There wasn't infinite time. From what I could think of, there were some essentials we had to go do. Sheba needed clothes, lest we give up the ruse immediately. She needed shoes, and we needed information. Much like Saturos, the best way for us to cover this would be to split up.
"What, want to get rid of me already?" Sheba asked cheekily, leaning forward and folding her hands behind her back. I just looked away, throwing my pouch of money to Karst.
"She needs clothes and shoes. Sheba can probably show you where."
"Something that travels?"
"Of course." There was no point in assuming we'd fail, after all. "The Vale is temperate and Imil is freezing, so remember to get her a cloak too."
"Got it."
"Don't I get a say in this?" I just rolled my eyes. Sheba knew she didn't get a say. We had too much to do and not enough time.
"Meet me at the arena. I'm going to scout the competition." I noted. I removed the mask from my cloak, handing it to Karst. "Give that to her after she gets something that has a real pocket in it."
"Got it."
"Tch, travelers. Always worshiping your pockets." Sheba retorted cheekily.
"That's because they are useful." Karst shot back. Her lips twisted into a smile. "So, a dr-"
"No dresses." Sheba said it with such vehemence that it left me wincing. "Dresses are useless."
"Well, that answers that."
"Just get to it, you two." I groaned. "You leaving your Djinni with me?"
"Course I am. You aren't getting away that fast, princess." Sheba answered. "Right, this way, Karst. I know a few shops."
"Not too expensive, I hope."
"Nothing is expensive when you have black mail." Sheba's lips were wicked, and it suddenly occurred to me that Sheba probably could blackmail most of Tolbi. She could, at best, be described as terrifying. "And don't forget it, Felix!" She winked at me playfully.
I could not understand this girl, probably at a fundamental level. The second she left her room, her spirits had shot through the roof. When was the last time she'd felt the wind?
I put that thought out of my head. The best way to help her was to win. Everything else was a secondary consideration right now. I started to walk back to town, waving behind me.
This chimera, I needed to know more about it. The best way to find out about it would be to watch it fight. The day had started, so I was sure there would be some fighters.
"You would be right." Ether's voice was far more distinct. It took a moment for me to realise the Djinni on my head wasn't Ether at all.
"You're her other one?"
"Simoom. Though the line between me and Simoom is very thin."
"So you're Sheba?"
"That's a way to look at it." Simoom just bobbed on my head, hoping down onto my shoulder. Her tail looked almost like a flower, swishing in the air. She was almost as cheeky as Sheba was, lounging around on my own body.
"You aren't that nice to lay on."
"Says you."
"Says me."
At least her ego was strong. Prisoners usually broke after months, but she had lasted far longer.
Tolbi was a beautiful city in the morning. The Colosso, though, loomed in the distance, a citadel of blood that I would have to conquer by the end of the day. The smell was heavy in the morning. Like they had tried to clean out the Colosso and failed miserably.
"Is it that unpleasant?"
"Very." I muttered. "Like… corpses."
"Most who fight the chimera live. Some are not so lucky."
"Let's make sure we don't join the dead then." I walked into the upper walkway. The viewing gallery was separated into several sections. The lower you got, I suspect, the more it would cost. Up here, it was only a flicked copper coin. It was a fair distance to the Colosso floor, but I could see it easily.
"I can't see what you see, just saying."
"How's the shopping?"
"Haggling was quick. The man doesn't want to know who his son is seeing in any detail, unsurprisingly." Sheba seemed happy to admit to blackmail.
"I'm getting measured now."
"Good." I watched as the first group of warriors walked out. The crowd cheered as they declared their names. Azart, Satrage and Navampa. That was the three names. The chimera entered the arena a moment later, stalking forth like a cat playing with a group of mice.
It was almost brutal to watch. I could feel the bloodlust from the arena. The dragon within me roared in response, a thrum in my chest that desired to tear free and annihilate the predator before me. Three warriors, all charging forth with a scream.
The chimera was fast. That was what the first battle told me. It danced like a cat around their swords and ripped through bodies and flesh with ease. Thick armour did not avail them.
"Any tells you can see?"
"The lion's eyes glow red when it breathes fire." I noted. Simoom nodded against me, resting her head against my ear.
"It breathed fire. So you could see it doing it as well?"
"Yeah." The gladiators were cleaned up with little effort. I was almost sure the chimera would eat them, but it was herded away by horsemen with spears before it could begin feasting. With that, the first round had ended in disaster for those wishing to defeat the chimera. "Armour is useless. The claws are too long."
They resembled the claws of my dragon form, which meant they probably had a razor fillet to rip open metal and shells. The dragon head should have given the presence of such a thing away in hindsight.
"It intends to use lightning."
"Yeah. The dragons eyes went purple. I suppose the ram uses blue and ice." I muttered. "What about the snake, though?"
"It's heads all have individual minds." Simoom noted.
"They don't seem to agree very much."
"No, I see what you mean." I mused as the fourth group elected to split up. "Which head controls the body?"
"All of them. They fight for control."
The beginnings of a strategy was forming in my mind. What I could see was telling me how we could win this. The main three heads were all quite competitive. The snake head was the real killer. It was hidden from view and darted to each side to devour its target. It's fangs must have been as long as my arm.
"Whatcha thinking?"
"You know what I'm thinking."
"I don't talk to that many people, Felix. Hearing it is nicer then looking for it."
"... I think you need to be directly in front of the chimera." I answered. "Karst and I fight from the sides. If we're in its face, then the dragon and ram heads are trying to pull it to the sides. The lion can't attack you unless it breathes fire." I paused for a moment. "Use your winds to part the flame."
"Then you intend to fight the ram and Karst the dragon?"
"That's the idea. You need to keep an eye on that dragon. If it spins to blast me with lightning, you need to head it off."
"Because it'll kill you. What about Karst?"
"I'll use psynergy to cover her. You need to keep us apprised of which head is going to use its attack."
"I can do that."
"That snake is the real danger. We need to cut it off as quick as we can." I muttered. "I don't think we could get armour thick enough to block that."
"We are getting shoes now, by the way. Should only take another ten or twenty minutes."
"... That's fast."
"The girl knows her stuff."
The next four rounds ended poorly, with one fatality being sprayed across the arena sands in a spectacular spray of gore, his entrails all that held his torso and hips together. Death was always a possibility in battle. If I could just use my dragon form, it'd be my prey, not the other way around.
The idea of what we were going to do made me nervous.
"Studying your foe?" I didn't turn to Agatio. I didn't really want to talk to him too much. "You remember the first tenet."
"I did." I muttered. "I take it that Saturos is about to leave?"
"We have a cart for the day. This plan better work, or we won't have funds." Agatio retorted. "You have a plan?"
"Divide and conquer. It's dumb. We use that to split its attention and sever its heads."
"I would start with the snake." The older warrior looked at the arena hard, his eyes narrow. "The neck is thick."
"I'll ram a pillar through it."
"If you could fight, I'd believe you." The words came out as almost a sneer. "Saturos says good luck. You probably need it. We'll be back in a few hours."
The 'wait for us' didn't need to be said. I let out an explosive breath as he left.
"Tell me you guys are coming soon."
"We're on our way. What next?"
"Practice." I answered. "I have a plan, but we need to practice the approach." I nodded to myself. We could do this. We just had to stay strong and confident.
"You want to see how well I handle."
"Yes. We're going to hunt something."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Sheba's voice was reassuring at this point. I just groaned, hand on my sword as the two girls joined me. Sheba was dressed in far looser cloth, something that actually looked like it fit her, with my mask hanging off her belt.
"What was the damage, Karst?"
"It could have been worse. We went through half of the coin."
"Right. Lets go then."
-
Hunting was nerve wracking. Well, at least it was for the first monster. I had explained how we would approach, but the practice went awry almost immediately. Sheba's face was beet red as I returned from the corpses of the gnomes we had encountered.
"You need to watch the lightning bolts."
"I didn't put that much into it!"
"Then you need to tone it down more." I bit my lip as Karst lit up, the girl still wreathed in flames. "It's like using fire! Too much energy doesn't make it stronger, it makes it larger! Those lightning bolts will fry us if you don't make them smaller!"
"It's not that easy!"
And that was the problem, wasn't it? Sheba was extremely strong. There was no doubt of that. She also had no real control. The second round went about as well as the first. The third had me call a stop.
"Alright, we need to do something else." I declared, as I pointed in the distance and ripped the earth up into a boulder. "That's your target. Shoot."
"What? It's just rock."
"Exactly. You have to hit nothing but the rock." I answered, standing directly behind it.
"Felix!"
"Shoot already! If you're doing it right, you won't hit me! Tone it down before you kill one of us!"
I could tell Sheba was shrinking at my words, however, this was the safest way to force her to learn. If she put too much power into it, hopefully I'd just get a little singed. A moment passed. Then two.
"I can't."
"Do it." I declared. My body started to change, my wings ripping free as I felt the world still around me. "Do it, or I'm going to strike."
"Felix-"
"Chi Pa-"
"Stop!" Karst's voice let out a scream as a blast of lightning erupted. I felt my lips twist into a small smirk in spite of the blinding pain, as the rock before me crumbled away, electricity crackling around me and my now extremely singed right wing.
"Well. That's a start." I noted. "Patoh." The word of power was all that was needed, as my left talon dug into the ground and rose another boulder. "Again, Sheba."
"This is cruel, Felix." Karst snarled. I shook my head.
"We don't have time. The plan relies on her being able to aim."
"I can't do that again."
"You're right, you'll get smaller." I declared. "Again."
The method was cruel. Karst was right. It was also the only method available to us. None of us knew how Jupiter Adepts interpreted their power. So the only way to make her get better at it was to force her to do so under pain of something she didn't want. Sheba'd been a prisoner for years. There was probably nothing that could happen to her she hadn't at least made some level of peace with.
Harming… say, me, though.
It took about an hour for her to start showing results. When I finally let the stillness go, returning to being just a human, I could feel the pain from the wound in my back. It was nothing I couldn't fix in a moment with some psynergy, though. Only the skin was broken.
"Okay. We're ready."
"We're… Oh…" Sheba's eyes widened as it occurred to her that we had only been practicing. "Wait, you aren't going to-"
"We're getting lunch first. Then we're doing this. We can't delay." Karst just shook her head. I could hear her faintly muttering to Sheba that Saturos was a bad influence, but I let that go.
If that training was good enough for me, then…
There was no point dwelling on it.
We met the others near the fountain before the Colosso. The street vendors did amazing sweetrolls. It was worth the three silver I paid for them. Saturos gave me one look over, before nodding.
"Planned?"
"Very. You find anything?"
"Not a lot." Saturos admitted. "Agatio will be back later." The meaning was clear. We'd discuss it somewhere there wasn't prying eyes. That was fair enough.
"I don't know that I want to do this…" Sheba admitted as we walked towards the Colosso.
"You don't want to be free?"
"I just… hurt you. Bad."
"It's not that bad."
"Felix, remember who you are telling that to." Karst rolled her eyes. "We're in this far. Menardi's bet on us. We have to do it now."
"... Right." Sheba glanced at me just once, before pulling the Mask of the Black Dragon onto her face and pulling her scarf over like a hood. "How do I look?"
"Menacing. Like an armoured witch." I meant it as a compliment, but her huff gave me the feeling it wasn't taken as one.
The reception was small, and the man at the bar counting coins and writing names absently as we applied. He didn't seem that invested in the whole thing. Then again, he probably got paid win or lose, and it wasn't like he could see from here.
"Just remember, if you die, your goods are forfeit." He noted. I rolled my eyes, pulling my scarf over the bottom of my face.
"Right."
"Nervous, Felix?" Karst asked. I shook my head.
"I'd normally eat these things."
"Well, you aren't twice its size." She shot back. "Sheba?"
"Terrified."
"Good. It means you're alive."
"Just remember. Right now you're Nina."
"Right…"
As we entered the arena, spinning and screaming our names, it occurred to me that out plan was optimistic. We were facing a chimera in its element. The sand was rough and coarse, terrible for using with psynergy.
"Don't you dare think that now."
"Wouldn't dream of it." I moved right, towards the ram, while Karst moved left, towards the dragon. It kept stalking, yet we stalked in a circle with it. The ram's maw was twisting from a snarl to terror almost immediately.
Good. It recognised that it was my prey. There was no reason to wait for a signal to start. Even after months, Karst and I could still work together like a well oiled machine. The earth around me twisted into something resembling armour, while Karst's body ignited in fire.
Sheba's first lightning bolt missed, but it was our marker to charge. The chimera leapt out of the way like a deadly cat, but we were upon it in seconds. Meters melted into feet with a dozen paces, and my sword, ripped from its sheathe, was already cutting a bloody ark.
It was fast. That I had known from the outset. This deadly dance was as much one of endurance as killing blows. The chimera's heads pulled it every which way, sword and scythe biting into flesh and ripping fur. It's focus was on Sheba, ever dodging those lightning bolts of hers.
Then it struck. I had been waiting for the snake head to make a move. Like I thought, it attacked me, its predator, first. Its fangs, dripping with venom that sizzled in the sand, were easily as long as my whole arm and would rip me solidly in half if they hit.
"Fire! All around you!"
"Karst! Part!" I danced around the snake head, sword biting scales, as I leapt backwards. The lion head breathed fire, exploding in an inferno that split in an instant. I had expected it to aim that at Sheba, not us.
I lunged the second it parted. The lion head was not ready. Karst clearly had the same idea, for our weapons found its neck together, ripping through its throat.
Where Karst could wrench hers free, I had to abandon my sword, the snake tail snapping at my laurels. My boots skidded over the sands, and the psynergy erupted from my fingertips, a wall of earth separating it, and me.
"Ice! It's going to use lightning on your after!"
"Shield!" I stepped back again, clapping my hands to the ground as Karst fell in behind me. A dome of earth erupted around us, fending off the ice. Lifting my hands from the ground, I kicked the dome, turning it into a boulder and hurling it the chimera's way.
The lightning came after. Whatever of its thunder breath was meant to hit us clashed with a lightning bolt from Sheba's hands and flew off into the arena walls.
The strategy was a winner. The execution, well, maybe it could have been better. My hand ripped a sword of earth from the ground as I waded back in, Karst splitting to the side again. As long as the ram and the dragon were looking opposite ways, they'd fight over control of the body.
And so that was exactly what happened. Soon, Karst had claimed the dragon head as well, severing it with her scythe, wrenching upwards in a geyser of blood. The fight was almost disappointing, but then, it was a domesticated chimera… sort of. It couldn't be too dangerous, or there would have been a need for psynergy to capture it in the first place.
I relaxed. That was my mistake. The chimera gave us the slip almost immediately, leaving me cursing at that very fact Of course when it was down to one head it'd start moving faster.
I knew where it would go. It only had one viable target. It was fleeing me.
I used the earth as a springboard to rocket back to Sheba. There was no way I could kill it before it struck. It just wasn't going to happen.
I shoved myself between it and her instead.
The pain was unimaginable. Those fangs were huge, ripping into my left side. I could hear Sheba step past me as the snake hissed, gripping like no tomorrow.
Then the lightning roared. I've never been more grateful for someone's hand on my shoulder. If Sheba hadn't been touching me, protecting me from her lightning, then I was sure I'd be dead. The chimera certainly was.
The snake head fell from my side, fangs bloody. If I was a mere human, that'd have been the death of me. As it was…
I coughed. That was quite a bit of blood.
"F-Felix?"
"I'm fine." It was a bold faced lie and Sheba knew it, as I raised my hand in victory. "The chimera is conquered!"
The crowd cheered for its quart of blood. I just wanted to rest. Sheathing my sword, I shifted my cloak over my left side to hide the wound. Venus was able to heal, but this was far beyond my ability. I would have to rest in my other form to recover.
To do that, we needed out of Tolbi.
"Felix, you're hurt." Karst glared at me. I shook my head.
"I'm fine. Let's get our reward."
"But…" Sheba looked at me, just once, before gritting her teeth and nodding. She did not look happy. I suppose I wouldn't be if someone got hurt for my sake either.
But we had won. The man at the counter scarcely believed it, as he led us towards the main spectator box. I knew who we'd find there.
Babi.
He was far older then I thought he'd be. His hands had some chicken within them. He'd clearly been eating before we had arrived.
"Welcome, welcome." His voice made me hate him almost immediately. It betrayed… something about him. He smelled wrong.
"You'll have to explain that smell thing later." Simoom quipped, as Sheba settled beside me.
"So, you have bested the chimera. I trust that it all worked out then?" Babi's voice betrayed something. He knew something. Something…
"You bet on us." Karst guessed. Babi's mouth twisted just a little.
"Well, yes. Of course I did." He answered. "Two warriors from outside town, with such exotic and expensive silk? I was waiting for you to decide to fight. Though your third, well…" He paused for a moment. "Is the mask truly necessary?"
"I-"
"Before that, our boon." I declared. Babi blinked.
"To business? So soon? You don't wish to eat?" I wasn't sure I ever wanted to eat at the same table as Babi. I took a deep breath. It was getting more and more difficult to not cough and betray my injury.
"Business before pleasure, King Babi." Sheba noted.
"Very well." Babi muttered. "Fine. Name your boon. Money? Done. A ship? No, you have that. Maybe you seek-"
"Release Sheba into our custody." I answered. Babi froze.
"Excuse me? How did you even… Oh. Isn't that devious?" Babi's mouth twisted from shock to amusement almost immediately. "I should have guessed. The clothes and the mask… that was bold. Alright, the ruse is up, 'Nina', you can remove your mask." I resisted the urge to laugh as Sheba pulled the black mask from her face.
"You don't seem upset." Karst noted. Babi shook his head, leaning back.
"I suppose she hasn't told you much. Otherwise, you would have told her not to incur my wrath." He retorted. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
"You don't seem to get it." I retorted. "She's coming with us."
"Why would I let you take her away? Humour me, before you go singing of my death."
"Because we're going north, and if it gets out she killed the chimera, your leverage evaporates." I answered. Babi's feast slowed.
"Oh? And you propose to solve that problem by removing her from the equation?" Babi asked. "Tell me, 'Felix', why do you need her?"
"Because I have need of a traveling companion with her talents." I answered.
"I think you believe you're saving a princess. Beware, that princess has thorns." Babi shot back. "No matter… I will grant this boon on conditions."
"Name them."
"You go north. You do not return past the Karagol Sea."
"Done." I had no intention of actually obeying, but that would be a matter for later.
"You agree so easy?"
"We're going back to Prox. Why would we return."
"The fact your ship is here."
"A ship you cannot sail. We have no worries about it." I answered dismissively. Lemurian ships were dangerous to try and damage. There was no need to worry.
I needed this conversation to end as soon as possible.
"... Very well. Sheba may go with you." Babi rolled his eyes. It was clear he thought he'd gotten off easy. It wasn't like we needed to worry. It wasn't like he could make our ship move. Menardi had the orb.
My mind was starting to become full of pain.
"Thank you." Sheba's voice was a whisper as we walked from the box. She offered me the mask back, but I just shook my head. She didn't ask questions, she just returned it to her belt.
"You won." Saturos noted. I looked at him almost blindly. I was poisoned. I knew it. His face was no longer distinct. "Felix?"
"I have to go."
"... We have a few bottles. We could use it to fix the wound." Menardi noted. Agatio just snorted.
"Why waste it o-"
"You have what?"
"Some medicine. We can use it to-"
I wish they'd stop talking.
[ ] Leave town for the night. You'd recover as a dragon overnight.
[ ] Use one of the elixirs of life.
You will be leaving Tolbi tomorrow.
