Dead Tired - Volume Four - Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Fenfang stared into the swirling portal. This... was big. 

Sure, she wasn’t that well-versed in politics yet, even with her crash-course and with the experience she was gaining from being tossed into the deep end, but even she could speculate. A portal like this meant instant transportation across a nation. That was... huge. Logistically, it would change the way her entire nation operated. It would make exchanging goods impossibly fast. It would make trading techniques and getting the right people to the right places easy.

She’d be able to communicate with otherwise distant governors with just a few hour’s delay. Her nation may well be one of the most interconnected ones... ever. Or at least, in recent history. She glanced to the side and eyed the profile of her Master. He didn’t seem concerned about it, though he couldn’t exactly look lively about his achievement.

She closed her eyes. Lively.

“Ohoh? I haven’t spoken a word and yet I hear you groaning, dearest Limpet,” her master said. “Did something occur to you?”

“N-no, Master,” she replied quickly. “Just... I didn’t think you looked very... uh, lively despite your accomplishment.”

Her master may have lacked eyes, or a face, but she could still sense the amusement and maybe pride wafting off of him like the smell of dung off of a farmer fresh from the barn. “Well done, Limpet. I feel like you might be taking the first steps towards becoming an amateur in the ancient and occasional-forbidden art of Wordplay.”

“I’d rather learn magic,” Fenfang said. “Like that portal... what city is that, on the other side?”

“Shitake,” Harold replied. “I had to consider which city to open a portal to, and I concluded that it was likely the best option as a first portal. They’ll need the assistance most. Opalhorn can be next, I suppose. The Death Butlers will care for it in the meantime. Lava Fist City and Seven Hills ought to be the next two.”

Fenfang nodded. “That makes sense to me. Seven Hills is the only one I’m kind of worried about.” She glanced around the space, taking in all of the stone buildings destined to hold portals leading to a dozen or more places across the continent. “Of those within our empire, I mean,” she corrected herself.

They hadn’t yet existed long enough to really build anything like a cohesive culture. That would come with time. Still, there was good reason to fear the ‘foreigners’ from outside the Flaming Steppes. The Jade Throne had made their dislike clear, and she didn’t doubt that there would be trouble.

“Ah, a familiar face. That’s nice,” Harold said.

Fenfang blinked out of her thoughts and refocused on the moment. A squad of undead had moved through the portal already. At first just skeletons and zombies, but then a few slightly-higher ranking undead, carrying clipboards and strange, magical equipment made of bone and steel. Measurement devices or some sort. She’d seen Seventeen using some before. 

They verified that the portal was secure, then stepped back. 

The first person through--had this been a well-organized and planned-out event--ought to have been someone important. The mayor of the city, maybe? Or the head of the local sect? Fenfang wasn’t sure, but she felt like it should be more than just the undead.

And then someone important did step through, and she wasn’t sure if she was mollified or not.

Cinder moved through the warping, shifting surface of the portal with the grace of a well-raised cultivator. Her long robes fluttered about her legs and yet hugged her form, highlighting everything she had that Fenfang found lacking in herself. 

The young cultivator scanned the area, her face darkened by the shadow of her ever-present parasol. Her mask, with its little breathing tubes and filters, covered the lower half of her face and made it all the harder to guess what she was thinking.

Then Cinder locked onto Fenfang’s master, and she strode over. “Lord Harold,” she said with a deep bow. “A pleasure to see you once more, yes yes yes.”

“Hello, Cinder,” her master said quite casually, as if they’d just run into the woman during a morning stroll. “I see you’ve made it through the first of our portals. What do you think so far?”

“It was... easy,” she replied. She shifted her head back. “We are near Yu Xiang. I can sense it in the air. The pressure is different, and the position of the sun in slightly slightly slightly different as well.”

“Very astute,” Harold said. “You moved quite some ways east of where you were. There will obviously be some changes. Are they discomforting?”

“Not to a cultivator,” Cider replied simply. She glanced to Fenfang, then bowed. It was a far, far shallower bow, but it still made something in Fenfang’s stomach twist a little. She wasn’t sure right away if it was in a good way or not. “Empress Fang,” she said.

“H-hello, Cinder,” Fenfang replied. “It’s nice to see you again. Were you chosen by your sect to be a delegate?”

“No no no, there was hardly time for that kind of choice and deliberation to be made,” she said with a slight shake of her head. “I was the nearest member of the sect that wasn’t an outer disciple. I knew not to be too worried when I saw the undead, of course, but I chose to investigate myself, just in case.”

“How very brave,” Harold replied. “Did you feel any magical discomfort?”

“No no no, nothing of the sort. My chi is settled. It is as though I passed through a door from one room to another. Though the change in temperature and, I suspect, elevation, can be felt. A civilian might feel some pain in their inner ear.”

Harold nodded. “That’s fantastic to hear, then! I hope you don’t mind if I use you as a guinea pig for a few more things?”

Fenfang pouted, then worked hard to straighten her features when she noticed Cinder’s eyes twitch towards her. She was her master’s test subject! Wait... no, that was a stupid, stupid thought. If Cinder wanted to volunteer, all the more to her.

“Are there any other portals that require testing?” Cinder asked.

“Oh no, but there is a device that I wouldn’t mind having you test for me!” 

Fenfang felt a shiver run down her spine, and judging by the way Cinder stiffened ever so slightly, she wasn’t as keen as she had been a moment before. “What item?”

“Well, this tournament can’t simply pit the average combatant against a trained martial artist, or a well-educated mage. It would be a spectacle the first time, but I imagine it would grow quite tiresome. Instead, I propose that we use brackets. Groupings of people across various skill levels. Ideally we would have at least twenty such groupings, but I suspect that that would be too complex. So, a three part system will have to do.”

“What would each... group be, more or less?” Fenfang asked.

“Novice, Intermediary, Expert.”

“No Master?” Cinder asked.

“A true Master wouldn’t need to participate in a tournament like this,” her master said. 

“But the prize is immortality,” Fenfang replied.

“Hmm... perhaps what qualifies as a ‘master’ has shifted somewhat since my day. In any case, in order to ensure that no one is cheating and attempting to enter a lower levelled fight just to get to the prize--Sandbagging, I believe, was the term back in the day--I want to create an item that casts a certain divination spell.”

“Sandbagging?” Fenfang asked.

“Ah, a particularly clever mage entered a Flying competition and tied bags of sand around his waist in order to weaken the cast of his own spell and make himself appear weaker. Once released, these bags fell out from under his robes, lightened him considerably, and sparked a small scandal as people tried to determine if it was cheating or not.”

“Oh,” Fenfang said.

Cinder nodded along. “Interesting, interesting, interesting. What is this spell or item intended to prevent this... sandbaging, then?

“The spell is Lesser Reveal Status. It’s a divination spell, as I mentioned earlier. One which reveals and condenses information about a person or creature into an easily digestible format. The Minor and Major forms of the spell reveal a lot more, of course.”

“I remember you using that one me!” Fenfang said.

Her master nodded. “Yes, it’s how I was able to determine without a shadow of doubt that you weren’t a threat to anyone or anything”

Fenfang twitched, but he probably wasn’t wrong.

“In any case, we’ll have every contestant be tested on arrival, and from that, we’ll be able to create a set of groups for the tournament proper. If you wish, Cinder, you may be one of the first to test my new device!”

***