On the Shoulders of Titans

by Andrew Rowe

  That’s a Citrine-level anti-Divination rune. A pretty standard precaution, and a powerful one.

  Hm, I think that’s a teleportation rune linked to a shielding rune.

  That would work a little differently from the anti-teleportation runes I use, since it doesn’t block teleportation from being used inside the manor. It just prevents teleportation spells that originate from outside the house from getting in. That makes a lot of sense, since it still allows people inside to escape via teleportation, but it prevents attackers from being able to teleport straight in.

  I’ll write this combination down. Might need to use it myself eventually.

  This last one is a reinforcement rune for protecting the walls. Kind of easy to forget these are here, since Keras and Derek always end up wrecking the rooftop anyway.

  After that, there were sets of capacity and recharge runes for each of the mana types. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  All of those enchantments seemed like reasonable precautions, and I didn’t find any rooms that had any extra runes that were out of place.

  Considering how powerful some of those enchantments were, as well as the sheer number of them, Derek must have spent a fortune on defending his home. I’d sleep a little easier knowing that.

  Who could have broken into my room?

  The most likely option was someone connected to Orden and the Whispers. If that was the case, I didn’t think I’d be able to track them.

  I looked up the set of runes I’d found on the floor and formulated a plan. I couldn’t act on it immediately, but I had some ideas.

  I considered hiring a more powerful Enchanter or Diviner to look into it on my behalf, but I couldn’t afford it.

  I also thought about reporting the incident to the school, but after what had happened to Orden, I didn’t really trust the academy’s administrators. Moreover, I didn’t really want to bring anyone else into this whole mess if I could avoid it.

  For the moment, I’d just have to watch my back while I looked into other things.

  The next major item on my agenda was to visit Professor Vellum. She was the closest thing I had to an Enchanting mentor, as eccentric as she was, and I needed her advice. But first, it was finally time to go back to class.

  Chapter III – Mismatch

  If I’d wanted to take it slowly, I probably could have skipped a few days of class without a tremendous risk to my grades.

  My next class on the schedule happened to be one of Lord Teft’s: dueling class. That would have made it even easier to skip, since he knew about my situation.

  But I wasn’t interested in a vacation. I’d seen how far behind I was in terms of raw power in the tower, and I needed all the fighting practice I could get.

  More importantly, I needed every point I could earn.

  Not only was I still worried about graduating, I also knew that with the growing chaos in my life, it was likely that my second year would be even harder.

  The points I earned this year impacted my placement for the second year, if I graduated. That meant that getting as high of a score as physically possible was a priority, because I wanted to have a safety net for the second year.

  Finishing my second year with a high score was also a must, because I wanted to be able to choose to be assigned to be a climber. The knowledge that Tristan was alive hadn’t changed that in the slightest.

  If he’d already been stuck in the spire for five years, clearly there was something keeping him from leaving. Being assigned to a climber role would give me the best chance of figuring that out and getting him home.

  I’d obviously get him out sooner if I could, but I couldn’t count on that.

  Finally, I had one more reason to go to the class: I wanted to see how my new attunement worked in action.

  That wasn’t going to be ideal, however, since today’s dueling class was dedicated to something we rarely seemed to discuss—

  Dueling.

  We were actually fighting duels.

  That...still wasn’t exactly my area of strength, but I did have a much better chance than when I’d first started the semester.

  Knowing Teft, there’d be some kind of spin on it, but I didn’t know exactly what that was going to be when I walked in.

  Teft leaned up against the lectern, addressing the class. “While most classes will have final exams in the last two weeks of the school year, I’ve found that I get far better results when my students aren’t prepared. And thus, today, we begin the first stage of your final exams.”

  He waved a hand. “Follow me to the dueling arena, class.”

  I winced. I wasn’t ready for a final exam, but that wasn’t my primary concern.

  Sera was sitting right next to me. She still couldn’t use her attunement.

  But Teft knew that, didn’t he? Would he pair her with someone who wasn’t a good duelist, or maybe let her skip the test until she recovered?

  We exchanged doubtful looks as we stood and followed Teft out of our usual open-air lecture area toward... I wasn’t really sure. I thought that classroom was considered the dueling arena, although we’d used different rooms for a few training exercises.

  I should have known better than to expect a normal dueling arena out of Teft.

  True, the location he led us toward was a sports arena — one used for vaban, a popular ball game designed for attuned. The vaban court itself, however, had been modified for our activity.

  The arena floor was gray stone, about a hundred feet across and roughly fifty feet wide. Normally, the only marks would be dividing lines every ten feet to mark increments of distance.

  Today, the court had been covered in square tiles etched with runes.

  With a snap of Teft’s fingers, the squares began to glow a variety of colors—

  In specific: red, orange, yellow, and green.

  I noted that a handful of squares remained unchanged as well.

  I did not like where this was going.

  I hated colored tile puzzles.

  From the groans of the students around me, I could tell that many of the other students agreed.

  Teft gestured to the battlefield. “Today, you will be fighting in team matches on the field below. Rather than traditional dueling, this challenge combines the difficulties of dueling with the risks of a standard format for tower chambers — tiles with different magical effects.”

  He glanced around to the class. “For the moment, divide yourself into teams of four.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief at that, since I already had three people with me.

  “Where’s Roland?” Patrick asked, glancing around.

  I frowned, both because adding Roland into the formula would disrupt my perfect team of four and because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him.

  Where was Roland?

  He wasn’t in class, certainly.

  “Don’t see him,” I replied, “But we’ve got a solid team of four right here.” I was talking about Patrick, Marissa, and Sera, of course.

  “Might not be so wise, m’lord Corin. I’m still not in the best of fightin’ shape, nor is Sera. Maybe we could get a pass, given that we’re still recovering?”

  It was savvy of Marissa to phrase it that way, since it didn’t put the entire burden on Sera. And, in fairness, Marissa was probably still recovering from that burst of extra mana that Katashi had given her. It had only been a few days since then, even if it felt like weeks.

  ...Wait; did Katashi use the Arbiter attunement to give her that power increase? Was his ability the same one that I have?

  It seemed functionally similar, even if Katashi had the extra flashiness of drawing on the extra line of the rune for her next attunement level. He’d given her more than twice her previous maximum in mana, too, which I wasn’t supposed to do...

  ...But maybe that was the reason it was taking her so long to recover. It was possible Katashi had risked her health by giving her so much power at once, and it was also possible that he knew bet
ter than the Researcher did exactly how much power was safe to transfer at once.

  Maybe there were other, more complex factors in play — for example, the Guardian attunement was defensive in nature, and that might have allowed Marissa to tolerate more mana safely. I didn’t know, but it seemed like it was worth researching eventually, or just asking Katashi about it if I saw him and didn’t have anything more important to discuss.

  “I’ll go ask Teft if we can get you two excused from this, or maybe all four of us.” Patrick offered, jarring me out of my introspection. I nodded as Patrick headed in Teft’s direction.

  I turned to Sera in the meantime. “Have you been feeling any better?”

  Sera shrugged.

  “I went to the Divinatory to do some research earlier. I found a few options we can investigate. I’ll tell you more after class.”

  She gave me the weakest smile I’d ever seen, then turned her head away.

  Patrick came back with Teft a few moments later.

  Teft walked straight over to Sera. “Miss Cadence, I was aware that you were injured in the tower, but not the degree of severity. That said, there will be many times in life when you are forced to fight at a disadvantage.”

  He folded his arms. “Given your circumstances, it is within reason for you to skip this week’s test to recover. If you choose to do so, I will give you a below average, but passing grade for the exam. Due to the structure, it would not be possible to take the test at a later time. Would you like to take that option? This is not a trick question.”

  Sera glanced to the rest of us, her lips twisted into a frown.

  Patrick put a hand on her shoulder. “We can handle this as a team, Sera! The four of us can handle whatever Teft throws at us.”

  Sera turned her head to Patrick, her eyes meeting his. Then she nodded, and with new resolve, she turned back to Teft and curtly shook her head.

  “Good.” Teft nodded in return, then turned his head to Patrick. “And because you’ve chosen to influence her, Master Wayland, you can be on her team. Your opponents,” my heart sank has he gestured, “Will be Master Cadence and Miss Callahan.”

  I knew there would be a twist to this, I just hadn’t expected...

  Resh.

  “Your team will be up second.” Teft turned his back to us and walked away to split up the other teams.

  “Well,” I glanced from side to side, “This is awkward.”

  Patrick was full of resolve. “Sorry, Sera. Didn’t think he’d do that, but this is better in some ways. Uh, go easy on us, Mara?”

  Sera stepped in between the two of them, put her hands up in a warding gesture, and shook her head vehemently.

  I turned to Patrick. “Yeah, if you think Sera wants us to go easy, you haven’t been paying enough attention. She’ll murder me if she realizes I’m going easy on her.”

  Sera raised a finger and made a throat-slitting gesture, her expression serious.

  I said that, but the key part was “if she realizes”.

  It was working, so I decided to add to the effect. “And, in truth, I’m not sure you’ll need it. Sera is vastly better with things like tile puzzles than I am. Don’t know about you, Mara.”

  “I’m nae any good at them. Much better at punching things.”

  Seems fair.

  “Not sure how much that’ll help.” Patrick sounded dejected. “We don’t even know what they do yet.”

  “I think that’s part of the point.” I jerked a thumb at Teft. “He’ll probably give us some basic rules in a few minutes, after he’s done splitting up the other teams, then we’ll have to figure out how the tiles work once we’re in there.”

  We chatted for a couple more minutes. Teft did another round of walking to every group, checking on the status of our shield sigils, then headed back to the front of the class to address everyone.

  “You will not always be able to choose who your allies — and who your enemies — are. For today’s test, you face a scenario every soldier dreads: a battle against some of your closest allies. Or, in the case of some of you,” he scanned the crowd, “merely the people you thought would make the most efficient team.

  “In either case, you very likely know something of the abilities of your opponents, and vice versa. This will be a test of both your combat abilities and your knowledge of how to counter the tactics of your rivals.”

  I caught Sera’s eyes. The tip of her mouth curled up just slightly.

  She’d always dominated me at games of strategy. Valor, Crowns...it didn’t matter which.

  “This test,” Teft waved at the arena, “will be a simple one, but not an easy one. Each colored square has a different effect. Some are beneficial, some are detrimental. Both the layout and the effects of each square vary between matches, and thus, fighting later will not offer you an information advantage.”

  I heard a few groans at that, but I didn’t agree with Teft’s assessment. Not entirely. If there was a discrete list of possible effects, we could learn those from early matches and have an idea of what some of the squares might be, even if the specifics were different.

  I also suspected Teft knew that, and that he was expecting a few of us to pick up on it.

  “A few rules, of course. First, you will be given an attachment called a sigil monitor to put over your shield sigil before the match starts. When your shield sigil is depleted, the monitor will immediately detect this and teleport you out of the arena to the Mender unit.”

  He pointed to a nearby door on the side of the arena. “When you’re teleported out, you’re done. The Menders will see to any injuries you sustained in the fight, then you can return to the stands to watch the remainder of the battle. You may not return to the fight, even if you can recharge your sigil.”

  Well, that’s one idea down right away.

  Was Teft looking straight at me when he said that? Probably just my imagination.

  “Second, the match has a time limit of ten minutes. If neither team has eliminated the other in ten minutes, it will be considered a draw. Since eliminating opponents is the primary way to earn points for the exam, a draw will not be advantageous to you. While you may feel obligated to allow a draw if you are fighting against your friends, I assure you that this will not be the way to earn the highest amount of points.”

  But it’s not expressly disallowed. Interesting.

  Sera shook her head at me as soon as I looked back to her.

  Fine, fine.

  Teft continued. “You may not leave the arena during the match to maneuver. If you leave the arena, you will lose immediately.” He glanced at Kyra Dyson’s team, one of the few teams I considered almost as likely as my own to try to find a loophole in the rules.

  Kyra was one of the few people with the Shadow attunement in the class, and while she wasn’t as good of a straight fighter as someone like Marissa, she was one of the most proficient at finding and exploiting weaknesses in her opponents. I liked her style.

  “And you also may not interfere in matches other than your own.” He glanced at Patrick when he said that. Apparently, he hadn’t forgiven us for when Patrick jumped in on my “duel” against him on the first day of class. I brought a hand to my mouth to unsuccessfully attempt to stifle a laugh.

  “Finally, you will only be fighting with dueling canes. Other magical items will be permitted, but for safety reasons, I will not be permitting other enchanted weapons.”

  Another advantage gone. It was a sensible rule, however. Selys-Lyann and similar weapons could cause a lot of damage in a test like this.

  “I will be watching your performance carefully. Today’s match will determine which of you are prepared for the second half of this class.”

  That was an intimidating implication. Was he going to be failing some of us outright?

  That was not an acceptable outcome.

  From the looks on the faces of my friends, I could tell they felt the same way.

  “Teams One and Two, come with me.”

&nb
sp; Team One was Kyra’s team, consisting of her and an Elementalist named Loria Marshall. Team Two was Rupert Kent — another Elementalist and a constant subject of Marissa’s ire — and Desmond Vyers, a Shaper.

  I could see why they’d assembled their team of four the way they had. Two Elementalists and a Shaper would have given them tremendous long-ranged firepower, and Kyra could have handled virtually anything else. I would have given them good odds against our own team, at least in our current state. If Sera had her Summoner abilities...

  I shook my head. Hypothetical matches didn’t matter. I had a real one to watch.

  Just one, presumably. We were Teams Three and Four.

  We headed to the stadium seats, getting as close as possible to get a good look at the action. Teft led the two teams to the steps into the arena, where he knelt down to open a box. He retrieved four discs from within — the sigil monitors. It was hard to see at a distance, but they had some kind of prongs on them to attach to the shield sigils.

  Could I disable mine to stay in the fight longer?

  Probably, but it’s not worth the risk. The chance for being hurt is too significant, and it might even get me disqualified.

  Fortunately, my phoenix sigil’s barrier is the outside layer — it’ll take damage before the normal shield sigil does.

  And I’m a Carnelian now. My shroud will mostly be inside the barriers, so it won’t do much to help my shield last longer, but it will definitely help prevent injuries from slowing me down.

  That was all good, but our opponents had phoenix sigils, too. I’d made them myself.

  I didn’t regret it for a moment.

  I couldn’t hear what Teft was telling the other students at this distance, but they headed to opposite sides of the arena. The tiles were just large enough for a single person to stand on them comfortably and there were a lot of them.

  I also wanted to know why some of the squares had remained white, their normal color. If the other squares represented the advanced stages of an attunement, were these “white” squares supposed to be Quartz?