The eighteen hours came and went without much fuss. All of us faced the archway burned into the wall with rested faces, watching as the line began to burn with crimson fury and eat away at the wood, the entire passageway turning into embers. Sunlight glared in through the newly opened passageway, a warm contrast to the demure light of the fire and the few lamps already around the room. My armor stored away, I followed Jor’Mari out into the shining light, wearing my worn traveling clothes and the leather harness that secures my armor in place.
Apparently, using armor is discouraged during this game. Considering the brutality that Jor’Mari described to me in great detail, that seems somewhat of a poor idea. He assures me that I will be fine, and given my incredible ability to recover from injury, I agree. That doesn’t mean that I like to suffer the injuries in the first-place mind you, but a good deal of the sting that comes along with being stabbed vanishes the moment you realize you will be fine in a few minutes. At least the debilitating fear does.
A wave of vertigo hits me the moment that I leave our small room. Before me stands the field that I have been told to expect, a rectangle painted into the mowed lawn with white and yellow, two-hundred feet long and fifty wide, two goals at each end. There are seats set off to the side of the field, ten on each side, and floating in the center of the field is a large black cube ten feet off the ground. What sets my stomach to riot, however, has nothing to do with the space in front of me. Glancing to the side as I exit, I find that the walls to the indoor field have vanished, a howling tundra full of ice and snow passing by. The doorway to the room we were just inside stands at the edge of the circular lawn, leading back to the impossible room that is separate from the driving rain and icy field passing by all around. I feel again as if I am on Arabella Willian’s floating manor, watching the world pass beneath me while I seem to stand still.
“That must be expensive,” Clarice says, cocking her head to the side as she approaches the edge of the lawn, looking almost as if she is about to step over the edge and fall into the snowy world. She reaches out a hand, knocking on something invisible that I come to realize must be the wall of this indoor field. “It is a very good illusion,” she says, turning back to us. “I wonder how much this must cost to maintain.”
I am about to say something when a booming sound comes from the opposite end of the field, making me turn. Another doorway appears out of the air, an archway that leads into a room identical to the one we just left. People emerge from the doorway. Some are as awed by the presentation of the field as I was, others entirely unimpressed. Eyes lock in the space between our group and theirs, and if as by rote, we all begin to approach the center of the field.
As I have been made to understand it, the game in its truest intent is incredibly simple. With a name like Stoneball, how could it be anything but. In the game, the object is to gain possession of the ball, and race down to the opposite end of the field with it and your team. When a person crosses into their opponent’s goal while holding the ball, their team scores a point.
There are a few more rules, like if someone carrying the ball is driven to the ground, play resets from whatever point they were pulled down. You are also unable to throw the ball forward, only being able to toss it laterally or backward to a teammate.
The most important twist on the straightforward game I was told is that there are in fact four different balls that are used in the game. The black cube floating in the center of the field has inside of it the balls that will be used, each one enchanted in a different way. There are four balls: green, yellow, red, and black. When the game begins and after every goal, the cube in the center of the field, called the Dispatch, will toss a different ball into the game. The green ball is the most standard and common among those that the Dispatch hurls into the arena, and it starts every game. While a person holds onto the ball, it will gradually grow heavier and heavier in their arms, weighing them down and making them an easier target for the opposing team. When they pass the ball or lose control of it, the ball becomes light once more.
The yellow ball is a bit different. Like the green ball, the yellow will grow heavier over time to encourage a more team-oriented approach, but it will only ever grow half as heavy as the green ball. People refer to it as the Scoring Ball, as the most points in the game are earned off of a lucky yellow ball coming in at the right time. The red ball differs from the previous two in that it does not grow heavier over time. When the ball is tossed out by the dispatch, it already weighs as much as it might. Jor’Mari referred to this ball as the Stoneball, and it weighs three-hundred pounds and is even rarer than the previous two.
The black ball, by far the rarest of any, is so uncommon that a group that plays regularly might only see it once every few months. Getting your hands on this ball will push vast amounts of magical power into your body, effectively working like magical equipment. The downside is that the ball will explode after being held onto by the same person for more than seven seconds.
Jor’Mari went at length to explain these rules to me, expecting that we would be playing based off of minor tournament rules. Apparently, alongside dueling, equestrian, and the joust, Stoneball is a crowd favorite at the seasonal tournaments the nobles threw for each other in the springtime. The minor tournament rules are established for the young scions of the nobility, those beginning to feel their endowment empowering their bodies. In real tournaments, where the lowliest competitor would be able to match a rank three magician, each ball carries with it greater properties and there is much more danger involved.
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Magicians are allowed a place in these competitions, but the stipulations placed upon us are so strict that they seem almost unfair. We are prevented from using our magical abilities in any offensive way, completely prohibited from touching another with any magical power. Given my abilities, I am going to be of little help in this game.
Our two groups came to meet each other, standing at the center of the field, looking over one another. Four men and a woman, all the same tall humans that I saw outside the tower, stare back at us. None of them strike me immediately as being all that threatening, except for the man that stands in the center of their line. He is rank two.
A booming clap overhead drawls all of our eyes upward. Above us, it appears as if the sky races past, a flurry of clouds and sunrays passing by so quickly that it is dizzying. While the Dispatch continues to hover above the center of the arena, its opaque and shiny black exterior subtly thrumming with a beat that pierces through the air, I spot a woman standing upon it.
She is dressed in a green toga, long silken strands clinging to her body, peering over the staff she leans against at us. A harp adorns her left hip, its iridescent strings strumming a tune without the need of fingers. Heavy jewelry of gold and silver decorates her, rings inlaid with rubies, earrings sparkling in the god rays strobing from overhead, bangles and bands laid so thick on her arms they might work as armor, and golden necklaces drawing the eye to her considerable cleavage as she looks down at us. The ties of gold wrapped in her hair do little to contain the flowing mane of lavender and blue that floats in the air in a single long braid. She is dressed as the goddess Gir Kraessa, the goddess of magic and temptation.
I don’t need my eye to identify this woman, not that it can. Arabella Willian, dressed as a goddess, leans on an ancient and gnarled staff, the subtle grin on her face digging up an irritation in me that I did not know I held. Jor’Mari barks a laugh beside me, cutting off whatever I was going to petulantly say to the woman.
“So, this was you?” he asks, pointing around at the field.
“Your impetuousness and temerity are an interesting combination mortal,” Arabella says, looking down on him. “You are all arranged now inside of my influence, and what I desire from you is amusement.” As I listen, I cannot help but feel a bit disturbed by how differently Arabella speaks. There is a haughtiness in her voice that I don’t remember, and it is as if she truly believes herself to be Gir Kraessa. “There is a game called Stoneball, where young men and women bludgeon each other with their bodies in order to score points and dominate each other. I find this sport amusing.”
The Dispatch begins to rise into the air, spinning, but somehow Arabella always stays looking directly down at each of us. She jumps back into the air, levitating as she points her staff toward each of us in turn. “Demonstrate to me your prowess in this sport and amuse me for a time. I am bid to remind you that the usage of offensive magic in the progress of this game is forbidden to you, and if I see you turning toward such strategies, I shall throw you off this tower. The game shall go to five points or an hour, whichever comes first. I trust that each of you understands the rules of this game.”
One by one, those of us trapped on the ground nod our heads towards the woman portraying a goddess. I look between their group and ours. With Samielle still recuperating back in the room, our teams are evenly matched with five players each. I have no idea what it is that our opponents are capable of, and I do not know what Clarice and Jasper can do either for that matter. I will need to be adaptable to do anything during this match.
“It would seem that there is no need to make certain that the numbers match,” Arabella says, rising even higher into the air. A wind begins to blow through the room, the grass on the field starting to blow in the chill breeze that reminds me of a winter morning. Overhead, the Dispatch begins to whine louder, the black cube spinning end over end in a blur of motion.
Arabella points her staff towards our opponents. “Team…” Suddenly, the Dispatch overhead grinds to a halt, merely hovering in the air. “What is your team going to be called?”
Five sets of eyes turn skyward, looking at the woman with sudden confusion. “Team Viridian,” the woman says before anyone else can say anything. The name is somewhat on the nose, four of the five have vibrant green hair. Though, I suppose that it could also be referring to the green robes that the woman wears.
“Very well,” Arabella says before she points her staff in our direction. “And you?”
“Team Mari,” Jor’Mari yells out immediately.
“What?” Jess and I exclaim at the same time.
“Team Mari it is,” Arabella says, delighting with a grin as she gestures toward the Dispatch that begins to spin like a top once more, its whine picking up, higher and higher. “Team Viridian, ready?”
The opposing team roars their assent.
“Team Mari, ready?”
Jor’Mari yells with all his heart, while the rest of us give a more half-hearted yell. I feel my heartbeat pick up, the whine of the Dispatch seeming to pour fire into my blood. My muscles tighten as I crouch on the field, the tendons in my legs coiled, preparing to fire forward like an arrow. I might not have much use for my magic in this game, but I have come to rely on my speed.
The sound pulsing through the air from the Dispatch crescendos, a long and shrieking note held in the air. That single note is like agony, the seconds seeming to crawl past while the sound rattles through the air, through me, through my bones and my nerves. Then, silence.
Like the explosion of a cannon, the Dispatch fires the first ball down into the field. The streak of light that launches all of the players off their starting lines is so startling that only three of us are in motion as the ball collides into the ground. The twenty feet between our starting line and the center of the field where the ball collides into the grass are eaten up by the pumping of my legs, the grass churning into the air in my wake. My eyes widen as I realize that I am at the front of the pack, my legs burning with all of the power I can haul out of them, my prize just a few feet in front of me now. To my excitement and horror, my mind finally catches up with my feet, the color of the ball standing out to me in the stirring grass. A black ball lays in the center of the field, its spherical surface a beautiful nightscape devoid of all color, a menacing aura radiating from it.