First appearance: S3E17, Season 3 Finale - Soot Mustam v Huey Leatherface · watch it on YouTube
Soot Mustam was a twelve-year-old Goliath boy who looked about twenty-five. He stood roughly six feet tall, was improbably muscular, and was absolutely certain he was the greatest. Played by WintersTales, he fought Huey Leatherface in the Season 3 finale, riding a flaming winged horse with a lightning squirrel on his shoulder. He also carried a deep well of childhood hurt that kept spilling out mid-fight. His run was a parade of spectacular misfortune, and it ended with one of the most self-inflicted deaths the arena has seen and one of its most unexpectedly moving farewells.
Story
Soot came through the Arbiter’s portal ready to fight. He announced that he trained at many gyms, that he was “very, very fit,” and that his hat was worn backwards because “This gives me my power.” The arena was one of the Grandmaster’s treasure rooms, full of ten-foot gold piles and glittering crystals and guarded by her pet dragon, Lilac. Before the fight began, the Grandmaster loosed a small arrow into him. He shrugged it off: “I’ve been punched harder than that before with an arrow to the face.” When it came out that he was twelve, the Arbiter reassured everyone that “His mom signed the waiver.” Soot explained that leaving to fight was what all the kids from his village did, and Huey added that they all leave home at ten.
He opened by summoning his steed Flamewing, a “flame horse that’s not copyrighted,” which came out of a “blue and white square.” He leapt onto it “like Mario” and soared over the wall of dragonfire dividing the room. He tried to flick flame into Huey’s face for effect, but only burned off part of his own shirt. He then turned the accident into a threat by revealing his abs, which genuinely rattled Huey: “I did not expect to see abdominals of that capacity on a small child.” The bad luck started soon after. Huey, blinded by his own fireworks, tried to slip away, and Soot swung at him with his blindsight. The swing failed completely. The Acolytes had gifted him a second chance, so Soot confessed his “deep-seated shame” about proving to his mother he wasn’t the weakest in his village and tried again. That failed completely too. As the Grandmaster narrated, “Your mother starts crying in the stands.”
The fight only got stranger. Soot yanked Huey ten feet with lightning channelled through his flying squirrel Marymoo, then set Marymoo gnawing on Huey’s face for the rest of the match. The Acolytes threw a troupe of meemaws into the arena, and Soot charmed one of them, Sophia, who handed him a Werther’s and pinched his cheeks. When he tried to look intimidating, he flubbed it so badly that his puffed-out cheeks were too cute to resist, and she trapped him in a hug. “I haven’t been hugged enough as a child,” he admitted. Huey used the moment to fling a loose floor tile into him. Soot then offered Gerald, the Box of Chaos, his most precious bauble, “the emblem of my hometown.” Gerald took offence at the littering, dumped a trash can of trash and shit on Soot’s head, and handed him a Cube of Annihilation: a tiny hole in the multiverse that erases whatever it touches.
Soot fought on. He blinked off Flamewing to flank Huey, landed a divine smite, and then struck a perfect, crushing blow with his second swing. Huey survived it, barely. Huey then turned invisible, crept over to Gerald and sold him Flamewing, and Gerald dragged the whole pegasus into the box. Soot hurled the Cube at him, but Huey sidestepped it. When Huey later tried to catapult it back at Soot, he lost control of it, and it drifted toward him instead, plucking out a good many of his feathers. On his final charge, Soot had to jump over the Cube to reach Huey at the arena’s edge. He fumbled the leap and stepped straight into the black hole. “I did it to myself,” he said. As he dissolved particle by particle, he listed everything he could have done better, including making more friends, and hoped the gods might one day bring him back. The Grandmaster came down in tears to close the Cube: “We wish you well on your next journey.” Marymoo had the last word. Enraged at the loss of his “one true friend,” the squirrel clawed Huey’s face so fiercely that the startled Grandmaster dropped the winner forty feet.
Personality and Abilities
Soot was a walking contradiction: a child in a body built “Gohan-shaped,” swaggering and insecure in the same breath. He called himself “the greatest,” “a troubled youth,” and “an angry boy.” His bravado kept slipping into confessions. He said his “entire village hates me,” that his mother “used to yell at me,” and that he had only become a warrior a year earlier, at eleven. In the style of an animal trainer, he collected “legally distinct” baubles, or bells (“It’s interchangeable”). He wanted “to be the very best like no one ever was before.” The backwards hat was the source of his power and, as Huey noted, it “does dictate enemies.”
He described himself as a paladin warlock powered by “a dual partnership agreement, one would call them sponsors, with both a celestial being and a warlock patron.” He fought with a greatsword and could cast lightning, sweeping bursts from his blade, healing light and sacred flame, which he called “this beautiful blasting light from my Lord and Savior.” His blindsight came from training blindfolded; his village’s harsh “blind steps” training even had children line up blindfolded while people shot at them. He dismissed most wounds with “That’s nothing.” His companions were Flamewing, his winged flame-steed, and Marymoo, a “lightning flying squirrel” who was “never in a cage.”
Relationships
- Huey Leatherface: His opponent, an Owlin artificer who regretted having to kill a twelve-year-old but did his best anyway. Soot promised him an inspirational speech “If I don’t kill you today.”
- Marymoo: His flying squirrel and most loyal companion, who avenged him by clawing Huey across the face after Soot’s death.
- Gerald: Took Soot’s hometown emblem, called him “You little shit,” and gave him the Cube of Annihilation that killed him.
- The Grandmaster: Shot him with an arrow at the start, then wept as she closed the Cube over him at the end.
- Soot’s mother: Unnamed. He fought to prove to her that he was not the weakest in his village.
Memorable Quotes
“I could have made more friends in my life.” (S3E17, Season 3 Finale)
“And maybe one day the gods will bless me and I will come back and maybe I won’t be a troubled youth.” (S3E17, Season 3 Finale)
- “I’m feeling the sense of deep-seated shame that I have that I need to be a better fighter for my mother to prove that I’m not the weakest one from my home village.” (S3E17, Season 3 Finale)
- “I’m both upset about this and also comforted because I haven’t been hugged enough as a child.” (S3E17, Season 3 Finale)
- “It’s not because I am deeply insecure on the inside and my entire village hates me.” (S3E17, Season 3 Finale)
- “I did it to myself.” (S3E17, Season 3 Finale)