Golden Sun Redux – Tolbi Chapter
Part Five: A Gallant's Tale
Babi had collapsed in his chair -though in reality it was more like the throne of Tolbi than anything so minor as a chair- and was now studying Isaac and Ivan intently. His aide, Iodem, was rushing about, restoring order to the shaken palace and learning precisely how much chaos there had been during Babi's disappearance. Apparently there had been quite a lot.
"Not Lemurians, yet users of Psynergy. Great warriors, yet mere boys. Who are you, Isaac of Vale and Ivan of Kalay?" he asked, but it might have been rhetorical.
"Adepts," Isaac replied. It couldn't hurt to tell more if Babi already knew what Psynergy was. "I'm a Venus Adept, tied to the power of the earth, and Ivan's a Jupiter Adept, aligned with air."
Babi nodded. "Perhaps, then, they were all connected to the water…" He was muttering to himself, but Ivan decided to be helpful.
"Mercury. Mia is a Mercury Adept," he added.
"Healing powers too?"
"The best I've ever seen," said Ivan, thinking of the many injuries she had saved them all from.
"Mercury, then," Babi agreed. "Very well. You have never heard of Lemuria?"
"Not until about half an hour ago," Isaac replied.
"Strange. Fascinating, as well. They are not nearly so unique as I believed, perhaps. Do you know what Mystic Draught is, then?" questioned Babi again, and though the fire that they had seen in him back at Altimiller Cave remained, the weariness of his age was taking hold too.
"Not a clue," Ivan answered brightly.
"It is the drink that has allowed me to reach the age I am," the patrician of Tolbi explained.
"How old are you, anyway?" asked Ivan. Isaac went rigid and wondered if the fire he had seen in Babi was soon to be applied to stakes and upstart Adepts who angered city rulers.
"You have mortified your companion," commented Babi. "But it is a fair question, Ivan of Kalay, and my tale would not seem nearly as interesting without an answer. I am over a century and a half old." Both the Adepts choked in surprise. "I thought your reaction would be such."
He looks good for a corpse, Granite commented inside Isaac's head.
Stitching's holding up well, added Sap. I'm assuming he's been embalmed already.
You two are disgusting, said Ground.
If he starts looking closely at your neck, run for it, suggested Flint.
Oh, be quiet, snapped Ground.
Isaac did his best to maintain a poker face while Babi went on. "Far out over the ocean is an island called Lemuria, where the people live for many centuries by drinking the spring water…"
* * *
"Lunatic," said Ivan as they left Babi's chambers.
"You think so?" asked Isaac.
"Boy, the guy said he was a hundred and fifty years old," said Sap.
"Look, I know you're all centuries old and everything, but is it really necessary to call me 'boy', especially when you yourselves look like…"
"Look like what?" demanded all the Venus Djinn.
"Well…" said Isaac, suddenly flailing for another topic. "Anyway, he did know what Psynergy was before we even mentioned it. He's not all crazy."
"Yeah, he did, and did you see the look in his eyes? Greed. This Lord Babi's got a thing for power, and I'm not sure we were smart in telling him about our Psynergy," said Ivan.
"We sure as heck aren't showing our faces until Tolbi's on the other side of the horizon," said Sap.
"Can you imagine if he saw a Djinni? He'd probably explode," Zephyr agreed.
"Traveller! Isaac!" called a voice from the halls behind them. The Adepts turned, wondering if somehow Babi had discovered the existence of the Djinn or the like. Instead, a black-haired and bearded man rushed after them, stopping only at a skid on the red carpet, which gathered beneath his feet. "Lord Babi would like me to inform you that if you wish, Colosso is open to your participation."
"It what?" asked Isaac, quite lost.
"If you wish to participate in the final rounds of Colosso, you are welcome to join as a full champion, with an equal chance at victory," said the man, slower and patiently.
"I don't think we've got time for this," said Ivan.
"He also asked me to inform you," the man continued, now sounding a little unsure, "that Gondowan Passage has been closed to all but properly proven warriors."
"That tricky ba-" Ivan started.
"Babi, or rather, Lord Babi, certainly knows how to motivate," Isaac cut him off, brightly. "All right. How long do we have to prepare…" Isaac trailed off.
"Iodem," the man supplied. "And the first of the three finals begins in not much more than an hour." Isaac and Ivan looked at each other. Even though Isaac didn't have Mind Read, a silent conversation passed between them.
We don't have time.
We don't have a choice.
You think he'll let us through if you lose?
You think I'll lose?
He just wants to see your Psynergy in action.
And then we can get moving again.
I suppose it doesn't hurt that you'll get to compete, either.
"Where should I go once I'm ready?" Isaac asked.
Garet, hauling a considerable quantity of equipment and a not-so-minor sack of coins, and Mia, still the absolute image of earth-encrusted authority, marched triumphantly out of the Lucky Dice Emporium and through the streets of Tolbi, searching for their friends.
"That was pretty good," Garet admitted. "Particularly the part when you bluffed four times in a row and then slapped down a… what was it?"
"Glorious Revolution," Mia muttered. "He took losing all his kings pretty hard, didn't he?"
"Yeah, that…" Garet agreed, seeming far off. "Do people play cards often in Imil?"
"Every winter night," the Mercury Adept replied, grinning.
"I should have known."
"He might have felt better if he did, but if a guy's going to be that ruthless with someone so innocently moronic-"
"Hey!"
"-I hardly think it matters how he feels as he gets his just desserts," she finished.
"I could go for just desserts. I'd take anything- how long has it been since we got to eat?"
"We don't know where Ivan and Isaac are, and you're thinking about food?" demanded Mia, looking sternly at Garet. The fact that she looked like she had just crawled through the crust of the earth from some dark underworld was certainly a point in her favour, as far as being assertive went, but Garet thought quickly (he was capable of it).
"Mia, they're guys too. If I'm thinking 'where's food' and I've been in town while they were adventuring all day, they're going to be hungry too," he pointed out.
Mia considered this for a moment, and decided that it was bluffing, but it was dang good bluffing, and maybe true. "Okay. Then where can we find food?"
"Practically anywhere, but all the markets are really crowded," said Fever from near-ground level.
"Hey, where've you been?" Garet demanded.
"Looking for you, kindling-brain," Fever shot back. "You left me behind."
Mia looked exasperated, but before Garet could defend himself, she spoke. "How could I have forgotten about that? Fizz!"
"Aye, lady?" said the Mercury Djinni, appearing in her hair.
"Where are all the Venus and Jupiter Djinn in this city?" Mia asked.
"I've told you before, it's really hard to find Djinn that aren't allied… oh, wait. You mean Isaac and Ivan's? They're up at the palace."
"Gah…" Isaac gurgled, staring at the long, laden table.
"Gahah…" Ivan agreed, trying not to drool. The entrants to Colosso were fed well.
"I can smell that!" shouted a voice at least two floors below them, and a tremendous pounding of feet up stairs and along corridors followed, until Garet burst into the room between them.
"All of you are in Colosso?" asked an attendant, disbelievingly.
"Garet, where are you?" another voice called, female, yet nothing like soft. A few moments later, Mia entered as well. "Knew it. I just followed the trail of inch-deep footprints in the carpet."
"Now I'm certain you're not supposed to be here," said the attendant, who had the sort of unpleasant, supposedly-formal-but-more-like-congested voice that was usually found among those who have high rank for no reason except to prove that rank doesn't say much about intelligence (or, for that matter, fashion sense, he had ruffs at his wrists that could cushion a meteor strike). "Women aren't allowed in Colosso."
"Why not?" Mia demanded.
The attendant looked over her much-travelled clothes, particularly the remains of the battle with Hail, which fit Mia easily into the rank of 'civilian', or perhaps 'peasant'. "The trials are far too much for women. It addles their brains. They would be fainting all over the place."
"I'm not even going to bother," she declared. "Ivan, Isaac, let's go. Garet, out of that chicken."
"The stuffing is the best part…" he complained, not withdrawing his hand.
"Actually, Mia," said Isaac, his face as red as Fever, "I've agreed to compete in Colosso."
"You what?" asked Mia, deadpan. Isaac stuttered into a repetition, but Mia waved him to be silent. "I heard you. Somehow I'm not surprised." She noticed his sudden hurt expression. "I mean, if they're so intent on the entrants being masculine-"
"Spare us," muttered Spritz.
"Have all the finalists gone to prepare?" asked another attendant, walking in. He caught sight of the Adepts. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm participating in Colosso," Isaac replied.
"That's ludicrous," said the attendant instantly. "We've reached the finals."
"Really? Oh. Babi'll be disappointed about that," said Ivan, casually.
"…Babi?" the attendant repeated.
"These are the other contestants," said the attendant, leading Isaac into the preparation chamber. "They all passed the early trials of Colosso where others failed to match their strength and prowess." He looked Isaac up and down. "You don't exactly look like the usual type we get in here, but if Babi insists… I just hope you have a good doctor."
"Best in the world," Isaac replied. "But I don't intend to need any patching up afterwards."
"You may find that your fellow contestants have other fates in mind for you. Not all of them standing upright. In fact, very few. Frequently leaking important fluids."
"Do people die in Colosso?" asked Isaac.
"No. But it's up to the contestants when the final battle ends. They either have to declare their surrender or be… unable to declare it."
"Like dead?"
"No! Unconscious, perhaps."
"This sounds ugly."
Garet, Ivan, and Mia were in the crowd. They had been given good places to watch from, admittedly, but they were all still wondering what was going to happen. Mia was especially preoccupied with the log-filled pools and entire sections that appeared to have been stolen from a Contraptions That Cause People To Fall From A Great Height convention.
"This looks ugly," she decided.
"Isaac can handle it," Ivan stated. "Besides, he's got Psynergetic equipment. What could possibly get through that?"
"I've got to what?!" Isaac demanded.
"Hand over all of your equipment. Only Colosso-approved items are allowed," said the attendant. "The ones you gather during the trials."
"I'm not looking forward to this," the Venus Adept mumbled.
I wonder if we'd count as equipment, Flint remarked. Isaac grinned, but tried not to show it.
Babi shook off Iodem's attention. "I'm fine now, stop fussing." This didn't do much, Iodem was well-paid for his job and took a measure of pride in being worth every coin. And he wasn't the type to bother with introspection like "Maybe Babi would actually prefer not being nagged the rest of the way to death."
The ruler of Tolbi moved on, trying to pretend he didn't have a forty-year-old man following him around like his mother. The only difference coming to mind was that his mother didn't have a small contingent of heavily armed bodyguards to make sure he ate his broccoli.
Eventually Babi managed to reach his favourite balcony on the eastern wing, the one that looked out from the highest level of the Colosso arena. It was a huge place, and four obstacle courses had been built across the long field, each one split into two halves that met at the centre, where a small battleground had been prepared.
Of all the buildings in Tolbi whose design he had taken from the Lemurians, Babi prized his arena the most, even greater than the Lucky Spring. He looked out over the contest grounds, and is gaze swept around the gathered crowds from all over Angara, even some from Gondowan.
At a moment like this, riding the waves of the cheering crowd, Babi couldn't imagine how he could ever die.
He held out a hand, and Iodem placed in its newly-strengthened grip the Rod of Commencement. "The champions are ready, milord Babi."
"Tell me of them," he commanded, not taking his eyes away from the vast roaring crowds.
"The favourites are Azart, Satrage, Navampa, and Ezekiel the Destroyer."
"…What?"
"Well, there's always one, milord."
"The fourth is doomed, I have no doubt; keep a doctor ready near him until he's outside the city. What about the others?"
"Not much hope for them, your lordship. The one called Morgan -black armor- was, well…"
"He wasn't the one up being sick all last night?" Babi recalled the actual events of last night, which had been big in the disturbing-scratchy-footstep-sounds department. He hated that cave. "The night before last, rather."
"That's right."
"What do they say about my chosen champion at the betting booths?"
"I'm not sure they've heard of him, milord."
Babi grinned. "Iodem, this is going to be a Colosso unlike any other."
Isaac stood ready in position alongside the other Colosso warriors, but he had the feeling that if they hadn't been worried about disqualification, they'd have been doing their best to grind him into the bricks of the nearest wall. The black armoured one -Isaac thought his name was Morgan- kept glaring at him with what might have been intense hatred behind the helmet's faceplate.
"Champions ready!" called a voice down the long tunnel they faced.
Outside, Babi raised the rod to the sky and pulled a trailing cord. The upper half of the rod launched into the sky and exploded, the finest chrysanthemum firework opening over the crowd in waves of red and blue.
"To your positions!" the voice shouted to Isaac and the other champions. They dashed ahead down the hall and burst out into the arena, where they were greeted by a deafening cheer. Isaac took a moment to be dazed by the sudden bright sunlight and flood of sound, but he was encouraged to keep moving by a clip along the back of the head from Morgan, who rushed off toward his own trial.
"Jenna does that," Isaac muttered, and kept going.
"Can you see him?" Garet called to the others, barely heard over the rest of the spectators.
"If I could see him, I'd have said so already," Mia replied, annoyed by just about everything at that moment.
"I can mostly see a lot of torsos," said Ivan, also not in a great mood. "I was wrong, Garet, you aren't freakishly tall. It's everything else that makes you freakish."
Garet ignored Ivan. "There he is!" the Mars Adept announced, and indeed, Isaac had just walked up to the start of his first trial. He looked slightly unwell. After all, he was facing seven other finalists, all huge warriors who had fought in Colosso before, and would again. Men who knew what they were doing, who had been getting ready for this all year long.
Men who were roughly a foot taller than him. And those were the short ones.
Gong. Tolbi soldiers were on the uppermost level of the arena, at the back, ringing a massive gong. Gong. That was two. One more to go… Gong. And then the torch was put to the fuse, and a cannon blast signalled the beginning of the finals. Isaac was halfway into thinking 'Babi's got a thing for really loud noises' when the warrior took over. He ran.
"That's amazing," Ivan remarked, watching Isaac dash past a mobile column, one that he probably could have used as a stepping stone, and take a flying leap over a space twice as wide as he should have been capable of. The Venus Adept hit the edge of the other side with his ribs, arms flat out on the ground. His flailing boots found purchase, but he was moving so fast it was more like shoplifting. Isaac rose up the wall and ran on.
The next half hour was a blur to Isaac, in later memory. He had coherent flashes, but he was being driven by the sort of mind that usually only came alive in battle, seeing things and reacting before he had time to bother with second thoughts like 'is there a faster way' or 'am I going to survive this'.
He remembered leaping over a huge pipe and pressing his back against the wall, sending the massive thing rolling with his feet so that it crashed into a gap and let water keep flowing, flipping mechanisms and opening the way to move forward.
He remembered a bridge that continually broke and sealed again in several places, so that it wasn't safe to slow down. This wasn't really a problem for him. Garet would have sworn that at one point the bridge opened right below Isaac and he didn't so much as falter.
And he remembered a battlefield, armed only with the most basic of equipment, plus a strong iron shield, because Isaac reached the centre first and, during the long wait for the other to catch up, was granted the stronger of the two items.
The battle wasn't long, and so there are only a few scattered images of it in Isaac's memory, mostly of a shocked face behind a helmet and the sound of his short sword clashing against armor. The other finalist, Azart, was dropped in moments, but the warrior did not leave Isaac, and he rushed on to the next trial path.
There were a few moments while Isaac waited for his next opponent, he calmed just slightly. The warrior, while still alert, subsided and allowed Isaac to think more clearly. He looked up, seeing Garet, Mia, and Ivan in the crowd, waving to him. The rest of the crowd was cheering too, and it occurred to Isaac that, as long as he was competing, he might as well give the crowd what they were there for.
"Did that scare either of you?" asked Mia, not showing how unnerved the first trial had made her in the least.
"Like hell," Garet replied, a huge, not perfectly real grin on his face. "I hate it when he does that."
The second round was better, more like watching a tiger in the forest than a maniac on a rooftop. A performing tiger, too. Isaac entered a maze, and quickly decided that the winning solution didn't include the ground. He leapt against one wall, pushed off, and rebounded onto another, climbing to its top.
"Oh dear Mars," said Garet, hands over his eyes.
"Wow!" Ivan exclaimed.
"What?"
"He just did a cartwheel along the edge!"
Splunsch!
"What was that?"
"That was the edge running out," Mia replied. "It's okay, he landed in a big pool."
"A pool?" Garet repeated.
"Yeah. So he's fine," said Ivan.
"This is the pool we saw earlier with the moving platforms and such?"
"Uh-oh."
"Oh, Mars help him…"
Isaac broke the surface and gasped for breath. The water was pleasant enough, and without his usual plate mail, swimming to the other side would be a breeze, or a tide or a current or something. Fortunately, the warrior instincts hadn't entirely sunk, either. He turned just in time to see one of the platforms heading coming toward him, and a sudden twist confirmed the fact that Isaac was about to get turned into the new design on the wall. He yelped and dove under.
"It's fine," Ivan reported after a few moments. "He's climbing out on the other side."
"I'm not looking until he's done with the water."
"He is done with the water," Mia assured Garet.
"Good."
Splosh!
"Just not the log-rolling."
"He shouldn't have tried to do it backwards."
"Mars help us all…"
Soaking wet, Isaac took a moment to pose heroically at the top of the steps before turning and running onto the battlefield -clonk- where he ran right into Satrage, who was now wearing some well-crafted and sturdy armor.
"It's faster if you don't drown twice on the way," the tall warrior told Isaac. "Now it's time for some payback. I'm not sure what kind of tricks you used, but Azart's a buddy of mine, and-"
Isaac didn't bother to wait for Satrage to finish talking, he simply ran into the man again with a full body tackle, this time leading the way with his iron shield. The surprise attack evened things for the first few moments of battle, while Isaac was on the offensive, but being able to shrug off the minor strikes so easily led to a turnaround soon after. They traded blows for a while, blocking when possible (or when convenient, in Satrage's case). The Venus Adept took a few strikes, and retreated to concentrate.
Babi edged forward in his seat. This was exactly what he had been hoping for…
And Isaac was acting exactly the way he was supposed to. He didn't bother to put his thoughts into words, but if he had, they would have been something like 'to Hail with that, I'm an Adept'.
"Quake Sphere!" No one in the crowd ever quite agreed on what happened, some said it was a freak accident, some said the strange warrior's sheer strength made the very earth tremble. Either way, Satrage was thrown into the air and dropped unceremoniously back down, making a metallic sound like a kitchen stood on one end.
Isaac followed it up with a strike to the side of his helmet that would likely never stop echoing in Satrage's head, and that battle ended.
"Wonderful!" Babi shouted, leaping to his feet and applauding.
"Sir?" said Iodem, carefully.
"Did you see that? The light, that energy- it was incredible!"
"Sir?"
"Stop saying 'sir', like that. I am well aware that 'sir' in that tone means 'whatever few marbles this old man once had have come unscrewed'."
"Not at all, sir. And I certainly did not attempt to convey in that sentence any sort of scepticism on the subject of unscrewable marbles."
"I shall make it all clear to you later, Iodem. For now… are we already at the last trial?"
"Yes sir. Your chosen warrior versus… my goodness. It's Morgan."
"Morgan? The one who didn't want to show up for dinner because he was too nauseous from fright?" asked Babi, bewildered.
"That's right, sir. He's been fighting like a… a… well, I have various reports making references to tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, and one mentioning a cage full of wet tigers and a man whistling at a painfully high pitch while covering himself in barbecue sauce."
"Promote that one. I approve of detailed reporting."
Isaac stood now at the beginning of the final course. He wasn't especially surprised, really. He had come in second for sure, and could even win Colosso. So much for his fears at the start. But now some more rational fears were coming up, including 'I don't think it should hurt when I breathe' and 'either the wall or myself is wobbling, which one is it?'
"Isaac doesn't look so good," Ivan noted.
"Isaac looks like he's going to be sick," Mia corrected, getting concerned.
"I don't think he's going to be able to make it through this next one," Garet said.
"Don't say things like that! I'm sure he'll be fine," said Mia.
"I hope so. It's not like there's anything we can do to help," said Ivan. He noticed a sudden stillness behind him, and when he turned around, Garet and Mia were staring at each other, silently and intently. They didn't even bother with 'are you thinking what I'm thinking'.
"On it," Mia declared.
"I'll take the kid," Garet agreed, grabbed Ivan by the arm, and dragged him through the crowd.
Isaac tried to stand up straight, stumbled, and fell back against the wall. He called up Cure Well, but even though the Psynergy healed his injuries, it left him even more exhausted. And now he had to rush through another obstacle course to fight the best of the other warriors. The signal would come any moment now, he had to be ready…
"Good people of Tolbi!" called a familiar voice. "I missed my introduction!" There was a sort of confused mumbling among the crowd at this proclamation, but they seemed interested. And Isaac had placed the voice. He looked about for the source.
"Mia, your timing is incredible," the Venus Adept mumbled.
She stood atop a pillar at the side of the central battlefield that was Isaac's next goal, arms wide. "For although there have been a great many champions seen in this place on this day, there is one greater than all others, and he is not known to you. His travels have been long, but they have led to this place, and so do I come with him to speak of his deeds."
"This is wrong, isn't it?" said Ivan, handing Garet the Orb of Force.
"Well, there's wrong and there's Wrong, really, and this isn't the one with the capital," Garet replied, sending a ghostly fist flying from his own. "Pretend you're on a mission from Jupiter."
"When first I met him, it was in the far north, in the land of Imil, where I witnessed this knight walking across water, on a quest to open a holy fountain and end a terrible sickness," Mia went on.
"Well, that's one way of putting it," said Ivan, focusing his Psynergy. "Another way would be to say that since we failed to stop them from lightning Mercury, we got the Water of Hermes flowing by accident."
"Again I saw him in the forest realm of Kolima, where his pure heart resisted the glamour of a vengeful spirit and broke the curse that had been placed on the sacred guardian tree."
"First, she didn't see that, it happened the first time through the forest; second, 'again' is stretching it, 'cause she saw him all the way there, too," Garet pointed out, but went silent when he was too close. The man working the machine was focused on Mia, and didn't even notice when Garet cast Halt.
"On the Karagol Sea, he saved a ship from a terrible beast, a kraken from the depths of the waters, and did not relent until the monstrous creature was felled," Mia whispered. And she could, because the entire colosseum had fallen silent listening to her.
"Hey, I did that!" Garet protested.
"Done!" Ivan called quietly from the crowd.
"People of Tolbi!" Mia shouted to the sky. "I give you the performer of miracles, the breaker of curses, the protector of mariner sanctity, Sir Isaac of Vale!" Mia was rewarded with an explosion of cheering over which no one heard her exclamation of "Mercury, I'm good!"
And then the signal was given. Isaac had taken his moments of rest thankfully, and was prepared for the final run as much as he was going to be. Except that as he began, he couldn't help thinking…
Is it supposed to be this easy?
Because, really, it looked like someone had taken all the really hard parts and fixed them before he got there. This was supposed to be the greatest test of skill at Colosso, but as he hopped along a shortcut on a stone pillar maze, Isaac noticed deep tracks in the dust as though they had been moved around. Or possibly Moved around.
The next section was a long treadmill, and Isaac should have had to run at quite a speed to make it across, but the entire thing simply seemed to be twitching back and forth without doing much. If he had noticed the large block of wood jammed in the gears, he might have taken some time to thank his friends, but he was already across.
On the one they had called the Leap of Faith, where a large stone pillar was supposed to force him to scale the wall and then choose a chute to drop back down onto the other path, Isaac pretended not to see that it had been Lifted a foot off the ground. He crashed into the pillar and kept on running, using it as a bridge when it toppled and stuck.
It was all too easy. Isaac couldn't imagine how his friends had helped, but he was thankful for the assistance, and took the steps up to the battle field with a deep, relieved breath. At exactly the same moment, so did the black-armored Morgan.
"How?" Isaac breathed.
"How?" Morgan echoed, apparently shocked at Isaac's own performance.
"A tie," the judicator announced. "As such, neither champion's weapon shall be improved."
Isaac and Morgan looked from the referee of Colosso back to each other, slowly. "I think that means we start now," said Morgan, and Isaac noticed for the first time a strange quality to his voice. It was deep and gruff, much like the others he had battled, but there was something strange about it…
In the battle, there was no time to think of such things. Isaac rolled to Morgan's side as he advanced with an overhead swing, and the Venus Adept came up from behind with surprised speed, scoring a trio of quick strikes to the other's back.
Morgan spun quickly, blocked the fourth strike, and kicked out low, catching Isaac below the ribs with his boot. Isaac rolled along the dusty ground, but when the bright sunlight above was blocked out by a dark shape waving a sword threateningly, he recovered quickly.
"She's good," Mia remarked, watching the duel from the sidelines again.
"I've never seen anyone keep up with Isaac before," said Garet, amazed.
"Remember that Isaac's already battled a Jupiter Djinni and saved Babi today," Ivan pointed out.
"…I feel like something's nagging at me," Garet muttered.
Isaac and Morgan were on equal footing now, and the back-and-forth action was going to give the entire populace of Tolbi severe neck pains for a week. The other Adepts, watching from the sidelines, were amazed. They had never seen anyone match Isaac for this long, and they were even beginning to wonder if Morgan might come out with the victory.
Babi looked like a four-year-old seeing Colosso for the first time. He didn't know anything about the Djinn, but he could faintly see their strength behind Isaac's motions, an afterimage burning in the Psynergy spectrum, and it enthralled him. Iodem, off to one side, was preparing a calming cup of tea and ironing a highly ornamented straitjacket.
At last, Morgan turned the tide. He dropped, caught Isaac's downward stroke with his own blade, and swept the Venus Adept's feet out from under him.
"Surrender," he commanded.
"Not today," Isaac replied, rolling backwards to his feet and quietly calling "Unleash Flint!" Hoping that the burst of light -for anyone could see Djinn power- would be taken for sunlight reflecting off the blade, Isaac struck, and with a terrific clash, Morgan's helmet split, and he dropped backwards.
"She!" Garet burst out, whirling on Mia. "That's it!" You said 'she'!"
"You mean you can't tell?" asked Mia, startled.
"No man is going to bring me down today," Isaac stated calmly, but Morgan only laughed. It wasn't derisive, it was a long, hearty laugh, and in a different voice from before. One rather higher, and much more natural.
"Then isn't this convenient, Isaac of Vale?" asked Morgan, standing up, and the halves of her broken helmet clattered to the floor. A wave of long, reddish-brown hair rolled out, and eyes the colour of lightning met Isaac's from a face that was definitely female.
"What the…" Isaac mumbled, eyes wide.
"You mean she's Kelsey's sister?!" Garet exclaimed, barely aware that something was happening on the battlefield. "And you never told me?!"
"Jenna," Ivan whispered, nudging Garet in the side.
"Oh. Um, right. Well, you still could have said something," he finished.
"She was obviously sneaking in. I'm surprised you didn't catch on," said Mia.
"How did you know?" asked Ivan. "I can read minds and I didn't know!"
"Isaac's in trouble," Mia observed, and he never remembered to ask again later.
Morgan drew from her armor an item she had picked up during the earlier trials. The familiar flame-yellow of an Oil Drop caught Isaac's attention, and he thought quickly. If she dropped it, then he might have a chance while everything was obscured, but to avoid getting taken down by the blast… he'd have to be very, very lucky.
She threw it. He cast Ragnarok- though made of Psynergy, it too was visible to normal eyes. The twin explosions rocked the battlefield, and when it all cleared, neither combatant stood. Morgan and Isaac were both out cold. It was officially declared a tie, for the first time known in Colosso history. The prize was split evenly, and some rethinking was done on the idea of letting women compete.
Morgan would wake up not too long after, in her sister's house with a fair share of coins and a king's ransom in fame. Isaac would wake up too, in the palace, ready to go see Babi and continue the quest.
But at that moment, the crowd's roar dulled in his mind as the world went dark, and new voices rang out in the deepening quiet, defiant cries over the sounds of battle. He knew the voices, or perhaps simply would know them… it was impossible to tell who they might have been.
"I pray to Mercury, and the strength of the soothing water!"
"I call on Jupiter, and the force of the speeding wind!"
"I bring forth Mars, and the might of the raging fire!"
"I fight for Venus, and the spirit of the living earth!"
"We summon Sol, and the power of the shining light!"
When he awoke, hours later, he would not remember.
[Author's Notes] It might not look much like it, but that's the end of the Tolbi Redux. Now onto new projects… such as the third and probably final 'book', Lost Age Redux, which will cover the events surrounding Mars Lighthouse in a, shall we say, creative way. Ja mata ne! (And happy birthday to Vilya!)