33. Restraint

Thaseus sighed as the servant rubbed the knots out of his back. He lay face down, his muscular form mostly exposed as the masseuse did her work. He was so tense from holding back all day, but the bleeding hearts who had organized the tournament were so strict and serious. While he could cause his opponents to miss their next fight or two due to the injuries that he inflicted, anything serious or permanent would cause him to be ejected from the tournament.

And he wouldn’t allow that to happen. There was too much on the line.

The door opened, and his sister, his uncle, and his parents came in. He moaned and closed his eyes as the massage continued, but he knew that the time for relaxation was over.

“You performed well today, Thaseus,” his father said. “The family is proud of you. It was the correct decision to hold you back from ascending to bronze to broaden your foundation, although I know that you have long chaffed at the restriction. The timing of this tournament was fortuitous for our family, that we should have you in such a perfect state to bring home the grand prize.”

“Get to the but,” he said. The masseuse moved her hands, and that wasn’t what he meant, but he didn’t correct her.

“But there is always room for improvement,” his uncle said.

“I crushed everyone I faced today,” he objected.

“They were weak. You are only ranked number three.”

“When I face numbers one and two I will crush them too,” he predicted.

“Perhaps,” his uncle agreed, rubbing his left mustache. “But every brute can be overcome by tactics. The only way to surpass a tactic designed to defeat you is to know it, and to counter it with a tactic of your own. You must own this tournament as we own the Red River Valley. You must know every opponent of note, and you must know the judges, and you must know the strategies which will lead to your victory and your enemies defeat.”

Thaseus sighed in frustration. “I take it that this lecture is going somewhere?” he asked.

“We have a dossier on the judges. We have studied their biases and their preferences for scoring their matches,” his mother said.

Thaseus looked at her and frowned, but he had to admit that knowing how to impress the judges would help him score more points. “Very well. I’ll listen to that report,” he admitted.

“And we have another dossier on your chief competition,” his sister informed him.

“I don’t care,” he said.

“You’ll listen to that one as well,” his father said sternly.

“I don’t care. I’ll learn their tactics and overcome them in battle,” Thaseus stated.

“Yes, but you’ll go into battle with a plan,” his mother said. “Thaseus, don’t be a blockhead. Use every advantage you can get.”

Thaseus sighed, but he knew that he wouldn’t be allowed to sleep until he agreed to cooperate, so he turned, wrapping the towel around him, stood.

“Fine,” he said. “The sooner we begin the sooner this farce will end.”

They waited for him to dress, as unconcerned with his modesty as he was. Then the lessons began with the dossier on the judges.

He knew them by sight already, and he cared nothing for their names except in sorting the information in his head to better understand their biases. One judge overcalled blows to the head as solid blows, while another would count anything that surpassed a certain amount of force. A third was hard to please, but awarded high points when you landed a truly telling strike. The list went on, and Thaseus soon had it memorized. There was no need for his sister to repeat the information.

Then the lessons on his opponents.

The number one ranked contestant was Lamren Sii, and she was a wind cultivator. She was as swift as she was strong, and while she lacked his strength, she overpowered her enemies with rapid blows.

Next was Lukal Lukal, an earth cultivator who hadn’t displayed any elemental techniques but who had proven to be a devastating combatant. Thaseus himself occupied the third slot, and one by one the family went down the top twenty-five contestants, listing their observed strengths and weaknesses.

“—Po Guah, from the north. Nobody knows much about him except that he might be favored by the judges since they speak the same language, but our watchers saw no signs of favoritism in today’s matches. It’s something to be on the lookout for, however. He has a strong water affinity, which he displayed today by overcoming another water elemental cultivator with her own conjured attack. He seems to enjoy playing with his opponents, but it’s likely that we’ll see him turn serious later in the tournament. Next is Koras Tona, who specializes in—”

Thaseus sighed, but listened with half of his attention as he plucked at a bunch of grapes. It was nothing that he wouldn’t learn in the opening moments of a match, except for the names of the top rankers, but those flowed in one ear and out the other. Honestly, unless they impressed him, he was unlikely to remember any of these fools.

And if they impressed him, then he’d reward them.

By crushing them.

~~~~~~~

Alone I walked through the halls of the most extensive library I’d ever seen in this short life. I stopped and picked up one of the books, leafing through it. The secrets of the Six Mountains Sect, as were all the other books.

I studied the technique described in the manual for a moment before putting it back where I found it. It was shallow, I thought. It called for vast amounts of energy to make an explosion of air which would result in devastation without flame. It was deadly and devastating, a way to destroy or debilitate an entire fortress.

And I saw three dozen ways in which it could be improved simply with a greater understanding of the principles involved.

But I hadn’t really expected depth from the Six Mountain Sect, even when I’d been a member as a child, before I remembered myself. They were what I’d had available to me then, and I’d been eager to take what they were offering. But now?

I sat down in front of the bookshelf and began to jot down the improved version of the technique in my notebook while the thoughts were fresh in my mind. Perhaps this is how I would repay them for their generosity towards me.

But such thoughts only required half my attention. The rest was focused on cultivation, as I worked on attuning myself to the spatial energies which fluctuated rapidly within the library inside the ring that Pi Phon had given me.

Once I had completed this final step, I would be satisfied with my foundation. One I had acquired a spacial affinity, I would step onto the bronze path, and I would take my cultivation forward at a sprint.

~~~~~~

The second day of the tournament began with announcements. With two thirds of the contestants having dropped out the night before, or not showing up at the final ringing of the gong, the format was changing.

A swift redecoration, and the eight rings were replaced by two. Each fight would now last twice as long except in cases of a clear victor, and the overall number of matches per day was severely reduced due to the smaller number of participants.

But the excitement grew as everyone realized that this meant that the tournament had entered a new phase.

I yawned as the official repeated the same information that was being announced in the stands to the audience. I wasn’t surprised. The other participants in the room, all fourteen of them, did seem to be. It was frustrating that I was roomed separately from Hien Ro, I would have liked to have had someone to talk with.

I noticed a boy and a girl, the boy looking like one of those who was lying about his age and the girl just shy of adulthood, playing dice in the corner. I approached and, after a pantomime conversation, managed to convince them to let me join. The rules to the game we played were the same I was familiar with from playing with Yara and Adan, and while I swiftly lost my buy-in, I won my coin back before very long.

We played until the boy was called to fight.

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He didn’t come back.

When I inquired, I was directed towards the medic’s hall. That wasn’t particularly surprising, but I was disheartened by the broken lad I found when I arrived.

His body would recover, but his spirit had been beaten down. I inquired with one of the healers what had happened, and the northern traveler answered honestly. His opponent had played with him, making him believe he had a chance by allowing him to strike minor blows in exchange for serious ones which had driven up their points. The boy had fought the full duration, believing that if he tried just a little bit harder he could win the match.

The crowd had cheered him on, right up until the moment he had been knocked unconscious in the final thirty seconds of the fight.

I wished I could give him some encouragement, some balm to the wound that he had just suffered, but we didn’t speak the same language. I patted his shoulder and passed him one page of my notebook instead.

Hopefully the diagrams inside the folded paper would make some sense to him.

I asked for and received the name of the opponent who had done this to the boy.

Thaseus.

I would remember the name.

My turn to fight came later than I was initially expecting due to the modified format of the tournament, and I decided that, perhaps, it was time to stop fighting at my opponent’s level and start fighting at my own.

~~~~~~

“Hello. Yara, right?”

Yara turned to the familiar trio who were standing behind her in the stands. “You are the three who came to the mountain.”

“That’s right,” said the boy in blue and silver. “I’m Farun, and this is Arjun and Lahri.”

“You dropped out,” she said.

“Yes. We all did, at all about the same time,” Farun admitted.

Arjun stiffened but said nothing at his friend’s words.

“Master Po Guah said that it’s wise to respect your limits. Earlier, there was a boy who was pushed beyond them. It was so sad to watch, but the crowd kept cheering him on and he kept finding the strength to stand back up long after he should have lain down and given in,” she said, shaking her head in sorrow.

“Yes. We were watching,” Lahri said. “We just happened to see you over here. We were sitting over there before, and when we spotted you we thought we could come and cheer on Master Po Guah together.”

“I think he’d like that,” Yara agreed.

The four teenagers sat together, drinking from bottles that they’d brought with them. That Arjun’s smelled of something stronger than juice nobody commented on.

Little Bug’s name was called, along with one of the remaining contestants towards the bottom of the ranking. Their friend’s opponent was an older teen, and he had a determined expression that was easy to make out even from the stands. The crowd cheered as their names were announced, but not nearly so loud as they’d cheered when Thaseus’s name had been called earlier.

They perked up with interest when Tornolai was announced as the judge. Despite the excitement that he’d caused when he’d arrived and declared himself one of the judges, the golden path cultivator had only judged two matches so far. While the other judges were all known quantities, Tornolai remained unknown and unknowable.

His voice filled the coliseum as he called the battle to begin before the bell actually rang.

~~~~~~

Pi Phon perked up as he usually did whenever Little Bug was in the ring, but he wasn’t expecting too much from the battle. The opponent was low ranked, and although Little Bug had a habit of fighting to his opponent’s ability and putting on a good show, such displays weren’t going to win him the tournament.

He didn’t think that the boy even cared about that.

“Would you like to place a bet with me?” Tonilla asked.

“Why? We both know that Po Guah will win,” he said.

“Yes, but by how much?” she inquired. “I predict he will win by less than twenty points. If he wins by more than twenty, then I shall allow you a night to actually rest tonight.”

Pi Phon looked at her in surprise. “How generous. I accept.”

~~~~~~

Polkluk swallowed as he faced off against the higher ranked boy. While the boy was the same height as him, he looked younger. Po Guah was his name, and he’d been consistently in the top ten on every report card that Polkluk had seen.

The boy took his position in the other side of the ring. He bowed to Polkluk, a northern tradition, but a polite one, and one that Polkluk found himself returning awkwardly. It wasn’t anything personal, after all. Polkluk didn’t expect to win, but if he could place, then he could leverage the prestige later, once he had ascended to the bronze path.

It was the same hope that all of the other middle-of-the-pack runners were holding.

So Polkluk didn’t mind that he was probably about to lose, he just wanted to score a few points.

At least he didn’t have to worry too much about taking an injury; he had asked around and even though Po Guah was ranked highly he’d never hurt any of his opponents. Even the duels he’d fought to incapacitation had resulted in the opponent limping away after spending a moment to recover.

Then the loud mouthed judge shouted “Begin!” and the opponent vanished.

“Three points!” the judge announced immediately, and Polkluk blinked in surprise. What? He turned to look at the judge to try to understand what had just happened, and was surprised to see a fist an inch away from his face when he turned his head.

“Oh,” he said.

“Fight me with everything,” the boy said. “I fight everything too.”

“Yes,” Polkluk agreed, and he turned, and he began an offensive. His fists flashed, his elbows struck, his knees and kicks were like lightning.

But his opponent met every attack with a block, and every opening was exploited. In their furious exchange, Polkluk lost himself. This was a good fight, he thought. His opponent was stronger than him, but if he could just get in one lucky--

The other boy split in two, one version of himself going left and the other going right. An illusion? Was that possible in the foundation realm? Polkluk knew that one of the boys must be fake, and he chose to block the left one’s attack. He grinned as the fist connected against his palm. He’d picked the right one, and the--

He was on the ground, stunned. What had happened? He replayed it in his mind, and he saw how the illusion had struck him from the side.

“Five points!” the judge called.

“You stand?” his opponent asked.

Polkluk groaned and forced himself to his feet. He’d picked the wrong illusion. In a real fight, he’d be dead, but this was just a tourney, so he could afford to make mistakes like this. It didn’t really cost him anything but a rung bell, since it didn’t really matter if he fed points to the higher ranked boy.

“I’m okay, I can continue,” he told the judge.

“I know,” the judge said. “They’re both real. Don’t try to pick.”

Polkluk frowned at the nonsensical words, and his opponent split in two again. The illusion on the left came at Polkluk first, and it was real. Polkluk blinked in surprise and fought it, ignoring the second illusion completely until--

He was on the ground again. He replayed what had just happened.

He hadn’t been struck by the version of Po Guah he’d been fighting. He’d been struck by the illusion. But that was--

“Two times more,” the boy said, and he split from two illusions into eight. “Fight. I go slow. We fight hard.”

Polkluk stood. He tried to figure out which of the illusions was real, and he realized that he couldn’t take the risk that any of them were fake. He had to treat them all like they were real, so he did.

And so, outnumbered in a one on one match, Polkluk fought against eight Little Bugs and held his own.

For thirty seconds.

The blow connected to his sternum, sending him flying back towards the edge of the ring. He spent a moment on the sand gathering his wits.

“They’re all real,” he whispered. “How?”

“Stand and fight,” Po Guah said. “More to test.”

Polkluk stood. At least he wasn’t seriously hurt, he reflected. And it didn’t really matter if he fed his opponent points, since there was no way he’d be winning the tournament anyway. He grinned.

“Fighting you is like fighting my own shadow,” he said. “But that’s fine. I don’t plan to win, I just want to score one point. If I score one point, I’ll declare myself a victor even if the world calls me a loser.”

“Yes. But not go easy,” Little bug said in the pidgin language of the south. He suddenly split once more, and Polkluk found himself fighting against sixteen opponents in a one on one duel.

He never did score the point.

But he acquitted himself well, and in the end, he told himself, that was all that truly mattered.

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