by Alston Sleet
At one point a female marked with a blue painted circle on her leather chest piece challenged another female with a similar blue painted circle on her chest piece. The younger sister (Daughter? Niece? I’m guessing sister) taunted her older sibling the whole way down to the dirt pit. The older sister did not in any way look amused, neither did the troop she had been leading, to be truthful. I’m guessing the female fights determine who gets to lead the teams, given her behavior I doubt that she would be leading those men effectively even if she won.
When the two sisters fought, it was horrible. At one point the older sister broke the younger sisters arm, then proceeded to start rolling the limb up like a crunchy fruit roll up. Red flavor. Once the palm touched her shoulder, the other arm held under her squirming body, her sisters knee sitting between her shoulder blades, the younger sister snapped her head around and tried to bite into her siblings lower leg. At this point, the fight was about to devolve into a free for all bloodbath when the Chief Lady shouted something at the two fighters, and they seemed to come back to their senses.
The older sister took the win, and the younger took a seat with a hefty dose of some kind of healing (or numbing) potion. Given the disgusted look on her face, either way, the drink was nasty tasting. I just wanted a sample of it. The looks passed between the two did not convey any love. I’m thinking that this was some sibling rivalry gone wrong. But then, that could just all be headcanon for me. I couldn’t understand a word these people were saying. I was reading between the lines pretty heavily, and the lines consisted of headbutting and face paint, so I took it with a grain of salt.
The fights were also interspersed with demonstrations of dances by the youngest of the tribe, as well as smoked meat. The tribe looked to have decided to turn the entire day into a fair-like atmosphere. The Chief and Lady Lizard didn’t fight until the rest of the clan had worked out their differences. After the chief had called out the same phrase she had used before, though this time with no new challengers coming forward, she turned to Lady Lizard and said some kind of ritual expression.
Lady Lizard straightened up and then closed her eyes and recited some phrase while her whole body stretched toward the sky, her tail stretching taught behind her. After her spoken word performance, she stomped her feet as she shuffle-danced down to the dirt fighting area. Her mother matched her stomps and shuffled down to the cleared dirt area as well. The drums picked up in a solid beat, and then they then proceeded to…dance fight, is the best way I could explain it.
Given the horrific claw and fang fight from the females before, I had been expecting these two to rip each other to shreds in a display of death and danger. The dance-fight was utterly captivating to everyone else, but mostly it was boring to me. It wasn’t until they had been dancing and thumping along for minutes that I started to understand the importance of the focused looks they had. Little wisps of fog seemed to raise themselves from the ground at their feet then flash across the distance at each other. The wisps broke up as they came close to the other dancer. The flashes of faces and ghostly claws that formed from the fog, along with the shudder and looks of exhaustion from the dancers, said there was more going on here then I was aware of.
Without warning, Lady Lizard whipped her arm out in her mother's direction, and a green bolt of lightning flashed between them and into the ground. She was obviously trying not to hurt the older female, but threatening was definitely allowed. The Chief returned the threat with a sharp stomp during her dance rhythm which chucked up a plume of dirt and a rock spike in her daughter's path. Lady Lizard continued her dance without missing a beat, even incorporating the new stone spike with a twirl, stomping onto the ground as she passed to thrust a similar spike of stone in retaliation. The Lady Lizard’s stone spike was not as well aimed, nor as large, but she followed it up with a gust of wind that forced the Chief to stumble as she dodged the rock. The older females face had mostly remained relaxed, even as [Gertara’s Lightning] had to have been a surprise, but the stone spike/wind burst combo threw her off her game.
The dancing spell fight continued with bolts of mana which were aimed at the ground between the opponent's feet, shield spells which blocked drops of fire which had been gently lobbed in the direction of dance, and even a spell which caused a strange shudder to rush across the ground in a wave. Lady Lizard had started the dance less sure of herself, the Chief being older and more experienced. Lady Lizard’s use of the green lightning left her opponent rattled. Her endurance and agility while dancing, combined with her ability to release more spells, had her winning hands down. The Chief though tried to go out with a bang, her last move was a jumping twisting thing that left her hands clapping together with a literal concussive wave of sound. Lady Lizard took the blast head-on with an aggressive flash of a magical shield and followed by a wave of mana of her own, her concussive clap being the result of her tail slamming into the ground.
The silence of the drums and the shocked halt of the dancers was short lived. The troop quickly started hissing and cheering. Lady Lizard was saying something which had Shortstop standing behind her with his spear and the old Chief looking both reluctant and proud. Both women were helped back to their sides of the firepit, their breathing coming in gasps. Lady Lizard, now promoted to the master of ceremonies (and probably the tribe) performed some kind of speech and then smiled as a group of younger males started handing out small gourds of a drink.
The music and performances continued into the rest of the night, but it was clear the Lady Lizard and Shortstop were now in charge. The old chief didn’t seem to be too upset about the entire thing, she sat down next to Lady Lizard and chatted with her in a good-natured way while the festivities continued.
I was having a hard time watching the rest of the proceeding since Romeo had decided after the show of Shortstop’s acceptance, that he was going to get his place in Lady Lizard’s heart back. His idea?
He came to visit me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Memory Dump
The sound of the magically levitating metal pole slamming against the side of Romeo’s face echoed loudly throughout the challenge room. The real surprise was how quickly the lizard honor guard was able to recover and continue through the maze of moving obstacles.
I had been distracted by the end of the dance fight between the two ladies, so I had missed Romeo’s initial approach, but I recognized him the moment he entered my domain. I’m sure an anthropologist would be able to gain all kinds of insights from the dance, the formalisms, why they did things the way they did and half a dozen things I would never even think about. That being said, it was mostly just a fun dance-fight for me. Romeo in my challenges was going to be far more fun. His goal was made clear the moment he started marching through the vestibule. He was planning to tear through some challenges, and he was not taking the same slow pace of the other lizard challengers.
He avoided the magic side and turned toward the physical trials. I wasn’t sure if his choice was based on knowledge of the magic trials. I hadn’t seen him discussing the trials with Shortstop or Lady Lizard, but either way, his decision was a smart one. I wasn’t sure if someone untrained would be capable of challenging the first magic arena without the [Sense Mana] skill. Maybe with some of the manastone dust. I knew that sapients were able to sense large amounts of mana when close to it, but that’s not the same thing as detecting relative mana concentrations while inside a deluge of dungeon mana.
His travel through the first agility challenge was quick, it had never been intended to be a lengthy trial, it was only the ultra-careful methods of the kobolds which had retarded their progress. I had honestly expected the duo to abandon that method after just a few challenges, but when Shortstop had done, so Lady Lizard chewed him a new one.
Romeo had no such qualms.
He practically ran through my first agility challenge, snagging the coins off the pedestal almost in passing. Once the achievement clicked over, he made an angry hissing noise and stomped h
is tail a few times. He continued around through the hall of champions and quickly finished my second challenge, though not as fast as he did the first. I took a bit of joy in the fact that he solved it the way I had intended instead of scooting on his butt as Lady Lizard had. Then again, Romeo seemed a bit more straightforward than the other two.
The third agility trial was only slightly more complicated, a long series of hallways of pitfalls into spikes similar to challenge one, but the walls had stationary and moving metal poles. It was more than just a slight difficulty increase when compared to the second challenge. Each challenge should have a significant increase in difficulty, and this one fit the bill nicely. I had considered adding blades, but I figured that making the moving poles still usable as platforms to hang on was a nice touch. At one part of the trial the hallway takes a turn and along the whole last third of the trial was moving and stationary poles over a pit with spikes. That last part left you with no safe ground to land on except for at the pedestal.
Romeo took a couple smacks before he figured out the timing, but he made it to the end. Apparently, platformer video games were not popular in this world. Who knew? As a present for him being the first to complete my agility trial, I decided he would get a chance to try out my experimental skill stone. When the marble of stone plunked onto the pedestal as he touched down from the final swinging jump, he cocked his lizard head at an odd angle. He barely hesitated before he snagged the stone.
My new experiment with this stone was two-fold. First I put a delayed bundle of mana wrapped around the rock which should act to trigger it after it is picked up. The delayed mana was easy enough to create, but having it transported to the pedestal along with the stone was the tricky bit. In testing, it repeatedly failed until I had the idea of tying a small tail of mana onto an inert part of the stone's surface. I guessed that while the shell of mana wouldn’t last for long, maybe a couple days or so, it wouldn’t matter since picking up the stone would trigger the spell itself.
When Romeo picked up the stone the spell triggered and caused the single-use enchantment on the marble of stone to trigger. That part of the experiment was a rousing success. Now comes the tricky part. The second experiment was far more difficult. It was a language stone. I knew that a spell could allow someone to speak and read a language, I was living (inanimate?) proof of it. But that spell worked in an entirely different way, the spell acted like a translator, my skill stones dumped memories and ideas into someone's head.
I had enough memories and impressions from Jorgen and the deserters to teach Common, or at least what I thought of as ‘Common.’ It was more of a trade language, it was an actual language instead of just a pidgin, but it was a very sparse language, very direct. Only Jorgen actually thought in the language. The humans had their own language, though only Tres was actually any good at it, and Jorgen spoke Dwarven as well. Why he and the rest of the dwarves in the fortress only used Common probably had to do with being so close to the human kingdom, that was the only guess I really had. That or the mage had been extra tricky and had used dwarven ‘Common’ to protect against his presumably human foes. It was a distinct possibility given the tricky feel to the mage's containment enchantments. But then, why would the deserters speak it? As much as I had their memories, I didn’t have their whole lives, just concepts combined with brief bursts of far sharper experiences.
I would figure things out in time. I had nothing but time.
If this worked, then Romeo would be able to speak Common, or at least work things out. I wasn’t sure how well it would work, but this was a perfect test bed. When his hand landed on the stone, and the spell triggered I had expected that Romeo would pause and stare off into space like the Lady Lizard before him. Instead, Romeo collapsed instantly and went into full body seizures. His jerking body cracked against the stone repeatedly as he experienced almost twenty years of memories in the space of seconds. The process was violent, dangerous, and I was still wondering if it would work.
Note to self: squishy sapients don’t deal well with memory dumps. Maybe I could try and stretch out the time that they get the memories?
Eventually, his grand mal seizure calmed down, and Romeo stared blankly at the ceiling while taking deep breaths. When his eyes started to focus again, he rolled over in a flop then crawled onto his hands and knees. A few deep breaths while hunched over had him gathering himself and standing. His movements from there were more like those of an old man then the actions of the agile guard I remembered. I don’t think he broke anything, but he would definitely be sore and perhaps bruised.
I was wondering if he was going to try my fourth agility challenge. I can’t imagine with his current staggered movements he would be able to jump from the moving platforms I had set up with the moving blades, poles, and ceiling rings. It would have been difficult for someone in top shape, let alone someone who just tried to beat the ground to death with the back of their head as he did.
My guess was correct since when Romeo reached the vestibule, he spent a few moments looking between the challenge hall and the exit. I could see the internal debate going on; another one of the challenges or should I give up now? His eventual decision was to continue, but he avoided the agility door. His next choice must have been at random, but he entered the melee challenges. This was actually a great choice. I bet he could easily handle the first couple challenges of any category even in his current shape, but he had explicitly trained for guard duty so combat would be a specialty.
His entrance into the copper melee challenge was slower and more careful than when he entered the agility challenge. This told me that he had in fact gotten some kind of information from either Shortstop or Lady Lizard. When he noticed the targets and swords on the dummies, he seemed to have figured out the challenge very quickly. I was kind of curious what his plan was for this challenge considering he hadn’t brought a weapon, he hadn’t even brought the back pouch that Lady Lizard seemed to favor. The answer was some kind of bare claw attack. He swiped at one target, dropping into a crouch that was far easier for him to maintain because of his counterbalancing tail than it would be for a human, while the blade spun past his head. Not the easiest way to solve the problem but it worked for him. At one point he even did a tailspin attack thing, the loud smack of his thick tail slamming into the target was drowned out by the grating spinning dummy.
The two copper coins when he completed the trial were given more than a cursory examination, but in the end, he decided to take the coins and continue. Narrowing his eyes when he reached the vestibule, he glared at my exit as if it had personally insulted him. After a snort and a curse - in Common! - he returned to the challenge hall.
When he stepped into my melee challenge again, I was practically vibrating in excitement. This would be the first challenge which would have a monster! Well, it was not that dangerous of course, but it would be more than a dummy with a blade.
When he reached the arena room with the pedestal in the center, the door directly across from him, he slowed in consideration. The stand had a single large gem on the top which was softly glowing. When he noticed the door behind him was closed he appeared to be rethinking his plan. It was too late though, he had wandered into my parlor and as the spider said, welcome!
Silent insane cackling aside, it wasn’t much of a challenge. It was just the tin challenge. When Romeo finally got up the nerve to examine the glowing gem, his touch triggered the door to open. The little green slime bounced and hopped out, slowly shuffling its way in his direction. I was still chuckling to myself since while I doubted this little slimeball would be a real threat to Romeo, he wouldn’t be completing this challenge without injury. The green slime was weak, slow, and could be crushed with a casual smack…but its body was acidic, and Romeo had failed to bring a weapon.
I watched his face, and I knew the moment he had realized his mistake. With his protruding jaw, the facepalm gesture couldn’t be natural for his species as it was for humans, but the Kobold equivalent was a
pparently to cover the eyes and look upwards. Romeo glanced around as if to try and find a weapon, but he eventually just got up his courage and used the side of his tail in a swatting motion to slam the slime against the wall. While he won that round, the gritted teeth and slight smoke rising from his tail said how unpleasant it was. Passing through the monsters doorway, he continued to the prize area and exit.
He only gained two coins this time around, but he seemed to be pleased by that anyways. I was expecting him to bail out after his last win. The patch on his tail was almost entirely void of scales by this point, but he surprised me by continuing around to try again. I wonder if he was trying to punish himself here? Either way, the bronze trial will be interesting. The arena would be the same, but his opponent was going to be a surprise.
When he noticed the room looked the same as last time, he stopped and cursed again, this time in Kobold instead of Common, but he approached the pedestal. When the door opened, I was fixated on his face, wondering about his reaction. Would he let this monster win? Would he overcome his natural reticence and fight? What kind of brawl would we see?
The response was nothing like what I expected. The wild kobold, hunched over and practically slavering, started forward, but Romeo instantly charged him with a wild yell. The feral kobold was entirely caught off balance and took the brunt of Romeo’s claws directly to his face. The fight was long, drawn out, and insanely brutal. The challenger's initial attack blinded my monster on his left side, which didn’t hinder him as much as I would have expected, but it was the deciding factor in the fight. While Romeo took a few clawings and bites while dodging, he spent most of the time clawing and kicking and even tail slapping his opponent. When my monster overbalanced in a lunge, Romeo ended the fight by snapping his jaw around my monsters shoulder. The wild Kobold ended his fight flailing around while trying to get his claws into Romeo, his face unable to turn and bite his opponent. Once Romeo had a hold, he just held the wild monster's claws away and let the blood loss do the work.