Hustle and Fade

[Call me J]

(solo)

"Joke's on you, we still alive"

- Kanye West, "We Don't Care"

[Call me J]

I didn’t like Alerar. The dark elven country was uninviting. Everything about it just felt a bit off. The people weren’t rude, or even outright bigoted, but in every tavern I had felt ignored. As if I was allowed to drink with the dark elves out of there munificence, and not because I was their equal. Their women wouldn’t talk to me, and the men only wanted to offer me menial labor.

If it wasn’t for the Patriarch, I would have left. I wanted to leave in spite of the Patriarch. Part of me just wanted to go to Grace Manor and spend some time with Rainee. She seemed like the kind of girl who would just let me relax and feed me grapes. That was the part of me I should have listened to. Hell, if I had known just how strange my next few days were going to be back when I had first arrived in Ettermire, I would have even rather stayed at the place of an ugly girl.

The thing was, I knew that the Patriarch was coming for me. When I had been in Eluriand, I had met his minions. They hadn’t identified me yet, but it would only be a matter of time. All I had to do was say the wrong thing at the wrong time, the Patriarch had eyes and ears everywhere. I don’t know how he did it, but he was able to control everyday people. All he needed to do was bite them or have one of his minions bite them, then he’d be able to see out of their eyes.

I was in Ettermire because Itarildë Vanimedlë told me I should be. I didn’t trust many people, but I trusted her, and not just because she was the Headmistress of Aglarlin. I could have cared less about that, as much as I liked to read, I had no interest in singing in the middle of a battle. It was because without Itarildë, I don’t know if I would have made it out of Eluriand alive.

Though I didn’t like to dwell on it too much, I realized that I owed more to the Aglarlin Headmistress than I did to my own family. My father was Damon Kaosi, a fact that despite my best efforts to keep secret, powerful people seemed to know. I’m not sure if it was my father publicizing these facts, or if the well connected on Althanas just had spies, but either way, I knew exactly why a member of the High Graf Schynius’ special forces appeared in El’inssring calling out for me.

“Jay-mee Kay-oh-see,” the man shouted. He had called the name out like he was calling for a pig.

I tried not to laugh. It was obvious that he had only seen the name written. Anyone who knew me pronounced it “Jaym.” I wondered if I should have acknowledged the page. Though Damon had never hated the Alerrarians, he had been the High General of Raiaera before Findelfin, and was seen as a bit of a pariah here. I knew I couldn’t fight him, but I was sure that I could slip out of Ettermire before the High Graf had caught me. There were enough foreigners in Ettermire that I wouldn’t have been too prominent, and based on my last name, I was sure they were expecting a green skinned half elf, not a humanoid with the ability to turn into a green dragon.

If it had been the regular police or the Kyorl, then I might have hesitated to answer the call. But this was an emissary of the High Graf, the second most important person in Alerar. Someone like that was going to have a more elaborate interest in just questioning me over my bloodline.

“Here!” I said. I raised the glass of the dark ale I was drinking. I didn’t get up though, if the High Graf was sending his emissary instead of coming in person, then I was jolly well going to have the High Graf pay my bill.

[Call me J]

I pretended not to notice as the High Graf’s emissary made his way over to me. I was seated in a bar area where single people could go and sit with stools. It got us better service from the bar wenches, and the place had seemed to put its prettiest wenches on the job of serving single men. I appreciated that touch. Now, as my server came back, expecting that I would soon be leaving, I winked at her.

“Stay around for a while...” I told her. She obliged, though I could tell she was a bit confused.

The High Graf’s emissary didn’t care much for my pretensions, but I didn’t really mind. Even though I had told the emissary where I was, I wanted to see how he’d react to a few antics. If the High Graf wanted to question me because I was Damon’s son, I imagined he’d get rough soon. If the High Graf wanted to ask for my help, then he was going to be polite.

The emissary cleared his throat. “Excuse you,” I said. He cleared his throat again. I took a drink of ale.

I could tell that the emissary was getting frustrated, but he just folded his arms over his chest and cleared his throat for a third time. It was only after I had finished my ale that he finally said something. “The government of Alerar is summoning you,” he said.

“Then let it summon,” I replied. I asked the wench for another ale.

She looked at the emissary, who sternly shook his head. He gestured over towards the sword in a scabbard at his waist, a threat that wasn’t lost on me.

“The government of Alerar doesn’t want you drunk,” the emissary said. He was practically glowering at me. I could tell that he was mad. I took that as a good sign. Drow weren’t known for their restraint against other races, so any restraint that he showed me was because he had no choice.

“I’ll go meet your High Graf,” I said. I got up from my stool and brushed myself off.

The wench cleared her throat. “Your bill?” she said coldly. I could tell that she didn’t much appreciate being caught in the little interplay between me and the emissary.

“Could you get this?” I asked the emissary. “I’m a bit stripped right now.”

I imagined that if I said anything else to him, his head would have exploded with fury. Still, I watched as the dark elf took a few gold coins out of his pocket to pay the bill. “Are you done yet?” he asked. I could tell that he no longer had any patience.

“I guess...” I replied. I shrugged and followed the emissary out of El’inssring.

[Call me J]

The walk from El’inssring and Valshath d’Isto wouldn’t have been extraordinary for a dark elf, but it wasn’t very comfortable for me. My lungs, even though they could breathe fire, didn’t care much for Ettermire’s air. The pollution that spewed out from the factories created a black smoke that was worse than anything that could have come from a natural fire. I wondered what kind of things they could have been making in these factories.

I remember thinking to myself that I would never fit in here. I know that my father had spent a bunch of time here before he ended up becoming General of Raiaera, and he had even won Alerar’s Medal of Trestoria. But I can see why he hadn’t stayed. There was nothing about this continent that appealed to anyone with a heart. The dark elves had traded their identity for machines to tend. I wondered how their civilization continued after that trade off.

We passed by a few refugees as we made our way to Valshath d’Isto. They all kept a respectful distance from the palace, but I was more than certain that I had seen at least a few of them in Tel Aglarim. I supposed a lot of them had no where to go now that Xem’zund had taken over most of Raiaera, and that Ettermire was the closest place that they could find.

Since I knew it was a matter of time before we had to fight Xem’zund again, I wondered why they hadn’t been brought in to Alerar’s army. I tried to ask this question of the High Graf’s emissary, but his answer was less than satisfying.

“Well we’ve got enough of our own problems without taking up someone else’s chaff...” he said. “If these people were any good, they wouldn’t be begging on our streets.”

I crumpled my face at his answer. It was utterly reprehensible and short sighted. “What the hell’s he going to do when Xem’zund comes here, join with the undead over these people?” I sighed. This was what I had sacrificed so much for in Carnelost and Eluriand.

Though the emissary was both short sighted and despicable, I decided not to argue. I had irritated him enough, and I doubted he would have listened to me anyways. By the distance he kept from me when we walked, it was pretty clear he seemed embarrassed to be around me. I wasn’t sure if this was because I was a dragon or a Kaosi, but either way, I could tell he didn’t like me.

Eventually, we stood at the gates of the palace. The giant iron gates that kept the people from their rulers were parting right before me. It was a bit intimidating, especially when I looked up at the palace. I had no ideas what technologies were hidden inside the palace, though I couldn’t help but be a bit afraid when I realized how much of the smoke around me had emerged from there.

It was still a few hours before twilight, but I could tell why Ettermire was called the City of Lights. Between the reflections of sunlight off the black onyx and the flames spewing out of Valshath d’Isto’s many orifices, the palace was glowing. If it wasn’t for the High Graf’s emissary standing next to me, I might have just given up on whatever business I had right there. As I glanced over towards the emissary, I could tell that he also seemed a bit intimidated.

“Lingering is unseemly,” he said. I lingered just a second longer before I followed the emissary into the palace.

As I entered, I tried to pretend that I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t know if I was going to fool anyone, but I needed to pretend, even if I was only deluding myself. I couldn’t escape the truth. If Alerar had a soul, I was entering it. If Alerar had turned over to the machines, I dreaded to think what Valshath d’Isto was.

[Call me J]

Valshath d’Isto was surprisingly comfortable, once I was inside, at least in comparison to my expectations. At the bottom level, I could hear the noises from what seemed like a thousand little workshops, but I didn’t get too close to any of them. The main corridor that lead up to the stairs was well furnished, there was an elaborate rug on the floor and all the light fixtures were made of precious metals. I would have been surprised by how dark it was, but considering that it was a palace for dark elves, it made sense. To me it was a bit unseemly, it reminded me too much of what I imagined an undead palace would look like.

The emissary had guided me over to the stairs. They weren’t too steep, but I wondered how high I would have to climb. I didn’t want to have to go too high, the higher I ascended into Valsath d’Isto, the harder it would be for me to leave. Right now, I didn’t think I was anywhere close to anything important. The only thing regal was the carpet. Everything else was more commercial than regal.

I hadn’t noticed what the emissary had done to call them, but a group of dwarves appeared bearing two palanquins. My eyes opened wide when I realized what they were for, I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to be impressed or mortified. I considered suggesting that I’d rather walk than put the dwarves through the trouble, but I realized there would be little point to that. The High Graf’s emissary would just insist I took the palanquin. Not because he cared about my welfare, but because he had to escort me.

With a sigh, I thanked the dwarves politely, feeling a bit embarrassed they grunted when they lifted up the palanquin. I hoped, for my sake and theirs, that it wouldn’t be too many flights up the stairs. The dwarves grunted as they lifted me up, and the palanquin wobbled a bit before it steadied. They had the palanquin steady before they started to carry me, so I tried to relax.

Still, I couldn’t help feel a bit uneasy. It wasn’t that I was afraid they were going to drop me as much as I was leaving anything that remotely resembled a comfort zone. Still, I tried to take it easy and gain a better sense of myself. Whenever I reached the High Graf, I was going to need composure and a clear head. I wondered if I should have toyed with his emissary now, especially finishing my glass of ale. I wasn’t drunk, but I didn’t know if I’d be as fast as I could be if necessary.

I had been in many mansions before, but the only place that I could think of now was the Fire Palace in Hell. I had nearly gotten killed there, and I had an entire army of Rainee’s dead relatives on my side. As the palanquin continued up the stairs, I couldn’t shake the thought of Omarion sacrificing himself for me.

My thoughts were interrupted by the dwarves. They were speaking to each other, not me, but they were using Salvic, either because they couldn’t speak Alerian or they didn’t want drow listening in. Either way, I paid attention. I needed all the information I could get.

“Tough morning eh Dhav?” one of them said.

The other just groaned in reply.

“He’s heavier than all the others...” a third interjected.

“Eh, he ain’t that bad, at least he’s just one. After the morning’s rush, he ain’t nothing,” the first one shot back.

Then, one of the dwarves, the one I think was Dhav, mentioned something that really startled me. “Second Kaosi of the day...”

“Damon,” I thought immediately. I hadn’t seen my father since our time traveling misadventure in Alerar. He had sent me many messages, and I had occasionally responded, but I hadn’t seen him in the flesh for a while. Under different circumstances, I might have been a bit nervous to see him, but now, I was so nervous about meeting the High Graf that the idea of meeting my absentee father seemed a lot less intimidating.

“Yeah, but he goes up three more flights,” the first dwarf had joked. “All the way to the damn top of here.”

The dwarves groaned in unison. “Fifteen floors of technological wonder and they still need to import servants,” another dwarf deadpanned.

I smiled.

[Call me J]

When the palanquin reached the twelfth floor, I slipped out of it. I passed a few gold coins to the dwarves, and they nodded to say they understood. I smiled. I pointed to the emissary’s palanquin in front of us and slipped them a few more pieces of gold, so that they would know better than to alert the emissary. The nodded too. I grinned widely. Moving through the palace seemed easier than I expected.

I still made sure to move quietly as I moved down the hallway until the emissary’s palanquin was out of sight. There weren’t many people around, and I figured that if he heard more feet, he might get suspicious and peek beyond his curtains. With the good hearing I knew dark elves had, I didn’t want to take any chances.

The hallway on the twelfth floor wasn’t nearly as fancy as the one had been when I had first entered the palace. The walls were grey, probably the color of the cement that had been used to finish them in the first place. There were a few torches, and soon, I reached a hallway that had a sign hanging above it in big red letters. The words were in drow, so I couldn’t read them. Shortly afterwards, I would find that they said “military personnel only.”

I was vaguely certain I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, but that didn’t stop me from continuing to look around. I didn’t know if it was curiosity, or just the feeling that if Damon was around here, he would make sure that nothing would happen to me. Either way, I continued down the hallway, noticing that practically every door was not just padlocked, but guarded with strange contraptions that made me a bit uneasy. I’m not sure how any of them worked, but they seemed as if a person didn’t know how to control them, they would send large crescent blades attached to the ceiling down to kill the poor soul who ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After about five minutes of walking past dull, windowless walls and identical rooms with identical traps, I stumbled upon the end of the hallway. This room was not like the others. It wasn’t guarded at all, and instead of having a steel door, this one was engraved and finished in a waxy, shiny wood. I nodded appreciatively, glad that Alerar seemed to have at least a vague sense of aesthetics. I approached the door tentatively, hoping that Damon would be behind it.

My first impulse was to knock, but I quickly realized how stupid that would be. Maybe Damon was behind the door, but if he wasn’t, then I would have just revealed my location to whoever else was behind the door. Instead, I put my ear there and started to listen for Damon’s voice. I figured even though I hadn’t seen him since my first time in Anebrilith, I’d still recognize his voice. The voice of a person explaining to you that he broke the universe tends to etch itself into the memory.

The first voice I heard wasn’t Damon. It was a woman’s, and it was deeper and more serene than any voice that I’ve heard before. “There is only so much I feel justified in doing,” the voice began. “When he started, he just wanted to meet girls and drink. It was easy to steer him where he wanted. Now, even when he isn’t following his father, he’s doing things. I’m afraid if I steer him too much, I’ll be the one that kills him.”

A male voice spoke after her, though it wasn’t Damon. “We can’t have him getting too close to us,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on with him, but can’t we throw money at him, introduce him to a girl, I don’t know, anything…?”

The female voice spoke again. “We could, I just don’t know,” she said. “He’s been into some weird things…”

A second male voice spoke. This one was a lot softer than the first. I didn’t like it. It had both a velveteen and serpentine quality to it. It reminded me of the time I’d taken a shower and had a snake slither down my back. This voice definitely did not belong to Damon. “And so Lady, what are these things that he’s doing?” he asked.

The woman, presumably Lady, took a long time to reply. “I’m not your spy,” she said. “I know what’s needed, and that’s the only reason I’m here. Don’t for a minute think I’m here for Alerar. I’m here for Althanas. There’s a difference.”

“As are we all,” the first man said. It seemed like he was trying to placate the second man.

I leaned in closer. I couldn’t explain it, but I felt as though whatever they were talking about had to be linked to Damon. Even though none of the voices were Damon’s, I felt as though he had to have been in that room at one point. Given the weight of the discussion they were having, I couldn’t imagine them having it without having Raiaera’s youngest general ever involved.

Now, I heard another voice. “Hey you!” it growled. This voice wasn’t coming from the room. I turned around. There were three guards, all of them dressed in Kyorl uniforms. Two of them carried crossbows, both of which were pointed at me. Immediately, I raised my hands up to the sky. I could hear the people in the room behind me getting up from their seats and heading to the door.

[Call me J]

I stumbled for words. “I- I- I was summoned here…” I began. I made sure not to reach for my weapons.

Still, the guards noticed I was armed. The one who had called out to me earlier shook his head in utter disbelief. “You have weapons?” he asked incredulously. His eyes were open wide and it seemed as if he didn’t have his own hands on the hilts of a pair of daggers he would have rubbed his eyes just to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. “How’d you get them in here?”

I had no answer. I had known that weapons were not as welcome in Ettermire ever since the assassination of the Queen, but the police had not insisted that the law be obeyed. Now, I supposed within Valshath d’Isto, laws were enforced more vigorously. “I was let in with them,” I said, doubting that answer would suffice. “I uhh… no one stopped me when I entered…”

The guard’s mouth pursed as he began to say “shoo…” I winced. My eyes were open and in desperation, my mind rushed around for ideas, but was so completely washed with emotions that I wasn’t sure it realized what kind of trouble I was in, let alone how to get out of it.

Seconds later I got my reprieve. The door opened behind me, and in a hurried voice, the first man who had spoke shouted. “Idiots!” he boomed. “This is Jame- Jame Kaosi! Do you want to get fired?”

“Who’s Jame Kaosi?” one of the guards asked.

“Just get out of here,” the male voice behind me replied.

With that, the guards put their weapons down and began to walk away. I relaxed my hands and began to turn around, only to notice three people staring at me, all of whom were angry.

None of them were Damon Kaosi. That was clear. One of them was another green skinned elf, but from what Cloverfield had told me in Scara Brae, I knew that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. This was the one who had told the guards to stand down. The other male voice was a dark elf, and he was wringing his hands fervently. I didn’t know what exactly I had done wrong, but he seemed very agitated. I guessed he was the one with the unsettling voice. The female voice had come from an old and a dark skinned human, probably in her seventies, but still, I couldn’t avert my eyes from her for a while. She was stunning, in an elegant, not sexy way. I felt of the three, I liked my chances with her the best.

Unfortunately for me, it was the dark elf who was the first to speak. “What have you heard,” he said, leaning in to me so much that I could smell the garlic he’d eaten for lunch. “What do you know?”

I recoiled a little. “You’re talking about some guy, and he’s out of your control. And the lady there isn’t a spy. That’s all I know…”

The lady laughed. Her voice was soft and warm, and very soothing. “He heard something alright?” she said.

The dark elf glowered at her. “For the sake of Edari’axa, this is not a laughing matter…”

The lady just continued laughing. “Well what are you going to do about it, torture him? Kill him? He’s Jame Kaosi. It’s not like you have many options.”

While this perked my interest, I was more intimidated by the anger that appeared in the dark elf’s face than I was relieved. The dark elf grumbled, and though he spoke quietly, I was certain he had wanted me to hear. “He didn’t have to know that though.”

The green skinned elf jumped on this as an opportunity to diffuse the situation. “Well then,” he said, clapping his hands together. “You were supposed to meet with Schynius, not us. We’ll take you to him, and he’ll answer all your questions. Alright?”

I nodded, but only because I wanted to get away from the dark elf. I took a few steps towards the stairs but then hesitated. I turned around and looked at my three new escorts. “I don’t have your names though…” I said.

The green skinned elf followed. “I’m Sebastien,” he said. “Nevermind the others…”

I tried to protest, but he had wrapped his arm around my shoulder. He began to guide me forward, with a stern hand that suggested I’d be better off complying. I didn’t want to comply, but I did anyways. I just hoped that I wouldn’t run into the dark elf again, and if I did, the woman called Lady would be with him.

[Call me J]

By the time I had gotten back to the staircase, the High Graf’s emissary had reappeared. He was walking down the stairs nervously, probably worrying about his fate since I had disappeared. From his expression, I could tell that he feared being in trouble. I only hoped he didn’t take it out on the dwarves.

Now that the emissary saw me, he practically leaped out at me like a carnivorous animal. This surprised me enough that I had no reaction to him. “Uhh… happy to see you?” I managed as the worried drow’s hands clasped onto my shoulder.

The emissary looked at me as if he wanted to hit me as hard as he possibly could. “You know… you could have gotten me killed by slipping away like that,” he said. “Don’t ever do that again.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t expect that the emissary was being that candid with me, but was shocked that someone would have wanted to kill him over what I did in the palace. I could barely manage an apology before Sebastien interrupted.

“There was nothing wrong there, Taritod” Sebastien interjected. “Just stay calm and bring this boy up to the High Graf. He was curious, and so he came looking for us, and there is nothing wrong with that.”

From the way that Sebastien spoke, I could tell that he was angry at Taritod and just didn’t want to have an argument here. “It was me,” I said, trying to defend the poor emissary whose career I had feared I had ruined. “He didn’t do anything wrong at all, I had just heard some people talking, and I wanted to see what they were talking about.”

Suddenly, I felt myself being turned around by Sebastien. He looked at me intensely, and a deep scowl had appeared on his face. “Who told you… and what?” he asked.

I winced. If I had to get the dwarves in trouble in order to save Taritod, it didn’t seem quite fair. “Uhh… I just heard people,” I said. “I couldn’t see their faces, I just heard them talking…”

“And what did they say?” Sebastian demanded. He had interrupted impatiently, even though I was answering his questions.

Since, I didn’t have the time to think up a lie, I had to come up with the truth. I knew it might sound stupid, and that possibly, I could get Damon in trouble by mentioning it. “Someone said they saw Damon Kaosi,” I said, almost as if I was apologizing. “He’s my father.”

Sebastien just laughed. I suddenly felt relieved, and I was certain that he was as well. “That’s the first time anyone’s made that mistake,” he said. “I’ll be…”

It took me a minute, but what Sebastien was thinking dawned on me quickly. He figured that the dwarves had mistaken him for Damon, and that made sense, considering they had never seen him. Green skinned elves were relatively rare, and though Sebastien was much younger than Damon now looked, there would be little reason for the dwarves to know that. They were both fit men past their fifties who carried themselves with dignity. The mistake made sense for anyone who had never seen a picture.

A lump appeared in my throat as I realized that Damon might not be there. Sebastien was someone I didn’t think I could trust, and with him being so welcome in the palace, I didn’t know if I could trust anyone else in Alerar either. My apprehension began to grow again as I realized that my father wouldn’t be around to rescue me if something bad were to happen.

“Keep it together,” I told myself. “Just think, you were doing fine before you thought your father would be here, and now you’re going to do fine now. No one has even threatened you, it even seems like they can’t. Just take it easy and maybe meet up with the white haired woman if you can. She seems like she has answers.”

By the time I could come back to my senses, I was being lead back up the hallway by the emissary whose name I had found out was Taritod. I could tell that something had changed about him, but I didn’t find out what that was until we reached the top floor. There, he extended out his hand to me, and I shook it. He clasped me to his chest and whispered in my ear.

“It may have been your fault I was in trouble, but you saved me back there,” Taritod said. “One favor begets another, and a drow never forgets.”

“It was nothing…” I offered.

Taritod shook his head. “It was something,” he said. “And something now means something later.”

I just shrugged. If I had made a friend somehow in this palace, I wasn’t about to object. I knew I probably needed them.

“Now go and meet the High Graf,” Taritod nudged. He pointed me in the direction of a large, gold encrusted door. “Just go in…”

I nodded, even though part of me wanted to run back down the stairs as fast as I could go. I knew that wasn’t an option, but it felt nice to indulge it, if only for a fleeting second.

[Call me J]

I opened the golden door, but not until after checking the ceiling for giant crescent blades. Finding none, I opened the door, just enough to see through it, and saw that I had entered nothing more than an office hallway. Schynius was probably behind the next set of doors, but the only person in the room I entered now was an elderly drow woman who seemed more interested in what she was writing than whether or not I had entered the room.

“Hello…” I offered. I waved, hoping that was customary in Alerar.

She screamed. “Vel’xunyrr! Vel’xunyrr!”

Her voice was panicking. I could see that she was looking straight at the short sword I kept sheathed at my waist. I had no idea what she was saying, and I tried to protest her panic by holding up my hands with my palms facing her. “See!,” I protested. “I’m not doing anything!”

I worried she was going to get a gun or call security again, and this time Sebastien wouldn’t be there to save me. I was terrified, wondering how now, when I had done exactly what I was supposed to, I was going to be in more trouble than I was when I had trespassed through the military headquarters. Seconds later, an athletic older dark elf burst out from the door opposite to me. He was dressed well, in regal attire, but he carried a blunderbuss with him. I shuddered again.

“I didn’t do anything!” I insisted.

“Of course you didn’t,” he replied to me.

On the first sound of his voice, the old woman stopped screaming. I put my hands down, though given the way events were going, I wondered if it wouldn’t just save time to perpetually surrender to people.

“Leave your weapons with Mrs. Ne’kashik please and follow me,” the regal drow said.

I complied and followed him into his office.

The office was one of the grandest rooms I had ever laid eyes on. There were large swords hung on the wall, each of them autographed. There were two pictures on the back of the room, one of Alerar’s king, a picture I recognized, and a second picture of the face of a wolf formed out of a fiery abyss. The desk near the back of the room was surprisingly ordinary, but the chair behind it was velvet laced and covered in gold. All the other chairs, were expensive, but ordinary. They had no cushions, but their veneer was fancy.

Even with my limited experience in these kinds of state matters, I could tell, unlike many of the other things in the palace, this room wasn’t meant to impress, but to intimidate.

“Sit down…” the dark elf said. He was pacing in the right corner, head in hand, right below his picture of the king.

I listened. I took the chair closest to the desk, on the opposite side from what I imagined was this dark elf’s chair. My feet tapped a little nervously, and despite my glowering at them, they would only stay still for a few seconds before they started up again. I only hoped it wasn’t obvious.

“I am the High Graf,” he said. “As you may have guessed, of course. Jame Kaosi, you don’t know it yet, but your life is about to change for the better?”

That kind of a promise made me a bit uneasy. It was the kind of thing that was too easy to say and too hard to do. I hated to think of myself as overly cynical, but now when I was stuck on the top floor of a palace in the middle of a foreign country, I felt cynicism was warranted. “For the better?” I asked. “I was doing fine before I came here…”

Schynius smirked. He took his hand off his chin and folded both arms across his chests. “Now you are just fooling yourself if that’s what you believe,” he began. “I’ve seen you, you’re just a kid with power that’s growing and no one to target it. If you don’t get smart soon, you’re going to explode somewhere.”

I raised a doubtful eyebrow. “Explode somewhere?” I repeated, though in a questioning tone. “You don’t know my powers at all, do you?”

Schynius’ expression didn’t change. “I know who you are,” he shot back immediately. “Better than you are, I’d wager. You’re a kid, son of a famous man, and you’ve aged fifteen years in the past six months. Now, you’ve survived Carnelost, wrestled with Xem’zund, and worked in the Dajas Pagoda. The whole time, your power has been growing, but you haven’t been using it. You can turn into a dragon, but you don’t. Why is that? It’s not because you’re ashamed, though you’ve probably convinced yourself of that. It’s because you’re afraid of your power. You don’t know if you can ever be like your father, so you don’t even want to try. For most people, the government of Alerar could care less if they spent their entire life afraid of their father’s shadow. But you… you’re different. We can help you and you can help us.”

My jaw practically fell to the floor with what Schynius said. It wasn’t that it was true, but that he knew so much about me. My journey with Damon where the universe was almost destroyed, my brief history in Tel Aglarim and even a very quick aborted run as a Pagoda warrior. I was astounded, and I just stared vacantly at Schynius. He must have been waiting for a reaction, because there was an awkward silence before I spoke again. “Who are you?” I asked, completely mystified at how he could know so much.

“The High Graf Schynius,” he replied, clearly conscious he wasn’t answering the question I was asking. “Representative of the Republic of Alerar.”

[Call me J]

I waited for Schynius to answer my question before I spoke again. I knew it was probably stubborn of me, especially since he was the High Graf, but I really didn’t care. I didn’t like being toyed around with, especially when it came to who knew about me. It was unsettling enough being famous enough for people who I had never met to know who I was, but Schynius seemed to know so much that I didn’t care about how long the awkward silence between himself and I lasted.

Eventually the High Graf spoke. “You should know that in Alerar we have great expectations for you,” he said. “Our state oracle even calls you Uk Vel’uss Z’hin xuil Mya. Do you know what that means?”

Though I didn’t care what the name meant, I still acknowledged Schynius. I figured he had given me his answer indirectly by mentioning their state oracle was watching me. I didn’t know whether I should have been flattered or unsettled by this. Even as the son of Damon Kaosi, I would have thought that the government of Alerar would have had bigger concerns than who I was sleeping with and which taverns I visited. With a slight scowl on my face, I didn’t even bother to answer Schynius’ question. “You have a state oracle watching over me?” I asked. “Why?”

“Your own life should tell you that,” Schynius replied. I hated just how perpetually even his voice was, especially with all the confused emotions that were seeping out in mine. “And our oracle’s name for you is He who walks with Mya. Do you know how rare that is to meet them once, let alone twice? To ask questions and have them answered? I have never met them, there are some Grafs and Freiherrs who don’t even believe that the Mya exist- and you have met them twice. You’ve been given so much, and what do you use it for, drinking in bars, impressing the pretty girls and being afraid of your gifts? You are powerful, like I said, but without us, what are you? Just a kid lucky enough to escape hell.”

As Schynius spoke, I could feel the back of my ears getting hotter with every sentence he made. “He has no right to judge me,” I thought. “I didn’t ask for any of this, I didn’t go running after danger. It came to me. Don’t blame me for not doing what I never wanted to do…”

“Well, if I still had my sword, I’d send you to hell and see how you’d fare!” I shot back at Schynius, immediately regretting the words once they had slipped out from my mouth. I had just threatened to kill the High Graf of Alerar in his own office.

My eyes bugged out, but not as much as Schynius’. The cool dark elf suddenly seemed unsettled, speechless and just like me. I didn’t doubt that I would be punished for what I had said, but at the moment, it felt worth it just to see Schynius that uncomfortable. Somehow, I settled back down in my chair and sat more relaxedly, assured with that knowledge.

“As it may be,” Schynius finally said. “You are the one who is the Duke of the Fire Palace.”

A wave of relief passed over my body. It seemed, given the other alternatives he had, Schynius was inclined to ignore my outburst. I imagined that worked best for me as well. Now, I decided that I should needle him a bit more, just to see whatever information I could get out of him. Toying with Taritod had just annoyed him, but I could tell Schynius was far more composed, and I remembered what the dark skinned lady had said about

Before I could say anything about being impressed that his oracle could know so much about what happened in a hell dimension, there was a knock on the door. I turned my head around, and the secretary that had been scared of me earlier entered along with two strangers. One of them was human, a slight middle aged man who had a large dog by his side. He entered the room arrogantly, as though he had been there before, and it was not all that significant to be called before the High Graf. Each of his slender fingers contained a ring, though his finger tips were dyed the color of tobacco spit.

The other, a female dark elf, was stunning. She followed I couldn’t guess at her age all that well, since dark elves aged so differently from humans and dragons, but she looked to be roughly my age. Her hair was cut short, her face was cute, but what really took my breath away were her legs. She was wearing leggings that clung tightly to her svelte long legs that dropped all the way down to the floor. Under different circumstances, I would have bought her a drink, but here in Valshath d’Isto, even beauty seemed intimidating.

“Dexter,” Schynius observed. “It is good to see you. Meet your newest charge, Jame Kaosi.”

The old woman who had brought them into the room shut the door behind them. The middle aged man, the one called Dexter, took one of the seats and intentionally moved it to the back of the room. He sat there, one of his legs folded over the other. The dark elven girl and the dog stood to either side of him.

“Finish up,” Dexter said. His eyes were focused on me, even though it was more likely that he was speaking to Schynius. “From the vacant expression on this kid’s face, it doesn’t look like he knows who I am yet.”

[Call me J]

At this point, I wondered how many people with potentially important ties to my future I was going to meet in the palace. I felt they all knew more than me about my own life now, and oracle or not, probably more than even I did. If there was one thing that had happened to me consistently since meeting Damon in Anebrilith, it was finding out that practically everyone knew more about me than I did.

Everyone, that was, except Rainee. She knew I was Damon’s son, but only because I had told her. Even after that, she hadn’t asked me any stupid questions about trying to fulfill his legacy or exclaim that it must have been that wonderful to be the son of such an accomplished warrior. Now, as Dexter and Schynius continued talking at me, that was all of what they were saying. I had lost track of what they were saying, not because I was less uneasy, but just because I could tell that neither of them were going to give me a straight answer.

“So Jame, are you in this or not?” Schynius said. The way the High Graf spoke, I could tell that he had been waiting on an answer from me while my attention wasn’t on him.

“In what?” I replied.

“He’s lost alrea-” Dexter began, only to be quiet after Schynius shushed him with his hand.

“Your future,” the High Graf quipped. “Whether at forty you end up Freiherr or a drunk has been who sits at bars bitter that he’s left life pass him by.”

I wasn’t sure what a Freiherr was, but I could tell from when I’d heard the natives use the word, that it was not a trifle. Despite the offer of the position, I couldn’t help but to think I had more alternatives than just that, but before I could voice that thought, Dexter interrupted to contradict me.

“And don’t think there is anything else for you, kid,” the tobacco stained human chimed in. “When you turn down an opportunity once, the fates aren’t going to be so kind in the future. Lady Luck has been on your side until now, but you don’t think that’s going to continue now do you? She was here today for you, but still, use your brain kid. You don’t have this many people asking something from you that many times…”

“Most people never have it, and are probably happier for it,” I wanted to say, and yet I managed to stop myself. I wanted to press on the Lady Luck issue. I remembered the brown skinned woman I had encountered earlier, and now I wondered if she had been Lady Luck. Both the drow and green skinned elf had called her “Lady.” I managed to suppress this instinct as well, when I realized that I was never supposed to have met her. If I mentioned it, I could have gotten Taritod in trouble. I wanted to avoid that, especially if he would have gotten killed for his mistake. So, I just said nothing.

“You’re getting really quiet…” Schynius observed. “The offer is on the table, take it or leave it…”

I scowled. After my outburst threatening to kill Schynius, I had gotten much more careful about thinking before I spoke, and now, it seemed that was being used against me. I still wasn’t sure what this offer was, and so my first instinct was to reject it. Then, I thought a little more and realized, despite my distaste for everything I had encountered, I decided that the little apprehensive fear in my gut wasn’t enough for me to reject an offer that could one day make me Frieherr.

“Alright…” I said warily. “I accept for now.”

“Acceptable,” Schynius agreed.

“No it isn’t,” Dexter interrupted. “He’s either in, or he’s out. One way or the other…”

“He’s in for now,” Schynius decided, as if his word was decisive.

Dexter’s face turned knots over itself, and I could tell he was about to say something he knew he shouldn’t when the pretty dark elf at his side that had remained silent until now put a hand on his shoulder. She said something in drow that I couldn’t understand, and then Dexter said only three words, “so it is,” and left the room.

“You will begin lessons tomorrow,” Schynius explained. “As for now, get your weapons back from my secretary and then someone will escort you to your quarters. Dexter will be ready by tomorrow morning.”

Even there were many things I wanted to say, I decided that I’d just as soon let them all remain unsaid. Though Schynius had regained enough composure to continue to present himself as a paragon of equanimity, I knew there was bound to be some hostility that he wasn’t letting on. If he was going to say nothing, than so was I.

“Thank you,” was the only thing I said before departing from his office.

[Call me J]

Once I was done with Schynius, I was escorted to a room on the third floor. I was told that it was one of the guest rooms, and that my furnishings were among the most lavish. When I entered, I believed it. I had seen opulence before, but nothing like this. My room, as it were, was more like a house in and of itself. There was a large lower floor, with a large free space, a few couches in the corner meant, presumably, for entertaining, and a short spiral staircase leading up to an open second floor which had a bed and night stand. The place even had a small kitchen.

I stared all around me with pleasant surprise. I hadn’t expected anything so comfortable in Alerar, especially after Schynius’ office. Everything about the place was elegant, but in a subtle way, as if it was actually meant to serve as someone’s home. If it wasn’t for everything else I’d seen in the palace, I might have actually felt welcome.

“Who was here before me?” I asked.

The dark elf who had escorted me shrugged. “Some woman,” he began. “She had dark skin but not drow… She left today.”

Suddenly it made sense. “Lady Luck,” I realized. This would have been the kind of room she would have insisted on. I was a bit put off by the fact that she had seemed to leave so suddenly, but the homey surroundings made me more amenable to it than I would have been if I had been told in Schynius’ office.

“Thanks,” I said offhandedly.

My escort bowed and left. I wondered for a moment if I was supposed to have tipped him, but I shrugged and let it go. He left before I could have reached into my pocket for a coin.

Tired, I decided to go up to the top floor and rest. I considered rummaging through the cupboard in the kitchen area for food, but I realized I was more fatigued than I was really hungry. I just needed to spend some time sitting and collecting myself, figure out just how much trouble I’d really got myself into and who all these people were around me and who I needed to be afraid of.

After laying on my bed for fifteen minutes staring up at the ceiling, I decided that I’d had enough of just relaxing. I was still tired, but my mind was too restless give me any respite. I began to think of everyone I met, and I realized soon enough, Lady Luck, the one who had just left, was the only one I wasn’t suspicious about.

“Great, the only one I trust is some kind of whimsical fate controller…” I muttered, surprised with how sardonic I sounded when I said it out loud. “Look at the trouble I’m in…”

I was about to get up and look and see if the cupboard had the ingredients for a sandwich when I heard someone working on the lock to the door to my place. I stumbled around, looking for my weapons, but then, stopped. The dark elven girl who had stood by Dexter had entered. I relaxed just a bit, if she had been sent to kill me, she would have done it earlier.

“Can I help you?” I called out to her from the second floor. Now that I knew who it was, I didn’t even bother finishing rolling off my bed. If I’d had to sit in Schynius’ office like an exhibit on display earlier, I was going to make this meeting on my terms. “If you want, come down here…”

There was an audible sigh, and shortly after, the girl appeared by my bedside. I smirked just a little, I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help myself. “Can I help you?” I repeated.

The dark elven girl just shook her head. “Are you always this way?” she asked. “Or did being around Schynius that long turn you into an ass?”

My eyes opened as wide as they would have if she had offered to blow up the palace with me inside it. I must have said the word “you” for a solid minute before managing to find another syllable. “You, don’t like him?”

With a look that was both smug and suggested that she expected better from me, Dexter’s assistant reached down to her boot and pulled out a small kriss dagger. I immediately scurried to the other side of my bed on my back, and she just looked at me like I was doing something stupid.

“I’m a trained assassin,” she said. “I don’t warn the people I intend to kill.” She held the blade out forward, so that I could see an engraving of a ‘B’ near the hilt. I recognized it immediately. Damon had a dagger that looked exactly like it. He had showed it to me once and told me that I could trust anyone who had it.

“Damon?” I asked, genuinely confused.

She shook her head, as if offended “No, just a former member of the Brotherhood,” she replied.

I sighed. I should have expected that, but after the dwarfs earlier, I had got my hopes up.

“But,” she began. “Damon was always good to me.”

I smiled.

[Call me J]

For the next hour or so, I talked with the dark elven girl. I found out her name was Kali’rea and that she had been a member of the Shadow division of the Brotherhood until their leader died and then she ended up just coming back to Alerar. Dexter had taken her under his wing, he was one of the best assassins and one of the best teachers in all of Tesserar, and he had given her that opportunity. She told me, under duress, Dexter had agreed to do the same for me, but only because Schynius had forced him.

Though she answered many things, when I asked her what she thought of Schynius, and she was not all that forthcoming. I took that to mean she didn’t like him. When I asked her about Dexter, she warned me not to anger him, that he was cruel and unrelenting, but I would be grateful when he left. I trusted her, though she didn’t really know much about Schynius’ plans and seemed surprised that I knew as little as I did. As we talked longer, I could tell that she was wondering more and more why I had been given this opportunity, even considering who my father was.

I was glad she didn’t ask, because I honestly had no answer.

Eventually, I could tell that we were both getting tired. At one point where she had let her guard down, she had intimated that she had been in Kachuk earlier that morning and that the travel to the city had been hard. Now that she had provided me with my first prolonged bit of comfort since entering the palace, I was beginning to tire too. I yawned, she got up out of the chair she had been sitting in.

“No… wait!” I insisted.

She hesitated and looked at me expectantly. “Yes?”

I realized I didn’t really have anything to say. I just didn’t want her to leave. Just having Kali’rea around gave me a sense of security that I didn’t want to lose. Still, I didn’t want to say that to her. “I don’t know, just… what’s going to happen tomorrow?”

“You’ll do what Dexter tells you,” she replied. “Trust me, it won’t be so bad. It’ll be hard, tough work, but you’ll be better for it.”

Even though I could tell she was trying to be positive, the promise of any hard work didn’t really appeal to me. I had been promised status by Schynius, not tasks. “But, what am I really going to have to do?” I asked. “There had to be some kind of reason for all this…”

Kali’rea sighed. “Probably something you don’t want…” she said eventually. “Not sure what, but the High Graf never lets anyone out without his pound of flesh- even a Kaosi.”

I tried to smile, but my uneasiness was clear on my face as I spoke. “I just don’t want to be here,” I sulked.

Kali’rea’s face softened and she sat back down. “Don’t act like you’re a teenager,” she rebuked. “Whether you want to stay or not, you don’t have a choice. You’ll have to stay here, I’ve heard they have an oracle watching you…”

I remembered that Schynius had mentioned the oracle earlier, and it had caught my intention then. Now that Kali’rea brought it up, I wanted to probe this more. “An oracle?” I asked. “Schynius mentioned that, who is she, what does she want?”

With a bemused smile, Kali’rea looked at me as if I was a bit slow, which in many ways, I probably was when it came to these things of high politics. For the most part, I just assumed that everyone was corrupt and against me and generally ended up okay. “You think I know everything?” she asked. “All I know is there is one, somewhere here, she’s under Schynius’ employ and has been watching you ever since they’ve heard of you.”

“Seems strange though,” I said. “Damon’s son or not, I’m just me, you know?”

Kali’rea nodded knowingly. “Yeah,” she said. “Strange. Anyways, they’re probably going to watch you for a while…”

Realistically, I knew I couldn’t expect that much more, but I was still disappointed. “And if I leave, they’ll just use the oracle to find me…”

Kali’rea nodded.

Though I didn’t say anything out loud, I had realized that if I ever wanted the freedom I had taken for granted when I’d woken up that morning, I was going to have to find a way to kill the oracle.

By the way she patted me on my knee before getting back up and leaving, I could tell Kali’rea was sympathetic, though not sympathetic enough that I could confide my plan about the oracles. “Anyways… you should get some rest,” she said. “Dexter’s going to want you up early.”

With that, Kali’rea left. This time, I didn't protest. Instead, I just stared up towards my ceiling for far too long before eventually falling to sleep with my bedside lamp still lit.

[Call me J]

In the morning I woke up stiff. The bed was long enough for me, but not the way I slept in it. I had stacked the pillows up on top of each other the night before, and now they had made my neck sore. I was wearing my dirty clothes from the night before. Only now did I realize that all my belongings remained in a small inn on Valsharess Street, two blocks from the palace. Given all the things that had happened in the course of the day, I wasn’t surprised that I had forgotten, but now, I had nothing to wear but some clothes that felt dirty after a day and night’s wear.

Just to let my skin breathe a bit, I took off my shirt before I headed to my downstairs, somewhat startled to see that both Kali’rea and Dexter were waiting. Kali’rea was rearranging the cushions on one of my chairs, but Dexter just sat, unmoving in another one, petting his dog’s head methodically. They weren’t the only changes since I had first been in the room. In the kitchen area there was a kettle and a plate, though I couldn’t see what was on it. Over in near the door, a collection of my things had been placed haphazardly by a flower pot. For a moment, I wondered if Dexter or Kali’rea had brought them, but then I figured it was more likely to be one of the dwarf servants or even Taritod on Schynius’ orders. After all, if they were spying on me enough to know where I lived, the least they could have done was help me move.

“Uhh… hello” I managed, somewhat surprised.

“In fifteen minutes, we would have begun training with waking you up,” Dexter said. He seemed irritated that I hadn’t woken up yet. “Now you have fourteen minutes to get breakfast and prepare…”

I blinked. “Uhh… excuse me? You could have woken me…”

“That wouldn’t have been a test of your discipline,” came the reply.

“But- come on… this is my first night here. How was I supposed to know…”

Dexter wasn’t moved. “If you have fourteen minutes, is this really how you want to spend them.”

I looked to Kali’rea for some help, but getting none, I just shrugged and made my way over to the kettle and food on the kitchen counter and poured myself a drink. It was some kind of tea, but it tasted bitter. I drank it anyways, because the only food that I had was a tasteless bread.

“There was fruit before,” Dexter said. “But you lost an item of food for every fifteen minutes you were asleep.”

Since I had already learned that arguing with him was futile, I just cast a quick glance over to Kali’rea to see if I could get any help from her. I couldn’t. Now she was just sitting in the chair she had arranged earlier and was looking at a dagger, as if she was trying to look busy. Getting no help, I just ate as fast as I could and went over to the water pot in the corner to wash my face and armpits before I had to begin whatever training it was we’d be doing.

By the time my fifteen minutes were up, Dexter had tossed my claymore to me. I caught it, glad that if my new teacher was going to be throwing weapons at me, he was at least going to keep them sheathed. Knowing I had no time to put a shirt on, I just strapped the weapon across my back, and figured that since my fifteen minutes were up, if Dexter had problems taking me wherever we were going training without a shirt on, he’d just have to eat his words.

“It would have been easier for you with armor on…” Dexter said as he got up from his chair. “We’re going to duel.”

My eyes rolled. “You have to be messing with me.” Dexter shook his head. I looked to Kali’rea to see if she could tell me any better. She just continued to look at her dagger, paying me no mind. I had a feeling that even after last night, she wasn’t going to be any more help than she had been in Schynius’ office.

Before I could even wrap my mind around the new reality, Dexter charged. All I could barely unsheathe my claymore before the broad side of his blade rapt against my chest. It stung hard, and left a red mark in the indent of a sword right on my right pectoral.

“That’s for being a smartass…” Dexter intoned. “Kali’rea will get the wooden swords now…”

“Thanks,” I replied, half expecting to be hit again for that comment.

[Call me J]

The morning’s lesson didn’t go anywhere. I think Dexter learned more about how little swordsmanship I knew than I did about combat. He just kept using words I had never heard before, and eventually, after four hours of being poked and prodded with his wooden stick, I threw mine down and shouted. “Look, I’ve had enough. I’m not that good, I get that, I never said I was, I don’t care what Schynius told you, but you know what? I don’t care. I never had any training at this, I never really wanted any. The only training I got was in the Citadel, and that was because my opponent felt sorry for me!”

I could hear Kali’rea suppressing a giggle, but Dexter immediately moved out his palm so as to tell her to stop. I just looked at him, shaking my head, sweat practically rolling off my naked upper body. I looked over in the corner and thought that I just wanted a damn shirt. Even being dressed in something other than what I’d slept in would have made Dexter’s constant berating of me more tolerable.

There was a long pregnant pause before Dexter said anything. I wondered if he wanted me to apologize, but I had no intention to. He looked at me, disappointed, and made his way back to his chair and sat down.

“You want to learn?” he asked.

“I guess,” I replied.

Dexter wasn’t pleased with that answer. “You have no respect,” he decided. “You’re one of those kids, you’ve had everything handed to you, never had to grow up, and now, when someone wants something, something that requires more struggle than just sitting in your underwear and sleeping past noon, you act like it’s too much to give. Ever think that I have to train you, ever think that Kali’rea is sitting there, learning nothing, because I have to catch you up to speed. Did you even consider that she actually earned her spot to be here, while you just used your father’s connections?”

Though I might have been concerned about Kali’rea in a different setting, now, I was just angry. Dexter’s words stung me, not just because he assumed so much, but because part of them was also true. I had done nothing useful since coming to Alerar, even though people had entrusted me with the duty of finding The Patriarch. I had occasionally looked for clues, but I hadn’t done that nearly enough. I feared that one day, one of the Patriarch’s sirelings would come for me, and when he did, I would deserve it. Even though Dexter knew nothing of that, his words still bit me as if he did. I may have not been lazy and ungrateful for the reasons he mentioned, but that didn’t change the facts that I was lazy and ungrateful. The truth hurt, and though it was eating away at me inside, my face was just red with anger and frustration. I wanted to go over to his seat and strangle Dexter, and I even made the first motion towards him before I stopped myself.

“You want to hit me?” he asked.

Even though I wasn’t going to hit him, I still answered truthfully. “Yes.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because it’s not worth it...”

Dexter nodded. “Alright then…” He threw the wooden sword he’d been using to the ground, and swore something under his breath. Without another word, he left silently, save for the door that slammed behind him.

The whole thing happened fast. By the time my temper had subsided in favor for rationality, Dexter was already gone, his dog was barking confusedly, and Kali’rea sat wide eyed in her chair, her hand frozen in shock halfway through petting Dexter’s dog.

I looked over towards her uneasily. “Say something…” I asked.

“No- no one’s ever talked to him like that before,” she managed, though it took her a while longer to come out of her shock.

“Figures…” I replied. “Someone really should’ve.” I went over to the breakfast tea and poured myself another cup. “I guess Schynius will smooth this one over for me or something.”

Kali’rea didn’t say anything, but I could tell that she didn’t think he would. I also sensed she was trying not to show how angry she was at me. With only a curt excuse, she just left the room, without saying another word. She didn’t slam the door but she left it open. Dexter’s dog went with her. Assuming that everything would settle itself later, I went back to the tea and waited for lunch.

[Call me J]

Lunch came, and despite having nothing to do until dinner was expected to arrive, I stubbornly stayed in my room. My body was exhausted from the morning’s routine and a night of awkward sleep, and so I really didn’t need any more entertainment than lying on my bed half naked and cooling down. I cursed how hot the palace was. With all the industry on the first couple floors churning out whatever products they churned out night and day, it was practically impossible to escape the heat from their furnaces. I even hadn’t bothered out onto my veranda, just because of all the black smoke. I wondered how the King tolerated it.

A few minutes after my dinner arrived, I had a visitor. It was a dark elf, I had a bit trouble placing him at first, but the moment he spoke, I recognized him immediately. I suffered the same chill down my spine that I had the first time I’d heard his voice.

“Jame Kaosi,” he began. “I assume you remember me.”

I didn’t really stop eating to acknowledge him with anything other than a nod. I had decided in the time I’d had alone that I couldn’t back down now. Either Schynius was going to have to agree to stop tracking me with his oracle and let me go, or this was going to be on my terms. I had decided that the last time I had really asserted myself was back in the bar with Taritod.

“I see…” the slimy voiced dark elf continued. “You’re staging a fit. How cute. You should recognize that the High Graf Schynius doesn’t have time for it, and neither do I.”

At that very moment, I didn’t care who had time for what. “And I just have time for all of you?” I asked rhetorically. “Every last one of you coming in here with your demands, telling me to do things, you know what, I don’t even care anymore. Go ahead, and tell me what you want me for. Tell me, I really don’t care. I’m just someone’s son. So’s everyone though. I’m no one. Just the same as a street rat huddling outside your palace. Or have you forgotten about the Raiaeran refugees there?”

The slimy elf’s face turned stern. “You think this is a joke for anyone else?” he asked. “It’s not. It’s something we take very seriously. It’s either you and us against the world, or us against you at this point… And don’t bring up the street trash here, we have more compassion for them than they’d have for us.”

My anger at this seedy dark elf had reached a point where I had decided that I didn’t care what I said anymore. I could feel my fists clenching tighter, and the anger coursing through my veins to the point where someone or something was going to get it. And since I needed to take it out on someone, it might as well have been someone whose voice I hated.

“You know what, you say it’s us against the world, or just you and me? Well let me tell you something, there’s always the world. It’s out there, it’s getting stronger, and when things aren’t working for you, it’ll be ready to melt your face off. Take warning now, let me tell you, because if you don’t, you won’t be standing so proud when things go bad…”

Though the dark elf seemed somewhat surprised by what he said, his response was surprisingly even. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings then…” he said succinctly.

I just shrugged. I had seen too many things already to believe that he, or even this palace, were as intimidating as they seemed to me. After all, a day of being everyone’s prince, followed by some of the worst training in my life was bound to have this effect. I felt like I was being treated like trash now, just because I was tired of playing a game. It was one thing earlier with Schynius, but now, I was tired of being treated by a porcelain doll, especially by a creep like this slimy voiced elf.

“Yeah… we’ll see about tomorrow,” I said, watching my supposed benefactor as he exited my place.

[Call me J]

The next day, it was late morning before I had a visitor. I was eating my breakfast, only having just got up, and Kali’rea entered without bothering to knock. I didn’t mind, she had been the only one straight with me so far. Though as she approached me, I could tell that she wasn’t nearly as pleased.

“You’ve got some mouth on you sometimes, you know that?” she said. “This isn’t a joke, not a joke at all. You alienated some important people there, if it wasn’t for the High Graf Schynius and ambassador Sebastien, then Graf Vilhelm would have gotten his way. You’d have been out of here then…”

The sarcastic front I had been wearing all of yesterday still hadn’t washed away. “And you’d miss me?” I asked.

Kali’rea shrugged. She underarm tossed a wooden sword to me, with every expectation that I’d catch it. I did, but only because it was her. “Look, I know these people, they don’t get you, no one here does. You’re special, you’re a wunderkind, whatever you want, dig it, fine. Enough with the attitude already… or I’ll let you take the whole thing on by yourself…”

I looked at Kali’rea for a moment, utterly speechless. I didn’t know how someone who I had liked so much before she had entered could so completely miss the point. “I’m not special,” I shot back. “Damon might have been special, but like I’ve been saying and nobody wants to listen, I’m not him. And I’m not after his legacy, I call him Damon, not Ilharn, or any other country’s word for father either…”

Kali’rea looked at me, somewhat dumbfounded. She bit her lip, almost as if she couldn’t tolerate the way that her former Aegis’ son could be so completely hostile to him.

I didn’t feel like waiting for her. “Say whatever you were going to say… fuck it, we’re past that point. Just know though, you don’t understand me at all…”

At this point, it seemed like Kali’rea was ready to cut loose. I expected some kind of tirade from her, about how shiftless and lazy I was and about how the world needed me so badly. Instead, her answer was calm and surprisingly contrite. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “People don’t understand each other, some just try harder than others. Now get that sword I gave you and come here. Until you can beat me, then Dexter isn’t coming back…”

There was something in the way she spoke that I didn’t quite get, but I still got up. I put down the breakfast roll I was eating and made my way towards her, brushing the crumbs off my forearm as I advanced. I swallowed my last bite before asking her anything, but before I could manage to get a word out, she attacked, a wooden sword aiming right for my face.

Quickly, I blocked. I held the sword horizontal to the ground, right above my face and held her weapon at bay. She pressed hers weapon against mine, and despite my bigger frame she was able to push harder, putting me on the defensive. There, in the middle of the lap of luxury in the guest quarters of Valsath d’Isto, only one of us really wanted to win, and it wasn’t me. I was happy just having her face so close to mine.

She didn’t just want it, she really wanted it. She wanted it the way that want almost became perverse, at the point where she would destroy the entire planet just to get what she was after. It wouldn’t matter if the pursuit cost more than she wanted the item, at that moment, for Kali’rea want was about principle.

I grunted, trying to repel her attack, but I went nowhere. Before I realized her strategy, she had kneed me in the ribs. I bunched up, and seconds later, I was sprawling on the floor, my head swimming from a blow upside the head.

“Not good,” she said.

I got back up. She went for another blow. This one, I caught in my hand. A second later, I’d yanked the sword out from her, grabbed the two swords together and then broke them with my bare hands.

Kali’rea looked on, unmoved. “So you can snap oak…” she said. “You’ve got that kind of strength and you still let me hit you.”

I grinned. “I only play the games I like,” I said.

As if that was the answer she least wanted to hear, Kali’rea began pacing back and forth with an eye on the door to get out of my place. She soon settled down, but I could tell that she was still angry. Very angry.

“Well how’s this,” she said. Her voice lowered, almost to a whisper before she spoke again. “Beat me, train with Dexter, and I’ll show you the oracle’s quarters.”

“And what am I supposed to do there?” I asked.

She replied succinctly. “You want your freedom? Earn it.”

My sarcastic grin had changed into a full smile. I finally had something I wanted.

[Call me J]

Over the next two weeks, the training was intense. I learned more about swordsmanship than I thought was possible. I used wooden swords, heavy blunted weapons of lead, all kinds of practice equipment that I was seeing for the first time. I was tiring myself out every morning, and going to bed drenched in sweat every night. By the end of the second week, I was better than Kali’rea. Not better in terms of my technique or knowledge, but I had managed to close those gaps with my size and strength. Plus, now I wanted it as much, if not more than she did.

It was only after our fourteenth day of practice together that I even thought to ask her why she cared. We were still working in the first floor of my place, though now all the tables and chairs had been pushed against the wall to give us more space. After an unfortunate incident two days prior with lead broadswords, it had become essential.

Kali’rea was catching her breath, and she had bent down to tie her shoe when I asked. The way she looked was beautiful, her sweat gave a lustrous sheen to her deep blue skin, and her hair had fallen in such a way that the locks framed her face and flowed all the way down to her cleavage. Her white shirt, coated with sweat, left less to the imagination than the rules of modesty might have normally dictated.

Still, training had changed my focus so much that I was more interested in escaping than bedding her, a reaction that undoubtedly had to be a first for me. My eyes wandered a bit to places that may have not been particularly polite considering she was my teacher, but my questions were much more focused.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

Kali’rea sighed, as if she feared we were entering another round of my antics. “I thought we covered this,” she said. “The world, Alerar, the Forgotten Ones?”

Hoping to ward off any anger, I answered carefully. “That’s why it’s important to me,” I said. “I want to know why it’s important to you.”

“I do believe you’re getting more into this…” Kali’rea said. “But my reasons are the same. Plus, the one you just don’t want to hear.”

Given her remark, I replied somewhat evenly. “Damon?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, almost apologetically. “But really, he was a good man…”

I threw the wooden sword I was using down in disgust. “It’s always him… I’m not good enough on my own.”

Kali’rea sighed. “We all stand on the shoulders of others,” she began. “Damon helped many more people…”

“But you see, that’s different, THOSE, you… that’s Damon’s people,” I retorted. I could feel the volume of my voice rising, though I was powerless to stop it. My feet were pacing back and forth, and my eyes were fixed on the floor. “I’m just me, how many times do I have to say that? He’s a good man, I just end up in places at the right time… Look, if I wasn’t Damon’s son, he wouldn’t have given me the time of day. He barely does now, except to tell me what to do. Now, I like you, I don’t want to think of you the same way.”

I could tell what I said made Kali’rea a bit uncomfortable, because for the first time, when I had brought up Damon’s name, she didn’t look angry. Instead, she looked on me with pity. I wasn’t sure what was worse. She made her way over to me, though I didn’t notice until she had reached, my eyes were still glued to the floor. I only noticed when she had put one hand on my shoulder. I turned to face her and was surprised how close we were. I was a good eight inches taller, but otherwise we would have been staring each other face to face. I took a step back.

“I didn’t mean it that way…” Kali’rea offered.

When I looked into her eyes, I could tell that they were earnest, that they were somber, and that they were hiding something that she didn’t want to say.

“You can go,” I said. My tone of voice wasn’t angry, but kind.”

She nodded. “Tomorrow, Dexter will be coming,” she said.

“And you?” I asked.

“You’re trained enough now, at least in what I can give you,” she offered. “Dexter wouldn’t teach you any more until you were done with me. Tonight, there’s a ball, and in all drow balls, they have feats of power. Volunteer to compete, and Dexter will see what you know…”

I sighed. “If that’s how its going to be…”

Kali’rea’s eyes blinked only once during the whole time she answered me. “It is how it’ll have to be,” she said.

[Call me J]

Shortly after the session with Kali’rea, one of the palace servants arrived. He knocked, and I answered, and he offered me a silver plate. There was a frilly shirt and a nicely pressed pair of slacks on it, consistent with the fashions I’d seen worn by some of the wealthy businessmen in El’inssring. I thanked the servant. He handed me a piece of paper, a formal invitation to a party in the ballroom just a few doors down the hall, and I thanked him.

My first reaction to the invitation was to realize that I needed to get out more. I had barely set foot outside of my room, and most of that time had been to call for servants. I couldn’t help but notice the irony. I knew Valsath d’Isto had turned itself into a cage for me, but until then I hadn’t realized that I had compounded the problem by keeping to my room.

As I quickly changed into my clothes, I resolved to do some exploring when I had the chance. According to the invitation, I had about an hour to get ready, and there was a letter I was writing to Rainee that I wanted to finish. Given everything that had happened to me, I wanted to let her know how things were going, especially when I had promised her I’d visit her in Radasanth and never did.

The interactions with Kali’rea had also made me start thinking about Rainee again. I knew it wasn’t very hard for me to attract women, but I seemed to be much less successful at keeping them. Even though she seemed to believe she hid it, I could tell that Rainee was madly in love with me. Still, I just couldn’t bring myself to settle down with her. Same thing with Kali’rea. Over the past few practices, I’d been noticing a real sexual attraction, and I was almost certain that was why she said she couldn’t see me again. “Pity,” I thought to myself. “She’d have made this place less terrible.”

As I began to write, I wondered if my bad luck with love was just a factor of the way I had aged. It had been unnatural, and instead of having a childhood, I got a twist of fate handed to me by the Mya. Though I hadn’t appreciated it at the time, what they’d really done to me was that they’d pulled me out of the streets at the age of fourteen, handed me a sword and told me to go win them a war. I figured that had to have some effect on my relations with women who, had they known, would have thought of me as little more than a cute younger brother.

For a moment, I indulged myself and cursed that fate that had changed for me in Anebrilith when I went back in time with Damon and the red haired girl. I didn’t like to do it often, thinking about that put me in darker moods and made me ask questions that I didn’t like the answers to. Once I had it out of my system enough to get back to writing, I picked up a quill and got to work on Rainee’s letter.

After a few sentences, I realized that I needed to be careful. If I wasn’t careful in my choices of words, some censor would probably end up intercepting the letter before it ever reached Radasanth. Because of that, it took much longer than the average letter. That, and I didn’t know what to write. There were too many things unresolved. Eventually I just decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble because whatever I wrote would have been intercepted anyways.

Twenty minutes later, I was in the ball, drinking hard and pretending I was having the time of my life. It was one of those times when I really didn’t like myself.

[Call me J]

The conversation at the party had been about the future of Kachuk mythril and about how to ensure that Alerar stayed the technological capital of the world as new frontiers to civilizations were opening to up. It was so riveting that it made me sure if it wasn't my depression but boredom driving my drinking. I was finally starting to feel the effects of alcohol after about half an hour and that was when I saw Kali’rea. She was standing by a stained glass window, holding a glass of untouched ale as she listened, seemingly unenthusiastically, to a human I had never met before.

I could tell that she was a bit uneasy. She kept scanning the area around her, as if she was looking for someone. The few times that I was in her gaze, I tried to wave. She always looked away, as if intentionally. “Well whoever she’s looking for, it isn’t me,” I thought with a sigh. I was tired and wanted to leave, but didn’t know if that would be proper decorum, or what obligations I was expected to fulfill by attending the soiree in the first place.

Before I could figure out my next move, it was made for me. Sebastien, the green skinned elf I had encountered clapped me on the shoulder. He leaned into me, over the shoulder, and though his face was now quite close to my ear, he didn’t change the volume of his voice. “Dexter’s been bragging about you,” he said. “The old coot says you’ve learned a thing or two from his assistant. Soon enough, you see that area over there, the one with the ropes? That’s going to be turned into a fighting pit. Dexter’s volunteered you to show everyone what you’re made of.”

I couldn’t manage a reply before he clapped me on the shoulder again, said “good luck,” and turned and walked away. I suppose I could have followed him, but decided it wasn’t worth it. He had helped me before escape a bit of wrath from Taritod, but I doubted I could count on him for very much more. Given everything I’d learned about his kind in Scara Brae, I knew that he wouldn’t help me any more than he wanted to, and given the way he’d said good luck, I could tell he’d already given me all the assistance he was inclined to give.

Frustrated, I remembered that Kali’rea had mentioned the fight before, but after thinking about her and Rainee my head had got tied up in so many knots that fighting had been the last thing on my mind. Now I looked at the area separated off by ropes. It was pretty small, no real place for much maneuvering, but there was a softer carpet there that seemed like it would soften any real hard falls.

I must have stared at it for a good fifteen minutes or so, because by the time Kali’rea tapped me on the shoulder, they were already talking about who would be involved in the first match. “They’ll have you up second,” she said. “You should go find Dexter as soon as you can…”

“Why don’t you help me?” I asked.

“Don’t go there,” Kali’rea said with a sigh. “I’m doing you this one last favor…” She pointed over towards the slime voiced drow whose name I had found out was Graf Vilhelm. “That’s your oracle,” she concluded. “Don’t look at him, but he’s the one who watches you when you leave, maybe when you’re here too…”

“He’s watching me when I’m here?” I asked incredulously.

Kali’rea made sure to look over towards Vilhelm to make sure he was still absorbed in his conversation before she spoke to me. She repeated an old truism about the dark elven land. “No one trusts anyone in Alerar,” she warned.

“That isn’t true,” I insisted. “I trust you!” With everything else not going my way, I was hoping that a little honesty might help me now. During our training I had taken a lot of my bitterness out on Kali’rea, and now I hoped letting her in to my vulnerability would persuade her to help.

Still, she only sighed. “You need to do what you’re told sometimes,” she said. “Go find Dexter.”

“You can’t even tell me why?” I asked. I felt I was at least owed an explanation. After everything we’d been through the past few days, I couldn’t believe she’d want to abandon me.

She sighed. “It’s just not the right time,” she said, as if that was the closest thing to a why that I could ever get.

The first fight was getting ready to start. A pair of drow were going through a series of exercises to loosen up, and the beginning of a crowd had already assembled. Had it not been for my height I wouldn’t have been able to see what was going on in the little ring.

“They take these things really seriously here,” Kali’rea reminded me. “You lose, and they’re not going to think highly of you. It’s a coming out party for the new nobles, they want to see which ones will be given chances in the coming years.”

I frowned. I didn’t want to be part of any noble gathering. Regardless of who my father was, nobility had never been in our family line. Damon may have become General of Raiaera, but he was born poor. I had been born into considerably more wealth, but even so, we weren’t nobles. Still, I could tell by the way both Kali’rea and Sebastien had spoken to me, it wasn’t like I had a choice.

“Put it this way…” Kali’rea began, though her voice was getting to seem quite tired. She began to look around the room again, her attention focused on Graf Vilhelm. “Win there, and you’re probably going to be doing more than just training.”

Now that made me smile. I wasn’t exactly sure what else Alerar would have me be doing, but I supposed anything would be better than waking up before the sunrise for Dexter. “Alright,” I said. I could tell that she didn’t want to talk any more, regardless of how much I needed a friend at that moment.

With the sound of a fire cracker, the first fight had begun. There was a loud cheer and people from all over the room were beginning to congregate near the contest. I knew that if I wanted to find Dexter soon, I was going to have to get moving.

“See you later,” I said to Kali’rea, before disappearing into the throng of people hovering over the first match.

[Call me J]

By the time I’d found Dexter, I’d already missed most of the first match. He didn’t look happy to see me. “You should have been here earlier,” he said, his attention focused on the two competitors. “I could have pointed their weaknesses out to you.”

“Well sorry,” I replied, even though I didn’t mean it. Since Kali’rea seemed insistent about having as little do with me as possible, I figured I had to be as nice to him as possible. “I just didn’t know where to find you…”

Dexter wasn’t pleased. “Use your eyes,” he said. I had to refrain from countering him by suggesting that with the amount of tobacco juice on his fingers, it would have been easier to use my sense of smell.

“Well I was talking with Kali’rea, she was explaining how the whole thing works and everything else I need,” I said, trying to diffuse an argument before it started. If this conversation with Dexter ended on the same tone as the previous one, I doubted it would bode well for me in Alerar.

He sighed. “You should have come to me, I know more about this than her,” he said. He reached up and grabbed my chin, orienting my face back towards the fight. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m no prize- pay attention to what is. You look bad here, so do I, because I’m supposed to be your teacher.”

“Then you should have taught me something,” I thought, even as I complied with Dexter’s order. Still, there probably wasn’t much I could gain at this point. The fight was almost over. Both competitors were bloody and bruised, but the smaller of them was panting heavily, and it was only a matter of time before fatigue got to him. Seconds later, a quick punch did the trick before fatigue could. After a count to ten that the fighter couldn’t respond to, a large, somewhat rotund dark elf was declared the winner.

“Gack!” Dexter exclaimed. “You missed it. Missed the things worth watching.”

“Probably did,” I replied. “I’ll catch the next one.”

The announcer began to call a name for the next fight. A rather burly drow who looked to be roughly twenty three in human years made his way into the ring. I looked at him. By looks alone, he looked like a better fighter than either of the ones in the first match. His body practically rippled with muscles, his shoulders was so taught I wondered how he was even able to move his neck. Then, the announcer named me as his challenger. I flinched, even though Dexter was looking.

He looked at me smugly. “Should have paid attention…” he warned.

Even though I was uneasy about this fight, I wasn’t going to give Dexter the satisfaction of knowing it. There was a bit of alcohol still running through my system, and I was almost afraid what would happen if I ended up taking a quick blow to the soft part of my gut. I entered the ring carefully, keeping an eye both on my opponent and the announcer.

It would only be a matter of time before the fight began, and I realized I didn’t even know the rules. “Can I use my firebreath?” I thought. “That’d probably be the quickest way to end this…” That way, I’d either burn the muscular drow, or end up being pummeled by him early. Either way, I’d be done there.

In the last minute before the contest began, I wondered if I really even wanted to win. I supposed it was important to my relationship with Dexter, but did I really care beyond that? If Alerar’s prognosticators had me destined for greatness anyways, the results of a few parlor games weren’t going to matter. And even if they did, I supposed the worst they could do would be to let me leave, something I more or less wanted anyways. I had really only been training because Kali’rea had wanted me to, and because her insistence had reached a point where I really just couldn’t say no anymore. If she wasn’t going to be training me, I didn’t want to be trained.

The firecracker went off before I realized it, and a fist seemed to come out of nowhere, heading straight for my jaw. Two kicks to my calves followed, and I was already stumbling before I had even realized the match had begun, I tried to counter, taking a couple wide swings, but my opponent just ducked under them and then hit me a few more times in the gut.

I fell to the floor and got up quickly, dodging a few attempted stops in the process. Another kick came towards me, but I was able to block this one. The alcohol in my stomach was beginning to sit uneasily and my entire body was aching, and I wanted to give up. A couple more rights came at me and I blocked them, but I wondered whether I just lay down, if that would be an end to my troubles. This guy was beefy and strong, I expected even the punches he blocked to leave bruises on my forearms.

With my patience waning, I wound up for a spinning kick. I figured there, if I could knock him down, one good punch to the temple might do the trick. I may have not been that great of a fighter, but at the very least, I knew how to make the punches I landed count.

The drow couldn’t stop me from getting the kick off, but once I did, he caught me against his side. He had winced with the pain of the blow, but the force hadn’t even caused him to stagger. I watched, wide eyed, too awestruck to do anything as he brought his elbow dowm with a sickening blow on my knee. I screamed in pain.

My opponent let go of me, but only so that I could feel just how little weight my leg could take. Hoping to catch me unawares, he came barreling for my midsection and we both fell to the ground. I hit with a hard thud and could barely do more than cover my face as he unleashed a series of blows to my face. I let him hit and hit, not knowing what else to do, until I finally saw my opening. His body, straddled over me, had given me one very convenient target.

With my one good leg, I kicked up. I hit him right where it counted, and sprung into action, grabbing the drow by the throat and turning him over. I was on top now, and the pressure on his throat would be enough that if he didn’t give up, I’d be able to choke him. Stuggling, grasping for air and coughing, he tried to pull away at my hands, but I had already cut off his air supply long enough to weaken him. He pulled in vain, his eyes defying me even as he desperately grasped for air.

I wondered just how long I’d have to go, and if I was willing to do it. I continued to bore down on him, biting my lip, but I wondered if I really was willing to choke him to the point where he passed out. I worried that I might kill him, and I knew there was nothing in crowd entertainment that was worth dying for.

Before I came to an answer, he began to tap the carpet violently. The announcer called me off. I kept my grip on him. The announcer pulled me off.

“He said he was done… no need to continue,” the announcer said.

My attention was still focused on my opponent, my chest heaving heavily and the adrenaline that had almost drove me to kill still surging though my body. To the party goers looking on, I was probably more animal than human. As the fear from the match wore off, I looked around the room. There were a number of onlookers looking bug eyed at me, but even more were still going about the party, making the same trite and useless conversation they had been making before the fight had even started.

“Dinner conversation and blood sport,” I observed to myself. “Only in Alerar…”

With that, I walked away from the ring like I was smoldering. I felt untouchable, both powerful and reviled. All because I had almost killed a living for party entertainment. The worst was, I wasn’t sure if I was upset or not that some people weren’t watching.

[Call me J]

By the time I had limped my way back to Dexter, the next fight had begun. Both of the fighters involved were skinny, and one of them even coughed like an asthmatic. Still, they both went at it desperately, perhaps because they felt this would be their only chance of getting a win. If these were supposed to be demonstrations of talent for young nobles, the only thing I was seeing was that Alerar didn’t have very many talented nobles.

Dexter handed me a small piece of cloth without diverting his attention from the fight. “Pay attention to this,” he warned. “You’ll have to beat one of those two on that leg of yours.”

My eyes bugged at this. I didn’t care how skinny or useless they were, there was no way I was getting back in the ring. I could still remember the popping sound that my knee had made when my opponent’s elbow had come crashing down on it, and I barely wanted to walk, let alone fight on it. I had been expecting that my job was done, and even hoping I could go back to my room and send one of the servants for ice.

“Another one?” I asked.

“You have three,” Dexter said. “Eight people, three rounds for a winner. Winning a match here is enough for some credibility, but winning the whole thing’s a real coming out party…”

If it wasn’t for the fact that we were in public, I would have wanted to yell at him. “Coming out as what, a murderer?” I thought to myself, my fists balling up in a tired rage. “The kind of guy who chokes a man down? Kicks someone in the balls and then uses that to win? If that’s what Alerar wants to see, they’ve got more problems than Xem’zund.”

Since I couldn’t say that, I just nodded and began to watch the fights. The asthmatic somehow managed to steal a win, and after that the fights picked up. The last first round match didn’t last long. One of the fighters seemed tough enough, the other would have fit in better against the asthmatic. I cringed for the loser as I saw him crash to the floor after a full throttled slam. His skull bounced off the floor despite the rug. The poor kid had no chance to answer a ten count.

Next, I was up. I was announced first, and I only hoped that my opponent wasn’t the drow who’d had no trouble slamming his opponent. Fortunately, I lucked out, I got the asthmatic, and he seemed scared enough of me with my noticeable limp. I could see his mentor nudging him forwards, as if he needed to be convinced to get in the ring with me. I tried to stare him down, intimidate him so that I might win by forfeit. After nearly strangling the other, tougher drow, I hated to think about what I could do to this one.

Still, with my hobbled leg, I knew if I wanted to win, I was going to have to win fast. I took a glance towards Dexter, and he gave me a dirty look, anticipating that I was thinking of trying to use my injury as an excuse to leave. I limped a little, just to show how bad I was hurt, but he still wasn’t persuaded. I had to stay.

The asthmatic got in the ring, and managed to get a punch off immediately after the firecracker. This time, I was ready though. I knocked his hand away and then grabbed him by the shoulder. A few seconds later, I had him knocked to the ground with a falling slam. I rolled off of him and watched as he just lay there, too frightened to get up. He might have had some strength in him, but one move had knocked the will from him.

Just to make sure he stayed down, I taunted him as the count continued. “On one leg,” I shouted. “On one damn leg!”

There was a silence as I said it. Dexter shook his head. I looked around nervously, wondering what I did wrong. The ten count had ended, and I hobbled back over to Dexter, confused about what I had possibly done wrong.

“That was Graf Vilhelm’s son,” Dexter said tersely. “You shouldn’t have taunted him.”

“There were taunts earlier…” I said, trying to defend myself.

“Still…” Dexter said. “This is Alerar, you have to know your place.”

From the look on his face, I understood exactly what he meant without saying it. Vilhelm was the vengeful type. Beating his son would have been bad enough, but now I gave him that much more reason to hold a grudge. I wondered if that was how the asthmatic kid had got that far in the first place, other people letting him win. I could feel the eyes of the crowd looking at me, even as they began to announce the second semi-final. It was over even faster than mine was. The fat, muscular and all around big drow who had won the first fight won his fight easily. He even beat the one that had won the quick match before mine.

“Careful with the leg,” Dexter warned. “After pissing on Vilhelm’s kid like that, Alerar’s not going to be too kind to you after a loss…”

“And if I win?” I asked.

“If you win, then you’re cocky, but good…” Dexter replied. “People respect that. If you lose though, you’re just another asshole. And you know, no one likes an asshole.”

Since I might have been walking out to my doom anyways, I figured I could take a moment to be glib. After all, depending on what Vilhelm had in mind, this could have been my last ever chance to tell a joke. “They don’t even like an asshole in Alerar?” I asked.

Dexter tried to suppress a guffaw, but he couldn’t. “Not even here,” he laughed.

[Call me J]

The fight started off with the burly drow trying to target my wounded knee. He tried to use what little speed he had to test me, just to see how little I could move. I knew I was going to be in trouble then. He wasn’t just huge, he was smart too. And, though I hated to admit it, he was faster than me.

I was searching for hope when the first punch came my way. It was the worst kind of punch, the kind that connected even though I had seen it coming. Just trying not to fall, I staggered a few steps back, and somehow managed to sidestep a charge from my rampaging foe. The burly drow couldn’t stop his massive momentum and tripped over the ropes. I smiled. This was my chance.

Quickly, I limped over to him, hopping on one foot to get their faster so that I could wrap his legs around my knee and put pressure on his thighs that way. The muscles in his legs were just as thick and powerful as the ones on the rest of his body, and I didn’t know if I could overpower them. Still, this was the only thing I could think of other than jumping on him with my severely lighter frame.

I managed to get to him in time and pull up his legs so they were wrapped around my good knee. My injury stopped the move from being as painful as it could have been, but I could hear the drow scream and hiss in pain as I pushed harder and harder on his legs, putting pressure across his thighs. Sweat rolled down my face and I grunted, holding the move was taking more out of me than I thought I had. I could dent damascus just with a punch, but this guy’s legs were strong enough that I wouldn’t have been surprised if they could kick through mythril.

Eventually, between my sweaty palms and my opponent’s desperation, he managed to kick his legs out of my grasp. I moved away, while I knew I was letting him get back up, I needed to turn around and face him, a harder task given how much pressure my gimpy knee had been forced to absorb.

As I stumbled forwards and turned around, I could see that my opponent was just as hurt. His hamstrings looked taught, and he staggered forward towards me with madness his bloodshot, dark elven eyes. His mouth frothed with insanity born from desperation, and his hands had already balled into fists.

At this point, I almost wanted to use the fire breath to protect myself. I had managed to hurt my enemy, but the cost was just as hard to me. I had to drag my wounded leg now and my hands were tired from holding down on those tree sized legs for so long. The first punch came, and it hit me in the chest. I let it, because I was going for a punch of my own. As he hit me in the chest, I connected in the jaw, and we both went staggering backwards.

I smiled as I looked at my opponent, watching him as he spit out a stream of blood and a tooth. I’d got him to bleed, after this it wasn’t going to get much harder. There had been two crucial plays in the match so far, and I had them both. I’d dodged a potentially crushing takedown and turned it into an advantage, and while my entire left arm felt all but dead, I’d gained the moral victory of first blood. The plays that really mattered, the ones that everyone at the party could see, those were the plays that went my way. As I quickly glanced to the audience, I could tell they were thinking it too. The fighter who had walked in on the gimpy leg was the one who was taking care of business. When I looked into my opponent’s eyes, I could tell he knew it too.

That was the moment that I knew that I owned him.

Now, it was time for him to start getting desperate, time for him to start reaching, the time that the only advantage I might have had with smarts might have come in to play. It was one thing that his teacher had taught him to test out the weaknesses of his opponent but it was an entirely different thing all together to be cool under pressure. Ever since I had been all but slaughtered in the Dajas Pagoda by an ally of Xem’zund, I had been harder to intimidate. But this guy, probably raised in palaces and mansions his entire life, had never faced anyone nearly as tough. It was one thing to be trained, and another to be a fighter. I may not have had his training, but after the last stand at Carnelost, I knew I was a fighter.

He swung at me again, but I moved to the side, using my wounded leg as best as I could to pivot in the direction he least expected. I half expected my knee to give out with my weight, but it was a chance I had to take. I knew using my wounded leg would take my opponent’s last hope of victory away, even if the surprise part of it wasn’t as effective as I hoped.

Once I’d spun, I could practically feel my knee buckling. Still, I landed a kick on my opponent’s back. It hit lower than I expected, but somehow, perhaps more by fluke than anything else, I connected with the right kidney. The drow went tumbling to the floor and I fell too, but I was the only one willing to get up. I managed to pick myself up, ignoring my limp as I began to walk out of the little battling area even before the count had expired.

Sore and battered, I stumbled to Dexter, only to have him clap me on the shoulder and chuckle slightly. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” he said. “Or else you’re the smartest man in the world.”

[Call me J]

Fortunately, I didn’t have to stay at the party much longer. I went back to my room in the palace and sat on my bed gratefully as I waited for the servants to return with ice. Dexter had looked at my knee after the fight and he had told me that it’d be better with a few days rest. I hadn’t liked that answer, especially since I figured that since the Citadel could arrange for better healing for me, the Alerarian government certainly should have been able to do so as well.

Soon, I heard a knock on my door. I was lying up in my bed, somewhat surprise that the servant would bother to knock when I had given him expressed instructions to rush. The knock was also very timid, which didn’t seem to make much sense. “Come in!” I called down. “I’m upstairs.”

I was just glad that most of the servants were dwarven, it made it a lot easier because while I’d learned a bit of dark elven, speaking in Salvic to the dwarves was much easier. I had to wait a bit longer than I would have expected, given the promptness of the dwarven service, and while I wasn’t inclined to complain most of the time, my knee had been aching badly.

“You couldn’t have made it here even a minute earlier?” I asked, turning over in my bed to reprimand the dwarf. “For…”

It wasn’t a dwarf with the ice, it was Kali’rea. She hovered around my bed like a child at the edge of a diving board, fumbling for words. I didn’t say anything. I could tell there was something wrong. Her eyes were brimming with tears she seemed too proud to release, and her hands were shaking ever so slightly. I was both intimidated and awestruck, because I had never seen someone that stoic in their grief.

“I sent the dwarf away,” she began, setting the ice down on the mattress. “Here is your ice.”

She hadn’t come to deliver ice. From what I had expected, she would have been halfway on her mission, wherever it was they were sending her. I became increasingly nervous with every moment where she didn’t speak, fearful that she had come to relay a message about some Graf out to get me, or that I had caused internal bleeding to Vilhelm’s kid.

“What is it?” I finally managed, afraid of what her response would be.

“They’re sending me to the Fields of Khu’fein,” Kali’rea replied.

My first thought was one of relief, and I hated myself for it. I was relieved that she was worried for herself, and not for me. For the first time in my life, I thought of myself in comparison to Damon and didn’t like what I saw. When I looked at Kali’rea’s face, I could tell that she had told me that she was all but condemned. I didn’t know how to reply, I knew little about these fields, or even what I could have done to help if I had.

“Are you going to go?” I asked.

“The orders of Graf Vilhelm,” she replied. “My orders were changed at the last minute to a suicide mission…”

I didn’t know how to reply. The severity of this problem was more than I was comfortable with. I stammered as sentence fragments popped into my head that I immediately dismissed as poor. Desperately, I wished that I had the ability to say something pithy that would have made the entire situation go away, or at least made Kali’rea feel a little better.

With a heavy sigh, I thought the least I could offer her was some sympathy. I got out of bed and limped my way over to her. “I’m sorry…” was all I could manage, though I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing for her situation or my initial reaction to it.

Kali’rea tried to smile. She let me hug her, and then pat me on the back. “I have to go though,” she said. “If I don’t, they’ll punish Dexter and you and anyone else I care about.”

“I’d still run…” I replied, squeezing her body tightly. “We’ll handle ours…”

She sighed. “You don’t understand…” she began.

Remembering what she had said to me earlier about people understanding each other, I replied with, “But I try.”

She leaned in and kissed me lightly on the lips. “And may the Mya bless you for that, Jame,” she said before kissing me again.

[Call me J]

An hour later, we were lying in bed together naked and spent. Kali’rea had been asleep for a while, but I just couldn’t get any rest. I tried cuddling with her, but that made me feel too guilty, especially since our sweaty skin clung to each other’s as if to say we belonged together. While I had feelings for Rainee too, I knew I loved Kali’rea. I didn’t know if I loved her out of guilt or because there was something real, but I loved her.

“Damon would have been able to save Kali’rea,” I realized somberly. “He could save her and I can’t even try.” I had plenty of excuses. My abilities were limited, my leg was wounded beyond the point where I could stand on it without pain. There was little reason to go off with her and get the two of us killed. The thing is though, I had seen Damon in Anebrilith, he hadn’t thought in those terms. The moment he had decided what was right, he did it. I hated the way he was able to turn impulsiveness into a virtue. For me, all it meant was that I would sleep with Kali’rea before letting her go off to die. My fists were clenched and tears of frustration welled in my eyes. I would have wanted to scream but for the sleeping woman next to me.

I spent the next two hours staring up at the ceiling, feeling guilty. I had just slept with a woman I knew was going to die and was now perfectly willing to accept there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t shake the thought from my mind, it wormed its way deeper and deeper into my desires and perception of myself, to the point where I feared it would scar my brain irreparably.

Though I had always known that Damon and I were different, I was beginning to regret my hedonist ways. They’d made me too dependent on comfort. I might have not been as bad as the Graf’s kids I fought in the tournament now, but I was like that before Carnelost. It was just a miracle of fortune that I had managed to survive that battle, and I mostly had others to thank. “Others who are dead,” I reminded myself.

I began to wonder if my entire existence wasn’t just owed to other people, that I stood as some kind of monument to the people who had died for me. I wondered if they would have liked what they saw, seeing me lying in a bed when I should have been defending the life of a girl. Would they have been angered at what their monument represented, or would they have been glad that I had preserved myself? I wasn’t sure, and I hated that uncertainty.

For every impulse within me that told me to protect Kali’rea, there were far too many others that told me that I should leave well enough alone. I didn’t want to listen to them, but they were the ones that kept winning out, and I cursed myself because it was because of my cowardice.

I realized what Kali’rea had meant when she said that no one really understood each other. If they did, Kali’rea wouldn’t have turned to me for comfort. She probably expected me to have been her hero, and at best, I was a little comfort. Rainee had trusted me too, and I wonder if she also saw me as the hero I wasn’t. I even wondered what the women I had slept with in the bars, the ones I had been so careful not to let them know the Kaosi name, thought of me. They’d never expected much more than a good time.

Now I wondered if the people who said they cared about me were really in love with the son of my father. The difference might have been subtle, but it still meant a lot. When I had first heard I was the son of one of Althanas’ greatest warriors, I was proud. Shortly after, I found out the responsibilities that I didn’t really have any interest in. Since then, I hadn’t been living so much as acting, playing the role of a hero in a play that only Damon and the Mya knew the ending to.

Sighing, I looked over at Kali’rea. Her stomach heaved slightly as she breathed in and out, and I reached out and ran my fingers through her hair for a bit. I was careful, for if she was about to die, she at least was entitled to a night’s sleep.

Eventually, my own eyes grew heavy enough that my regret could no longer keep me awake. I nodded off, but only out of physical need.

[Call me J]

When I awoke, Kali’rea was gone. I had never been on this end of a one night stand, and it felt terrible. Especially since all my dreams had been about saving her. I had resolved, shortly after I woke, to go with her, or at least insist that I appeal to Schynius on her behalf. However, she was gone, and by the time I had dressed and hobbled down my stairs to go see if I could find her, there was a knock on the door.

I opened it, and it was Dexter. “Have you seen Kali’rea?” I asked.

“She’d have left hours ago…” Dexter replied. “She said she gave you her goodbye last night before I talked to her.”

As I looked at Dexter I wondered what he knew. Not just that Kali’rea and I had spent the night together, I didn’t care what he knew about that. Instead, I wondered if Dexter wasn’t just as guilty as I was, and that he too had let her go off to die without chasing after her. I knew I couldn’t ask.

“She did,” I replied, not wanting to elaborate on it any more.

The slight smile on Dexter’s face faded. It was only then that I realized just how artificial his expression had been. As we looked into each other’s eyes, we could tell that the other one was thinking the exact same thing. We shared a silent moment of consoling each other before getting angry that the other one hadn’t done anything. We stared at each other with angry eyes, and I wondered if the lessons would continue. Dexter was supposed to be the one teaching me now, but I didn’t know if I could be in the same room as him considering how angry I was.

“Is your leg feeling any better?” Dexter asked. He knelt down to pet his dog, who had been moving around his legs aimlessly. “We can’t continue training ‘till you’re better.”

I gave him the most noncommittal answer that he could manage. “Don’t know really,” I replied. “It was feeling a bit better yesterday…”

“These things can get stiff,” Dexter said. I wasn’t sure if he meant a double entendre. “Just stretch it and use ice…”

My reply was just one word and then a pregnant pause, “Sure…”

Dexter nodded. “Alright then. Talk to you later.” I watched as Dexter and his dog left as unsuspectingly as they came. As they left, I wondered what I would do with myself now that there was no training.

Before, I had been happy enough to waste my time and theirs sitting around the guest room, but now, I felt as though I needed to keep active. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was anxious about Kali’rea’s fate, or all the things that had been said about me were beginning to have an impact on the way I viewed myself. While I had been afraid to act last night with Kali’rea, I had shown myself to be a champion earlier that night. I knew that now, there was a difference between the person I had been and the person I was becoming, and while my initial resistance to Dexter might have been the old me fighting back, it was going to be the last stand for it. Carnelost had changed me, and the last night had made the changes permanent.

As I hobbled back up the stairs, I wondered what I should think about myself now. I figured that if I was expected to heal, I was expected to take bed rest. If that was the case, then I figured that I would be spending a long time staring up at the ceiling the way I had last night. There were too many questions that needed answers.

[Call me J]

For the next two days, I had no visitors. Servants brought food to my bed, but as my luck would have it, the people on shift were dark elven. I didn’t know if this was a sign that I had become someone more significant as a result of my victories at the party, or because Schynius and his people trusted me less. Dark elven servants were much more likely to be spies.

They also didn’t speak any language I understood, so I had to settle for the blood pies and Gareth Ceagrass, a disgustingly bitter Alerarian ale. I wasn’t sure even if these servants realized that alcoholic drinks weren’t going to make my leg better any faster, or whether they considered that anyone in Alerar would drink anything else. Either way, it made me long for being able to walk out and find the kitchen, wherever it was in the labyrinthine palace.

The sun had set about an hour ago. There had been a thunderstorm on and off all day, so it was difficult to tell the time by the sky alone and I had no other time piece on me. I knew it couldn’t have been too late, but it was late enough that I could justify myself settling down for the night.

I began settling down to another night of sleeplessness. The one thing that I could say in favor of the Gareth Ceagrass was that it was potent, and that it made me tired once the buzz wore off. It was the only way that I’d gotten any sleep, and I’d imagined that when Dexter had come to check up on me, he’d see bags under my eyes. It was late enough now that I was content to think that it was a reasonable hour to go to bed, even though I wasn’t as tired as much as I was affected by ennui. Still, I knew that sleep, if I could get it, would be good for me. My eyes had felt perpetually dry for the past day and I found my concentration waning. Even if my knee had been completely healed, I wouldn’t have been much use as far as learning went.

However, the knee was healing. I was going to have to go back to training with Dexter whether I was comfortable with it or not. Though I knew I’d be able to delay for a few days, eventually Dexter would catch on, and while I didn’t get the feeling that he wanted to train me any more than I wanted to be trained after what happened to Kali’rea, I figured that neither of us had much of a choice.

I sighed as I tossed and turned in my bed, wishing that I would have been able to go to sleep. Though I yawned a few times, I was simultaneously tired and alert. Everything seemed to distract me, the pillows were too worn, the mattress wasn’t nearly soft enough and the storm outside was beginning to be too loud. Claps of lightning seemed to illuminate the room just at the moment that it seemed that my eyes had finally settled in to the darkness. It felt like all of Alerar was punishing me for my cowardice now. I wondered if Dexter slept any better.

Eventually, Alerar must have shown me some mercy because I fell asleep. My dreams had been simple, but without any pity. They weren’t nightmares exactly, things never went so bad in them to wake me up, but I spent my dreamtime lost and confused. Kali’rea kept appearing, though the only words she would say were goodbyes.

Halfway through the night, I woke up. It was still storming outside, but I thought I heard a knock on my door. Groggy with sleep, I ignored it. I rubbed my eyes for a moment, looked up during the next lightning clap and seeing nothing, went back to bed. Seconds later, right after I had just laid my head back down, the lightning clapped again. This time, I saw a figure moving up my stairs.

I couldn’t make it out by the time the lightning disappeared. Whoever it was, they were moving stealthily, any footsteps were drowned out by the sound of the rain pelting against the walls and terrace floor. I fumbled around, knowing that my claymore wasn’t kept too far from my bed, and that it was leaning against the nightstand. It would be a somewhat unappealing weapon to wield groggily, but I didn’t have a dagger.

By the time lightning punctured the darkness again, the stranger had reached my floor. It was a woman, dark skinned, though that was all I could gather before the darkness returned. I immediately called out, more out of hope than evidence, the name Kali’rea.

The woman only shook her head as she reached and lit the kerosene lamp nearby me. She seemed to have known her way around the room. “This was mine before you came here Jame,” she said. “I left the day you arrived, and I hadn’t intended that we meet.”

Immediately, I knew who it was now. I turned over and stopped groping for my sword. “Lady Luck,” I said, wide eyed with surprise at her sudden and unexplained visit. From what I had understood, she had long since left Valshath d’Isto, so I didn’t know why she’d have returned.

“I have been watching you Jame Kaosi,” she began. “And that is a name that finally suits you now, isn’t it? The Whitizard role is one that you don’t have to play any more than you want to.”

I bristled. Ever since I had been lying on the ground with my entrails bleeding out in the Dajas Pagoda while a minion of Xem’zund lectured me on the difference between a “worm” and a “wyrm” I had little appreciation for wordplay. Also, even though I had come to accept some of the commonalities between myself and my father, I wasn’t ready to embrace them.

“It is good to see you,” she continued, seemingly undaunted by my unwillingness to speak.

My apprehensions slowly began to melt. There was something about the woman’s demeanor that calmed me, it was similar to the way that Damon had carried himself when I had last saw him. I wondered if it came from understanding the world at a deeper level than most would ever be able to. Still, even if I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t happy either. Luck hadn’t gone my way much lately, the entire relationship with Kali’rea had fallen apart before it could have really gone anywhere, and in fact I had cursed the fates for ever letting me know her. Though I wasn’t frightened, I wasn’t pleased either.

“Why did you let Kali’rea go?” I asked. “And are you protecting her now…”

Lady Luck replied with a laugh that would have been infectious in another setting. I could tell now that the two of us were thinking in completely different terms. “You’re really forward, know that?” she said. “Most people, when meeting an oracle controlling their luck, would start with flattery…”

“Most people don’t know that wouldn’t get them anywhere,” I shot back.

With a coy smile on her face that suggested she’d been expecting that kind of a response, Lady Luck smiled. “So why are you even asking for a favor?” she replied.

I began to speak candidly. “You don’t get the difference between asking for a favor and begging for information.”

“She’s dead,” Lady Luck replied. “It was the kindest fate out of the choices.”

My fists balled up in frustration and I punched the wall, denting it and causing the ceiling itself to rattle. Plaster dust rained down from the ceiling. My hand, slightly bruised, got the least of the impact, but that wasn’t my concern. Neither was whether I had woken any of the neighbors.

“You couldn’t have…” I said, choking back tears as I spoke. “You… you couldn’t have…”

“Omniscience doesn’t mean omnipotence,” Lady Luck replied calmly. She seemed unwilling to come closer to comfort me, perhaps because she knew what I would do if anyone close to the fates got any closer to me.

I was so caught up in my disappointment that I couldn’t express it in any way other than frustration at the world. I hated myself for my failure, but I hated the fates for conspiring to put me where I was. For the past two days I had been blaming myself. Now, for whatever reason, I had been offered the chance to curse luck itself in a position where she would be listening. It wasn’t an opportunity I planned to let pass idly.

[Call me J]

“You let her die!” I finally screamed. “Like Hell, you could have done something, anything couldn’t you? If you control luck, couldn’t you have given her some? Done something damnit! You’ve been at me ever since Anebrilith, in one way or another, haven’t you? That red haired girl Karuka, she didn’t have to knock me in to Damon’s portal with her, did she? That was you…”

I was surprised at how statuesque the woman had stood despite my berating her. The oracle seemed completely unaffected by the fact I was screaming at her, practically raving like a lunatic. If I had been of a different mindset, I might have realized that she would have known this was how I was going to behave, given her knowledge of the future, but as it was, her poise made me even more frustrated.

“Be angry tonight,” she said. “But tomorrow, you wake up and you get back to living. The fates need you to play the role that the fates require.”

I wanted to rebel, but at this point, I didn’t know much more revolution there was within me. There was a part of me that had died moments ago, and it dulled my sense of being indignant. If I had to go to Dexter, I was going to go, no matter how little I wanted to. I’d be like the walking dead, going through drill after drill without creativity or passion. I didn’t say think this as a way of planning my next opportunity of resistance, I thought it as a matter of fact.

“I’ll go,” I said.

“That’s not enough,” Lady Luck replied. “The world needs you there in spirit and in soul.”

I sighed. It was too late, I was tired, my head hurt and I was being asked the impossible. I didn’t know how to react any more. I had already been furious and I had already been tired. It seemed like pretty much anything else would have been pointless. “So I’m just supposed to suck it up and find a sincerity I just don’t have somewhere?”

“That’s life,” Lady Luck said, evenly. “Do you really think anyone else does what they want to?”

“You seem to,” I sighed. “I was doing what I wanted until I was pushed into that portal…”

Lady Luck remained silent for a moment. “I did make sure you were pushed in there,” she said. “It should have been a matter of luck, but I changed yours.”

This was enough to flush me out of my numbness. I was angry again, and I felt deceived. “You- you robbed me from the life I was supposed to have!” I shouted angrily, practically stammering as a rush of emotion finally came over me. For the first time in a while, I felt as though there was someone else I could blame for my problems concretely. It was one thing to bitch to the fates, in abstract or in front of them, but another to know that they had altered the universe. It felt like I was being toyed with.

“Do you really want that life?” Lady Luck asked. Her brow was stern.

I replied immediately, even though I knew that Lady Luck would have wanted me to reflect. “Yes!” I said, practically shouting at the top of my lungs. “What do you think? Do you think I like being here, sleeping with a woman only to know she’s dead? Do you think I like being in a palace where I can’t trust anyone instead of sitting in a bar, drinking away my trust fund and flirting with girls? What is it about my life now that you think I should be happy that I have? The nightmares about Kali’rea, the scar on my cheek from the Salaturn church?”

“If you hadn’t fallen into that church, you would have been dead. Three months ago, you’d have gotten Syphilis in a bar in Knife’s Edge, and you’d have died, never knowing your father, never knowing your potential, never knowing life,” Lady Luck replied. Had the words come from anyone else, it would have been laced with sarcasm. Instead, the oracle spoke sagely, with counterpoise.

Her tone itself was enough to make me feel humbled. I hung my head. While I wanted to think that she might be lying, I knew it couldn’t be true. There was something about the way she had been so upfront about everything else that made me feel that I had to trust her now, even though I didn’t want to.

“Thanks,” I said, unsure of what else I could say.

“Get your sleep,” she said, with a sympathetic smile tickling the corners of her mouth. “Tomorrow, you’ll be ready.”

I smiled. “I’ll walk you out,” I said, getting out of bed. We made our way down the stairs to the veranda, where I bade the oracle goodbye.

She smiled and kissed me on my forehead before disappearing. I watched as she dissipated into the air. Her disappearance was almost instantaneous, but at the same time, it was very elegant. I could still feel her presence in the air around me as the rain finally reached a light drizzle. As the storm faded, the smoke from the factories below began to rise up again, seemingly thicker than it ever had been before. Even though I was tired, I spent at least half an hour staring out into the smoke clouds on that wild and windy night.

[Call me J]

After Lady Luck visited me, I wasn’t grateful, but I was humbled. I disliked waking up every morning and being put to the task by Dexter. The slight camaraderie we had developed the night of the fight had evaporated immediately when we had seen each other the next day. To keep his distance from me, Dexter did everything in his power to make sure I hated him, from arranging for very early morning training sessions, to having me spar with him far after my muscles had given out.

I complied dutifully, not out of a desire to comply, but because I knew my place in the world. Every morning, I started with a Dexter mandated run, after which I was only allowed to eat breakfast after I had defeated his dog Shadow in windsprints. Then, I would duel until evening, and then we would go to a gymnasium on the floor above for target practice. After a few days of the routine, I had come to long for target practice, it was the only respite my aching muscles got until I finally had leisure time one hour before the sun went down. Then, I would lie motionless in my bed until dinner arrived, scarf it down quickly, clean myself and head to bed.

Fifteen days after Lady Luck’s visit, I could barely even move. I still walked downstairs, stiffer than ever, ready to begin my run. My legs ached, every step they took seemed as though my muscles had fused together to make a tight string that was ready to snap at any moment. My eyes felt heavy and I yawned three times as I made my way to the breakfast table, knowing that while I couldn’t eat, at least I’d sit down for a bit before Dexter arrived.

After fifteen minutes, he still wasn’t there. I began to eat the breakfast that had been laid out for me. It was only now that I noticed that the sun was much higher in the sky than it normally was when I got up. I had figured I’d become so conditioned to waking up early that I hadn’t needed Dexter to wake me up, but it seemed that for whatever reason, he’d let me sleep at least two hours past normal.

Since he wasn’t showing up, I went back to bed. I slept right through lunch and when I awoke, not only had my lunch meal been delivered, but I could see the sun was beginning to set. I shook my head, somewhat surprised that I could have slept that long, but more confused that Dexter hadn’t stopped by. It wasn’t that I missed him as much as a deviation from the routine he had been putting me on seemed completely out of character.

Had it been any other situation, I wouldn’t have been nervous. There were many reasons why he could have left without contacting me, but after what happened to Kali’rea, I feared something like that could have happened to him too. I didn’t know what to do, part of me wanted to run up to Schynius’ office and protest, but I didn’t know what good that would do in any case. It wasn’t as if the High Graf was inclined to do anything because I asked.

I began to wonder what the point of being considered chosen was, or more importantly, why Alerar was going to this much effort. I supposed Lady Luck had advised them, as had their other oracle, but I wondered what my role was in the grand scheme. In particular, I wondered what they had envisioned me. With Kali’rea, I had learned to fight, the kind of skills that were unfortunately a necessary part of nobility. However, with Dexter, I got the feeling that I had begun to train for something else. I didn’t know many nobles who ran long distances every day.

Since I didn’t have anything else to do, I pulled myself up to the table and began to eat my lunch. It was already cold, but I didn’t mind. I think it was the smoke from the factories below that scared them away, but one of the nice things about the palace was there were no vermin that would have gone after the uneaten food. It made it a bit more palatable to pick my way through cold meat and bread.

I was hungry enough not to care too much how the food tasted, and I began eating ravenously. Breakfast had been fine, but I was still very hungry. I had eschewed utensils in favor of just eating quickly, and by the time Dexter entered, the edges of my mouth and my fingers were coated with grease. My mouth was full and I must have looked like some kind of chipmunk as he entered.

“Swallow first,” Dexter replied, somewhat coldly as he entered and sat down on the bench opposite my table. He spit a strand of tobacco juice into a bowl that he had kept in my room for that purpose. His dog Shadow was nowhere to be seen.

I swallowed. Then, I didn’t say anything, but headed back up to my room. “So kind of you to wait for me,” he said. “You went and had yourself a good day instead of going out and running, didn’t you?”

“I did,” I replied evenly. The lack of emotion in my voice was genuine. I did what I was supposed to, but Dexter knew that I wasn’t inclined to do anything beyond what was asked of me. I knew my place was to listen, not to improvise. “And I’m glad to have done nothing all day. I needed the rest.”

Dexter sighed. It seemed like he didn’t have his normal stomach for an argument. “And you did fine then,” he said. “If you really needed the rest, then, who am I to say? You’ve been going well the past few days, especially, I knew that you were hurting.”

“So thank you for not showing up today,” I said, sincerely meaning it.

“Just keep in mind you need this toughness,” Dexter replied. “You’re a sharp kid… a fighter, strong, but you can be fast too. Real fast, the kind of fast they only talk about in legends.”

I didn’t’ know what to make of compliments from Dexter. They didn’t make me uneasy as much as they just seemed out of place. I wondered what he planned to follow them with. “Thanks,” was all I said.

“Yeah, so just keep that head on you,” he said. “You know, I used to know your father a long time ago. He was quicker than anyone else I knew. I thought my reflexes were sharp, but they were nothing like his. For about as long as we’ve been training, I worked with him, trying to get myself up to his level. On the last day, I finally asked how he did it. Know what he told me?”

I knew my father’s abilities well enough to know the answer. “He can see things before they happen,” I said.

“Wrong,” Dexter said. “That would have been the truth, but he told me he just worked at it. Know why he said that?”

“Because, sometimes, my father is an asshole?”

Dexter chuckled. “He’d have fit well in Alerar then, wouldn’t have he? Thing is though, he wanted to see how close I could get, just on skill alone. He knew that if I was training, and I knew something was possible, then I wouldn’t settle for anything less.”

“But it was impossible…”

Dexter nodded. “But I took myself farther than I ever would have imagined. When you want something that badly, you’ll tear up everything you were for it just to get it. You don’t want anything like that here in Alerar that bad yet, I can tell. You go through the motions because you know it’s what you have to do. I’m impressed by your love of duty, but even so, you’ll need to transcend your limits one of these days.”

I smiled slightly. Dexter didn’t know about Lady Luck. He would have understood why I was willing to do everything he’d asked if he did. However, I was content to leave him with his misperception, given the favorable light it cast me in.

“Anyways, I’ve got a job in a week from now…” Dexter continued. “I need an assistant…”

Dexter went silent, when he realized that he had almost said the name that had floated between us like an uncomfortable guest ever since she had left for the Fields of Khu’fein. “I’ll do it,” I said, more to keep him from mentioning her name.

“Thank you,” Dexter said. “I’ve been training you thinking this was possible the whole time. Get whatever sleep you want, I’ll be stopping by tomorrow only in the afternoon, and I’m going to let you in on the old trade techniques…”

While I wondered what “old trade techniques” was a euphemism for, I decided that I could wait to learn. If it involved running and shooting, I had a pretty good idea already, especially considering where Dexter’s supposed expertise lay.

“Starting tomorrow, you’ll hustle and fade,” Dexter said as he got up and prepared to leave. He was almost out the door before he repeated himself, “Hustle and fade.”