Nova woke with a start, a heavy handed knock slamming into the solid wood door.

"Fighter Carolus, you awake yet?" A voice shouted from the other side of the door.

Nova responded with a noise similar to that of a dying animal.

"Alright, I'll take that as a yes, you have an hour till you're needed in the arena, food will be coming in about twenty minutes." The voice informed him. Before presumably heading off to give a similar wake up call to the other fighters.

Slowly sitting up on the bed, Nova instantly regretted not slipping out of his armor before sleeping, his entire body feeling both sweaty and cramped. Thankfully, it seemed that they expected the fighters to look their best, and each room (he presumed) came equipped with a bathroom, shower included. Slowly doing a strange mix of standing and stretching, Nova pried himself off the bed and dragged himself into the bathroom.

While Nova showered, a guard and servant entered his room, the servant carrying a meal similar to a typical English breakfast. The guard gave a quick look around the room, before walking up to the bathroom door and hearing the running of water.

"Huh, he must be showering, guess he'll get a nice surprise to see breakfast earlier than expec-"

~Every night when the stars come out, am I the only living soul around~

"Is he... singing?" The servant asked.

"Yeah, huh, even sounds like there's music in there as well."

"That's silly, where would the music even be coming from? This isn't Equestria after all." The servant dismissed, placing the meal down and leaving the room.

The guard lingered at the door for a second, before shrugging and following suit.

After finishing his shower and turning the music off, stared at his body as he began drying himself off. He almost didn't recognize himself anymore, his hair had grown to what almost looked like a mullet by this point, he made a note to fix that as soon as possible. His once rather flat stomach now had turned toned with some serious muscle starting to show, in fact, overall his body seemed to have beefed up slightly.

What really caught his attention was his glowing limbs, while they usually just looked like almost see through, golden prosthetics, now they seemed to shine almost radiantly. That wasn't all though, he could feel an abnormal amount of power pulsing perpetually through each one.

"Hmm, guess all that lucid dreaming really was taking its toll on me." He assumed aloud.

Deciding he'd ogled himself long enough already, He focused and re-equipped his armor back onto himself before leaving the bathroom, as soon as he entered the room, he could already tell someone had been in here while he was busy showering. Assuming the worst, he quickly checked around the room to make sure no one was still hiding inside, just as he was about to look under the bed, his eyes caught sight of the meal they had left for him.

Now feeling a bit stupid for assuming the worst, he took a calming breath before sitting down and digging into his food.

Meanwhile, somewhere on the lower level of the city, a robed figure ducked into an alleyway, quickly looking back to see if they were followed, they snapped their claws twice and waited, after a few moments, the sounds of hooves striking the cobbled path behind them alerted them.
Spinning around, they let out a sigh of relief when they saw a similarly hooded figure.

"You shouldn't approach from behind like that, I thought the point of the signal was for you to know it was me."

"Just making sure, can't be too careful after all, now, do you have it?"

Reaching into their robes, the first figure pulled out a small brown bag, handing it over, a magical aura grasped the bag and floated it over to the second figure, who proceeded to look inside.

"Yes, this is defiantly the artifact, I cannot begin to fathom how such a simple merchant managed to get their grasp on this amulet, but it doesn't matter." The second figure floated the bag back to the first, who snatched it and hid it within their robes once again.

"This will defiantly allow you to carry out your plans, however, best not to use it till the very last minute, after all they say power is corrupting, and isn't that what your little group claims it's trying to fight against?"

"Indeed, I have to thank you for alerting us to this, I don't know what your stakes in our efforts are, but it doesn't matter." The figure turned and looked up pass the upper level city, all the way to the palace. "As long as it helps us get rid of that old bastard, I'll use anything I have to."

Nova followed behind the rest of the fighters as they were escorted back to the arena, he could already feel the excitement of the crowd as he was the last one to walk out into the giant battlefield, the guard behind him pointed to his spot with the rest of the D block finalists.

He gave Ruby a quick smile as he took his place beside her, next to her was the Earth Pony and beside him the Minotaur, the other block winners were also similarly lined up. Looking up at the royal box, he saw Ares getting ready to talk.

"Welcome everybody, to the second day of the Spring of Rebirth Tournament! He announced. The crowd went wild with cheers, before eventually quieting down to let Ares continue.

"Today, we come to see the best fighters from yesterdays free-for-all fight it out in an epic four way battle, each fighter will be randomly chosen, and be taken to the enclosed arena towards the middle.

Nova took a second to look behind him, where he could see what looked to be a rather large, if archaic, boxing arena.

"Random huh?" Ruby whispered to him. "Let's hope we don't get pulled to fight in the same bout, would be annoying if we had to waste of strength fighting someone else before each other."

"Nah, he says its random, but if I had to guess, there's going to be one fighter from each block fighting one another. If I had to guess, the only random part will be who goes to fight from each block." A sudden nudge from one of the nearby guards told him he needed to be quiet.

"Now, without wasting anymore time, lets see who the first fighter will be!" Ares announced, seemingly reaching into a bag filled with names.

"The first fighter shall be Carolus Rex from block D, please step forward!" Ares announced.

Nova almost had to do a double take when he heard his fake name get called, after pointing to himself, as is to ask, 'Me?', He took a step forward away from the rest of his block. Ares reached back down into the bag.

"Second shall be Piper from block B, also step forward."

Taking their place next to Nova was a griffon, presumably female by the name, though unlike a lot of the griffons he had seen up to now, Piper seemed a bit different, in that she looked more like a seagull than an eagle. Most of her feathers and fur was a brilliant white, as for her weapons, she seemed to have a pair of rather nasty looking metal gauntlets, making her natural weapons even more deadly, and if that wasn't enough, the outer sides of the gauntlets each had large blades coming out of them.

"Third will be Digsby, block C, step forward.

Stepping up next to Piper was what Nova assumed to be an actual Diamond Dog. Digsby was a shorty that pretty much looked like what would happen if a greyhound and a human got mushed together to create a fursona, he had a dirty black coat, with a long white shirt, short brown pants and a red scarf. His weapon of choice, funny enough, seemed to be a shovel with serrated edges. Given how different the two of them looked, he wondered how anyone mistook him for a Diamond Dog, but remembered all the times they said how ugly he was for one.

"Last but not least, from block A, Heru, step forward!"

Nova almost lost his footing when he heard the name. Sure enough, there Heru was, casually strolling up to take his place. He was wearing what looked like a modified version of the typical guards armor, and instead of a spear, he held a huge halberd. Nova simply continued to stare at him until Heru could feel his eyes burning into him, the cheeky bastard just smiled back and gave a thumbs up.

With the four fighters decided, the guards started shepherding the rest to the sidelines while the four selected began walking towards the ring, Nova took the chance to quickly jog up beside Heru.

"Ok you bastard, you got into the city way after us, how the hell did you even manage to get into the tournament?" Nova asked.

"So I take it I surprised you?" Heru said with a smug look on his face. "To answer your question, let's just say that being a guard has its benefits, anyway, you might want to back off Carolus, before somebody gets curious about why were so talkative."

Still not happy with the given answer, Nova conceded and let Heru move ahead of him. Upon reaching the ring, the guards instructed each fighter to take one corner, Nova, being the lazy prick he his, took the corner he was closest to, with Heru and Piper taking his sides, and Digsby taking the furthest corner.

"The fighters are finally in place, and with the beginning of this fight, I hereby officially welcome you all to the second day of the Spring of Rebirth. Fighters, BEGIN!"

As soon as the words left Ares mouth, both Heru and Piper launched themselves far into the air and instantly locked weapons with one another. The two left behind just awkwardly stared at the griffons for a second, before Digsby cleared his throat.

"Eh, let the griffons deal with griffons, guess it's you against me kin." He said with a shrug.

"Alright, sounds good to me, good luck." Nova responded, drawing his blade from yesterday.

Wanting to get a chance to smack Heru around as quickly as possible, Nova rushed forward, drawing his blade and swiping at Digsby's chest. The real Diamond Dog quickly jumped backwards up onto the rings' corner post, taking the chance to swing down onto Nova's head, who barely managed to raise his weapon in time to block.

"Quick little bastard, aren't you?" Nova taunted.

Digsby just smiled, suddenly hooking the corner of his shovel under Nova's blade and launching himself forward, as he tumbled, the blade was forcibly ripped from his grasp, clattering to the ground some distance away. Digsby quickly caught himself and spun around, hoping to catch his unarmed opponent off guard, only to be met with a pair of twin axes catching his shovel.

"W-what? Where do you get those? I only saw you enter with that blade!" Digsby said, stupefied.

Nova responded with a harsh kick to his midriff, sending the smaller opponent reeling to the ground. Taking a step forward and raising the axes, he prepared to end the fight, however, Digsby quickly reached into his pocket and through it towards Nova.

"Pocket sand!" He triumphantly announced as it harmlessly bounced off Nova's mask.

Nova just stared down at the small dog as condescendingly as possible while wearing a mask.

"Boy you all kinds of stupi-"

His insult was cut off when Heru's halberd slammed down right onto the downed Diamond Dog's chest, immediately knocking him out. Nova was about to say something before, yet again, getting cut off when the unconscious body of Piper suddenly slammed down onto the ring right beside him, causing him to jump.

"Jesus crust Heru, you're making me look bad here." He said, allowing him to pull his halberd free and take his stance.

"Have you ever looked in a mirror? Not that hard to do."

"Big words for a guard that couldn't even handle a few spiders, you're not gonna panic throw that halberd at me, are you?"

Nova's taunt was successful, pissing of Heru enough to have him recklessly move forward and violently trust the halberd towards his stomach. Nova responded by dropping both axes, they disappeared as he dodged the stab, Heru followed up with a downwards slice, but was deflected by Nova's newly summoned weapon.

Heru's was visibly confused by the drastic switch in weapons, before shaking it off and going for another quick stab, Nova once against avoided the blow, taking a step closer towards Heru this time. Trying to keep Nova within the effective range of his halberd, he tried to pace back, lashing out with a series of large horizontal swings.

In the blink of an eye, Nova effortlessly moves through the desperate swing, Heru felt his weapon finally land a hit, only to despair when he saw it was the shaft of his weapon. He didn't have time to pull back before Nova's fist collided with the side of his head, the knuckle of the knife making it all that much worse as he was sent crashing across the ground.

Nova was startled by he effectiveness of his blow, before he noticed the light golden glow, barely visible through the cracks in his armor.

Heru, barely managing to fight off the arena's best efforts to knock him out due to the force of the blow, leaned against his halberd for support and he shakily got to his feet, only to feel a sharp pain enter his chest. Looking down, he could barely make out the knife that had somehow managed to pierce through his chest guard, he grunted in pain when a hand suddenly grasped its handle.

As Heru looked up, Nova gave him a warm smile before brutally pulling the knife back out, the spell instantly stole his consciousness from him.

The entire arena sat in shocked silence, before erupting into a frenzy of deafening cheers.

"My, that was an exhilarating first battle, guess it's time to announce Rex as the winner and move on to the next round."

As Ares went to do just that, Applejack decided to voice her confusion.

"Ah don't get it, why would that Diamond Dog switch ta such ah small weapon when he had those two axes?" She asked, looking to Terra for a possible answer.

"Well, the halberd is a very dangerous weapon, being both a spear and axe gives it much versatility, and its range can keep the user safe, but, that range can also be its downfall, if someone were to get too close with a weapon like a short sword or knife, the long reach of the halberd is instantly turned against it, basically turning it into a metal pole." Terra explained.

"Yeah, yeah, thats all boring and whatever, you know what else was boring? How he just tossed the knife at him!" Rainbow exclaimed. "I mean it was cool when he just straight up whacked him before that, but why did he have to go and ruin it afterwards?"

"Yeah, but he won." Pinkie said.

"But it wasn't awesome!" She retorted.

"The part where he slowly walked up afterwards and pulled the knife out wasn't awesome enough?" Pinkie argued back.

Rainbow tried to respond, but found he didn't have a counter argument, and sat there quietly pouting, waiting for the next fight.

Nova was having a hard time keeping himself from laughing. He currently stood there with the three remaining fighters, and each one was from block D.

"Ladies and gentle-griffons, right now you are all seeing history in the making!" Ares started to announce. "For the first time in this tournament's history, the finalists are not only all from the same block, but each a different species, none of which include one of our own kind!"

The crowd gave an uneasy cheer, it was clear that they weren't entirely thrilled that not even a single griffon had managed to make it to the finals this year.

"What is this lack of a reaction? You should all be thankful that these glorious fighters have chosen to grace our arena with their fierce skill and strength, is that not why you all came here today?!" Ares worked the crowd.

A quiet murmur made its way through the arena, before slowly some started to cheer, it slowly grew till the whole arena was shouting in agreement and encouragement.

"That's more like it, now without any further delay, let us introduce our finalists! First, we have the fierce dragoness Ruby, second, we have the unwavering Minotaur Stout-arm, Thirdly, is the overpowering Earth Pony Quake, and last but not least, the masked Diamond Dog N- I mean Carolus Rex!"

Nova seriously considered unmasking himself for giggles, drama and mass panic, he barely managed to restrain himself.

Barely.

Author's Note

Good part getting close, hold onto your butts.