Elf Puncher Read online

  Elf Puncher

  Simon Archer

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  A Message from the Author

  1

  The lights clicked out around the arena and plunged the room into darkness. A single beam from a single flame remained near the open doorway.

  “Come on, Rico,” Joaquin called out. “You gotta go. You can’t hang here anymore.”

  “You didn’t even let me try, Joaquin,” I protested, not moving from my chair by the door.

  “I’m not in the mood tonight.” He waved me off. “Just let an old dwarf go home in peace.”

  “It’s not right,” I continued. My stubbornness wouldn’t let me leave. It glued my ass to the chair like sap to a tree. “You know it’s not right, Joaquin, you know it.”

  “Yeah, ‘cause you won’t shut up about it,” he snapped. Even though he was a solid three feet shorter than me, Joaquin’s intimidating frame thundered over and forced me to look him in the eye. I met it like a challenge.

  “I don’t plan to shut up about it until you give me a shot,” I argued.

  I refused to back down to this old dwarf’s freezing glare. I met it with my own unblinking blue eyes. I shoved every frustration, every rejection, and every doubt into that glare. I sent it down to the dwarf until our eyes watered. I pushed and let a well of tears culminate at the corner of my eye, willing to go so far as to let it drip down my face, whatever it took to stare him down. Whatever it took to show him that I was serious. Whatever it took to show him that I was relentless.

  Finally, Joaquin clapped his plump hands over his eyes and swiped at them. He grunted deep in his throat.

  “Then I guess I will be hearing you gripe for the rest of time then, ‘cause there’s no way I’m letting you fight, Rico.” Joaquin balled his hands into fists, put them on his hips, and sighed. “Thank Walden that dwarves outlive humans, I guess.”

  “Exactly,” I jumped in. I decided to take any opening I could. “I don’t got much time left. I just need a chance to show you I can do it.”

  “Rico,” Joaquin said, saying my name like my father used to when I did something wrong. “You have to face it. You are human. Humans don’t have magic. You need magic to fight in there.”

  Joaquin pointed a stubby finger behind him at the arena. Even doused in darkness, I could pick out every detail. I didn’t need any kind of magical vision enhancements to do that.

  The stage was on an elevated platform, a perfect square. Expanding ropes stretched room corner to corner. Despite being still now, those barriers bent, curved, flexed to meet the needs of the match. I’d once watched Deran the Slick tangle Bono the Competent in all three of the southern ropes till the gnome turned purple from the constraint.

  Rows of benches sloped up the sides and stacked over one another. Wrappers and food remnants littered the walkways. Joaquin would sweep those away in the morning, refreshing the place for next weekend’s fight. It wasn’t as spectacular a place as the Helter Center, where all the professionals fought, but Joaquin’s Gym was the closest to me, placed on the outskirts of the city. It was a hell of a trek from my farside farm. Nevertheless, I walked it every weekend in the hopes of getting my one chance to star in a fight.

  Joaquin was the owner, but he rarely ran a match anymore. “Too old,” he would complain. That often left Cloaken, his right-hand dwarf, in charge. That asshole wouldn’t even let me in the door to watch. Joaquin had a softer heart. Old age had softened the man, and I figured one hundred and eighty-two years would do that to you. He would at least let me watch, even if he always denied my entry into the open tournament his gym religiously hosted.

  “I don’t need magic,” I huffed. “It’s not required.”

  “I knew you wanted to fight, but I didn’t know you wanted to lose too,” Joaquin said with a scoff. “If you don’t got magic, then you don’t got no special move.”

  “Damn it, Joaquin,” I shouted. I slammed my fists against my thighs, the pain comforting me. “We all know that’s just for show. It doesn’t always win a fight.”

  “No, it don’t,” Joaquin relented. With another audible sigh, the dwarf took a seat next to me. He cracked his neck, the relief echoing out into the dark space. In the dim light, I saw his face fall. His brown beard twitched and fell into his lap, and he twiddled the end of the braids through his fingers.

  I watched, unnerved by the silent dwarf. Silence meant Joaquin was thinking, and when Joaquin started thinking, it seldom turned out well for me.

  I knew my spirit and will to fight appealed to his heart, but when his logic stepped in, it was like watching that DENIED stamp press in red ink onto the top of my application. Or hearing the rip when Cloaken tore the parchment in two. It reeked of disappointment and failure.

  “The minute I let someone like you into my arena,” Joaquin trailed off with a shake of his head, “I’ll never get another fighter in here. I’ll lose my gym. You don’t want to do that to me, do you, Rico? You don’t want to drive me into the ground.”

  “I won’t be the one to run you out of town,” I said passionately. “It’ll be those elves and their archaic rules.”

  “Now I know you got more brains than that, Rico,” Joaquin said. “The elves run this city. They run the fights. You’ve been a fan since you were a wee one, right?”

  “Since I can remember,” I admitted.

  “And who was in charge then?” Joaquin prompted.

  I answered him even though I knew where he was going with this conversation. “The elves.”

  “The elves!” Joaquin repeated, jumping over me before I finished the last syllable. “And who was in charge before them?”

  “The elves.”

  “And the elves will be in charge after you die.” Joaquin poked me in the ribs, his sausage finger feeling like a blunt knife, but I didn’t flinch away. “And they aren’t changing their ways. They like their fights with magic, they like the spectacle of it all. Otherwise, it’s just two creatures smacking each other around.”

  “It’s more than that!” I protested, the automatic rage coming when someone misunderstood the sport.

  “I know that,” Joaquin growled. “Don’t you think I don’t. But that’s not what they see. They want magic, they want a show.”

  “I could give them a show.” I lifted my fists and threw a quick one-two combo of jabs into the air.

  Joaquin put a small hand on my arm and, with a surprising amount of force, pushed it back down at my side. I knocked him aside and then turned the jabs towards him. I faked aiming for his stomach with a flurry of blows. I never connected, but I aimed to show him my speed and control rather than my strength. My size made the impact of my blows apparent.

  I was large for a human. A hulking six foot five, nearly three hundred pounds, most of that muscle. I was not nearly as sculpted as I could have been, but I knew with enough weight behind my punches, I could knock even the supernatural beings a new one.

  “Alright, that’s enough of that,�
�� Joaquin declared. He threw up a hand, fingers splayed like he was preparing for a high five. However, instead of waiting for me to connect with him, Joaquin straightened his elbow and thrust his hand out farther.

  Instantly, my fake blows were hitting an invisible wall. The barrier glowed grey between the two of us. This was simple magic that referees used to break up fighters at the end of the round if they didn’t do it themselves. A wall would fly up between the competitors, protecting them. Another one refs used was a body bubble spell when fighters wouldn’t let go of each other. They had to be touching the fighters for that one, though. It ballooned the competitors’ skin, inflating it until it was impossible to punch.

  I was grateful that Joaquin didn’t use that one on me. It was a bastard to recover from. Referees only used it in extreme circumstances, however, though it was a fan favorite to watch.

  “You should head home, Rico,” Joaquin suggested.

  I lowered my fists and pounded them once against my thighs. I flexed my fingers and stretched them out of their clenched state. The fabric wrinkled under my grip, and I took a moment to even it out nervously.

  “And do what, Joaquin?” I said, my voice embarrassingly weak.

  “Plow your fields, feed those animals, take care of your farm.” Joaquin smacked the back of his hand against his palm with each idea. “Focus on those things. You should let go of this whole notion of fighting… or put your knowledge towards the stocks.”

  “I’m not much of a gambler,” I said with an eye roll.

  “Well, you don’t need to be so spiteful,” Joaquin said, a cheeky grin playing out on his face.

  “I hate the creatures who bet on the fights,” I muttered.

  “I don’t mind them.” Joaquin chuckled. “They make me a lot of money.”

  “It never has interested me.” I stuck my bottom lip out disapprovingly and shook my head. “The stocks are a whole enterprise that ruins the sport for me.”

  “You don’t play at all?” Joaquin said, surprised. “With your knowledge of the odds and the statistics of all the competitors?”

  “I like the technique,” I said as I looked up at the shadowed ring before us. “That’s the part I find fascinating. They have such grace and precise movements. They work so hard to hone their bodies and perfect their strategies.”

  As I spoke, I saw the recent fight play out in front of me. My mind’s eye constructed the match, filling through a crowd with cheering fans. The ring held two heavyweights: a demon and an orc. The demon, Kilmuros the Crass, was a green-skinned, lizard-like creature with a cascade of horns down the center of his back and tail. Hardimin the Gouger was a massive orc with a noticeable underbite who, at almost eight feet tall, was nearly the size of a giant.

  The match went three rounds until Hardimin knocked out Kilmuros. He blasted the demon with his signature move, a thunderous sonic roar from his mouth. Kilmuros was blown off his feet and collided with the ropes while the orc approached his fist raised. The demon looked up at his opponent with bleary eyes and bleeding ears when the orc threw one final punch to his head.

  As I re-watched the fight in my head, I spoke my admiration for it aloud to Joaquin.

  “They work so hard to hone their bodies and perfect their strategies,” I said again, my voice sounding far away, even to my own ears. “Fighters have to rely on those skills because no matter how much they train, how many opponents they face, every fight is different. Fighters have to apply their knowledge in the ring with little to no real warning. There is a delicacy to it unlike anything else in the world.”

  “Spoken like a true fighter,” Joaquin said softly.

  His compliment broke me out of my reverie. The lasting images of the previous fight from that evening dissolved. I looked at the dwarf, my mouth hanging slightly open in awe of his words.

  “You obviously love it,” the dwarf noted, “but unfortunately, that’s not enough. You are human, and that won’t be enough to fight. Ever.”

  While I might have been marveling in his words a minute ago, this final statement smacked me in the ribs. It rippled through me like Hardimin’s sonic boom, or Uris’s fire blast, or Reubinous’s stretch kick. However, I could have prepared for those blows. I could have survived and recovered from those. This pronouncement of my fate, so definite and final, was worse than any injury I could have received in a fight.

  “Well,” the dwarf said with a humble shrug, “I don’t know what else to tell you, Rico. The moon’s risen, and the weekend is nearly over, and as much as I want to stay here and chat, I’m not your therapist. You aren’t paying me to sit here and listen to your laments.”

  Joaquin slapped my knee and hopped off the seat. He sniffed and hiked up his pants with a little wiggle. His dark eyes looked at me expectantly. With a jerk of his head, Joaquin indicated that I should get up.

  I hobbled to my feet, teetering a little from my own shock at Joaquin’s declaration. My legs led me to the exit, while Joaquin followed behind me. My brain fuddled for some sort of goodbye, but the dwarf filled the silence.

  “Got to get home to Melanie,” Joaquin grunted. “She’ll probably be wondering where I’m at.”

  “You’re lucky to have someone to worry about you,” I answered, happy that I was able to function enough to respond properly.

  “Maybe that’s what you should go and do,” Joaquin offered. “Find yourself a partner. I don’t recommend it, but I hear it’s good for some creatures.”

  “I thought you loved Melanie?” I asked, stalling with the question and leaning against the door frame.

  “I do,” Joaquin said. “I love her when she’s asleep. Or out of the house.”

  I shook my head and crossed my arms. “You can’t mean that.”

  “You bet your ass I do,” Joaquin snapped. “You will understand one day.”

  “I don’t plan to hate my wife,” I said wistfully. “I will marry her for love and treat her like the queen she is.”

  “Ha!” the dwarf barked out a laugh. “That might be more of a wild dream than you being a fighter. Let me know how that love thing works out for you.” Joaquin put both hands on me and shoved me off the door frame with a playful but forceful shove. “Get out of my gym now, alright?”

  “Goodnight, Joaquin,” I said as I straightened myself upright. “I will see you next week.”

  “I hope I don’t,” he lamented. “Help a dwarf out and get that light, will you?”

  I obliged and reached up to snuff out the flame. Before I did, I glanced once more over my shoulder and looked at the arena. I studied the ring and vowed that I would be in it one day soon. It would be my stage where I made my debut as a real and established fighter.

  As I made this promise to myself, for the millionth time, I pinched my fingers together over the small fire burning on the candle’s wick. It burst into smoke beneath my fingers and spread true darkness throughout the arena.

  2

  The sun trickled in through the open window and pierced my eyes, as sharp as a needle. Simultaneously, the rooster called from his post atop the chicken coop. His alarm could be heard throughout the four hundred acre farm. It signaled the start to our day, the animals and mine.

  Reluctantly, I released a groan that, while powerful, only echoed through the confines of my room. Despite having the house to myself, I still had the smallest bedroom, as I had when I was a child. Not much had changed, save for the bed which had grown with me.

  It was the attic room, with a sloped ceiling, longer than it was wide. My armoire teetered to the left of the window though most of my clothes littered the floor. Posters, crinkled and curled from age, plastered the walls. They were of all my favorite fighters. Some were posted pictures, like the ones on their trading cards, others were candids, caught in mid-fight. The best, though, were of the fighters during their special move.

  Fire swirled around some, while others grew in size, and some popped across the arena. Whatever their pose, all of their names ran across the bottom of
the posters in large letters with complimenting colors. Eunice the Beheader. Firean the Multiplier. Weride the Terrible. Riga the Warrior.

  They all had titles like that. It identified them to the crowd and became their signature as much as their magical move, their fighting style, or their outfit. Once you got a name, you were known. You were established.

  I had about a dozen or so posters plastered on the walls. Each had the Magical Fighting League’s, or MFL for short, logo in the bottom right corner, marking the merchandise as official. However, only one was framed, and that one lived on the flat wall by the window. I had to lift my head a little, tucking my arms beneath my head for support, in order to see it.

  Warpin the Relentless stood with a straight back and a menacing glare. His bulging arms were crossed across his wide, shirtless chest. A black ponytail swung over his shoulder that originated at the base of his otherwise bald head. He had a triangular shape for a heavyweight, on the smaller side of that class. Nevertheless, Warpin was toned, like a marble sculpture. His mustache lifted to one side, complimenting his smirk and the twinkle in his eye like he was challenging me every morning.

  Warpin was by far my favorite fighter. Not only did he have swift footwork, mighty jabs, and an uncanny dodge, but he was a half-giant. Warpin was the first and only half to make it as a fighter. It was revolutionary when he stepped into the ring for the first time. All the controversy surrounded him, this unknown competitor.

  I still remember watching that first fight a couple of years ago. The half-giant went up against Oldier the Viking, who was a true giant. He loomed over Warpin, having at least a foot on him. Giants had that size advantage and sometimes were difficult to beat in a complete knockout, but they were typically slower. An opponent needed to take advantage of their size, and consequently, their slowness.