The Fate: Book 1: Tournament Wysteria

by Ko, John

  The Princess’s Earliest Memories

  There was once a time that she was the one that was always smiling. He was the one that didn’t know how. There were other children around, but they were the closest in age. He couldn’t speak a word despite being older. She could already recite one of her grandfather’s speeches by heart.

  But he listened to her when she spoke. There weren’t many to take the words of a four-year-old seriously. She even touched him once and he didn’t start crying. But she knew better than to try it often. Instead they would just play. Hide and seek was of course their favorite. A palace was a wonderful place for such a game.

  The last time they played was the last time she played anything, at least for fun. It was her turn to hide. The spot she picked was ingenious, one she had been saving for a very long time. She knew that it may have been considered cheating—but just a little. It was an unspoken rule that the parts of the castle frequented by adults were off limits, but this room could fall either way.

  When she heard the footsteps, she became as still as she could and waited. She didn’t mean to spy, but that’s exactly what happened.

  The Princess couldn’t comprehend everything the familiar voices whispered, but she could tell that her mother was crying. That’s how she learned of what befell the King. There, hiding alone in the dark, is where she learned of the death of her grandfather and aunt.

  She ended up winning that day. He never came to find her.

  The next day, her granduncle was anointed the ninth Love to sit upon the throne. Her mother talked to her for a very long time. It was hard to understand most of what she said. She talked about things that were so big, so far away. The little Princess tried to tell her Love’s shouldn’t cry, but her mother just whispered, “My only darling, you have it wrong. A Love does not laugh. But cry? A Love may weep oceans. This, at least is allowed.” It didn’t sound very fair, so she hugged her mother. That just made her mother cry all the harder.

  She sat there in her mother’s arms, sticky in tears, her hair matted and drying into curls that clung to her face, her gown so wet and twisted it had become one with her mother’s. She had never seen her mother like this before. She was scared.

  When her mother finally spoke, she knew why she had been afraid. “I’m so sorry, my precious little darling. I will be leaving you all alone. I have to go the Temple. It is the only way. I have to take her place.”

  She didn’t understand at all.

  Finally, he came and found her. He burst in screaming, followed by the Old Man. The boy wrapped his arms around her. In her small world—in her short life, this was what shocked her most.

  He spoke for the first time, one word. “No!”

  He screamed it over and over again. Her mother told the Old Man to take him away before it was too late. But the boy needed only one word to let them know what he thought of the idea: “No!”

  She didn’t want him to go away. She didn’t want to be left alone, but all she could say was, “Yes.” Even then, she knew where her duty lay.

  The Old Man did something to make the boy fall asleep and that was the last she saw of him for many years. The one she now thought of as nothing but a Troublemaker.

  Present

  “He’s nothing but a fool. A selfish fool who thinks of nothing but himself.” she screams.

  He doesn’t know what really matters. How else could he have caused so much trouble? How else could he have earned the trust of the one she had failed to? What if she had left with him and the Old Man that day?

  She shakes the thought from her head. I’ve come too far. I’ve worked too hard. No one else can do this. I don’t want anyone else to have to try.

  At least, Wake’s stopped laughing. Even Kase stares back at her in surprise. Tears stream down her face. She wipes them away, but her sleeves are already wet with the stupid splashes from Wake’s Water.

  “I’m sorry, Princess,” Wake begins to say.

  “Don’t be!” she screams, directing the next shout at her only friend. “Why is he still standing?”

  “This is taking too long,” Kase says, trading blows with the Water Knight. “I’m going to use that …”

  “Whatever, just do it!” the Doll Princess yells, the cracks in her porcelain showing.

  Wake Avenoy leaps high into the air and crashes down in a wave between Kase and the Princess.

  The Chosen One crosses both spears high above his head and begins to whirl them faster and faster. She begins to chant the words that will heal her. It’s a special healing Tech, one that will even restore the Water Knight’s unusual damage.

  Wake Avenoy slides towards her, both swords aimed at her center. I know how your Pure Water works, she thinks. It’ll take a lot more than that to finish me.

  As the sword of Water and Ice pierce her very center, she is surrounded in the Sphere of Protection. How can this be? An attack like this shouldn’t be enough …

  “I’m sorry, Princess,” Wake tells her, staring at the ground darkened by his attack. “Splash Damage.”

  She finally understands. All those attacks against Kase were really directed at her. Those small splashes of Water were eating away at her all along.

  She wants to scream. She wants to cry, but she’s not going to do any of those things; not again, not today. She just nods at Kase to finish what he’s started. This Tech is strong enough to take out a whole team. It should be saved, but that boy needs to be taken out right now.

  Kase uses all the momentum of his whirling spears and brings them crashing down, smashing the stone platform. “Earth Splitter!” A crevice forms, cutting the plateau in half. The force of the blow knocks the center of the platform downwards, thrusting the sides of the plateau to shoot upwards. Kase Shake leaps backwards off the shaking stage, clapping his spears together. “Earth Entomb!”

  What had been the top of the platform are now two chunks of stone that float perpendicular to the ground. As his spears slam tight, the slabs of earth come together, crushing the Water Knight.

  When it’s all over, what’s left of the plateau crumbles back to the earth, she sees Wake Avenoy encased in his own Loser’s Ball. It bounces and rolls all around, finally coming to a stop near her.

  His eyes are mad with laughter and his mouth mocking. She decides once and for all she does not like him. Not one bit. “Don’t be so pleased with yourself,” she says. “You may have managed to take me out, but your teammates are still outnumbered. Even with Riser’s damage, without a Finisher, your team won’t manage much more than a scratch.”

  “That was some ride,” he says, clapping his hands together in imitation of what had just happened. “You’re right, we won’t take another one of you out. You were the only one we had to though, the only one with a Hand of Fate.” He wiggles his gauntleted hand.

  What is he talking about? She finds herself snorting in response, “Whatever, I know Kase will win this for me.”

  “I believe in my team too,” he says. “It’s up to them now.”

  The way their spheres landed, they are facing each other. His smug face is the very last thing in the whole wide world she wants to look at right now. She tries to turn away.

  “Princess, I’m sorry.” he says, suddenly quiet and serious. “Really, I wish things could have been different.”

  She can tell he speaks the truth. His concern is more frightening than his laugh. When she meets his eyes with her own, he holds her gaze. Staring into his turbulent blue eyes, she is reminded of how deep the ocean can be. “Why is your captain still in the Staging Area? What sort of trick do you have planned?”

  “There’s no trick. He hasn’t told us anything, but what we do know is … is that he met with the Glissade. That’s as much as I can say.”

  Of course! I should have guessed as much. “Is that all? Is that all they asked of him?” That’s not fair at all. Her Challenge was so much more—is so much more.

  “Yes, Princess.”

  She just looks at him,
trying not to cry. There is no way to win then. Even if Kase and the Boryeon reign victorious, Wysteria loses.

  “Princess,” he says. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  “You don’t know anything!”

  Chapter 64

  BROTHER MONSTER

  [Battlefield: Rainbow Forest]

  “So, what do you think of the Captain, now?” Riser asks, acknowledging him more than the huge, rounded mallet being swung at her head. She ducks out of the way and the largest of the Mud-Men curses. “He’s just a big letdown, isn’t he?”

  “No,” Brother Monster says.

  It’s bad enough that his feet are stuck tight in the thick sludge, but the first thing their attackers did was to encase his good hand in mud. He tried to wipe it clean right away, but it was too late. So now he wears two casts, one he set himself and another of crusty clay. He can’t move. He can’t even heal. He is pretty much useless. And the Mud-Men know it. Now, they ignore him totally, much as his partner is pretending to ignore them.

  The female Mud-Man scoops another handful of sludge into her slingshot and sends it flying towards them. As she chants, the muck transforms into a dozen wasps. Esperanza slices through them. “He’s a bad influence, though. Just look at what happened to your arm.”

  He answers her with a grunt before trying once again to free himself from the mud.

  She on the other hand, hovers there, back towards their opponents as if they weren’t even there.

  The three from the Boryeon Tribe too glide effortlessly across the muck. One of them wields a hammer with a stone head that rivals a keg. The other brandishes an axe that blots out the moon. Behind them, a girl flings mud that hardens and stings.

  “He poisoned your once cowardly mind,” Riser says, finally, turning back to face their enemy.

  She launches herself towards the one with the battle-axe. He's blocks Ehecthal, but Riser's able to lower her shoulder and bowl into him. As she is about to deliver a clean blow, his friend with the hammer appears behind her. She is forced to retreat. No matter what small advantage she gains, it is not for long enough.

  “No.” What she’s saying is not right, the Half-Orc thinks. Really, he’s more like, “Medicine,” he mumbles aloud.

  “Are you asking me for medicine?” she yells back over her shoulder. “You know that I don’t carry anything like that.”

  “No, I’m saying he’s not like poison; he’s more like medicine.” It’s true, Monster thinks. He helped cure me and I didn’t even realize I was ailing. “Watch out!” he yells, wondering again why she’s ignoring their opponents.

  “That’s a new one.” She leaps straight up to avoid another batch of stinging bullets. And then the Half-Orc notices just how annoyed their opponents have become.

  Treating them like they aren’t even here is really getting under there skin, he realizes as he watches the mud flinger cry out in frustration at her latest miss. He knows exactly how she feels. She’s good at getting under one’s skin. The thought almost makes even him laugh.

  “With all that’s been going on, I never got a chance to thank you,” she says, slicing the tip of her sword across the surface of the muck. It sprays sludge all over one of her attacker’s face. She laughs, leaping back and away. “Anyway, thank you.”

  “Sure,” he mumbles. “You’re welcome.”

  She grins at him. “It’s only been a couple days, but you’ve already lost weight.”

  He looks down, trying to decide if she’s right or not. “Well, about that—I got the kitchen to order us a whole pig. They should have started roasting it this morning.”

  “Daebak! I like your sauce best, by the way.”

  The talk of food must have been the final straw—the three from the Boryeon Village retreat and huddle up. They begin to chant in unison, “Unleash Tri-Summon: Three-headed Mud Golem!”

  A massive mound of sludge and muck grows at their feet. The mud flows upward like a thick dark geyser to form a gargantuan, misshapen man. Twisted and towering, the Golem raises its three heads and screams in anguish. The landscape surrounding them hardens, leaving only scattered puddles of mud here and there.

  The colossus of mud uproots a crystalline tree and stomps towards them. Each squelching footstep draws more and more gasps from the crowd. The Mud-Men maintain their chanting. It takes all three of them focusing together to keep that thing out. At least, they can’t attack alongside it. Maybe Riser can use that to our advantage. His hopes are dashed as the Boryeon begin sinking into the mud.

  With a final belch of muck they disappear into the ground.

  The three-headed Mud Golem screams, shrieks, and roars, each head agonizing in its own way. It shoves the tip of the tree into the mouth of its left head and begins to chew.

  The right head opens its mouth and sends a shower of crystalline splinters towards them. Riser steps forward and begins to spin in midair.

  “Perfect Defense: Roaring Rose,” she shouts out, surrounding them in a protective shell of condensed Air. Countless splinters impale themselves against the invisible barrier.

  The Golem runs straight into the invisible petals and is sent sprawling backwards. It lands with a deafening plop that sends a small tidal wave of earth and mud rushing towards them, coating their barrier with sludge.

  Now that it can see that something is there, it stands and begins to slam its middle head against the Air Petals. Through the dripping silt, the Half-Orc can see the behemoth’s three heads clearly for the first time. The left head is eyeless, with only a gigantic maw where its face should be. The right head has what he thinks is an eye and a hole the size of a child’s head for a mouth. The center holds the other eye, which opens and closes as it smashes its hardened, protruding forehead against the Rose of Air. Skulled like a battering ram, it whips his head back and forth, raining blow after blow. With each thrust, its neck grows longer and more snakelike. Soon it’s cracking like a whip of boulders, but the Roaring Rose holds.

  The Golem reaches low and wraps its filthy arms around the Roaring Rose. It grunts, groans, and cries in frustration as it tries to lift them without success. The heads stop screaming and a frightening quiet replaces the awful noises. All that can be heard are squishes and squelches as the Mud Golem feels for an opening. It finds the tip of the closed bloom and begins trying to pry it open.

  “I am not leaving you!” she yells. “You make the stupidest vow in the world and expect us to respect it, but you can’t honor another’s!” They won’t lay a hand on you, she promised moments before the match. He didn’t like the words then and even less now.

  He looks over at the Daughter, whose eyes dart back and forth looking for a way out of the deathtrap they now find themselves in. But there is no answer. The Mud Golem pries the tip of the blossom open wide enough to drive its head through.

  Their is an awful sound coming from outside. When Brother Monster finds out where it's coming from, he finds an abomination’s nightmare. The left head has begun eating the right. As it chomps down hungrily, the right continues to wail in agony.

  As it the end of its meal, Brother Monster looks up and realizes the serpent-like head has almost grown long enough to reach them. It ate one head to make the other's neck longer.

  But before the elongated head can reach them, Riser releases the Roaring Rose, which explodes in a huge blast of air, knocking them all back.

  The now two-headed Golem picks itself up, lays its remaining one eye on him and begins to charge.

  Brother Monster braces himself.

  When he opens his eyes, it’s his partner’s prone body flying towards him instead of a raging behemoth. She hits him like a lifeless sack, knocking him onto his backside.

  She moans, but her eyes do not open. Her glowing armor is nearly gone. She needs healing.

  From the forest’s edge, he hears the Mud Golem screaming.

  “Epseranza! Please, wake up!”

  She opens her eyes and tries to focus. A trickle of blood trickles down
the side of her mouth. She coughs so hard her whole body trembles.

  This is no good. She won’t last another attack in this condition. There must be something I can do. He looks down at his hand encased in hardened mud. If there was just some way I could crack this. But there is nothing hard enough around to smash it open with. Ehecthal! he thinks, only to see that the katana has landed far out of reach.

  The Mud Golem is on his feet and coming for them.

  He looks down at the girl in his arms. Her fangs are so tiny, he thinks. There’s nothing monstrous about them at all. Which reminds him of the true monster, and for once he doesn’t think of himself.

  The Golem is coming for them.

  Fangs … He opens his mouth wide and brings his mud-coated hand to his mouth. He bites down as hard as he can into the Tech-infused clay. It feels as if his fangs may just splinter, but it’s the clay that cracks instead.

  It tastes awful, but better than any dish he’s ever tried before. He does it again and again, until he can see a finger and then two. When he’s cleared enough of the foul muck to see his palm, he presses it against the girl in his arms.

  “Lay Hands!”

  The Golem is almost upon them, but Riser glows so bright that it stops to shield its eye. She floats to her feet.

  “Roaring Rose! Now!” he yells at her.

  The Daughter begins to spin.

  The Mud Golem smashes against the Roaring Rose once and then twice before blinking its giant eye and remembering just what to do.

  “I’m sorry, that’s all I could think do,” he tells her. “Now, we’re just trapped again.”

  “Trapped, huh?” Her eyes flash.

  Crouching low, she whispers, “Don’t heal me anymore.”

  The behemoth of sludgy earth begins to pry the tip of the blossom wide and once again, it whips its neck back. As it thrusts its head downwards towards them with hissing force, Riser launches herself to meet it. The Air around her booms, knocking the Half-Orc against the inside of Roaring Rose.