Part 2: Souled Out

  Chapter 81: Minor Amusements And Irritants

  Soren

  Soren Creed had considered hiding his nature as a divine being from the people attending what they called ‘The All-Isles Festival’. In the end, he had opted not to disguise that his rank was so overwhelmingly far ahead of the local Deck Wielders. It was something he rarely did this far from home unless he was planning to kill the person in question, as it frequently resulted in local powers banding together in pathetic attempts to harm or kill him in order to acquire the treasures they assumed he had.

  It was just that since coming to The Muck Lands he had been struggling with a little bit of ennui. Things had been so explosive, so challenging, so treacherous and thrilling when he had been shattering and then seizing the power of the Final Peak Alliance. After he had come north the most engaging encounter he had faced was an eighth-ranked woman whose day job was ‘mother in a backwater.’

  So as stupid as he knew it was, Soren was making things more difficult for himself. Well at least that had been the plan, the moment word had gotten out that a powerful southerner of a near mythological rank had chosen to attend the All-Island Festival things had gone from boringly easy to surprisingly easy.

  Rather than put together gangs of their most powerful players to try and ambush him late at night, or hiring local poisoners of renowned skill to try and kill or debilitate him. The people of Medius Island had opened their homes and businesses to him with such sycophancy it almost made him uncomfortable.

  While it was all obviously pathetic attempts to curry his favor out of fear and greed, Soren had to admit he appreciated being treated with the levels of respect he was due. Upon leaving the territory he personally ruled over he had either been swatting aside clumsy attempts to kill him, or simply hiding his identity.

  So there was a certain novelty with the way businesses refused to charge him, and parents paraded their daughters before him as though he had announced that he was searching for a bride. Though since word had spread about him Soren hadn’t needed to announce much of anything at all. The MuckLanders of the island capital bent themselves over backward attempting to anticipate his every desire, they also had an uncanny way of ‘coincidentally’ showing up in great numbers wherever he went.

  If Soren had to guess, people were casually spying on him and selling the information they obtained on his movements around the city and festival. The blond man didn’t mind so much, as that was simply what happened when you were one of the powerful. What was beginning to annoy him was the sheer number of ‘once in a lifetime’ investment opportunities he had been presented with over the last few days.

  As accommodating as the people of this small city were, Soren found getting to the person he was hunting far more difficult than he imagined. Moving throughout the lake-island city he had managed to follow the sensations sent to him by his own god until he had come to something he didn’t think this godless land possessed.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  The workshop of a Spell Framer. It was honestly a shock to see this far north, but upon seeing the Glyphs carved into the sign above the building in question he had begun to reassess. The workshop itself was huge by the standards of Medius, dwarfing the buildings around it, and standing taller than every building bar the Palace of Rulership, or whatever they called where their government met up here.

  Soren could of course tear the place apart with his own two hands if he wished, but even he wouldn’t take aggressive action towards a Spell Framer unless he absolutely had to. That had been the downfall of many a god over the centuries, they grew arrogant enough to believe they could bully the people upon whom the creation of almost all spells rested.

  It was pure idiocy, even here in this backwater, even if he exploded into the building in the dead of night and tore the Framer’s head from their shoulders before they could even react. Soren would never know whether he had triggered some hidden Spell or not. He had read about many such accounts, of wealthy Spell Framers going out of their way to avenge even the least of their number through convoluted skullduggery decades or even centuries after the initial transgression.

  Besides Soren hadn’t been shown a Spell Framer when he had implored his god to help him make Alistair’s Deck into what it needed to be. He had been shown an animal that had ascended to near humanity and acted as a sort of river guardian.

  So Soren had opted to make use of the hangers-on he had been unable to divest himself of and asked around. It seemed the Medius Spell Framer and the Creature he was hunting had some sort of agreement in place. Aparator, which was the name of the thing, was apparently a centuries-old crab that was perhaps the first inhabitant of this island. Hoping to impress him, several of his sycophants had tried to explain the process by which the crab had become a human and gained the ability to shape-shift.

  That had been almost amusing, they thought of it as some rare occurrence that would pique his interest. Soren understood the process, and had known many such beings. The woman who cleaned his quarters back home had once been a bear.

  He also learned that Aparator rarely left his sanctum deep within the Spell Framer’s workshop, but would do so in times of great need or to declare the winner of the All-Island’s Festival Tournament, and play a ceremonial match against the champion.

  Now that actually was interesting. Soren had played a number of tournaments, but none since gaining his divinity. While this place would no doubt only produce a bunch of weaklings that had no real hope of hurting him either in a Challenge or outside of one, people did bring their best to tournaments and even the weak occasionally produced an interesting strategy or two.

  That left him with a clear, simple, and possibly enjoyable path to the end of this particular pilgrimage. He would enter the Festival’s tournament, win it, and then finally get his hands on this so-called ‘River Guardian’ that Alistaire needed in his deck to serve Soren effectively in the coming apocalypse.

  So Soren had made his way to the large grassy field at the center of the city that would act as its tournament grounds. Even days before the matches themselves started he could see crowds of people watching Deck Wielders play practice Challenges, and the same quaint little food stalls and hawkers of well everything that had been popping up all over the city since Soren arrived could be found set up in any space not already taken by people, or reserved for tournament use.

  ‘Quaint’

  He found that word repeating itself a lot as he approached the pavilion tent that he had been directed to for sign ups. There were perhaps two hundred entrants here, from all over The Mucklands. It made Soren smirk and shake his head, when he had first entered the Final Peaks tournament for children under the age of eight there had been at least four thousand children competing.

  And on to part 2!

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  Dosei