James had ben handed a tankard of beer, much the same as Teddy had, he raised it high, saluting Baboa and turning to the crowd in salute. He quaffed it in one and a refill was brought to him.
They looked up at the wheel again, this time there was a barely perceptible change as the tiny sliver that was the ‘Gift’ slot was removed and the rest readjusted. Baboa was watching them with sparkling eyes, the man was enervated, they could feel the energy coming off hi, he seemed to feed on the entertainment but was sharing it back out at the same time.
“And now we have to see what the ladies have in store, please step up and see what you might get!”
Lucy happened to be closer to the dais than Kyra and we didn’t look back as she stepped up.
The wheel still had plenty of options on it, some good and a lot that were questionable. She reached up and gave the wheel a hard spin, the options blurring in front of her. She stepped back and resisted the urge to hold James’ hand, although the crowd seemed friendly they felt as if they were vulnerable in front of the masses and did not want to look weak.
The rapid clacking of the pointer at the top of the wheel of fortune penetrated through the cheers of the audience. It almost vibrated off each stud until the wheel started to slow. The rhythmic clacking got slower, pointing at each of the options, they did in fact see ‘Give a Gift’ on one of the options and were glad to see the wheel keep spinning. It finally came to rest on ‘Win a riddle’.
None of the Mitchells could say that they had ever been into riddles or riddle competitions before. Fortunately as she had experienced in the temple of Hero last time she was there her recall of strange random facts and information from her previous life was now much easier. Another advantage was the essence abilities she possessed which boosted her thinking prowess along with the inherent boost from being bronze rank, this was tempered by the fact that the challenge was ‘Win a riddle’, and Baboa, who was gold rank with a gold rank mind, was smiling like a cat who got the cream.
“Well, well, well. We have an opportunity for someone to win their place through a battle of wills! The rules, the rules, you must win by either one clear riddle or by an effort worthy of earning the title of guest, I will be both judge and competitor.” He clapped his hands together then athletically leapt back to his chair, moving with superhuman ability which looked incongruous with his portly belly. He gestured to the space in front of him for Lucy to join him on the other side of the table. “Now, as the visitor you have the right to start the competition of course!”
The noise from the onlookers dropped, there were muttered whispers and a few people unhappy that there was nothing really to watch but most seemed very interested in the interchange.
“Ok, Mr Baboa, hardly my area of speciality but let us see where it goes. Let me think… Many have heard me, yet nobody has seen me. I won't speak back unless spoken to. What am I?”
“Ah, a good opening, let me think. I can see from you brother… brother-in-law? Yes my apologies, I can guess from his performance he is of the assassin class.” Teddy coughed and slightly shook his head. “Ah spoilers! No spoilers I implore! I would say that there is the repertoire of darkness and shadow there, invisibility, no but he would not be heard. That is not it… no… I would say… an Echo!”
The room erupted in cheers and table thumps as Lucy smiled and nodded at the big man. He had to hold up his hands to forestall the crowd.
“Now visitor it is my turn. My dear answer me this. What has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?”
There was a sussurance through the crowd as others discussed the answer, the sound was unnervingly blocked from Lucy so as not to give anything away. It felt like an eternity to think of the answer, she was sure she had taken far longer than Baboa but it often did feel the passing of time more when put on the spot.
She suddenly had it. “Baboa you crafty man, your afternoon has been going on now for many many years and I wish you many more before your evening. The answer is Man, when he is born he crawls on four limbs, when he is grown he walks on two and when he is in his elder years he walks with a cane.”
The crowd went wild again and Baboa thumped the arm of his chair. “Well done! Indeed may it be many more years before I am invalid! The floor is yours for your next riposte.”
Lucy thought for a moment looking at her hands. “Two men are given poisoned tea. One man drinks fast and lives, the other man drinks his slow and dies. How is this possible?”
“Ah intriguing, the easy answer, the lazy answer is to say an essence power but no that would be a riddle not worth telling…” His habit of thinking out loud was a nod to the crowd, a way to spread the entertainment further, Lucy had cottoned on to this by not just blurting the answer out to her riddle but embellishing it for the crowd. “As identified there are different types of men, essence users and normal, so are there different types of tea… I would say the answer to your riddle is the poison is in the ice in the tea, not the tea itself!”
Again, the crowd erupted at Lucy’s nod. She felt a small thrill at the power such a small gesture had in front of so many people, she had never been on stage before and this performance was new, the look on Baboa’s face said that this was what he lived for.
Baboa leapt upon the table arms wide with gusto. “Men seize it from it’s home, tear apart its flesh, drink the sweet blood, then cast its skin aside!” The crowd responded to his dramatics with fresh revelry.
“Baboa you mean to lead me astray! Talk of violence and riling your crowd, you speak of a fruit of course!” The crowd laughed along with Lucy as Baboa chortled holding his shaking belly as he hopped back down to his chair.
Keen to dial up the dramatics Lucy had an idea. She swept her arm across the air in front of her and runes streamed from her eyes to leave a straight line. “Names, give power.” She bent the runes into a circle and a rune portal appeared. “Magic to control.” She closed her fist and it disappeared. “But what is broken by naming it?”
The crowd had gone quiet, the performance enthralling them. Baboa thought in his head, eyes darting side to side a he went over the possibilities. All of a sudden his eyes went wide and he smiled.
“SILENCE!” He bellowed. The spell was broken as everyone understood. “Ha, by naming silence we break it, very good, very good. Tell me the answer to this riddle young traveller, Tear me off and scratch my head, what once was red is black instead.”
Lucy forgot herself for a moment and answered straight away. “A match! That was a good one, from the good batman back in the day…” Baboa just looked at her in slight confusion and it gave her an idea. “Baboa, for you. The less of them you have, the more one is worth?”
“Ah short but precarious. I would remember back to my early days, even with gold rank memory, the days when I barely had two coins to rub together, and rub them I would! It would take a lot to make me spend my coin and so now I can make them flow like water. I would say to you young adventurer coin is the answer to your question.”
Some of the crowd started to preemptively cheer but Lucy held up her hand. “Honoured host, I am sorry to say, though while your answer has merit it is not correct.” There was a ooh from the crowd. “The answer to my riddle is a friend. A man may be thrilled to have a hundred friends but when you find yourself with only the one true friend do you see the value.”
“Very well! A good riddle, point to you. For the win then it seems. I can start a war or end one. I can give you the strength of heroes or leave you powerless. I might be snared with a glance, but no force can compel me to stay. What am I?”
Unfortunately for Baboa he didn’t understand the history of earth, the multitude of wars throughout history that had been started for this very reason, the songs that were spread an available at the touch of a button or the films they all sat eating popcorn through. The answer was far more simple to Lucy without thinking of anything from the new world that might have confused it. “Mr Baboa, what you speak of is a powerful force, the most powerful I have ever come to discover during my studies of magical theory. The answer,” she moved to hold James’ hand, “Is love.”
At Baboa’s smile the crowd went wild. He stood and grabbed a flagon and passed it to her. “Welcome guest, speak your name and be welcome.”
“Lucy Mitchell, wife of James Mitchell.”
“Welcome! You are under my protection all the time you are under guest rights and you are free to come and see me for any matters that arise during your stay.”
Lucy took the flagon and raised it to Baboa before taking a sip, she turned to the crowd and raised the flagon again, they all saluted back and she took another drink. She went back over to stand with her family and looked back up at Baboa.
“And now, one final visitor, please come up and take your spin!”
Kyra squeezed Teddy’s hand and let go, making her any up to the wheel. She gave it a form spin and stepped back, crossing her arms. The wheel noise was familiar now and she watched where it might land. The options either side were not very interesting but the section it landed on gave each of the Mitchells a horrible feeling at the bottom of their guts. Kyra turned towards Baboa, assessing the gold ranker as he still stood by his chair.
“The lady has spun ‘Dual’!”
[If he makes a move, if he twitches I’m teleporting you back to the Serenity.] Teddy said.
[Koda’s ready to go.]
[I’ll deploy the Lechuza, she can do her best to tie him up and I’ll then re absorb her as the witch to boost my powers.]
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Baboa looked over the team who had all stiffened and subtly moved to combat ready stances. “Of course it would be unfair to dual with myself, so she will dual my bronze rank champion!”
The team relaxed slightly, Kyra not having to fight the gold ranker. The crowd parted from the rear and a huge man walked forward, he was built along similar proportions to James but not quite as big. He had a bushy moustache and his beard was sectioned and braided and came down to his mid chest. He wore huge plate armour with the gaps covered in heavy chain mail. A huge double headed axe was slung over his back, the heads poking out behind his massive shoulders. Another single headed but huge axe was slung at his belt, the handle was ornately carved and wrapped in leather at the top that also wrapped part of the head. The head was carved in sigils and wards and the engraved parts were blackened in stark contrast to the shiny metal. He had a pair of huge gauntlets tucked into his belt that thrummed with magic to anyone with the senses to see. He strode right up to where the Mitchells were standing close together. He flung his arms wide and caught them all up in a hug as Kyra moved back to the others.
“Well met Mitchells! Well met! It is joy to mine eyes to see you here before me!”
“Oof, hi Ragnar.” Kyra said weakly.
They had met the huge man in the temple of hero. He had boisterously picked up Teddy and Kyra then and carried them into the party, once they had met with Vastreed the wraith priest he had the cajoled them into staying for the party where they eventually woke up the next morning on the floor of the library.
“You have already met my champion?” Baboa asked with some confusion.
“Indeed my liege, I have met the honoured Mitchells in the divine halls of Hero, a few of their minor deeds have already been sung in those walls.”
He put them down and held them at arms length. Lucy shook herself out a little.
“What are you doing here Ragnar?” She asked.
“My god bade me go hence and adventure in his name!”
“Your god told you to get off your ass, stop getting drunk on his fancy furniture and earn your place in the church!”
“Ha just so. I attempted to cross the wasteland. A poor decision and an un-heroic death, Baboa found me clinging on, once revitalised he bade me spin his wheel. I fought his champion and bested him, throwing him down. I was invited to stay on as champion and have been making my god proud claiming victory in his name!”
Baboa interrupted. “And now my last visitor, you must fight him. My champion has Might, Earth, Forge and the Titan confluence, what might your essences be so we can set the arena?”
Kyra realised that she really was going to have to fight Ragnar and started sizing him up. “I have the Earth, Life, Mirror and Diamond confluence.”
“Ah an essence shared, this will make it much more interesting!”
Baboa clapped his hands and the wall behind him separated again to the room where Teddy had run the killer obstacle course. It was much bigger and featured an ice-hockey style arena in the middle, the floor was rocky and undulating, a ruined building on either side and scrubby plants dotted about. There was a huge scraping of chairs and benches as the crowd stood up to traipse through to stand around the glass partition around the arena.
Kyra strode onto the middle with Ragnar, she gave him a shove playfully as he stopped when she carried on to the far end.
“The rules!” Baboa spoke, it sounded as if it came from the middle of the arena so everyone could hear. “The fight will be no-holds barred. We want to see a real fight not a spar, to that end for the purpose of this competition I will guarantee the safety of all in this room. I have gold rank level assets to ensure the survival of the competitors. Our visitor must win by right of arm or make a good enough how that she earns the right of guest within these walls. Ragnar, are you ready?” The big man untucked his gauntlets and put them on then unshouldered his double headed axe and nodded. “Visitor are you ready?” Kyra bounced up and down a couple of times an rolled her head like she was cracking her neck, she summoned her diamond sword and buckler and nodded. “Then fight!”
The noise of the crowd was lost on Kyra as she dashed forward. Kyra had the advantage of sparring with James all the time, she knew that his size bellied his speed and what to expect. She wasn’t intimidated by the power of the man, the Might essence was known for its power and gods know what powerful tricks the Titan confluence would kick out but James’ essences also gave him strength beyond what his rank normally did.
The starts of fights opened many different ways. Teddy complained about being assassin class but he preferred his stealth attacks. Lucy like to bait enemies into a clever setup, James liked to lock strength for strength straight away. Kyra liked combination attacks.
She ran in and juked to go around Ragnar. When the big man turned to defend from the position she was going she had an earth spike erupt from the ground in that direction. To her annoyance the spike flowed like muddy water around the man and formed earthen armour. He somehow managed to use the formation of that armour to spin and catch her in the shoulder with his axe. It sparked and slid off her armour before digging deep into her shoulder and her arm went limp, she bit off a scream as blood sprayed his face. She rested her arm against his chest in the still moment after the impact.
“Oh Ragnar.” She said, looking apologetically at his face close up.
At the same time she used her Self Reflection power and detonated the sword in her hand that was resting on his chest. His chest plate where her hand had been caved in and split in the shape of his axe blade, then the shards of diamond exploded away from Kyra at him and hit him in his exposed face and wound. After using her power her shoulder was completely healed as if it had never happened, the only sign that it had was the tear in her armour.
He staggered backwards and she pressed her advantage. She summoned a diamond spear and chased him down. He backed up, catching the tip of her spear on the flat of his axe. He struck out at her legs with the haft even though she was pressing hard. He managed to start sliding the razor sharp blade of the axe down the haft and she wondered (is that shit vibrating?!) She knew there were weapon effects that did extra damage like that.
What Ragnar hadn’t noticed was the extra part of the combination attack. Lucky clamped onto the back of his leg. It wasn’t a normal dog bite, Lucky was a bronze rank familiar with bronze rank strength, left to it he could rip Ragnar‘s leg off. He didn’t give the dog a chance, he spun and swung the axe. Kyra recalled Lucky before it could hit and struck at his back. His second axe flew from his side, it clashed hard with the spear, taking chunks off it.
He came up swinging, the double headed axe weighing nothing in his hands. The single axe was dancing of its own accord. She was suddenly fighting two enemies. The chunks kept flying off the spear. After a fierce flurry the spear snapped, she switched styles on the fly, a defensive style that was used with short swords against multiple enemies. She managed to kick the floating axe away, it must’ve fallen outside the sphere of his influence and fell to the floor. Ragnar bulled into her, grappling her.
“Forsooth shield maiden, have you run out of tricks now?!” He said, crushing her against his chest that seemed strangely solid.
“Not yet” she whipped her head round, the divine beads in her hair gave an amount of thickness to the plait with extra braids, they gave her mana regeneration and lowered the cost of healing magic. But they were also a divine artefact, whilst they weighed nothing more than metal beads to her they struck Ragnar in the face like hammers. His grip faltered and she used another earth ability on him, an earth wall rose between his legs, hitting him square in the beans. He let go of her as he recovered.
“Songs do not get sung about such underhand play!” He moaned at her.
“Yeh well you’ll be singing soprano now for whatever you do sing.” Her voice seemed to come all around him and he looked up.
There were a dozen copies of Kyra all around him, some with sword and shield, some with the spear and some with neither.
Kyra knew her high-damage attack options were limited, most were earth based which he could obviously easily negate. She wondered if he was better than her at hand to hand and didn’t want to find out. He had taken her attacks well so far and she studied him to see how, the leg that Lucky had bitten was now a solid metal, she guessed that his chest was too from where she had hit it and then he had tried to crush her against it. She couldn’t afford to get caught again, she was running out of tricks to get away from him.
Before he has fully recover she had all her doubles run around him and start firing, there were phantom earth spikes and boulders and mirror shards flying from everywhere, he would have blocked most if they were real but a few of her mirror shards got through until he realised that none of the earth effects were real and he focused solely on blocking the mirror shards. It came as a shock then when he was hit by a double boulder and then couldn’t move his feet to dodge a pair of earth spikes coming at right angles at his torso, they both punctured his chest shallowly. When he looked down he saw the debris from where he had been hit by the boulders had been moulded around his ankles to the floor, pinning him in place. He felt the cool touch of a diamond sword on his neck.
“Yield Ragnar.” Kyra said from behind him.
“Well fought trickster, impressive, I had not managed to get many of my powers out at all! But I did manage to get one, drop your sword or mine axe may may falleth.”
She looked over her shoulder and saw the single bladed axe was hovering over her.
“No.” She said and leaned into the sword, putting increasing pressure against his neck. The axe fell, it skittered off her diamond armour, she had used her Encased power for a moments invulnerability and the axe buried itself into the ground.
Baboa was standing in front of the Ragnar, one fingertip on the tip of Kyra’s sword stopping it from going any deeper.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I declare a winner!”
While the noise of the crowd came back to her Kyra got straight to work, she melted away the earth powers she had used on Ragnar, hit him with a Life Bolt and a Life Aura to assess the damage, holding him up. He gave her a bloody tooth grin from his chest wounds.
“A good fight Ms Mitchell. But yielding is not in me unless there are innocents at stake.”
He stood under his own power, Kyra’s healing having patched up the relatively minor damage, the fight was called not because of the puncture wounds, which most bronze rankers could cope with but more because Kyra would have been able to cut his head off which was unlikely a bronze ranker could deal with, not even James.
Baboa took Kyra’s hand now she wasn’t supporting the big man and thrust it into the air. “Our winner, and new champion! What is your name guest?”
“Kyra Mitchell, wife to Teddy Mitchell.” Kyra said, copying Lucy’s parlance.
“Then you are welcome Kyra Mitchell and your are under my protection all the time you are under guest rights. Come and seek me out for any assistance you may require whilst you are on board.” He was handed a tankard of beer and he passed it on to her, she saluted him with it then took a large gulp. “All of our visitors have earned their places as guests! Let us show them a good time.”
“Congratulations Mitchells.” Yarraballah said standing close to them. “You are in! That is the hardest part done.”
Baboa joined the team and the gold ranker. “Ragnar I’m sorry to see you fall, you gave a good stint and were ever a good show. Mitchells welcome aboard, I will not apologise for the theatrics and you all gave a good showing, eat drink, enjoy yourselves. On the morrow we will talk about your desires for coming aboard. Kyra, Ragnar, as my current champion and my recent defeated you will come and drink with me at the top table, the others may join as they will but be free to mingle, we have a lot of interesting people on board. Yara I will speak to you in private later.”
The rest of the Mitchells let the gold ranker pull Kyra and Ragnar away.
“What does he want to speak to you about in private if you don’t mind my asking?” Lucy said.
“My friendship with Baboa is old, part of his keenness to have me on board is to share the resources and knowledge of the adventure society that he does not have access to for progression through gold rank, not that he is overly bothered. He has a long time to ponder it and as you can see is in no rush.”
“I see, he kind of has it all then.”
“Yes, including your sister-in-law for now.” Teddy looked at him sharply. “Don’t worry, he will let her go, but she is technically his champion for now and he will try hard to convince her to stay.”
They all looked up to the top table to see Kyra sat at Baboa’s right hand while they toasted her again. She caught their gaze and lifted her tankard and drained it, enjoying herself.
“We’ll let her have this one, we’ll remind her tomorrow that we actually have a job.”