I hastily ducked, her fist passing a fingers breadth over my head. I then jumped backward with a backflip and lashed out with my tails. She brought her arms up and blocked the attack, making her stumble back with the force of the blow. Once my feet touched the ground, I took advantage of her stumble and lunged forward, using my chakra to make claws of ice on my fingertips, and I—
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked my clone.
“I’m writing just like you told me to.”
“Writing, yes. Good writing, no. You’re in the middle of the book.”
“Well, I thought we’d start there to build intrigue and then go back to the beginning to catch everyone up.”
I shook my head, “No, no, no. That will just confuse everyone.”
“Well, what would you do? And by the way, we share the same brain cell. My ideas are your ideas.”
“I would start at the beginning like a normal and logical fucking person. And you’re only one part of my brain, so the joke’s still on you.”
“Still your brain dum dum.”
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck you!”
“WILL YOU BOTH SHUT UP!” I yell, “We need to get to work writing all of this down!”
“She started it!” I accuse myself at the same time.
“I don’t care who started it, and I’m finishing it!”
“Wow, really classy line,” another one of myself says, “especially coming from someone writing—”
“AH! AH! AH!” I stop myself, “Narrator Zeana is writing everything that is happening right now, and we don’t want to show that to kids.”
I looked at myself, writing down my interactions, and continue to write as I stared … L—
“Don’t even!” I stop myself from writing that.
“All right,” another one of me claps my hands, getting my attention, “we need to start somewhere. And the obvious choice is where we left off.”
“Lii, becoming a little—”
“Not there. We need to start with us going to Ree’ze village and going home.”
“That’s precisely where we should’ve started. But no, you wanted to be cleaver.”
“You mean we,” I corrected.
“We mean we,” I corrected again.
“Enough! Writing Zeana, please make a scene break and start from the beginning before we somehow start a fire.”
“Fine,” I said. I then grabbed a new sheet of paper, dipped my Olli feather quill in ink, and began writing.
Then a fire started somehow, and we all left the book to burn.
The end of The Hollow Throne book two
… Fine, I’ll put in the scene break and start properly.
***
On the way back to Ree’ze village, I asked all the questions and tried to catch up on what I missed. And I didn’t miss much, sadly. The tournament fights only just ended, and the only interesting thing that happened was Lii disappeared for a week before returning to the village. Nobody knows where he went or why. Hmm, weird.
ANYWHO! On the way back, we stopped for a quick hunt in our forest, and this time I got to be with Cami as my partner. Yay! Her monster form is so cute and unique. Her dark red skin makes her difficult to spot in the darkness of the forest, and her cute horns that curl around her pointed ears add just enough height to match me now. And her blue eyes seem to glow a little, and her irises don’t look like normal irises anymore. They look curved somehow. I’ve got to ask about that.
“Hey, Cami?”
“Hey, Zeana!” Cami said cheerily as she skipped along.
“Why are your irises weird?”
Cami looked at me curiously and fired back, “Why don’t you have weird irises?”
“I have weird irises!” I defended, “My eyes are like fox eyes. Now answer my question.” Cami stopped skipping and just looked at me knowingly. I bowed my head in shame and added, “Please.”
Smiling, Cami asked, “Which way are my irises bending? Left or right?”
I looked her dead in the eyes and said, “Left.”
“My irises change depending on if the moon is waxing, waning, new, or full. If my irises are fully open, it’s a full moon, and I would be at my strongest cause I could see perfectly during a full moon. Right now, they are curved to the left. Therefore it’s going to be a third-quarter moon tonight. On the new moon, my irises close shut, and I can’t see anything for the day. I blame my moon elf half. Damn, fathers don’t give me anything of worth. They just go for milk and cigarettes and never come back,” Cami explained, and I had to laugh at that.
“Ha! Okay, I can see the ups and downs of that. But I’ve never seen you take a day off. Were you training when you can’t see?” I asked.
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“Ah, that is the beauty of magic here, my young padawan,” she said in a mocking wise voice, then continued, “You know the rune for sight? I use a level-five spell with sight, mind, body, and chakra runes in combination with my third core. This lets me see for the following twenty-four hours.”
“What’s your third core?”
“Oooh, such a personal question.”
“Ah, sorry! I didn’t mean to offend.”
“Ha! It’s fine,” Cami laughed, “Just be careful asking other people that. It tends to be a personal subject.”
I nodded, “Okay, sorry. But I still want to know.”
Cami sighed, “Fine, fine. But only my third core. Got it.”
“Okay, I already know your first is dark and poison.”
“ANYWAY! My third core is dream and life chakra. Better known as restoration chakra. It puts people to sleep and heals their injuries when channeled into someone. Not including the user.”
“Why not the user?”
“Cause you have to be conscious to channel. Duh.”
“Oh, right. Forgot about that,” I said, then a rustling noise came from my right. I whirled around, ready for anything. Cami came up next to me, also ready to fight.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. A hoard of reavers jumped out from the nearby foliage and surrounded us in an instant. Their white fur was stained red with fresh blood, and tufts of fur stuck out of a few of their mouths. One wore a makeshift hat made of clay with two massive antlers attached to it. The antlers were twice the size of the tiny rodent, and it hopped forward slowly and looked up at us with its beady red eyes.
“Let’s be fwends,” the antlered reaver said as a chorus of its words left the bleeding mouths of all the rest of the reavers.
“C-C-C-Cami.”
“Y-Yeah?”
“I-I’m afraid of rabbits.”
“M-Me too.”
“Let’s … be … fwendsss,” the lead rabbit said as its voice slowly got deeper and more demonic. The Hord charged, and Cami and I began casting spells and killing the monsters as fast as possible, setting the forest ablaze with fire and poison.
A few hours later, Cami and I made it to camp, completely exhausted and covered in injuries that I couldn’t heal since I ran out of chakra for my healing core during the reaver fight. Haze looked up at us curiously and asked us what had happened. We told her she didn’t want to know and ate.
Once we finished eating, Haze clapped her hands together to get our attention, “All right! Listen up. We will be heading to the Hollow Throne tournament in the Wong empire in one week. And it is just in time. The new year has begun, which means it’s payday!”
Everyone clapped and cheered along, including me, as I asked, “I get paid?!”
“Yes, you get paid, dummy,” Cami answered, “I forget how, though?”
Haze chuckled and rolled her eyes, “Per day of training, one Lucre. Per day of work, two Lucre. And based on missions and roll within the missions.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, understanding the math behind it, “So how much did I get?”
Haze smiled and pulled a bag out from behind her, undoing the straps and pulling out six smaller bags, each labeled with our names. I spotted mine and saw it was the smallest bag, which brought my excitement down immensely. She also pulled out a small sheet of paper and began to read the contents aloud, “Our lowest earner for the year is Zeana with a wapping 617 Lucre.”
I frowned, “That’s not that bad.”
Haze chuckled again and began counting off fingers, “You officially got here one month after the new year, then you slept for three days after that. You were knocked out a few times, which lost you a total of one week. Then you split your core like a dumbass and lost a month. Then you were dumb enough to stuff three chakras into a single core, costing you another month. And you got punished for the tournament fight, which cost you another month.”
“I lost three months’ pay?!” I asked incredulously.
“Yep, but you also got work pay for building the bathhouse for so long. So you got 113 days of training pay, plus 152 days of work pay, bringing the total up to 417 Lucre. Then with your mission, you got an additional 200 for your work,” Haze explained.
My ears drooped as I listened to her explanation. So I need to try not to get knocked out during training and lose days. Otherwise, I lose money. Then to change the subject, I asked, “How much did everyone else get?”
The tension in the camp grew as everyone waited for the answer. Haze smiled, tossed my small bag of coins to me, and stood with the other five bags in her hand, announcing, “In fifth place, with 1,100 Lucre, SHIRO!” then she tossed him a bag of money which he grabbed out of the air bitterly. “In fourth place, with 1,130 Lucre, JAX! In third place, with 1,234 Lucre, SCARLET! In second place, with 1,860 Lucre, CAMI! And in first, with an impressive 2,130 Lucre, XIAO!”
“WHAT!? THAT’S BULLSHIT!” Cami exclaimed as she and Xiao got their bags, “I worked nights tending the fields to get this much money! How did he beat me!?”
“The villagers at Tian Peng were grateful for his work putting out the fires. So they sent a little bonus for him,” Haze said, and a smug smile curled Xiao’s lips.
Cami crossed her arms and pouted, “I still think I should’ve gotten first,” she said as she reached in, pulled five coins out, and gave them to Xiao, who gladly pocketed them. Everyone else begrudgingly did the same. Then Xiao looked expectantly at me.
I stuffed the bag of coins between my breasts, “I’m not giving you my money ‘cause you won.”
“You have to. It’s tradition here,” Scarlet said.
“But—”
“Just do it, shorty!” Shiro yelled.
Pouting, I pulled my coins out and opened the pouch. Each coin looked to be made of a different material. Copper, jade, silver, gold, and platinum. I blinked and asked, “Which one am I supposed to give you?”
“One of each,” Haze answered.
I gulped and pulled out each coin. One platinum, one gold, one silver, my only jade, on one copper, and I reluctantly gave them over to Xiao. I then hesitantly asked, “How much is that worth?”
“I can explain this,” Cami said enthusiastically, “Copper Lucre is worth one, jade is worth five, silver is ten, gold is twenty, and platinum is one hundred. So you handed over 136 Lucre along with the rest of us. I’ll win next year, Xiao! Mark my words!”
I quickly did the math in my head. 136 x 6 is … 816 Lucre! I looked up at Xiao as he stacked the money into towers according to the material. Then he picked them up and handed them to me. I looked at him, confused, and raised an eyebrow. Xiao chuckled and said, “I have no need for the money, so here you should have it.”
Stammering for words, I managed to say the dumbest thing I could, “A-Are you sure?”
“Yes, take it,” Xiao chuckled.
Fumbling to open my coin pouch, I placed it under his hand, and he poured the coins into it. Then I stammered for more words and managed, “Umm—Bduh—Umm— Uhh … thanks.”
Xiao chuckled again, “You are most welcome.”
“THOSE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE MINE!” Cami yelled as she tackled Xiao and shaked him vigorously by his collar.
While they argued, I counted out my money. Ten platinum, nine gold, seven silver, six jade, and seventeen copper, making my total amount of money 1,297 Lucre. Once I finished, Haze managed to pull the money-grubbing Cami off Xiao, and I quickly put all my coins into my pouch so Cami won’t steal it with the opportunity. And I had one more question pop into my head, “So, while we’re at the tournament, do we get paid?”
Haze sat back down with Cami in a headlock before answering, “Yes, but it’s just one per day. You can make more if you place bets, but you could also lose a lot of money.”
“Okay, what will happen during the tournament?”
“If I had to guess,” Haze said, then twisted her body with a slight jolt that made something pop in Cami’s neck, then continued, “I would guess teams, doubles, singles, and free for all. It’s suggested that you only choose no more than two of them to participate in, but you can go to all four. Pretty much everyone goes into the free for all cause it’s at the very end of the tournament. So most people pick between the other three.”
“Uh, master?” Cami said, slight panic in her voice, “I can’t feel anything below my neck.”
Haze placed her free hand on the back of Cami’s neck and sent chakra into her, creating another loud pop before releasing her. Cami caught herself, struggled to her feet, and popped her neck again before returning to where she initially sat.
“Okay, what will we do for the rest of the week?”
A wicked smile curled Haze’s lips, and I felt instant regret for that last question, “We’re going to train to the point you’ll want to die. Then train some more. Speaking of, let’s get back to the village so we can get started.”