The Pitfighting Event, the sound of the Byzantine slaughter being drowned out by the spectators' hyena howls.
Beyond the edge of the pit, Henry observed with surprise as a Cutthroat snuck up behind the eliminated Loki and speared him through the back of the skull.
"Did you pay that guy to kill him?" asked Rose, her eyelids drooping from the weight of ten beers.
"Not a coin. That was 100% this crime-riddled zone."
The pair watched as the Cutthroat tried to swipe up Loki's bow, only to be barraged by a volley of spells from infuriated fans in the stands. Both the thief and the weapon were instantly vaporised, becoming a pile of ash at the bottom of a crater. It was quickly filled in by the glugging flow of mud-water.
Shortly afterwards, the last of the Byzantines was eliminated, marking their defeat.
Their opponents were bewildered at how effortless the victory had been.
The crowd continued to laugh.
Henry and Rose rejoined the Village off to the side of the pit, as the members staggered off the battlefield to clear way for the next challengers. Some of the Byzantines were disheartened by the loss, but most, accustomed to it by now, were drinking beers and bantering with each other over their misplays.
Above their meeting point was a Reincarnation Monument, from which the members who'd been killed respawned and jumped down, many faceplanting in the mud.
When Dan, who'd taken a spear through his handsome heart, landed with a plop, he raised his eyebrows at Henry.
"The rush didn't work, Big Bro! We got smashed!"
"That's because rushes are a garbage strat."
"What about that archer, Big Bro? Isn't...uh...she? Isn't she supposed to be super good? It didn't change anything."
A few eavesdropping Byzantines cringed. Indeed, the help of Suchi's 5th-ranked duellist had been unable to lift them from the trash.
"This isn't an anime," Henry answered. "The martial prowess of an individual is irrelevant to the outcome of large-scale battles. Even the best kung-fu artist in the world can lose to three disciplined grunts with spears."
"Oh, that sucks. Hey, Big Bro, but what about the zombies yesterday? Or shooting lightning at those guys? You were outnumbered there."
Henry scowled. "Can you pay closer attention to my lessons. please? I barely have two weeks to get you guys in shape to win the 6v6, and it doesn't help when you miss the basics. Items. With the overwhelming stat advantage of my items, I might as well have been fighting ten-thousand toddlers armed with butter knives. The only danger was having a heart attack from trying to beat them up too fast."
Dan rubbed his handsome chin, feeling on the verge of comprehension. "So if you've got better items, it's sort of like when you're playing five-down against a team of Johns but you still pull off an easy turkey swap to the wing for a Zip-Advo because the Johns haven't got the arm length to nab his leg?"
"I'm too wasted to understand a word of that."
"That's about right," interjected a Byzantine Shaman, who was also a rugby enthusiast. "Dan knows the score. Good on ya, mate!"
"Awesome!"
"YOU!" A shrieking woman flew down from above like a banshee. Hitting the ground on two feet, she thrust a man-loathing finger at Henry. "You did that on purpose! It's your fault my bow's gone!"
Both the Artemis persona and Loki were butthurt.
There was some truth behind the accusation. Henry had indeed tossed out a few clues to suggest that he was coordinating Byzantium's suicide rush. From there, Loki took care of the rest, filling in the blanks himself and sticking around long enough to get smoked.
This was one of the pitfalls of pairing extreme intelligence and extreme arrogance. One easily conjures sensible-ish rationalisations but, due to a lack of self-doubt, fails to properly scrutinise them or the base assumptions. Making correct judgements is as much about adhering to robust investigative processes as it is knowledge and wit.
The other issue was that, similar to Justinian, the spy's cognitive faculties were partially occupied with persona maintenance.
Regardless, the Artemis persona could never claim to be aware of any of this.
Henry shrugged innocently. "Chill out, dude. What the heck are you ranting about?"
Artemis
Henry raised his shoulders even higher until they swallowed his neck. "The rush was his idea. He always has Byzantium use that halfwitted strategy regardless of the circumstances because of his difficulty delivering nuanced orders without dropping character. Ask them yourself. Also, there's no way he's capable of conspiracy; he probably has a vow forbidding it."
"That fella's on the mark," confirmed a random Australian bloke listening in the stands above. "Byzantium's a pack of headless clowns."
"Our Justinian would never do that," added one of the Crusader's fans. "His heart's as golden as his costume."
When Loki, struggling to believe this absurd claim, swept his gaze across the Byzantines, he was stunned to see most of them avert their eyes in embarrassment. Justinian, the cause of their predicament, was drunkenly picking the mud from his golden locks, muttering various combinations of weapons. Lady Kittykat's father smiled apologetically and informed 'Artemis' that there'd be no sore feelings if she retracted her decision to join them; she wouldn't be first.
"As for him taking me aside earlier," continued Henry, "Justinian was asking me to craft a plan of attack, but I rejected the offer because of its absurdity. Why would I know anything about tactical manoeuvres? I'm just a random kid."
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Someone started to laugh beside him.
"Oh god, that's sush a bad lie!" slurred Abigail. "Does that make any sense? You're THE—"
She fumbled for a cookie he threw at her, dropping it at first but then catching it at the last moment with the assistance of bullet-time.
"Liar!" screamed Artemis irrationally.
Henry, bored with this argument, clapped his hands to get the attention of the other Byzantines. "Alright, kids, enough wallowing in the mud, there are festivities to enjoy. Let's make like a moving truck...and move."
He thought they'd done enough at this Pit shindig by showing their face. He was feeling nauseous with the number of spectators, and Abigail and Anderson were showing signs of exhaustion. It would be more efficient for the team's progression to recuperate before tonight's real training session, which would be more fruitful than this unstructured environment with too much downtime between matches.
Loki became alarmed at this suggestion, mistaking Henry's aim to be to thwart him. His Artemis persona was so single-mindedly obsessed with duelling she could never participate in an evening wasted on frivolous activities. Thus, his suggestion was essentially telling Loki to #&#$ off back to the shadows,
"There's still the 6v6 and 1v1!" screamed the spy. "We should fight to redeem our honour, or are you a coward?!"
"A little bit," Henry answered, somewhat confused by the intensity of the spy's outburst.
There was a massive misunderstanding still outstanding. Since Henry'd made the decision to delay consideration of these Spy matters until the next Overdream session, none of what he'd done had been trying to rid himself of Loki. He'd actually tricked the spy into dying purely for a joke.
In other circumstances, Henry would have recognised the spy's mistake, but right now he was blitzed out of his mind, having drunk ten beers, too.
"Peace and passivism," continued Henry, "you should know better than anyone how I promote these ideals." He turned back to the others. "Kids, can we leave already, aren't you feeling humiliated being pelted with all this mocking laughter?"
The crowd was still laughing at them.
"Shut up!" Artemis shouted, directing her booming cry as much to him as to the mob. "Are you here to admire landscapes and handbags or to relish in the glory of battle?!"
At once, the stands came alive with a chant to soldier on. Artemis's die-hard fans raised their spell hands, threatening Henry with the same fate of the Cutthroat who'd tried stealing their Goddess's bow. Meanwhile, the Byzantines, who had long been numbed to the humiliation of defeat by daily exposure to it, showed the cracks of persuasion.
With the mob backing the spy, Loki shot a challenging glare at Henry.
What now, Tyrant? it said. In this domain, I am adored, the plebs move to my every whim, you cannot shake me off so easily.
Henry scratched his head.
What was Loki's problem? Was he being a contrarian $&#* just to piss him off because he died? Jesus, talk about an over-reaction.
What should he do? Right, he still had that card.
Henry nodded. "Fine, we've arrived at an impasse. Then, let's settle our differences through the greatest battle of them all, that time-honoured tradition of The Slums." He paused, smiling at the crowd who thought he was about to request a duel. "Democracy!" With the gravitas and solemnity of Cato ordering the Romans to wage war on Carthage, he addressed the Byzantines. "Option one: Artemis's, we continue mudwrestling, continue getting our butts slapped."
"Language, Henry."
"Sorry, Catherine. Option two: mine, we ditch this place, we clean ourselves up, and we make the most of the night spending the twenty-five thousand gold worth of pocket money that I will give to each member who votes in my favour."
Before any doubts could be raised, his Spatial Bracelet arm shot out.
The crowd grew silent.
The Byzantines licked the blood from their greedy lips.
Henry, standing beside a stack of platinum taller than himself, glanced back at the spy. "Are we done?"
When a volley of magic from Artemis's enraged fans rained down on him, he activated a
In the end, exempting two—Justinian with his knight's vow of poverty, Artemis with her stubborn feminine rage—the Byzantine vote was unanimous.
After Henry left the Pit with his buddies, he was astonished that Loki didn't tag along. It was only by consuming a sobriety potion to drop down from uncomfortably drunk to pleasantly tipsy that he figured out the spy's overly-intricate rationalisations.
Hah, what an idiot.
Happy at his amazing luck, he roamed the festival grounds with Team Friendship Forever in a fun-and-more-fun mood, playing carnival games, snacking on snacks, and browsing the various exhibits.
There was much more to the festival than dazzling clothes.
In a section for the humble Farmers, they sampled exotic fruits bred to thrive in Suchi's water-starved climate. One guy specialising in pastoralism allowed them to 'milk' his prize Cattlecamel's hump, which excreted an oil with the faint tang of snakeskin. Amongst the delicate Artists, they watched a thousand sculptors producing epic scenes of their Villages battling In the Fall of The Mammoth Beetle Temple, none of them aware that this had only been the complex's penultimate dungeon.
With the sturdy-handed Constructionists, Henry recognised a familiar Egyptian-style reed-boat at a shipbuilding fair. Since their last meeting, it'd undergone a wild transformation, being painted salmon pink and festooned in garlands of flowers. The eccentric woman who'd submitted the piece told him that she'd been wandering the land for inspiration when she'd found the boat abandoned on a riverbank by The Horny Boar Fields.
Overall, Henry had a grand time checking out all the hard-working souls, even if their creations were generally worth less than their materials.
When he'd last visited Suchi, these Civilian activities had been almost absent from The Slums. Back then, would-be craftsmen were obstructed in their work by the constant theft of their tools and by gangs abducting and enslaving them. Now, they could pursue their interests with less risk of these crimes, although there was still some risk.
Part of the sea change was The Slum Empire creating more political stability, a feat for which Henry would give them their proper kudos. The other part was his own tyrannical reformations, flooding the game with casuals who opted for paintbrushes and chisels over swords.
For this personal contribution, his chest swelled with a small bit of pride.
An outdoor studio where Civilians of multiple classes coordinated to create cheesy portraits.
At Cathy's insistence, Team Friendship Forever were posing before a painted backdrop of Suchi's savannah, their seat the spine of a bus-sized Rhinophant taxidermied by a Carcassworker. To go with the setting, a Textileworker had dressed them in the vibrant party garb of the local NPCs, wrapping their heads in thick scarves and draping themselves in loose silk garments woven in elaborate and colourful geometric patterns. Their portrait was being painted by an Artist in a mime costume.
Henry felt a surprising thump on his shoulder as the head of Drunken Rose fell against it, her eyelids closed by sleep.
From his experience poisoning opponents, her slumber seemed to be genuine, the facial muscles relaxed to an unflattering degree that people avoid when faking.
He supposed it had been a long day and she couldn't have slept much the real-life night before if she'd rolled a new character.
Intoxicated himself, his inhibitions lowered slightly, he stared unabashedly at the girl.
It was strange. The square face, the nose that curled down at the tip like a witch's, a pair of angled cat eyes...the more he looked, the more he saw her brother. Only in the minutia did the two differ—a bit of extra fat in the skin, the strands of hair peeking out from her headscarf were a little softer and shinier, a more slender jaw and fuller lips—yet these subtleties combined to create a drastically distinct impression.
She was quite lucky not to be as hideous as him.
Henry usually refrained from treating Rose kindly to avoid reinforcing the stalking behaviour. Since her senses were deadened by sleep, though, he shifted the poor girl's head so that the point of his shoulder wasn't digging as hard into her cheek.
Feeling a sudden vibration on his chest, he shoved her away, startling her awake.
"Hi...Princess Pateela here...uh...boy, this is embarrassing...we were...then I...is my husband with—"
While Henry was scrambling to reach inside the inner pocket of his tunic, the Princess's voice emanating from it came to an abrupt end.
His fingers, rather than grasping the thin, elliptical shape of a Communication Stone, were wrapped around a gritty object with the bulk of a potato.
He pulled it out.
It was an actual potato. A potato covered in dirt.
He scanned his surroundings for trouble.