The Play is Set

Anera was there again. She was outside Jenn’s room and waited in the same position Filly did. Back against the wall. Eyes, prepped for what was to come. Jenn watched her with steady eyes. She did not know why Anera was here, but remained on edge all the same.

“Our King is an engine,” said she. “He is as man as the ashes of a once living body. He must go where he was bound to go.”

This was pretty blatant. Chances are, she knew Jenn was there.

“Sure,” Jenn mumbled in reply. “Take him on holiday or something. Have a beach episode.”

“What point would there be?

“Ever heard of Helen Keller?”

Anera ignored her. “There is an expression of life at times, a faint flicker in his eyes, but those are a mummer’s farce. With no more truth than a fishwife’s gossip.”

An annoyance crept over Jenn’s features. She grunted. “So what… What do you want me to do exactly? What do you think I, Jenn of Green fucking Gables, can do to save your damn king?”

“The same thing you did to Katou Hayasugi,” replied the woman. “That is all.”

Jenn came close. She directed a questioning glare at the black-eyed woman and met her face-to-face. If the King were as vulnerable as he seemed to be.

All it would take would be her hands around his neck. No. All it would take would be a single punch to send this sack of bones crumbling. Easy as stealing candy from a paralysed, blind and deaf babe.

But then that begged the question.

“Why can’t you do it yourself?” Jenn asked, her voice annoyed.

“It is unfeasible. Do you remember the impossible question I gave? All Kings and Queens of Indaria are cursed. So long as they sit in this chair, so long as their blood supports the Kingdom to which they rule, they cannot die.”

“So they're invincible as long as they're the King or Queen… Because?”

There was indeed a long and rather convoluted explanation for all this. Involving gods of old, the heraldry of a King from Britain, and three old witches with a devil's bargain. But that was all rather unimportant to the situation. Or rather, would be a long and terribly difficult thing to explain (something the attendant no doubt understood).

“The King's blood lives in us all, you included, Jenn. And as we are his body, he is in us, and as we live, he cannot die. As has been the case for many generations prior. But your hand is different. You have taken from Katou what he thought impossible, and you may yet do the same for our one and only. We have prayed and prayed and prayed, and at last we have prayed enough!”

Jenn knew that, of course. That Katou, the H-Game Protagonist Hayasugi, was an immortal in some form. After fucking just about everyone in the Kingdom, both metaphorically and literally, he’d accumulated so many levels and HP stats that he became borderline impossible to kill.

The thing was, Jenn hadn’t fought him on those terms.

Not really.

She hadn’t so much as ‘broke through’, his HP as she had nullified it entirely. And that was through some other means. The Sixth and Final Reversion.

Anera looked up longingly, attempting to gauge her feelings. “Are you unwilling to take up the task?”

“It’s not that I’m unwilling to do this. But I have to ask this beforehand—did you, or did you not promise that the winner of the tournament would duel the King?”

“The Lord Regent,” replied the woman on the left, with a rather sour expression. “Not us. This whole tournament was his grand design.”

Jenn did not show it. But there was a vague feeling inside her. The odd sensation which pressed from the back of her brain. That told Jenn that the King, despite his current situation, was not so hopeless as he might seem.

It took her a moment to form an answer. “I’ll fight your damn King.” She moved past the attendant, shooting one last glare behind. “I’ll win the tournament. And once I do, I’ll fight him just like anyone else would. That’s my aesthetic criteria.”