Nuthea surveyed the garden area of the little manse they had been given to lodge in. A wooden boundary-fence marked off an area about twenty metres wide and long. A patio floor of cream-coloured stone reflected the heat of the Farrian Summer morning sunshine. Aside from that it was bare, except for a little ornamental pond and some potted plants off in the far corner.

This will have to do, she thought.

She regarded her troops, as she was coming to think of them. Ryn, Sagar, Elrann, Cid and Vish all stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a line facing her. She hadn’t even asked them to do that; they had just done it naturally when she had called them outside. She would make a fighting squad of them yet.

“Okay, team,” she said. “The Governor has said that we can enter four people into the tournament, without us even having to go through the qualifying heats. So the first thing we need to do is choose which four of us will enter.” [NB can always cut this later and write a qualifying heats summary section if I want to].

“Well obviously I’m the first choice,” said Sagar, putting his hands on his hips and sticking out his chest a little.

Nuthea saw Ryn open his mouth, but she jumped in first before “May I just remind you, Captain Sagar, that the Governor has told us that this will be a tournament of unarmed combat?”

The pirate deflated ever so slightly, then frowned. “So what? I’m still the best fighter among us. Well, maybe joint best. I suppose the scumsucker is alright at fighting too…”

“I have a question,” said Ryn, ignoring Sagar and putting up his hand like a school pupil. “Will we be allowed to use our elemental projection powers?”

“I…” Nuthea hesitated. “I’m not sure. I didn’t ask about that.”

“Of course we will,” said Sagar. “Now that they’ve got the Emerald, you can bet your ass that the Farrians will be using theirs. Hells, I wouldn’t be surprised if they enter Baldy into the tournament! Didn’t the Governor guy say that he was their strongest monk? And now he’s got earth powers, there’s no doubt he’ll use them…”

Sagar’s voice trailed off. He was seeming less and less confident by the moment.

“Well if that’s the case,” spoke up Elrann, “then I think it’s pretty obvious who we’re going to enter, isn’t it, princess girl? I mean, I can handle myself in a fight, sure, but I much prefer to have my pistols and whip with me. I’m not so sure that I could take on a trained fighter like monk-man, especially when he’s got earth powers now. The logical choice for who we enter is: you, farmboy and pirate-man, because of your Jewel-thingamy-powers, and the bountyhunter because of his badass fighting skills.”

Yes, thought Nuthea, that is the logical choice, except what you don’t know is that I’m blocked.

“How does everyone feel about that?” she said out loud.

Sagar folded his arms and nodded, clearly still trying to give off an air of nonchalance.

“I’ll fight,” said Ryn.

“Shadowfinger Vish?” Nuthea said.

Vish shrugged. “You know what I want. As long as you give it to me, I will fight for you. I have fought in ‘tournaments’ before, and won them.”

“You have?!”

“Yes. Both before I became a slave to the Empire, and since.”

“Well,” said Elrann, “that settles it then, doesn’t it

“Hold on,” said Nuthea, “let us give everyone a chance to speak. Grandfather, do you wish to fight?”

Cid’s bushy eyebrows rose. He looked surprised to even be asked. “Oh, no, Granddaughter, I’m getting too old for this sort of thing. I am happy to sit this one out.”

“Even though you are more experienced than the rest of us and might not have to face the same obstacles in preparing for the tournament?” Nuthea tried to convey extra meaning through a tight-lipped tip of her head to one side.

Cid’s eyes glittered, and she knew he had understood her. “Ah. Yes, even so. Do not worry. We have a week–I’m sure that is plenty of time for you to improve and to overcome any obstacles you might be facing in the way of your peak performance. All of you.”

Nuthea nodded, taking his meaning completely. “Then it is settled. Unless a better idea presents itself for whatever reason, myself, Ryn, Sagar and Vish will enter the tournament to compete for, and win, the Earth Emerald.” She turned to Vish. “Shadowfinger Vish, you are clearly the b…” She paused, not wanting to set off Sagar again. “You are clearly highly proficient at hand to hand combat, especially when elemental projection is taken out of the calculations. Will you train us in what you know of unarmed combat?”

Vish’s eyes were blank and unreadable above his face scarf as the rest of them waited for his response.

“Will you give me poppy?” he said.

“You know you are meant to be coming off it,” said Cid, “which is what you really want, remember? But yes, as part of withdrawing slowly, you can have some poppy in a week and a half. After the tournament.”

The Shadowfinger was silent again, his eyes still blank.

“I will train you,” he said at last.

“Thank you,” said Nuthea.

“Poodoo to that!” said Sagar, throwing up his hands. “I don’t need no fighting lessons, especially from a scumsucker like him. I’m off to go and find myself a drink.” He began to stalk towards the manse, then stopped. “You coming, woman?”

Elrann’s brows knotted. “Why would I be?”

“Cause you agreed to go for a drink with me the other night?”

Elrann scratched her chin. “Oh right. Yeah, but not now. We said we would go in six days, on our day off of training before the tournament starts. I want to train with the others, and see what the bountyhunter has to teach us.”

“Whatever,” said Sagar, “suit yourself.”

The door slammed behind him as he left the garden-courtyard. He was beginning to irk Nuthea somewhat.

She refocused on the task at hand. “Here we go then,” she said, “Vish, you swap with me.”

She traded places with the Shadowfinger so that she joined the end of the lineup next to Cid and Vish took the place in front of them all, facing them.

The rest of them awaited Vish’s first instruction.

Vish sighed deeply, a sound like the last breath going out of a corpse.

“Alright, listen,” he said in his foreign-accented, guttural tones. “I am good at fighting, but not for the reasons you think. When the…untrained think about schooling in the fighting arts, they imagine it is all about learning special routines and practicing certain steps, like learning to dance. And there is some of that. But a fight, a real fight, is not like a dance. In a real fight, any fancy routines you might have learned, any special moves with silly names like that monk performed, any semblance of control or poise you might have, go out the window, and you just become another animal trying to kill all the other animals to stay alive. And the fastest, most brutal, most vicious animal is the one that kills first, and so the one who gets to stay alive a little longer. Do you understand?”

Nuthea blinked at the Shadowfinger. It was the most words she had ever heard him say. He clearly knew, and thought, a lot about this subject.

None of the others said anything either. They must be as surprised as she was.

“I will assume that you do understand,” said Vish, giving them all a withering look. “All that said, there is some advantage to be had by rehearsing certain routines and steps, not because in an actual fight it will be possible to replicate them smoothly, but because by rehearsing them strength is built, and because the memory of your muscles might mean that small elements of the routines are reproduced in combat in potentially effective ways. All of you, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and bend your knees slightly.”

They did so.

“Now bend your arms at the elbow and make fists with your hands, with your thumbnails pointing up, like this.”

They did so.

“Good. This will be your first rudimentary practice exercise: punching. Now, with me, twist your fist round and punch the air in front of you, alternating right and left hands. Right! Left! Right! Left!”

Nuthea punched the air along with the others, falling into the rhythm of following Vish’s commands easily enough. She had done something similar to this with Evisca, her swordmistress, when she had been taught the sword as a teenager, before she had been allowed to handle the blade. It seemed like a pretty basic exercise, but presumably Vish would work up to more advanced exercises.

Just then, a bright blazing ball of fire shot past Vish and crashed into the fence several feet behind him, burning a hole in it and setting it on fire.

“Oops,” said Ryn.

“What in all the hells are you doing?” Vish snapped at him, shouting through his face covering. He hadn’t moved an inch in response to the fireball, but he was furious nonetheless.

“Sorry…” stammered Ryn. “I just suddenly thought ‘Hey, what if I combined this punch with a fire projection’, and then I accidentally did it…”

Nuthea put a hand over her face.

It seems this is going to be even more difficult than I had anticipated… she thought.