Shabaka's Pride - Round 5: Match 1

             Three could still win the tournament, two could not. Those three were Amare, Smalls, and Shabaka. The match order was not announced yet, but only two possible matchups remained. Shabaka vs Amare, and Smallblade vs Tilian. If Smalls won his match, Shabaka could no longer win the tournament, at best she could match his score and he would win the tiebreaker. In this scenario Shabaka could purposefully lose to Amare, drawing the scores of those two and giving Amare the tiebreaker win. She threw off this idea, winning the tournament was secondary to winning as many individual matches as possible. But if Smalls lost, or even tied, Shabaka’s match against Amare would be winner take all.

            “Alright,” sung Bard. “Go rest my children, and when you return, the order of this climax shall be determined.”

            Everyone knew their final opponents through process of elimination. That was why Shabaka handed the watch over to Vito. It was also why she avoided making eye contact with Amare like the plague. No matter the scenario, she had to beat xem. She had stopped caring about winning the tournament, it was all a game anyway. But she wanted desperately to win her final match. She was still pondering why, the same as she had been doing all day, but with no one bothering her during the final five-minute break, she looked back at her history.

            The quat, originated from the desert of Skol. When avareed colonizers came from the mountains, the quat fought back. There the avareed where exposed to a quirk in the quat language.

            A common war cry for quat fighters was, “Yin ta hesh ala’usra. Tati al’kira.” A phrase which roughly translates to “You hurt my family. Your final days come.” But in the avareed’s rare attempts to make peace, and understand each other’s languages, they had mistranslated the war cry. “You hurt my PRIDE. Prepare to die.” This was because the words for ‘my family’ (ala’usra) and ‘my pride’ (ala’sura) sounded extremely alike the untrained ear.

            Many quat would leave their homeland, either my choice, or by being forced out. They would start a new colony on the shores of Olden, where Shabaka was born and raised. On the new continent, the mistranslation persisted with the humans, and soon became a part of the Newland Quat’s dialect of the common tongue. There, many quat would refer to their family, as their pride.

            Shabaka returned to the present day and went to hear her father announce the final matches and the order in which they would occur.

            “I don’t think I need to keep up the ceremony anymore,” Bard said in a silk voice. “First Smallblade vs Tilian, and then Shabaka vs Amare for its ability to decide out champion independently.” Smalls and Tilian had seemingly already steeled themselves to go up first.

            The players got in place. Vito yelled, “Start!”

            Smalls charged forward like he had in his match against Shabaka. Tilian, having learned from Shabaka’s failure and Amare’s success stepped to the side. He couldn’t fly, but he could extend his large leathery wings. Being smacked in the face by a wing did nothing to harm Smalls, but it did seem to disorientate him. Tilian swung his wooden sword back at Smalls. Smalls grabbed the ‘blade’ in both hands. Smalls pushed back, and with two hands beating one, Tilian himself was almost pushed back to the ground. But then, Tilian grabbed hold of the tip of the sword.

            The sound that Tilian made was not a human sound, it was a mighty draconic roar. “SRKONGEROGCHARANNIRAANKKKSH!!!!!!!!!!” The roles were reversed. Smalls was nearly pushed back to the ground.

            The sound that Smalls made was not human either. Orcs didn’t roar but their war screams were deep and dark enough to mistaken as one. “MRRRRRRARRRGGONJJJJJGRASSHH!!!!”

            The scene was like two dogs fighting over a bone, but instead of pulling, they were pushing. Two giants of immense strength, moving against and towards each other, trying to wear down their stamina. This made it certain that Smalls as going to win. While it was often believed that the natural strength of dragons was greater than that of ten orcs, Smalls had trained his body, Tilian had not.

            But then, a miracle happened. The sword cracked. Shabaka had no way of telling if this was a pure accident or intentional on the part of one of her brothers, but it gave Tilian an opening. Tilian crushed the crack of his own weapon between his jaws and snapped it in half.

            Tilian was freed from the push of war and let go of the splintered wood pieces. He charged his head towards Smalls’ chest, as if he was trying to drill into his brother’s heart. Smalls in the span of this changed between three different expressions. First shock and confusion, then pondering, then determination. Smalls slammed his arms in at the Tilian’s head. Tillian had too much momentum to slow down and stop his attack, dooming him to get his bell rung by Smalls. Shabaka thought so at least.

But then Tilian, countered in the one way he possibly could. He spun around, not stopping his fall, instead tripping Smalls with a sweep of the tail. The advance of Smalls’ crush drummer bear hug was ceased. The two brothers fell towards the ground. Tilian stretched out and stiffened his tail giving him a pole to lean on and prevent his fall. Smalls used the sheer strength of the muscles in his legs and back to straighten himself.

They took huge strides forward. Smalls came in with a fist clenching a shard of wood, Tilian with his maw open and letting out a huge roar. Smalls punched into Tilian’s mouth and lodged in the wood, prying open Tilian’s jaw. Smalls then went to slam down on the top of Tilian’s head. But then, Smalls saw something, something that made him hesitate for that extra half-second, and Shabaka saw it too. A faint spark from the back of Tilian’s throat.

“STOP! TIME! STOP!” screamed Vito, a panicked sweat covering his face. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The fight ended just when it could have gone too far.

	Amare	Vitoroy	Tilian	Smallblade	Shabaka	Points
Amare	~	L	W	W		2.0
Vitoroy	W	~	L	L	L	1.0
Tilian	L	W	~	D	L	1.5
Smallblade	L	W	D	~	W	2.5
Shabaka		W	W	L	~	2.0

Tilian vs Smallblade: Winner, N/A - Draw. Match time, 3:00.