War God for Hire- Gladiator by David Burke (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

to scoff too loudly but his disdain was painted all over his face. Gilthan was called upon next, which was also fitting. Kyle was impressed with how agile the elf was. He appeared as natural and fluid at it as Kierra had been, unless one watched very closely.

The near misses against him were much closer and near the end of the first minute, a pair of rocks hit him and would have undoubtedly sent him sprawling. It was then that his use of essence became clear, although Hilde later informed Kyle that the elf was calling upon his stores of essence the entire time in subtle ways to speed his movement. This time, though, a cushion of air caught him midway down and rippled until it bucked and pushed the elf back up onto one of the poles.

The humans, bruised from their own failed attempts and only partially healed by Selma’s team, jeered and called out Gilthan for cheating.

Saber turned on them rapidly and said, “And that is part of why you will never match him. It isn’t cheating to use everything he is capable of doing. Any fighter who doesn’t use everything at his disposal would be a fool. You should just thank your lucky stars that Lord Soren still has hopes of getting some value out of you. Otherwise, the rules might be very different and some of you would end up as splats upon the arena floor.”

The sudden rebuke cowed the men, but Kyle had been paying partial attention to their discussion. Instead, he was intently focused on watching Gilthan. The elven sorcerer fell back onto his essence as soon as the arrows began. A swirl of air rushed around him with the force of a small tornado. Each of the arrows was flung off course just enough that he never got more than a shallow scratch.

When the magical attacks began, the elf seemed to effortlessly dissipate the air attack. The fire whips gave him far more trouble. His air shield only seemed to make them burn all that much more brightly so that when two of them hit him at once, he was knocked flailing from a center pole. This time he wasn’t able to catch himself until right before he hit the ground. As he sat there on the cushion of air, he looked first at the top of the poles, then at the mages in their robes waiting to rain more magical attacks upon him, and finally at the ground before his mini cloud disappeared and his feet drifted slowly to the ground.

“Wise man to know when to quit,” Saber said. Then he looked at Kyle and said, “I wonder what sort of wisdom a war elemental has.”

Taking his cue, Kyle found his own way up to the top of the poles. Rather than climb on claws or shimmy up like the humans, he squatted down and gathered his strength. Hilde was laughing in the back of his mind that he was still so physically dependent. Then he leapt high enough to have his feet clear the top of the poles and he landed on one of them.

It wasn’t nearly as graceful as he would have liked, though, as he stumbled forward and had to make a jerking leap to the next pole over. As soon as he caught his balance, he heard Saber signal the beginning. While down on the ground, Kyle had reasoned out that there were three ways for him to beat this exercise. One of them required him to be able to freely tap into his essence, and since that wasn’t really an option yet, he discarded that choice. That left him with deciding between making his own attempt at agility or just gutting it out.

For now, he opted to try agility. As the projectiles came flying, he dodged as best he could and started practically running with long bounding strides between the poles. His size was his biggest advantage and handicap at the same time. While he could make the leap between poles with just a running step he was also as wide the proverbial barn door and the highly skilled trainers didn’t miss very often.

Being pelted by weighted discs and rocks was no fun, but he soon learned it was inevitable. His durability was great enough that while they didn’t feel good, they weren’t going to do anything more than leave a bruise. He could endure that. He would will himself through it.

The thing that he wanted to look out for were the spears. Their metal tips were nothing to joke about, and he wasn’t eager to learn what it would feel like to be impaled on one of them. Fortunately, his agility had already come a long way. While he wasn’t anywhere near as good as Kierra or even an essence-increased Gilthan, he was still able to avoid the long flying toothpicks when they tried to skewer him.

A couple of times, a rock would hit him hard enough to almost make him stumble while landing upon a new pole, but his great weight saved him in that regard. When the rocks began, he breathed a sigh of relief, if only for an instant, as he knew what was coming next.

When the first arrow buried its head in his arm, his first thought was that it didn’t hurt nearly as much as he had expected. Over the course of the next minute, not a single one of the thirty arrows fired at him missed entirely. A few he was able to twist enough to get nothing more than a cut, but by the time it was over he had twenty-one arrows sticking in his skin.

His saving grace was twofold. First off, his body was apparently dense enough that the arrows couldn’t make it more than an inch into his skin. Secondly, with his size, that was never enough to hit anything vital. He had taken special care to protect his eyes during the barrage and it seemed to