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Chapter 206

  “Time for the best performance of your life, mate,” said Aurin, summoning Shamtile into battle to face off against Tobias’s Grakadon in a battle of earth elemental against earth elemental.

  “Now this,” said Tobias with a wide grin, “is the showdown I was most looking forward to. Let’s see just how far you’ve come, little Shamtile. Can you take on the mightiest of dragons?”

  Shamtile summoned a pillar of earth from beneath himself and rose into the air to meet Grakadon who continued to beat his wings to stay aloft after skewering Steambot with one of his obsidian spears. The dragon roared and Shamtile screeched, greeting each other, but the friendliness ended here.

  The dragon sped towards Shamtile, aiming to knock him from the pillar, but Shamtile coated his fists in diamond and swung at Grakadon, snapping one of the dragon’s purple nails. The furious Grakadon whipped his tail, slamming it into Shamtile’s stomach and sending him flying.

  As he fell, Shamtile summoned a platform from the side of his column of earth and crawled back up to the top. He launched himself high, catching Tobias’s Minakai off guard and threw a diamond spear that struck Grakadon in the shoulder.

  The mighty dragon flew back and downwards, giving himself a large gap between himself and the pillar. He suddenly sped forwards and drove himself straight through Shamtile’s platform, which collapsed with the small Minakai fifty feet in the air.

  Shamtile screeched and waved his arms, summoning another smaller platform that rose to meet him before he fell too far. Grakadon pivoted and then charged straight through this one too, sending Shamtile falling once again. As he tried to summon a third pillar to catch himself, Grakadon spun and rammed into him, sending the small lizard crashing to the ground.

  Raising himself back into the air, Grakadon threw a flurry of conjured obsidian spears. Shamtile skittered and scarpered, leaping this way and that to avoid the attacks, many of which came within an inch of running straight through him. He was forced to duck low and conjure a diamond cage that covered him, leaving the last three spears to strike it before bouncing to the ground.

  Shamtile burrowed underground and Aurin caught Tobias’s smile. “Don’t!” Aurin called, but Shamtile couldn’t hear him underneath the battlefield.

  Grakadon landed and placed his hands on the ground, causing it to shake and convulse so violently that the audience members closest to the battlefield clung to their seats in fear while Aurin and Tobias held onto the walls to stop themselves from falling.

  “That ought to do it,” said Tobias. “Bring him out.”

  Grakadon used his tremorsense to detect Shamtile, only to throw himself backwards a split second before the masked lizard burst from underneath him with a diamond spear in hand. Missing his mark the first time and unwilling to do so a second, Shamtile quickly brought his arm down and tossed his weapon, piercing Grakadon’s stomach.

  The brown dragon roared in pain as he grabbed the spear and pulled it out, throwing it back at Shamtile who caught it with ease as he landed. The lizard threw it to Grakadon, who moved his head to avoid the pathetic throw, but the spear was inconsequential. Shamtile had coated his fists in diamond and delivered two mighty punches to the dragon’s legs.

  Grakadon kicked, but Shamtile encased him in stone. Grakadon broke free, but Shamtile had already jumped on him. Drawing back his right arm, the lizard’s fist smashed into the dragon’s jaw with a sickening crack and Grakadon’s head flew back as he lay there in a daze, blinded by the stadium lights and the sun overhead.

  Shamtile did a victory dance and then raised a hand, pushing it out towards the wall. The ground beneath Grakadon flipped up and sent the dragon soaring into the stadium wall. He hit it with a thud and dropped to the ground, unconscious.

  The crowd went wild, seeing Tobias’s signature Minakai defeated by another earth elemental, especially one that he dwarfed in size and experience. Even Tobias had to laugh and give a small clap before shaking his head.

  “Alright, time to bring out the big guns,” he said, cracking his knuckles and throwing out a fist.

  From within a flash of yellow light, appeared a large segmented creature with red wings. Arusom twitched the black legs on her yellow body and tilted her head, flicking her crimson feelers around. As she beat her wings, her blue eyes caught the lights from the stadium and reflected it onto the grass like a mirror. The crowd held their breaths, all of them eagerly awaiting Tobias’s use of his epic Minakai.

  “Doesn’t matter how much bigger than you she is,” said Aurin to Shamtile. “Take her down!”

  A tired Shamtile flung himself into the air as he did with Grakadon, coating himself in stone armour and conjuring a stone spear in each hand. He pushed through his exhaustion and flung the stone spears at the huge moth that hung in the air before him.

  With the heavy beating of her wings, she brought a heavy gust of wind that was strong enough to send Shamtile’s spears off course, and they fell to the ground, wedging themselves in. Shamtile himself continued to fly towards her and encased his fists in stone.

  Arusom did not bother to move much—she saw no need to—and let Shamtile come closer before emitting a clicking noise and pointing her six pointed legs out. Shamtile swung his fist, but he collided with her legs before he could reach the moth and his armour shattered on contact. He dropped to the ground and waved his hands in the air, summoning a boulder that he would use to squash the bug.

  He flung his hands up, but found that the boulder would not move. Arusom was casting a wind so strong that the exhausted Shamtile didn’t have the energy to resist it. The insect landed on the huge rock, gave a small push with her legs and the boulder buckled, falling down on its owner and crushing him.

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  The rock vanished in thin air, revealing a very dazed Shamtile underneath. With the flick of her wings, Arusom cast out a cutting blast of air that struck Shamtile and sliced into his scaly body. The moth flew down to him, picked him up and flung him across the battlefield towards Aurin, where the lizard landed at his tamer’s feet and Aurin could see that Shamtile had fainted on the way to him.

  “Shamtile may not have been able to do it,” said Aurin, looking at his tamer glove and then to Tobias, “but I still reckon a big enough rock can crush that bug into paste.”

  He threw out another flash of brown light and the sonorous roar of Zeera’s call echoed into the evening. The grey dinosaur slashed his claws through the air before staring at Arusom and snarling, revealing the sharp teeth he wanted to use to rip her wings right off.

  “My goodness, folks!” called the announcer. “It’s a battle of epic monster against epic monster. The moth and the dinosaur. I think I may just pass out myself!”

  “No restraints,” said Aurin to Zeera. “Unleash all your fury and end it quickly.”

  The hulking dinosaur gave a small nod without taking his eyes off his opponent and then thundered forwards. Arusom beat her wings, using the same mighty wind she conjured to oppose Shamtile’s boulder, but Zeera was too heavy and too in control to be blown aside in the same way.

  She took to the skies to get out of reach, but Zeera tore his claw across the air, summoning a volley of boulders that flew into the air. Arusom dodged the speedy attacks surprisingly effortlessly for such a large monster, but Zeera was not finished.

  He raised an arm into the sky and drew it down back with immense force, summoning a shower of meteors that plummeted towards Arusom. Zeera’s snarl turned into a satisfied smile as he watched his foe. The satisfied smile turned to a furious grimace as he watched her countermove.

  From within Arusom’s wings spawned several glowing miniature moths that darted towards the meteors, ploughing through them and shattering them into dozens of smaller chunks. The mighty moth summoned a tornado around herself and, as the meteors fell, they swirled around her as small stones.

  Zeera coated himself in armour as the tornado ceased and all of the rocks were flung towards him. He crouched low and braced himself for the high-speed barrage that beat against him, smashing his armour to pieces. The last dozen struck him on the body, leaving him sore, but far from out.

  Despite the setback and taking a few hits, Aurin had what he wanted and Arusom was much lower than she was previously. “Keep her low,” he told Zeera.

  Suddenly, a stone cage sprung from the ground and grabbed Arusom as she tried to fly away in a panic. Her entire lower body was encased and, no matter how hard she struggled, Zeera forced his cage to hold strong, channelling much of his energy into it.

  “You don’t need to move,” said Tobias and Arusom stopped struggling.

  As Zeera restrained his fellow epic Minakai, he summoned another stone spear and hurled it at her. From Arusom’s mouth came a high-powered beam of swirling air and, at the centre of it, was a streak of pure air elemental energy that obliterated the stone spear.

  With a look of fear, Zeera dove out of the way. He could see that it didn’t matter if he restrained his foe, she would find a way to attack him. As he was about to release his cage, he heard Aurin call out to him.

  “Don’t!” he ordered. “Get close.”

  Zeera didn’t need told twice and charged across the battlefield, weaving his way past the repeated blasts from Arusom. The closer he came, the harder they were to dodge and he was forced to summon his armour for protection. Each time, it was quickly blasted apart and Zeera felt the remnants of the attack cutting into him.

  Aurin watched Tobias carefully and he wasn’t smiling anymore, he looked focus. He was worried about what would happen if Zeera could lay his hands on Arusom.

  “Take the attacks, go!”

  Zeera mustered up a burst of speed, now free from his armour and powered through the raging blasts of Arusom, who started to panic and beat her wings once more. Zeera swung his claw up and swiped vertically downwards, cutting into Arusom’s head and thorax, but he was not yet ready to stop. Not until Arusom moved no more.

  He swung and he swung, cutting and slicing with his claw, brutally assaulting his foe who continued to struggle and make attempts of escape. So focused became Zeera on his attack, he let his stone cage slip and Arusom tried to flee into the sky, but Zeera grabbed onto her abdomen and slammed her onto the ground. He sank his teeth into her neck and shoved his claw through her wing, leaving her unable to fly.

  As he was ready to tear his foe’s head off, he hesitated. With a look to his tamer, who shook his head, Zeera backed off and left Arusom spasming on the ground. She tried to roll over onto her front to crawl away, but lost consciousness halfway into the roll.

  “What a savage,” gasped the announcer. “I’m glad I’m not a Minakai facing off against this monster, but Tobias now has a problem. He’s down to his final Minakai.”

  “And you know what it is,” said the Bretonian champion, showing off his turquoise summoning stone. “Mindadam!”

  The brass horse galloped onto the field in a burst of light, aiming for Zeera who readied himself to strike.

  “Behind you!” Aurin called.

  Zeera spun around, readying a strike as Mindadam disappeared through one of his portals, but he did not strike from the back. The cosmic horse emerged from the side and rammed into Zeera before summoning another portal that Zeera fell into.

  The lower half of the audience looked around, but the upper half saw what had happened. Zeera had been released through a second portal in the air and plummeted to the ground where he crashed, leaving a crate underneath him. The grey dinosaur sank his nails into the soil and pulled himself back onto his feet, climbing out from the hole and weakly standing upright again.

  Before he could make another move, he was struck by a concussive blast that sent him rolling across the grass. This time, when he tried to get up, he flopped back down in defeat. His battle with Arusom had taken it out of him and the final two attacks from Mindadam were enough to finish the epic Minakai.

  “He can’t win now,” said Luna despairingly. “What’s he supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know,” squeaked Emily.

  “He doesn’t have anything that can stand up to a cosmic elemental who hasn’t even broken a sweat,” said Gardner. “Zeera was his last chance.”

  “Don’t count him out just yet,” said Hunter. “He’s got one Minakai who may just be able to pull it off.”

  Kyle nodded. “He’s come this far. He’s not going to roll over.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Jimmy anxiously.

  Aurin looked to his friends and gave them a wink. Hunter looked at him confidently and gave him a nod as Aurin held out his hand to summon his next Minakai.

  “Get ready to lose, champ,” said Aurin, conjuring an orb of steely grey light before him and summoning Dolissile into battle.

  “What?” shouted Hunter, lurching forward. This was not the Minakai he had expected and the others looked at him in confusion.

  “Full speed ahead!” Aurin called out.

  Dolissile torpedoed towards his opponent, zooming across the battlefield before grinding to a sudden halt two thirds of the way towards Mindadam. The cosmic horse’s eyes were glowing bright turquoise as he focused, while Dolissile was rumbling as though he was trying to keep moving but just couldn’t.

  “Sorry, Aurin,” said Tobias sincerely. “It’s the end of the line, I’m afraid.”

  Aurin smiled. “For you,” he said. “Detonate!”

  Dolissile’s back half exploded, generating enough force to break through the mighty cosmic elemental’s hold. He sped towards Mindadam, who could not react quickly enough, and slammed into his chest, driving him towards the concrete wall at breakneck speed. The second before impact, Mindadam teleported away and Dolissile slammed into the wall, falling to the ground, while Mindadam lay on his side, unmoving, upon the battlefield.

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