Knights of Alchemy

               

Chapter Ten: Things Best Left Unread

                Somehow, Cata had expected something else from a dragon.  This creature was a reptile, and wings, and generally nasty-looking, but its body wasn't too much bigger than Zak, its white scales didn't look too much like a monstrosity of the underworld, and its eyes glowed with something that wasn't quite hellfire.  Heckfire, perhaps.

                The Sky Dragon may have realised that it wasn't all that shocking to look at.  Over the many generations, it had developed a certain understanding of the way prey looked upon it, and some deeply ingrained instinct told it that screaming food tasted better.

                Well, it is a monster.

                Lacking size or a terrible appearance, the dragons had instead put all their effort into a few tricks that could, on occasion, scare food into submission.  It tried one now, leaving a space for a really awful 'shocking' pun by loosing a forked lance of violet lightning from its mouth.  The blast superheated everything it touched, turning a patch of grass into ash and blowing apart the ground underneath.

                As it swept over them again, flattening the grass with the wind of its flight, the dragon gained a great deal more ground toward 'terrifying' with a scream that Cata expected to blast her ears off and set her bones on fire.  Howl and Zak seemed the worst affected, staggering under the sonic assault, but before it could strike at either of them, an arrow whipped across the Sky Dragon's path.  Lynn's shot was deflected by the plates around its neck, but the threat gave the Knights a much-needed moment to recover.

                "You know what this is?" Cata demanded, drawing her Lemurian-crafted sword.  She realised as she did so that this was really the first time it would be tested against anything other than the less-than-amazing weapons wielded by the Alhafran guards.

                "Sky Dragons are the most dangerous creatures on this side of Weyard," Lynn replied.  "Fortunately, they aren't common in the wild, they prefer to live in underground lairs in hard-to-reach places."

                "That's great!" shouted Elys, sarcastically.  "Do the Contigans have any words of wisdom for what to do when they actually find you?"

                "Of course," Lynn shot back, frowning.  "I was out hunting for one when I had the fantastic luck to run into you people."

                The Sky Dragon chose that moment to sweep another Storm Breath through their group.  Padriac failed to dodge this second assault, and was sent sprawling with violet electricity crackling around him.

                "What did you do wrong?" asked Zak, bewildered, but when the Sky Dragon circled around toward them again, he kept his focus, slamming a hoof into the ground.  They were already on a slope, and when Zak shouted "Ridge!" the earth broke.  The ground tilted until it had opened like a trapdoor in the hill, forming a slanted wall and creating a helpful shelter again the next blast of lightning.

                "It wasn't punishment, it was a privilege!" Lynn insisted.

                "You Contigans must believe in a really great afterlife," said Zak.

                Cian joined them in the lee of Zak's makeshift wall, and he was soon followed by Howl and Meg, supporting Padriac.  Lynn bit her lip at the sight of the shocked captain, and set to work healing him.  The others gathered closer together, wondering how long the protection would be useful.

                "Any ideas?" asked Cata.

                "Oh yes," said Howl, his eyes closed, listening carefully.  "It thinks we've disappeared.  I don't think it quite understands what Zak just did- nice trick, horseboy."

                "Thanks, pup."

                "So what are you-" Cian began, but Howl had heard what he was waiting for and started to move.  He boosted himself up and above Zak, scaling the ridge and leaping up just as the Sky Dragon flew over them, just low enough for his claws to find purchase on its scaly hide.

                The lycanthrope moved quickly, as though gravity were a luxury he had decided to do without for the moment, and bit down as hard as he could on the dragon's neck.  A wolf's jaw muscles were more than a match for the neck of any kind of prey in the world, but Sky Dragons aren't prey after the age of approximately three hours.

                "Ouch!" Howl yelped, recoiling from the iron-hard neck scales he had just tried to bite through.  There were a few moments of frenzied growling, interspersed with yips and a few truly vicious human curses, all muffled by Howl's hand holding his injured mouth.  The Sky Dragon rolled and Howl dropped, but his fall was cushioned by Cian's arms.  "It works on everything else," he insisted, standing up.

                "I have this great idea," said Zephyr, brightly.

                "What?" asked Cata.

                "Use the Djinn for once in your lives!" the Jupiter Djinni screamed.

                Cata and Meg looked at each other.  "Y'know, she could be right," said Cata.

                "I'm inclined to agree," said Meg.

                "Sure," said Elys.  "Just get met one!"

                "Sky Dragon," said Cata, thoughtfully, ignoring her friend's continuing protests.

                "Jupiter aligned for sure.  Especially out here, with the Jupiter Clan," Cian decided.

                "So we hit it with Venus Psynergy?" said Meg.

                "Hit it with whatever you can, I think, but Venus is going to be what wins this one," said Cata.  The dragon was still wary after being ambushed last time, but was daring to come at them again now, this time from the unprotected side.

                Meg and Cian dashed ahead to meet it, expecting it to fly low again, but it had decided that the strange furry thing probably couldn't jump fifty feet, and so soared up out of reach.  Elys fired Prism Psynergy at it in a high arc, but the giant ice block fell quite short

                "Planet Diver!" Meg shouted, jumping an incredible height like a meteorite in reverse, glowing red with an aura of Mars Psynergy.  The Sky Dragon was losing height quickly in its efforts to hold steady, and Meg just managed to reach it at the top of her arc.  The two crashed back down to the ground and burst apart, sending bright sparks up in a cloud.

                "It's about time I did something," Cian muttered to himself, and charged the dragon before it could take flight again.  His sabre danced across its scales like a bladed rainstorm, chipping relentlessly, but could never seem to pierce them.  The dragon flapped twice, lifting off.  "Froth!"  A volley of watery globes burst from Cian's hand, and they struck like exploding whirlpools.

                The Sky Dragon wasn't hurt by his blast, but the sheer force did send it tumbling back down to the ground, this time ready for battle and so angry at the pesky blue-haired one that it forgot all about that nasty furry thing.  The nasty furry thing, who preferred 'Howl', or even 'aiee, get it away', hadn't forgotten about him, but an unthinking swing of the dragon's tail sent him rolling in the dust.

                "I'd really enjoy some backup!" Cian called, now forced onto the defensive.  The Sky Dragon's claws had already ripped at his Lemurian adventuring clothes, but the fencing style that was common on that island was made for simultaneous attack and defence, so he hadn't been badly cut into yet.

                "I'm here already," said Meg, and a flaming sword stabbed out over his shoulder, scorching the Sky Dragon's reaching claw.  "That Planet Diver wasn't my most brilliant work."

                Now facing two options for a snack, the Sky Dragon was torn between going for the easier one and leaving the rest alone, or trying for the nasty fire-toothed one.  If it succeeded in killing her, then all the rest would be much easier, especially the horse that wasn't daring to come near.

                It bashed Cian to the side with a wing and moved to savage Meg.  Elys had other ideas.

                "Ice Horn!"  Her Psynergy struck the Sky Dragon from the side, chilling it and finding the occasional gap between damaged scales.  The dragon screeched again, turning to blast Elys into oblivion, spreading its wings wide- and suddenly the idea of 'tricked' entered its predatory mind.

                After a few minutes of Lynn's considerable powers of treatment, Padriac had decided that his preferred combat tactic -'if it moves, hit it again'- lacked the sort of impression he needed to make.  He intended to make an impression right through those scales and out the other side.

                "Stone Justice!"  The ground around him shattered and rose, spinning in the air.  Padriac raised his arm toward the dragon, pointed, and his rock storm lashed its vulnerable underside and wings.  Scales were chipped and broken, but the Venus Psynergy wasn't as devastating as he had expected.

                "Oh, honestly!" said Lynn, exasperated.  She had just finished fixing Padriac up under Zak's shelter to watch him go and put himself into another perilous position.  Lynn hated to see good work get injured again, and killed was right out of the question.  "Sky Dragons resist Venus power, they're weak to Jupiter!  Unleash Gale!" 

                At the healer's call, Gale flew into being and released a powerful windstream that was luminous with purple-glowing Psynergy.  Her attack smashed into the dragon, sending it into a tumbling, bouncing fall before the air currents converged and the dragon vanished in a swirl of grey.

                There was a moment's wonderment at Gale's display of power before the Djinn started in on the Knights, too.  The humans (and horse, and part-humans) were breathing hard, but Djinn don't breathe, which frees up a lot of their time for nagging.

                "Weak to Jupiter?" demanded Squall.  "Meg, you and I could have taken that thing!"

                "I told you," said Zephyr, shaking her head at Cata.  "Use the Djinn. But no, you have to do things the hard way."

                "Let's not let them get any further ahead!  The Tomegathericon is still to the northwest!" said Spring, carefully tuning his Psynergy-sense to the unique rhythm of the dark book.

                Cata looked at Elys, disbelief at the Djinn on both their faces.  "You know, not having a Djinni isn't necessarily a bad thing," said Cata.

                When they finally saw Tolbi, City of Invention, appear on the horizon, most of the Knights were about ready to collapse on the spot.  The only ones who hadn't noticed the passing miles were Zak, Howl, and Meg, which Cian decided probably had to do with none of them quite being human.

                "What are you smirking about?" asked Meg, half frowning.

                "Oh, nothing," the Lemurian replied.

                "Do we really have to walk the rest of the way there tonight?" asked Elys.  "I'm beat."

                "It's that or wait out here to see how far Sky Dragon territory reaches," Meg pointed out.

                "Come on, no time to lose!" said Zak.  "Elys, hop up.  Or hold still, I'll do another earth-shifting thing so you can just fall over my back.  Whatever, let's just get inside some walls!"

                "What do you think?" Howl asked Cata, who was, he supposed, technically the leader.

                "I think we should probably listen to Zak or risk losing most of our carrying capacity.  And do you really want to have to carry your own provisions?" she asked him.  It was meant to be rhetorical, but then, she was talking to a werewolf.

                "Well, actually, I find they usually carry themselves until they're needed, though it can be difficult to find them when they're… needed…"  Howl noticed that he had suddenly become the centre of attention, in as much as blank stares and the occasional open jaw can be called 'attention'.  He was guessing, however, in the case of Zak, who was about halfway to Tolbi and accelerating, with Elys on his back.

                Eventually the Knights caught up at the edges of the city, just as the sun vanished under the horizon.  Zak insisted on an inn with a thick-walled stable that had stone foundations, which was fortunately not too expensive for the human (or mostly human) members of the party.  Padriac insisted on trying to get into a fight in the pub on the main floor, but after pulling him off the sixth man to 'deliberately provoke me by saying he didn't want to fight', Cian locked him in his room.

                When they woke the next morning, Tolbi had changed.  Instead of a city, Cata opened the inn's door to encounter chaos with buildings in.  She shut it again quickly.  "I think someone heard about Howl," she told the others, looking like she was holding back a flood.

                The others all turned their gazes on the lycanthrope, who had his hood pulled low.  "Well, I was on the roof last night, but it's not like I was… howling… or stealing chickens again or something."

                This didn't change much in the way his companions were watching him.

                "Oh, come on, it's true," said Meg, annoyed.  "I was up there with him.  I'm still not really used to staying up all day and sleeping at night."

                "And that's the only reason, is it?"

                "Cian, don't make me feed you your boots."

                "Ye're blockin' the door, lass!  Get outta my way or I'll have te be breakin' the wall, an' innkeepers can get mighty pushy about payin' fer repairs!"  The Adepts turned to see where this rumbling was coming from, and eventually found its source slightly closer to the ground than they expected.

                "Who's the short guy?" Elys whispered to Cian.

                "Actually, he's relatively tall.  That's a dwarf," Cian replied, trying as hard as possible to look like he wasn't talking.  Dwarves, however, have inhuman hearing (what else do you expect from nonhumans?) when it comes to people talking about their height.  This one, who either had thick brown hair or a badger strapped to his head -which was admittedly just under four feet off the ground- gave them a glare to rust iron.

                "A dwarf," he repeated.  "That's true enough.  An' I notice the lot o' ye are humans, but ye dinnae see me hangin around here an' saying-" and suddenly the dwarf's voice became the pinnacle of refined human noble twit-ness "my goodness me, what a positive gaggle of tall fellows.  I say, that one has blue hair."

                "Well, I am Lemurian.  I suppose that still counts as human, but it's a sort of… different…"  Cian decided, after seeing the looks he was now getting from the dwarf and all his friends, that this would be a good time to stop trying to help.

                "Also, I'm not-" Howl began, but Meg silenced him with indifferent efficiency.

                "Sorry," said Cata, "it's just that Elys and I have never met a dwarf before."

                "Really?" asked Padriac, who glared at the dwarf every few moments.  "Well let me tell you about them, then.  They're a particular type of blustering hard-headed miners who couldn't care less about anything that isn't rocks, make positively awful conversationalists, and have the general personability of a pirate."

                The Knights took faster stock of the situation than a compulsive quartermaster-savant and dove to the sides, though Cata suspected Meg could have been fast enough to boil some water on the now flame-red dwarf before he let loose a famous dwarven war cry ("AHHHRGH!", which translates roughly to 'ahrgh') and body-checked Padriac.

                However, the captain was the only one who hadn't moved, and he took the flying tackle with ease.  The next few minutes were mostly made up of thumping, shouting, and the occasional cough as a particularly solid blow met its target.  The best thing you could say about them was that it was the most civilised brawl of all time, with no furniture broken, and at one point Elys could have sworn the dwarf sidestepped to keep from dropping Padriac onto an ornate side table.

                "Hah!" Padriac laughed at last, dropping into a sitting position against the wall.  "No one fights like a dwarf.  'S been far too long since I sparred with one of your people."

                "Ye're a fair walloper yerself!" the dwarf admitted, dropping (a rather shorter distance) beside him.  "And a hard headed one, too!" he added, rubbing his forehead.

                "Father's side," Padriac explained, in his over-exaggerated, slightly slurred way.  Cata was starting to notice that he slipped to this one, the more piratical, from his usual refined captain-speech when he was feeling relaxed.  "In fact," he went on, screwing up his brow in thought, "I think one of my great-great grandmothers might've been a dwarf."

                "Really?" said the dwarf.  They looked each other, noting the difference in heights.

                "Great-great-great," Padriac amended.  He noticed, looking rather owlish (or so they say, though Cata never really understood why 'owlish' described someone who was looking at something nearby as though it were a mile off) that the other Knights were still mostly keeping their distance.  "Come on, then," he called, standing up.

                "What are the chances of my being used as a blunt instrument if I show my face?" asked Lynn.

                "Low," said Padriac.  "Dagna is as fine a dwarf as I've yet met, and not going to bite."

                "Not without fair warnin'," the dwarf, whose name was apparently Dagna, added, and Padriac nodded in serious agreement.

                "Well… good, then," said Cata, slowly.  "I'm Cata."  The others gave their names, and Howl was quite surprised when Dagna sniffed slightly as the lycanthrope spoke (taking care to keep his hood up) and then muttered about the places wolfmen got themselves into these days.

                "An' ye've left a few out, I can tell," Dagna rumbled.  "Well, I'll be the first ter start, since 'm not the type ter ask others te do what I wouldna do meself.  This's Geode, an' he's been me friend since before the lot o' yer were born.  …Maybe not yon blue-haired fellow."  As Dagna spoke, spring-green lights resolved into the shape of a brown creature that had to be a Djinni, and Venus-aligned at that.

                "Geode!" shouted a voice. 

                The Venus Djinni closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them in horror.  "I know that one…"  The inn's front door swung open after a bit of Zak's convincing, and a Mars Djinni bounded inside gleefully.  "Oh no… Coal…"

                "Geode!  I haven't seen you in ages!  How've you been?" asked Coal.

                "Suspiciously well, until very recently.  I should have expected this," Geode muttered.

                "What, did you catch a cold?"

                Geode eyed the Djinni, who looked like a fire with eyes and feet.  "Quite the opposite, actually."

                "What, a fever?  Hey, Fever's here too, didja know?"

                "Fever?"  At this, Geode actually sounded less like he had been sentenced to a life aboveground.  Slowly the Djinni scanned the room, stopping on each of the Knights in turn.  "Hey, you all have Djinn.  Well, except for her."

                "Don't remind me," Elys said, a bit bitterly.

                "Two Jupiter, two Mars, two Mercury… somehow I'm not surprised," said Geode.

                "A' right, a' right, are ye gonna be getting' out o' me way 'r what?" asked Dagna, waving for the Knights to get away from the door.  "That Card's me own, an' I'm not thinking fer lettin' anybody else get their hands on what's belonging to meself!"

                "Uh… Padriac, do you think you could manage to finesse out of him what the devil he's ranting about?" asked Cata, quietly.

                Dwarves have excellent hearing.  "'M rantin' about Colosso, lass, an' ye're in me way, meanin' I'm not setting up me contrapumulation, meanin' I'm not entered in yon contest, meanin' someone else is gonna get me Mysterious Card!"  At this, Dagna took off toward the wall, with the apparent intent of muscling his way through, and it was clear that granite would have been persuaded to let him through.  Elys jumped away from the door, and with a nudge from Howl's powerful arm, the door was merely smashed open at half the speed of light, rather than the wall being destroyed.

                "Colosso," said Cian, as though ballistic dwarves weren't even worth noting.  "I remember hearing about it when I was in Tolbi one time.  I've never seen it, but apparently it's some kind of inventor's tournament."

                "Great, great, but we can't stay," said Elys.  "The Tomegathericon's nearby, we have to keep moving."

                "Actually…" Spring admitted as he appeared on Cian's head, "I'm sort of… lost."

                "What do you mean?  We're in Tolbi.  Everyone knows Tolbi, don't they?" asked Lynn.

                "Uh… no?" suggested Elys.

                "I know where I am," Spring went on irritably.  "I just don't know where everything else is.  Can't you feel the turmoil?  There have to be hundreds of Adepts in this city, and of all the alignments… I can't place Hail, let alone something as powerfully chaotic as the Tomegathericon."

                "Hundreds of Adepts," Howl repeated, thoughtfully.

                "It could just be me…" Padriac began.

                "But this place sounds like the perfect hiding spot for a couple of Venus Adepts who don't want to be noticed," the lycanthrope finished.  "Even someone in shadow mail like Dullahan."

                "Even people who've never heard of Tolbi know who Dullahan is," Meg insisted.  "I know who Dullahan is.  Or maybe 'are'.  There's more than one, right?"
                "There's a Dullahan for every generation.  When the old one is too old, or weakened, he finds a new person to wear the armor.  Who knows what their purpose is.  But there's always a Dullahan," said Lynn.  "They say one of them battled with the people of Anemos in ancient times."

                "And got royally smoten," Gale added in a satisfied tone.

                "The monarch fought him?" Howl suggested.

                "The smiting happened after a few dozen of the finest Jupiter Adepts had been killed in battle, of course," Lynn pointed out, wisely suspecting that smug Djinn could only be worse than the normal kind.

                "All right, if we know they're hiding in Tolbi somewhere, and all the Adepts are probably gathering for Colosso, then let's get looking!" Cata declared.  "Where's my sword?"

                "This is madness."

                "It is our only chance."

                "I didn't say it wasn't."

                "Dullahan, you're a waste of plate mail."

                "The fact that I didn't say it wasn't doesn't mean I don't think it isn't."

                "Try to confuse me all you want.  Unfortunately, I'm brighter than you.  Bright enough to know that there's more than one way to harness unholy power."

                "What, you study this in your spare time?"

                "I'm just creative."

                "Well, that's more likely than Lemuria's libraries containing anything like Ungodly Power and You: Controlling the Awesome Destructive Forces of the Damned."

                "Very funny.  Just… drop something heavy on it and run if this goes wrong."

                "If it goes wrong, he's not going to be happy."

                "If it goes wrong, we'll be dead.  No fear of torture."

                "I'm more enthusiastic already."

                Some miles to the south, Rish was certain she had lost the trail of whoever those Druj had been protecting.  They had been hard to follow to begin with, and while the other Adepts had been easier to follow, they had entered Contigo, and she was not fool enough to enter that place uninvited.

                "This is hopeless," she stated aloud.

                "You know what I think when you say that," one of her companions stated reproachfully.

                "Yes, yes.  But then, you don't have the same concerns I do.  Nor the same perspective."

                "Not much we can do about the second part," her other friend remarked, just loudly enough to be heard.  "You're about six times his height."

                "I do, however, have more experience, and I've never seen anything good come of losing all hope," said the first, pointedly ignoring any other comments.

                "You can be so difficult, Sera-" Rish began, and then a sensation rolled across her mind like a liquid shockwave.  "North!"

                "Tolbi.  Should have guessed."

                "Don't bother with guessing!  We might not have much time!"

                Colosso was a riot.  The stands were full with onlookers, nearly all of whom were Adepts, and in the middle of the vast ring of seats, there was a sea of people that only broke to allow space for a variety of devices that could have been created by tying a windmill to a giant's two-in-one garlic crusher / pasta friller and half-melting a few of the less interesting bits.

                "This could be slightly harder than we expected," Cian admitted.

                "No one bothered asking me," Zak grumbled.

                "They never ask us helpful types," Coal agreed, glaring at the others from his place on Zak's head.

                "Oh, get out of sight!  We don't want to get mobbed!" Lynn told the Djinni, waving him away.

                "No one even remotely sane would mob a Mars Djinni," Padriac remarked.

                "These are Adepts.  Creative ones, too, considering these thing's they've built," the Jupiter healer explained as they passed something that had mostly been covered with netting.  "Any Djinni, even a psychotic one, would draw more attention than we want if we're trying to find Jastyx and Dullahan."

                "Saying their names probably isn't a great idea either," Cian remarked.

                "Very well.  Where shall we begin our search for these particular August Personages, good sir?"  asked Elys.  Cian sighed deeply and started examining a large pulley that appeared to start with the bungee-jumping principal, upside down.

                "Ye didnae tell me ye'd be here too!  I hope fer yer own sake that ye're no' in the competition!" Dagna rumbled, parting the crowd by sheer stubbornness and approaching the Knights.  "C'm'ere, ye've got ter see the winnin' device before any o' this lot get their hands on it."

                Following Dagna, since there seemed no other way out, they found themselves in front of a massive structure of wooden beams and more gears than anything except possibly an Elemental Spirit's watch could possibly need.  "And this does what?"

                "Mostly it's supposed ter trip up yon testers.  The ruler o' Tolbi picks a few Champions every year ter decide which one o' the inventors wins the prize.  All we 'ave ter think about is the best ways o' buildin' a sort o' obstacle course that e'en a Champion cannae get across.  There're teams, too, but I'm more of a virtuoso constructor."

                "And destructor," Padriac remarked.  "Are those powder charges?"

                "Aye, aye.  Ye see, yer twit Champion comes up there, has ter roll across the water on logs while avoidin' the fallin' sodium bags, and if 'e hasnae pulled the right sequence o' chains on the trip over, or if 'e steps with the left foot instead o' the right foot on the platform, or if 'e hits one 'o the fake steps -ye'll notice the fake steps on yon staircase switch every couple o' seconds, the clockwork fer that took weeks- then the charges go off an we're all really happy that there's lots o' water in the pool."

                "Jupiter preserve me from the creative people," Cata remarked.

                Meg dropped down from somewhere in the machinery.  "Not bad," she decided.  "But that clockwork's a bit rusty.  I had to practically stomp on one of those steps before it gave way."

                "Ye did what?" asked Dagna, bewildered.

                "Oh, that's just Meg.  She's about as far from normal as you can get."

                "Uh… Howl?"

                "Yes?"

                "…Never mind."

                Jastyx placed the Tomegathericon on the ground reverently.  At least, it looked like reverently, but was suspiciously similar to 'rigid with terror'.  "We're clear on this, right?" she asked.

                "Yes, yes."

                "I do this, you just kill anyone who tries to stop us."

                "I've got it."

                "And you don't look at any of the pages."

                "No."

                "Nor any words."

                "I've got the idea."

                "Not even a 'single glance at a syllable or two that couldn't possibly hurt'."

                "Mm-hmm."

                "The illustrations are even less safe, if that's possible."

                "Can you get on with it?"

                "Blindfold yourself first."

                "I thought I was guarding you."

                "I thought you were a warrior."

                "That's low."  Dullahan sighed, forced to back down to prove his skill, and tied a bolt of violet-grey silk around his eyes.  Jastyx closed hers, trusting common sense to keep those lids shut, and opened the black book to a random page.

                "We are in danger," the Venus Adept intoned.  "We are trapped, and we carry you to one who will bring forth your power as it has never been seen before.  We are not capable of channelling you, but we have need of that same power.  Help us, that we might aid you."

                Through her closed eyes Jastyx saw the glow, and wheezing, scratching words flowed from the pages.  It was like listening to an entire chorus speak a sentence in a second by having each person recite a different word.  The Tomegathericon might have said "I do not aid, but I shall bring to you beneficent destruction."

                "I suppose that'll have to do," she muttered.  The pages were flipping back and forth on their own, and a strange humming was growing in her ears.

                "Better than being incinerated," Dullahan said, staring blindly at the world, but now very thankful for the blindfold.

                "We can only hope," she replied.  His grip on his sword tightened rather a lot.

                "So, once these Champions get blown to Contigo, the prize'll be mine, an' this year I've heard it's a Mysterious Card.  Nae a soul left in the world knows where those came from, and there are nae many left," said Dagna.  Cata suspected that he could have kept talking for hours, but she had been left behind somewhere around the idea of sodium bags, and so was almost grateful for what happened next.

                The key word there is definitely 'almost'.