The golden bird arrived exactly seven minutes after Kidlat had finally gotten all the sheep wool out of his hair.
This was, as Master Kanlaon would later observe while nursing a cup of extremely strong rice wine, absolutely typical of the universe's sense of humor. The boy spends two hours scrubbing Meredith's philosophical wool from his scalp, and the moment he achieves something resembling cleanliness, destiny comes knocking with all the subtlety of a drunk elephant.
The bird itself was magnificent in the way that things tend to be when they're about to ruin your perfectly ordinary evening. Its feathers caught the dying sunlight and threw it back in cascades of gold and crimson, like someone had taught fire how to fly. It descended toward the village square with the kind of graceful confidence that suggested it had never once crashed into a sheep or misjudged the distance to the ground.
"Show-off," Kidlat thought automatically.
The entire population of Apo, all forty-seven souls, plus Mushu the goat and Meredith the sheep, who had philosophical opinions about everything, gathered in the square within minutes. Word traveled fast in a village where the most exciting recent event had been Elder Diwa's cat getting stuck in a tree, only to rescue itself while everyone argued about ladder placement.
Elder Diwa herself pushed to the front of the crowd, her walking stick clicking against the stones with the authority of someone who had lived through enough surprises to be professionally skeptical of them. She squinted at the bird, which had perched itself on the rim of the village fountain with the sort of dignity usually reserved for statues of important dead people.
"Well," she announced, "that's either very good news or very terrible news. In my experience, golden things that fall from the sky tend toward the terrible."
"Could be medium news," offered Berto hopefully. His mother immediately swatted him for optimism.
The bird regarded the assembled villagers with eyes like molten amber, then extended one perfectly manicured talon. Clutched in its grip was a scroll that seemed to pulse with its own inner light, sealed with what looked suspiciously like actual gold rather than the cheap wax seals the village was accustomed to.
Master Kanlaon approached cautiously, the way one approaches anything that might explode or demand tax payments. "Well," he muttered, "at least it's not another one of Ki's experiments gone wrong."
"Hey!" Kidlat protested from somewhere near the back of the crowd. "My experiments don't arrive on golden birds!"
"No, yours just create unexpected holes in my roof and traumatize the livestock."
The bird, apparently growing impatient with the commentary, dropped the scroll directly into Master Kanlaon's hands with the sort of precision that suggested it had done this before. Many times. Possibly to people who were equally unprepared for whatever nonsense was about to unfold.
Elder Diwa elbowed her way forward, her years of experience with mysterious documents making her the logical choice for scroll-reading duties. She had, after all, successfully navigated three decades of tax forms, marriage contracts, and the infamous Great Property Line Dispute of 98 that had nearly split the village in half over six inches of questionable farmland.
The seal broke with a sound like distant thunder, and the scroll unrolled itself with the dramatic flair of something that was deeply proud of its own importance. Golden letters blazed across the parchment in script so elegant it made the village's usual chicken-scratch handwriting look like the artistic efforts of concussed toddlers.
"By decree of the Council of Bathala," Elder Diwa read aloud, her voice carrying the weight of official proclamation, "let it be known that the time of the Soul Tournament has come again."
The crowd made a collective ooh sound, the way people do when something sounds impressive but they're not entirely sure what it means. Mrs. Rosa, who ran the village market, whispered loudly to her neighbor, "Is that the thing with the fighting? Or the one with the dancing?"
"Shhh!" several people hissed.
Elder Diwa continued reading, her voice growing more amazed with each word. The Soul Tournament, it seemed, was a legendary competition held every seven years when the celestial alignments were favorable and the cosmic bureaucracy had finished processing all the necessary paperwork. Warriors from across the known world would gather to test their skills and demonstrate their mastery of the mysterious powers granted by their Soul Marks.
The winners, or more accurately, the survivors... might be chosen to train in the legendary Mythical City, place of such incredible power and wisdom that they made the village's tiny library look like a collection of grocery lists.
As Elder Diwa worked her way through the rules and requirements, the crowd listened with the rapt attention usually reserved for Master Kanlaon's stories about his youth, when vegetables grew to impossible sizes and the weather was always perfect for exactly the right amount of time.
Then Elder Diwa reached the list of chosen competitors. The names glowed on the parchment like tiny suns, written in letters that flicker with their own inner fire. Most were unfamiliar warriors from distant lands, the sort of dramatic titles that suggested either incredible power or incredible overcompensation.
But there, near the bottom of the list, written in letters that burned brighter than all the rest, was a name that made everyone in the square turn to stare.
Kidlat.
Just Kidlat. No dramatic title, no list of accomplishments, no description of legendary powers. Just the simple name of a boy who had spent the morning trying to prove that gravity was more of a suggestion than a law, and who had most recently been seen picking sheep hair from his teeth.
The silence stretched like taffy, thick and uncomfortable, until Kidlat himself broke it with the sort of question that could only come from a mind that operated on completely different principles than everyone else's.
"Wait," he said, sounding genuinely puzzled, "is this like a birthday party invitation? Are we supposed to bring gifts?"