‘What are they?’ Lex asked suspiciously, remembering how Jeremiah had mentioned hero points to him back at the Wither City.
‘We’re trying to decrease the death rate a little, you see,’ Lady Luck replied. ‘It ruins the Game a bit if too many people perish in the first or second round. It doesn’t make the last round so exciting if the players aren’t all there. So, starting from this Game, if you see another player in mortal peril during the course of a round and you save their lives rather than leaving them to die, you’ll be awarded hero points, which will contribute to your overall score. Ditto if you perform some particularly noble or self-sacrificing or just generally heroic act during the round.’
Lex pulled a face. He didn’t like the sound of that one bit. ‘But wouldn’t that mean that someone? say me? could win the round but end up with the same number of points as someone who didn’t win, just because they happened to perform a few so-called heroic deeds?’
‘Well, theoretically, I suppose,’ Lady Luck replied. ‘The hero points don’t apply to your companions though. Otherwise we could be in a situation where the player was constantly saving their own companion in a contrived manner and being awarded points for it. So the hero points only apply between players.’
‘Are there any other new rules?’ Lex asked, hoping that there weren’t, for he didn’t much care for the ones he’d learned about so far.
‘I don’t think so, dear. Do you remember any other new rules, Jesse?’ she asked the cowboy.
Jesse shook his head. ‘Can’t say that I do, ma’am.’
‘No, I think we’ve covered everything, Lex. Now I really must go. You need to get a good night’s sleep before the penalty round tomorrow.’
So the Goddess took her leave and Jesse went down to the hold below to sleep with Rusty. Silvi looked like she was thinking of following him but Lex called her back. She was his griffin after all and he was used to her sleeping on his bed. During the course of the last Game he had shared this room with Lucius and Mr Schmidt and it would have seemed quite lonely there all by himself without the griffin.
Lex got into bed and Silvi curled up next to him. Lex lay awake for a while, stroking her feathers and thinking about the upcoming Game. He’d had rather an undignified start, it was true, but the Game itself would be glorious. He was quite sure in his mind about that..
The next day, Lex completed the penalty task fairly easily with only the minor hiccup of almost falling to his death. Fortunately, the black griffin, Monty, saved him just in time and Lex completed the task all in one piece and with the golden egg that was his ticket back into the Game. The ship then set sail for the Sea Volcanoes where the first round was to take place? right at the very edge of the world.
When the first Adventurers started exploring a hundred years or so ago with their Chroniclers, many did not come back. There were countless theories as to why this was the case. Some believed that they got lost; others thought the Adventurers settled in new, tropical lands full of lush greenery and beautiful, half-naked women serving them coconut milk all day long; and some believed that they simply got eaten by sea monsters.
It was only later they suspected that most of the missing Adventurers had inadvertently sailed right over the edge of the world. The evidence for this was the sudden appearance of the Sea Volcanoes. They towered up out of the ocean and, like icebergs, there was even more of them beneath the surface. They were situated right at the very edge of the world, keeping the water in. And all along their base, down on the seabed, were the wrecks of thirty or forty sunken ships.
But the strange thing was that the ancient maps had no record of the Sea Volcanoes, and some Adventurers swore that they’d been in that area before? almost close enough to see the Edge itself? but that the volcanoes hadn’t been there then. There was no official explanation but it was widely believed that the Gods had put the volcanoes there later because of the fact that the location and the currents in this particular area meant ships were susceptible to sailing right over the Edge and the Gods wanted to put a stop to it. It wasn’t difficult to believe. After all, the Gods did live in the Lands Beneath and anyone would start getting a bit fed up after the twentieth ship came crashing down from the Lands Above, breaking things and cluttering up the landscape. If any ship were to get near to the Edge now, it would just be smashed against the volcanoes and sink to the seabed.
The Sea Volcanoes were a striking, majestic sight, rising up out of the water like noble guardians of the ocean and the men who sailed it. What made the sight particularly rewarding as Lex’s enchanted ship approached it was that Saydi’s sun was in the sky that day. As the Goddess of Beauty, Saydi’s sun made the air sweet and fresh, and brought loveliness to the landscape whether it was sunny or rainy.
Today, Saydi had cooled the rays of her sun enough that star-sleet fell softly from the sky. This was a special kind of sleet that only Saydi could produce. It sparkled silver like the stars, twinkling and shimmering as it fell, until finally it faded away like a dying glow-worm. It did not leave the skin wet, for it would not do for people to be uncomfortable and thus less able to appreciate Saydi’s beautiful handiwork. So, although Lex stood at the prow of his ship surrounded by falling star-sleet, he was not wet. The sleet broke apart when it touched his skin, fading away and leaving behind nothing more than a faint tingling. But the sleet did not disappear when it touched the cold volcanoes and they currently looked like they were covered in a silver, sparkling coat of star-frost.
It was breathtakingly lovely, complemented by the calm dolphin-grey sea and the two-tone sky. It was bright blue where Lex had come from but, as they got nearer to the Edge, it became darker until it was a sort of velvet navy colour on this side of the Sea Volcanoes, melting into star-spangled black beyond them where the sky gave way to space.
There was even a cafe built on stilts at the base of the volcanoes. After all, when a mysterious volcano range suddenly appears on the landscape and may erupt at any moment, what could be more natural than to build a cafe right there beside it? Actually, it only served tea and scones, so it was more of a teashop, really, than a cafe. And a ridiculously overpriced teashop at that. But why not? The Sea Volcanoes were, quite literally, at the edge of the world, which meant that only the very rich could come here. Lex knew the type: men with monocles and women who thought nothing said sophistication quite like a hat piled high with fruit.
There was a little pier at the cafe only big enough for about four or five boats. One large tourist boat was moored there already but Lex could see no sign of Jeremiah’s boat, or Lorella’s? assuming that she was even coming by boat.
Ha, he thought smugly to himself, even with the penalty round slowing him down he was still the first one here!
He was early, in fact. The round wasn’t due to start until twelve noon and it was only just gone eleven o’clock. But it never hurt to scope out the surrounding area a bit first. Lady Luck had told him that the Sea Volcano teashop would be charging more than double what it usually charged because, today, its patrons would be having the honour of witnessing part of the Game first hand, and that was quite something even if it didn’t extend past seeing the players turn up.
There were a lot of posh-looking people currently on the teashop’s veranda, sitting at the tables with their scones and tea, or else standing at the railings, gawking at Lex’s beautiful enchanted ship as it approached. Lex manoeuvred it into the pier and was gratified to see that all the toffs were on their feet by then, applauding him from the veranda. At least they were clapping this time rather than laughing. It boosted Lex’s confidence a little and almost made him think better of what he was about to do. Almost. When the ship came to a halt he gave them a sweeping bow and a wave before disappearing back inside. The ship was huge and he was confident that no one down on the pier would have seen his face too clearly from that distance, which was good because he wanted to have a little wander about down there without people being all over him.
He went down to the enchanter’s wardrobe. When he’d first acquired the ship, the wardrobe had mostly been full of the tall, pointed hats the enchanters favoured, which had been very useful to Lex because it transpired that enchanters kept some of their magic in their hats, which meant that, when Lex put one on, he could perform a bit of magic, too. Of course, human minds weren’t built for magic and Lex put himself in terrible danger each time he used it. There had been a couple of rather horrible side effects and talk of brain haemorrhages and unpleasant things like that.
Lex had therefore faithfully promised his brother, Lucius, that, no matter what happened during the course of this new Game, he would never put an enchanter’s hat on again. Lex hadn’t exactly been lying when he’d said that… but he’d only half meant it. He certainly meant to avoid the hats if he could help it but… if the situation was really desperate, to the point that he didn’t have anything to lose by trying, well, he certainly wasn’t going to rule the possibility out completely.
