by Andy Adams
He tried another idea. Wedging his shoulder against one side, and his feet against the other, Brenner pushed against the tube-walls, using his hands against the sides to propel himself upward. After using much of his stamina on the initial climb, and then sprinting through the Malipede’s lair, Brenner was tired; the ninety-degree vertical climb was slow going. And the sharp squeak of his feet and shoulders rubbing against the walls didn’t help.
He was about thirty feet up the tube, and could vaguely see the other three climbers through the cloudy glass—one girl had just reached the top opening and looked to have grabbed her glowbe—when a hard yank on his leg jerked his body loose and sent him tumbling down. The glass walls screeched like banshees as his arms scraped painfully against them. He collided with a red-shirted Montadaux player on the way down, and then hit the hard bottom. The other player quickly disentangled himself from Brenner, and gave him a savage smile.
“And stay down!” the burly teenager yelled, kicking Brenner’s stomach. Brenner gasped and curled in on himself.
Sprawled on the ground, his arms scraped with wall burns, and a sickening pain pulsing from his abdomen, Brenner saw the other player leaping upwards, quickly propelling himself with hands and feet on either side of the tube…just as Brenner had done—soon he would emerge from the top, snatch the last glowbe, and eliminate Brenner from the finals.
It should have been mine.
Brenner’s forehead burned: something primal inside himself ignited.
“Oh no you don’t!” Brenner said, crouching low and then bursting upward with all his energy, using quick, alternating pushes of his left and right hands to ascend the tube faster than before.
The Montadaux player saw Brenner approaching, readied himself for contact, and swung a leg down at Brenner, trying to catch him in the head. But Brenner dodged, and using both his hands, grabbed the boy’s foot and yanked down as hard as he could—slamming the boy’s upper body against the wall.
As the two fell, Brenner pulled himself level and then above the other boy. Cursing at Brenner, the player jammed himself in the tube and tried grabbing at him…but Brenner kicked his hands away, thrust his own hands to the tube’s side to lock himself in place, and then jammed his heel down on the player’s chest, sending him tumbling to the ground.
Advantage gained, Brenner started climbing up again. When he was sure he had a clear distance between himself and the Montadaux boy, he looked down: the player was still in a heap at the bottom.
Brenner continued with renewed intensity, determined not to relinquish his position.
After another five minutes of continuous climbing, he had done it. The tube opened to the thundering cheers of the crowd, and Brenner, balancing on the glass rim, reached up and grasped the shimmering glowbe.
Panting, he sat on the edge of the tube, his legs dangling against the thick, rigid glass, as an announcer’s voice called out, “Spellcasters of Ganthrea, we have our fourth and final Agilis player advancing to the finals—Brenner Wahlridge!”
Up in the stands of the Agilis stadium, a brown-haired man in green robes wove through the applauding fans as Brenner and the other three Agilis players jumped onto silver platforms and hovered down to the sidelines. He stopped next to a yellow-hooded fan who nodded slightly.
“Took you awhile to find me,” said the hooded man, “And you’re supposed be wearing robes from another biome…”
“Sorry, Dalphon, I was caught up at the academy.”
“How many have you secured for me?”
“How much are you paying for each?”
“Depends on their ability.”
“Well?”
“Thirty golders for inexperienced spellcasters…fifty for the upper levels …a hundred for the top players.”
“I’ve got seven convinced so far; five lower and two upper, and I had one top player. But he died.” He held out his hand.
“What?”
“Where’s my advance? I’m running risks you know—other sages at the academy are suspicious.”
“Then you’re not doing your job right.”
The two looked hard at each other. Finally, the brown-haired man glowered, let out a huff, and lowered his hand.
“You’ll receive payment upon delivery to my caravan after the final day of the Games.”
The green-robed spellcaster shook his head resentfully, before turning back to the crowd and saying, “So be it.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Rookie Knight
To soothe his muscles and backache after the Agilis match—particularly from the fight inside the glass tube—Brenner spent a good amount of time after the game soaking in the stone baths of the conjurer’s dormitories, where fresh scents of vanilla plants and aloe permeated the air. By the morning of the fourth day of the Games, he felt rejuvenated and ready for his first appearance on the Zabrani team.
At the western side of the massive northern arena, their king, Maverick, dispersed special mircons for the game—giving three separate ones and white capes to Gemry and two other healers, Dunn and Piltkins. Taking his regular mircon, Brenner strode with his emerald green team to the base of their stone tower, and followed the lead of his teammates, who flew to the top of the tower, waiting on an upper balcony for the match to begin.
There was something different about the field ahead: high in the sky floated dozens of oblong silver discs, ranging in size from a ping-pong table to a large billboard. They hovered above the territories of both Silvalo and their opponent, Vispaludem.
“Kings, collect your landform seeds,” announced the official in the middle of the field. Maverick zoomed off.
“Haggerty, how much did you bet on us this time?” Girard called past Brenner.
Haggerty, an older teen with a crooked nose and long black hair, answered, “The booths think we’re gonna get squashed, so I took advantage of the 4 to 1 odds against us.”
“Yeah?”
“Bet my entire savings: twelve golders. So we’d better win this one!”
“Gutsy!” someone yelled.
“Begin land formation!” the official called. Brenner watched the two kings cast down red seeds all across the middle of the field, where immediately a spine of mountains arched up, rising almost as high as the silver discs. Then Maverick grew trees in a Z-shaped pattern back from the middle, with two large lakes on either side of the diagonal trees.
“Knights!” called Maverick, flying back to them. “We need to reach the midfield mountains first. Vispaludem has better aim than our last opponent, and if we let this game drag on, we will lose. If we keep hold of midfield, we win. Six of you—he indicated Gemry and several others—stay to guard our three glowbes. The rest,” he called, motioning with a sweep of his arm, “get ready to follow me.”
Brenner crouched on the edge of the tower wall, shield strapped over his left wrist, mircon clenched in his right fist. He turned to Gemry. “Promise to stay dry, okay?”
She nodded solemnly. “You, too.”
The official for the match, now hovering over the transformed field, called with enthusiasm, “May the Semi-final Zabrani match of Silvalo versus Vispaludem—” he raised his arm, and out from his mircon golden sparks shot into the air, “begin!”
Brenner no longer had to speak the word Volanti, instead he pictured a flying kestrel and started the spinning flight cycle in his mind, surging forward through the air with five of his teammates, shield held in front of his face to ward off incoming spellfire.
Purple spells sizzled through the air past them.
“Watch the flank from right!” Dunn called out, and Brenner zig-zagged, lowering his altitude as shots whisked above his head.
The squad flew in a curve, away from the right, toward the middle of the spiny ridge. Brenner’s face fell. He saw advance Vispaludem scouts landing on top of the mountain, spotting them, and opening fire.
“Split in two!” Maverick called.
The double attack from Vispaludem forced them to ta
ke cover; Brenner soared down with two others behind a stone pillar, shielding them from the purple spells coming from the top ridge.
He returned fire with Arcyndo spells, along with Dunn and a girl, Kasha, while the other Silvalo regiment hunkered lower down the hill, trying to repel the knights advancing from the right side. Not good, Brenner thought. He’d played enough chess and Zabrani now to realize that they were in poor position: with two angles of attack, all Vispaludem needed was a scout to slip around the left side, and his crew would be picked off.
“Got one!” Kasha yelled next to him.
A tall Vispaludem knight keeled over from behind his boulder, then rolled like a lifeless log a dozen feet before dashing against a ledge.
“Dunn!” Girard yelled from the crew below them, “Arturo’s hit!”
Dunn aimed a healing spell at the motionless knight downhill, missed, but on the second shot, revived him.
Then Brenner felt a hot spell blaze past his shoulder. He reflexively hunkered to the ground.
“Guys!” Brenner called, motioning to a Vispaludem knight coming over the middle ridge and hiding above a silver platform, “They’re getting behind us! I’m going around!”
“I’ll give you cover,” Kasha said, eyeing the rocks. “Make ready… and—NOW!”
She fired a rapid stream of green spells, forcing the Vispaludem knights to take cover.
“Volanti!” Brenner thought in a rush, flying low with his belly nearly scraping the ground, his shield thrust toward the upper ridge, racing past rocks and scrub trees, seeking the far left end of the ridge. Twice, his shield buckled against him from the onslaught of spells, metallic tings reverberating through the air as he flew over the final rock ledge, into the opposite side.
He landed, and then scanned the area for enemies wearing violet. Two from the upper ledge fired down in his direction, but since they were well over four hundred yards away, their spells hit the dusty ground away from him.
Brenner ran through his options: he could retaliate at the two knights on the middle section…but they knew his position and were well defended; however, if he could sneak further…
His thoughts were interrupted by close spellfire. Other knights had staked a location nearby, and their spells were within twenty feet of him. He looked at the upper ridge—and a blinding ray of sun caught his eye. Where was that from?
He noticed a silver disc had deflected light around him…and a strategy sparked.
Quickly casting his Volanti spell, he flew away from the middle ridge and into Vispaludem territory, toward a grove of poplar trees, weaving over rocks as spells ricocheted all around him. Once in the woods, he felt secure with the tree cover, so turned back to the fray. Brenner spotted a cluster of green spells whizzing over the mountain from the Silvalo side, saw a flicker of purple on top ridge, and calculated his angle.
Aiming his mircon not at the rocks of the mid-section, but at a silver disc floating between them, Brenner loosed a volley of spells like arrows.
“Arcyndo!” he called out.
His spells flew up toward a floating platform, hit the smooth surface at a sharp angle, and bounced down toward the top of the ridge—striking just over the edge like missiles. While he couldn’t see if his targets were hit, the blasts of spellfire coming from that area soon lessened.
After a ten spells, Brenner paused, wondering if more Vispaludem knights would attack him now that he had revealed his position in enemy territory. He hovered to a new vantage point, about thirty yards away, behind a large willow tree.
He watched the middle ridge; there, two violet knights climbed back over the center ridge into Vispaludem’s side; he cast another barrage of spells at a silver platform, which bounced down and caught one of the knights in the chest, and sent the other scrambling to a rock for cover. Brenner smiled, remembering how his brother used to chide him about spending too much time on blueprints and angles, but it was that dedication to detail that now gave him the advantage in battle.
Not wanting to venture further into Vispaludem territory with an opponent at his back, Brenner scanned the mountain, and noticed some crumbling, chossy ledges just above the hiding knight.
Time to flush you out.
“Arcyndo!” he called under his breath, sending a ray of spells into the rockside, which started a small avalanche toward the knight’s hiding spot. It had the intended effect: the violet knight dashed toward a new boulder, exposing himself for three long seconds, during which Brenner shot a barrage of spells into his path, succeeding in stunning him to the ground.
Brenner grinned. His back secure—at least for a few minutes—he pressed forward to Vispaludem’s glowbes. If I can get one, that will shift attention and allow for Maverick to gain the midfield.
About two hundred yards ahead, through a thicket of tall trees, he saw three shimmering violet glowbes…spaced far left, far right, and right in front of the Vispaludem tower. Overhead, on either side of him, silver platforms floated in the blue sky.
A flurry of lilac color moving behind the trees alerted him to the several defenders stationed around the three glowbes. It appeared there was a tag-team of defenders around each glowbe, probably two or three apiece.
Knowing that a flight straight for the center glowbe would be suicide, Brenner decided on another surprise attack: two at once.
Running low, Brenner advanced to the edge of an open clearing in the middle of Vispaludem territory; then, as he had done earlier, he shot Arcyndo spells up, but this time at two silver platforms in the sky, raining down spellfire on the left and right ends of the arena, and, he hoped, into the guarding defenders of the glowbes.
“From the middle! He’s in the middle!” shouts rang through the trees.
He ignited his Volanti spell, flying left, away from the middle. To avoid detection, Brenner flew hard and low to the ground, but accidentally gashed his knee on a tree root. He winced, but kept flying.
Then he looked back. A swarm of violet knights converged on the clearing he had left. But thankfully, a small contingent of green flyers had made their way over the middle ridge, and were now engaging those violet knights. Green and purple jets of their spells blasted back and forth through the canopy.
Using the distraction, Brenner circled wide left, on the fringe of the arena, and worked his way through the trees behind the outer violet glowbe. There was only one sentry left watch over it, not two as he thought—and she was facing the battle, her back to Brenner.
He crept closer through shrubs, and let off two quick shots: the first hit the girl’s leg, the second, her back, and she crumpled to the ground. He flew in, grabbed the glowbe, and made a wide berth back to the center tower, only briefly hearing the crowd erupting in its approval.
From the explosions and loud shouts coming from the tall oakbrawns in the middle, it seemed his teammates had fully engaged the Vispaludem fighters. He made his next approach, darting from tree to tree in the back of their territory, heading closer to his next objective: their tower, which stood high above their center glowbe. He skimmed toward the base of it—shield raised at his left side in case another sentry saw him—then pressed his back against the shadow of the stone tower.
“Volanti,” he thought, and quietly floated up the backside of the tower, keeping the structure between himself and his opponents. He soared to the top, where Vispaludem’s score—31—shimmered in misty numbers above the circular turret; if he planned correctly, the middle glowbe was about seventy feet down from him. He braced himself, spun around the side of the tower, and jumped—plummeting down shield-first to the middle glowbe, and opening fire on the squad of violet knights below.
By the time he had flown down the first fifty feet, his green spells had hit two knights in their backs, which alerted the other defenders and caused a counterattack of spells. Explosions rang in his ears; his shield vibrated as it absorbed return fire. Only twenty feet left. He leveled toward the ground, feeling his leg tingle with the shock of a spell—ten feet left—hi
s mircon arm and other leg were stunned—just a bit further! Like a baseball player stealing second base, Brenner lunged for the prize, his shield hand stretched out—got it! I got it! As he grabbed the glowbe, he was shot from both sides and collapsed in a heap.
Brenner couldn’t move, but it didn’t matter. His plan had worked: he had gotten two glowbes. Pain erupted in his sides, but the thrill of triumph filled his mind. The white glowbe changed to emerald green and hovered up above the field. Soon after, the melee on the right side finished, and his team rallied to grab the third and final glowbe.
“Valoria knights—you have won the game,” called an announcer from the peak of the middle mountain, “Silvalo will be represented in the Final round of Zabrani!”
A white sage flew over to Brenner, sending an invigorating spell that thawed his muscles, allowing him to stand upright. A moment later, his team was flying over to mob him.
“Fantastic game, Brenner!” Maverick called to him.
“Great flying,” Girard said.
The group flew back to midfield, where all spellcasters tapped their mircons to a lantern, which sent up a swirling billboard in the air, publicizing individual stats and the final results from the match: Valoria had won, 89 to 37, and, of that, Brenner had scored more than half, with 51 points.
A gentle hand touched his shoulder. He turned around, and Gemry gave him a grin. “Was that you shooting against the silver discs?”
“I figured it was worth a try.”
“I’ll say.” She raised an eyebrow. “Traditionally, those have been used for defensive flight-posts. Not for offensive strategy. But, they sure will now.”
