The brown-stone arena tiles warmed Huld's bare feet.

The tiles had been baking in the sun all day, which was still bright and hot this afternoon, though strangely a clump of dark clouds had formed in one corner of the sky.

It's not time for the rainy-season to arrive yet, is it? No, of course not.

He dismissed the thought.

Underneath the mostly-clear sky, thousands of his countrymen and countrywomen stood watching around Tenkachi's arena, so many that he couldn't see beyond them.

Boys with toothy, eager smiles plastered on their faces. Men with stony-serious frowns and arms folded, unmoving as boulders. Girls staring keenly, biting their nails or with both hands clasped together in front of their mouths like they were praying. Women murmuring silently or anxiously hopping from foot to foot. Wriggling babes in arms. Statued elderly. And all the ages in between.

I must not let them down.

All of the Farrians who had competed in the Tournament's Quarter Finals thus far had lost. Although, to be fair, one had been a woman, which was Not Correct, and one had been a dishonourable exhibitionist fool–not a soldier-monk trained in one of the religious fighting-schools of Eto like Huld had been, but a sacrilegious free agent who made money out of his fighting.

And, also to be fair, none of those losses mattered that much, anyway. This was Huld's tournament to win. That he won his matches, and won the whole thing, and won the prize for Farr, was all that really mattered.

Huld needed to win this tournament, not only to claim the Earth Emerald, but also for the honour of his country–to show that the Farrians were the strongest, the greatest, the supreme people of Mid.

That was what the Governor had told him, and what he knew to be true.

"Are you ready?"

Huld came back to the present with a jolt. The tournament announcer had asked him a question from where he stood at the side of the arena. The monk was vaguely aware that the announcer had already asked him this question once before, but he had been lost for a moment in a rare drifting of focus.

He looked over at his opponent standing opposite him.

A tall, dark-skinned Frikian woman with a curiously shaved head, except for an asymmetric fringe of jet-black hair that curved around to her left ear and came down over her right eye. She wore a garment made of the skin of some spotted animal, which clung to her torso, tied at the waist with a rope belt, leaving her smooth arms and legs bare. She winked at him.

Another woman. Most strange. What were these tournaments coming to, that two women had made it into the Quarter Finals? And this one was not even a Farrian, but a filthy foreigner! It was practically an insult for him to even have to fight her.

Huld nodded. "I am ready," he said levelly.

"Alright," said the announcer. "Then…BEGIN!"

Huld dropped his weight into chocobo stance, bending his knees and resting his fists at his hips, taking a defensive poise to see how the Frikian would open.

The Frikian did nothing at all. She just stood there watching him, a wry little smile creeping out from behind the overhanging half of her fringe.

Then, slowly, deliberately, exaggerating the movements painstakingly, she dropped into chocobo stance herself, still smiling.

A muscle in Huld's jaw twitched. Does she mean to mock me? he thought. She can't know the Farrian arts. No master would allow a Frikian to train with him, let alone a woman… She must be copying me…

Carefully, gaze still trained on the woman, Huld extended his fingers and pinched them together against his thumbs, putting a foot forward and bringing his hands up in front of him, one close to his chest, the other stretched further out. Crane stance. An investigative stance.

In front of him, the woman did exactly the same, mirroring his movements exactly.

Huld kept the irritation out of his expression. So she was copying him. Well, that was having some success in baiting him, he reluctantly acknowledged, but it would only get her so far. She couldn't mirror his every move. Not in the heat of battle.

But then why is she still smiling?

He took a step forwards, towards her, and the woman stepped forwards too.

He took a few more steps, and the woman matched him exactly, the gap between them closing by degrees, about eight paces now.

He took another step, but this time he walked diagonally right, no longer approaching her head-on but moving to one side, to flank her.

This time the woman moved to her own diagonal right, Huld's left, keeping her mirror image of his movements so that the size of the gap between them remained the same.

Huld continued to strafe to his right, and Qendra of Frikia did the same, so that they circled one another across the stone tiles of the arena.

As they did, Huld watched her lithe, toned limbs closely, looking for some opening or sign of weakness.

The thing was, Huld noticed with a start that nearly made him misstep, the woman's stance was perfect. She wasn't just poorly imitating his thousands-of-times-practiced poses and positions on the spot, apparently. Her arms were held out at precisely the right lengths, her legs moving in precisely the right sequence, her torso tensed in precisely the right way, for crane stance.

Maybe she has been trained by a Farrian?

But if she had, why mess around with this mirroring game? Why not open with a distinctive attack of her own, or put up a more conventional defence and let him come to her instead? It was like she was playing a game of Check where she had decided just to mimic his every move.

Enough contemplation, Huld thought. It's time to put an end to this charade.

He kicked off from the arena floor, launching himself at the Frikian with a crane-fisted strike from left to right aimed to hit the side of her head with the back of his hand.

In the same instant, the Frikian sprang towards him with her own identical strike…

…then at the last moment dropped her body, ducking under Huld's blow. As he moved past her, she lashed out and up with her knee, catching him in the stomach. Huld doubled up, the wind knocked out of him, gasping at the sudden pain.

The Frikian drew her leg back, then flicked it around her off-side in a vicious roundhouse aimed at Huld's face.

He ducked the kick, thrust his legs back to press himself flat against the arena floor, then rolled away rapidly, spinning over several times before coming up into dragon stance, one fist held back, one up in front of him with two bent fingers.

Opposite him, the Frikian already stood in exactly the same stance a few paces away.

"What game are you playing?!" Huld yelled at her, ignoring the calls of the crowd, angry at what the Frikian woman was doing, angry that she had landed the first blow, angry that she had broken his composure–already. "How are you mirroring my movements so perfectly?"

That irritating smile still mocked him. Her lips were cherry-red.

"Well," said the Frikian in a disturbingly confident and sensual voice, "that would be telling, wouldn't it now?"

Huld moved forwards in dragon stance. The woman did the same.

This time when he got close to her, he feinted with the beginning of a simple front-kick, then quickly brought his foot back down and flung out his left hand in a thrusting punch instead.

The Frikian copied him exactly, right down to the feint, and flung out the start of the same punch, but turned it into a feint of her own, suddenly dropping down to the ground beneath his strike, spinning as she did so in order to throw out a fast-moving low sweep kick.

This time Huld was ready for it. He jumped the sweep, then came down with a palm-thrust. The woman backed away, quick as a snake, then dodged his follow-up punch, and the one after that as well.

She flipped backwards heels-over-head, and Huld thought he had her on the run, but as she turned over in the air her foot flashed out and caught him in the face.

He staggered backwards, blinking away his surprise, then blocked every strike of her subsequent assault with his hands. She had underestimated his reaction speed.

He made to grab her arm, missed, but when she pulled away in alarm he stepped up and followed through with an almighty punch from his other hand, hitting her square in the stomach.

The Frikian grunted as she stumbled back across the arena. She landed on her back but managed to turn her momentum into another flip which got her on her feet again at once, where she adopted a stance Huld did not know–a low crouch with two arms outstretched to either side of her, pointed fingers and thumbs at the end of flat palms.

"So you do have more than mirroring to you!" Huld called over the noise of the crowd. He was sure they were cheering for him.

"Much more," said the Frikian. Infuriatingly she was still smiling. "But mirroring seems to be serving me well enough."

No wonder this woman made it to the Quarter Final, he thought as he watched her crouched there, himself crouching into monkey stance. As well as her mirroring trick, she is astoundingly fast, and deceptively strong. In terms of fighting skill, they might even be evenly matched. He did not know how that was possible, but somehow it was. He did not think a woman nor a Frikian could be this skilled at fighting.

He would have to use a trick of his own in order to win.

No, not a trick, a gift.

A gift he had earned.

Huld broke his stance and ran straight at the woman. Predictably, she did the same, coming right at him.

He thrust forwards with a true straight punch, and the woman mirrored him, but then at the last moment caught his hand and jumped, pushing herself off of it in order to flip into the air again. Her feet came around in a circle behind her and back down towards Huld's head, but he got his hands up and blocked the kicks, which glanced off them.

The woman hit the ground in front of him with a wobble, almost losing her footing, and Huld saw his chance.

He stepped forwards with a punch from his other hand, moving just a fraction slower than normal.

At the same time, he willed a section of a stone tile just behind the woman to rise quickly in the form of a small pillar, up and slightly at an angle.

To Huld's great satisfaction, the woman stepped backwards out of the way of his just-a-bit-too-slow punch…and straight into the path of his earth attack.

The rising pillar of stone smashed up into her, now making her lose her feet completely, connecting with her back with a dull thwack. It carried her along through the air for a moment, then, as Huld stepped out of the way and willed the stone to stop rising, the woman was thrown from it with an enraged grunt of shock.

She tumbled in an arc through the air, flailing her arms and legs around desperately, then managed to turn her descent into a graceful dive, tucking her limbs into her body and trying to steer her descent.

But it was no use. Huld's earth attack had taken her completely by surprise, and hit her too hard, and she came down several rows back in the audience, who yelped and hollered when she landed among them, throwing up their hands and scrambling to get out of the way.

"Out of bounds!" cried the tournament announcer immediately from the side of the arena. "Huld of Farr is the victor!"

The cheer went up, the loudest Huld had heard so far that day–a wall of noise that fenced him in.

He exhaled relief, and looked over at his Lord Governor, sitting in his viewing box above the arena.

The Governor was applauding like the rest of the audience, but he was not cheering. Instead, he sat tight-lipped, his stare intense.

Huld nodded to him, tilting his head just a fraction. The Governor nodded back, just barely perceptibly.

The monk became aware that the crowd were doing more than just cheering him–they were chattering frantically about something.

"How did he do that?" he heard someone say nearby.

"More sorcery!" cried someone else.

"Is he allowed to do that too?"

Huld realised that he had left the angled stone pillar he had made from the arena floor with his earth manipulation still standing.

Ah. That was right. They had all seen him perform the earth attack with their own eyes, right in front of them. The chocobo was truly out of the stable now.

Meanwhile, the Frikian woman had made her way back through the audience and was climbing over the wooden perimeter. She walked back into the arena, still smiling, and extended her hand to him.

"Good match," she said, just for his ears.

Normally Huld would not have condescended to clasp her arm, an unhygienic foreigners' custom, especially when bowing would have sufficed just as well, but to his own surprise he found that today he was happy to reciprocate the gesture. She had, after all, indeed given him a good match. Unexpectedly.

"How did you do that trick with the floor?" the woman whispered to him.

"How did you do that trick with mirroring my movements?" Huld countered, breaking the arm-clasp.

The woman shrugged a shoulder. "Fair enough," she intoned, her eyes gleaming red in the sunshine. "You keep your secrets, and I will keep mine."

Huld frowned. He couldn't admit it out loud, but he was deeply unsettled by this woman. She had nearly given him the fight of his life. A filthy foreigner had nearly given him the fight of his life! If he hadn't resorted to using that earth technique, the match could have gone either way.

A collective gasp issued from the crowd, and Huld looked round.

The Governor had left his viewing box and was walking onto arena.

Now Huld did bow, deep and low, before looking up again.

The Governor strode over to Huld and the Frikian and held up his hands for silence from the crowd.

Hush fell immediately.

"People of Farr!" boomed the Governor. "People of the greatest nation of Mid! Your eyes are not deceiving you! What you have witnessed here today is a display of earthmoving!"

The audience gasped.

"It has been made possible," the Governor continued, "because one of our fighting monks recently retrieved the fabled Earth Emerald from its resting place in the Shrine to Eto! This is the same Emerald whose power was once used to build our mighty capital city of Shun Pei!"

Chatter broke out over the audience like the after-tremors of an earthquake.

"Did he really just say that?"

"The mythical jewel–can it really be?"

"I thought it had been lost!"

Undeterred by the chatter, the Governor carried on loud and clear, and the crowd fell to listening again: "In view of this being revealed by our champion earthmover, Brother Huld, I am pleased to disclose that the prize for the winner of this Tournament will not only be one million gold pieces from the treasury, but the gift of the Earth Emerald itself! The Tournament Winner will claim it for whatever nation they represent!"

More astonished gasps broke out across the crowd, chased by chatter.

Huld's palms began to sweat as he watched the onlookers heatedly discussing this news. The pressure was really on now. It had already been on, given he was now the only Farrian left in the tournament, and the only one who had been personally entered to it by the Governor himself, but now the whole country would know that he was fighting for the Emerald. He must not let them, or his Lord Governor, down. He must not fail them.

The Governor held up his hands again, and got the quiet he wanted. "Furthermore," he bellowed, "I have a second important announcement! It would appear, my fellow Farrians, that an unusually early rainy season is upon us!" He gestured up towards the sky, at the growing contingent of dark grey clouds that were gathering, blowing in from somewhere east. "Therefore, to avoid the Tournament being called off, I am exercising my Governing authority to decree that this Tournament will conclude today, so as to beat the rain! On with the semi-finals!"

Huld's eyes went wide. The crowd erupted, shouting out its approval. They were clearly thirsty for more fighting.

"Lord Governor," Huld said quietly as he walked with the Governor and Qendra back towards the arena dugout, "are you sure you want to do that? There might be some wisdom in postponing the tourn–"

"Do not presume to question me, Huld," the Governor chastised him equally quietly, "especially in public. You forget your place."

Huld blanched. He had forgotten his place, momentarily–but the announcement had been so unexpected, and he was tired from his fight with the Frikian…

"You can see those clouds," the Governor continued, flicking his head upwards. "It is going to pour soon. The rainy-season seems to have arrived unusually early this year. Our people will not want to stand and watch the fighting in the rain–they will leave, and travel home. But the Tournament is good for the economy, and for national morale. Best to get it over with today and to show those foreigners our supremacy as quickly as possible. That will send a message to the rest of Mid that Farr is not to be challenged. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes, Lord Governor," said Huld.

"Good. Of course you can." They had reached the tunnel to the dugout, and the Governor came down into it with them. "Now, listen to me. The Jewel-touched foreigners have a healer among them. I have made an arrangement with him. He will heal you so that you are ready to fight straight away at full capacity in your next bout. You are to win it, and the final, using your earth powers, putting on a fine display just as we practiced, to show that Farr is supreme over all the other nations. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Lord Governor," Huld said aloud.

But in his heart, as he watched the Frikian woman go ahead of him to gather up her things, he thought, But are we really supreme over all the other nations?