“W-well, that was a grand w-w-waste of time.”

“What was that?” hissed the amiable snake man.

“N-nothing,” Jun replied, trying and failing to repress a shiver.

He sneezed. Snorted. Wiped away the warm, dribbling excess with his tattered, moth eaten sleeve.

Damned cold.

He didn’t know how long he’d spent toiling over his poorly conceived creation, lost to time in that nothingness realm between trials, but near the end there, it was either remain in that limbo and slowly go insane, or call it quits and risk hypothermia—if only for a change in scenery. He was already beginning to regret his brief lapse in resolve.

Diligently, he continued to jog in place.

Once again, he found himself in an out of the way nook near the back end of the courtyard. Having out maneuvered the “wandering shoulder” incident with ease, he was somewhat surprised to find the ultimate destination remained the same.

He idly wondered if that might mean something, then figured he probably didn’t want to know. As always, a light dusting of snow blanketed the uneven flagstones, the pristine covering barely disturbed in this out of the way corner.

Absent was the constant roughhousing and fickle tempers so common elsewhere.

In fact, if you ignored the bitter cold, it was actually rather nice. Quiet. Peaceful, almost. Somehow removed from the certifiable din of the unwashed masses.

It was what he thought a cloister might feel like, with old men shuffling about in threadbare robes, occasionally kneeling down in mass prayer, when they weren’t playing games of strategy on checkered squares etched into the stone.

It really did seem to be something of an escape for the older inmates, though why they were allowed this serene place of respite he didn’t rightly know. Didn’t want to know, he reminded himself. He’d stay ignorant for a while yet, if he could help it.

And, as if on cue, his previously stoic, and blessedly silent, companion chose that very moment to speak up. From where he sat with legs crossed, still several head heights above him for all that Jun was standing, Goro picked up a thread in an earlier conversation he could’ve sworn he hadn’t ever taken part in.

“It wasn’t always like this, you understand. Once, the rift between halfbreed’s and whole men was not so insurmountable as it is today, hard as that might be to believe. There was a time when man stood alongside changeling in brave defiance of the long dark. When brother bled for brother, sister wept for sister, regardless of kin, or claw, or country.”

Jun stared up at the bovine man. Was he…? No. It couldn’t be. He must’ve been mistaken. Because, for a second there, he’d actually thought the big guy was monologuing.

“All were seen as comrades during the times of the great upheaval.”

Why!? What for!? Was this part of the trial? Because it couldn’t have been anything he’d done to bring about this impromptu diatribe. Hell, he hadn’t even said anything this time around, too preoccupied with his own thoughts to bother.

“All were made equal beneath its bloated, shadow blighted embrace.”

Oh great, there’s more.

“And yet, not seconds after the war was won, the Great Betrayer changed all of that. And in so doing, thrust our varied peoples into scourge blasted ignominy. The likes of which we might never recover from. Kings and queens turned to slaves and conscripts. Made to fight in their petty wars and die for their petty amusements. A greater fall from grace, I cannot imagine.”

And with that final pronouncement, the man, the apparent “halfbreed,” fell silent.

Why do I get the sense he’s not quite finished?

“Even to this day some of the worst affected are those least deserving.”

There it is.

“Our pitiable fate not only turned into a mockery—a malady reviled the world over—but a naked blade willfully leveraged by those with few scruples to give, and even fewer reservations. The Grand Duke and his flock of sycophants being one such cabal of irredeemable bastards. More than willing to damn their very own kin should it serve to further their goals.”

Aha! A clear antagonist. Kind of like Elder Shao in the last one, huh? Wait, does that mean I’d complete some sort of hidden objective by defeating him? Ah! Shit! No! Quit it! Stop thinking. Ignorance! Quick! Think ignorant thoughts!

“Tell me. Were you aware that the majority of blood sport arenas are owned by a single man? Bane Vanderhaul, head of the Vanderhaul Consortium? Ah, but of course. It would be far more surprising had you been ignorant. Please, forgive me. What you might not have been aware of, however, is that one of the Vanderhaul Consortiums most prominent stakeholders is none other than Grand Duke-”

“No need! No sir! Right big fella, let me cut you off there,” Goro grunted—genuinely caught off guard, he obeyed immediately. “It’s been a pleasure, it really has! Well, not really, but it’d be rather rude to say it’s been hell now wouldn’t it? Great chatting with you and all that, even if it was mostly you doing the chatting. Very… informative. Not really cool of you to do, but I promise I won’t hold that against you. Anyway, I’d best be off! Would love to stick around, but it's probably about time I stop beating around the bush. You know how it is. Nose to the grindstone and all that! Hahaha!”

Jun heard the notes of hysteria enter his tone, and promptly snapped his mouth shut.

Goro, for his part, seemed utterly bewildered. The man was stupefied. Jun couldn’t really say he blamed him. Still, staying in character was often more trouble than it was worth, and anyway, it had abruptly ceased to matter.

With his mind made up, Jun steeled his nerves, recited his mantra, and promptly splattered his gray matter all over the finely dusted flagstones.

image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]

He was going about it all wrong.

Worse, he knew he was going about it all wrong, he just didn’t know what to do with that information. Staring at the spinning ball of purple fluff, he’d just about given up on trying.

He was missing something. In his approach, in his methodology. Something was seriously off about the way he was thinking about this, and if someone could please explain to him just what that was, he’d be eternally grateful from now until the end times, and thank you very much in advance.

He’d thought he was making some pretty serious progress for a while there. Compressing and shifting the haphazard projection. Subtly altering the way he thought of his mantra to better align with the nature of piercing.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

He’d even gone so far as to picture the beam emerging from his hands, because you’d hold a spear with your hand, and spears—I mean, you know spears—they had to be on the up and up with papa piercing, patriarch of all things prickly, they just had to be!

It had collapsed back into a jumbled mess the second his concentration faltered.

That had been ten or so hours ago. He should know. He had counted. In all that time he’d been hesitant to restart the trial. He didn’t really see the point. Also, he really didn’t want to die again. And while it was true, the existential dread couldn’t really reach him while he was in this state, per say, at least on an intellectual level he recognized that the damage was only compounding with each and every subsequent restart he endured.

He supposed he could always simply get out of his own way.

Settle for something basic. Something pre-approved. It wasn’t as if this laser eyes thing was a hill he was ready to die on. No, instead it was the principle of the thing. The simple fact that he literally couldn’t, even if he’d wanted to, that ate away at him. A part of him railing at the thought of conceding to such narrow minded demands.

If the system governing these abilities actively punished you for thinking outside the box, after all, then it wasn’t a system he wanted anything to do with. Punishing him for being overly ambitious was one thing, but rejecting anything an everything that didn’t fall within a stringent niche of acceptability?

That, he simply could not understand. It was downright criminal. Worse than that, it was derivative.

How could there be progress if creativity was stymied at every turn?

And without progress, where was the inherent value? If all paths inevitably led down the same number of roads, and the roads that could be traveled had long since been tread, then what in the nine hells was the point of doing anything? To come up in a world where total stagnation, a monopoly on ideas, was already as set in stone as the cobbles beneath your feet?

What a bleak and miserable existence indeed.

image [https://i.ibb.co/rw6tMBB/IMG-2711.png]

With a clack that resounded through their little stretch of snow strewn courtyard, Elemenfae Viridian Hawthorn, or Auntie Viri by her own insistence, brought to a close the thorough and comprehensive beat down that’d occupied them both for the last fifteen minutes.

She raised her hand from the small stone, long and elegant fingers flicking in a dismissive gesture.

“How is it you get worse with every time passing? Where are your manners, fool boy? You embarrass yourself.”

“Not all of us can be tactical savants in the world of gogi, Auntie Viri…”

“You make excuses. Where are your manners?”

“I don’t know, Auntie Viri. I must have left them in my other pants.”

“Bah!”

As far as he could tell, Auntie Viri was a member of the “fae” race—whatever that meant in this current incarnation of the trial. He still wasn’t certain if overarching details, such as race, religion, or politics changed with every repetition, every death, or if it was merely the alignment of minor characters and events that was changed each time he restarted.

In any case, she was fae—or, well, half fae at any rate—which meant, among other things, she looked surprisingly good for two hundred and seventy years old. It helped that she didn’t act like a woman of her vaunted years, though he suspected that was less a fae thing, and more an Auntie Viri thing.

She stuck a grubby pinky finger up her left nostril, and promptly began digging around in there like she’d caught a strong whiff of gold. Outwardly, Jun’s face remained passive. Inwardly, he recoiled.

“Poor play. Poorer manners. I do not know why I even bother. Who am I to suffer such foolishness? A bullfrog does not associate with tadpoles.”

“Who’s to say, really? Oh, but, and I’m just throwing things out there, mind you, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that everyone but me refuses to play with you on principle?”

“Hmm… Perhaps,” she snapped.

And so saying, she finished with her requisite gold digging—mining operations having, evidently, been a roaring success—briefly inspected her find, before, without an ounce of hesitation, she casually flicked it in his direction. At his face, if you wanted to split hairs over it. This time around, experience allowed for a swift and timely evasion, maintaining his cleanliness at the cost of some dignity.

“Gah!”

And as for all the previous times…? Well, needless to say, he now knew why the woman was effectively a walking pariah.

Auntie Viri began to attack her scalp next, like a dog with a particularly bad case of mange, her hair—a cascade of verdant, ropy coils, intertwined with tiny pink blossoms of pale iridescence—left somewhat the worse for wear, for all her ministrations.

Her face was scrunched up in childlike concentration, though whether in pleasure or irritation he didn’t rightly know.

Meanwhile her skin was tinted a subtle green-blue hue, reminiscent of moss or lichen. With faint patterns, like those of twisting leaves and vines, tracing along her dark complexion. Her eyes, even scrunched into slits as they were, glowed a vibrant shade of deep magenta—striking, intense, and fiercely intelligent.

While her movements, even if indelicate, carried with them this unmistakable grace. A fickle breeze flitting through forest canopy.

Put simply, she was beautiful in an otherworldly, ethereal, and almost disconcerting sort of way. Which made a kind of sense. He technically was on another world after all. And if you didn’t know her personally, you might even have been fooled by all that.

Enchanted by her allure, completely unaware that it was only skin deep.

“What you leering at? Fool boy. No manners. I am much too old,” she paused, her brow furrowing in thought. “See me in a hundred years maybe. Grow muscles. I like muscles.”

And now it was her turn to leer, not that he’d actually been leering of course. He felt her eyes roam over him, as if she were perusing some prized stallion, or salivating over an investment contract. It actually left him feeling somewhat violated. He crossed his arms over his chest uncomfortably.

“That’s something I’m also having a hard time understanding,” he said, picking up on an earlier thread in the conversation. “I know I’ve been improving. I’ve seen it. My grasp of the ruleset is head and shoulders above what it had been only weeks ago. I can read several lines ahead and react accordingly. In the early game, I even feel like I can give you a run for your money. So why doesn’t it feel like I’m getting any better?”

“It feels that way because it is that way. You were already quite bad. You are getting worse. It is quite the sorry state of affairs.”

“If you wouldn’t mind enlightening me as to why that is?” Jun managed past a knot of frustration.

“I would mind, you fool boy. I will do so anyway, but only because I am gracious. Be grateful!”

“Your charity knows no bounds, Auntie Viri.”

“Just so! Ahem. Yes yes. It is simple really. You greet the world with open palms, and toes and fingers crossed, indulge in cleverness for cleverness’ sake and… and I can tell you see nothing wrong with what I say. Fool boy. No manners to speak of. It’s written right there on your face. You abandon plans in their infancy, before they’ve even been conceived, never wanting to commit the time for any one of them to grow.”

The fae snorted, hawking up a glob of phlegm before she spat it to the side.

“You tiptoe about the board with light steps and fancy feet, too afraid you’ll be caught flatfooted and cut off from retreat. Stacking deception like the layers of a cake—every move a feint, and every feint more cleverer than the last. Always shifting, always changing, when everyone knows honesty is best.”

She began to gnaw on a finger nail, muttering the next words under her breath.

“I say his play is like the humming bird’s wing, but does he listen? No! Instead he decides to choke the board with all manner of cleverest conniving’s. So clever, that when his defenses are finally tested, they only ever manage to get in each other’s way!”

She turned her attention outward, and spoke up once more.

“You begin with a hollow center. A shapeless thing. Eager to respond to every little thing I do. Hah! If I went to squat down behind a bush, it would like as not have an answer ready and waiting, yes? And about that instability you attempt to build a fortress?

”Bah! Where are your manners? When what you really need is to start with a solid foundation. Manage that, and you can throw around all the fancy tricks you want. Only once that imagination of yours is paired with a good, honest foundation, will you ever have even the hope of challenging me.”