34. Withdrawal
Thaseus’s eyes went wide as he stared at the ranking card.
He’d moved into fourth place. Number one and number two had swapped, with number two pulling ahead of number one. But everyone had been moved down a rank when a new challenger had appeared, pulling from number eight all the way into first in the space of a single duel.
He regretted being trapped down in the waiting area. He wanted to see that fight! He knew it couldn’t have been fair, that something must have happened to upset the balance of the tournament like this.
He sighed and put it out of his mind. It was his family’s responsibility to appeal things like that. He was certain they would.
But at the moment, all that he could do was wait for his final match of the day.
He crushed it and went home. He was preparing to bathe and receive another massage when his sister barged in.
“You must Crush Po Guah if you want to win,” she informed him. “Cripple him so that he cannot continue. If he is taken out of the routine, if he misses any fights at all, then we still have a chance. But for every fight he wins, he will pull further and further ahead.
Thaseus blinked. “What are you saying? Have you figured out how he’s cheating?”
“That is the thing. All of the elders insist that he isn’t. If you ask any silver ranker who witnessed the fight, they will say that, if anything, Tornolai was undercalling his points,” she said.
She spent several moments discussing the impossible match, but Thaseus remained unconcerned. “So we got it wrong and he’s an illusion master. It’s not so strange that one of them could—”
“His illusions aren’t illusions. They’re Dao Avatars,” she said.
Thaseus paused. “That’s not possible.”
“But it’s true. When he began splitting himself in the fight, all of the elders stood up and took notice. We took notice of those who took notice, and they all say the same thing.”
“Then he’s a cheater,” Thaseus said. “You must walk the silver path for decades before—”
“The elders say that it has nothing to do with raw power. There’s no reason that a child can’t summon an avatar except that it takes decades, sometimes centuries, of experience,” his sister explained. “They say that is what he is doing, and with all of the elders saying the same thing, who are we to gainsay them?”
Thaseus went silent, then he finished stripping and slipped into the water. “Then I’ll crush him and his avatars.”
~~~~~~
Hien Ro moaned in agony as Yara massaged the pain ointment into his bruised and beaten muscles. While he could heal quite fast as a mortal, the last match had exhausted him spiritually as well as physically, and he’d have to recover his Qi before he could work on recovering his body.
He won, but it had cost him. If the tournament’s format hadn’t changed, then he would have submitted early in the fight, but knowing that it was his last fight for the day he had pushed himself to overcome the high ranker. He had taken as much of a beating as he’d delivered, but he’d narrowly eked out a victory on points.
And now he got to feel Yara’s hands on his bare back, he reflected, even as her massage caused him pain. Worth it.
“Master showed his depths today,” she informed him.
“I know,” he said.
“Who told you?”
“I sensed it from the waiting area.”
“You could sense what he was doing?”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“I think so. When we spar, sometimes I get a feeling like that. I always thought that he was going easy on us, but it wasn’t until I tried maintaining a Qi technique like the one he uses to lower his cultivation and fight at the same time I realized how much effort he must be putting into our spars. The feeling where I’m pushing him, or where he goes all the way down to the energy gathering realm instead of fighting me in the purification realm, that’s what I felt.”
“What’s it feel like?” she asked.
“Utter calm and determination,” he said. “But I know it’s not mine, because I’m not calm, and while I’m determined about some things, I’m not determined about everything. ”
“Huh,” Yara said, and she finished her massage. He sighed, knowing that the fun part was over as the rest of the parts he could reach himself. He began to reach for the medicine and--
She touched his chest.
He looked at her.
They smiled awkwardly.
~~~~~~~
I strolled through the library. I picked up a book, studied it for a moment. I made a few notes in his notebook, then put the book back and continued walking.
I wondered what my friends were up to, but I had seen enough to know not to look too closely at the bonds of fate between them any longer. Some things should be private.
Still, I knew what I knew, and I was happy for them.
~~~~~~~
Tonilla stood before the tournament heads, those who had come forward to match her own funds after she had put up her own clan and sect’s collateral for the creation of the coliseum and the inauguration of the tournament.
And then there was Tornalai, who looked almost sheepish for a change. “Why did you assign him so many points?” she asked him at last.
“He deserved them. By the rules of the tournament, a killing blow, held back at the last moment, is worth five or six points. It says so right in the instructions,” the golden path cultivator said. “Each of his blows would have been fatal to the boy he was fighting if he had not pulled them at the final moment. I was simply counting how many times he killed his opponent in pantomime.”
She sighed, but, having walked halfway down the silver path, she knew the truth of his words. Po Guah did not truly belong in this tournament. She had known that for the start, but she had thought that the boy would show some restraint.
Instead she had to clean up this mess.
Most of the mortal audience did not truly understand what they had witnessed the day before. Even when the words “Dao Avatar” began to spread to replace the word “Illusion,” the mortals did not understand how extraordinary that was.
They had allowed children younger than twelve to skate by if their cultivation otherwise qualified them for participation, but they had magical means of verifying such things and had employed them throughout the screening process. It likewise showed when someone was older than their claimed age. Po Guah was twelve years old, that much was certain.
Nearly a century too young for a Dao avatar, let alone fifteen of them.
“You could have miscounted,” she suggested.
“I did not. I was taking my role very, very seriously,” Tornolai answered.
She slumped. “This entire tournament was his idea.”
“Then I very much want to shake his hand,” Tornolai said. “it is the most fun I’ve had in decades.”
“I thought he was planning on – it doesn’t matter. I knew he was extraordinary and hid it from many of you. For this I apologize,” she said, deciding that sunlight would be the best cleaner for this mess. “However, it is also his promised reward for which my sect, and many of yours compete. A ‘personalized technique from the same mind as the Toh Foram Siel,’ that is the reward many of our juniors were instructed to select if they won the tournament. And that is what Po Guah offered if we built this tournament from the ground up for him.”
“Why are you telling us this now?” one of the persons who hadn’t known asked.
“Because. I think that it is time to renegotiate the deal,” she said.
~~~~~~~
I emerged from the library for breakfast with my friends. They both had stupid grins on their faces, but I noticed that Hien Ro at least did not seem to be as sore from his injuries as he had been when I’d left them to roam the library that he wore on his finger.
I played as oblivious as I could, but still there was so much blushing from them.
After we had eaten, we journeyed to the coliseum together, splitting apart at the gates. However, a servant caught me before I could register my presence for the day, and I was brought into the box office which overlooked the ring.
Tonilla was there, with all of the sect leaders and several merchants. She smiled at me, but her words left me utterly disappointed.
“Master Po Guah,” she said. “I humbly request that you withdraw from the tournament.”