Begin.
I knew I was going to lose.
Vera's face was firmly devoid of any hints of mercy. Looking at it, I saw a different side of my friend. All her thoughts were competitive, sharp and calculating. “I’ll try not to hurt you,” Vera said, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll hesitate to fling you out of this circle.”
I dodged a blast of wind before Vera fired it by looking into her mind and predicting where it would land.
Vera shifted into a defensive stance and focused on the space before her as she prepared to attack. Before she could summon any air, I lunged, closing the distance between us in an instant. Vera launched herself backwards with a blast of air, but I twisted my outstretched arm mid-jump and brushed my hand against her ankle. Before I could activate my Gift and enter her mind though, she jerked her leg back. I tumbled haphazardly to the grass and as I started to get back up, Vera pushed me out of the circle with a strong gust of air. I fell clumsily back to the ground before I even had the chance to get up. The worst part was that I saw it coming. I could feel the thoughts going through her head before she acted. But I couldn’t move quickly enough.
“Winner: Vera,” I heard the Guide yell. “Don’t start your next fight until I tell you to.”
I reached out to shake Vera’s hand and she took it.
“Tough luck,” she said.
I grimaced. I didn’t lose because I wasn’t lucky. I lost because I was weak.
In the circle next to us, I saw Lucas fighting a lithe boy with spider-like limbs coming out of his back. Inside Lucas’s hand, a writhing mass of void grew. He threw a speck of it at the other boy, and the other teenager let out a deafening scream as it hit. Lucas nudged the teenager's trembling form outside of the circle. The Guide announced the winner: Lucas. Lucas paused and turned in my direction.
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“Do I know you?” he asked as he walked over. His head was tilted to the side in curiosity. For a second, I didn’t respond; just stared at him as I looked through his mind. He stopped, looked at the ground and coughed nervously after I still didn’t reply. “I’m sorry," he began, "it’s just that you were staring at me as if you knew me and–”
“You really don’t remember, do you,” I asked as I felt some part of me break. There wasn't a hint of recognition from him. I paused as I considered something. “Do you mind if I enter your mind?”
“Go ahead?” he said with a frown. I pressed my finger against his warm neck and activated my Gift. Lucas and I appeared in his mind, and he yelped in surprise. We appeared floating in the hollow sphere that housed his memories. His memories were stored in the form of a long snake whose every scale had housed a small moving image: each representing a memory.
I scanned through his memories but stopped when I saw an empty void where there should have been a moment. When I tried to read it, I felt a burning in my head, which confused me to no end. I shouldn’t have been able to be hurt in here. But I was. I turned to Lucas who was floating next to me.
“What’s that black spot about?”
To my surprise, Lucas blushed. “It’s probably because of my Gift. I create a little void in my memories and a void appears in the real world. Makes me forget things.”
I kept on looking through his memories and repressed my panic. He voided his memories of me, didn’t he? All those years; gone. “What’s this giant gap?” I said, pointing at a mountainous hole in his mind.
He stopped looking around his mind to look at the void.“It’s probably from when I first used my Gift. I never knew I had a Gift, and there was this thing — a monster. I didn't have proper control over my Gift, so I burnt through my memories to kill it.”
He poked at the wall of the sphere we were in. “So how do I get out?”
I deactivated my Gift and he blinked as he acclimated himself to the real world. “You can’t unless I let you,” I said. Before any of us could say anything, the Guide spoke.
“Get in your positions,” the Guide shouted, “the second round is about to begin.”