Previously on Saga of the Jewels… The life of seventeen-year-old RYN, bookish son of a wealthy landowner, changes forever when his hometown is destroyed by the EMPIRE and everyone he has ever known is killed. Ryn discovers that the Empire are seeking TWELVE PRIMEVAL JEWELS which grant the power to manipulate different elements, and that his father had been hiding the FIRE RUBY. He sets out to take revenge on the Imperial General who killed his family and retrieve the Fire Ruby, and along the way meets NUTHEA the lightning-slinging princess, SAGAR the swaggering skypirate, ELRANN the tomboy engineer, CID the wizened old healer, and VISH the poppy-seed-addicted bounty hunter. Together the companions decide to find all of the Jewels in order to stop the EMPEROR from finding them first and taking over the world. They have thus far succeeded in retrieving the Fire Ruby, borne by Ryn, and the Lightning Crystal, borne by Nuthea. They have now come to the land of FARR where they intend to compete in a hand-to-hand fighting tournament in order to attempt to win its prize, the EARTH EMERALD. However, the Farrian fighting-monk, HULD, has also entered, and has progressed to the quarter finals too… EPISODE FORTY-ONE: THE TOURNAMENT: QUARTER FINAL FOUR: HULD OF FARR VS. QENDRA OF FRIKIA The brown-stone arena tiles warmed Huld’s bare feet. The tiles had been baking in the sun all day, which was still bright and hot this afternoon, though strangely a clump of dark clouds had formed in one corner of the sky. It’s not time for the rainy-season to arrive yet, is it? No, of course not. He dismissed the thought. Underneath the mostly-clear sky, thousands of his fellow Farrians stood watching around Tenkachi’s arena, so many that he couldn’t see beyond them. Boys with toothy, eager smiles plastered on their faces. Men with stony-serious frowns and folded arms, unmoving as boulders. Girls staring keenly, biting their nails or with both hands clasped together in front of their mouths like they were praying. Women murmuring silently or anxiously hopping from foot to foot. Wriggling babes in arms. Statuesque elderly. And all the ages in between. I must not let them down. All of the native Farrians who had competed in the Tournament’s Quarter Finals thus far had lost. Although, to be fair, one had been a woman, which was Not Correct, and one had been a dishonourable exhibitionist fool–not a soldier-monk trained in one of the religious fighting-schools of Eto like Huld had been, but a sacrilegious free agent who made money out of his fighting. And, also to be fair, none of those losses mattered that much, anyway. This was Huld’s tournament to win. That he won his matches, and won the whole thing, and won the prize for Farr, was all that really mattered. Huld needed to win this tournament, not only to claim the Earth Emerald, but also for the honour of his country–to show that the Farrians were the strongest, the greatest, the supreme people of Mid. That was what the Governor had told him, and what he knew to be true. “Are you ready?” Huld came back to the present with a jolt. The tournament announcer had asked him a question from where he stood at the side of the arena. The monk was vaguely aware that the announcer had asked him this question once already, but he had been lost for a moment in a rare drifting of focus. He looked over at his opponent standing opposite him. A tall, dark-skinned Frikian woman with a curiously shaved head, except for an asymmetric fringe of jet-black hair that on one side curved around to her left ear and on the other came down over her right eye. She wore a garment made of the skin of some spotted animal, which clung to her slim body, tied at the waist with a rope belt, leaving her smooth arms and legs bare. She winked at him. Another woman. Most strange. What were these tournaments coming to, that two women had made it into the Quarter Finals? And this one was not even a fellow Farrian, but a filthy foreigner as well! It was practically an insult for him to even have to fight her. Huld nodded. “I am ready,” he said levelly. “Alright…” said the announcer. “Then……BEGIN!” Huld dropped his weight into chocobo stance, bending his knees and resting his fists at his hips, taking a defensive poise to see how the Frikian would open. The Frikian did nothing at all. She just stood there watching him, a wry little smile creeping out from behind the overhanging half of her fringe. Then, slowly, deliberately, exaggerating the movements painstakingly, she lowered herself into chocobo stance too, still smiling. A muscle in Huld’s jaw twitched. Does she mean to mock me? She can’t know the Farrian arts. No master would allow a Frikian to train with him, let alone a woman… She must be copying me… Carefully, gaze still trained on the woman, Huld extended his fingers and pinched them together against his thumbs, putting a foot forward and bringing his hands up in front of him, one close to his chest, the other stretched further out. Crane stance. An investigative stance. In front of him, the woman did exactly the same, mirroring his movements exactly. Huld kept the irritation out of his expression. So she was copying him. Well, that was having some success in baiting him, he reluctantly acknowledged, but it would only get her so far. She couldn’t mirror his every move. Not in the heat of battle. But then why is she still smiling? He took a step forwards, towards her, and the woman stepped forwards too. He took a few more steps, and the woman matched him exactly, the gap between them closing by degrees, about eight paces now. He took another step, but this time he walked diagonally right, no longer approaching her head-on but moving to one side, to flank her. This time the woman moved to her own diagonal right, Huld’s left, keeping her mirror image of his movements so that the size of the gap between them stayed the same. Huld continued to strafe to his right, and Qendra of Frikia did the same, so that they circled one another across the stone tiles of the arena. As they did, Huld watched her lithe, toned limbs closely, looking for some opening or sign of weakness. The thing was, Huld noticed with a start that nearly made him misstep, the woman’s stance was perfect. She wasn’t just poorly copying his thousands-of-times-practiced poses and positions on the spot, apparently. Her arms were held out at precisely the right lengths, her legs moving in precisely the right sequence, her torso tensed in precisely the right way, for crane stance. Maybe she has been trained by a Farrian? But if she had, why mess around with this mirroring game? Why not open with a distinctive attack of her own, or put up a more conventional defence and let him come to her instead? It was like she was playing a game of Check where she had decided just to mimic his every move. Enough contemplation, Huld thought. It’s time to put an end to this stage-play. He kicked off from the arena floor, launching himself at the Frikian with a crane-fisted strike from left to right aimed to hit the side of her head with the back of his hand. In the same instant, the Frikian sprang towards him with her own identical strike… …then at the last moment dropped her body, ducking under Huld’s blow. As he moved past her, she lashed out and up with her knee, catching him in the stomach. Huld doubled up, the wind knocked out of him, gasping at the sudden pain. The Frikian drew her leg back, then flicked it around her off-side in a vicious roundhouse aimed at Huld’s face. He ducked the kick, thrust his legs back to press himself flat against the arena floor, then rolled away rapidly, spinning over several times before coming up into dragon stance, one fist held back, one up in front of him with two bent fingers. Opposite him, the Frikian already stood in exactly the same stance a few paces away. “What game are you playing?!” Huld yelled at her, ignoring the calls of the crowd, angry at what the Frikian woman was doing, angry that she had landed the first blow, angry that she had broken his composure–already. “How are you mirroring my movements so perfectly?” That irritating smile still mocked him. Her lips were cherry-red. “Well,” said the Frikian in a disturbingly confident and sensual voice, “that would be telling, wouldn’t it now?” Huld moved forwards in dragon stance. The woman did the same. Dragon stance, at least, Huld knew had been exported from Farr by some travelling masters who had prostituted themselves by selling ancient fighting techniques to filthy foreigners. He had seen the fireboy use it earlier in his short-lived match against that Morekemian. But it wasn’t just that the Frikian used dragon stance—she was still mirroring his every movement with complete precision. This time when he got close to her, he feinted with the beginning of a simple front-kick, then quickly brought his foot back down and flung out his left hand in a thrusting punch instead. The Frikian copied him exactly, right down to the feint, and flung out the start of the same punch, but then turned it into a feint of her own, suddenly slipping beneath his strike, spinning as she did so in order to throw out a fast-moving low sweep kick. This time Huld was ready for it. He jumped the sweep, then came down with a palm-thrust. The woman backed away, quick as a snake, then dodged his follow-up punch, and the one after that as well. She flipped backwards heels-over-head, and Huld thought he had her on the run, but as she turned over in the air her foot flashed out and caught him in the face. He staggered backwards, blinking away his surprise, then blocked every strike of her subsequent assault with his hands. She had underestimated his reaction speed. He made to grab her arm, missed, but when she pulled away in alarm he stepped up and followed through with an almighty punch from his other hand, hitting her squar
