The two had been travelling together for a few months. They had met one another in Proselyte. Both arrived under a different impetus and both were heading to a different destination. But for a brief interval in their long journeys their paths coincided, so they accompanied each-other north-west through the technologically advanced country of Bemean to the affluent Golden country.

The woman had long auburn hair and a curvy slender frame. She had three prominent freckles under her right eye. The woman didn’t carry an adventurer’s pack with her but instead she had a small belt wrapped around her right leg adorned with many clear pouches who seemed empty yet held an immense bounty of loot within. The woman wore a large pastel yellow dress which despite the heaviness of the fabric weightlessly floated atop the tranquil morning breeze. She carried a large heavy glaive on her back, at first glance the size of the weapon seemed far too large for a character of her size.

The man was walking next to her joined in trivial conversation. He had dirty black hair whose top knot could hardly hold back his hair’s straggly nature. The man wore a long white robe which base fell to his ankle and whose collar flared all the way up to his nose. He carried a large basket on his back filled with a collection of various fruits. A large purple rope wrapped multiple times around him to tie his costume to his waist. Stuck through the rope were two sheathes, a small plain wooden sheathe carrying a thin black knife, and a large smooth curving purple sheathe which had long been separated from its accompanying blade.

The two would pointlessly chat all day long while they trotted endlessly. They never spoke of anything of importance and they enjoyed it that way. There was once a time when the man asked the woman what her journey was for. She told him that she was searching for something stolen from her, but she didn’t think it was the type of thing that could be returned even if she found the thief. She then asked the man what his journey was for and he told her that he was searching for a place worthy of his fruit orchard. There was a silent agreement after that day to keep conversations to meaningless pleasantries.

They had just begun walking onwards early in the morning when the two had found themselves funneled in between the large walls of two facing cliffs. Vegetation struggled to survive in this rocky corridor making it seem like a sudden arid steppe. At the exit of the natural alley were five large figures. The exit was still quite some ways from where the two were, but as they approached the figures and the figures approached them, they could start making out the silhouettes of tough broad humans. When a glint of sunlight reflected off the large metal of a broadsword onto the well-worn face of a halberd, the man grabbed the woman’s wrist and turned back the way they came. When they turned around, they saw eight more heavily armed people heading their way. The woman readied her hand over her weapon handle in preparation. One of the heavier strangers heading towards them spoke up “Where are you heading off to? We don’t mean to cause a fright.”

The man with the topknot let out a sigh of relief “Oh sorry, it’s just with a whole bunch of heavily armed people blocking us off in either direction we thought we were going to be attacked by bandits.”

The heavy stranger let out a hearty chuckle “Oh no, no, this apparel is just for protective purposes. You need to be careful when travelling in these isolated roads. Some people can react rather violently to a friendly face.”

The woman lightened her grip on her weapon and relaxed her posture. She took a few steps forward and replied to the group “No kidding, I guess we might have taken that philosophy too close to heart, you saw how jumpy we were.”

The twelve men stopped approaching the group a couple of feet from them “I saw that. But don’t worry, we just hate violence. So, if you two could kindly hand over your beautiful weapons we can have a peaceful conversation.”

The two were temporarily stunned silent. They were suddenly caught off guard by the direction the conversation went. The woman suddenly clicked in her mind how they just had a strange misinterpretation. The woman replied to the group “Oh us? Don’t worry were not bandits either. Plus, even if we were, there is no way we would try to attack a large well-equipped group like yours.”

“We know. That’s why you’re going to be nice and cooperative. Now let me see that weapon of yours, your shoulders must be aching lugging that big thing around.”

The woman was thrown into confusion and was rummaging through her mind while the heavy stranger quibbled aimlessly. She finally interrupted the stranger to ask a question she was worried she knew the answer to “You guys aren’t bandits… right?”

The heavy stranger opened his arms wide and took a few steps closer to the two with a large brimming smile “What is a bandit? If not a word? I prefer to think myself a poet, a warrior of the pen not the sword. As I told you, I don’t like violence. The sight of blood makes me queasy, which is why I don’t want to see anyone hurt here. No one wants to see your beautiful face ruined.”

The man travelling with the woman gripped his empty sheathe and glared at the heavy bandit before him. “What do you want from us?”

Noticing the increased aggression from their entrapped duo, the bandits all gripped their weapons firmly and broadened their shoulders to appear larger “Well you can start with a name and your weapon.”

The man with the topknot tightened his grip on the sheathe and spoke “My name is Palmer, and this is my weapon.”

Palmer quickly extended his hand away from his sheathe, as if enticed by the movement a long-curved branch bloomed out of the sheathe and into his hand. Still within the same single motion he carried the wooden blade up smoothly slicing through the heavy bandit’s nose. The bandit quickly clasped his hands over his nose letting out a painful screech. In a strained nasally voice he yelled out to his allies “AGH! Kill that moron.”

The eleven men raised their weapons and charged inwards. Palmer jumped into the air and the woman grabbed her glaive spinning it in a full circle, the blade whistled through the air and stopped with an explosive clang against the glowing red blade of one of the bandits.

A short bandit wielding two chained sickles launched one of his sickles towards Palmer who was still in the air from his impressive bound. Palmer deflected the sickle with his wooden sword sending it into the cliff wall. The sickle then lodged itself into the cliff wall and with an unexpectedly powerful pull, the bandit pulled out the sickle along with a massive chunk of stone which bashed into Palmer’s back and sent him towards the ground. Before the stone could crush him, he quickly sliced his blade over his head cutting the stone in twain. The two fragments innocently landed on either side of him.

A blue beam of arcane energy shot out of the spear of a bandit that was next to the red sword bandit. The beam streaked towards the woman who adeptly dodged out of the way. She had no time to react as the red sword bandit’s weapon ignited into a massive flame doubling the blades size as he swung it towards the woman’s neck. She barely ducked below the swing. The flaming sword easily cut through the cliff face next to them. The heavy bandit leader removed his hands from his nose and yelled towards the fire sword wielding bandit “Hey watch it! We don’t want to destroy such a wonderful specimen.”

Four more bandits lunged towards the woman and attacked with surprising coordination and skill. The woman could barely keep up with the incessant barrage of the four bandits as well as the occasional zoning strikes of the flame sword, not even mentioning the worryingly accurate sniper shots of the magic based spear wielder.

One of the bandits hiding out at the back waved a small wand almost completely hidden within his sleeve and a faint ethereal flame seemed to lick off the skin of the rest of the bandits. A massive hammer smashed down just behind Palmer and a hail of arrows so numerous one couldn’t imagine that they came from just two people were constantly missing palmer by barely an inch. The chained sickles seemed to dance with near sentience curving mindfully through the air like a bird trying to flank and catch its distracted prey. A large halberd smashing down right before Palmer briefly halted his retreat which he quickly resumed as he dodged another swing of the hammer. Palmer skillfully balanced deflecting the unpredictable sickles with his branch sword while simultaneously weaving in and out of arrow fire as well as avoiding the thunderous swings of the heavy hammer and halberd. Palmer thought that the enemy’s attacks were manageably predictable and easily avoided, but when he got a moment of space to catch his breath, he noticed the true strategy behind their fighting pattern. Palmer had somehow found himself completely separated from the woman.

The bandit leader dashed forward with an unexpected speed for his larger size. The woman quickly tilted her head to the side as the leader’s broadsword whizzed by cutting off some of her lagging hair. She simultaneously twisted her body as a blue beam of energy pierced through empty dress. She raised one of her legs to clear from the raging flame leaping off the sword which landed just barely ahead of her. She let her weight fall on her only standing leg folding it so that a blade flew through the created crevice behind her knee. A scythe from above forced her to crumple her upper body forward. A lightning fast jab of her glaive pierced the chest of a bandit about to pierce his rapier forward. Physically unable to move anymore without readjusting her body a final axe lodged into her calf. The woman let out a wrenching cry and swung her glaive with the dead bandit still skewered on with as much might as she could. While most of the bandits jumped back to avoid the wide arching sweep of the glaive, the leader jumped forward stopping her swing early by pushing against her hand with his own and smacking the hilt of his sword across her chin “Oh no, don’t want to bruise that pretty little mouth.”

His arm now fully outstretched in front of her folded back elbowing her across the side of the head and knocking her down onto the ground.

Meanwhile, a halberd pierced right next to Palmer’s head and with a flick the axe head was now facing his throat, he quickly dodged under the swing catching an arrow with his hand and thrusting it into the arm holding onto the hammer that he jumped back to avoid. With an aggravated growl, the hammer wielding bandit grabbed onto the arrow and plunged it deeper into his arm and pulled it out the other end. The bandit hiding at the back waved his wand again and the hole in the hammer wielding bandit’s arm quickly mended itself. Palmer was trying to bait either of the two archers into shooting one of their comrades, but despite the close quarter combat and constant rotating movement, they seemed to never hit their own. The two chained sickles slithered along the floor circling Palmer, the subtle vibration of the chains as they very slightly jumped up and down disturbed a cloud of dust to obscure his vision. He was in the middle of a busy battle, but he somehow felt isolated and alone. Out of the shrouded depths a halberd swung horizontally just barely missing Palmer’s top knot as he crouched down. He then quickly rolled to the side as a hammer struck the ground so hard it actually bounced him into the air where a sickle leapt up to start wrapping around his leg, the other sickle shot towards his head. Palmer swiped his branch down onto the sickle shooting for his head knocking it onto the ground; he kept the momentum of his weapon swinging through the floor lodging his weapon into the dirt. He then performed a handstand balancing over the branch blade and spread his legs forcing the wrapping sickle to get locked taught; he twisted his body so that the incoming arrows bashed into the chains instead of striking his soft skin. He felt a tug on the chains around his leg and was quickly pulled out of the dust cloud and towards the deadly pike end of the halberd leaving his weapon still lodged in the dirt hidden within the dust cloud.

The bandit leader was mounted on top of the collapsed woman, his blade pressed gently on her lip with the blade facing down onto it. She had to open her mouth as wide as she possibly could to not have the blade split her mouth in two. The woman tried to wiggle her body as much as she could to escape but she could not knock the heavy leader off of her. Tears streaked down her eyes as the bandit leader gently caressed his hand around her throat slowly tightening it. His elated grin only growing wider as he watched her face contort in various forms of primal distress.

The branch sword was left abandoned in the dust cloud. The bandits always quick to respond rushed right passed it and towards the blade’s owner who was now unarmed. The dust cloud was mostly tranquil, the blade was stuck quite deep into the dirt. So deep in fact that it caught on to a small water vein. The branch began to bloom and grow; the branches roots followed the water down along the water vein soaking up as much water as it possibly could. It quickly gathered enough water to allow its roots to curve up and explode out of the ground pressing against the woman’s back and carrying her high up to the edge of the cliff peak. The bandit leader was promptly knocked off in the unbalance of the sudden change. He and his men quickly darted up to reach the woman. The woman rapidly untangled herself from the branches of the massive tree ignoring her severed tongue and lip. Before running away, she caught glimpse of a small acorn growing off a branch of the newly sprouted tree. She had a strange uncontrollable desire to consume the acorn and so she swiftly stuffed it into her mouth before limping away from the rapidly approaching bandits.

Meanwhile, Palmer was being dragged by the sickle chain towards the pike of the halberd. Palmer grasped his hand just above the empty purple sheathe and dragged out another wooden sword which he quickly slashed through the halberd. His blade managed to strike the halberd on its wooden shaft splintering the weapon in two. The sickle bandit was caught off guard by the sudden appearance of a second weapon and Palmer managed to strike his blade a second time before the bandit regained his composure. The sickle bandit’s head let out a hushed thump as it plopped onto the floor severed from its body. One of the archers was about to release an arrow when roots burst out of the ground ensnaring his body and redirecting his shot towards the wand wielding bandit who was caught off guard by the sudden friendly fire as the arrow pierced his heart. The hammer bandit was charging towards Palmer when suddenly the ethereal red flames vanished, and his movements abruptly became sluggish. Palmer used this jarring change in stamina of the bandit to throw a quick counter strike severing his body in two. The unarmed halberd bandit made a fleeting attempt to salvage one of his friends’ weapons, but Palmer ensured to strike him down before he had any chance. It would seem that the second archer had made his escape when he noticed the shift of battle. The ensnared archer was completely entrapped by the wooden prison which swiftly grew into a small tree using the bandit as fertilizer.

Palmer sheathed his branch; when placed in the sheathe the branch seemed to molt and absorb into the sheathe walls. Palmer made his way towards the newly sprouted tree. He picked up the woman’s glaive and then climbed up the tree to reach above the cliff. Once he disembarked from the tree, he turned towards it and tilted his sheathe so that its opening faced the arboreal behemoth. The tree was immediately sucked into the sheathe, the ground now unsupported by roots in the alley below crumbled forming a small pit.

Palmer followed the faint trail of blood droplets to track down his travelling companion. He struggled to follow the trail for about half an hour until he finally came to a clearing. The clearing revealed a small hill that overlooked a massive valley beyond. Climbing up the hill were swathes of blood, discarded weapons, lifeless bodies, and finally at the tip of the hill was a beautiful tree that stretched high in the sky and carried many beautiful pastel yellow colored fruits with three little auburn dots. Hanging from one of the branches of the tree by a viny noose was the bandit leader.

Palmer approached the tree and looked out to the beautiful valley view. “Did you find it?”

Palmer plucked one of the fruits from the tree and gingerly placed it into his basket. He sat down and leaned his back against the tree letting out a deep sigh which was accompanied by the chime of a bell.

In front of the resting Palmer there was what seemed to be a small pink rhombus that grew out of thin air, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards Palmer holding a glowing parchment: It read.

You have been invited to The Tournament You are The Topiary