<div dir="ltr"><div>Working title. This tale has a bit of a flexible date, so I'm not assigning one quite yet. The actual tournament can change a bit to accommodate OCs, but most will remain the same. </div>-LurkingWolf ____________________ Training Paula had become more and more involved for Lois. The former assassin pushed her as hard as she could handle, and she was beginning to respond to the training more and more successfully. She was already giving him some good fights, but Lois was becoming worried. If she became too used to just his one combat style, varied though it was, then she would have trouble adjusting to other opponents. With a change in pace long overdue, Lois took Paula to the training fields early one afternoon. He had expected just to find a few men that he could recruit to help him show some variety to Paula, but what he found was that the fields were being overtaken by some sort of hubbub. Lois looked on quietly, Paula following just off of his tail, watching the odd scene on the training fields. Three men stood on a trio of barrels which had been pushed together in a makeshift platform, calling out to different portions of the small crowd as questions echoed from all sides. Just visible to one side, written in legible, if not particularly elegant, script, was a notice of a small pugilism tournament. The writing made reading it more difficult, but after a few moments, Lois finally made it out. "All fighters to the rings to-day! Crown the King of Fighters!" A smaller notice written below read. "Contributions required for participation, the first half to the winner, and the other to remember the Fallen of Bradanes." Lois raised a brow at this, but he noticed as he turned back to the trio of men on the makeshift platform that Paula had already made her way towards their perch. Lois stepped closer, and was able to see after a brief inspection that the well-worn hat in which they were collecting contributions had two or three coppers in it so far. The small crowd was interested more to hear the men parading atop the barrels than they were in actually participating. The ermine walked to one side, to where a fast-talking hare in patched clothing was quickly announcing to his portion of the crowd why they should consider joining. "How much for two to enter?" Lois called above the muttered questions of the gathered throng. The hare jumped down, pointing towards Lois. "Aye, there's a man whose spirit will take him places! Sir, the entrance fee is what you wish to pay. We ask at least a copper for the pot, but if you could add more it would be a certain grace for us." "By your accent I would wager that you're not of the north," Lois observed. "And freshly Cursed, too; your clothes have not been tailored correctly for your form." The hare nodded. "Correct on both counts, sir. As for my accent, it may differ by degrees from that of my countrymen, as I have traveled abroad for some time, but all of us have come from the once-great, now-plagueridden city of Bradanes. We were cursed to die there, now Cursed to live here." He smiled at the irony, showing his buck teeth. "For myself and my fellows here today I can say that our lot has been easier than most. Here with our families intact we are, but burdened now with the knowledge that there remain those not so lucky. We seek through any means possible to ease the lives of those so stricken, and with no goods to peddle, we have turned to a competition for worthy men and women to twice prove their worth: in battle, and also by helping those needier than themselves." Lois pulled out a pair of silvers from his pouch, making a show of the amount to the speaker. "Thank you, sir. For my entrance I wish to give one silver, and one to you for your most helpful information." The hare snapped a large foot to the ground quickly enough to raise a small cloud of dust. "Not so, sir! I have no need of silver. If you wish to give two, apply the second to your entrance as well." Lois feigned insult. "Is my money not for me to do with as I please? You have aided me by answering my question, and I wish to pay you for it." "I will not accept, sir, not while there remain hungry mouths to feed among my people," the hare replied, now scowling at the ermine's suggestion. Lois could have sworn that the temperature had lowered in the area, but he smiled to the hare all the same. He was always suspicious of anyone who claimed to perform charity in such a way as this, but the man's reaction convinced Lois of one of two options. Either he was earnest, and the money would be used well, or the hare was an excellent actor, in which case he had earned the coin by his performance alone already. Smile still intact, the ermine expertly tossed the coins into the hat, both landing solidly within its small circle. “That is all I needed to know, sir. Get yourself a larger hat for the pot, you may need it in a few moments.” Paula had returned to his side, smiling wryly at him. She had caught onto his intentions, and seemed quite amused by them. Before she could comment, however, her mentor suddenly dodged into the throng of interested Keepers. She heard a few words exchanged between him and another Keeper, and suddenly the man was loudly proclaiming how he would wipe the confident grin from the ermine’s face. Lois prodded him further, and the two began to scuffle until one of the men atop the barrels stopped them. “Gentlemen! There will be plenty of time for that in the ring, and far more to gain from it!” It was the hare, regaining his elevated voice and eager theatricality. The man that Lois had prodded seemed to consider before shouting in affirmation and throwing a whole crown into the hare’s hat. Suddenly, the two men were everywhere at once, challenging others to fight for everything from the pride of their country to revenge for slights others had made to their mothers. Before long, most of the crowd had thrown in, tossing coins from their purses into the hat so quickly that the three men were nearly overwhelmed. Although the other two began to have trouble coming up with words, the hare continued to throw the full weight of his quick-spoken words behind the cause. In less than an hour, the men were forced to call a halt to the entrants so that they would be able to handle it all. In far less time than it should have taken, the men had set up dueling pairs in a tournament, with the hare scrawling quick notes on the back of the sign he had set up an hour beforehand. Lois grinned to his partner in crime as he handed him two crowns in recompense for his help. The ermine was not often so free with his money, but those two crowns had earned back far more than their own worth in the hat. He was so busy smiling that he failed to notice the mousy old woman who crept up beside him. She had been Cursed with the form of a mouse, but she wore the form well, down to the twitch of the whiskers she gave as she smiled up at the ermine. “Thank you for that,” she said in a quiet, creaky voice. Lois turned back to look at her, surprised at her sudden appearance. “For what?” he asked innocently. “I saw what you did there. I thought when those three took it into their heads to do something so foolhardy as this that it would end in failure, and I warned them. I guess sometimes it pays to be a fool, and young Emery is quite the example of that.” “The hare?” Lois inquired. The mouse nodded. “He was born in Bradanes, and raised most of his life there. When he claims that he lost no family to the plague, it is because he had none left to lose. They all died when his house caught ablaze, and when we found him he was being cradled in his mother’s arms. He grew up swearing to leave the place to escape those memories, and leave he did with a traveling carnival. By the time he returned, Bradanes was a city of dying men. We were poisoned and disfigured, waiting to die. Emery returned to find it in such a state, and rather than leave he swore to save it. Few knew of him; one brave voice among the hundreds of suffering was easily drowned out. Those who heard his messages scornfully asked what he knew; he had not succumbed to the poison, he could only watch as the city withered and died.” Lois turned back to watch the hare, who was energetically speaking with another of the refugees who had joined him in the endeavor. “He seems quite driven,” he commented. “You don’t know the half of it. When the bitter insults began to fly at him, he did the only thing he could think of to respond to them. He drank of the poisoned water himself.” Lois’ mouth went dry. The hare he was watching had barely entered his adulthood. Had he really been willing to cast away what remained of his life to better help others? What did that say of him? “We destroyed the wells and left Bradanes not long after, but when we did he came with, us, covered in rags to hide his own plague-distorted face.” She smiled. “He was a handsome fellow, it was good to see the Curse graciously returned some of that to him.” Lois was almost tempted to call the whole story a bluff, but as he watched the men who were rapidly putting together the bracket for an impromptu tournament he could not bring himself to believe the suspicion. It was unlikely, but the way the men were quickly separating the pot into two halves, one for the winner and one for their cause, he could see on their face an expression of joy. It wasn’t the pleased, scheming look of men who had made a haul through deception. It was instead the faces of men who had set out to accomplish an unlikely work, and somehow it had come together despite the odds against it. He nodded and smiled to the mouse beside him. “I am glad to have been able to help, ma’am. Now if you will excuse me, I believe that this tournament is about to begin.” He gave her one last smile before heading towards the rings where the hare was beginning to summon those who had joined the competition. </div>