When Shini exits the secret room, she finds that the walls have transformed into those of Elidon's hideout. The cultist is nowhere to be found. Elidon is sitting on a bench, leaning forward on a purple cane with a white orb that rests just below his chin.
Based on the given information, Shini makes a few inferences. One, she and Elidon have been transported back to Elidon's hideout somehow; two, Elidon must really like purple; three, Elidon must have created the cane somehow. After his display of utter power against Shini earlier, she feels that she should take careful note of what Elidon does, and how he does it. Elidon uses four fingers to point next to him on the bench. Shini takes careful note of the odd point. Most people point with only one finger, or two if they want to be different from others. A four finger point is unheard of, and must be the component of some kind of spell.
"You don't have to sit, I was just offering," Elidon breaks the tension, and Shini's train of thought. He correctly assumes that Shini was thinking deeply about something insignificant, "I just wanted to talk with you. I figured it would be easier if you were sitting."
Shini doesn't understand how it would be easier if she were sitting, so she takes note of that. She snaps out of her nonsensical thinking, decides to play Elidon's obvious mind game, and sits down, "You wanted to talk?" she asks.
"I did," he places his hand back on top of the orb on his cane, "about the cloth from earlier."
Shini did not want to talk about that. "It should be returned to the owner," she replies immediately.
"Well, you're holding it, aren't you?" Shini nods, "So isn't it yours then?"
"No."
"What would make it yours?" Shini ponders the question, "Nothing, right?" Shini nods slowly, "Then you can borrow it."
"Not without asking the owner."
'Checkmate. Game, set, match,' Shini thinks to herself as she racks her brain for more colloquialisms for winning. It would be impossible to find the owner, because there was no owner. She was finally able to not take the cloth, and she felt at ease.
"I can't argue with that," Elidon compromises. Shini eased even further, enough to be relaxed about the whole situation. Elidon shrugs, and meanders out the door, "Stay right there, I'll be right back."
So Shini obliged, and stayed right there. She occupied herself by being tired some more, and relaxed even deeper. Elidon eventually returned, this time with Ghizh in tow.
"That's my rival!" He shouts. Elidon nudges him, "I mean- and my cloak!"
"Ghizh here claims to be the owner of that cloak."
This one is just about wrapped up, Elidon thinks to himself as he tries so desperately to think of another analogy for this argument being over.
"Yeah, that's right," Ghizh exclaims as he sticks his chin up, "so give it here," he holds out his hand. Shini obliges easily, and wins her battle with Elidon. "With this battle won," Ghizh continues, "our rivalry is finally over. An eye for an eye, tit for tat."
"Very good, very good," Elidon leans in, "you do remember the plan right? You're going to give it back to her," he whispers to Ghizh.
Ghizh deliberates for a moment, and motions for Elidon to huddle up with him, facing away from Shini, "If I give it back, I'll lose," he whispers.
"Well that can't happen… why will it be a loss?"
"Because I'll be giving back the thing that let me win in the first place."
Elidon stands up straight for a second, and glances towards Shini. She is very clearly somewhere else. He drops back down to the huddle, "I think, if you give it back, it's the ultimate win."
Ghizh squints deeply, "How?"
"Because you'll be demonstrating that you didn't even need it in the first place."
"And what would that do? Just show that I was fighting just for the sake of fighting? Just to spite her? That would be the ultimate loss, not the ultimate win. I'd look like a fool."
Elidon is surprised by Ghizh's eloquent argument, "You said that she beat you once before, right?"
"No, I never said that. But yes, she did," he scratches his chin, "What does that have to do with this?"
"Well… what did she beat you in? How did she beat you?"
"She beat me in a fight. In a rather convincing fashion."
"So then you would need to beat her in a similarly convincing fashion to be even."
"Which I did."
"Not quite, friend," Elidon shakes his head. A confused expression crosses Ghizh's face, "she values the cloth highly, but not highly enough."
"So I need to get something that is of higher value."
Elidon snaps, "Exactly. And you have to trade the cloth to get it."
"Why can't I just keep the cloth, and get something else that's higher in value to her, but low enough in value that I wouldn't need to give her the cloth?"
"Because I need you to give her the cloth. That part doesn't have to do with you winning."
"So why should I do it?"
"Do you know of anything that would be able to let you win?"
"No, I'm afraid not. But you do?"
"Not necessarily, but I can definitely figure something out."
"And why can't I?"
"You could, but it will be easier for me."
"And why's that?"
"I don't think you would really understand if I told you."
"And why's that?"
"Because you're a little stupid."
"And why's- no! That's not true! Tell me."
"I have some leads on where to find something that could help you win."
"How?"
"That's what you'd be confused about."
"And why's that?"
"We've been over this."
Ghizh thinks about if they had been over it. He couldn't remember, so he moved on, "Couldn't you just tell me what those leads are."
"I could… but then I'd lose all my leverage."
Ghizh thinks for a second, and bobs his head side to side, "You seem to know what you're talking about on some things. I'll go along with it," Elidon smiles, "but first, you need to tell me who you are, where I am, and what's going on."
Elidon claps him on the shoulder, "Okay, probably eventually," he turns towards Shini, only to discover that she is very clearly somewhere else, "Listen, you need to go find her. I'll be looking into how you can win."
Elidon disappears from the lair.
Ghizh is left alone in the purple room, knowing only that he is in a purple room, and that he is supposed to find Shini somewhere in this purple lair of other purple rooms. He starts walking, with no clear goal in mind, towards Shini. Possibly. He is possibly, maybe moving towards Shini. Potentially. Ghizh doesn't know much about Shini. All he knows is that she carries a large sword, has dark, maybe red skin, has one horn, and is wearing a bathrobe. And he knows that she must dislike him, for her to beat him that badly in their fight.
Ghizh hadn't really ever lost anything before his fight with Shini.
This would give the appearance that he is talented in a wide array of things, but this is pitifully not the case. Ghizh is just very cautious, and very knowledgeable on things that he thinks he would lose. He avoids these activities, and chooses only to partake in things he can win. The list of things Ghizh can win is a very short list. Some things Ghizh can do are: pick fruits from bushes and trees (although that has gone awry several times), play chess with his younger sister (although he has noticed that his sister is slowly catching up to his ability), walk the family dog (although the family dog is getting quite old, and is not so much a fan of walks anymore), and be better than his no-good, lazy, younger brother (although, recently, his brother has been steadily climbing the gladiator rankings, which is why Ghizh started fighting in the first place). The newest addition to Ghizh's list of things he can win is "navigating the purple lair." He has the whole labyrinth locked down to a perfect map. How, you may ask? Well he certainly wouldn't tell you. In fact, he would ask you, just so he knew that you knew. He sticks his hand on the wall as he walks, convinced that it will do something, and keeps moving.
~
After walking around for a good while, Ghizh discovers that he has discovered absolutely nothing. Determining that searching for Shini was an activity that he could lose, he chose to instead sit still, and let Shini find him. Being found seemed like something that was much easier than finding someone else, therefore, it would be much harder to lose at that.
~
So he waited for a good while, and when Shini did not find him after that, he determined that this was also something that he could lose. He decided, at the end of his thinking, that he would just go to sleep instead. He could not lose at sleeping (although he did have a hard time sleeping on occasion, due to being so consumed with the idea that he could lose). So Ghizh dozed off.
~
After several hours of wandering around the purple lair, Shini walks back to the room where Ghizh and Elidon talked to her. At least, she thinks it's the same room. It looks like all the other rooms- purple- so she's not sure why she thinks this room is the one she should be in. Ghizh and Elidon are also not in this room, so her confidence in this room was gone. Some snoring noises float into the room shortly after she arrives. Shini stops for a second to try to locate where the snoring is wandering in from. Or maybe it was just her stomach. She was feeling pretty hungry. Her confidence in her hunger dissipated when she heard the noise again. Shini's stomach never really growled more than once in rapid succession, so she knew for a fact that it was snoring.
Although there was that one time…
"Shini?" Elidon walks through the wall. Shini has a hard time processing this, so she just pretends to ignore it, "Why are you standing there?"
"Thought you two were in this room." Ghizh wanders back into the room, rubbing his eyes, "You two are in this room."
"I heard a- oh, I found her," Ghizh looks at Elidon, "So how flies the eagle?"
The speaking in code is not lost on Shini nor Elidon, but Shini lacks critical information. She doesn't understand what the eagle stands for, so it's pretty hard to crack the code. She gives up shortly after learning of the code's existence.
"The eagle flies swimmingly," Elidon responds, thoroughly throwing Shini off the scent, "Now, another egg has hatched, so we must help this baby eagle fly as well."
Thoroughly confused as well by the metaphor, Ghizh speaks up, "And why exactly do we need to do that?"
"The main goal of all animals is to maximise their evolutionary fitness. Now what this means-" Elidon realizes that it would just be a waste of everyone's time to begin explaining evolutionary psychology, "let's just go. You two both have a fight in the arena. In Petunia town."
"No, thanks," Shini and Ghizh say at the same time. Shini did not say thanks, however.
"Well, both of you have to."
"You're forcing us to fight?" Ghizh asks.
"No, I mean you both need to. You're drawn to fighting in the arena."
Shini recoils slightly. She's offended by Elidon's statement. She wasn't DRAWN to the arena, she didn't WANT to fight. She was forced to, against her will. So he was right. She did HAVE to fight. But him being right didn't make it less offensive to her. In fact, it just made it more offensive to her. Because even though he was right, he didn't know why he was right. He could never know why, yet he was spot on.
"No I'm not! I just chose to fight because I wanted to.. and that's all."
"But you're not thinking deep enough, my boy," Elidon turns to face Ghizh, addressing him personally, "Why do you want to win? Why do you NEED to win?"
Ghizh thinks for a moment, "So- to- for money."
"For money?" Ghizh nods in response, "That's not true."
Ghizh punches the air, "How'd you know?"
"Why are you doing it? Really, I mean really really."
Shini takes note of the repetition from Elidon. It could be that repeating words for emphasis is… important in some way. Maybe some sort of wizard thing that she would never understand. She was noticing that there were a lot of wizard things going on.
"Well," Ghizh scratches his cheek, "because I can win. I know I can."
"But you lost, didn't you?"
"And that's why I'm not doing it anymore."
"Well I suppose that makes sense," Elidon taps his foot and looks at the ground for an answer. There's a bit of silence as Ghizh and Elidon shift around in place.
"No it doesn't," Shini points out, "that doesn't make any sense."
"Why not?" Elidon asks as he keeps looking at the ground in front of him.
Shini isn't quite sure why it doesn't make sense, but she knows it's wrong, "You only lost once."
"Which is more than I've lost at anything else."
"So what? What's bad about losing?"
"Well… you lose."
"What are you-" Shini rubs her temples, "are you really THAT stupid."
"I am no such thing," Ghizh pauses, "unless the meaning of 'stupid' has changed recently."
"It hasn't." Shini assures him.
"What?"
"What?"
"What hasn't changed?"
"I have a challenge for you," Elidon interrupts, "Ghizh. If that's alright."
"If what's all right?"
"If issuing a challenge is alright. That's what I'm saying."
"Oh, yeah. That'd be all right. What's your challenge?"
"Hey, we were-" Shini tries to get a word in.
"I challenge you to fight with Shini in the arena."
"No."
"Why not?" Shini and Elidon ask. Shini realizes that she asked out loud, and quickly looks in a different direction, trying to play it off.
She wasn't offended or anything, so there was no reason to ask all offended-like. She just didn't want it to come across that she was offended, because she wasn't at all.
"I didn't mean to offend you," Ghizh says to Shini, but Shini pretends that he said it to someone else, "I just can't."
"Because you would lose?"
"Exactly," Ghizh exclaims, "I'm glad you finally understand."
"But you just lost right now," Shini points out. Both Ghizh and Elidon look at her quizzically, "what? He lost."
"What do you mean? How? How did I lose whatever I lost?" Ghizh begins to panic.
"No, you-" Elidon tries to get a word in.
"Because you didn't do what the challenge asked you to."
"What do you mean? How?"
"It's really not-" Elidon starts again.
"The challenge was for you to fight in the arena, and you chose to not fight in the arena. And you accepted the challenge."
Elidon tries to interrupt again, "Well he didn't necessarily-"
"Right. I did accept."
"So you failed the challenge."
Ghizh's entire life flashes by in a matter of moments. 'I totally, utterly, forlornly lost,' he thinks to himself. and he had to deal with that somehow. Because, as far as he knew, he had never lost before, so he had never learned how to properly cope with losing. In his eyes, he was incapable of losing, so to do something he was incapable of- to do something he was incapable of…
…
"That's it!" Ghizh startles Elidon and Shini, "By losing, I can win!"
"What? Never mind," Shini asks before remembering that she doesn't care.
"If I make my goal to lose, then I'll be winning."
"And what if you win?" Elidon asks.
"Use your head for once, you old bag: if I win, then I win. Duuuuh."
"But if-" Shini starts talking, but stops when Elidon kicks her leg.
"You're right, that makes total sense," Elidon laughs, "anyway, when do you think you'll be ready to fight?"
"Well… well I think right now."
"Right now?!" Elidon lights up with glee.
"Right now!" Ghizh mirrors Elidon's excitement, "Yeah! Right now!" They both turn to Shini. She gives them a look that would turn bread to mold, "Or-?"
"What do you think, Shini?" Elidon asks.
She slowly, angrily marches out of the room, shaking her head, "I hate petunia town."
Elidon follows behind her, and Ghizh follows closely behind him, until someone tells him not to. He's not sure who told him, but he knows someone somewhere said something about staying behind.
"What's wrong?" Elidon asks as he enters the room Shini stops in. She's shuffling through the cabinet in the corner of the room.
"hungry," is all she says.
"You've sure made yourself at home," Elidon jokes. Shini doesn't respond. Elidon sighs, and starts to speak.
He's interrupted by Shini, "if you're going to manipulate people, then I don't feel bad about stealing food."
"Manipulate? When did I-?"
"it's not like you'd understand. you'd obviously think you did nothing wrong. let me eat first," she continues to scrounge through the cabinet. Elidon watches her do so for a minute.
"I'm sure that how we're letting Ghizh live with his losing was wrong in some way," Shini stops and turns to him, "but being so direct, so quickly could be harmful to him as well. I think both of us were in the wrong, even though neither of us thinks so."
Shini wouldn't have even known how to respond to that on a full stomach. She returned to scrounging for food.
And she wasn't in the wrong! Obviously…
"There's food in the top cabinet," Elidon motions towards the cabinet, and moves to the table in the center of the room.
"why didn't you tell me that?"
"It was funny watching you struggle a little bit."
"people struggling is funny to you?" She grabs hold of something she assumes to be food. It's a small box with an "E" on top. It has four sections, and the top two both open in separate directions like a clam.
"Only when they're strong. It's a funny contrast."
"what are you talking about?" She takes a bite of the- maybe- edible thing in the box.
"I mean that you're a very capable person otherwise. It's funny to see you struggle with little stuff, like the bathtub earlier."
But it wasn't little for Shini. Not that she would be able to say that out loud, "Whatever." She sits on the floor, "What is this?"
"You know, people usually ask that before they start eating," Shini slowly takes a bite, "A hamburger."
"What's with the box then?"
"It's branding. I'm trying to make a business, sell food."
"Why do you wanna do that?" Shini asks through a mouthful of her food, "Just be the champion of the arena."
"That wouldn't be right," Elidon slumps down, and takes a seat at the table in the center, "I feel like you should understand that more than anyone else. Don't you want to sit at the table?"
"The floor's fine. The floor's good. And it makes sense, what you said about it not being right," She actually didn't really understand. "So, when's the first fight?"
"At 15 o' timey."
"And what o' timey is it now?"
Elidon looks down at his wrist, "13 o' timey. And a half."
"So… what does that mean?"
"We have one and a half… timey units? Until the fight."
Shini chews slowly, "Is that a lot?"
Elidon thinks for a moment, "Not really. Relatively, I guess. It'd be about the same time as a trip to Gohushu."
"Gohushu? Like the town?" Elidon nods. Shini sits completely still for a moment. The contents in her mouth eject into the box, and she follows up by shoving her fingers as far back into her mouth as they can go.
"What are you-?" More and more contents eject from Shini's mouth onto the floor, "Explain please?" Elidon croaks out in confusion.
However, Shini could not explain at the moment, as she was busy vomiting. After she finished, she shivers, exhales sharply, and wipes her mouth. "sorry. I can't eat before a fight."
"And so you- so you just-" Elidon stops, and rubs the bridge of his nose in exasperation, "You could have gone about that a different way, you know."
Shini contemplates his statement for a moment, and nods in agreement, "yeah I know. sorry."
"You already apologized," Elidon sighs, "it's okay. Can you just clean it up, please?" Shini nods, and Elidon hands her a mop. However, to Shini, it was a completely foreign object. And the fact that Elidon pulled it out- seemingly- of nowhere didn't help her confusion.
"yeah, of course," she grabs the mop with one hand, and slapshots the vomit onto the far wall, "I'm sorry. that wasn't right. I don't know what this thing is. how do I use this?"
Elidon's head drops back, as he stands silently for a moment. "It's okay," he finally mutters, "Just do it with less power, please. Gently."
"like this?" Shini slowly wipes the vomit down the wall, "I feel like-"
"It's better."
The two spend an excruciating amount of time cleaning up the rest of the vomit. Far longer than any group of people should spend cleaning up vomit.
"how long left now?" Shini asks after she cleans the last of the vomit.
"One… timey unit. What do you think I should call the timey units?"
"timeys. how long is one timey?"
"Well this one's about as long as- oh, you meant how long is a timey unit." He thinks for a second, "One trip to Gohushu by dustslider."
Shini didn't know what a dustslider was, "oh yeah, okay. makes sense, yeah. so should we go soon then?"
"No we have plenty of timeys. Let's get Ghizh."
"You called?" Ghizh says as he walks in, "Why does it smell so bad in here?"
"It's by design," Elidon replies, "Are you ready for the fight?"
"Always! How many timettes until it's time?"
"Sorry? Just one? Timettes? It's at 15 o' timey."
"Oh, then we have plenty of time."
"how do you know about all that? nobody ever explained it to you, right?"
"No, but- well, I found this somewhere in here," Ghizh holds up a purple timey, "and I figured it out after a while."
"Figured it out?" Elidon gawks at Ghizh, "How did you do that?"
"What do you mean how?" Ghizh glares at Elidon, "I just figured it out, okay? The hands on the timey point to numbers. The big one is for the numbers that go higher for time, so the second slot, and the little one does the first numbers. So, right now, the little hand is pointing at 13 and the big hand is pointing near 58. That means it's 13:58."
Elidon laughs, "Of course! That's how I designed it. I'm proud of you!"
Ghizh's glare slowly melts into a look of pure shock, "You… 're proud of me?"
"Of course, you figured out my machine on your own. That's a tremendous accomplishment."
Ghizh's look of shock melts further, into one of embarrassment, "Well, come on. It's not that big of a deal, right?"
"it's fine," Shini assures Ghizh, "I figured it out pretty easily," she said, knowing full well that she did not know how the timey worked at all.
"See?" Ghizh shrugs to Elidon.
"No, I think that it's a great achievement," he turns to Shini, making sure his gaze burns into her, "you even inspired me in how to make it better."
Ghizh's look of embarrassment melts EVEN further, into one of pure excitement, "I did?!?! What'd I do?!"
"Well, initially, I didn't really have that much of a detailed explanation for the timey hands, but I like yours a lot. It also works in a scientific way. And the name, timettes. I was struggling to think of a name."
Ghizh did not know what scientific was, "What???" He asks with a beaming smile still stretched across his face, "But cool!"
Elidon smiles at Ghizh, "Sometimes. Even I need help. Everyone. Needs help sometimes."
The emphasis Elidon used in his speech was not lost on Shini. She chose to believe that, instead of the statement being aimed at her, it was some sort of strange wizard thing.
"That's a really great lesson, fa- Elidon!"
Elidon nods with a smile, pats Ghizh on the shoulder, then starts off in the direction Ghizh came from, "Now we should go. The fight is in less than 1/3 of a timette."
"Really? But I thought-" Ghizh checks his timey to see that it's now 14:40, "we've just been standing here for that long?" Ghizh asks, not sure whether to trust his sense of time, or the crazy old man who invented it.
"Yes, we have," Elidon responded. However they hadn't waited that long. But, in a way, they had. "In a way, I mean."
"what does that mean?" Shini asks.
"It means that we ought to get going. Only 1/10 of a timette left now, we're running short on time."
"Right, off we go then!" Ghizh exclaims as he marches off with Elidon.
Shini follows behind with no further question asked. She did have a lot of questions, but none that would get answered, so she didn't ask them.
And so began their journey. It's too early to say whether it'll be some grand journey, one worthy of some stellar adjectives. So, for now, it's just their journey.