Fate and the Dance

The two faced each other off. Luge's Body Lightening had finally finished casting, yet even with those several spells empowering him, he still didn't believe he could evade Baonte's sword. Looks like I'm dying here today, he thought. Damn Half-Man. He said he'd help—why is there still no sign of him? And that didn't even count as help. Saying he was helping Luge just made it sound nicer; in truth it was serving Half-Man's own ends, and Luge had merely been swept into it—at most, willingly swept in. He quietly finished empowering a Ray of Frost. "A strange spell that can pass through Air Armor and affect me. If I'd known, I should have finished you outside. Maybe I could even have found a way to turn you into a book..." Baonte's longsword began to tremble slowly, ripple after ripple of force condensing along the blade. Boom! Luge kicked off with both legs and hurled himself to one side. A broad gully was carved out by the strike. Baonte still hadn't entered the range of Fetid Skin, yet he could unleash a blow as exaggerated as that. Several slashes layered one atop another. Luge fled in a wretched scramble, and at the sight of the gully the slashes had stacked together, beyond his shock, he found it somehow familiar. If Baonte weren't wary of Fetid Skin and simply charged in close, there was no way Luge could have dodged. Luge hesitated no longer. He flipped his hand and quietly closed the Demon's Dice in his palm. At the same time he pulled a pile of storage pouches out of the Abyssal bedroom space and, in a flurry of hands, hung them all over himself, one clamped in the corner of his mouth. "Guess which pouch that black book is in? I'm just a shameless little kobold, nowhere near as valuable as that book," he mumbled around the pouch. "Don't go chopping off-target. If a storage pouch breaks, more than half of what's inside goes into the void space, never to be found again. You know that, don't you." Luge was just about to say more to stall for time, or to provoke him, to make Baonte's malice burn hotter. Then the surroundings warped and shifted, and melodious music rose with it. There were flowers, there was applause, and waves of sweet air, like the fragrance of some delicious fruit. The black gladiator arena was gone. In its place stood a towering palace, ringed by row after row of exquisite stone pillars, each needing at least two people to wrap their arms around. Crowds of people who had appeared from who knows where danced gracefully, beautiful skirts spinning into umbrella shapes with each partner's help, and in the blink of an eye he and Baonte were drowned beneath countless dancers. Baonte's sharp eyes were casting their gaze through the hair tips of a girl whose face was blurred. The ball had begun. Luge looked at these creatures and abruptly rolled across the ground, hiding himself among the crowd. These dancing fellows were a little clearer than those he'd seen back in the tavern and the gladiator arena—he could even make out the fine patterns on the skirt hems, and the tips of their ears. Only details like their faces remained indistinct. A flash of silver! One of the small horns on the side of Luge's head and a large patch of scalp were sliced away. He had dodged with all his strength. Baonte had utterly abandoned his hesitation over the unknown Fetid Skin. He had always been a man of great courage. Luge grimaced, rolling and crawling, and he too turned vicious. The fact that the other man's sword went for his head meant Baonte was wary of the pouches. Luge hooked a flap of scalp up with a fingernail along the wound and jammed a storage pouch underneath it. Whether it would do anything, who knew—better than nothing. He rolled on, ducking under skirts and vaulting over legs. Every time Baonte swung his sword, a group of dancers inevitably suffered for it. Luge finally found an opening to loose the Ray of Frost he'd been holding ready for so long. No matter how he hid, Baonte could usually locate him quickly enough. As the blue-white Ray of Frost shot out, a low voice rang through the great hall. "Dance, spin, rise onto your toes, move our feet. Let us dance the Dance of Deathless Life together with the rhythm, deathless and undying." The voice echoed through the hall, the music swelled, and the dancers threw themselves into it harder, bodies full of strength, displaying graceful figures. Luge had no leisure to admire the dancing. The Ray of Frost had dropped him into a dead end—that opening had been Baonte's trap. Gritting his teeth, he flung the Demon's Dice from his hand. He watched the longsword, still coming for him despite all his dodging, and his eyes went wide. But the dice he'd tossed to his feet had done nothing at all—not one of those several curio effects had appeared on Baonte. Bang! Baonte was first blocked, then sent flying backward. A tall demon figure, black and red, appeared before Luge and happened to knock Baonte away. Luge felt at his own shoulder. One arm had vanished without a trace, fallen at the feet of a nearby dancer. He hurriedly picked it up and stowed it in a pouch. "Ah! What is this—" Thud! Before anyone could get a clear look at the tall demon, its head burst apart. A pity it hadn't turned into a book. The headless corpse slowly toppled. The Demon's Dice bargain did not permit maliciously harming the other party, but clearly this had been a thinking demon, one that perhaps knew a great many spells—one of those quick-witted fellows the dice liked to summon, and an unlucky one at that. Death by knowledge fell outside the rules; it didn't even count as self-harm. It had simply gained a great deal of knowledge all at once. Luge had just picked up the dice and hadn't yet hidden himself when Baonte, who had merely been knocked aside, came pouncing back. From far off, a silver light came slicing out. At the same time an invisible force burst from Luge. The pouches he'd hung on himself in haste had already been lost as he rolled, and now the few remaining were all blasted off by that force, leaving only the real goods he usually kept tucked in his waistband. How could it be this strong! At the apprentice wizard stage, who else could possibly be this fellow's opponent! Luge felt that if he released the boosts of those several spells, he would collapse at once and not get up again. The strange interplay between Demonic Form and those spells had turned him from a scrawny kobold into an agile one—otherwise he'd have died long ago. A sense of powerlessness rose in him. He knew he couldn't dodge anymore. Most of the big wounds on his body had been left when that force came into being; every time it appeared, it dragged at him and disrupted his dodging, and now he no longer even had the pouches for protection. The Demon's Dice he had just picked up had become his only reliance, and it slipped from his fingertips once more. Baonte seemed a little impatient too. His malice was growing. Suddenly Baonte froze, and then actually threw away his longsword and began to dance. Pfft! That half-completed slash still made blood spurt from all over Luge's body. A clear line ran from his head to his feet, nearly cleaving his skull, even splitting him in two—into a Half-Man more halved than Half-Man. He lay on the ground, trembling as he fumbled out a vial of deep green potion and poured it down his throat. "Let us welcome the new joiners. Let us dance the Dance of Deathless Life together. When this tune is done, we shall be undying deathless ones." Luge's hand shook, and the vial, only partly emptied, slipped away. He struggled to pick it up again, thinking: surely Baonte wouldn't be kept here so easily by a dance? He had no idea whether the dice's dancing effect would last long enough. "He won't become a deathless one." Half-Man's voice appeared abruptly. Luge tilted his head with difficulty to look at Half-Man, and saw the fellow actually bend down, dexterously pick up the vial with his fingers, bring it to Luge's lips, and feed it to him. "If the severed arm isn't missing too much, you can take it out now and reattach it." Having said that, Half-Man lifted his foot and walked, unhurried, toward Baonte. Luge hugged his arm and watched them, while laboriously shifting backward inch by inch. If Baonte suddenly recovered and Half-Man couldn't hold him—or simply ran off—he wanted to be ready to fight for one more sliver of life. Half-Man came to a stop beside Baonte, a dead man's face utterly without expression, quietly watching Baonte dance. "I am standing right in front of you, and you have lost again, Baonte," Half-Man said. Luge was taken aback, and suddenly felt that didn't sound like something Half-Man would say. Half-Man raised one hand, and the longsword on the ground drifted slowly into his grip. At the instant Baonte's dance stopped, he thrust savagely, breaking through Air Armor, running from under the jaw straight through the back of the skull. Blood welled out of Baonte's mouth. Baonte's eyes went wide as he stared at the expressionless man before him. Fear showed in them, then nothing but confusion. "Who are you?" Baonte clenched both hands around the blade, and the blood pouring from his mouth slurred his words. The man before him said nothing. "Who are you! You're not Kaliu..." Baonte's legs suddenly gave way and he dropped to his knees, yet still he strained to lift his head and look at the man, gripping the blade tightly. When no answer came after a moment, his eyes slowly dimmed. Half-Man suddenly let out a soft laugh. He who had always been expressionless and given to obvious swings of emotion now cast off his old manner: the corners of his mouth curved up slightly, he blinked, and with a smile he let his true voice come from his mouth. "I am Kaliu. If I'm not Kaliu, who else would I be?" Kaliu said. Luge watched from a distance, his face calm, while his heart pounded away in a thoroughly undignified fashion. Baonte suddenly turned his head, eyes wide, and stared at Luge. "What—what did you do? What did you let out!" With that, Baonte's eyes went utterly dark, and his hands slid from the blade. Half-Man turned around with a gentle smile. "Let's get properly introduced. From now on, you can call me Kaliu," Kaliu said with a smile. At a glance he looked like the sunny, handsome boy next door—the sort who did a few good deeds for others every single day. Luge stared blankly as the former Half-Man, now Kaliu, bent to pick up Baonte's storage pouch, waved a hand to erase the arcane mark, and took out a bottle of clear potion, tossing it over to him. "The pureblood potion. Add the dragon blood you prepared yourself, and you'll get a share of pure dragon blood," Kaliu said lazily. "This was meant for a familiar. This fellow stole it. Fortunately, I no longer need to try the Beast King Wizard path now." "Hm? Don't look at me like that. I'm not some villain out of a storybook. Believe me, you haven't done anything wrong," Kaliu said. Luge gave an awkward chuckle and nodded sheepishly. "We should go. Those apprentices should all have left by now. If we wait any longer, we'll miss it... hm, let me take a look..." Kaliu took the two storage pouches and rummaged through them. Luge drew a deep breath and tried to rise slowly. The arm he had just reattached still couldn't move. "Only one Return Stone. But I should just about be able to bring you along." Luge was startled. "Return—where to?" he said. "Do you really think those apprentice wizards travel on foot across the vast Earth Cave? At that rate they couldn't get two things done in years," Kaliu said with a laugh. Luge's breath quickened. Could it be the civilized world? Then he hesitated again, glancing out beyond the hall—though naturally he could see nothing from where he stood. Kaliu didn't press him, seemingly giving him time to think on purpose. The apprentice wizards had all left, and the former Half-Man, now Kaliu, was leaving too. There was no soil left here for spells, and once he missed this chance, how would he ever grope his way to those places? In truth his hesitation came only from how sudden it was; the answer had long since taken root and sprouted in his heart. "Very far?" "Very far." "Then please trouble yourself to take me with you, Lord Kaliu," Luge said. Kaliu smiled, gripped his shoulder with one hand, and crushed the Return Stone with the other. The several magic stones in the same palm instantly turned to flying ash. The two figures vanished from the hall a moment before the dance tune ended. ... Before the kobold Sacred Lord's Great Cave. Old Gold Tooth sat with his legs crossed, picking his teeth with a thin bone, the very picture of ease. "Shoo, shoo, shoo!" He bared his teeth and drove off several little kobolds. He knew Aisjin and the others had gone for the transformation into dragonborn kobolds. Though their master—full of wisdom, and a spellcaster besides—was watching over them, he still fretted a little. After all, it had already dragged on longer than it had in his own time. "These things from the pointed-ears are all meant to be saved for the master's roast meat. Letting you have them once is already generous!" Old Gold Tooth said crossly. Then he licked his lips again and sneaked a glance beneath the stone, where he had stashed some black water skins—all of them elf Crying Mushroom Wine. Better to keep these good things for them to drink, he thought. They'll celebrate together when they come back. They'll all succeed for certain. Still, worry lingered in his heart.