Rieren reached the same spot she had left the others in the nick of time. The Aetherian had arrived at the exact location the Avatar had created the giant, gold-firing tree just as she had come to a stop, albeit a little short of breath. She had to frown at the coincidence. It was almost as though the Avatar’s tree had been a gigantic signal for the Aetherian to land…
Where had it come from? Rieren had seen no meteors or anything of the sort. No stars shooting across the expanse of the sky. It wasn’t dusk, so shooting stars wouldn’t have been visible anyway, but a meteor crashing down onto the Mortal Realm would have been impossible to miss.
It had caught the attention of everyone else in the area, which included both the people Rieren had left behind and a few new additions. Namely, Amalyse and Kalvia.
Morel and his group were there as well. They nodded at Rieren, though briefly. Like her, and like everyone else in the little area, they turned back to face the monster who had descended upon them.
“You got here just in time,” Amalyse muttered.
Rieren didn’t answer. She was too busy staring at what was in the monster’s hands. It was carrying the woman who had run away in one hand, the missing tokens in its other.
“Aetherian,” the Avatar said, taking charge as he stepped forward. The light coming off the Aetherian made his ceramic mask look like burnished gold. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your arrival?”
The monster didn’t answer. It was certainly close enough to have heard, but it waited all the way until it reached the ground. Rieren tried to place the monster and where she might have seen it before. It was the exact kind of creature she had faced at the bottom of the pit in Lionshard dungeon. The Higher Aetherian she had barely fought off with her friends’ help.
It looked too similar to the one she had dealt with back then. Shining plate covering its entire body, limbs tapering to sharp points, horns jutting from its angular head with the lone blue eye. An otherworldly appearance of the sort its kind tended to boast.
“I come bearing an entreaty, mortal,” the Aetherian said. It had no visible mouth, but the sound of its voice reverberated from all around them as though the air itself had come under its control. “A desperate plea that only you can grant me.”
“Speak. What is your entreaty?”
“That you allow us all to enter this great tournament you have established.”
They all stared at the creature. Rieren was tempted to poke a finger into her ear to ensure she hadn’t misheard.
“Did… did that thing just want entry into the tournament?” someone said. The shock of the absurd request had made him forget to keep his words to himself.
“We did!” the Aetherian answered, making the speaker flinch. “Our request is not a light matter. It is a grave near-injustice. For, if you hold the right to settle your arguments in such a civilized fashion among yourselves, should you not allow all your enemies to do so as well?”
“You’re not an enemy,” Galorian said. He had stepped forward too, brandishing a short sword with a little sparks of orange light flickering at its tip. “You’re a plague. We don’t negotiate with infestations. We crush them. We burn them to ash so that they may never rise again.”
“My, what an aura of violence.” There was the hint of a smile in the Aetherian’s words. “If nothing else, you simply prove what a good idea it is to allow us to participate in displays of controlled aggression. After all, is it not avoiding unnecessary conflict that we are conducting this gathering of powers and testing of strengths?”
Galorian didn’t have an answer to that. He might have been appalled at the idea of at a monster participating in tournaments, but he understood that brazenly omitting them would lead to more widespread havoc and destruction throughout the Elderlands.
“I am afraid that this tournament has already been established to take into account the competitors we originally had in mind,” the Avatar said. “We do not have any contingencies for any newcomers.”
“Oh?” The smile in the Aetherian’s words had grown wider. “Who said anything about changing your tournament?”
He dangled the tokens he had taken from the woman. Rieren wasn’t the only one who growled at the sight. If that cursed monster had been behind the official’s sudden, inexplicable actions, then that raised even more questions.
“Thief,” Galorian said, having found a new focus for his ire. “You stole those.”
“Were you not in the process of stealing these from each other over the course of your tournament?”
“That is not the same.”
“See. Now you speak from prejudice. If I appeared before you in the guise of your fleshy kind, you would not react as such.”
“Of course, we wouldn’t. We know other humans wouldn’t wish to tear us limb from limb just because we exist.”
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“Aha! So you admit that you are allowing your biased view of what others of my kind might have done before affect your judgment. Is such bias allowable for conducting decisions of this magnitude? Remember the fallout of what could happen should you choose to exclude us. After all, is it not the same kind of exclusion that has caused all previous incidents.”
“What? I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore, monster.”
A sudden loud rustling broke through the rising argument. A strange bird constructed of twigs and leaves flew in from behind the Avatar and the group of competitors. Rieren glanced at Kalvia, whose eyes had narrowed in recognition. That was the same kind of Domain Summons she used.
The Avatar let the bird rest upon his shoulder for a moment. If there was any communication passed between him and the bird, there was no overt sign of it. Nevertheless, after a minute, the plant-bird flew off the way it had come.
“Things have changed,” the Avatar said. Rieren could see nothing of his expression, but the way he held himself said enough even without his words. There was a stiffness about him that made all his actions look mechanical, like he was following a script. “Aetherian. You have been asked to accompany us to the tournament grounds. The rest of you may follow us as well.”
The outcry that broke out at that announcement wasn’t surprising in the least. Both Kalvia and Amalyse added their voices to the general expression of displeasure. The Avatar ignored them all, simply turning around to head deeper into the tournament grounds. Rieren watched as the Aetherian followed. Both the tokens and the poor woman were still in its arms.
“This is insane,” Amalyse muttered.
“Well, there’s not much we can do about it,” Kalvia said, trying to be pragmatic. “We can only surmise the chain of reactions that led to such a decision.”
Rieren couldn’t fathom the trail of intentions and events that had led to this. Circumstances were quickly spiralling out of her sphere of control. Worse, there wasn’t much she could do about this. The invitation for the Aetherian couldn’t have come from the imperial court alone, as was proven by one of the protests.
“You can’t take a monster inside,” Galorian was saying, all but begging the Avatar to stop this madness.
“They would never have allowed this,” Olis said. Her voice held the same urgent conviction that Galorian possessed. “This is a clear breach of one of the very first agreements we came to. The Trials of Ascendance are to be insured against any and all monstrous interference.”
The Avatar didn’t look back, but he did spare one little evidence that shut them all up. “The decision was unilateral. The Aetherian has been invited by all sides.”
Hard as Rieren found that to believe, there was nothing any of them could say or do to prove otherwise. Amalyse grumbled under her breath and led the way behind the Avatar and the monster. Kalvia followed as well, muttering under her breath. It sounded like she was trying to formulate what each party in the region might have to gain from the Aetherian’s appearance.
Rieren and the rest of the group soon followed. She gripped her sword tight. Ultimately, she was going to have to put her faith in others. For now. Until she could find an opportunity to act as she needed.
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The main tournament grounds were grander than Rieren had thought. With how uninspiring and rather drab the forest had appeared from the exterior, she hadn’t thought much of the organizational capabilities of the imperial court and its followers. She was proven wrong when she finally got to see what lay waiting for those who qualified for the second round.
An enormous area had been hollowed out of the marsh in its middle. What looked like a small town had been erected in a wide circle, built on a series of stilts and wooden platforms to stay above the unstable, swampy ground.
In the centre of the circle, consisting of the largest space that was almost a league wide in radius, was a plain field. No trees, no rocks, no silty water. Nothing. Simply flat, solid, unadorned brown earth. That would serve as the battlefield for all those who were to take part in the one-on-one matchups of the second round.
The townlike area consisted of tall stands at the very edge of that wide field, forming a bulwark against anything the competitors might throw out. Those stands shaded the rest of the buildings. These included the main administrative buildings where the competition judges and officials would be residing, as well as special residences for important dignitaries.
Different pavilions here and there flew the flags emblazoned with insignias of different factions. Just a quick glance confirmed that most, if not all, the great powers of the Elderlands had gathered here. The Forborne Emperor had managed to finagle everyone to the tournament.
Even from a distance, Rieren caught sight of the twin intertwining serpents of the Stannerig clan far away. Other familiar ones included the flaming golden falcon of the Arteroth, the crossed spears of the Karlosyne, the talon of the Arraihos, the Tarciel clan’s mirror, the mountain range of the Lionshard Sect, and the red-tinged leaves of the Crimson Leaf Sect.
Rieren’s eyes were drawn to ones she hadn’t seen in this timeline, but knew from the previous one. Shackles, a paper wreath, a field of flowers, a gold-leafed, silver-barked tree, a black dog with four heads, and a few others besides.
There really were powerful people here. Competitors Rieren would need to be wary of. This tournament wasn’t supposed to be easy. She had known that from the beginning.
And now there were these monsters who might very well join…
Rieren and the rest of the competitors were met by another tournament official. The man studiously ignored his compatriot in the monster’s arms and led the competitors off to a separate field.
“Why can’t we get to see what they’re deciding to do with that monster?” Amalyse asked no one in particular.
There turned out to be no real need. The smaller field they were led to wasn’t far from the main tent of the tournament officials, which was where the Aetherian was guided to. Rieren didn’t know how good of an idea that was. For all they knew, the monster could turn out to be a trap, an attempt at assassinating the important personages attending the Trials of Ascendance.
Then again, that tent did hold some of the most powerful people in the entire empire.
Rieren’s attention was pulled away from the tent itself when she found who awaited her and the rest of her group in the field. They weren’t the only competitors here. Judging by another quick look, it felt like every single other participant had been led here to form a hodgepodge of flaring tempers and barely held-back hostility.
A dozen conversations went up at once. People greeted and rushed towards each other. Friends clasped hands on some occasions, while at others, enemies squared off, moments away from outright displays of brutality.
The air almost sparked with all the powers everyone was desperately holding back. Rieren could nearly feel the violence that was a single misplaced insult away from breaking loose.
Of course, she herself wasn’t spared an altercation.
“Well, well, well,” a loud voice said, drowning out every other nearby voice.
Rieren turning, tensing a little and then mentally berating herself for it. Essalina Arteroth had decided to show herself at last.