It was evidently, utterly, unfair to pit those two against each other. Benhuldran stood nearly twice as tall as the dwarf - or at least it felt like that. Covered in heavy pte, the knight towered above the blue-haired shortstack. All she was armed with were her two weapons of mass distraction.

  ‘Unless she’s been hiding enormous power, this will be over in a fsh,’ Rykard thought.

  Tey’s fingers snapped.

  No immediate motion. “C-could I request the first strike?” Vimi asked.

  “Certainly,” Benhuldran obliged immediately.

  “Th-thank you! I’ll get a little closer? I’m not good at aiming.” Waving her closer, the knight waited patiently for her short legs to carry her the distance. His sword was undrawn, his shield unsummoned.

  Vimi continued to walk, right up until she was in front of him. Then she moved swiftly. Surprisingly swiftly, given her motions up to that point. Under any other circumstances, Benhuldran would not have been surprised by her. Even under these circumstances, he possibly could have stopped her, had he meant to.

  Had he known what came next, Rykard reckoned he would have.

  Grasping the blue gem resting above her cleavage, the queen of the ice dwarves shouted the words, “Ice bst!” A spell sealed inside the object was released. Big as a fist and denser than any other snowball, a perfect sphere of ice unched from the gem and flew in a straight line at Benhuldran, smming into his crotch.

  Rykard involuntarily cringed where he sat. He could hear a different kind of cracking while the sphere of solid, magically reinforced ice smmed against the chain curtain guarding the general’s loins.

  All regality left the expression of the knight. Eyes bulged. Legs gave. Coughing and wheezing, he fell to the ground. “...fuck…” he pressed out the short-breathed curse. A clenched fist pounded the dirt. The desperate measure of a man trying to think about anything else besides the worst of all pains.

  Rykard got a view of Vimi. He caught a faint smile on those lips. “I-ice bst!” she decred again.

  The second attack, much weaker, shattered against the side of Benhuldran’s head. Proving that even the most patient of knights had his limits, the general instinctively swung his arm at Vimi. The backhand smmed against her cheek. Before the force could properly transte, Vimi was already taken out of the arena.

  “The winner is Benhuldran,” Tey announced, barely suppressed mirth under her voice.

  The knight was teleported out and everyone could hear his relieved sigh. The removal from the arena had immediately healed his wounds, thus relieving him of the decreased chance of siring offspring.

  “That was more entertaining than I thought it would be,” Tey announced. “The finale will occur tomorrow. Rykard will face off again Benhuldran.”

  ‘Things are moving as expected,’ Rykard thought.

  Rykard found Iceface sitting on his bench. The Speaker of the Centrepiece of the Snowfke had his arms crossed and his invisible eyes closed. ‘I still haven’t worked out how I can tell… Is it just that the rest of the body nguage maps onto what I am used to?’ The question went unanswered. The dwarf raised his head. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  Gaze drifting to the canopy above, the ice dwarf grumbled. “Ain’t nothin’ lovely about sun and wood, when I could be surrounded by ice and snow… then again, maybe the break makes me appreciate what I have at home. Quiet. Discipline. Manners.”

  The criticism was evident. Rykard plopped down on the bench next to the dwarf. “Look, Iceface, I’d like to keep lukewarm retions… or is pleasantly cool the proper way to express it for your people? Wouldn’t want to be insensitive.”

  Iceface cackled, a rumbling sound accompanied by the noise of snow shifting and compacting. The encapsuted dwarf shifted around where he sat. “Pleasantly cool would be correct, but we don’t mind much.” He raised his hand before Rykard could chime in. “Look, ddie, I don’t dislike ye, but what ye did two days ago wasn’t right. Our queen is the fwless Centrepiece of the Snowfke. Ain’t nothing that should make her impure.”

  “I’m not going to promise you that I won’t do it again because I simply don’t share that focus on purity,” Rykard told him. “Not that kind of purity anyhow… but, if you would entertain me, I’d like to at least keep things amicable enough that, when next we meet, it's not a bloody engagement.”

  “...What did ye promise Tess?”

  “It would be improper to disclose.”

  Iceface’s lips, what little was visible of them behind the yer of white, curled into a smile. “You got integrity, I’ll give you that.”

  “And grit,” Rykard added with smug certainty, “and all the power I need to spare myself the need to lie to you.”

  “Ye think you’ll defeat Benhuldran?”

  “It’ll be a long battle, but yes, I will.” Rykard stated, acknowledging one of the knight’s retainers, present with them on the gde. “He’s wanted to challenge me anyhow. All I got to do is prove to him that I’m superior. That’ll take some of the wind out of his sails.”

  “HAH!” Iceface spped Rykard’s back. “You really do have guts, ddie! You’d make a fine ice dwarf!”

  “I was meaning to ask about that, what makes you different from normal dwarves anyway? Is it just the ice?”

  “Guess ye could say so. Normal dwarves, ye see, they live near all the magma veins and such. My people been burying through the ever-frosted stones of the Eternal Gcier for generations. The ice is in our blood - literally.” Iceface raised his thick fingers and wiggled them about pyfully.

  “Interesting.”

  “Ye didn’t need to worry about diplomacy that much. We’d be angry for a few years at most, this ain’t bad enough for the Book of Grudges.” Iceface let his hands fall into his p with a loud cp. “It’s good ye talked to me though. Gives me something to tell the council. Speaking of which, the meetin’ will soon begin.” He hopped off the bench. “I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  “Much appreciated,” Rykard told him. “New Eden will not get in the way of your pattern making. If that’s all you want to accomplish, perhaps we can co-exist. I don’t mind snowfke shaped mountains on the map. Gives the world a little bit of character.”

  “I knew ye had a sense of beauty! If you ever need to buy any sves, you just left us know!”

  Rykard blinked several times at the back of the jolly dwarf, as he stomped happily towards the door to his faction’s quarters.

  ‘Need to buy what now?’