Chapter Fifteen

“Laaaaadies, gentlemen, folk of all ages and sizes! Welcome! Welcome one and all, to the first annual Yu Xiang Grant Tournament!” 

I glanced down and over, leaning slightly forward to see over the edge of the balcony. The bard was stationed before a faintly-glowing array on a staff which hovered at mouth height. He was on his own balcony, with a thick curtain separating him from a room where the rest of his troupe, the Celestial Sound Stage Performance Sect, were readying themselves, instruments poised. 

The crowd cheered, of course. It took very little to excite people who were primed for it, and the people of Yu Xiang and the collection of tourists who had come to visit were nothing if not primed for an exciting day.

“Today, by the grace of the Empress of this new empire and her master, the infamous Herald of the end times, master wizard and supreme sorcerer, we are gathered to witness skill, spirit, and the fighting prowess of masters and fights from across the continent! Are you ready?” 

The response was a roar. Someone had likely made a small fortune selling small banners, black and white with a skull motif on them. I didn’t think we had come up with an official banner or symbols for the empire, so it seemed as though the locals had filled that gap themselves. 

“To our competitors, be ready! Today, and in the rest of this tournament, you will be tested like never before! But the prize at the end could not be worth more!”

Lu Changge paused, and somehow drew a hush from the crowd. Not that they weren’t still excited, it was merely that they were primed to hang off of his every word. Bards were well known, and feared, for their ability to perform diplomacy.

“Lute-force diplomacy,” I muttered with a small chuckle.

“To our audience! Cheer loudly! Our brave fighters need to hear your voices spurring them on! So scream out your blessings, wager responsibly, and do try to keep all limbs behind the marked lines!”

The spectators gave a hearty example of their loudest cheers just as Lu Changge gestured behind him and a lot, thrumming note filled the arena. More joined it, a flute, some sort of stringed instrument, and a chorus of humming voices.

The music shook through the air, cast through a complex array of spells interspersed across the arena. A clever bit of spellwork, that. 

“The rules are simple,” Lu Changge continued. Somehow he managed to weave his voice into the music. It wasn’t song, nor did it rhyme, but the music flowed well with his speaking voice. More dastardly bard tricks. “This is a single elimination tournament. One this first day, we will see three groups of combatants fighting, cleverly divided along lines of power. Once eliminated, a contestant is out of the running. Only the three victors, those who make it to the very end, will unlock power and prestige. Immortality awaits! Are you ready?” The crowd cheered. “Empress, by your leave?”

Tens of thousands of eyes moved up to our balcony, and the Limpet jumped in her seat, surprised by the sudden attention.

She raised a hand, then gave a little wave.

“And so, we begin!” Lu Changge shouted.

More cheering, then the arena staff below started to move about to prepare things.

“He didn’t tell me he was going to do that!” the Limpet complained.

“Bards,” I replied. “Ironically, they can be a little tone deaf, oho! But their delivery is rarely flat, and their wit can be sharp. Unfortunately, they have no chord of conduct.”

“Urgh, Master,” the Limpet complained. Her pain was a balm to my soul. “Please tell me that’s all of them?”

“No no, I have plenty more where that came from. If you’re going to have minstrels as fool-time employees, ohoho! Then you’ll need to know how to handle them.”

“And bad puns will help with that?” she asked. Her doubt could not be any clearer even as she shook her head. “Sounds like some sort of... minstrel illness.”

“Ohoho! Well done, Limpet!” 

She smiled a little, her lips twitching before she schooled her expression and glared. “No. No, I can’t! It’s wrong.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” I replied. “But once you weigh the prose and cons, you’ll see that the verse case scenario is only that you miss out on a bit of joy. Though, sometimes you do feel some pain. For example, I have been wracking my brain trying to think of how to use ‘pitch please’ for the last minute.”

“Master!” 

“And here we have our first competitors!” the bard said. 

Two people walked onto the arena and faced off against each other, the entire space of the arena between them. 

“Exiting the East gate, Gao “Mountain-Splitting” Han of the Jade Golem sect! A wayward disciple of the Southern Barbarian Lands, Gao has crossed the empire on foot to come here today to test the strength of his stony determination!”

The crowd clapped as the young man looked up to them and nodded respectfully. He was a broad-shouldered lad, with a dusty-brown set of robes with the sleeves torn off. 

“And exiting the West gate, Lan Fen, the Fawning Swan! A noble sword cultivator from the capital of the Divine Kingdom, here to prove her mettle and her metal!”

The other competitor was a slight woman with a straight sword by her hip, she wore a tightly fitted robe, one covered with carefully embroidered flowers. 

Captain Seventeen leaned forwards from between the space where the Limpet and I were standing. Neither of us had elected to sit just yet. “The young man is a level twenty-five Stone Druid. The young miss is a level twenty-six Sword Fighter,” he said as he read off from a clipboard.

“Interesting,” I said.

“Twenty-six means she’s going to win, no?” the Limpet asked.

“It means she has a statistical and experiential advantage,” I replied. “It doesn’t mean everything. Not all classes are made equal. A Fighter will almost always defeat a Wizard before a certain level is reached, after which the Wizard has a great advantage. In this case, a Druid may well have a small advantage based on class, and it is reduced because of the level difference.”

“Oh,” the limpet said. She returned her attention to the arena where the two competitors were scoping each other out. “So it’s nearly even?”

“If I may interject,” Captain Seventeen said. “We attempted to ensure some level of parity in skill where we could. It will make for fairer fights and I suspect, more interesting viewing for the audience.”

“Good thinking, Captain,” I replied.

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Are you ready, contestants?” Lu Changge asked.

Both contestants nodded, signalling their readiness. The music bloomed, growing to a crescendo and filling the arena with a sense of grand expectation that even I felt myself being swept into. 

“Then let us prepare the arena, as demanded by our competitors!” Lu Changge said. “Thisi s special, everyone, something unique to this very arena!”

The arena shook, then items and new pieces of terrain sprouted from the ground, though only on the one side. Each competitor had stepped out onto a clearly marked space, the ground tiled in carved stones that formed a circle deep within their side of the arena.

The rest of the space was designed to change. 

Gao’s side filled with stones. Some taller than the man himself, others laying on their side. There were a few bushes as well, and small natural elements. It was as though we had transplanted a small bit of the badlands to the arena.

Lan Fen’s side of the arena levelled out and filled with flat, even paving stones made of undecorated but smooth marble.

“The battlefield is ready, our competitors are ready. Are we ready?” He paused to let the crowd scream that they were. “Then let this first battle of the Novice league... begin!” 

The two contestants paused for a moment. It wasn’t to see what the other would do, but more a lack of experience in competitive fighting freezing them on the spot while the crowd absolutely roared for them to fight.

Gao moved first. The young man stomped a foot down with a grunt. The earth of the arena shook, and the crowd gasped, but the only effect was for a few clumps of dirt to move towards him.

“Hmm, Mold Dirt,” I said. “It’s a simple cantrip to move earth out of the way or create small structures. He’s using it, or a poor copy of it, to create armour out of hardened mud. Interesting.”

The Limpet looked up to me for a moment, then refocused on the fight.

Lan Fen caught on that the terrain on one side of the arena heavily favoured her opponent, and so she darted across the gap at cultivator speeds, kicking up dust behind her as she moved. It wasn’t long before she was before Gao, sword already stabbing forwards and aiming for his muddy chest.

The fight was on, and the crowd howled for blood.

A bit of a weak opening, really, all the pillars of stone were blocking the visibility from some angles, but the fight was moving rapidly enough that it hardly mattered.

Now, what sort of interesting magic did the people of this modern era had in store for me?

***