Chapter 618: Ashlynn’s Challenge
"Ugh, no, no challenges," Ollie said, shaking his head and waving both hands in front of himself in response to Ashlynn’s cryptic words. "I just finished one set of trials, I don’t need another one! Wait, I mean," he stammered looking for the right words. "I learned a lot in the last challenge you gave me and I’m still..."
"Just stop before you dig any deeper," Virve said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Mother Ashlynn wouldn’t torment you after you passed your trial, and Sir Thane isn’t here to teach you any lessons that require letting him punch you to make sure you understand the lesson," she chided.
"You let a vampire punch you?" Hauke said, blinking several times in surprise at the young human. He’d learned just how tough Ashlynn was in her first visit to the High Pass but he assumed that it was because she was Nyrielle’s Seneschal. Were all humans actually so supernaturally strong, despite their smaller stature? "Was that, was that before, or after you became the Cypress Witch?"
"Before," Ollie said, rubbing his chest as he remembered the power Sir Thane’s punch held. Each time he’d been hit, his vision swam and he felt like he was on the edge of losing consciousness until falling to the ground shocked him back to awareness. "He pulled his punches. It wasn’t a contest of strength or anything. More like a lesson and a little pain to make sure I remembered it."
"It’s a thing that knights do to each other," Ashlynn said, still confused by the ritual but willing to accept it because both Thane and Ollie felt it was an important part of becoming a knight. "But this challenge, even though it’s difficult, is much, much easier to manage. It’s more fun too, though it’s not hard to be more fun than letting the Lord General punch you," she teased.
With a flick of her wrist, Ashlynn removed the lid from the box, revealing twelve bulging leather pouches roughly the size of a large plum and tied shut with a bright green silk ribbon. Reaching into the box, Ashlynn selected one of the pouches, bouncing it in her hand and producing a -CHINK- -CHINK- sound as she did.
"Each of these pouches holds fifty silver tails," Ashlynn said, smiling at the people around the table. "You each get two pouches. We’re going to go down to the festival and our goal is to spend every last tail you have."
The money in the chest, six hundred silver tails in total, represented a sizeable portion of the money she’d made for herself while in High Fen City, though at least half of it had come from placing wagers on Heila’s fights in the arena. Most of the wealth that Ashlynn secured went into Nyrielle’s treasury to finance the work being done in the Vale, but now that the festival had arrived, she was glad that she’d kept some back for herself so that she could share it with the members of her coven.
"Tails?" Ollie asked, frowning at the unfamiliar term.