First appearance: S1E13 — Snow-clad — Highfrost v Bryltyn · watch it on YouTube
Bryltyn was a champion of the Void’s Deathmatches who insisted there was no one else like him, despite the Arbiter’s suspicion that the arena had seen his face before. In S1E13 — Snow-clad — Highfrost v Bryltyn, he faced the kilted warlock Highfrost in a snowbound town. The fight became a war of insults, unwanted kilt reveals, liberated ducklings and a deadly game of tag. He came out of it bloodied, one axe short, and victorious.
Story
Bryltyn introduced himself with few words: “I’m just a warrior. There are none like me. That is all.” The Arbiter wasn’t convinced and recalled “a bunch that look almost exactly like him in the other deathmatches.” Bryltyn had an explanation: “They were all fakes. Clones, perhaps.” The Grandmaster took his side at once: “See? Clones!” When she ordered him to fill the halls with his voice, he announced that he was “here to bring some pain.” Highfrost offered to “lift up me kilt” to show him something special, and Bryltyn mocked his accent. Highfrost then revealed that his uncle had once lived in this very town in the north. Bryltyn asked if he knew what had happened to them, and answered his own question: “I killed them all.”
The match began with Bryltyn behind a fence, unable to see his foe. Then a beam of eldritch force came arcing up through the air, “with the spirit of your ancestors guiding your hand,” and struck him on the head. “This is rigged,” he complained, though he called it “just a scratch.” He replied with a snowball packed with chunks of ice, which missed. When the Grandmaster asked what made him angry, he named “insufficient enemies on the field. This man is nothing more than a charlatan.” Then he flew into his rage, screaming into the sky. In that state every kind of harm except attacks on the mind only half-landed. A ray of frost iced over his skin, and the ice melted away as steam in the heat of his fury. A draft also lifted Highfrost’s kilt in “a little Marilyn Monroe action,” and the sight of what was under it was judged traumatic enough to hurt him outright: “That is a disgusting sight.” Highfrost admitted he had “not had the time to trim in a few weeks.” The Grandmaster offered him a reward if he impressed her, but he waved it off with “Keep your potions.” He found a glowing crystal in the rubble instead, which tasted icy cold, “as if you’re drinking Listerine,” and blinked him up onto a rooftop. Meanwhile Highfrost was writing his whole name in piss across the wall of his grandpappy’s house. Bryltyn answered Highfrost’s tribute to a grandpappy who “could drink with the fishes” with “It’s funny. Now he’s sleeping with them.”
Then the chaos began. The Grandmaster landed beside Bryltyn, offered her hand, squeezed it tight and cried “Tag, you’re it!” A tag was now on him, and it would hurt him badly if he couldn’t pass it on. He offered Highfrost a friendly handshake, but the warlock had seen a game of tag before and refused. Highfrost then turned to taunts about Bryltyn’s mother: “You know who liked it when I was up there? Your mother.” She had preferred him “through the back door,” he claimed, and “the kilt gives me easy access. You just pull it up and down like a drawbridge.” Bryltyn asked if he was “a grower and not a shower,” but the perfectly delivered taunt, and Highfrost “whipping his junk at you so fervently,” left him shaken and doubting her (“She had a whole second life”). He briefly wondered: “Could this be my father? Will I be battling my father?” Highfrost followed up with a bagpipe performance so bad that it wounded the Grandmaster herself. Bryltyn climbed to the peak of the roof, 30 feet up, and leapt off. He slid down with gravity behind his handaxe and left Highfrost bloodied in the snow. Then, face to face, he slapped the tag onto him, or as the Arbiter put it: “He touches you. Look who’s it, bitch.”
The tag did not stay put. Highfrost passed it to a straggling duckling with a little tap on its “feather buns.” He then hiked up his kilt and pulled a slice of bread from a leather satchel hanging underneath (“Nobody wants your ball sack infused bread,” Bryltyn told him) and flung it into Bryltyn’s face. The whole flock mobbed him, Mama Duck landing square on his shoulder, and the little one tagged him right back. “These chaos events have not been my friend,” he grumbled. Soon both men were bleeding into the snow, “almost like that scene out of Kill Bill.” Bryltyn took an all-in attitude: “If you die, I die. Everything’s fine.” His first swing hit, but the second broke one handaxe on Highfrost’s metal chest, and Highfrost river-danced out of reach before he could pass the tag. Then an avalanche roared down the mountain and swept them both to the docks. There the tag went off. His palm glowed red and burned, and the light pulsed through his veins. A coin flip went his way and his rage dulled the rest, so he survived. Beside the frozen ocean, he charged with his last axe and finished it, telling the blow himself: “A slash, a deep gash in his chest. The blood sprays onto the snow, onto the stones, into the ocean… Be at peace with your family, foe.” The Grandmaster came down and held out her hand again, “this time no tag in sight,” and he rose “as light as a feather” as she carried him off to his fans. At the table, Highfrost’s player revealed that he had a mind-piercing finale planned that Bryltyn’s rage couldn’t have blocked: “Defeated by a coin toss.”
Personality and Abilities
Bryltyn was blunt, proud and humorless in the funniest possible way. He was certain of his own uniqueness, which suited a man whose look apparently resembled a bunch of the arena’s past champions. He seemed to have no use for ducks (“We don’t feed the ducks”) and no idea what friendship was (“Friends? What is that word?”). His opponent called that “the scariest thing you’ve said all night.” He still had a dry wit, and promised to find Highfrost a therapist “if he lives.”
In battle he was a bear-totem barbarian who fought with two handaxes, though he left the arena with only one. When he raged he screamed to the sky and grew so tough that frost, force, necrotic power and even duck pecks only half-landed. Only harm to the mind hit him in full, which is why taunts, and the sight under Highfrost’s kilt, did him real damage.
Relationships
- Highfrost: His opponent. Bryltyn claimed to have slaughtered Highfrost’s family’s village, briefly feared Highfrost was his father, and killed him on the docks.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: She cheerfully tagged him with a deadly game of tag, then personally flew him to his fans after his victory.
- The Arbiter: He doubted Bryltyn’s claim to be one of a kind and fretted that the fight would end too soon for the paying crowd.
Memorable Quotes
- “There’s no way. I’m the only one. They were all fakes. Clones, perhaps.” (S1E13 — Snow-clad)
- “It’s funny. Now he’s sleeping with them.” (S1E13 — Snow-clad)
- “Nobody wants your ball sack infused bread.” (S1E13 — Snow-clad)
- “These chaos events have not been my friend.” (S1E13 — Snow-clad)
- “Be at peace with your family, foe.” (S1E13 — Snow-clad)
- “I told him from the very beginning he was going to die, like the rest of his family. And now he’s dead, there’s not much more to say.” (S1E13 — Snow-clad)