There was murmuring within the room once Taessa Calana vanished from the air. Gaius watched the scene before him through a hidden window that looked out onto the bottom level of the tower. Barely any time was given for the participants to absorb their chewing out, pushing them directly into combat immediately afterward. Some still looked properly shamed, while others were merely annoyed and trying to organize the random members inside their isolated wedges into some kind of team.
A woman nearby confirmed that the stickers were in their positions, awful creatures that the guild had abducted from one of the lakes north of the tower. The monsters stood four-feet tall each, bearing amphibious bodies that were somewhat humanoid in stature, four stocky arms protruding from their thin chests, webbed and clawed hands always reaching forward. The monsters’ nature as a hive beast set them apart and made them a constant threat to the guild’s hunting grounds every year. Worse than the fact that they burrowed into the earth beneath lakebeds and were thereby a nightmare to displace, was that the blood of the monsters acted as a sort of glue when exposed to the air, giving them their name. The pale creatures swarmed over their opponents, none that individually powerful, but with their hands they sought to grapple their enemies to the ground, and even as they died the tied up the weapons used to slay them. Eventually, if they were allowed to, they would defeat anything with the mass of their numbers, sinking the hideous needle-like fangs inside their mouths into their victims, dragging them into the water to drown.
Gaius had not been present for that culling by his own design. Culling the stickers that multiplied around two of the northernmost lakes every year was a job for the youngest in the guild.
Taessa Calana appeared in the room, muttering under her breath as she stalked to a table to pour herself a draft of wine. The woman collapsed into a chair with a sigh.
“You did well,” Gaius said, turning to his subordinate.
“I could have been harsher,” Taessa said into her drink. “Some of these children could do with a beating now to save us a few despots later.”
Gaius snorted and shook his head. “Do you believe that a rank three magician tossing around children will change them for the better?” He looked out the window to where the first of the monsters had begun to crawl up out of the ground. “These youths are too old for such simplistic lessons. We will not change their character against their will, not without extreme force. Our job is merely to pick out the promising ones and to offer each a chance to push themselves hard to advance.”
“There are murderers down there,” Taessa said. She kicked up from her seat and joined Gaius at the window, staring down at the battle that was beginning to erupt.
In one of the triangular cells below, a girl dashed out and smashed her hand down on the rune in the center. An aide in the room activated a specialized enchantment inside the room, and all competitors in that slice vanished from the tower, reappearing out in the courtyard. The group of three hadn’t lasted even half a minute.
“They seem to make the murderers younger each year,” Gaius said. His eyes roamed through the competitors below, alighting on a few that he had seen do truly awful things in the competition. “Justice, unfortunately, is not within our purview. We are a professional guild of magicians, not rulers or magistrates.”
At his side, Taessa tsked, putting her wine to her lips.
“Careful where those thoughts carry you,” Gaius advised. “We are powerful within the bounds of our scope, but stepping outside of those bounds carries a risk you may not be prepared to shoulder.”
“Conquest does not interest me,” Taessa dismissed, cutting through Gaius’ veiled implications.
He could not help but smile at her directness. Of course, she would speak her mind frankly. The two watched the battle play out below for a while longer before an aide approached with papers clasped between his hands.
“We have the information you requested,” the aide, Jogal, said.
“Casualties,” Gaius asked for first.
“Twenty-five with serious wounds, but none dead as far as we can tell. Lady Cassida stood by, ready to subtly intervene, but she informed us that her intervention was unnecessary. According to her, the dedicated healers among the contestants are impressively competent and prevented any deaths.”
Gaius quirked a brow at the man, a bit surprised. “Honestly? Finally, the gods have seen fit to sprinkle a bit of favor upon us. Forward the recordings of the healers that took place in the skirmish outside for me to review. If they truly kept the death toll to nothing, there are likely promising candidates among them. How many will need to be taken from the competition?”
“Eight,” the aide said. “Lady Cassida has already descended and has begun to evacuate the courtyard.”
“It is not already done?” Gaius exclaimed. Behind him, another group of people vanished from their cell as they became too overwhelmed by the stickers to continue the fight. “We are already sending people out of the tower.”
Jogal blanched, and Gaius waved his hand to dismiss the man’s worry. “I cannot command Lady Cassida to conduct her work faster,” the aide said.
“Very well,” Gaius sighed. “What did the inspections indicate?”
Jogal shuffled the papers in his hands, showing them to Gaius. Reading over the papers in his hand, Gaius was surprised to find that six of the roughly hundred and twenty participants that entered the tower had been able to skirt the magical inspection. Certainly, there were abilities that a few magicians possessed to occlude magical scrying, but those abilities were rare. None of the information revealed by the probing returned anything that might indicate one of the contestants as being responsible for the invasive influence that was running through the contest. Still, six people being able to repel a rank three scrying device was quite something.
It was maddening. Here, in the tower, Gaius could sense the subtle influence that tried to needle into his mind. The influence was something he could dismiss simply, but its source was hidden from him and all his most powerful devices. A delve through a thousand years of history had turned up several possibilities, but after eliminating the impossible ones, there were very few options left. Half of those that knew about the meddling influence on the competition suspected a God or a fifth ranker of dipping their fingers into the contest, putting a thumb on the scales. If that was true, Gaius would never be able to uncover it if they did not wish to be uncovered. Another possibility existed.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
Gaius turned to Taessa who was watching the fighting below with an incredible intensity. “Who among them do you think it is?”
The woman sipped on her wine, squinting down. “If it is one of the contestants, then they are incredible at hiding this ability. Were I needing to make a wager, I would bet that the culprit would be from among your list.”
Gaius looked at the woman, a bit surprised. He flipped through the papers in his hand to find the list in question. “Why is that?”
“Because that would be the worst possible outcome for us,” Taessa answered, moving away from the window to refill her glass of wine.
He couldn’t disagree with that. When he had become aware of this outside influence on the events inside of the competition, he placed people on monitoring each and every contestant that their scrying devices had recorded, comparing the abilities displayed by the individuals to the ones that the guild had on file for them. So far, the vast majority had displayed a full range of abilities, none hinting at something as insidious as being able to influence an incredible area with sophisticated manipulation magic. No, Gaius did not think that one of the participants was responsible.
Looking down at the sheet in his hand, he studied the names and descriptions listed. One of the primary functions of the entire event was to scout out potential talent for the guild to recruit. The top ten candidates stood out on the page, eight of which had already crossed the threshold into the second rank. Their future progression would be far slower. The latter half of the contest could not be made too deadly, and as such the top-most competitors would find themselves at a lack for real challenges outside of the other contestants.
The kressin woman, Lady Forendous topped his list of promising youths, though he knew it was highly unlikely that the Vivantee Empire would allow the Willian Guild to recruit one of their young stars. It was clear that she was an alpha magician, able to survive the most grievous of injuries through her own power. Peering over the papers he held, Gaius picked her out amid the combatants below. The woman’s scowl as she crushed the monsters pouring into her cell and the blood stains on the front of her chest told of her humiliation at the hands of what she would consider to be a lesser being. Gaius could not help but think that a dose of humility would do her some good. With a word to an aide, he doubled the pace that the monsters flooded her particular cell.
The next name on the list was a bit of a surprise, Kendon Esfelle. Seeming to be the star of the group Arabella presented to the competition, the man demonstrated a brilliance for combat and a ruthlessness far surpassing his years. There were many complications surrounding the young man, not least of which being the woman he had involved himself with. Hopefully, the man’s psyche would survive the trauma once this was all over. What was most surprising was that this man had surpassed all estimations, showing a competence that outstripped another competitor from his group, the only other alpha magician in contention, Jor’Mari, whose name appeared on the list just below Kendon’s.
Reviewing the recording, Jor’Mari had not fully shown his potential, preferring to shy away from combat for the last few weeks, only fighting when pushed into a corner. Today, during that bloody skirmish outside and inside the tower, the guild had its first real look at the man’s capabilities. He clearly had potential, maybe enough worth cultivating. Most impressive of all was his ability to hold his own against magicians a full rank above his own, a feat native to the elite of their profession. Given that this competition was meant to house only the elite made the man all the more remarkable.
The list became a smattering of relatively unknowns, magicians fortunate enough to get their hands on a soul cage in the first set of dungeons and who had pushed their bodies and minds to their limits. One member on the list languished in a serious condition after his encounter with Lady Forendous and was unlikely to recover. The one thing that set the six second rankers apart from the rest of the pack had been something specific to each: their canny intelligence, their skill at their craft, or the brutal natures that manifested in their soul presences. They would need to be watched closely as the competition proceeded into the second phase. None of the placings on the list were likely to remain stagnant.
At the bottom of the shortlist a name stood out to him. It stood out firstly for the fact that it was the only other first ranker on the list of ten potentials, but also because it was not Dovik Willian. From the outset, Gaius had expected Dovik to excel in this contest, to hopefully form a faction of his own that he could lead to a satisfactory end that strengthened the bonds of comradery between the contestants and helped the guild’s relations going forward. That had not happened. Instead, a third member of the group Arabella Willian brought to this contest shone, set apart.
Charlene Devardem: from what Gaius had dug up on the girl, she appeared to only have been in possession of a full complement of essentia for less than half a year. Had she been a noble born girl, trained from birth in the arts of combat and sorcery, her unprecedented rise and talent might be explainable, but from all information Gaius was able to get his hands on, she came from unremarkable origins, the daughter of a pear farmer. It would seem that Arabella Willian either had an incredible eye for talent, or she was the luckiest scout the guild had found in decades. Charlene Devardem barely managed to push her way onto the list for one simple reason. Out of everyone in the considerable breadth of the contest, she had by far killed more monsters than anyone else. He noticed a new scribble next to the girl’s name that hadn’t been there the last time he had looked at his little list. Apparently, she was one of the six that had avoided their magical scan.
Gaius stared down into the field, watching a plume of orange fire rage over a group of the stickers pouring up through the floor, the flames curling and burrowing into the dark to scorch the creatures before they could even reach the surface. He couldn’t help but smile as he watched the young firebug laugh like a lunatic, walking up to the hole in the floor to stream fire down into the opening, drying blood smearing the bottom half of her face.
“I think that is my dark horse,” Gaius said.
Taessa followed his gaze and couldn’t help but scoff. “The lunatic? No, the young lord will be the final victor of this contest.”
“You have learned the art of prophecy?” Gaius asked. “I thought that was Illigar’s domain.”
She rolled her eyes, nodding down to where Dovik Willian fought against the tide. The man had no flashy abilities, nothing that truly made him stand out among his peers, but as he battled the oncoming wave of monsters rising up from the floor, he never stopped moving, his twin weapons whirling. Neither did any of the creatures even come close to landing a blow on him. “That man will inherit this guild one day. I doubt that there are three people in this contest that will be able to land a blow on him.”
“Maybe,” Gaius admitted. “He certainly is talented. Had he not sat on his ass for nearly two weeks, he likely would have a commanding position in the rankings. You can never know the outcome of these events; that is why we hold the contest to begin with. No matter how talented or well-trained, there is no guarantee of success. After all, even the guild master did not win in his year.”
A frown stole over Gaius’ face as the situation returned to his mind. In essence, there existed four possibilities for the pervasive magic that had invaded the contest. If the Gods or a fifth ranker was behind it, there was nothing he could do other than mitigate the damage. If one of the contestants was at fault, he would need to uncover them quickly. Of all the possibilities, he doubted that one the most, the magic was too pervasive, too subtle for a first ranker to be responsible for. That left two other possibilities, a naturally occurring phenomenon, something that he would eventually be able to reveal and could potentially put an end to. The last potentiality made the hair on the back of his neck rise. Perhaps there was a creature out there with this power native to them, one that even his most powerful instruments were incapable of finding. The havoc such a creature might be able to wreak scared him.
Gaius could not decide which outcome to pray for being the case. The shadow of disaster loomed in each direction he looked. When Taessa returned from her trip to the table with a second glass of wine in hand, offering it to him, he did not refuse. Below him, terrible violence was being wrought, but for the first time since the onset of the competition, Gaius felt in control of where that violence was pointed. The sweet wine on his tongue went far toward banishing the worries from his mind. Even so, he could not shake the feeling of a specter peering over his shoulder, a wicked smile on its face as it watched him carefully lay his plans.