“Welcome to the first round of the Fortress competition, Eterna versus Redclaw!”
The announcer’s magically amplified voice rang out through the huge open field set aside for the event, drawing a cheer from the gathered audience. Despite the fact that it was only the first round in a four-stage knockout tournament, the number of spectators was quite large, reflecting the popularity of the event.
The Fortress competition was a matchup between five-member teams, each having a base to defend. The objective was to destroy the mana crystal at the centre of the opposing team’s base while protecting the home base. While on the opposing team’s side, players could be tagged and from there would have to touch their own base’s mana crystal before being allowed to venture into the opponents’ territory again.
Matches were strictly non-violent, and the setup heavily favoured energy mages who specialized in speed magic. It was generally an exciting event of athleticism and strategy.
Veltyen reflected on this while participating as a token seat-filler because the rules did not allow teams of less than five people to compete. Beside him, Devlin, Asher, and Taine fulfilled similar roles.
Despite the lack of any speed mages on their team, Ariela and Devlin were currently arguing over how long to wait before winning the match, neither of them even slightly concerned about the possibility of losing.
“It has to be decisive and crushing,” said Ariela.
“My dear, the absolute shortest a match has even been was fifteen minutes. We will get booed for being boring if you end it immediately. Even worse, they’ll probably assume some kind of mana crystal malfunction.”
“Well, I can’t just sit around doing nothing for fifteen minutes. My powers aren’t exactly suitable for non-lethal defence.”
Veltyen had a few ideas. “You could drop them into pits,” he suggested.
Ariela’s eyes lit up. “I could drop their whole fortress into a pit. That would suitably impress the crowd, right?”
“…Maybe save that for the final match,” Devlin suggested. “We need to build up excitement.”
“How about you slowly dissolve their fortress in a wave this time,” Taine suggested.
“Okay,” said Ariela. “Over, let’s say, two minutes?”
Everyone nodded. “Focus on creating obstacles for the players until the ten minute mark at least,” said Devlin. “We’ll be here around the crystal in case any of them get through.”
Ariela rolled her eyes. “Fine. Did anyone bring a watch?”
“I did,” said Taine. “I’ll let you know.”
Everyone took their starting positions around the base crystal. With a blow of a whistle, the match was on.
The opposing team had allocated two players to defending the base while three went on the attack, sprinting across the dividing line while widely spaced apart to make it difficult to target them as a group. In contrast to their haste, Ariela casually strolled around to the front of the cottage-sized building that served as their base. Seeing only one opponent, the enemy mages conserved their magic and ran forward at impressive but human speed.
The ground before all three of them seemed to waver before dissipating in a cloud of ash and they found themselves falling into pits deeper than their own height. While surprised, all three managed to land on their feet.
“They can easily jump out of there,” Veltyen warned, having had ample experience with the physical capabilities of kinetic energy mages in the course of his training and career.
Before any of them could do so, the pits tripled in depth, the earth again vanishing in a puff of ash that coated the mages in a layer of gray powder. As soon as they landed, the depth doubled again. The area immediately above the disappearing soil became misty with water vapour.
“I know,” said Ariela, “I just didn’t want them getting hurt falling.”
Seeing their teammates in trouble, one of the opposing players left on defence cast a spell that pulsed blindingly bright light, making the Eterna players squint and shade their eyes.
“Should we help, my dear?” Devlin enquired.
“Veltyen, be a dear and run over there and tag those players before they get out of their pits, would you?” Ariela requested. “No need for a lot of magic use, just keep yourself safe out there.”
“Gladly,” Veltyen said. He tied a cloth around his eyes and used his magic to turn it into a translucent sun shade that cut through the blinding light before running out onto the field. He was rather glad that circumstances had allowed him to participate in a minor way, his mind having automatically started strategizing on what he would do if he were competing seriously. His magic was not particularly suited for the rules of this particular game, but in becoming a combat mage, he had gained a lot of experience with kinetic energy specialists, while they likely had no familiarity with materials magic in any kind of athletic context.
Under the cover of the pulsing light, Veltyen snuck up on one of the opposing players just as he reached the top of the pit Ariela had conjured. It was quite amusing to see the soot-covered mage’s expression shift from surprise to annoyance as he registered being tagged right after all the effort of escaping the trap.
Veltyen immediately turned and sprinted for a second pit, but the first opponent called out a warning and his second target was prepared for him to try to tag her. What she was not prepared for was for him to soften the soil under her hands until they sank in to the wrists, then harden it, his recent experience in construction work unexpectedly helpful. He did not bother pouring enough power into the magic to truly immobilize her, just slow her for the fraction of the second he needed to tag her and send her back to her side of the territory.
The third attacking player had escaped his pit and continued his advance despite the loss of his teammates. No longer conserving magic, he ran, jumped, and dodged in movements that were difficult to follow with the untrained eye, causing Ariela to conjure new pits in the wrong areas to slow his advance.
Without speed magic, Veltyen had no chance of catching up by running. Instead, he slammed his hand onto the ground and sent a burst of magic that softened the field to the consistency of thick mud. The mage managed to jump into the air before the ground completely softened, but a second pulse of magic when he landed succeeded in trapping him for long enough for Ariela to drop him into a pit. Veltyen grinned and jogged over to tag him, forcing him to retreat. The light effect faded, the opponent choosing to save magic stores for the time being.
“Has it been ten minutes yet?” Ariela asked.
“It’s been two,” said Taine.
She tsked in annoyance. “I really don’t want us accidentally losing because we were stalling for too long.”
“Dear, why don’t you go up to the top of the building and pretend you are setting up for an elaborate spell?” Devlin asked. “They’ll target you instead of the mana crystal.”
“I don’t have any chalk.”
Devlin picked up a stone and handed it to her, transforming its material properties in the breath that it took to complete the motion.
“Huh, free chalk,” Ariela joked. “I knew I married you for a reason.” She climbed to the top of their base and began drawing random circles on the roof.
The first two opponents to be eliminated had returned to their base and were setting out for a second attempt. Deciding the ground was too treacherous to traverse, they used magic to launch themselves into the air, speeding forward like loosed arrows.
Veltyen moved forward to intercept the mage in the lead, only to pause when Asher said, “I got it, I got it.” A second later, both of them were flying at the exact same speed in the reverse direction, Asher having completed such a flawless vector reversal that it took them a few seconds to realize what had happened and regain control of their flight. They retreated back to their base, presumably to confer with their teammates.
Taine looked at the younger men thoughtfully. “You two would actually be good at this game,” he observed.
Asher shrugged. “Maybe? It would only take a few tries before someone figured out how to get around me. Veltyen could do it.”
Veltyen grinned. “You’re too distractible.”
“That being said, we’re operating at a massive advantage,” Asher continued, somewhat proving Veltyen’s point. “Everyone else is trying to win with the absolute minimum magic expenditure, since it will be four rounds to the finals. I haven’t had a second thought about casting a medium-strength spell since Sery joined the guild. Just the fact that I’m here after winning the Powerspeed competition, of all things, is completely ludicrous. In fact, all of us except Ariela are competing in more than one event.”
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Veltyen’s eyes automatically cut to Sery, sitting in the audience next to Foria, who was laughing her head off, presumably at the sight of the mages flying backwards so suddenly. Sery’s expression was warm and amused. Sensing his gaze, she smiled and waved. He smiled and nodded back before returning his attention to the playing field, alert for their opponents’ next move.
“You are all supposed to be placeholders,” said Ariela, now drawing neat rows of diamonds along the edge of her main circle. “The whole point of this exercise is to prove that our guild is to be reckoned with even without Sery’s help.”
“I mean it’s true that Sery isn’t boosting us during any of the events,” said Asher, “but it’s hard to quantify the advantage we had simply because we could spend the last six months practicing rather than spending our every waking moment meditating, not even charging our own mana crystals to hoard every last mana particle we could store.”
“…You’re right, of course,” said Ariela. Glancing over at the other side, she dropped the advancing players into a single large pit while they were still on their side of the territory, casually demonstrating a terrifying range of phenomena interference – Veltyen himself was limited to physical contact, maybe a few inches past his fingertips if he really strained. “It’s sometimes hard to remember life before Sery, even though it’s only been what, ten months?”
“It will be ten months next week,” Veltyen confirmed.
“Regardless, it’s time people learned to stop messing with us.” On the emphasized word, Ariela stood up and stared at the opposite team base.
“Don’t forget to use some focusing gestures, dear,” Devlin prompted. At the reminder, Ariela moved her hands around in some typical gestures that many mages found helpful in directing their magic. The movements were so completely unrelated to the magic flows around her that Veltyen had to laugh.
“Um, it’s only been seven minutes,” said Taine, though he clearly did not think Ariela would continue to wait.
The front of the enemy base began to crumble away with eerie precision, as if an invisible line of destruction were creeping slowly, inevitably forward, leaving nothing but ashes and dust in its wake.
“Um, what is your phenomena interference range?” Veltyen asked. The base was twice the distance away from the pit she had previously manifested.
“It’s a good question,” Ariela said, eyes focused on her target but otherwise completely relaxed. “I have never been able to target something without visual confirmation of its position.”
“…So within eyeshot.”
“It works if she’s looking through a telescope as well,” Devlin added.
Veltyen was completely speechless. Such an effortlessly destructive power with an unbelievable range…
Devlin patted his shoulder. “She’s too lazy to destroy the world.”
“Think of all the paperwork,” Ariela joked. The entire front wall of the enemy base was gone, leaving a clear view of the mana crystal at its centre.
“Wait,” Asher said, “Could you target the moon?”
Ariela snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous, Asher.”
She ruined the comforting words by adding, “I’ve never tried.”
Seeing the utter destruction of their base, the opposing team went on an all-out offensive, all five players running out and launching a variety of attacks. The rules forbade spells that would physically harm any players, but they endured bursts of sound, light, and wind intended to distract and interrupt Ariela’s spellcasting. She simply closed her eyes and continued.
“I thought you needed visual confirmation,” said Veltyen, keeping an eye on their mana crystal so that it did not get damaged by the pebbles their opponents were shooting down to destroy Ariela’s chalk drawings.
“Unless one of them can move that base, I already got it,” said Ariela.
Their victory seemed far more of a close call than it actually was, he and Asher deflecting a barrage of attacks on their mana crystal once the opposing team decided that there was no way to stop Ariela. In reality, they could have done nothing and the crystal would have weathered the attacks for long enough for Ariela to finish, as it was designed to absorb a considerable amount of kinetic energy before shattering and releasing a victory flare. Her line of destruction inched slowly forward until it hit the base of the enemy mana crystal, which immediately shattered and released the Eterna guild mark as a giant sigil in the air.
The crowd roared its approval.
***
“Hey, you’re Veltyen Indei, right? You won the Fortress competition.”
Sery looked up at hearing Veltyen’s name unexpectedly, on her way back to Eterna’s tent area after a visit to the shower facilities with Foria. An unfamiliar woman had stopped him in the street while he was presumably on one of his casual patrols around the area. She looked about Veltyen’s age, fairly wealthy but not a mage based on her dress, attractive in looks and confident about it in her bearing.
Veltyen did not look particularly happy to be recognized and attempted to disengage himself. “Excuse me.”
The woman grabbed his arm. “What’s the hurry?” Leaning in, she said something next to his ear that Sery could not hear over the bustle of the crowd. She could only read his expression, which had shifted to one of distaste.
Following Sery’s gaze, Foria noticed Veltyen for the first time. “Oh dear, our boy has gotten a bit too famous. Let’s go rescue him, shall we?”
The web-mage strode forward with a confidence that dared anyone to get in her way. “Veltyen!” she called out cheerfully. “Thanks for coming to get us!”
Veltyen looked up with visible relief, using the distraction to put distance between himself and the stranger. She did not look happy at the interruption, turning on Foria with an annoyed expression. “Excuse me, we were talking.”
Foria pinned her with a thoroughly unimpressed look that Sery wished she could emulate. A second later, the web-mage turned to Veltyen, completely ignoring the woman’s existence. “Let’s go, shall we?”
Sery slipped past the offended stranger unnoticed and fell in behind Foria and Veltyen as they returned to their tents. Veltyen automatically pulled her close to shield her from the jostling of the crowd.
“Thanks, Foria,” Veltyen said ruefully. “That’s the second one today.”
“We couldn’t just ignore a damsel in distress,” she teased. “Does our shy boy not like the limelight?”
“Don’t you start, too. All I did was help stall so Ariela wouldn’t end the matches too quickly,” he grumbled.
“Well, you did do all of the running around,” Foria pointed out.
“Ariela instantaneously dropped an entire castle into a twenty-foot pit from eight hundred paces away and then burned its stone to nothing, and people are concerned about my running around,” he complained, referring to the rather spectacular finals match that had occurred yesterday, where each team’s base had consisted of a custom-built stone fortress with twenty-foot walls, only one of which was still standing.
Foria grimaced. “Don’t remind me. The Games’ organizers are still trying to get us to pay for that castle.”
“What? That’s ridiculous.”
Foria grinned. “Don’t worry, there’s absolutely nothing in any rule or regulation that stipulated we couldn’t destroy the enemy base during the course of the competition. If they whine at me for much longer, I’ll sic Ariela on them. I dare them to keep whining while she slowly destroys their shoes or something.”
Veltyen laughed. “Suddenly I feel sorry for them. I’ll leave it in your infinitely capable hands.”
Sery kept her eyes lowered to match her subdued mood. If she had come across the earlier scene while alone, she did not think she would have been bold enough to intervene the way Foria had, even when it was obvious that Veltyen appreciated the help. It made her feel useless to not be up to the task one of the few times that he actually seemed to need or want assistance.
When they arrived at the tents, Foria surprised Sery by whisking her belongings out of her hands. “I’ll put these away for you,” said the web-mage, giving Veltyen a look before she walked off.
Sery looked back and forth between Veltyen and Foria, obviously having missed some silent communication while she was lost in her own negative thoughts.
Veltyen gently took her hand and led them to an empty seating area they usually used for dinner. Nowhere was truly private in a campground, but if they spoke quietly, people would be seen before they could overhear the conversation.
Rather than say anything immediately, he gathered up her long hair, still damp from the shower, and used a trick of his magic to make all of the water bead and drip to the ground. He called the water-repelling effect “hydrophobicity” and she had not had a chance to study material science enough to fully understand how it worked.
“Hey,” he said gently, waiting until she looked up to meet his eyes. “Are you mad at me from back there? Because I had no interest…”
Sery blinked at him in confusion.
“…and I was way off base,” he finished with a rueful chuckle. “What’s wrong?”
Sery did not quite know how to word her feelings. “I wish I were brave,” she finally said.
“What? What do you mean?” Veltyen sounded truly surprised. “Sery,” he said, taking her hand. “You’re the bravest person I know.”
Sery frowned, unable to reconcile the sincerity in his voice and the obvious untruth. “I’m not… Compared to Foria or Ariela, I’m…”
“Ah, I see what you’re thinking. Sery, those two are more fearless than brave.”
Her brow knitted as she tried to distinguish the terms.
“Foria and Ariela are both supremely talented in their chosen areas. They know exactly what they can do, and because their abilities are fact to them, there is no fear or uncertainty involved. If you dropped them in situations where those skills don’t apply, you’d see that confidence drop off.
“But every day is still new for you. You’re still learning your powers and your strengths, adjusting to a world that doesn’t have a neat path for Sources to follow. And still, every day, you move forward. That’s bravery, Sery. There’s no one I admire more.”
He hugged her, and she let her head rest against his chest, trying to reconcile his description of her with her image of herself. It had not really occurred to her that much of her anxiety was related to unfamiliar situations, but in looking back, she realized how much comfort she had gained with Eterna’s town and her daily responsibilities. She thought of herself as constantly anxious, but there had been weeks at a time that she had been happy and relaxed.
In the chaotic, noisy tent-city around the Games, only Veltyen could make her feel truly secure. As much as someone like her could be, he made her fearless.
“What brought this all on, anyway?” he asked.
“If Foria hadn’t been there today, I…”
He laughed. “Oh, that? It would have been fine. I’ve already fended off one overzealous fan today.”
Sery’s mouth twisted. Veltyen was right, of course. He was not fiercely independent, but rather effortlessly so.
“Wrong answer? Sorry. Tell me again what was bothering you.”
“I want to, to be able to, do things,” she said, aware that that was not even remotely a coherent explanation.
Somehow, he understood. “Like Foria and Ariela do?”
Sery nodded.
“They’re certainly not bad role models to have.” He chuckled. “I don’t think you realize how much of them you’ve already absorbed. Give it a decade, and you could be running Eterna, too.”
The idea of being in charge of anything startled her.
“But Sery?”
She met his gaze.
“Don’t forget to be you. There are key differences between how Foria and Ariela might get the same task done, things that come down to their differing personalities and talents, their personal style. You don’t need to copy the way they do things in order to accomplish the same things.”
Sery nodded, though she was sure she would have to think about what exactly her own personal style was.
He chuckled. “Sometimes, you remind me of people who used recording crystals at the academy. They’d store up the professors’ lectures to study later. Except you’re the student and the crystal at the same time.”
Foria emerged from their tent, walked over, and seated herself next to them. “You finished begging for forgiveness?” she asked Veltyen.
“Turns out that Sery was more worried about her inability to scare people away,” he answered.
Foria made a face. “It took you fifteen minutes to talk about that? Sery, if you see any annoying flies buzzing around Veltyen, just go over and hug him. They’ll get the message.”
Sery blinked at the simple solution. She could do that. She nodded, her pragmatic concerns laid to rest.
“Wow. I really did waste fifteen minutes, didn’t I?” said Veltyen with a laugh.
“I’m sure you had a lot of noble ideas and abstract encouragement,” Foria said in a mock-comforting way, pegging Veltyen so accurately that he burst into full-blown laughter, Sery’s favourite sound in the world.