She breathes hard through gritted teeth. “What do you want from me, Dewinter?”
I tell her the plan. She doesn’t move, doesn’t even blink, as I talk, and when I’m done, she leans forward in her seat so her long black hair falls over her face. She’s as unreadable as a statue. A lingering, uncomfortable silence hangs over us, until at last she speaks. “If everyone is attacking Vanguard… how do we determine who wins?”
That’s just what I was hoping she’d ask. “We settle it between the four captains. You, me, Talyn, Terra. While our Orders rush the Vanguards, the four of us meet at the base of the tower and fight it out. No tricks, no cheating. An honest duel.” I pause, letting her think it over, then say the magic words: “May the best Wizard win.”
I can see the moment she makes her decision, the tiniest, subtlest hint of a smile. “May the best Wizard win,” she repeats.
CHAPTER 44
Now
My one regret is that I don’t actually get to see the Order of Vanguard destroyed. I would’ve loved to see the look in Marius’s eyes when he realized what was happening, see the panic in their ranks as the mass of four combined Orders smashed down on them. But as gratifying as that would be, I still need to win this thing, so I tear away from the gathering mob and sprint for the tower instead.
We all arrive at the same time, Talyn, Terra, Vyctoria, and I, all converging on the tower from opposite sides. We don’t speak as we pace forward, eyeing one another uneasily, trying to see if anyone decided to cheat. The thought crossed my mind, certainly. It would’ve been easy enough to bring a few Nethros with me to tip the scales. But it feels wrong, wrong on a level that I can’t bring myself to stoop to. The others might be Wizards, rival Wizards, but by joining in on my plot they’ve crossed the line into rebels, however selfishly. They’ve chosen to back me over the school, to join the side of defiance. I know it’s the most momentary of alliances, but we’re allies all the same. And the least I owe my allies is a fair fight.
The four of us arrive at the foot of the tower at the same time. The sounds of combat wash over us, the great clash of our Orders on the far end of the field. The ground trembles with the roar of magic, with the thunder of explosions, the crashing of earth, and the crackling of ice. I ignore it, as much as I can, to focus on the three faces staring me down. None of us speak. None of us move. We just stand there, the four of us, hands on our Loci, waiting with bated breath.
“All right,” Vyctoria says at last. “Let’s do this.”
We all draw at once, slipping into the Null as our hands whip our Loci out of our sheaths. The world vanishes around us, the thunder of the battle receding into a dull, distant roar. The ash flutters down, thicker than usual, and through that gray haze I see the flicker of life in the three others, see their Loci pulse as they draw them. There’s no time left to think. All I can do is act.
Terra and Talyn are already carving, their Glyphs blazing in Vyctoria’s direction. That makes sense. She’s the strongest opponent, so they’re aiming at her first. Terra’s prioritizing speed, with a crude, hastily carved Blast of Earth that’s almost done. Talyn’s carving something more complex, an Ice Base, glowing a vivid blue. Vyctoria’s also carving, though I can’t begin to guess what she’s doing: her first form is one I’ve never seen, an intricate web of crosshatched lines, shimmering gold.
I move on instinct. While the others focus on Vyctoria, I swivel on Terra and carve. Wind Base, Push Form. Simple but effective. It flares white as I finish my last stroke, bright enough to draw Terra’s gaze my way. I see her face harden into a scowl, but it’s too late. We’re all locked in.
Terra’s earth blast fires first, the ground underfoot rising in a wave that rushes at Vyctoria. It’s barely left her Loci when my wind push hits her, a rapid current of force that sweeps her off her feet and sends her flying back across the battlefield. She hurtles excruciatingly slowly in the molasses time of the Null, and I see her howl in fury as she twirls through the air. Then she hits the ground hard, Loci flying out of her hands, and lies still. One down.
Talyn’s attack fires off, too, and I see it clearly, four dull rods of ice, streaking toward Vyctoria like arrows, leaving trails of frost in the dirt underneath them in their wake. But Vyctoria’s ready for it. She finishes her Glyph with a flourish, and a shape appears in front of her, no, no, below her, a spinning whirlwind of air, a hissing white cyclone under her feet. With the roar of a hurricane, it hurls her up into the air, like a leaf on a gust. Terra’s wave of earth hurtles by harmlessly. Talyn’s rods streak through the spot where she’d stood, crumbling into shards a dozen feet away. And Vyctoria rises up overhead, a full story above us, suspended on wind.
I know I ought to be carving my next attack, but I’m too distracted, stunned, staring. Every attack I’ve learned is predicated on fighting an opponent on my level, but now she has the higher ground. And she’s already carving as she hangs there, her Loci slicing through the air with razor precision, her eyes trained on me, her next attack glowing into being. I’ll never hit her in time. There’s just one thing left to do, one last trick up my sleeve.
My gaze flits to Talyn. Our eyes meet, and I see in his the same bewilderment, the same uncertainty. We stare at each across the Null for that tense, endless second of deliberation.
Then Talyn begins to carve an attack.
At me.
My hand flits up. I’m not looking at Talyn anymore, not looking at Vyctoria. I don’t even see what they’re doing. There’s just one Glyph I can carve, one Glyph that can save me. It’s one of the Glyphs I learned from a page stolen from the Codex, the most complicated Glyph I’ve ever carved. A half dozen intersecting hashmarks for a base, three interlocking diamonds for a second form. I’ve spent weeks practicing it with Marlena in the basement, weeks of frustration and strain and exhaustion, weeks mastering it for a moment just like this.
I don’t see their attacks fire off, but I hear them. A gust of wind bellows out of Talyn’s outstretched hands, racing toward me. A blast of ice, shackles I think, rattle out of Vyctoria, hurtling at me from above. I feel the hissing wind and grasping cold, even as my heart thunders, as I beg my hands to hold steady, as I will them to carve the last stroke.
A crystal springs into existence in front of me, tall as I am and whirling like a top, glowing with a brilliant golden light. Its surfaces are smooth as glass and just as reflective, and I see my face in the closest surface, my sweat-streaked brow, my panic, my fear. Time moves at a crawl as I look up and see Talyn’s and Vyctoria’s attacks, wind and ice closing in on me. I see their eyes open wide with shock.
Their attacks hit my crystal. There’s a thunderous bellow, a blast of energy that washes over us, at once freezing cold and scorching hot. The Null itself throbs, flickers, and there’s a burst overhead like a lightning storm. My whirring crystal pulses with magic and shatters into thousands of golden shards that flutter on the air like leaves in the wind. And the two attacks come firing back, redirected toward the opposite caster, Talyn’s wind at Vyctoria, Vyctoria’s ice at Talyn.
The Crystal of Reflection. An advanced defensive Glyph requiring incredible precision that transposes and reflects two magical attacks. It’s a rare Glyph, considered almost a novelty because it requires the caster to be hit by two attacks nearly simultaneously. The only time it was ever really used was in the Drakovian era, hundreds of years ago, when four-way krova-yans were common.
The other Wizards might have had years of training with the fanciest private tutors. But I had Marlena and a library full of history books.
Vyctoria scrambles to carve something else, but it’s too late. Talyn’s gust catches her from below and sends her flying backward off her cyclone. She lets out a little shriek as she plummets and then she hits the ground hard, face-first, her Loci tumbling out of her hands.
Talyn doesn’t even try to carve. He lets out a laugh, amused and surprised, and then Vyctoria’s ice shackles hit him with the force of a boulder, knocking him off hi
s feet, slamming him back against the tower’s wall. The blue ice wraps around him like a cocoon, pinning him up against the stone, entombing him in its frigid embrace.
It’s done.
I jerk back into the Real, gasping like I’ve been underwater, staggering back. The other three are down. Terra lies unconscious where I threw her, Talyn hangs frozen to the tower’s side, and Vyctoria moans weakly in the dirt, trying, and failing, to move.
“You knew,” Talyn says. The shackles have enveloped his body but his face is still visible, poking over the lip of the blue ice. “You knew I’d attack you.”
I cross over to him, panting, my breath burning in my chest. “I did,” I reply. It was the right tactical move, after all. He expected me to attack Vyctoria and at least wound her, so he figured if he took me off the board, he’d then be able to finish her off. “I was counting on it.”
Talyn laughs, a laugh that makes him wince. Then he glances down a little sheepishly and takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”
“It’s all right,” I reply, and I mean it. “We’re both fighting for what matters to us. And besides”—I pat the ice enveloping his chest—“I did kind of do this to you.”
“Gods, Alayne,” he sighs. “In another life, we really could have had something.”
“In another life,” I reply, and gently kiss his cheek. It’s a kiss of finality, a kiss of closure. It’s a kiss good-bye. He nods a little, closing his eyes, and I see he understands. What we had was wonderful, but it couldn’t last. We’re both at peace with that.
I glance up the field, and it looks like the battle against the Order of Vanguard is all but settled. Through the billowing dust and howling wind, I can see shapes drawing closer and closer to us. The other Orders have all turned on one another. It’s just a matter of time before someone else gets here.
No more time to chat. I need to move.
The doors to the tower shudder open as I push through them, revealing a flight of winding stone stairs that spirals up like a corkscrew. I’m running on pure adrenaline now, the goal so close in sight. I race up the tower, story after story, and soon hit a pair of heavy wooden doors that I slam through shoulder first out onto the tower’s roof.
The wind howls around me, sharp and biting, as l lurch onto the round stone floor. I’m still low within the crater, but now, a dozen stories over the battlefield, I have a clear view. The Vanguard starting line looks like a war zone. The earth is blasted with magic: scorched black in one place, frozen solid in another, jagged crags of stone shooting out like obelisks. The battle is still raging, with explosions of flame and wind, bodies scattering and dodging, lattices of light streaking through the air like shooting stars. It’s starting to move away from the Vanguard line, though, spreading out onto the field toward me, leaving dozens and dozens of students in its wake. Some are trapped, frozen in ice or bound with vines, suspended in the air, limbs flailing. Others lie cold and still in the dirt.
I hope Tish and Zigmund are okay.
I need to end this now. I turn back to the center of the roof, and there it is, a tall stone dais, and hovering over it is the single most amazing gem I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s easily as big as Zigmund’s fist, clear as glass, carved into a perfect pentagon. As it spins, the light bounces off it, glowing bright in a dazzling kaleidoscope of colors. I shoot out my hand and grab it.
The reaction is instantaneous. Horns, hidden within the tower’s sides, bellow a victory call. The gem in my hand glows hot with a blinding light. The tower trembles and then the parapets around me blast open as fireworks shoot out, spiraling trails that race high into the sky and burst apart in dazzling cloudbursts of the richest, darkest Nethro black I’ve ever seen. On the lip of the crater, where the faculty is, I see frantic movement and shouting, the rising panic as they realize just what’s happened.
I crane my head up to the sky and savor it, the feel of the wind, the rumble of the horns, the heat of the fireworks against my skin. I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know where this goes. All I know is that right then and there, I’ve won the game.
I’ve changed the world.
CHAPTER 45
Now
It takes forever for the actual winner to be declared.
With the challenge officially over, referees and medics rush the field, dozens and dozens of them, as students drop their Loci and collapse, exhausted, to their knees. The incapacitated students are freed, the wounded are rushed away in stretchers, and the rest of us are herded up out of the crater, led onto the grassy plain over the lip. There, we line up by Order, those of us still standing grouped together while the others are ushered into tents. By my count, there are at least two dozen Nethros still standing, and I quickly find the two faces I want to see most among them. Tish’s nose is bloody, their smile missing a tooth, and Zigmund’s arm is broken again, but they’re both alive, and I let out a whoop of joy when I see them.
I scan the other Orders, too, just to see how they did. Javellos and Selura each look to have fifteen or so students standing, and the Zartans are looking better with twenty. Terra and Vyctoria stand in front of their respective Orders, gazing into the distance, while Talyn is hauled off into a medical tent, but not before shooting me a sly wink. The Vanguards, on the other hand, are totally wiped out. There are only five or so standing, and they’re in bad shape, shivering wet or clutching arms still bruised from vines. No sign of Marius, though. Is he in one of the medical tents, having his wounds stitched together? Or was he one of the students carried away, cold and stiff? Did someone get to him before me?
The Humbles are there, too, all of them, scrambling to bring water and carry bandages and clean up in the crater below. I spot Marlena for one moment as she passes from one tent to another, and our eyes lock as I shoot her a wild grin. We did it, she mouths back, and my heart beats so hard it feels like it’s going to shatter against my ribs.
We wait there. We wait and wait and wait, as the sun lazily drifts across the sky, as students gradually limp out of the medical tents and rejoin their Orders. The professors are all noticeably absent, gathered together in one big tent at the field’s end. I don’t know what’s going on in there, but every now and again I can hear raised voices and fists pounding tables. I don’t think they’re happy with me.
At long last, maybe four hours after the game ended, the tent’s flap parts and the professors emerge. They line up, grim faced, along the edges. I look at Calfex to try to get a sense of what’s coming, but she doesn’t react either way, cryptic as ever.
Headmaster Aberdeen, on the other hand, is an open book. He walks to the center of the camp, and everyone grows silent, every eye on him. Sweat streaks down his brow, and his face is bright red, nostrils flaring. He can’t even bring himself to look at me. I don’t think there’s any way he can deny me this. But I’d love to see him try.
“We have now tallied all the points and come to a conclusion,” he says, biting down his rage with every word. “By claiming the gem and having twenty-three students remaining in the fight, the Order of Nethro earns nine points. That makes them the winner of the Third Challenge.…” He swallows deeply, and it’s like he’s forcing shards of glass up through his throat. “And the winner of the Great Game.”
There’s no roar now, no great swelling cheer. Everyone’s too stunned, too jaded, still reeling. We look around at one another, faces caked in dirt and blood and sweat, winners and losers, taking in the enormity of what he said.
Then the flap of a medical tent flies open, and a figure staggers out, a bandage around his arm soaked red and a look of unbridled rage on his face. Marius Madison. At last. “No!” he screams, his voice hoarse and raw. “NO!”
Every eye flits to him now, the shared nervous quiet of watching someone make a scene. Marius lurches forward, out into the central patch of grass where Headmaster Aberdeen is standing. “No!” he repeats. “This is bullshit! They don’t get to win!” He spins toward me, and he’s panting
, snarling, eyes blazing with more hate than I’d ever thought possible. His perfect hair is a mess, and sweat streaks down his wild face. “She can’t win!”
“She did win, Lord Madison, whether you like it or not,” Aberdeen growls. “Now I’d recommend you settle down before you say something you’ll regret.”
But Marius is past the point of listening, past the point of even pretending to offer respect. “You can’t just have everyone team up on one Order! That’s not fair!” he howls, and he has never looked more small, more petulant, more insignificant. A few of the students even snicker, and that really sets him off. “You think you can do this to me? To me?” He turns around, directing it at all of us, flecks of spit spraying as he shouts. “I’ll have you all ruined, you ingrates! My father will see to it!” Then his eyes light on Vyctoria, standing firm in front of her Seluras with her eyes on the ground, and he sucks in his breath. “And you! You! You were in on it, too?” He paces toward her, jabbing a finger in her face. “You sold me out?”
Vyctoria doesn’t look up at him, but she doesn’t back down, either. “You sold me out first,” she says, cold as ice. “Turnabout is fair play.”
“You little bitch,” Marius snarls through gritted teeth. “You smug little bitch. You—”
“Watch your tongue,” Aberdeen growls, voice rumbling with menace.
Marius doesn’t heed the warning. He pivots back to Aberdeen, snarling with open fury. “You don’t get to tell me that,” he says, pacing toward him. “This is on you! I was made a promise! I was told I’d—”
“Watch your tongue!” Aberdeen screams at the top of his lungs, and we all jump back, startled, even Marius. The mask is fully off, any trace of composure gone, replaced by naked fury and desperation. Whatever pretense of nobility or authority either of them had is gone. In that moment, everyone sees both of them exactly as they are: frightened, pathetic, and weak.
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