The Wish Game

Mineva

Our journey from Choire to Lunamaria took about six weeks. Apart from the four of us: I, Mineva, Rita, and Mira, there were seven sailors. We sailed along the Rudra River and had to stop at some cities for resupply.

The crowd gathered around the ship whenever we entered any port was humongous. I wasn’t allowed to get off the ship but the people sent some souvenirs through Mineva while Rita and Mira kept an eye on me.

Once we were out in the Bay of Tigers, the journey was mostly peaceful. I trained heavily with Mineva, Mira, and Rita. This time, though, it was more focused on minimizing collateral damage so that I don’t destroy any good vantage point or cause an unnecessary ruckus to attract attention.

After the six-week-long journey, we finally arrived in Lunamaria – the capital of Australia. According to what Mineva told me in the geography lessons, Lunamaira was a coastal metropolis with a population of 4 million.

The climate there approached winter and it felt like I had just traveled back in time. We were given a warm reception and were greeted by the mayor of the city and other dignitaries. We were allotted a two-storey house to live in the heart of the city.

It was April 20, 1999, and we reached Lunamaria towards the evening. The house allotted was quite spacious compared to what I'd used to live in. Everyone was happy and excited about what was to come, except Mineva.

She seemed uneasy since the moment; we were told that the group battles were to be held in Australia. As the unpacking was completed, I went to Mineva and asked, “Is something wrong, Mineva? You look uncomfortable here…” Mineva was startled, almost like I disturbed her from any deep thought.

She, however, smiled, “No, not a thing.” I said, “Okay, just wanna tell you. You can tell me if something bothers you.” I left her to her own devices and went to my room. The room was bigger than the one in Choire, almost double the size and all my items came right in it.

I walked to the mirror that was next to the window and looked at myself. The seal hiding spell was released and I muttered, “I need to find a way out of this condition. I must be able to use my full potential.”

The next day, the mayor of the city invited me for a private talk. I and Mineva went to the mayor’s office and, as she said, waited for the appointment. However, within minutes a man came out and escorted me in. He said, “Sorry, Miss Mineva, but the mayor wants an audience with her only. Please wait here…”

Mineva nodded calmly and sat there while I went inside the chamber. As we went in, I saw the mayor sitting at her desk and she greeted me saying something that the man translated as “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Aadhya.”

“So, he’s my translator?” I asked and she replied in the affirmative. “Wherever you go, he’ll be accompanying you for any linguistic support.” We talked for a while about various topics like my journey and my stay.

“Let’s go for a stroll in the garden. I know you must be missing your home a lot, a bit of greenery will be helpful in combating homesickness.” She said out of nowhere and showed me the backdoor to the garden. I nodded in the affirmative and went out with her. We walked down the garden a couple of times and settled at an open-air table.

I thought, ‘Maybe she’s upset about…’ The mayor looked at me with very keen eyes and I backed off a bit, “Is there something on me?” She changed her expression almost instantly and said with a smile, “Is there something you need help with?” I spoke without even thinking, “Nah, not necessary. It’s a bit on the personal side.”

She nodded in agreement, “All right, I respect your privacy. But if there’s anything you need, just ask me for that.” I smiled and nodded. We talked for a few more minutes before I decided to take my leave. As she dropped me to the door of her chamber, I finally decided to ask her the question troubling me.

“Miss Sarah, do you know anything about my mentor, Mineva?” I asked, waiting for perhaps a no, but what came was a surprise. “No one in Australia would ever forget her.” “Why is that so? And is she a renowned personality here?” I asked her haphazardly.

“Yes, she is a renowned personality here. The only winner of the Wish Games that this nation has been able to provide.” Ms. Sarah, the mayor said with pride. I asked nervously, “Was she the previous champion?”

She patted my back and replied, “No, Mineva was the winner of the 14th Wish Game. And here in Australia, she is considered a hero among the general populace, except that no one is sure how she looks.” I thought something for a while and nodded, “Thank you for everything.”

I went outside and found Mineva waiting. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” I said, greeting her. “So, you’re done?” She asked and I nodded in the affirmative. We left the mayor’s office and went to our house where I told the trio about the conversation. “The group battles will take place in two months as most other countries have still not decided their contestants.”

“So, what you’ll do in this time?” Mira asked me and I thought for a while before replying, “I am thinking of finding something to heal my body so that my magic is stabilized.” Mineva asked, “And how’ll you do that?” “Oh, the mayor gave me this,” I said while pulling out a metal card from my pocket.

“This is an access card that’ll give me access to the city’s largest library and…” I began with a proud tone before being cut off by Mineva, “You know that you can’t read or write properly, don’t you?” That statement caused me to crash down from the heavens directly into the underworld. “I’ll think something about it,” I said digging the ground with my toes.

The next day, after the morning shower and breakfast, I immediately put on some good clothes and packed a small bag. Mira and Rita were asleep after a hectic and fun night. As I was just going out, Mineva stopped me, “Where are you going, Aadhya?”

“Well, to the library. I told you about yesterday.” I said and she smiled, “You can’t read and no one can read books for you either. You don’t know the language of this place as well.” I turned as soon as the translator came in, “Oh, meet Mr. Lee. He’s appointed as my official translator and he’s helping me with the research.”

“Well, good luck then. May you find whatever you need!” Mineva said with a warm smile. I asked, “Hey Mineva, why don’t you come as well? It’d be a great help.” She smiled and said, “I’d love to do that but I have some work to do. See ya later.”

We parted ways at the city square and I went to the library. As we entered the palace-like building, the translator explained, “This is the largest library in the country. It is named ‘The House of Grand Wisdom’. It supports all kinds of information.” Inside the building, a man greeted us and asked something.

I asked the translator, “Is he asking where we are supposed to go?” He smiled with surprise and answered, “Yes, exactly that. How’d you learn our language?” I giggled and nodded in denial, “No, I just guessed it based on the interaction. But I'd love to learn your language as well. But right now, tell him that we need to go towards the archives section.”

Mr. Lee nodded and said something to the other guy, who gave directions to him. As we cleared, he told me on the way, “He said that archives are a classified section and you’ll need to show the access card to the guard there. It’s on the second level.”

We climbed the stairs to the second level and proceeded towards the archives department. Outside the department, two guards were stationed who opened the door after taking a look at my access card. Mr. Lee asked, “I wonder why there isn’t any commotion about you being here.”

I smiled and replied, “Oh, don’t worry about that. Only you can see me the way I am, others see me as someone else. Or if I move a bit away, they won’t see me at all.” I moved a bit away from him and soon he realized that I was invisible.

I went towards him and continued, “What most other people will think is that they just saw an illusion or something and return to their work.” He gave a creeped-out look and asked, “Are you like this always?” I smiled as we reached an empty table in the middle of the section, “No, only when I want to go here and there easily. It helps a lot.” It was my Presence Concealment at work that helped me here.

He took some time to calm down and asked, “So what do you want to know about?” I thought for some time, while consulting the mental list of priorities and replied, “Mineva.” He nodded and with a flick of the wrist called out some twenty books from different shelves on the table.

“These are the archive records that contain information on Mineva.” He said, and I pulled one of the books from the pile. I opened it and found it completely filled with texts of minute size. I gave a sour look and said, “What is written on this? I can’t read it at all.”

He looked into the book and sighed, “Well, I don’t think it can be helped. These are very old records, mind if I read them for you.” I nodded happily, thinking ‘This sorted the problem of reading…’ I let out a silent sigh of relief as he began reading the documents.

“Mineva was born in the year 1835 in a peasant family. Her family lived in the island state of Nova towards the east of the mainland. Her family background isn’t anything worth noting; they had some land and used to farm it.

This, however, changed during the spring of 1851. As the selection procedure for the 14th Wish Game began, Mineva was selected by the program selectors due to her immense magical aptitude. Therefore, she was transferred to Lunamaria so that she could be trained properly.

But she was quite rebellious. She rebelled multiple times and tried to escape, going as far as crossing the international water boundary between Australia and Indonesia. Though she was always captured either by the local law enforcement or soldiers of neighboring countries, who turned her in.

She was punished repeatedly for those transgressions – ranging from indoctrination sessions to solitary confinement. Finally, about eight months from the selection, she finally gave in to the indoctrination and agreed to train.

Her training was unparalleled and she excelled in fire magic to the extent that elemental affinities mattered nothing to her. You can spend a full day firing ice spells at her and she’ll just destroy them with her fire.

However, things didn’t go well as planned. It was later noted that her tenacity was far beyond the level it was supposed to be. She was merciless at best and brutal at worst. Her character development, it seemed, went horribly wrong.

Despite repeated counseling and medication, Mineva’s attitude didn’t improve. This was more evident during the tests when she would kill the instructor straight away on the first move, disregarding any and all rules or guidelines in place.

No matter the prowess of the instructor, he/she would die at her hands. She won’t stop at anything less than that. These forced the management to reconsider the training agenda and were forced to switch to recorded lessons and training golems.

In the autumn of 1852, the group battles for that Wish Game began. The format was a standard battle royale with an incapacitation rule. Meaning they couldn’t kill anyone else but only injure them. Once, the field staff intervene and declare that the enemy can’t fight, the injured one is escorted out.

But against anyone she faced, she’d kill them in a single strike without fearing anything and leave before the field staff could reach there. The final enemy that faced her was equal in terms of battle strength and the battle fought between the two was relatively long, lasting about six minutes before Mineva killed him as well.

The last battle caused her to go berserk and wander off in the artificially created city for solitude. Any attempts to recover her were met with stiff resistance and ferocious attacks. Her parents and other relatives were called for help as well, but she didn’t budge.

Finally, about two days after the battle ended, Mineva was captured. A war-like preparation was done for the extraction and it could be said that a war was fought for that. Twenty law enforcement personnel were killed in the mission with another fifty gravely injured, including her parents.

That was the first time the Indo-Pacific group was forced to field only one contestant. The format of group battles was revised to a random battle mode that could ensure that we can at least field three participants.

When Mineva was taken to the healer, she was kept sedated as a precautionary measure. It was later discovered in the examination that Mineva used to inflict self-harm continuously for long periods of time in order to make her pain resistant.

The healers deduced that because she didn’t feel much pain, she made it difficult to understand how much pain she made the others suffer. They were wary of even removing her from sedation and decided to keep her in the state while trying to undo her self-imposed mental conditioning.

They failed multiple times and finally gave up on the seventh day. Since they couldn’t figure out a way to undo it, a decision was made to put a limit on her ability. She was also known as ‘The Flaming Berserker of Australia’ due to her nature and her fire element affinity.

She was constantly counseled to keep herself in control and to never remove the limiter. But she remained rebellious at the core. Before the finale of Wish Game, she forcefully overrode the limiter and went berserk in the battle.

While no one is completely sure of what happened, an eye-witness reported a fire with blue flame ravaged the entire forest arena. Most of the contestants died immediately in the same attack, probably not even knowing what hit them.

The power level was calculated using the fact that the ground itself melted and became lava. Anyone unfortunate enough to survive the initial assault was tracked down and killed by her. This was the shortest battle in the history of the Wish Games and lasted only an hour.

After she won, she was rewarded with a gift: a wish. It was never classified by the WIC Company that what wish she did choose, but she was never again heard of. Most say she went away to live somewhere peacefully and died later. But the Australian government decided to keep this archive and tell everyone about her.”

He stopped the narration and I passed him some water. He drank it and I asked, “Did she have any peers with whom she trained?” “I do…Um…Lemme see…” He mumbled before going into one of the books and turning pages. After some time, he answered “It seems that the training regime here is based on a single person. They use their entire resources to train a single person.”

I thought about it for a while and sighed, “I do know how she would’ve felt.” Mr. Lee was surprised and asked, “What do you mean by that? That account is about 150 years old.” I smiled and nodded, “I faced the same situation in India. I blamed my parents continuously for my perils and refused to talk to them.”

A culpable sensation suddenly grew in my chest and I looked at the books spread out on the table. “Is something wrong?” I nodded in negative and smiled gently before asking, “So, are all winners so famous, like her?”

He smiled and replied, “No, it’s not that. Do you know of any other winner other than her? Leave that aside, did you even know that she was a winner before Miss Sarah told you?” I replied, “No, I didn’t.” “See they aren’t any celebrities or anything. To be sure, no one knows where they live after the games and what happens to them.” He said with a hint of a smile.

After a few more chats, we decided to return. It was almost midday when I reached home and realized that Mineva was still out. Mira and Rita had cooked lunch for the four of us and were expecting the two of us to be together.

“Didn’t you two go out together?” Mira asked and Rita added, “I was pretty sure she was going to help you with your research thingy.” “No, I was there with my translator. Mineva also didn’t know the language of this place, so…”

Mira suggested, “Maybe she is with the sponsor. He was here yesterday when you two were at the mayor’s place. He wanted to have some serious talk with her, so maybe she’s there.” I nodded in agreement when a sudden thought struck my mind and I jumped out of the chair.

“I’ll be back by evening. Please continue…” I said hurriedly while going out. The two of them were caught in surprise and asked, “Where are you going?” I screamed back at them, “Don’t worry, I just happen to know where Mineva is.”

I ran out of the house and went to Mr. Lee who happened to be at the mayor’s office. “Mr. Lee, where is that Nova island place?” I asked while panting as I entered the office. Mr. Lee turned towards me, “Calm down miss. Here…” He passed a glass of water towards me.

“I need to go to Nova, it’s urgent. Where is it?” I repeated while his eyes widened, “That place is more than 600 km away from here. It’ll take at least four hours to get there using the fastest means of transportation we have.” I reiterated, “Don’t worry, just tell me what to do?”

Mr. Lee sighed and said, “I’ll accompany you. I don’t think you can even get a ticket.” He got up and accompanied me to a building on the outskirts of the city. He called it a ‘Tube Capsulet’. It was a personalized means of inter-city transportation.