“So you’re seriously going to show up at some random location to meet with a complete stranger about training you to be a Djinn tamer?” Kay asked when the exhaust and haze of the ancient truck cleared away.
“He’s not some random guy!” Jackson said. “How many times do I have to tell you? That’s —”
“Cassius Briggs, I know,” Kay said imitating the awestruck tone Jackson used every time he spoke of the former champion.
“Plus, you’re coming with me,” Jackson said.
Kay sighed and looked and Sunshine. “What would he do without us?”
Before Jackson could reply to the snarky remark, the crowd broke out into a thunderous roar — the loudest of the night.
Jackson and Kay ran over to the edge and peered over into the pit. The bettors and spectators all gathered around a central ring — the night’s main event. Jackson squinted and saw a flash of turquoise and emerald. He knew at once it was a Megala and he knew as well who it belonged to.
“Tessa Green,” Jackson muttered under his breath.
The Megala made short work of its opponent, a Twisper — a wind-type Djinn that resembled a leaf. Twispers were known to be very hard to pin down in combat. Jackson looked at the board and saw that Tessa’s Megala hadn’t lost a single hit point — very impressive. Like she had earlier that night, Green returned her Djinn to its ring and cut through the crowd without skipping a beat, stopping only to collect her winnings. She shouldered away from dozens of pats on the back and other attempts to socialize.
“Jackson, the train comes in twenty minutes and it’s going to take us fifteen just to get there!” Kay said. “I swear, if I get stranded out here and have to call a Ryde-Along, you’ll have to pay me back the eighty suns it’ll take us to get home!”
“Hold on a second,” Jackson said, circling the pit to try and cut the Megala’s tamer off.
“What are you doing?” Kay said, trying to keep up with him.
“How many people do you know with a Megala?” Jackson said. “That has to be Fiona.”
“Fiona? No way! Her parents are too strict. There’s no way she can — Jackson!” Kay yelled out as Jackson went into a sprint.
He’d been trying to keep track of her in the crowd, but somewhere along the way, she’d disappeared. Without even thinking, he made his way back down towards the crowd, into the gravel pit.
“Are you seriously going back? We don’t have the time for this!”
“We don’t want to lose her!” He said, but he then felt a rough tug on his arm. He turned to see Kay’s frowning face.
“Jackson, don’t be an idiot,” she said. “She apparently comes here almost every night. We come here almost every night too. It’s late, I’m tired, and I don’t want to be out eighty suns just because you have some stupid theory you need to prove tonight.”
“I can pay you back.”
“I thought you were trying to save up that money. Plus, don’t you have somewhere important to be tomorrow?”
Jackson opened his mouth to argue back, but no words came. He took a deep, annoyed breath. Kay wasn’t wrong and he’d lost the mysterious tamer in the crowd. He wouldn’t be confirming his hunch for tonight, and there was no way he would risk being late to training with Briggs tomorrow; not on his first day.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Whatever Jackson had been expecting when he received an invitation to train at Cassius Briggs’s gym, what he saw sure wasn’t it. On the other hand, he knew right away why he would never have suspected the former Gold League Champion was living in Tyle.
The gym was a large, run-down warehouse on the edge of town. In the past, Kay told Jackson it had been used as a co-op and storage shed for the local crops before they were sold and shipped out of town. Now, with the advent of the light rail and other more modern transportation, most of the crops were loaded right onto the freight carriers and gone the same night as the harvest.
That meant the warehouse hadn’t been used for over two decades…and it showed. Half the upper windows were busted out and some of the bricks were gone from the side, collected in small piles on the ground where they’d fallen out. The windows at the bottom floor were mostly boarded up. Water stains left long white drag marks down those still uncovered and the double warehouse doors were rusted and pitted.
Jackson wondered if Laila knew about it — the building would make the perfect place for an Underground fight. Stepping through the half-open door only confirmed those thoughts — the place was shady. Asena sniffed at the door frame and looked at Jackson, as if asking what they were doing here.
“It’s all right, girl,” Jackson said, petting her head.
“Right…” Kay muttered from behind them. Sunshine let out a short yip in agreement.
Inside was a different, but no less rundown, story. It looked like when Cassius had first moved to the location, he’d had a little money to spend. The dilapidated produce warehouse floor was filled with a random assortment of equipment and machines. Gazing around, Jackson could only guess at what most of them did. It looked like there were weight machines, race tracks, agility courses and much more.
In one corner was a shrine of sorts — a wall filled with tarnished trophies and old-school, analog yellowed photos. Jackson felt drawn to the area and took a closer look. Most of the pictures featured a much younger Cassius (the one he recognized from the fights he watched), standing next to his trademark Hurricanther, Midnight. The photos and newspaper printouts, medals, and trophies all told the story of the dramatic rise and subsequent fall of the Djinn taming champion, Cassius Briggs. The last shot, over twenty years old, showed Briggs and Midnight illuminated in the spotlight of an enormous arena. The tamer had his hand raised, seemingly bidding farewell to the thousands of fans surrounding him in the stands.
“Taking a stroll down memory lane, eh?”
Briggs’s voice made both Jackson and Kay jump. For some reason, Jackson felt like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t, although he couldn’t have said what he did wrong.
“Just admiring your achievements,” Jackson said in a nervous voice.
Briggs waved a dismissive hand. “Bah! They get dustier and older every day, just like me. And I see you didn’t come alone.”
“Kay’s my rehabber,” Jackson says. “She patches up Asena after fights.”
“And I had to make sure you weren’t some creepy serial killer or something,” Kay added.
Briggs shot them a wry look.
Mortified that his friend called a legendary tamer a potential murderer, Jackson quickly changed the subject.
“So where do we start?” he asked, looking around. There were dozens of pieces of equipment throughout the gym and he was eager to get Asena going.
“We’ll start with a quiz,” Briggs said. “Let’s see if your head is full of anything but hot air. What are the five main Djinn Elements?”
Jackson resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. “Earth, Fire, Water, Wind, and Plain” he said. “C’mon man — everyone knows that!”
The older man ignored him. “And what are their various weaknesses and strengths?”
“Easy,” Jackson said. “Fire has a direct weakness to Water, Wind has a direct weakness to Earth. Earth has a weakness to Fire, and Water has a weakness to Wind. Plain has no real weaknesses or strengths. A Djinn can learn any type of move, except that of its direct opposite Element. So Asena can learn Earth, Plain, and Wind moves, but not Water. But her moves in those other Elements aren’t as effective as its Fire or Earth attacks. Oh, I almost forgot! There are also the complementary Elements —”
“Nah-ah,” Briggs said. “We’re sticking with the basics. Until you get those down, you don’t need to worry about the other stuff. Next question: why do you think I changed my mind about training you?”
Jackson had a couple of cocky answers at the ready but realized this was probably some kind of test. He thought for a long moment
.
“Because…I didn’t stop fighting and got better?” he finally said.
Briggs gave Jackson a long look that made him wilt from its intensity. “Are you going to wait until I get it right or are you telling me?” Jackson asked. “You’re telling me, right?”
Briggs shook his head. “Before I give you the real answer, let’s get something clear right away: there is no ‘I’ in Djinn taming. You didn’t keep fighting and you didn’t get better. You and your Djinn got better together. This is a ‘we’ thing, got it?”
Jackson nodded.
“Try again, then,” Briggs said.
Jackson still couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t a variation of what he’d already said. He shot Kay a sidelong look but she only shrugged. He looked at Asena but she only stared back — no answer forthcoming there. The fact that she would sit at his side comfortably and not run off to inspect the gym without his permission made Jackson realize just how far they’d come. And then it hit him.
“Because of our Bond!” Jackson said. “Asena started listening to me so it showed you that we were getting along as a team.”
“You’re getting closer,” Briggs said. “A Bond between a tamer and his Djinn is the most important aspect of a battle. You’ve got to be able to trust each other explicitly and without even a moment’s hesitation.” He looked away from Jackson at the pictures of a younger version of himself and Midnight hanging on the wall. “Never forget that and never break that trust. Do you know the answer?”
“The answer to what?”
“The question I asked you at the beginning of this conversation!”
“Oh…” Jackson said, thrown off. He thought he’d already given a satisfying answer, but apparently not. “If I knew it, I would have said it by now!”
Briggs folded his arms and Jackson could tell this wasn’t going to be easy. “Let me help: think back to your fight against the Moldune. Your Lyote was buried in the sand. Most new tamers would have panicked, but you did something different. What was it?”
“I…told her to stay calm and wait for the next attack?” Jackson said. “I don’t see what’s so special about —”
“There!” Briggs hoarse voice grew excited and his drooping eyelids widened. Compared to his usual laid-back self, this new side of the retiree seemed almost alarming. He pointed at Kay. “Young lady, did you hear your friend say anything when his Lyote was trapped in the dirt?”
Kay frowned in thought and then shook her head. “No, actually. It was kind of weird — he got really quiet, I would have expected Jackson to freak out at that point but he just looked…focused.”
“Yes! Jackson, you didn’t know it then, but you were communicating with your Djinn on a telepathic level. You didn’t say the commands out loud, you transmitted them through your mind — that’s the true sign of a Bond between Djinn and tamer.”
“But…I didn’t even notice.” Jackson said. He looked down at Asena and tried to tell her to bark without saying a word. The Lyote just looked back at him, head cocked to the side, waiting for him to verbalize what he wanted. “See? Nothing happened. Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” Briggs said. He seemed offended by the suggestion that he didn’t know what he was talking about. “I’ve been a Djinn tamer almost all of my life. For some tamers, that Bond can take years to develop. You seem to have a natural skill for it — which gives you an advantage over other novice tamers who have to use vocal commands or hand signs to communicate during battle.”
“But —”
“Don’t let it go to your head, kid,” Briggs said, cutting off Jackson. “When you just tried to do it again you saw how hard it was. You’re going to have to practice nonstop. And don’t think just because you got lucky and stumbled into it means you don’t have to put in all the other training.”
Jackson looked at Asena, more determined than ever. “I’m not lazy,” he said. “Just tell me — us — what we’re supposed to do.”
“Well, for starters,” Briggs gave an exhausted sigh. “I know I’m going to regret seeing this. Pull up your Lyote’s stats.”
“Um, okay.” Jackson obeyed, and pushed the holo out so they all could see it.
{{{}}}
GENERAL STATS AND INFO
Djinn: Lyote
Level: 5
Name: Asena
Element: Fire/Earth
Species Rarity: Rare
Tamer: Jackson Hunt
HP (Hit Points): 95/95
EP (Elemental Power): 50/50
XP (Experience): 56 to Next Level
DJP (Djinn Points): 8 Unallocated
Attack: 26
Defense: 18
Speed: 22
Accessories: None
Items: None
Status: Neutral
Bond: 35%
Move Set: Swipe Left to See More >>>
{{{}}}
Briggs scrunched his face, though whether it was in confusion or annoyance, Jackson couldn’t tell.
“I figured as much,” Briggs said. “Too often, you lot are too damn excited to get started, and you neglect the basics.”
“What?” Jackson said, almost too afraid to ask. He squinted at the stats. “What’d I miss?”
Briggs pointed to the tenth line in Asena’s stats. “That. DJP. Do you know what those are?”
Jackson stood, wide-mouth and stupefied — not because he had no idea what they were, but because he had, in fact, made that very mistake because he was too excited, just as Briggs had said.
“Oh, shit,” Jackson said.
“Yeah, ‘oh, shit,’” Briggs repeated.
“Can someone explain this to me, please?” Kay said from behind the two of them. “What are Djinn Points?
“Your friend here made a rookie mistake. When a Djinn levels up, it gets a base boost in its stats, and the number of points boosted in each area varies depending on how the level was gained, the type of Djinn it is, and countless other factors. But when it levels up, it also gets two Djinn Points, and if you really want to get into the weeds and make the Djinn yours, you can take those Djinn Points and allocate each one to the five major areas: HP — hit points or health, EP — the Elemental Power that allows them to use their Elemental attacks, Attack — its attack strength, Defense — basically how well it protects itself against physical and Elemental attacks, and Speed — which I think is self-explanatory. Once allocated, they will give random upgrades to their respective areas to help make your Djinn stronger as you see fit.”
“So basically bio-hacking,” Kay said.
Briggs nodded. “Welcome to some of the most fundamental, core aspects of the job. But Jackson, apparently, didn’t see fit to allocate. Sometimes that is a sign of a tamer not willing to commit to a specific direction for a Djinn, which I think is admirable.”
Briggs’s tone then got hostile. “But in Jackson’s case, he clearly just forgot about them.”
“I feel like an idiot,” Jackson said.
“You should,” Briggs said dryly. “Take in that feeling. Feel it. Hate it. Now move on. What do you want from your Djinn?”
Jackson smiled. While he hadn’t taken the time to allocate the points, he very much knew what he wanted.
“That’s the look of a kid with a plan,” Briggs said. “Now do it. I want to see where your instincts take you.”
Jackson tapped on the “8 Unallocated” line on the stats, and was instantly greeted with a sub-menu. On the left were eight large dots and on the right were each of the five categories. He dragged four of those dots over to “Attack,” two of them over to “EP,” and two more to “Speed.” As he dropped each dot over its respective area, a rewarding “ding” sounded.
“Interesting,” Briggs said. “I can tell already you’re as hot-headed as your Djinn.”
“I thought about it,” Jackson said, feeling strangely confident in his direction. “Defense is important, but I know that Lyotes already have an edge in their HP, and at this early sta
ge in the game, it’s the Attack I should focus on. I’ve noticed a lot of newts tend to focus on Defense because they’re scared of losing. If I can leverage the Speed, Attack, and its Elemental abilities, I can really throw them off, right?”
Briggs shrugged. “No wrong answers here, kid. Just interesting.”
Jackson smirked and tapped “Done.” He was pulled back to the general stats, where he saw the incremental increase in each of his categories.
{{{}}}
GENERAL STATS AND INFO
Djinn: Lyote
Level: 5
Name: Asena
Element: Fire/Earth
Species Rarity: Rare
Tamer: Jackson Hunt
HP (Hit Points): 95/95
EP (Elemental Power): 63/63
XP (Experience): 56 to Next Level
DJP (Djinn Points): 0 Unallocated
Attack: 40
Defense: 18
Speed: 28
Accessories: None
Items: None
Status: Neutral
Bond: 35%
Move Set: Swipe Left to See More >>>
{{{}}}
The old tamer smiled wide. “Now, let’s step into the ring and see what you’ve got.”
Jackson, Asena, Kay and Sunshine followed Briggs into the middle of the warehouse where a large ring was marked out by crooked fenceposts and some dirty, fraying rope. Briggs motioned for Jackson to take his place on one side and then assumed a position across the circle from him. Reaching into his pocket, Briggs pulled out a silver tamer ring set with a large ebony stone.
“No way —” Jackson said in awe. A flash of dark blue — almost black — light shot from the ring. When the light faded, a large Hurricanther filled its place. Jackson recognized the Djinn at once. Midnight looked just like the pictures hanging on the gym wall. It mostly had a dark-blue coat, which was accented by splashes of light-blue. The way the fur sat, it almost looked like scales. Its tail was made up mostly of that sky-blue color, and at its end was a tuft of white that resembled a cloud. But perhaps its most distinguishing feature was another cloud-like tuft that ran across its snout, which made it look as though the Djinn had a mustache.
Djinn Tamer: Starter: A Monster Battling GameLit Adventure (Djinn Tamer - Bronze League Book 1) Page 14
