A Dreamer's Tale Chapter 12

The first thing Elizabeth noted about the room was how large a crowd had been gathered there. The usual sparring ring had been elevated somehow to separate it further from the other Initiates and Adepts littered around the ring. She didn’t know how or why word had spread so quickly, but it had, and now she had over a hundred people watching her intently as she approached the ring (realistically she knew that wasn’t actually a huge number considering there were over a thousand Dream Warriors in the Temple, but it still shook her). 

Something tugged at her mind; she felt she was missing something as she looked over the crowd but couldn’t place it. Ultimately she realized she needed to focus on the fight about to happen and moved on ahead. 

Her opponent stepped up as well from another entrance. She almost didn’t recognize him at first since he was dressed in Adept’s robes rather than their usual Initiate garb. Did he- could he have passed the test overnight? The tests for Adept were individualized, so they could happen at any point, unlike the mass trials for Initiates. He jumped up to the ring with a cocky smirk on his face, pulling out and spinning around the staff from his back. It had a heavy head and tapered down to a thinner tail point, making it look more like a club than a staff. The shape and smoothness (or lack thereof) did too, the weapon looking far rougher than even the most basic of practice gear. 

She pushed aside any doubts about his new gear - whether he was an Adept or not didn’t change anything about their fight (if anything, him being fresh off a test should make it easier for her). Fergus would still be at the same level of proficiency with his Abilities he was a day ago. The weapon, on the other hand... 

“I don’t really care about your fashion statement, but I didn’t agree to you having a weapon, especially when I came here unarmed.” He clutched the staff a bit tighter at her comment.

“You didn’t specify we wouldn’t use weapons either. Anything goes in this fight, right? Take your pick from the sparring gear before we start,” he said, gesturing to one of the weapon racks at the side with a wide array of weapons to pick from.

Why was he so worried about fighting her unarmed? He was taller and probably a bit buffer than her with more training, but nothing she knew about him was that his weapon work was so much better than unarmed. She considered he might have damaged all the weapons there to sabotage her but discarded the idea. Too impractical to spend one’s time that way, plus they didn’t look damaged, and any slight weaknesses could be Fixed up.

The sword on the rack was tempting, but she didn’t feel confident enough with bladed weapons yet to put her all into her swings against him. Pulling out a simple staff, another Initiate put the rack back, and she stepped into her corner for the fight. She twirled it around experimentally, and it had a good balance. Ali’s advice from last night rang clear in her head; despite what ‘crazy powers’ they both had, it was still a fight, and technique and their weapons would be important. 

An Adept, someone she didn’t know, stepped up to the edge of the ring to judge and (apparently) announce the fight. “Brothers and sisters, we’ve gathered here to hold witness to a great duel; two young Dream Warriors enter, but one shall leave these hallowed halls in shame... forever.” The crowd started cheering in a rather unsightly way; Elizabeth had never seen her fellow monks act so unrestrained. 

“In one corner, the illustrious scion of the Guiltjoys, Initiate Fergus Guiltjoy!” Fergus did a little bow, and it almost looked like he winked at the Adept for a moment as he was playing to the crowd. That could be troublesome. “And in the other, we have our rising star, hand-picked by the student of the Grandmaster, Initiate Elizabeth Wry!” There was cheering still, but it seemed slightly less for her than when Fergus had been announced. That wasn’t worrying, though. What was worrying was her suspicions on the judge and the fairness of the match. She didn’t have any proof, though, and it could have been a mistake- 

“Initiates. Ready, set... begin!” She snapped her eyes back to Fergus, forcing herself to focus wholly on the fight at hand. A good thing she did too, as despite being several meters away, he was rushing her from the start.

Bringing her staff up in defense, she pushed his club to the side, though with the amount of force behind the blow, it shoved her over too. Where did he get such power? Going all out from the start, trying to win this quickly even if it tired him out? Still didn’t explain the speed of his Folding. Elizabeth was in trouble, and she didn’t have time to figure it out.

Fergus swung his club in great sweeps, trying to hit her with all his might, but she kept a better defense, dancing around it, never trying to directly match his strength with her own as she circled around him. He sent out a few probing Folding patterns to lock her in place, but despite his newfound Folding speed, they lacked creativity and subtlety. She made her own gaps to escape through, slipping past any net he tried to corner her into.

Snarling, he backed off a pace, not trying to keep his aggressive tempo up as he studied her. She launched a few exploratory attacks at him. He deflected with his club, keeping it up closer to bat her strikes away. Grinning, she swung back harder than usual for a strike, using her longer reach to risk opening herself up. He blocked it with good form like before. As much as she didn’t like him, she could understand that the extra years of training had given him a solid foundation to work with... however, it was that very foundation that betrayed him. He relied too much on the strength and Force behind his blows, and as he blocked her strike, she shifted it forward and wobbled it, using his own strike to send it rippling past and utilizing its more flexible nature to smack him in the face.

He was stunned by the strike, despite the lack of power behind it, and Elizabeth flowed into her next move, spinning around to strike his ankle- only to find her staff bouncing off of it to no effect. He’d blocked the blow entirely with Force! He followed it up by bunting the club at her, clipping past her hand and into her gut. The blow wasn’t strong (showing he was still reeling slightly and distracted), but it was still enough to send her stumbling back. 

She regained her bearings, only Fixing her hand enough so it wasn’t numb, wanting to save her life energy. When she struck his head, despite the fact the blow was weak, it hurt him. Force had many advanced applications, two of them being the ‘Perfect Shield’ and the ‘Iron Point.’. The Perfect Shield relied on one constantly flowing Force through their entire body to be protected from all angles. Even low-level Initiates could manage it; the difficulty was in keeping it up constantly and upping the amount of overall Force used to absorb stronger blows.

The Iron Point was more common; put all your Force into one spot to block with everything you have or defend with all of it. More power, but one wrong move left you open. Truthfully, they were less techniques and more ideals (their teachers had even admitted as such), with any one person ending up with a mixture of both; however, they were a good way for young Dream Warriors to help visualize and practice that Ability. He obviously leaned hard to Iron Point; Elizabeth just needed to find a way to exploit it again. 

He’d learned his lesson from his opening gambit and wasn’t wildly smashing around anymore, though, waiting for her to make another mistake. Fergus stepped forward, trying to pressure her and push her closer to a corner, but her footwork excelled over his lumbering steps, letting her keep circling around him.

He narrowed his eyes, then lowered his head slightly- no, he nodded his head. A signal! Only being so in tune with his intent allowed her to avoid his trap as he brought his hands wide and sent out bursts of fire all around. None of the flames hit her at first, but then they bent, space folding around to burn her. Except it wasn’t Fergus Folding it - even with his newfound power, he didn’t have the skill to use two abilities like that together on his own. Given the judge didn’t call anything, Elizabeth assumed it had to be him aiding her foe.

At least, she would assume that a moment or two after escaping the flames, rushing through them in an agonizing haze of pain. “Aaaaah!” She cried out as she stumbled through, falling to her knees for a moment.

“Ready to give up, ye-” he taunted, stepping closer to her rather than continuing the fire, and Elizabeth lashed out, swinging her staff around wildly at his voice as she got up. Said staff was on fire as well as her, causing Fergus to yelp as he leapt backward, and she used the breathing space to snuff out the flames on her.

“Heh, a bit more spirit than I thought, but you know you can’t win injured like that, right? You gave a good showing; you can just give... up... now.” He stopped talking as Elizabeth revealed her face, slightly pink and burnt but already mostly healed. 

“You do remember we can heal ourselves, right?” The way he winced at her words gave away his weakness; Fix. She’d never had that class with him, being in the Adept courses from day 1, but if she had to guess, that was his biggest weakness. Despite his power boost (again, it didn’t feel like that- his energy was streamlined and did a lot, but overall he just didn’t feel ‘inherently’ stronger to her, in a way that didn’t feel like it could be hidden), he must have still had his overall Ability usage be the same, which meant we couldn’t afford to heal quickly in the match like she could. She felt certain the match would be decided by endurance. 

Her foot ‘slipped’ as she tried to step around, the space between her foot and the ground suddenly just a bit greater than it should have been. She glared at the cheating Adept for a millisecond before she refocused on Fergus charging forward at her. His charge wasn’t as quick as before; maybe he didn’t get whatever signal they used or didn’t expect how it would happen, but in any case, Elizabeth decided to meet him head-on, much to everyone’s surprise.

Fergus hesitated for a split second at seeing her move towards him, his momentum thrown off, and they traded a furious flurry of blows. He still had far more strength to put behind his blows, but she saw his strikes getting sloppier, wasting more energy. She tagged him in the knee, rapped his knuckles, and hit his hip. All light blows, and not in great spots, but she managed them faster than he could use Force to block, if his wincing was anything to go by. Being that close with him also threw off the Adept helping him, making it harder for the man to try and use Folding discrepancies. She could win this!

Then her staff shattered. His strong blows had rattled her arms with each deflection, but she’d been able to resist it, with her own Force safeguarding her body from blows (and light amounts of consistent Fix); however, she hadn’t thought to extend that protection to her staff. She looked at him in horror as he swung the club downward in vicious triumph, her defense broken. 

The blow sent her tumbling away, bodily smashed to the ground and ribs broken by his strike. She’d tried to focus her Force to that spot, but it wasn’t nearly enough to nullify his attack. Elizabeth didn’t let it hold her back, however, rising up and charging in with her broken staff at him. He laughed and raised his own to block it, only for her blow to shift up and around it towards him. He tried to pull back and avoid the end of her staff, which might have worked had she not Fixed it to its full height mid-swing. 

The newly restored end of the staff smashed into his chin, causing him to bite his tongue. He reeled backward and waved his club about, just trying to keep her back. “You bith” he spluttered, blood dribbling down his chin. “You cheahed” he said while trying to heal his mouth. Elizabeth didn’t let him, pressing forward despite her own injuries.

Blocking his club to the side and then shifting to a one-armed staff grip to keep it there, she started wailing on him with her bludgeoning implement. “I think we both know that I’m not the cheater here,” she hissed at him as she got in close. Her attack against Fergus wouldn’t have worked if she had tried to use Folding on her own at the same time as Fixing her staff and attacking him, but she was able to co-opt a patch of shortened space actually made by the referee.

Her ‘strategy’ worked well for a minute, her blows seeming to come through with even more Force than she thought she was capable of as she smacked him around, even getting through to him a little bit when he managed to block in time with his own Force. Then she saw his face, full of desperation, pain, and fear, and she hesitated.

He ruthlessly exploited that, using her own grip on his club to knee her in her injured side and punch her in the head twice, causing her to see stars and fall down. Elizabeth still had enough wherewithal to roll away from his kicks at her prone body, but soon enough she found herself backed into the corner by him.

Raising the club up high, he smashed it down hard, straight towards her head. She raised her arm to block it, and her bones shattered. Then he did it again. She used her other arm, desperately Fixing the other. Then again, and again, and again. He smashed down at her furiously, lost to a battle rage, and in that moment she was certain he’d kill her if she let up in her defense. So even through the pain of having her arms broken several times over the course of two minutes, she kept on until finally he let up, the club hanging limply at his sides as he walked away. 

A silence hung over the crowded room after seeing that display of brutality. After a moment, the referee Adept tried saying, “And the winner is Ferguuuuus...” before trailing off as he saw Elizabeth rising up again. It was difficult, her arms far too badly broken to Fix them quickly enough to get back up, but she managed with a bit of flexibility, flipping herself back onto her feet. “Initiate Wry, please, just go and seek medical attention. As referee, I decree-” 

“Shut up! I’m not giving up my friends, my home, to your biased cheating ass or this jerk!” She yelled out, as pissed off as she’d ever been.

Fergus turned around to glare at her, still panting heavily. “Don’t think I’m going to go easy on you, give you the chance to heal back up if you’ll keep on going with this.” Elizabeth was in more pain than she’d ever been, her arms shattered, a couple more ribs broken, but regardless of that (and the slight increase in pain she got from actually doing it), she laughed. He had a couple of bruises on him, maybe a light fracture on his less dominant arm, but that was it, and yet... she’d figured it out. His secret, and the reason why she’d win now. 

He kept true to his word and didn’t give her a chance to taunt him or heal, rushing at her with the club. She stopped his progress by breathing out an enormous gout of fire at him. He skidded to a stop, holding a hand out to try and wrest control of the flames from her, pushing them back with his own powers. 

They held that pose for a moment, struggling for control, until he tried shifting it around him, then snuffing it out as the fire encroached ever closer. He didn’t seem bad with Fire, honestly probably better with it than any other Initiate, even herself with the recent ‘boost’ he got. It wasn’t enough, though, because no matter how strong he could be with it, he didn’t have the energy left to go with it, having exhausted himself beating her up. 

The fire engulfed him, and he screamed out, trying to Fold away and put out the flames. She let go of the fire for the most part, focusing it on his robes and ran (jogged raggedly with her injuries, more accurately) ahead, using the folded space to her advantage as he was in no state of mind to stop her.  

He put out most of the flames when her foot rose up and smacked solidly into his wrist, sending the club out of his grip and tumbling to the side. She intensified the flames on him, and he had no way to stop her, screaming out in pain as he pulled off the burning robes in desperation.

That was his trick. When she’d held on to his club, her abilities were slightly enhanced. Same with the robes; there was obviously something about them that boosted how a Dream Warrior could channel their life energy into their Abilities. Of course that only worked so long as they were in contact with them, and as she saw Fergus throw off the burning garments, she smiled. 

“Not so tough now, are you?” She asked as she tossed a roundhouse kick into his side, sending him back a few steps and eliciting a cry of pain. There was barely any, possibly no, Force left to protect him from her kicks, while she still had plenty to enhance hers. As she pelted him with her legs, she considered asking him why he did this all but decided that could wait until after the fight. 

The decision that was proven wise a second later when his feeble attempts at fighting back erupted into one final desperation haymaker (with suspiciously accurate pinpoint point Folding assisted targeting). She wasn’t sure how much power he had left behind him, but wasn’t going to take any chances at this point, catch his attack in a block.

“H-How?” He stammered before she ricocheted off that block into a perfect hook of her own into his face, crashing him down to the ground. She made a mental note to thank Victor afterwards. Him and Victoria, actually; he had helped her practice that block and counter enough times, as well as giving her the skills to notice which arm was dominant and uninjured to properly predict the attack and Victoria for helping her practice her Fix skills. Her arms and body had been too badly damaged to bring both of them back to full if she just tried to generally Fix herself, but by focusing that healing energy all in one arm, she was able to catch him off guard. 

Fergus Guiltjoy lay in a heap on the ground before her, barely moving as she loomed over him. “This time, I’ll ask you: Do you want to give up?” She grabbed her own fallen staff with Folding, snapping it into her hands and pointing it down at him. “Because I can keep on going all day.” 

He mumbled something, then, as he saw her raising the staff above her, cried louder, “I give up! I surrender!” 

The referee muttered a swear under his breath, glaring at her for a moment before going back to his usual smiley, false attitude. “It looks like we have our winner, folks. Rising from the ashes like a Phoenix, Initiate Wry!” He clapped, as did several others, the cheers growing as the stunned shock at her turnabout was overcome by acceptance of her victory. She used the moment to Fix the rest of her wounds until a motion in the crowd, ordinary yet captivating, pulled in hers and everyone else’s attention. 

A man in pure white robes and black seams stepped forward gracefully through the crowd, as if they weren’t there, each person shifting slightly to let him through without recognizing him. He was an older man, bald head practically shining in the torchlight. A small hourglass pendant hung around his neck, and he had a thin staff on his back. His eyes and lips had many crinkle lines, used to smiling, but there wasn’t an easy smile on his face as he stepped through the crowd, which is when the others noticed him.

Gasping in shock, they stared for a moment, then they started all bowing down to him on their knees. What was going on? 

She got her answer when the man suddenly appeared on the ring, no Folding, no other motion, just there suddenly. Fergus gasped out, ‘Gr- Grandmaster Tenga.” Fergus attempted to scramble to his feet, but still exhausted from the fight, collapsed, only barely managing to compose himself into a bow at the Grandmaster’s feet.

The grandmaster shook his head disappointedly, though Elizabeth could feel nothing off of him. Not even the blankness like Terra trying to conceal his emotions, like the man wasn’t even there, or something else she couldn’t grasp at the moment.

“I have to say, I don’t approve of duels being used in such a way, to force a fellow out of the Temple. I forbade any duels to the death or with stakes to expel someone from the Order, but I never thought of it being used to force an Initiate to transfer. I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future... along with a number of other things.” Though his gaze didn’t move from the two of them, the crowd of bowing Dream Warriors visibly shuddered at his words. 

“I’ll- I’ll just be going then, honored Grandmaster,” Fergus tried saying. Before he could rise, Tenga’s right hand was on his shoulder. 

“Honored. How very interesting that that is the word you use to describe me, immediately after dishonoring me. The others may have engaged in disgraceful or, at the very least, unfitting behavior, but I have not seen much that truly goes against the rules of the Order from them. But you? You wore the robes of a station beyond you. For that crime, there needs to be a true punishment.” He was crying now, bawling his eyes out really. For the second time today, Elizabeth saw true terror on his face, and despite everything he’d done to her, she couldn’t help but feel for him. 

“Grandmaster, I’m sure he’s really sorry, but-” 

He held a hand up to stop her, a smile on his face that, despite the situation, looked incredibly real and as if there was no trouble. “I think we’ll continue with your punishment of leaving the Temple; however, I wish for far more than just you to go to a different monastery. No, I think the only course of action must be... excommunication.” Shocked gasps came from the crowd, and then they silenced themselves, remembering whose presence they were in. 

“Ten- Tenga, please,” he begged, any sense of composure gone. A look of sympathy crossed his face. 

“Hush now, child, this life simply turned out to be one not fitting for you. There’s no shame in that, and I hope you find peace in your life out in the rest of the world.” He paused, as if to let him catch a moment’s reprieve before continuing. 

“But this is not a chance for you to run amok and cause problems for the people of the land, to abuse what you’ve learned here” he said, raising his free hand to Fergus Guiltjoy’s head and focused his power upon the young man, and Elizabeth finally figured out why she couldn’t sense him before. 

He didn’t conceal his emotions or disguise them through Dream Walking; he spread them out. Why could she see Dawn from anywhere in the world, could even pick out her friend’s now through the turbulent currents of Mount Dawnbreaker’s dream state, but had never felt anything like him? The answer was she had felt his presence, even back in Waken. What she had thought was the presence of the world was really him, encompassing everything and everyone. And as she felt the force of what she had once thought to be the world slam into Fergus’ mind, she truly understood for the first time why everyone bowed down to him. 

He let the former Initiate drop from his hand, and the boy collapsed to the ground. He was unharmed (physically), but the shock or exhaustion left Fergus' legs useless for the moment. “If you ever attempt to use the gifts you’ve once abused, or the knowledge you’ve taken from this temple against us, you will be haunted, and not now rest for the remainder of your life. Go now, freely, with nothing to tempt you further.” From his tone, he made it sound like a mercy, an act of kindness he had done for Fergus. Then the Grandmaster turned to Elizabeth. 

“Now, I believe we had some things to discuss, yes?” Unable to do more than nod mutely, they left the sparring room together, to the silence of all the other witnesses.