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The Hero
Chapter Three
The next day dawned anew, bright and blinding. Before the sun had even managed to rise a quarter of the way up the sky, the streets were filled with the sounds of so many criers, stamping hooves and armors clinking. Merchants were hollering out their wares, and there was a boisterous laughter and banter of so many fighters making their way to the center of the city—the Coliseum. Flags and banners streamed from above in all directions, so many splashes of color and trumpets sounded all around Dulle.
The day of the tournament had finally arrived. Throngs of people packed into the streets, all jostling to space as they hurried to get seats in the Coliseum, while the lesser fighters struggled to the entrance gate for Duelers. The Noble fighters, with all their entourages and pomp, hogged up a lot of the street as they too made their way to the entrance gate.
Mokuba was dragging Seto so fast that the latter was going to trip over him if the former wasn't careful. "Excuse me! Coming through! Let us pass, please!" Mokuba slipped in and out of the crowd with more ease than the tall boy did. It didn't take long before Seto realized that he had lost him.
He stopped, scanning the crowd for the little boy, but he was nowhere in sight. And he was so small that there was no way he could be properly seen in the tangled mass of bodies that were crowding the street. Seto gripped his spear and glanced around. Without Mokuba, he wouldn't know where exactly to go. The little boy had said this morning, "We've got to get in somehow. It's the Tournament day and they're not so nice to latecomers and they raise the entrance fee like crazy. So I've got an idea. I can sneak you in through a friend of mine at the gate. It won't cost us a cent! Just stick with me and you'll be okay!"
He was a very courageous little boy, he had to give him that. But now what was he supposed to do? He scanned the crowd again, deciding that if he couldn't find him, he'll just go to the entrance gate himself to look for him there.
As he glanced around, though, he caught a flash of deep purple eyes of nearly manic intensity. He stopped. They came from somewhere in the shadows. Glancing to it, it wasn't there anymore—but he was sure it had been a young man wit tanned skin and a fringe of golden bangs over his eyes. He looked around again, and caught the same eyes—but now the face was smirking at him. It was a smirk of a wild animal.
Seto frowned. Someone was circling him. He took a step forward, and saw someone directly in front of him. It was a tall woman with long white robes and a golden necklace around her neck. She was frowning deeply at him. He knew who she was.
The Oracle… he frowned.
"The white dragon…" she murmured, frowning at him.
"What do you want from me?" Seto asked, on guard.
Her frown deepened. "You are a danger to the Emperor. You would do well to be cautious—I've spoken to him of you. He will be looking out for you."
A smirk curled at Seto's mouth. "Hm… If you can see the future, Oracle—then you already know that I won't be succumbing to His Majesty's threats. I'm here to see the Emperor and finish this once and for all. You can go and tell him that if you want. I don't care. It'll get there no matter what."
He knew, for all the Oracle's 'neutrality', she would never do such a thing as tell the Emperor that. That would mean that she actually knew who he was. The Emperor would be then able to pick him out from the rest before the due time. That is not acceptable as it could change the future dramatically, and she was not allowed to cause such a thing. She set her mouth to a line instead. She had given him the choice, and he had made the one she had expected him to all along. "So be it."
"Seto!"
He looked up and saw Mokuba running to him. "Where did you go? I got worried!"
Seto stared at him and looked back up at the Oracle. But she was no longer there. He frowned. The Oracle stepped down to warn me…? It must be something serious. Her loyalty usually lies to the Emperor though she's supposedly neutral.
"Niisama, are you all right?" Mokuba asked at his silence. "You're not getting cold feet, are you?"
Seto twitched at that. "No, of course not. You shouldn't have run off."
"Sorry, I thought you were right behind me…" Mokuba looked a tad sheepish. "Come with me! I found my friend. And you won't believe all the Duelers that came in today! I've never seen so many at one time!"
The two of them wove through the crowd with difficulty, avoiding the armor bearers and horses, but finally they had made it to the entrance gates of for the Duelers. Unlike the main gate for the audience, which was large and wooden on the South side, the Duelers' gate was burnished gold rails, flanked by guards. There were three Duelers' gates, set in the North, East and West sides of the Coliseum. Seto and Mokuba arrived at the West gate, and Mokuba approached a tall centurion nearby.
"Isono!" he cried, waving to him. "Over here!"
The centurion spotted him and laughed. "You found him?"
"Yeah, I did," Mokuba grinned, going up to him with Seto in tow. "I lost him in the crowd."
"Don't blame ya—it's an awful crowd we've got this time around, because the Emperor's gonna be here and all," Isono looked weary. "You know how it is. And all these new Duelers all complaining about their armors and the slowness of it all—they've got to be pampered most of them. I reckon someone ought to whup them a few times out there in the ring to learn them."
"My niisama will!" Mokuba said confidently. "I'm sure he will!"
Isono now turned his gaze to Seto, who stared impassively back. "Heh…you're one of them young ones," he said. "Good to start young, says I, but dying early is another thing…"
What a strange centurion, Seto raised an eyebrow at him.
"A silent type, eh?" Isono patted him hard on the back with a metal-covered hand, and Seto glared malevolently at him but the man didn't seem to mind. "No matter—you'll be a talker soon, like the rest of them, once you get into a battle in the Coliseum. Nothing in the Empire like it!" He then stared. "Boy, you're as thin as whistle. Is that all the armor you've got?"
"We've got him the breastplate and the gauntlets and stuff…" Mokuba supplied. "And a shield."
"At least I'll give you the shoulder guards," Isono said with a grin. "Some Duelers left spares behind. You'll need them. One of them, that Otogi prince or something or the other—likes sending his opponents sprawling."
Mokuba grinned at Seto as Isono led them through the gates, completely abandoning his post. Seto stared. Is that really all right? He looked at Mokuba in askance, and Mokuba just laughed and scratched the back of his head. "Ah…he does that."
"How did you get him to let us in?" Seto raised an eyebrow. "What did you tell him?"
"Oh, I tipped him off on how to bet," Mokuba grinned. "Everyone bets. I just told him that the lucky sign of the day was the Dragon and you had a crest of one. Mind you, there are a lot of them with crests like that, but Isono took the tip anyway. Besides, I told him that you're a prince from one of the provinces so you've got a good shot."
"What?"
"Hey, it got us in, right?" Mokuba grinned.
Seto raised his eyes to vaulted ceiling. The madness doesn't end. What did I get myself into?
Isono came clomping back on his metal boots with some shoulder armor of steel, just a few shades off Seto's armor and headdress. As Mokuba helped him put them on, Isono said, "There now! You look ready. Hang on—you don't have a banner on your spear. Can't go out into the presentation without one."
And as though on cue, a girl with blonde hair came running up to Mokuba. "Mokuba! I've got the banner you asked for!"
"Hey, Rebecca!" Mokuba grinned. "Just in time!"
"I thought I wasn't going to make it!" she said. "But, brilliant as I am, I did. It wasn't an easy banner to make, either…" And she unfurled it for them.
For the whole time that Seto had been there, he had been feeling increasingly irritated at how people seemed to be clumping around him and dolling him up as a Dueler when before he didn't need any extravagance, but at the first sight of the banner, he decided that this was something good indeed.
Rebecca had indeed done a brilliant job—it was blue and white, fluttering in the wind. The crest matched his ring precisely, and the dragon looked magnificent, rising upward with its great wings.
"Do you like it?" Rebecca asked, grinning. "I used this bluish silver thread for your dragon. It helps it stand out in the cloth."
Seto said nothing as he reached out and took it, staring at it with a strange look in his eyes. He'd never had a banner before, and for some reason, having one now seemed to prove more than ever that he had made it as far as the Coliseum. It was his roadmark—he was about to get to his goal.
He looked at Rebecca and nodded. Mokuba grinned at the girl and said, "Thanks a lot, Rebecca! It's great!" and he hurried to tie it onto the spear.
"I'll leave you all now—I'm going to the stands. It's going to be terrifically bloody out there! Good luck!" The girl grinned and ran off.
Seto looked at his banner. It's not luck. I don't need luck. It's not a matter of chance. It's a matter of getting there with no other choice but to do so.
Without warning, there was a triumphant burst from the trumpets on the Coliseum grounds. They blew once and then twice—and the crowds erupted into cheers. The Tournament was beginning. Seto and Mokuba looked outside the rail gate that led into the Coliseum ground, and saw that millions of shining confetti of various colors was being let loose into the air, falling like multicolored snow down into the arena ground.
A hundred thousand-strong crowd was cheering madly, their roars and stamps enough to shake the inner sanctum where the Duelers waited anxiously—some astride horses, some on foot—but all gazing into the Coliseum with anticipation in their eyes, heads and banners held high. Murmuring rose among the fighters, which was gathering like a rolling wave as the trumpets sounded a third time. And slowly, the gates swung open, allowing them to enter the Coliseum ground for the first part—the presentation of fighters. The fighters within erupted into roars and cheers, Duelers and pages alike.
"There we go!" Isono said triumphantly. He pushed Mokuba and Seto on as the Duelers began to move out. "Hurry! Go on! Taste your first breath of fame! This is as big as it gets!"
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