills, and a variety of useful spells from Magical Linguistics, she had been a force to be reckoned with – and that was not even including the superhuman strength she had due to the fact that she was a vampire. Shaya had also been the first opponent Schrecken had faced in this tournament who was significantly more experienced in magic than he was. He had been stronger than Cordelia when he went up against her, and when he fought Apple, they were at approximately the same level of power and experience. But Shaya had been much, much stronger. It had been a long, difficult battle. Schrecken had done a lot of weird tricks and unorthodox tactics in that battle, including using his shadow merging ability to hide in Shaya’s shadow wings, whacking her several times with Zombie Joe’s severed arm (this was Zombie Joe #3, as Zombie Joe #2 had been destroyed by Professor Cressida long before the battle even started, all so she could watch him animate a new human zombie), and using his auditory illusion powers to briefly make Shaya think her children were crying. The ghostly faerie knights who had been Schrecken’s allies had been able to stop the effects of Shaya’s spells, and Schrecken was quite grateful for that. He wondered if he would ever see the Knights of the Ever-Flowing Cauldron again, now that the tournament was over and they had no need to help him fight anyone anymore.

In many ways, Schrecken and Shaya had been opposites. Shaya was an heir to a powerful vampiric bloodline, with both all the power and all the pressure that such a thing entailed. Schrecken, on the other hand, had no grand legacy or even a family, having simply poofed into existence one day in Germany as a conglomeration of fear given self-awareness and a physical form. Shaya was a trained, focused warrior, whereas Schrecken’s entire knowledge of combat came from comic books, movies and video games, and he was a rather silly and easily distracted individual even when he was fighting. Shaya had many friends and had even started a family of her own, whereas basically all of Schrecken’s friends were ghosts. And whereas Shaya perpetually struggled with the Beast, the dark and feral vampiric nature that lurked within her psyche, Schrecken had no such difficulties, no angst or trouble in the depths of his mind.

Schrecken had also made a dramatic speech in which he compared himself to the stale popcorn he ate for lunch.

Eventually, the Beast had taken over within Shaya’s mind, making her much more vicious and cruel in the battle, but Schrecken had still managed to win – with a technique that he had never even tried before. For him, combining the Sowilo and Kenaz runes produced a tiny miniature sun that floated in the air, and which he could manipulate to some extent. It had sort of exploded all over Shaya, sending her crashing to the ground and giving Schrecken the victory.

And then there was Kuzma. It was hard to say who was stronger, Kuzma or Shaya. They were both experienced students, albeit in very different fields of magic. Though Kuzma was somewhat lacking in raw power, he was a very talented Chronomancer, and he was also quite a clever individual, always going into battle with a plan and researching his opponent via scrying beforehand. And, of course, there was the fact that in the previous tournament, Kuzma had defeated Schrecken rather soundly. Schrecken was not sure whether or not this technically made Kuzma his rival, but it sounded pretty neat to have a rival in the first place. Both Schrecken and Kuzma had barely survived their rematch in this tournament – after all, the arena had been slowly heating up throughout the battle until it became unbearable, and both combatants had fighting styles that relied on wearing down and outlasting their opponents, due to their relative lack of powerful destructive magic (though Schrecken did have his Thurisaz rune, but it had a tendency to hurt him as much as it hurt his opponents).

Schrecken had also taken quite a while to come up with a good title for Kuzma, and had finally settled on the ‘Mysterious Psychic Time Traveler’, though Kuzma’s time loops, reversals, and time freezes could not really be called time traveling. At least it was better than ‘It’s Your Boy Kuzma’ or ‘The One Who Is Not a Girl’. Indeed, Kuzma was the only opponent Schrecken had faced in the tournament who wasn’t a girl, which Schrecken did not actually think was unusual or anything, but that was a poor basis for a title.

Schrecken had a difficult time facing Kuzma’s ability to manipulate both emotions and time, and had ended up screaming a lot of childish insults when Kuzma had used his psychic abilities to fill Schrecken with rage and bitterness. But Schrecken had Zombie Joe #4 – who, while alive, had been a wrestler, and thus had a tendency to suplex opponents when ordered to attack -- to pick up the slack when he himself was having difficulties. But it had, once again, been a new technique of Schrecken’s that allowed him to win the match. Instead of actually training, Schrecken had spent most of his time before the battle designing a scythe, which conveniently allowed him to pass one of his NEC 302 assignments in addition to being useful in the tournament. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it had been Baron Samedi who had approved Schrecken’s scythe, and Schrecken hoped that the Vodou spirit (who he had never met in person, but who had sent him a note with the scythe) was proud of him for using the scythe to take down Kuzma at the end of the battle. Schrecken had traveled through Zombie Joe’s shadow to reach Kuzma, and had used his scythe to reap Kuzma’s soul right before the arena would have burned both of the combatants to death.

Schrecken had put the soul back, of course. He was a nice monster.

Schrecken liked the idea of Kuzma being his rival. He could still be a friendly rival, not a rude one, and Schrecken decided to try and approach Kuzma with the idea once the Empath finally got out of the infirmary. His previous three opponents could be his friends, and Kuzma could be his rival. That was what he hoped for.

Of course, Schrecken still had a few issues to sort out even now that the tournament was over. He knew now who Zila Hawthorn was and why she had tried to trap him in her book. He knew what his reflection, the selfish, spirit-collecting Geist, was like. And he knew that there was some sort of evil force within Shaya that had forced her to act the way she did at the end of her battle with Schrecken. But then what? What was he supposed to do to keep Zila Hawthorn and her book away from everyone? What was he supposed to do about his immature jerk of a reflection? And what, if anything at all, could he do to help Shaya get rid of the influence of the beast within?

And, for that matter, how in the world did one go about making friends who weren’t already dead by the time you met them?

Schrecken still had that weird book, the one that would answer his questions in exchange for increasingly greater quantities of his blood. Of course, it considered his blood to be the single most disgusting thing it had ever encountered in its life, but that was neither here nor there. Maybe he could ask it how to make friends, since jumping out at people from the darkness and yelling that he was going to eat their heads did not seem to work. He wasn’t quite sure why. He wasn’t even planning to really eat their heads.

But, finally, it was really starting to sink in that Schrecken had defeated every single one of his opponents and won the tournament. He really had been an underdog throughout his time at Otherworlde Academy, being a strange, goofy, childish student who spent almost entire semesters reading comic books in the library and had little to no interest in killing anyone. Most of his magic was either simple, like his runes, or just plain silly, like the Crimson-Thorn Rose he had made that had sprouted a copy of his face in the center. He had lost every match in the first tournament he entered, and eventually got kicked out of the list of combatants for not doing enough to win, or something like that. But here he was, the undefeated victor of the tournament. He had faced a witch, a forest spirit, a highborn vampire, and one of the students who had defeated him in the previous tournament, and he had defeated each and every one of them.

He could think about the other problems he had later. For now, he could enjoy his victory.

“I won! I won, I won, I won!” the bogeyman exclaimed, jumping up and down on his bed, not minding the creaky noises it made whenever he landed on it. “Zombie Joe, I won! Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!”

Zombie Joe, of course, was unresponsive. It was a mindless zombie, after all, not a revenant type of zombie that still retained its old personality. Any form of autonomy that it had was due to muscle memory alone. Like the suplexes.

“We have to celebrate! Yes! We will have a big celebration!” Schrecken shouted. Most of his residences had been houses with children, so he knew what a party looked like. Using his illusion powers, he created images of balloons and confetti, and sounds of noisemakers and fireworks going off. He continued jumping up and down on the bed, not too concerned about breaking it – there were a lot of students who were probably heavier than he was, and they presumably did not break their beds. The beds were probably enchanted to not break. Schrecken was not actually considering this, however. He was not concerned about breaking the bed because he slept under it instead of on it.

But the balloons and the confetti and the noisemakers were all just illusions, nothing more. They would vanish as soon as Schrecken decided to put his mind to something else. And, besides, parties usually had cakes. He wanted a cake. Maybe he could throw an actual party, not just a fake one with just Zombie Joe as the only person invited.

He would still keep the noisemaker sounds, though. He liked those.