At what point, dear reader, does an epic battle become boring? I’ve wrestled with this idea the last few nights as I struggle now to portray the battle in as fair a method as I can. The quill has squiggled across the pages here, and then scratched back to cross them out a moment later. Go ahead and take a moment to peek at future chapter headings if you must, to reassure yourself of the inevitable outcome, or stay and let yourself see it without that knowledge.

I imagine that arm wrestling or a chess match has the same appeal. One must sit and watch, hoping to catch the one genius move by the victor that results in the vanquished’s inevitable defeat. It’s easy to imagine what you might have done from your armchair there once you have seen the actual battle, but in the heat of it… it is a different thing.

Why didn’t I just kill him? I could have. Even he knew that his life was in my hands. He also had no idea how I was doing what I did. If you must know, it was only that I sat there debating with myself the concept of defeat. I’d made a simple thing complex as my mind is want to do. I’d become convinced that killing him would not count as defeat.

Yes, yes. I know. We could debate the thing ad nauseum if you were to sit in my front room with me over a cup of tea. It isn’t that I think I’m smarter. It is that in being smarter than the average bear, I have limitations on how to think simply. And it is this trait that has hampered my progress throughout two lifetimes now.

People brasher than you have called me egotistical, but I do not consider my intellect something that has ever been helpful. It has resulted in far more trouble than it has ever gotten me out of. It isn’t smarter or dumber as you think IQ works as a number that goes up and down. Intellect, like autism, is on a spectrum and no matter where you fall on that spectrum, you have your equally unique challenges…

Pontification +25

What?

Oh, I’ve done it again, haven’t I? I’ve gone off on another rant, when what you really wish to know is how the fight went. I apologize. Sincerely. I feel so silly. I’ll just scratch all that out. What do you mean I can’t. Ugh. This system. Can I at least go back and tell them to skip those paragraphs? No?

Again, I’m so sorry.

Are you still there?

Oh, there you are. You read through all that? Wow. There is just something about you. Well, thank you. Anyway.

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Beau and I were two hours into the battle before he made the mistake. It was such a simple one. He missed a note. It says something about his talent that in the previous two hours he hadn’t done it once. He’d tried to laugh it off, but a single patron threw a crust of bread at him.

It was all a blip on a screen easily missed if one was glued to a cell phone. If I hadn’t been so intensely studying the mana of the room, I’d have written it off as nothing. It was nothing, really. One sour note.

I feel guilty that it was just an honest mistake that did him in. I tell myself not to, but it’s just so hard to hate him now. I hated him then though. I hated him a lot in that moment of his one sour note. I hated him enough to…

He truly was a great bard and the wiliest opponent I’d ever faced. The hours were a grueling mess of watching, waiting, and plotting. All the while, the tavern danced merrily, and the world spun as if we were nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Enough. You deserve better than my mental gymnastics. You’ve been more than patient. Go ahead and throw me the rope so I can climb up.

“It seems I need more ale,” Beau laughed off the mistake, ducking the single bread crust thrown at him for it. I was surprised that they’d even noticed. I only noticed because I’d worked with music so much. “And a tiny break.”

Beau picked up the thrown bread crust and tossed it back at the heckler with a good-natured grin. He sauntered to the bar and stood next to me, close enough for Terra to hiss at him.

“How did you get here so fast?” I made conversation awkwardly to avoid the sexual tension that oozed off of him like bitter molasses without the sugar.

“If you must know, I’ll trade the knowledge for fifty health,” he groused at me.

“Okay,” I agreed, and the shock on his face was priceless. I healed him for fifty health, without letting up on the poison at all. I had full health and mana at that point so it didn’t occur to me that he would turn this into a physical thing.

“Fine,” he wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. “I gave my money to my wife.”

“So, she is here,” I commented almost to myself.

“Yes,” he ground out, looking to the tavern as if he was smiling at me so charmingly. His jaw must have ached something fierce from the clenching.

“Mine isn’t,” I told him pointedly.

“Do you want to know or not?” He smiled at Mabel as she set another free ale at his elbow.

I pressed my lips together. Terra growled at him soft enough that no one else could hear.

“Being broke,” he continued carefully, “my only option of travel was to walk. I was nine day’s walk from here.”

“The system is that easy to fool?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” he admitted. I waited for him to go on. Was something compelling him to honor his agreement with me? He seemed to want to not say any more.

“When I charmingly asked my wife for enough money to take a coach to face my newest nemesis,” he finally elaborated, “she obliged me.”

“Just like that?” I snapped my fingers and was impressed that only the edge of his eye flinched at the movement.

“I was very convincing,” he smiled suggestively. I resisted calling him what he’d called me before we’d broken up the first time. “Once I had enough for one coach ride, I earned the rest at inns like this one along the way.”

“You cheated,” I shook my head at him.

“It’s a work-around,” he hedged, the cad.

“Uh huh,” I grunted.

“You seem to be doing fine,” he raised his eyebrows at me, gulping ale into his depleted mana supply.

“No thanks to you,” I muttered, wishing I had the nerve to drink the flat ale that still sat near me.

“The Nemesis Engine seems to compensate for working around the rules,” he grumbled. “You are definitely the highest level I’ve faced so far.”

His arrogance was nauseating. I wished I had the nerve and freedom to throw that ale in his face. I resisted. Barely. Terra took that moment to butt her head against my arm for petting while studiously ignoring him. It was the worst insult she could think of as a cat. He reached to scratch her head, but she hissed at him.

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“Nice… pet?” He pulled his hand back just quickly enough to avoid the scratch she aimed at him. “I haven’t seen a cat from our world since I got here. You would not believe what they call cats here.”

“I let him escape,” Terra asserted in my mind. I hid my little smile by nudging her head with mine.

“She is wonderful,” I told him out loud, not revealing her magical nature or her name. I needed to remember that this wasn’t an innocent social interaction.

“Who are you fighting for?” I asked him. I didn’t know why I wanted to know. “Who was worth dragging me into this world all alone?”

“You’ll do the same if you defeat me,” he answered without answering me. With that haunting prediction, our little truce was over.

I waited for him to begin singing again before I eeked out the fifty health I’d given back to him. He shook his head and sang a few country songs I liked. What? A person can love Stevie Nicks and Garth Brooks. It’s not a crime. The first was about thunder and cheating husbands. The second was Shameless. The songs ended before I’d realized his health had gotten up over a hundred. Shameless distraction of songs I loved. Was that all it took? A seemingly civil conversation and I was stupid enough to drop my guard. How was it that he sounded so reasonable? I felt betrayed by my own mind.

What is it about people who say such reasonable-sounding things? It’s like they think that by saying it politely, it could hurt less. It doesn’t. It hurts more. The words are reasonable. How could reasonable and polite words hurt so much? It wasn’t the first time I asked that question. He’d cheated but called it a work-around. Simple rephrasing. Reasonable words to soften the bluntness of the truth. Blunting the truth. That was the secret of it, wasn’t it? Sharp knives or blunt ones. The bruise a blunt knife left could be almost invisible, while the bleed of a sharp knife was treated right away. It was like being beaten with a phone book. That was my life.

I renewed the poison and thought about that missed note. He was playing another favorite of mine, probably thinking that he had a new way to wear me down. I knew he was right. The worst dagger of that conversation had been about me using the nemesis quest against someone else. I knew that I needed at least two more nemesis quests to bring my family to me. I’d already planned for it. I let him get to me. I thought about the people I’d curse to this loneliness. I didn’t deserve this. They didn’t either, did they? What would I say to myself to justify it? That they were my enemies and therefore deserved it for what they’d done to me?

It wasn’t that I disliked being in a world full of magic. I was dying to get out there and explore it. What I hated was that I was here alone. I’d worked hard for the family I’d had. Long grueling fights along the way and painful compromises to stay together. Years of tradition and breaking traditions to keep us all going in the right directions. What were they doing now without me?

When Beau’s health creeped back up, I hardened my heart and put the thought away for later. I was done playing games with this selfish bastard. He had not distracted me enough to forget the missed note and what it had meant. I focused on his fingers and the notes coming off the strings of his mandolin.

Vibrations. Those vibrations weren’t so different from friction. Physics. It was a required course for pre-med. Vibrations, friction, and mana had ties to one another. I twanged the vibration, just to see if I could.

My only indication that anything happened at all was that Beau gave a little frown. I did it again. Beau deftly tried to adjust the tuning of the mandolin as he played it. It was amazing to watch. I couldn’t tune an instrument with electronic devices and perfect silence. Beau did it between notes, even shifting around the string he was adjusting without changing the music. That’s what a level ten bard could do. I was impressed.

I wasn’t impressed enough to let it go. In retrospect, I realized I could have broken the strings on his mandolin or plucked them out of order. Instead, I did something so much harder and practically inconceivable to the world I’d been plopped into. I changed the key of the notes of his song as they floated away from the mandolin.

Spell Learned: Mana…something (error)

A foul set of caterwauling came out that had Terra folding her ears back. Beau nearly dropped the instrument. His second mistake was to try to continue playing. His ego made him take that mandolin firmly in hand and try to play Dueling Banjos. I got the feeling it was his finale, his coup de gras, his final crushing blow. What came out of that mandolin was nothing short of the devil’s version of the Devil Went Down to Georgia.

I didn’t play his mandolin, but I changed the vibration of the air around the instrument. I made the hollowness behind the strings broader or maybe denser, as if maybe a small furry animal had climbed into it. I overcharged the air around the strings to make it sound like an angry hiss from hell itself.

Beau doubled his mana usage to try to regain control, but he could only control the instrument itself. It wasn’t that the music coming out of Beau wasn’t beautiful, it was just that it had turned dark. The mana in the room exploded into a dark flavor that surprised even me. The patrons responded with a heckle or two at first but, as the sound continued to flow, they became disoriented and then angry.

“What’s wrong, bard? Cat got your string?” A patron who had, moments before, been happily soused turned grumpy. Terra hissed at the reminder that the mandolin strings had likely been made of some type of cat gut.

“I’m sorry, folks,” Beau tried to calm the souring crowd. “Just another ale and I’ll be good to go again.” He took up one of the ales that never seemed to be absent from the table beside him.

“Already bought you more ale than I’ve bought myself,” the same guy groused.

I watched the charm strip from Beau’s manner. I saw laughing drunks reach for their purses and find them lighter than they’d expected. I felt the edge hit the room. What had started as Bugs Bunny playing around the exploding note of Yosemite Sam’s piano became a Mississippi Squirrel Revival mixed with a KISS concert. Then it got ugly.

They turned on him. Beau’s eyes slid to mine as he reached low to grab his hat. He didn’t know what I’d done, but he knew I’d done it. I could see his mind whirling for the how even as it also sought a counterplay. I neither smiled at his misfortune, nor moved to help him.

“Mabel!” Beau called out, taking a few silvers from his hat. “A round of drinks on me.”

“You mean on us!” Another patron called out. The silver tokens in the hat backfired on Beau. “Them’s our silvers you be spending so freely. I don’t remember giving more than a copper meself.”

“It’s just that Marlo’s been changing out the coins as they add up,” Beau tried for reason. I watched in fascination. Would the reasonable turn serve him this time?

All eyes turned to Marlo, who gave a blank look. Marlo gave a doe-eyed blink as if coming out of a dream. “I don’t remember,” she fumbled, flustered at the attention she’d adored only an hour earlier.

“Take it back then,” Beau dropped the hat back on the ground, opting for an affronted response. “If you didn’t enjoy the music of the whole evening, then take it back.”

I thought I saw a note of sincerity in his demeanor. Was it real? I didn’t renew the latest poison. While I wanted to win, I wasn’t a killer at heart. I didn’t want to kill him. Without the healing song, his health had dipped into the single digits again. I stood on the precipice of wanting to help my fellow human being and needing not to lose to him. Still, his winning strategy hadn’t included killing me, so I could do the same. At least I hoped I could.

“Moments ago, you were all laughing and singing along, dancing even,” Beau called out to them admonishingly. “You were happy to hear my tunes when the ale was running free, but the moment I hit a single sour note, you’ve turned on me like I’d killed your dog. I’m just a bard. I do my best, but I’m human.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but I had and knew that he’d made his final mistake of the evening. Don’t lecture a drunk. They’ll turn on you in the blink of an eye. The ale had been flowing with abandon for several hours. Patrons, thirsty from singing and dancing, had happily chucked coin after coin toward the bar and into the hat. Reason can be a fickle playmate. The thing was, only the coins in the hat were left in sight, a shameful tally of their overindulgence. And who could they blame? They could not blame themselves.

The tension quivered in the mana of the room, as if waiting. I wanted to stay back, but this was my battle. I had to personally finish this to make it a real win. That was why Beau hadn’t won out back. He’d let the mob take control before he’d completely demoralized me. They’d been his weapon, but without my humiliation, the win wouldn’t have been epic.

I strode across the quivering tension and took up Beau’s hat. Without a word, I divvied up the coins and passed them around in absolute silence. I touched their hands and cast my buff over and over again. I had enough mana to cast it thirty times. A few of them handed a coin or two back to me. I only missed a few here and there.

“Fine,” Beau threw up his hands in disgust. “I’ll give it all back.”

“Aint you that’s giving it back, boy,” Mabel corrected nastily. “It’s her.”

I ducked my head but didn’t dare say a word. I didn’t smirk or even smile.

“She tried to warn us,” Beryle put in as I gave him several coppers and a Lift Spirits.

“Charlatan,” it was a whisper at first, but it became a chant.

I stood mute with the almost empty hat in my hand as they dragged him from the tavern. I didn’t go with them past the front door. I leaned in the doorway and watched as they dragged him through the mud and then crowned him with a bucket of ashes from the fire pits. They sliced the strings on his mandolin and then told him that if he ever returned, they’d slice off his fingers too.

“That’s enough,” I heard Mabel call out over the threats and taunts. “Bar’s closed. Ya can all go home and cool off for the night!”

Nemesis Defeated