Chapter 2. The Very Unlucky City
1205 Words
The canal port city of Pi-Ahch-Ugg was one of the most beautiful on the planet.
Student bag packers and other tourist came from all over the Sunite Empire to view some of the greatest collected works of art in existence.
The Satite empire had far more limited access, however, as the art was seen as belonging to the whole world, Some Satite citizens rich enough and well connected with the Bronze Flag Faction could still arrange a well-guarded tour.
Pi-Ahch-Ugg was very much like our real-world Venice.
Among the student backpackers was a young fourteen-year-old in a hooded jerkin and large bag on his back.
His was known only as “Dice”.
He had only been dice for a few weeks but despite this, not many knew his real name, and Dice himself had forgotten it now.
He did the normal tourist thing, but at each centre of great art, he barely paid any attention.
Instead, he would sit in a corner of the greatest buildings and fiddle with a twenty-sided dice for an hour or so then seem to get bored and then leave.
If anyone did notice him, the only thought that they spared him was, ’It is such a pity that some teenagers can not appreciate art these days’.
As the sun set the city buzzed with excitement.
For tonight was the legendary masked carnival night of Pi-Ahch-Ugg!
Most had started their work on their amazing costumes for this yearly event over eighteen months ago!
Unsurprisingly the birth rate usually spiked roughly nine months after each carnival.
No one judges those mothers whose children born at that time just happen not to look too much like their supposed father.
It was part of the local culture to see a ‘Pie Carnival’ child as lucky to befriend!
As the night drew in, more and more costumes and music filled the street.
For some reason tonight, there were a load of white draped figures with very plain white masks.
People were polite to them but only polite, no one liked tourist that can not be bothered to put a decent amount of effort into the occasion!
The merchant prince of Pi-Ahch-Ugg waved from the carnival float as it slowly went through the festival. The merchant prince scattered gold coins to the cheering crowds in handfuls.
Of course, there were some sensible security precautions.
Lines of crossbowmen and combat casters lined the tops of all the grandest art buildings keeping the Marchant price-protected.
And the glamourous scantly clad beauties lining the Merchants Princes float pretended to be mindless male and female bimbos but in reality, they were all highly trained counter assassins with very good acting skills.
In a corner, a bored-looking sulky teenager in a dark hood played and fiddle with his twenty-sided dice.
It was a perfectly normal twenty-sided dice,
The teenager widely rolled the dice against a nearby wall and let it settle.
It was not a trick dice.
The teenager rolled the dice off a nearby wall and let it settle again, and over again.
But each time the teenager rolled it, it always came up as a natural twenty.
After the hundredth natural twenty, there was a large rumble and a lot of building started to suddenly collapse.
This boy nicknamed, “Dice” did not even bother to look up.
A face, deep inside him, smiled.
No one expected all the grandest buildings to start spontaneously collapsing with all those protecting crossbowmen and combat wizards on top!
There were no obvious attacks, bombs of explosions.
They simply collapsed from normal ageing.
All such buildings needed constant vital upkeep.
It was an uphill battle to keep them standing.
The critical weaknesses were already inherent in all those buildings.
There was always a statistical one in one in two hundred and fifty thousand chance each day of one of these spontaneous building collapses happening.
The statistical chance of them all collapsing at the same time at that same moment was astronomical, but the chance however small, still statistically existed!
It was just very unlucky that they all collapse now.
And it was just a total coincidence that as they fell, that all the with robed figure took off their disguises to reveal tentacled faced deep ones from the darkest underwater sea trenches!
The ‘deep ones’ attacked the city.
As people screamed and died, larger tentacle things produced their long slimy appendages from under the surface of all the canals.
Meanwhile, Around the world,
Deep ones and sea monsters were attacking all the sea and coastal assets of all Hitt Phugs many identities, both those of the four merchant princes and the three pirate kings identities.
Hitt Phugs little empire was being systematically and thoroughly destroyed, worldwide.
Back at Pi-Ahch-Ugg.
The “Models” on the merchant princes float dropped all pretence and clicked into a professional fighting state of mind.
A variety of weapons were produced from a huge number of hiding places.
But despite their best efforts, they were soon overwhelmed by the deep ones as they all swarmed towards the Merchant Prince and the giant tentacles from the canals either side consecrated on that one float.
This merchant prince was just one of the many fake identities of Hitt Phug.
Hitt Phug knew that no enemies of the Merchant Prince identity had these kinds of resources or hated this identity enough to go to this much trouble.
This meant someone somewhere knew who he, Hitt Phug really was or the power that Hitt Phug might really wield!
Hitt Phug drew his weapon and prepared to fight Phug Family style!
The tide of the float battle turned as soon as Hitt Phug joined the combat in earnest.
Deep ones fell left and right as he revealed skills that he had hidden from the world for over a decade.
It felt good to be able to fight like a Phug again!
Then things started to go embarrassingly wrong.
Despite hours of trained footwork on a variety of uneven surfaces, out of just pure simple bad luck, Hitt Phug Slipped.
But his high training kicked in and Hitt Phug recovered.
Then he, very unluckily, slipped again.
At that point, Hitt Phug knew some sort of magic was being cast at him.
A man with Hitt Phug resources had some of the best counter magic items money could buy.
If any sort of spell was getting past those then he must be fighting something extraordinarily powerful!
Hitt Phug only knew one sort of being that could be that powerful.
A person with an imperial Soul Seal!
Only ten such beings were known to exist in the world!
(There were actually twenty-five such beings on this world, only twenty of them were Satite or Sunite imperial ones – each empire had ten only each! but almost no one knew that!)
More strokes of constant bad luck kept happening to Hitt Phug, until he was finally defeated.
But Hitt Phug was not being assassinated, only captured.
As Hitt Phug was beaten down and tied up, the young man called Dice strode up to him.
“Hello Mr Hitt Phug,” Said Dice leaning down and smiling.
- Writer
