After signing up for the tournament, we then went to a nearby government office that the recruiter had pointed us to. The walk there was a little confusing, but having slightly flawed directions was better than having none at all, so we got there relatively quickly.
Inside, we were guided to an empty side-office once we told them we were there to discuss getting Ainash into the city, where we sat and waited. The room had only a desk and a few chairs inside, a small amount of light coming from a small window placed in the wall.
Eventually, someone entered and sat with us. He was a short, balding man who wore clothes fancier than I’d ever laid my hands on. Though, that wasn’t saying much, considering I’d never laid my hands on many fancy clothes at all.
He sat in the chair opposite to us, back straight and hands folded on the table. “So, you’d like to speak with a monster specialist about obtaining a license for your pet?”
“Ah, no,” I said. “We’re here to try and get citizenship for a monster. Not a pet license.”
“And you want it by…” He looked down at his paper. “Tomorrow?”
“Preferably by the end of today.”
He sighed. “How do you expect that to happen?”
“We’re willing to pay the full fee right now, she’s just outside the city borders, and she’s very intelligent. I’m confident she’ll pass any test you throw at her.”
“Sir, it’s not that simple. Maybe if you were simply attempting to obtain a pet license, or to gain temporary permission for her to operate within the city, but full citizenship is a much more complicated process. It would take several months at minimum to get the paperwork submitted and all necessary tests administered. Additionally, you would need proof that the monster could feasibly find work in the city, and you would need three sponsors that would each agree to take legal responsibility if the monster committed any crimes.”I frowned. This was harder than I thought it’d be. “Is there any way to speed up the process? We’d be willing to work with you on whatever’s necessary, in terms of cutting some sort of deal to—”
“There is no ‘cutting a deal’ with legal documents, sir. It will take a number of months, and there is no way to speed the process up. You will simply have to move your plans, I’m afraid.”
“No moving these plans, unfortunately,” I said with a sigh. “We were gonna try to sign her up for that tournament thing; I felt like she had good chances to win the whole thing, honestly. But I guess it’s not possible, so we can just do the pet thing for now if that’s—”
“Wait, wait,” he interrupted. “You were planning on entering it into this week’s Conqueror's Tournament? That’s why you wanted to get citizenship in a day?”
“Uh, yeah.”
He took a breath. “I…think we may be able to cut a deal.”
Within an hour, we were standing outside the city walls alongside a few soldiers, a monster specialist, and another type of specialist that I didn’t think was normally present during this sort of thing.
Apparently, the fact that Ainash would join the tournament made a pretty big difference in the eyes of the government. The moment we mentioned it, the man in the office had rushed out of the room, speaking to a few different people and shuffling through various piles of documents. He said that he could get things expedited, but Ainash would need to take a different set of tests in order to gain citizenship, and she’d lose it if she didn’t get to at least the top sixteen finalists of the tournament.
So once a few people arrived, we rushed across city borders and out into the desert to meet up with Ainash. Standing here with the guards and specialists, we waited for her to arrive.
The normal monster specialist was a man with a pencil-thin mustache and well-trimmed hair, wearing a royal red suit that he seemed very upset was getting progressively dirtier with every minute we waited in the windy desert for Ainash to arrive. The guards wore the typical empire emblem emblazoned on their chests, each wielding spears and generally looking bored.
As for the second specialist—I still didn’t know what, exactly, he was here to do—he was a bulky man wearing plain clothes, the only notable thing about him being a strange belt around his waist with a dozen or so metal rods attached to it. I’d tried asking him what he was here for, but he brushed me off, saying he was “only here to speak with the monster.” Though he did seem to eye me and Erani occasionally, like he was sizing us up.
Eventually, Ainash appeared over one of the dunes, running over to us. The guards aimed their weapons for a moment at her sprint before I informed them that she was with us, not some random hostile monster charging at them. After I told them that, they still looked quite on-guard, but at least not actively preparing to attack.
“Hello!” she sent to us as she approached. “Am excited to see Human settlement!”
“I’m hoping you’ll be able to today,” I responded. “You’ll have to take a test, which will hopefully be pretty easy, and if you do well then you can enter. If not, we’ll just have to figure something else out.”
“How do I win the test?”
“I’m not actually sure. I guess we’ll see when it starts.”
“Okay!” Ainash said as she slowed from her sprint to a walk, arriving in front of the specialists.
The first specialist walked up to her, seeming careful to keep his red suit from touching the glowing embers covering her body. He looked at her from a few angles as she stood there, looking confused.
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“Am supposed to do something?”
“Hm, she seems well-enough behaved, at least,” the specialist said. “Although, I’m not familiar with this species. These flames, do they hurt?”
“She can turn them off,” I said, mentally asking Ainash to show him.
Sure enough, the embers burning across her skin quickly lost their luminescence. The specialist nodded and wrote something down on a notepad he held. He looked back at me. “Can she speak?”
“Uh, no. Her mouth isn’t really built for Human speech,” I said, lying slightly. It was true that any words she said came with a heavy lisp, but really, the issue was just that she hadn’t been taught our language.
He nodded again, noting my answer. “That is fine, although it will make this next portion slightly more difficult to administer. Monster, please just nod or shake your head in response to my questions. Do you understand me?”
I translated his words over to her, and told her it would probably be best if she just nodded to that one.
Once she gave an enthusiastic nod of the head, he continued. “Have you ever killed a Human?”
I told her what he’d said, and this time just let her answer honestly. I didn’t think something like that would result in an automatic disqualification, and if she’d said no, I’d worry he would think she was lying, which probably would lead to her never being let in. Though, if he ever asked how many people she’d killed, that would definitely require a dishonest answer.
The specialist continued asking more and more questions, most of which Ainash answered relatively truthfully. Eventually, though, the questions got into the realm of opinions and hypotheticals—things like “if a Human was being verbally aggressive with you and ended up shoving you, would you strike them back?" and “do you believe you are above working for Humans?” At that point, I started telling her what would probably be best to answer with. Some of them, even I wasn’t sure what the answer they were looking for was.
After probably over a hundred separate yes-or-no questions, the specialist nodded, looking down at the countless notes on his pen and paper. “Okay, we’re finished with that part of the examination. Next, we’ll move onto a test of arithmetic. First—”
“Woah, woah,” the other specialist said, placing a massive hand on the smaller man’s chest and stepping forward. This was the first time he’d spoken since Ainash had arrived. “You’ve asked your questions. Supposed to be reduced requirements, right? Seems like this thing isn’t planning on massacring any civilians; good enough for me.”
He took a step forward, eyeing Ainash up and down.
She glanced at me as he did. “This Human is different from other. First one did not really think of me as person. Thought more about answers. This Human is…not bad or mean, but kind of. Thinks of me like person. Like he is about to—”
In an instant, the specialist swung a massive greatsword at her, the weapon coming out of nowhere.
She ducked down below the swing and kicked away to put some space between them. He charged at her, wielding the blade that must have been almost as long as I was tall. Before she could draw her own weapon, he was on her again, swinging the sword downward at her crouched position. She leapt back just in time once again, and the sword crashed into the ground, throwing sand across the dunes.
“Father, am allowed to kill this Human?”
Before I could even answer, he charged and swung again, this time a sideways swing that threatened to take her head clean off.
“Fight back,” I said. The moment my words came through, she ducked underneath his strike and drew her whip in the same motion, spinning and swinging the weapon at his torso.
He grunted as the thorned whip tore across his stomach, then stepped forward and swung the greatsword once again.
I glanced over to see Erani with her hand raised, ready to shoot a Firebolt at the man, and grabbed her wrist. “Hey, I don’t think we’re supposed to interfere with the test.”
“Test?!” she demanded, face full of fury. “He’s trying to kill her!”
I gazed back at the fight. Ainash leapt straight over the man’s head, holding her whip in two hands, and latched it around his throat as she came to the ground, choking him with the spiked vine.
“I don’t think he’ll succeed,” I said. “Besides, if we assist, I’m sure he’ll take that as a declaration of her loss.”
Erani frowned. “I don’t even get why this is necessary. Clearly they’re trying to assess her strength before letting her in, but doesn’t the tournament do that already?”
“If they’re making a special case to let her enter the city earlier than normal just for the sake of the tournament, then it makes sense to ensure she isn’t just some random monster that’ll lose in the first round. Special accommodations are only made for special people, y’know?”
“It makes sense, but still. I don’t like watching it.”
I chuckled, looking back at the fight. “I sure do. Makes me proud to see her fighting like that. I wonder what Level that guy is.”
She ducked under a strike, then stepped back to avoid the follow-up. She tried to throw her whip out in an attack of her own, but another swing of the man’s blade came directly after, forcing her further back. There was a steep sand dune rising up just a few paces back; he was trying to corner her.
Soon, her back was to the dune. He took another wide diagonal swing, the anticipation of victory written across his face.
But within the blink of an eye, Ainash somersaulted over his arm mid-swing, wrapping her whip around the blade of his weapon as she did, and as she landed on her feet by his side, she used the leverage she’d created to pull the weapon from his hand and throw it a dozen paces away, where it sank uselessly into the ground. I had to cast Expedite on myself to enhance my senses just so I could keep up with the lightning-fast movements.
She turned to swing at him once more, but before her whip could touch him, he clapped his hands together, and a deafening boom echoed across the battlefield. Ainash was thrown away by an invisible force—a Martial Art, it seemed—managing to twist and land on her feet as she hit the ground.
“Okay!” the man said, nodding at Ainash. I hurriedly began translating his words to her. “Did quite well, considering I pulled a little bit of a dirty tactic on you at the start there.”
“Can still kill the Human?” Ainash asked.
“Wait,” I responded. “I think you might have won.”
“I was worried I might accidentally kill you a couple times, but you’re pretty sneaky with your movements. Very impressive. Suppose we should get introductions in order; those have been long overdue by this point. What’s your name?”
“Her name is Ainash,” I said. “And you?”
He nodded. “Ainash. Good name. Reminds me of the Dragons. My name is Pike Pinesteel, champion of the third Conqueror's Tourney. If you survive this, then I’ll look very forward to working alongside you.”
I frowned. “I thought she’d already passed.”
“Oh, no. That was just the warm-up.”
He reached down to his belt which held all of the metal rods, and I realized one of them was missing. Grabbing two more, he pulled them from the belt and held them up. The moment they left contact with it, they began shifting, the metal twisting and flattening to become new objects: two long knives, glowing blue and etched with intricate carvings.
He nodded. “Okay. Let’s start the test proper.”