Camilla clenched her fists as Jacob and Archie pounded away at each other like two stray dogs fighting over a scrap of meat. They rolled over on the ground, then sprung up and started punching again.

Archie started to cast a transmogrification spell. Jacob launched a massive ward at Archie, then another.

"What's Jacob doing?" Blake hissed. "If he gets into a raw power fight at distance, he's toast."

Camilla's nails dug into her palms. Blake was right. What was Jacob thinking? He had to have a strategy in mind. That was the Jacob she knew. But she couldn't see any path to victory this way. His massive wards were too costly, and pretty soon he'd be out of juice!

Maybe he had no choice. Maybe Archie was that much stronger than him and he felt he had to throw everything at him at once.

Archie's transmogrification spell rippled out from him. Jacob got caught in it, splashing down into the muddy clay.

Oh no.

Before Jacob could jump out, Archie solidified the arena again, trapping Jacob in place.

"He's done," Blake said, jerking back against his seat as if he'd been shot. "Fuck."

Camilla grimaced. That transmogrification had been impressive. To cover such a wide area in such a short time? Maybe Tanaka could do that. Anyone else in the class? Not a chance. And either Jacob hadn't recognized it, or just hadn't expected it to cover him. A single kill-stroke.

"At least it's Archie," Grace said, as if that were any consolation.

Camilla sat back in her chair. Grace was kinda right, she supposed. She should be happy for Archie. But now Jacob probably wasn't going to be training as hard since he was out of the tournament, and that meant she was going to have to ask him to train, not the other way around.

Then Jacob's hand shot out to the side and he began casting a spell. Camilla sat forward, frowning. She tried to place it. Production for sure. A deep, ruddy orange, in that weird, quasi-tangible zone between orange and red magic. Not far off from Ritual Magic.

"Camilla, what's he casting?" Blake asked. "I've never felt that before."

"I..." Camilla blinked. "I don't know."

Blake swivelled his head to look at her, shock written on his lean features.

Jacob finished the spell. A ray of amber light leapt from his fingers out to the ward wall surrounding the arena, which shimmered in response.

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Camilla's eyes widened.

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Jacob threw his hand out and cast the magic-siphoning spell he'd read about in Magical Absorption and Transferral. A ray of amber light shot out to the side, connecting him to the ward-wall surrounding the arena.

The ward-wall shimmered, then the ray began leeching it of power. White, phosphorescent rings were sucked from the wall into the amber ray, down along it, and into Jacob.

Power surged in him, energizing him.

Despite himself and the situation, he barked a laugh. It actually worked.

He'd tried it on the training room last night, and sure enough, just as Camilla's father had said in the book, a mage could pull from any latent store of magic. The energy he was leeching felt semi-crystallized, like a half frozen glass of water, not like the normal latent power he called upon.

The issue was that the magic in the training room walls—and he'd suspected, this ward-wall—were already ward magic, and so any power he siphoned from them wasn't universally transferable; he could only use it for ward magics. D'Angelo had gone on at length about why this was, something to do with the narrowing cascade of power when a mage actually cast a spell, but the theory had been beyond Jacob.

Archie's eyes widened, then he set his jaw and blasted a forceward at Jacob.

Jacob met it with his own forceward. Then cast another, and another. Each as large as the one's he'd thrown earlier. The amber ray connecting him to the ward-wall continued to drain power from it into him, keeping him topped up like a plugged in battery even when he cast spells.

For a time Archie met him blow for blow, their wards crashing together, littering the ground with shattered shards. Jacob had wondered last night at the viability of this spell. How much magic could he leech from these latent sources? A few wards? But the ward-wall that surrounded the arena was enormous, orders of magnitude larger than his relatively tiny forcewards, and it had to be strong enough to weather the strongest outputs from the strongest students. Effectively, an endless sink.

Archie's latest ward was weaker than the rest. He leapt to the side, trying to circle around Jacob.

Jacob pounded forcewards at him over and over as quickly as he could. One of them broke through the other boy's defences, smacked him in the side, and sent him sprawling out of bounds.

Just like that, it was over.

Power still surged into Jacob. He shivered and cut off the siphoning spell, then his perception and strength. He tried to walk forward, but he was still stuck in the ground.

The crowd was deafening. He barely heard VP Leslie land on the arena floor next to him.

Shit.

"Archibald, Jacob, remain where you are. The judges are conferring on the legality of Jacob's spell. If deemed illegal, Archibald will be the victor. If deemed legal, the outcome will be to confirm Caibo's victory by Vanderbilt's exit of the fighting area."

She waved her hand, casting Decomp. The ground around Jacob's legs turned to soup again. He stepped up out of it and looked down at himself. It looked like he'd fallen into a vat of spaghetti sauce.

VP Leslie looked up into the glass box where the judges were. She nodded, then turned to the announcer and made a signal.

"Vanderbilt is out of bounds! Caibo wins!"

The crowd roared anew.

Archie smacked the ground with his fist, then got up and stalked back to the tunnel.

"Congratulations, Caibo, though I suspect you just forced them to edit the rulebook," VP Leslie nodded curtly to Jacob, then she blasted herself back up to the stands.

Jacob turned and raised his hands to the crowd and laughed in exulted joy. He almost couldn't believe he'd gotten away with it. He couldn't believe he'd beaten Archie. Even with the siphoning spell it had seemed a desperate hope at best.

He let the roar of the crowd wash over him and basked in the hundreds of pairs of eyes on him right now.

Was this what it felt like to be on top of the world? Was this what it felt like to be powerful? Invincible?