Magic, like the crackle of lightning, sparks off the ball before my fingers even contact its surface. I feel time slow as my hand curls around the mass of darkness on the ground, my body slipping into battle fever without even thinking about it. Power, pure and unadulterated, courses through me; my muscles sing with strength, vibrations of ecstatic potential begging to be used. For a brief moment, I feel like a god, and I revel in the feeling.
The second rank man on their team, Jextarella, is bringing his hand down at me, swinging a wide arc aimed at my neck, trying to clothesline me before I can even stand with the ball. It is almost as if he is standing still in front of me. There is a shock in his frozen eyes; he didn’t expect the black ball to be thrown first either. It should have been green. Jor’Mari told me that the game always started with the green.
I can’t keep my mind from lingering on the thought as I easily duck beneath his swing, watching, fascinated, as I move around to the man’s back. Arcs of light peel off my body, clinging to his as I move past him, the ball between my hands thrumming with an energy that I want more than anything in that moment. The slowed world around me, I can see everyone on the field, each racing forward like they wade through molasses, the enemy converging on me. I flow through the reaching arms and grasping fingers thrown up in front of me, vaulting over a man that dives towards my legs to try and tackle me. The woman amid their group jumps into the air in my path, beautiful and shimmering butterfly wings sprouting from beneath her long robes.
I cannot fly like her, but I don’t need to. The satisfaction in her eyes dims to horror as she sees my rough leather boot approach her face. I feel the crunch of her nose under my heel as I use her face as a steppingstone, hurtling over her and into the air. Then, I am free, the only thing clinging to me the slight weight of my own body as the earth tries to pull me back down. Twenty feet of open air slowly shrinks beneath me as I fall: three of the opposing team are down on the ground, the other two still trying to turn toward me.
“Time left?” I ask Galea, surprised the mental words come normally despite the slowness of the world.
The fey spirit appears in front of me, a window held between her claws that reads, “6.3 seconds remaining.”
It hasn’t even been a second since I first touched the ball. Stone pillars erupt in a violent burst from the ground in front of me, forming a mess of obstacles that seek to slow me down. The air around me begins to contort, growing thicker, a dampness beginning to cling to my skin. So, this is how magicians need to use their abilities in this game.
My fire is no match for stone, but I don’t need to destroy these pillars. My boot claps down onto the top of one of the pillars, my momentum carrying me forward, the full strength of my legs pushing me to vault over the others. The dampness across my body begins to fade, and I look down to see that fire trails in my wake, as if my hair were a torch marking my path. Cloying flames cling to my body, not disturbing my clothing in the least. I know that this comes from the ball between my fingers, that it is helping me call up my fire in some way, but I can’t consider that now. Still, it will be a good thing to think about later.
A flash of light explodes in front of me and suddenly that man Jextarella is standing in front of me, his wild green hair whipping around his shoulders, his huge hands opened wide. A wave of energy, his stark green soul presence, rolls off of him like a wave. My mind screams at me not to enter it, that I will be at his mercy inside of his domain, but my feet are already carrying me forward. I dive into his expanding soul presence, flinching as I feel the flow of magical energy wash over me. I open my eyes to find myself awash in a sea of green, the world outside of the soul presence completely gone, just a sea of shifting and indistinct green beyond.
I race past Jextarella as he swipes his hand down at me, making it to the opposite wall of the green prison. I am surprised again as I easily pass through the barrier only to find three heavily muscled men sprinting directly at me. Somehow, despite running in a straight line for the opponent’s goal, Jextarella’s soul presence managed to turn me completely around. I glance to the side; two seconds remain on the time I can hold onto the black ball. My mind is on fire with energy, power, and insane ideas. I can see my team sprinting to catch up to me, Jess at the lead of them, but my eyes narrow at the man nearest me, his arms already open, readying to tackle me to the ground.
Madness inspires me. My body pumps forward like a furious bolt of lightning, my legs a blur beneath me as the ground becomes mulch in my wake. If I had ever played the sport before, I don’t think such an idiotic and inspired idea would have occurred to me. As we converge on one another, I thrust the ball forward, hurling it straight at the man’s head as he readies to tackle me. The black ball, hard as a brick, smashes into the man’s jaw, turning his run into a backward flip, his head sliding across the ground as his whole body gives out.
The ball sails upward, a little too high. I had wanted it to bounce straight back to me, but it seems too hard to do such a thing. The man’s falling form reveals the woman with the wings, her nose bloody and pushed to the side. She rises into the air, her arms outstretched for the black ball as I leap. I fly into the air as if I had wings of my own, the energy of the black ball still clinging to me. The flying woman and I crash into each other in a bone shattering crack, each of our hands clasped around the black ball. I see the dizziness and pain in her eyes as I ignore my own, wrapping my legs around her waist as the earth rises up beneath us. Her back collides with the ground, one of my knees digging into her stomach as I spring forward, easily pulling the ball out of her hands as I leave her wheezing behind.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Energy pours through me once again, pushing me forward, screaming at me to dominate and claim this entire field as my own. Fifty feet separate me from the goal, and I don’t even need to look at Galea to know that I have plenty of time left to make it there. Any idea of getting help from my team is abandoned as a ball of green energy appears in front of me, Jextarella’s soul presence a completely opaque mass. I could go around if I wish to, the terrible energy coursing through my veins gives me an inhuman grace that would allow me to turn in time, but a hunger deep inside of me screams for me to rush straight ahead.
I dive in; a rank two magician standing in front of me in the middle of a whirling vortex of color. He is moving forward, bending to try and put his arm across my neck once again, trying to knock me down. No doubt, the man is stronger than I am, and if I wasn’t holding the black ball he might be faster too. I don’t care; in this game of speed and power, I refuse to be intimidated, even by a rank two magician–especially by a rank two magician.
He steps to the side, anticipating me to duck the same way that I did to evade him the first time, but I continue sprinting straight ahead. Despite his size, despite his height and rippling muscles, I can read his conflux–Mage of Shifting Shores. He is a mage, just like me, and like me, he probably does not have a high attribute in defense. I drop in front of him, my thighs bulging as I coil all the power in my legs that I can manage. Before Jextarella can react, I explode upward, my legs uncoiling, my forehead driving straight into the man’s nose.
Darkness. Numbness becomes my everything for a brief moment. Color, first a swirling mirage of green that slowly opens into a full spectrum of light clarifies in my vision. I feel my weight being wrong at the same time that my mind blares a warning to me. I spin, realizing I am falling sideways, and just barely manage to put my feet beneath me before I crash into the grass. The ball continues to buzz between my fingers, not even near unconsciousness is enough to make me release it. I crouch in the grass for a split second, my head crying out and a trail of red snaking down over my left eye. I think that I have my incredible recovery to thank for not letting me go down.
To my right, the giant body of Jextarella crashes into the ground with a thud, the wisps of his soul presence dissipating around us. I feel my very bones protest as I throw myself forward, but the field is open in front of me. I sprint through the lines marking the field, the black ball buzzing between my fingers as my foot finally crosses the goal line.
Red smoke explodes from the ground in front of me and to my sides, a cheer from hundreds of thundering voices echoing through the open air. I turn, watching as the smoke rises like living flames into the air, the center of the field overtaken by an illusory scoreboard, my point the only mark on it.
“Team Mari scores the first point!” a voice calls through the open field, sending the unseen crowd into a riot of cheering.
I stand, my lungs pumping, my chest heaving, as I look at the spectacle around me, beaming. The ball between my fingers begins to relax, its constant buzz and feed of magical power slowing and becoming nothing. Jess collides with me, lifting me in a hug and screaming my name while I try to calm my head down. The other three come in behind her, clapping me on the shoulder and offering me congratulations while the opposing team pick themselves up. Three are a bit slower, Jextarella being the last to scrape himself off the ground, crawling back to his feet.
“Crazy bitch,” he says to me, spitting a mouthful of blood into the grass. His skin is split down his face as he glares at me with violent blue eyes, letting one of his teammates help pull him to his feet. The strangest thing is that I don’t think he means it as an insult.
“Are you going to let him speak to you like that?” Jor’Mari asks.
“I don’t know if he is wrong,” I say, tossing the dead black ball to him after pulling myself away from Jess.
“That was certainly a violent point,” Jor’Mari says, smirking.
“Violent?” I say, wiping the blood out of my eye. Running a finger up to my forehead tells me that the cut across my brow has already mended. “We are just playing a game.”
He laughs. “Exactly right. Now, let me show you how I play.”
It becomes apparent to me that our opponents are as clueless about the game that we have been forced to play as I am. Jor’Mari corrects both of our sides as we stride back to the center of the field, preparing for the second ball to come down. Each team lines up once more on the starting line for our respective sides, twenty feet from the center of the field. With our team being up a point, the next ball will be shot out by the Dispatch five feet closer to their line than ours.
As the black cube floating over the field begins to whirr, the whining sound keening through the air from the cube, I glance to my right to see Jor’Mari’s form begin to shift. His horns elongate and his teeth grow into dangerous fangs as he takes on his speed specialist aspect. The transformation goes further, his body growing taller and thicker in the way that I saw on the first floor of the tower. As the whine from the cube overhead hits its apex, the man has become a true monster, his hands digging into the earth as he prepares to launch forward.
The second that the ball is shot towards the earth from the Dispatch, Jor’Mari leaps off the line, blazing ahead far faster than I can keep up with. The man snatches the Stoneball off the ground with one hand, pushing his open palm into the chest of an unfortunate man and launching him back ten feet. No one even comes close to stopping him as he sprints down the field, the three-hundred-pound ball tucked under one arm, held as easily as a loaf of bread.
Resignation lingers in the faces of our opponents as we all watch Jor’Mari spike the heavy ball into the earth inside the goal. They know as well as I do that they have no way to stop this man, his power is simply that overwhelming. Jor’Mari points toward the sky, straight toward Arabella Willian, something unspoken in his gaze.
We win the match before the first ten minutes are up. Jor’Mari could have done it all his self if he wanted; he weaves through the magics of our opponents like a dancer or crashes through them like a brute. We retire to our room afterward, leaving the devastated Team Viridian to pick up the pieces out on the lawn. Today, we have won time. I only wonder how much that will be worth down the road.