The City Gathering

Here we are! Karina’s hand is in mine, held tight so we don’t get separated among the many people. I’m kinda used to being here, right in the middle of Volaria. I haven’t missed a single City Gathering since I was born. Or, at least, I don’t remember missing one. Karina’s never been here before, and there’s a lot of people. There’s a black-cloaked guy riffling cards over there. He’s not at a stand. I wonder what he’s doing.

Cobblestone paths like in Entela wind around haphazardly. There are stalls all along it, some selling food, some doing demonstrations, some— ooh, is that guy over there selling flowers? I’ll have to go over there soon. A bit further into the center of the paths is the dueling arena, which is made of some very pretty Litaran quartz. It’s like a 10-sided square, and there’re seats and stands inside that let people watch what’s happening in person. We’ll be heading there to watch Rianne duel a few times this week. A few aethertech displays — very definitely Entelan ones — float around catching different angles of the duels.

I tighten my grip a bit on Karina’s hand so she remembers I’m here. Not that she could ever forget, but just in case. “Rianne’s on in an hour, so we’ve got a bit of time to look around before she starts.”

“Okay, um…” Karina looks around. It looks like she’s thinking really hard about something. “So, what should we do?”

“Uh…” I try to avoid saying ‘everything’ yet. That’s not super helpful. Thankfully, before I need to make up my mind, the card guy does it for me.

“Observe,” he says with a bright smile, speaking to everyone but catching us with a glint in his eye. “Come see the magic of the magicless worlds! Tricks of the mind and tricks of the eye, all done without casting a single spell!” He tosses a card into the air and cleanly catches it on top of the deck. “How about you two? Care to watch me find your card?”

I look at Karina. She must’ve noticed the smile on my face, because she’s already leading me over to him. “Wonderful,” he says as we approach. “You two must have names. What are they?”

“Hannah and Karina,” I reply.

“Partners?”

“Not yet! Still only girlfriends.” Karina looks at me. I cutely smile back at her but don’t explain myself. I’m not ready to ask yet.

“Wonderful. Now, if you look over my deck, you’ll see it’s a perfectly normal Virilin set of cards. No magic on them, nothing missing, nothing strange…” The man fans the cards out face-down, collects them, and then does so again face-up. He collects the deck together, shuffles it, and presents it to me. “Here, take a card.” I take the top card and stare at it. It’s a queen of hearts. It’s hard not to recognize it. Dad used to teach me games with these same cards…

Why am I like this? I need to stay happy with Karina. I can worry about that later.

The man nods at Karina and continues, “You should look at it too.” I show Karina and she instantly nods at it. I guess they have these all over the place, then, and not just on Virilin. “Memorized it?” The man asks as he presents the deck back to me. I guess he wants me to put the card back. I nod.

The man takes the deck back and starts shuffling it, occasionally tossing a card in the air and catching it with the deck each and every time. How does he do that so well?

“These cards are said to be magical on both Virilin and Linela. But, of course, they aren’t enchanted or anything.” The man fans the cards out again, first face-down, then face-up. Yep, I can agree they’re not enchanted. I’d be able to recognize the magic. “They believe these cards are tied to fate. And you know? Maybe they’re onto something."

The man offers the deck to Karina, who takes the top card and looks at it. Her eyes widen, as does the man’s smile as he continues to hold the deck out.

“Same card?” Karina looks up at him and nods. “I’d bet that means something special about you two. Ready for me to find your card?”

Karina returns the card to the top of the deck and smiles. The man tosses the card into the air, splits the deck in two, and catches it between the two halves, looking up at us like he just caught a snowflake. I try not to laugh. He shuffles the deck once more and holds it in one of his hands.

The man looks at me carefully and taps the top of the deck. Without looking at the card, he lifts it to show us. “Queen of Hearts.”

“Wow…” I breath out. “How’d you do that without any magic?”

“A street magician should never tell their secrets,” he says with a wink. “It takes the mystery out of it. Anyways, I bet this Queen of Hearts can only mean good things for you two. Enjoy the rest of your week!”

The man turns away to entertain some other crowd. I lightly pull Karina out of the way towards the flower seller. She seems concerned about… something, but I’m not really sure what. Maybe just the people. The flower seller’s kinda pretty. Not anyways near as much as my Karina, though. “He’s right, you know,” I say as I move to hold Karina in my arms for a few seconds. “We’re meant to be together. I’m gonna stay with you forever.”

Karina looks up at me, a smile growing on her face. I guess I’m helping. “I’d like that.”

I lead Karina over to the flower woman. She’s definitely Elancean. Her accent as she greets me helps, but she’s also wearing the very dark green and black that’s all over the official Elancean clothes. The flowers in front of her are a mix of a lot of different flowers, some I’ve never seen before. Ooh, these ones are pretty. They’re a really glowy green. I wonder how common these are in Elance. I’ve never really been there.

I kinda quickly point at a bundle of the green glowy flowers while Karina’s looking at the other flowers and say “Credit, Delcarlo-Nisita” in Ancient Volarian. I don’t know many words, but I definitely know that one. The woman nods and hands me the bundle. When Karina looks at me next, I kiss her and hand the bundle of flowers to her.

“You know, I bet there’s some Entelans here doing engineering stuff,” I say as I look around. I’m trying to feel for the aether while I do that, but it’s hard with this many people being magical around me. “Maybe we should find them, then go get food.”

“Lead the way.”

I don’t know where the Entelans could be. I’ll have to remember to come back here and check out these Mileran guys, though. They’re showing how Mileran works on aethersteel daggers. Those daggers look really pretty too. One of them’s got a colorful blue edge. There’s a stall there with all kinds of bread. I bet those are really tasty. I make a note to where they are and keep going towards the food. I feel like if Mikara’s here like she said she would be, she’d have tried to set up near the food.

There’s a whole mix of spices in the air over here. Tirena and Theria seem to be trying to compete with each other about who can have the best smell, which ends up instead in this heavy mixture of great-smelling food. I wonder what I’m going to get. All the cities have such great stuff. And I’m still looking for any table of Entelans; are they all on the other side of the arena?

There they are. And I was right. I lightly tug Karina along to a tent that has a table with, among other people, Mikara. Looks like they’re trying to sell transceivers to other Volarians. They’ve also got a box that does something with an aether circuit and I’m not sure what. “Hey Mikara!” I greet as I get closer. “Having fun here?”

“Yep,” she replies, standing up to give a hug to both me and Karina. Karina’s getting better being around Mikara now. I guess it helps that now, she’s not walking into my room and finding some unnamed girl there. “Been convincing scouts from Theria and Litara that having transceivers is a good thing. It’s been pretty successful so far.”

“Are you working for Entela or are you guys here on your own?”

Mikara chuckles. “Just working for Entela this time. Don’t have any salvages to do yet, though I’ve heard something big just happened somewhere, so that might change.”

“Cool! You going to be watching Rianne?”

“Yep, I’ve got a screen right there.” Mikara stretches across the table to point at a screen somewhere across the way. “When she comes out, I’ve told her to come find you so you can help her find me. I’m kinda lost right now.”

“Got it!” I look at and motion to the metal box. “So what’s this do?”

“Oh, this thing’s fun!” Mikara leans down to something below the table and clicks what sounds like a button. In a few seconds, a ball of silver energy shoots out the side of the box and bounces a few time off the cobblestones before rolling away. I giggle as I watch people try to avoid stepping on it. I look up at Karina and smile. There, now she’s smiling too. “We get to do that so people wonder what’s over here. It’s hilarious.”

“I bet,” I agree. “Karina and I were going to go get food now, you going to be okay?”

“Yeah, you guys go eat. I get lunch soon.” Mikara waves us off.

I let Mikara go back to doing her job and try to figure out what I actually want to eat. There’s stands from all across Volaria here. There’s an Oscuran pizza stand over there, some kind of soup kitchen a bit over there. There’s a meat skewer barbeque, I bet that’s Ria-Demai…

“So what do you want to do about food?” I ask, looking at all the many options.

Karina only really offers me a shrug. “Whatever you’re getting.”

I laugh. “Right, uh…” Ooh, those Therian wraps look really good, and I bet they have  milk to go with them. Therian milk tastes so good. “How about over here?” I lightly guide Karina into one of the many lines around here. This’ll be a while.

Eventually we get our food. This is, like, a bready thing wrapping around rice, vegetables, and meat? It’s got a special sauce in it that tastes amazing, but I have no idea what it is. Something special in Theria, I guess. Karina seems pleased too.

I know where to go now. We go into the Arena, along which there’s carved paths telling us where to go to be seated. The inside of the arena is a smooth stone surface, with grooves marking boundaries and starting positions. One side is lightly tinted with white, the other is lightly tinted with black. A person dressed entirely in white, who’s being the adjudicator this time, stands in the middle, between the two sides.

“Round 1, Duel 4!” An announcer shouts from… somewhere. I don’t actually know where the announcers stand. I never really thought about it until right now. “On the White Side, the eleven-year-old prodigy originally from far beyond the edges of Volaria, Rianne Astera of Entela!”  There’s some cheers. There’s a few people that aren’t happy, but they’re mostly drowned out. Rianne appears at her place without even walking on. She’s getting good at that, huh? She smiles, sweeps her pretty blonde hair out of her face, and waves at the crowd. She’s also getting good at that. I remember she was really worried a couple weeks ago when Master Sara asked her to do this.

“On the Black Side, returning champion from the last City Gathering, Ken Irai of Mirora!” There’s more cheers. I remember some people were asking him at the end of that fight about the way he fights, since he makes life and then lets it go, but that’s something Mirora’s always getting in trouble for. Ken rides into the arena on the back of some kind of elemental animal. It looks like it’s made of water? Once he’s at his spot, the animal collapses into the ground, spreading water on the ground for just a moment before disappearing. He takes a bow to the audience.

“At the adjudicator’s mark, you may begin!” The adjudicator raises his hand, and a bright white glow of energy appears in his hand. Rianne closes her eyes, as does Ken. With a bright flash, the light disappears, and Rianne collects some kind of ice magic into her hand. I forgot she could do that too.

While Rianne does whatever set-up she’s preparing — which I expect means at least two different time spells ready to go off when she needs them — Ken collects a bunch of energy into at least three more water animals, one of which can… fly? Is that a bird?

I feel one really big time spell go off from Rianne, but it doesn’t look like anything happens. Aside from that Rianne’s breathing a bit more now. I wish I knew a bit more about what her spells actually ''do. Karina'' seems to know exactly what it does, and she’s already getting excited. Well, can’t let her outdo me, huh?

Rianne runs across the arena as fast as she can. The three elementals Ken made rush towards her, water being left behind in their wake. Ken steps into the water, probably expecting Rianne to land in the water too. She jumps to the side of the attacking animals, which stop and turn around. In the time it takes them to do that, Rianne lets her other spell go, freezing the water everywhere except exactly where Ken is standing. She jumps onto the ice and skates up to Ken. He steps back, slips, and a pulse of bright energy send him rolling along the ground.

Wow. The crowd cheers, Karina cheers, I cheer. She must’ve learned that from Mom. I’ve seen Mom do that so many times. Ken quickly jumps to his feet, and Rianne watches him for a moment before blinking back to the place that she started. Ken looks very confused. I guess most people are like me and don’t know exactly what Rianne’s capable of.

Ken directs his elementals to take a less direct line this time. Instead of running straight at Rianne, the two ground… things, run to her sides. Rianne looks up, trying to keep an eye on both the ground-creatures and the bird at the same time. She makes an attempt to run forward, out of the paths of the elementals, but too many of them are attacking at once and they ram into her, breaking like a wave on a cliff. She stumbles a bit, coughing like she’s been punched. I think I can see the water dripping from her hair. There’s cheering from all across the arena.

When I look over at Ken again, he’s added another five elementals to his control. Two more birds. A deer? A lion. And another… thing. “Do you know what that is?” I ask Karina, pointing to the strange thing. She just shrugs at me.

Rianne gathers magic into her hand again, holding it across her body. When Ken commands the elementals forward again, Rianne flicks her hand across her body, and a wall of ice creates itself between the two, crossing the entire arena. There’s a reason the seats in the arena are higher than the arena.

Rianne walks calmly up to the wall as Ken tries to move around the arena, looking for a way to see where Rianne is. Karina leans in a bit to watch what’s happening, and Rianne stands almost perfectly still while Ken moves around. What’s she doing?

Apparently she found what she wanted. She pushes out against her ice with some kind of spell, and a large section of the wall pushes itself outwards into Ken, sending him across the floor again. The wall dissipates. Ken’s elementals collapse into water. Rianne watches Ken. Is that it?

And Ken raises his hand. The arena cheers. Karina cheers louder. I cheer, but let Karina be more excited than me for once. There’s lots of cheering. Rianne looks around, raising both her hands. The audience cheers louder. I wave when Rianne looks at us. She waves back.

“Ken concedes! Rianne wins!” the announcer calls. A healer runs out with a restoration vial for Ken, while Rianne keeps looking to the crowd. I lightly pull Karina so we can meet up with Rianne when she leaves. They’ll need her out of the way soon anyways. I trace my way with Karina down to the entrance, where Rianne comes rushing out only a few minutes later.

“You guys saw that!” she exclaims. “How’d it look?”

“Awesome!” Karina replies.

“You took down last Gathering’s champion!” I congratulate, “You must be pretty happy.”

“He’s kind of reliant on his elementals doing the work for him, and people slipping on the rocks when they run to him. It happened to me the first time too, so when I did it again I made sure I froze the water and he was left helpless.”

When you did it again? I don’t have time to ask the question before Rianne continues. “Anyways, Mika said she’d see it. Do you know where she went?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, she’s just…” I lean over, trying to hold Karina’s hand for balance while I point around a corner, “That way a bit.”

“Great! I’m going to go make sure she saw it too!” Rianne waves as she runs off.

I watch her go for a moment, then turn back to let myself get lost in Karina’s eyes. Well, that’s not what I was hoping for at first, but now I’m here. I smile at Karina.