by Rex Jameson
Chapter 13
The Certamen
Sariel pushed through a crowd of spectators as he followed behind the individual—the singulus they called them—he had known since he was a young man. “Wait up, Elandril!”
“The longer we take, the harder it will be to get to our seats!” Elandril called back.
Sariel didn’t mind taking his time, though. Most of the women in the crowd were naked, save for body paint. Some groups of goblins took longer for him to get through, but not because the crowd was too dense. Sariel was just stopping to talk with the disrobed and excited females. Lucifer grabbed him by the collar and led him to Elandril.
“So many jubilant spectators,” Sariel said as he watched several women bouncing and screaming for the collective globus that they were rooting for.
“G-man’s going to kick your butt again this year!” a woman yelled at a gold-jerseyed goblin as she brushed past Sariel, rubbing glittery green paint across the front of his suit.
Sariel brushed the glitter off and grinned like an idiot. “Who is G-man?”
“That would be Ganymede,” Elandril said. “Odds-on favorite for the championship again. He’s got exceptional talent.”
A third of the street around them was decked in green. Even makeshift restaurant awnings were unfurled in support of favorite teams, and supporters flocked to the eatery displaying their preferred champion.
Sariel counted the clumps of chattering singuli at a table and yelled ahead. “Well, at least it’s easy to tell the different globi apart.”
Elandril laughed as he pushed through the crowd. “You assume that each collective globus agrees on who to root for, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. Each singulus of the globus may disagree vehemently on a subject—especially when it comes to sports.”
“That must make for interesting bar fights: ‘Which one of you started this?’; ‘Well, that part of me over there did, officer!’ “
“You joke,” Elandril said as he wedged himself between a group of gold-painted men with a black R painted on their chests. Their dangly bits brushed against Sariel.
He backed away from them into two of Elandril’s larger singuli, who were shouldering spectators out of the way to catch up with their lead elements.
“Took me long enough,” Elandril joked as his singuli caught up.
Sariel freed himself from his brother’s grip and yelled ahead to Elandril. “Can’t we just mingle with the locals a bit?”
The King-elect turned around and shook his head. “About that … we need to talk … before you go chatting with girls or speaking in front of a large crowd.”
Elandril led Sariel and Lucifer down an alley between a skyscraper and a Victorian home and shooed away a couple of spectators who were smoking irregularly-rolled cigarettes. Their eyes grew wide as they came face-to-face with the leader of their people, and Sariel smiled as they bowed and made apologies while putting out their aromatic papers on a trash can.
“If you want to have any chance of being granted asylum here, you’re going to need to be aware of the ground rules.”
Sariel turned around to watch as dozens of bouncing, painted breasts passed by the opening between the buildings. “Whatever rules you goblins have, friend, I will gladly follow.”
“That’s point one, actually. We’re not goblins. We never were, and after our reconstruction from our darker days, no one will tolerate you calling us by the derogatory term that Chaos stuck into every contract we ever signed. In the old days, we thought it served as a layer of protection. If your race thought we were ugly and beneath them, then maybe they wouldn’t make forays into our universe. But we’re past pandering to demons at this point.”
Lucifer nodded. “Done. No agreement will ever be drafted with the word goblin in it. You have my word.”
“Not just agreements and contracts,” Elandril said. “If you address us, you call us elves. This is the Elven Realm. We are elven, and our people are elves or globi and singuli, depending on if they are operating in complete independence.”
“How do you do that, by the way?” Sariel asked. “I mean … how do you communicate with the other singuli in your globus.”
“The same way you apparate, except we use images and sounds through the primal pattern. Not all of us can do it, and we actively test for the ability. The globus requires a great deal of concentration to sort through the vast amount of information, viewpoints, and stimuli.”
Sariel’s eyebrows raised as he visualized the process. The more surprising part of this pattern method was that it wasn’t entirely off-limits to wizards in Chaos. Sariel and his mentor Batarel used it all the time to keep each other informed when they were separated, as they were now. If he and his uncle had tried to form a distributed consciousness, however, they would be in direct violation of numerous laws drafted by the Council of Wizards.
“Do you understand?” Elandril asked. “No more goblins.”
“Got it,” Lucifer said.
“Second thing you should know is that no one stays in Arnessa for free. You’ll be expected to do something. You’ll have to work.”
“Gross,” Sariel said, ramming his finger into his mouth and making gagging noises. “I don’t even work in Chaos.”
“You kill people in Chaos,” Elandril reminded him.
“Yeah, but that’s not even work. I enjoy it too much.”
“Then find something you enjoy and do that, as long as it contributes to our society.”
“Need anyone dead?” Sariel asked hopefully.
Elandril conjured a ball of roaring energy and flung it up into the heavens, where it scattered high above the alley like celestial fireworks. From the direction of the street procession, Sariel could hear collective “oooohs” and “aaaahs” as people watched the pretty lights.
“If I want someone dead,” Elandril said. “I do it myself with one of thousands of my singuli.”
“Yeah, but sometimes you might not want the murder to be traced back to the elves.”
Elandril stroked his smooth chin. “Perhaps.”
“I could help train your armies in demon tactics,” Lucifer offered. “Please don’t take offense. I don’t mean that your own elven techniques should be replaced or even complemented with demon ones. I mean that I could provide intimate details of the inner workings of a demon unit—weaknesses and standard maneuvers.”
“An interesting skill-set,” the King-elect said, “one that I will definitely take you up on, but I am unlikely to divulge such a state secret to a stadium of sports revelers. You two will have to think of something else to convince the crowd.”
“Today?” Sariel asked. “That’s a bit short notice, don’t you think?”
“The Sariel I knew was quick on his feet …”
“Maybe when I’m running from something,” Sariel joked.
“Don’t impress the crowd, and you might be …”
“Point taken.”
“Win the crowd, and you win your asylum here. Lose the crowd, and you may lose your head.”
“A familiar homecoming,” Lucifer said.
Elandril grasped Lucifer by the shoulder and pulled him close. “All too true, brother. But this particular homecoming is hardly undeserved, I would say. The elven people’s angst about demons is not the result of some dark conspiracy against your family, as was the case in Alurabum …”
Sariel started to speak, but he thought better of it. Elandril hadn’t seen the other viewing orb yet. His old friend looked at him curiously before continuing.
“The last time you were here it was at the end of a sword. You’ve done enough to convince me to grease the gears, but you’ll still have to operate the machinery yourself.”
“That’s more than fair,” Lucifer said.
“Let’s grab our seats before we’re forced to tune in from a nearby cafe,” Elandril said. His larger singuli forced their way into the street and lined the alley entrance so the group could fold into the procession. The re
velers teased and prodded the big men and rubbed glittery bodies and jerseys against them, but the singuli remained stoic, if not for an occasional smile.
“You’ve still got the orbs, right?” Lucifer asked in a low voice.
“I can’t exactly lose them,” Sariel said. “They’re in the freaking primal.”
His brother exhaled deeply. “Any ideas on what we’re going to offer the crowd?”
“You mean other than an intimate portrait of their king’s assassination?”
“Yeah.”
“A crowd loves entertainment,” Sariel advised. “We should give them what they want.”
“Crash their championship?”
Sariel’s lips twitched as his grin grew wider. “Yeah.”
