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Chapter 48

Trials of Invicta Gloriana

“Good morning, husband. How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve spent the night being lectured to on alternative universal theory.”

“Hell connects directly with a lot of those.” She told me. “We demons even get free passage AND get to keep some of our abilities.”

“At the cost of your true name, and being bound into servitude.”

.....

“Some masters are better than others. Take you, for example. Hopeless. I’m going to peel your soul like a grape and crack it open for soul shards.”

“Hmm... You do have an active and very graphical imagination. What does your imagination say about why our belongings are missing?”

“Ugh. Dimmihammas?”

“Nrg?”

“Why is all our stuff missing?”

“Don’t blame me, you’re the one who didn’t set a guard.”

Well, none of our stuff was STOLEN; it’s just that a lot of it was being handed around, pondered over, and discussed.

“Miss Turner, about out things...”

“I know! Isn’t it amazing? They’ve been living in an isolated community for so long, they don’t understand the concept of private property. I can write a thesis about this!”

“That’s wonderful! I want my dresses back.”

“But those very dresses are in use right now.”

“What? Noooo... They’ve made ALTERATIONS! Husband, with me now! We’ve women to strip naked.”

“And one man.” Miss Turner said.

“No. Master, no! Those are MINE! MINE!”

“Master?” Miss Turner asked.

“You stay out of it!” Madonna snapped at her. She looked at me, pleading.

“Did you buy those dresses with your own coins, or with mine?”

“That’s! No! This isn’t about fair, this is about possession! Mine!”

“No, you are forbidden to count this as a hostile action.”

“Then YOU are buying me new dresses!”

“Perhaps not as ornate as those three.” I said.

“Exactly like those three!” she broke out in tears. “They are STEALING from ME!”

“Yeah, uhm, I’m not exactly cool with that, either.” Kismet said.

“They can’t have our spare accounting books. What can they possibly use them for?” Gamilla asked.

The Itinar women spoke with Miss Turner. “They say that for them to loan tribal items to you, you need to pass the trials.”

“But it’s okay for them to take from us?” Madonna asked.

“Invicta Gloriana promised them everything on this mesa.”

“Wait.” Said Gamilla, “Does that include them taking us as slaves?”

“Oh! I’ll ask.” She did. “They say there’s a day to see if we’re going to attempt the trials, but after that, we’re fair game.”

“So let’s just go.” Narces said. “Is just going an option?”

“No, they can f* themselves.” Gamilla said. “I’ll face all their trials.”

“They say it’s a team competition, six of us, and six trials. Oh. And we don’t get to know what the trials are, those are cast by lots.”

“Do we get to look at the lots?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s allowed.” She said.

“And once we pass these trials, they give us our things back?”

“Only the things we need, as I understand it.”

“I need my dresses.” Madonna said.

#

I strongly suspect that if there had been only four of us, there would have been only four trials.

The first trial was one of poetry, which Miss Turner lost for us.

Kismet left us for the weaving competition.

Narces won an archery contest, handily placing arrow after arrow through the bullseye of their human-shaped target.

The eating contest was mine. I was victorious, and had started in on my opponent’s plate by the time victory had been declared. Sissy eaters.

Fire-starting was Madonna’s task. “Pillar of FLAME!” she cast, incinerating every last bit of her firewood. “Yeah, that’s a VICTORY!” she said, using the Itinar word as she paraded around the circle of observers. “That’s right! Who’s the victor? I’m the victor! Come to the Hell of Vanity when you die, I’ll reserve a rack just for you dress stealing harlots!”

“It’s like she’s channeling Kismet.” Narces said.

“Oh, now there’s a thought we never want her to have.” Gamilla said.

I briefly envisioned Kismet as She Who Smashes Eyeballs. “It is a truth I shall never speak unto her.”

The final test was the “Spear Dance”, or dueling with spears.

“Please try to not kill her.” I said.

“Depends on her fighting style.” Gamilla said.

Medea’s fighting stye involved a quick thrust to the face, followed by getting kicked to the groin, whacked on the back of the head, and held face-first into the dirt by Gamilla’s foot, while she thrust the spear across either cheekbone before figuring out she had to ask her opponent to surrender.

Clearly, whatever skills Invicta Gloria had developed during her lifetime, her descendants just didn’t have the development points to implement. All of the priestesses, especially Medea, wanted lessons, and Gamilla taught them what I recognized as a simple kata.

We enjoyed a dinner with our new tribe, lamb meat and spring herbs, with cheese and butter.

“Gamilla, we seriously need to trade this village some salt.”

“They have Kismet’s bag, I just don’t think they’ve learned how to use it yet.”

And so, we began contaminating their culture, over the objections raised by Miss Turner.

Then came stories, where we learned that the Invicta’s spear, shield, armor, and many other items of gold and silver and iron had been taken by the Dragon, Glorious Golden Glider, for safekeeping. His description matched that of the only known dragon in the islands.

Well, that ... I just wasn’t ready to face down a dragon in his lair.

“Oh, you don’t need to challenge him to the death, or anything.” Miss Turner assured me. “I’m told that if you bring two gifts, one for before you speak, and one for after, he mostly doesn’t eat you afterward.”

“I assure you, Miss Turner, being partially eaten is not a pleasant experience.”

“Haha! And here I thought you couldn’t tell jokes!”

I just blinked at her, and then dashed off to where my wife was trying to get one of her dresses back.

#

In the end, we got to keep only the barest of essentials. Financially, the expedition to the mountain peak was a total loss, although Miss Turner assured us that the cultural gains were of credit to her in her work.

Likewise, there was no trace of guardian cats, whether they were Pumas or Panthers.

If I hadn’t promised, would I have let Madonna burn them off the mountaintop? I like to think that I would not have, but the truth is I did not know. I felt about it as Kismet and Madonna did; they were thieves and criminals, and I had no intention of ever returning, even if the pass weren’t more dangerous on the way down.

“Well, at least we’re done with that trunk of useless junk.” Gamilla said, “And the main books are safe in my inventory.”

“So, how does one account for getting robbed by one’s official kinsmen?” Madonna asked.

“Expeditionary loss.” I said.

“And how does one deal with the loss of funds, delivering birthday cards to all of your relatives?”

“What are birthday cards?”

“Rhishi! Birthday cards and gifts are practiced here. Have you been sending at least cards to the governors on their birthdays?”

.....

“When are their birthdays?” I asked. Oh, if I’d given offense, then I had best find a way to make up for it. After all, killing all of them just wasn’t an option, however good we were getting at it.

Kismet brought her hands up as if throttling an imaginary Kismet.

“Ambassador, isn’t that sort of thing clearly an ambassadorial duty?” Gamilla said.

“I have yet to have a single governor acknowledge our diplomatic credentials.”

“Just more proof of your incompetence.” Madonna said. “Be glad that you don’t have to explain how you lost so much and gained nothing. Oh wait, I guess you do...”

“It does seem to me about time to send another packet home. I guess we’re off to Vernice, soon.”

“And when is our next expedition, either for trade or this exploration bug you seem to have that is costing us so much?” Gamilla asked.

“Gamilla, how should we better invest our money?”

“What we need is a ship of our own.”

“At a cost of some five or six digits of silver, yes.” I said.

“We could make a profit if we weren’t paying cargo fees.”

“I concur, but at that point we’re paying crew wages.”

Gamilla’s lips pressed thinly against her teeth. “If these mere humans can figure out how to make that profitable, so can I. But I need a constant revenue stream, not this... smattering of randomness. If we were to replace all of our gear at once, it would endanger your next payment home.”

“All right, then. Find us trades, and we’ll see if we can make enough profit from them.”

“But that’s what I’m telling you. Just like the sugar, it doesn’t work. We need to produce something in large bulk, move it in bulk. We need that ship.”

“And how are we to do that?” I asked.

“Oh, if only you could take out a business loan.” Madonna said.

I am told my response was linguistically creative.

#