“One of the first recorded Tournaments was the Meat Games of Troit, in which slaves were forced to battle in exchange for food by the tyrant of the Citadel-State for his entertainment. Among the slaves was Sword Saint Sabrina, later sworn sister of Emperor Liam Kalu, who led the slaves in righteous revolt using skills honed in the arena, overcoming the psychic domination of the tyrant ironically with the same hunger intended to break and motivate them to fight. The entire ruling class of Troit was consumed by starved war slaves that day and the new rulers of the Citadel established a tradition of fighting not for food or the sick kicks of a slimy warlord, but to ensure they kept the strength to never be broken again.” -Extract from Jackalope Sect Imperial Archives

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John realised he had never seen the Sect truly full before today. Gaggles of guests mortal and decidedly otherwise poured through the gates, returning Sect members, visiting participants and their retinue as well as simple spectators alike filling the once rather empty expanse of the sect. Music from all manner of stringed, blown or drummed instruments filled the air as spectacular shows of light and smoke filled the air. Unfortunately none of that was what caught his eye.

Cobalt was standing acting aloof and distant, a familiar part of what he now understood to be her act. But something about the way she stood flavoured with a certain uncertainty, or the little tremble in her arms when she did not believe anyone was looking and the clipped monotone way she spoke when she did at all screamed something was wrong. He asked of course, but besides an insistent “I’m fine” which gave off exactly the opposite impression he received no answer at all. And so bereft of other options he decided to bomb it all and proceed with what he knew to be a terrible idea.

Magni was snacking on something green and spiced, the particulars of the foodstuff being unknown to possibly all but the cook. He lifted an arm to move his blindfold just to have more eyes spare to stare incredulously at John.

“Look in her mind? Really?” he not-quite asked incredulously.

“Something is clearly bothering her and I want to help but I don't know how.” he answered truthfully. “She isn't really talking to me and I was hoping you could see something with those eyes of yours.”

Uncharacteristically Magni looked at John with a serious expression. “And your solution to that is to ask me to invade her privacy while she is clearly already vulnerable?”

John averted his eyes. “I… I don't know…”

Magni sighed. “Look, sometimes you just need to give people some space, especially given her problems lie with her dox-shit dad which we can't exactly solve. You don't need to be able to see thoughts in order to figure that out I hope.”

“I know but I just-” John was cut off with a single pigmentless hand.

“Hold one second… not dealing with this right now…” Magni stated.

“And so that's why he called me I assume.” A familiar voice quietly spoke from behind them with an amused tone which sent vicious shivers down John's spine. He glared at Magni with all of the indignity he could muster. Calling Alexander… that wasn't fair at all. Naturally the pale psychic didn't react more than giving an insufferable smirk leaving John with no other options.

“Come with me if you please, we have much to talk about.” His three armed mentor requested. Though the outcome was never much in doubt.

A bit sheepishly he followed along the older man with his head hung down, a bit unwilling to make eye contact. The silence was broken by a little chuckle from Alexander, who looked up into the sky with a distant gaze. “Did I ever tell you much about my old friends?”

John shook his head. “I don’t believe you did in any real detail, and it seemed like a sore subject so I never pressed for details.”

Nodding Alexander sighed, shoulders slumping slightly and a bit awkwardly considering the extra muscles where his third and would-be fourth arms attach. “Forgive an old man for his nostalgic ramblings in advance then young John. Two of my best friends in a long ago life were psychic, twins they were with a unique mutation that arranged their organs into ideal shapes to transmit and receive psychic information. Argent and Alum were their names, and back in the day I used to beg and bribe them to give me information or help with involvement in all sorts of mischief…”

Listening in silence John watched as the weak smile on Alexander’s face fell into a deep emptiness, before settling into something between either expressions. “But everyone has things they would much rather hide, I am sure you are no different, it is common practice and even an inevitability for those with powers of the mind to occasionally pick up on loose thoughts and emotions but the secrets we hold close at heart are the things that can make or break trust. Trust is the most valuable currency in the world, something the twins beat into me over very many disciplinary sessions, though hopefully you won’t need that!”

Quietly John murmured out his justifications. “When I was alone and hurting I always wished someone would just… know… understand… even when I didn’t want to say anything. When the famine claimed my parents… when I got stuck in that cave and couldn’t move for two days… I see that in her face too and I just want to help… do you understand?”

A solitary tear running down his face his old mentor trembled in place, painful memories already close to the surface bubbling over in an unstoppable wave. Composing himself he gave his response. “Every day for decades I have wished to confide in the only souls that I felt truly understood, the Rats were my responsibility, it would not do to break down in front of you when you were all merely children in more desperate need of guidance than myself. But I was desperate, I don’t know if I did an adequate enough job of hiding that, but I was desperate for longer than you were even alive. But still, wounds scar over and heal, and sometimes the only way for them to do that is if you let them sit for a while. You asked for Magni to help you tear open fresh wounds and expose things that were hidden for a reason, your ideals were in the right place, but you have built your plan on fundamentally poor principles. Silence isn’t always the best course of action, I too wished for a shoulder to lean on, but simple empathy can go much further than you think. After all it’s why I stuck around herding you ankle chompers for so long!”

Silent for a while processing this information John asked another question that had been eating away at him. “You mentioned surface thoughts being inevitable to pick up and Magni mentioned something about shielding thoughts from others… and how apparently my arm is better at it than I am. How do people hide their thoughts?”

Humming and rubbing his chin while scratching his scalp and fiddling with his shirt Alexander considered the question. “It's a complicated matter which varies from person to person and I am certainly no great expert, but usually it's easier if you use metaphors. Think of your mind as a fort, in built natural defences are present in everyone but a determined seige engine can easily batter it down. Shielding is building moats, ditches and other defences that prevent things from getting near the important parts of the fort in the first place, usually compartmentalising important memories and building walls of unimportant emotions and memory is enough for novices like us, but the truly skilled can add additional walls to their fortress, reshape its structure to be better defendable, disguise their fort to blend into the background and even produce weapons used to counter-attack. The fact your Artos is capable of producing its own shielding… unsettling…”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Nodding along John digested the information. After a while, confident the information provided had been at least partially absorbed, Alexander continued the lecture with much more stern expression and looked him in the eye. “An important thing, like any fortress the mind can be worn down by trauma, cruel environment or simple neglect and us invariably extremely difficult to rebuild once broken. Similarly a psychic attack or simply extracting deeply hidden kernals of information from a mind necessitates breaching the walls and causing all sorts of lasting damage. Like the body the mind can heal, but not all heals equally, some things don't heal at all…” John’s eyes followed to the stump of his mentor’s fourth arm and shone with an understanding the older man recognised.

Reaching over with his slightly too long limbs Alexander reached over to ruffle John’s hair affectionately. The small gesture solidified the guilt in his heart more than any punishment could have done and the boy struggled to force himself to meet the man who was effectively his father in the eye. “Thank you…”

“Ah don’t mention it, after all there was no harm done, and if I was too harsh on you I would be a hypocrite wouldn’t I?” Alexander laughed off. “Care to join me and the others in looking for the food stalls? I do believe there is a raccoon vendor around…”

“That sounds nice yeah…” John replied with a smile.

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Deep breaths, Cobalt told herself. She had to banish all her fears, all her doubts. She was representing the Sect now, and as the first round of the Tournament approaches she could not afford any hint of uncertainty. Rapidly banishing all the shameful colours and textures that had crawled into her traitorous fearful skin she once again became a flawless white parchment studded with scales with the lustre of pearls. She was a Young Mistress… she was the face of the Sect…

Part of her looked over to where she knew John and Magni were before she wrenched her head back painfully. The words of her father rang in her ear… and it would not do to concern them besides with her… family issues… not that she could ever believe they were truly beneath her in a million years of course but…

If they knew the urges in her blood, the hunger that screamed in her soul, would they even want to stand by her side?

A voice suddenly shook her out of her thoughts. Bold, utterly without decorum, shameless. Part of her almost believed Magni had somehow snuck his way here before she saw the massive mane of shaggy slightly green hair.

“Why isn’t it the famous Young Mistress of the Lead Cave! I’ve been looking around for you, heard you got some camouflage mutation so I even busted out the old sensory tendrils in case you were actually a chair I walked past, but looks like that won’t be an issue fortunately!” The visitor from the Greenhouse loudly announced. She met him before but couldn't quite conjure who he was from memory just yet.

“What do you want?” Cobalt snapped, unwilling and unable to hide her annoyance. After the talk with her father her mind was a jumbled mess of emotions screaming for an outlet.

Unaware or perhaps simply too full of hubris to care the man continued. “As it so happens I came to wish you luck before tearing you apart!”

Cobalt baulked and wasn't sure if she should gasp in disbelief or laugh. “I- where do you get your confidence from? You know who I am surely?”

Her apparent opponent laughed loudly himself before suddenly changing his whole bearing. A familiar pressure radiated from him which got Cobalt's heart roaring with excitement. His hair whipped up around him as his loose, greasy skin split revealing rippling muscles that writhed like excited worms. With a grin exposing rust-red teeth the man declared. “I have never properly introduced myself yet, but I am Moss clan Keeper by right of adoption! Beneath all your dox-shit decorum I see that you are like me, and we both itch for proper battle! You will give it to me of course!”

A wide smile of her own growing on her face, fangs practically dripping with drool, Cobalt found herself unconsciously growing to the declaration of challenge “Oh it's so on!”

The promise of a good fight in the form of a direct challenge flooded through all her veins like a potent drug, anticipatory adrenaline flooding her veins even several hallways later. It was almost enough to make her forget about…

Shit.

Feeling that old misery rise and bubble to the surface again Cobalt growled and swallowed it down. She was stronger than this, she had to be… she could not afford otherwise.

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The first round of the Tournament began with wild, whooping cheers from the gathered audience. A trend that was likely to continue and indeed grow across each subsequent round. Unlike real combat, tournament fights were as much art and performance as they were a test of martial might, flashy moves you would not be caught dead doing in a real fight were the norm here. An Outer Disciple from the Lead Cave, a pale wiry man with bones that seemed too big for his flesh only noteworthy for being a member of the largest group of accepted Aspirants after the famine, faced down a swarthy woman of similar rank and almost entirely opposite constitution from the Wolf Creek. In any other circumstance not the best ingredients for an engaging fight but…

“Dozen blade dance!” The contestant from the Lead Cave shouted, sprouting twelve razor sharp blades of bone with a shower of gore and spinning towards his opponent in a frenzied spin of death.

“Armadillo’s Bulwark!” his opponent responded, curling up nearly into a ball and blocking the flurry of strikes with her armoured spine.

“Arrow of judgement!” her foe practically screamed, perhaps overdramatically rolling out of the way of her counter-attack and firing one of his bone spikes with the force of… well… an arrow.

This went on for the next few minutes, slowly but surely the challenger from the Lead Cave was worn down unable to keep up with the defensive stamina of his foe, who herself was only barely doing better dripping blood from exposed bits of skin. Nonetheless she stood victorious, her exhausted foe unable to resist being somewhat anticlimactically shoved outside the thin chalk line drawn in the arena floor. With a single word from Elder Phagos, whose suppressed predatory presence still felt unsettling even at the opposite end of the arena, the match was settled and the next set of contestants prepared. A machine-like efficiency earned through decades of experience.

Unlike in the trials participants in the Tournament were allowed to watch as spectators until a few minutes prior to their own round where they would either be eliminated and spend the remainder of the tournament watching from the sidelines with the rest of the spectators or return triumphant to the participant section of the arena marked with lines of red paint (all after recovery of course). John found he much preferred this arrangement as he watched with rapt fascination the next few rounds, it felt more like watching a street play than a fight but that was hardly a detriment, in fact more than anything else in his time spent in the Sect did he feel like a part of his childhood stories.

When his time drew near, a buzzer planted in a small bracelet that marked him as an active participant flashed red and vibrated, signalling the need to go down to the now nostalgic tunnels beneath the arena. Briefly his eyes met with another green-robed disciple who stared at him with no small amount of poorly disguised jealousy, though for the life of him John couldn’t figure out where he came from. Likely it was a similar situation to how certain other Aspirants felt in the trials over his “undeserved” position, and of course he could not deny there was nepotism involved, but if that “fellow” inner disciple thought that he was going to “teach a lesson” as he suspected the beast-brain was he had another thing coming entirely. But that was for the fight, and sitting down in a cleaned out cell which probably once held some manner of Spirit Beast he instead had more important matters to consider. Staring at ARTOS he thought out loud.

“I need some properly imp names for my moves huh…”

[I HAVE A FEW SUGGESTIONS] A foreign thought injected itself in his mind. From the corner of his eye he saw for the briefest of milliseconds the impression of the shape of a man.

He choked out a shocked cough which expelled bloody droplets burning hot with Si from his gullet.