“Lelantos, keep to the back and make sure no one gets sniped.” Liliana threw out the order as her feet pounded against the sand. She could hear screams and shouts erupting all around them as over two hundred teenagers turned on each other.
“Polaris, you already know your job. Go have fun.” Liliana instructed her bond, hearing an excited yip in response as Polaris peeled off from their group to do what he did best, wreak havoc and unbridled chaos.
Liliana wasn’t overly concerned that there was anyone here who could do him real harm. The large-scale battle would work in his favor. He could easily slip through the crowd and avoid any direct attacks and any accidental hits would mean little to the rank 4 beast.
“Let’s get started.” Liliana murmured as she came up on the wall, the first of her group to reach it, her Speed coming in handy. She whirled around, naginata at the ready as the rest of her team caught up.
They were lucky, in a way, that the first round of the Tournament was a battle royale that began with all the students clustered together. They’d all be too occupied fighting the bodies right in front of them to be concerned about chasing after anyone with the sense to run away from that nonsense.
Marianne, Emyr, Basil and Rathwater ran towards and behind Liliana, taking their designated spots without being told. Liliana twirled her naginata as she activated [Threads of Control] the only skill she was willing to use this early in the game as her daggers swirled around her.
Koth’talan took to guarding their right flank and Anya to their left as Alistair came to a stop just in front of Liliana and started to glow as he activated skills and spells. Lelantos stood before the distracted tank, fur bristling and body glowing as he prepared himself to defend them until their defenses were in place. A thin shield of light rose around them, enclosing them in a small space, enough to be comfortable but small enough to not be ridiculous.
“Koth’talan.” Alistair barked out as he closed his eyes and focused on the next layer of defense.
The dæmon prince grunted and held out a hand. Bubbling lava formed a few feet outside of their shield to give room for the additional defenses they’d be raising. In moments there was a thick moat of deadly lava bubbling and rushing around the shield of light. None had yet to fall to it, all the action concentrated at the center of the coliseum for now, but inevitably someone would lose today falling into that bright red viscous liquid.
“Work with Nemesis for earth defenses.” Liliana told Koth’talan.
The prince nodded, face set in concentration from having to do two different affinity manipulations, one after another. It would tax his Mana, but the point of this was that they would have the time to rest and recharge before they’d be forced to actually fight.
“Nemesis, help Koth’talan get defenses up.” Liliana instructed her serpentine bond.
Various spells and projectiles splashed ineffectively against the thin shield of light Alistair had already erected. Either missed shots or directed attacks. It was hard to tell under such chaotic circumstances.
Earth rose slowly, sand falling from the growing walls like water as Nemesis called to her affinity and forced it to protect them, Koth’talan working in concert with her. In seconds, the shield of light was covered in hard packed dirt. The sun was hidden from them with the new walls, though Alistair’s shield gave them enough illumination to see by.
“Putting up metal defenses once Basil gets the vines up.” Alistair told them, and Basil stepped forward, producing seeds from his pockets that he flung over the ground.
He didn’t need them, but creating life from seeds was far easier than from nothing. Vines sprouted quickly, growing in the blink of an eye before they tunneled under the hard packed earth, moving quickly with Basil’s Earth affinity and skills aiding them. Liliana could see the vines reinforcing the earthen barriers. She assumed they were creating an even thicker barrier around the earth they wove throughout.
“Done.” Basil said, wiping sweat from his brow as he stepped back.
Alistair nodded and looked to Liliana who sat down, her naginata across her lap as she placed her daggers back in their sheaths and turned off [Threads of Control]. She wouldn’t need them any longer.
She closed her eyes and activated [Astral Projection] sending her astral body outside of the protections they’d erected to face the battlefield. Her feet didn’t touch the ground as she moved, and she turned around to assess the defenses. The vines were huge, far thicker than she thought this particular breed of plant was typically capable of. The beauty of magic. The thorns native to it, which Liliana was fairly certain were poisonous, were as long and thick as her forearm.
Between the thorns and the lava, anyone sent this way would suffer a painful end. Liliana opened up a mental connection to her brother, communicating in images rather than words as she showed him what their defenses looked like.
“I’ll add metal to the inside then, and if I have the Mana, I’ll reinforce the vines with it.” Alistair told her, his voice coming to her clearly, even though her mental awareness was far from her body, as she turned to the fight. From here she could get glimpses of Polaris’ chaos faux fire flickering, though she saw none of the kitsune himself.
“Emyr, get ready for a spell, I’ll tell you where to aim.” Liliana instructed her friend mentally as she moved, approaching the thick knot of students still in the center of the coliseum.
It had only been minutes since the start was called, but far too many students had yet to take advantage of the large battlefield to give themselves much needed space. Liliana located the area that seemed to hold the most students clustered together and mentally directed Polaris away from it as she simultaneously instructed Emyr to aim for it with his spell.
Liliana flitted through the battlefield, ignoring her instinct to run away from threats and projectiles. Few could see her in her astral form, and even fewer of them could actually injure her like this. Weapons and spells flew through her intangible body as she just as easily stepped through unwary students, most only alerted to her passing presence by a cold shiver akin to someone walking over their grave.
Liliana kept an eye out for friends and classmates as she moved, looking for the best targets for her hidden mages to focus their attacks on. She kept an eye on anyone who looked to be a threat that would last to the next round.
She saw a few promising students she thought might survive the first round. A small girl who, if this world didn’t have dwarves, Liliana would swear had some dwarven blood in her, spun around with a wild war cry, her overlarge great axe turning her into a savage tornado of thick arms and deadly steel. More than one student went down when that sharp axe crashed into their kneecaps, shield or no shield.
There was a boy who seemed too thin to be healthy who had taken to the edges of the fight, making use of what, upon closer inspection, was a very clever mixture of Acid and Mist affinities. he was creating what Liliana would judge to be something chillingly similar to mustard gas.
It was good they had shields stopping damage because without them the crowd of students that deadly mixture washed over would need days with strong healers to recover, if they would’ve survived at all.
Good thing I never decided to introduce that particular brand of chemical warfare on this world. One insane teenager with that ability is quite enough. Liliana thought with a shiver as she hurried away from that nightmare fuel.
There was a third student, of indeterminate gender, who was making the most of what had to be a Blood affinity. Liliana fervently hoped they and Marianne never met because the way that person used a multitude of blood threads to control people like marionettes would certainly feature in at least one nightmare once the tournament was over. Liliana was grateful she was nothing more than an astral body as she made her way through that horrifying scene.
Liliana finally got a glimpse of Polaris bowling through a thick cluster of students, his tails tipped by his [Dark Kitsunebi] as he let out a thick stream of [Chaos Breath] on the ones he didn’t send flying with his reckless charge.
Students screamed as weapons, unprotected by shields, twisted and dissolved only for the insidious chaos flames to stick to their shields and slowly leech them to red even as the black and white flames covered their bodies entirely. Liliana watched with ill-hidden amusement as the students whose shields dropped to red vanished from the grounds, their shouts and screams still echoing in the air after they disappeared.
“Circle back and clear up anyone close to us.” Liliana instructed her bond as they parted ways after his show and Liliana headed towards another thick grouping of students.
She paused her movement when meteors fell from the sky, pelting down mercilessly on the group Liliana had directed Emyr to attack earlier. Her arms folded over her chest as she watched, wishing distantly for some popcorn to enjoy the fireworks show as bodies and dirt flew through the air.
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Liliana smiled as she shook her head and moved on after a few seconds of gratifying watching, sending the mental memory of the event to everyone inside the protections. Her ears, the physical ones, took in the sounds of her friends chuckling and laughing at the sight.
In the next grouping, she finally saw someone she recognized, several someones, from their class. Zir’elon was surrounded by his small coterie of underlings, a few from other assorted classes in their year. They were facing off against students Liliana didn’t readily recognize, but she didn’t much care who they were. They’d be getting a helping hand today.
“Basil. Can you get some vines here?” Liliana sent mental images with the words to the boy. She waited a few moments while he presumably adjusted to the influx of foreign information before he responded.
“It’ll take a minute, but yes, I can manage that much.” Basil told her, and Liliana waited, keeping an ongoing litany of mental images as she waited.
Three of the students opposing Zir’elon’s group had gone down and one of his allies, by the time twisted vines erupted from the ground. They grasped tightly onto anyone they could wrap around, mostly Zir’elon’s group. Liliana smirked as she turned away from them and stepped back into the thick of the fight.
Liliana continued her job as the eyes on the ground for her group, focusing on large, closely packed groupings of students for them to hit. It ensured they’d always hit someone with how fast battles moved if she focused on large groupings rather than small or single targets. And the faster they eliminated as many students as possible, the faster this entire round would end.
Fire poured from the sky as Emyr rained hell down on anyone Liliana pointed out. The ground itself turned on unwary students, as Basil and Koth’talan often teamed up to wreak havoc on anyone dumb enough to trust their footing. Rathwater flooded and electrocuted whoever Liliana pointed him at.
I wonder. Liliana thought idly as she looked at the ground, covered in discarded weapons and various bits and bobs from the fighting. She activated [Threads of Control] not expecting it to work as she waited out Emyr’s latest spell charge, keeping a lock on the group she wanted him to target.
Her astral eyes widened in surprise when the spell worked, picking up the discarded short sword she’d been targeting. A devilish grin took over her face as she grabbed and lifted various other objects, twirling them around once to assure herself of her control before she sent her stolen weapons out, aiming for those with their backs to her invisible form.
Liliana hadn’t spent much time testing the limits of her [Astral Projection] skill, but with the revelation that she could use spells at the very least while in it, it changed this guerrilla warfare game they were playing.
Liliana continued to give their mages targets to focus on, but while she did, she wreaked her own brand of chaos on the unsuspecting students. She kept her own Mana in mind as she did it. In the middle of a battle where everyone was an enemy, it was easy to use her spells to casually trip someone right into a stronger attack from a different student. Or to rip their weapon from their hands during a pivotal moment, unbalancing them or ruining a block.
“Lili, the mages need to take a small break. You should too.” Marianne’s voice called to Liliana while she was in the middle of very subtly tying one boy’s shoe laces to those of another boy.
She gave them a light nudge with [Shove] so they’d crash into a girl and send all of them tumbling into the path of a mage who was ramping up for what would be a very devastating ice attack.
Liliana looked around the battlefield, judging that maybe a fourth of the students who had started this battle royale had been knocked out so far. She looked back towards their defenses, no longer the only hastily built stronghold. Either other clever students had planned it or had taken inspiration from hr team.
For now, the majority of students were focusing on the easier targets still out in the open, which was where the greatest amount of the first years were currently. Liliana mentally noted the locations of the other roughly built defenses to check out later before she summoned Polaris back to their defenses to guard it, while Liliana returned to her body.
She slowly opened her eyes, vision swimming a bit as her astral self settled back into her body. She felt a warm body against her back and she turned her head to see Lelantos lying behind her, by all accounts, taking a catnap in the middle of the fight.
The next thing Liliana noticed was the scent of tea and, of all things, cookies greeting her nose. Liliana’s brow furrowed as she stood, stretching out a body that was slightly aching from being stuck in one position for so long. Looking around, she discovered most of her team seated around what was apparently a table and chairs built from vines, sipping on tea and munching on real cookies.
For a moment, Liliana struggled to comprehend the scene. It was a stark contrast to the hellscape she’d witnessed outside, where over two hundred students were fighting to the, fake, death struggling to survive.
To go from that to seeing her friends gathered around a table, sipping on tea and nibbling on cookies as if they hadn’t a care in the world, made her worry that she’d somehow been poisoned with a hallucinogen.
“What the fuck?” Liliana asked, blinking as she walked forward and took the chair Marianne pointed at for her next to the princess, too bemused by all of this to protest or do anything more than accept the silent command.
“There wasn’t much to do while we wait for someone to figure out it was a good idea to attack our defenses, other than someone sending out an attack every now and again, and so I thought it would be a good idea to take a tea break.” Marianne said, setting down a very delicate and expensive teacup and saucer in front of Liliana and serving her.
A splash of milk and four sugar cubes were deposited in the cup of aromatic tea before Liliana could say anything. Marianne knew her preferences a bit too well.
“You’re having a tea party in the middle of a massive battle? During the tournament, our biggest chance to show off and prove our merit?” Liliana asked, but she couldn’t resist sipping on the tea. Marianne had the best teas and no matter how insane the situation, Liliana would not pass up good tea.
“It was that or pull out a game to play while we waited.” Basil said with a shrug of his shoulders as he sipped at his own tea.
“Besides, it just shows everyone how strong we are. We’re so unconcerned with our competition that we’re comfortable sipping tea in the middle of this.” Marianne sniffed haughtily over her tea and, well, Liliana couldn’t fault that logic. Talk about a power move.
She had to wonder if this was something the queen taught her daughter, which raised the question of, had the queen had a tea party in the middle of a battle before?
“How did you even get a full tea set in?” Liliana asked next, pushing away mental images of the queen in full armor daintily sipping tea in the middle of a war aside, as she grabbed a cookie to munch on.
Based on the taste, they were ones Alistair had made. Had this been a secret plot between the two? She expected this level of pure insanity from Marianne, Emyr, too, but Alistair was a surprise.
“Surprisingly, a tea set, tea and cookies were not on the restricted item list.” Marianne said with a smile. Liliana closed her eyes with a sigh, drinking her now much needed tea to fortify her nerves for the insanity that was this entire conversation.
“I don’t think anyone expected someone to hold a full tea party in the middle of the first round.” Liliana groaned, earning a snort from Emyr.
“To be honest, they should’ve accounted for this.” Emyr said with a shrug, his smile a bit too sharp.
Liliana was reminded of the way he’d cackled after seeing the damage his spells were doing on the battlefield. She mentally rewrote the list she kept in her mind titled ‘Most Likely to become A Supervillain’ with Emyr’s name taking place of pride at number one.
“It’ll probably be banned before our next tournament,” Rathwater murmured quietly and Lilliana nodded her head in his direction as an agreement.
She wasn’t sure if the professors would find this entire thing disrespectful or entertaining. Probably a mix of both, if her estimation of the staff’s characters were correct. But they wouldn’t want students to completely disregard the sanctity of the tournament in such an obvious way in the future.
“Some kits are taking an interest in your hide.” Polaris informed her and Liliana set her cup down carefully. She didn’t need to damage the good china.
She closed her eyes and saw through Polaris’. From his high vantage point, presumably on top of their fortifications, Liliana could see a group of maybe five students approaching them. Polaris could easily handle them, but he was panting a little from his fun earlier and deserved a break. Liliana tapped Nemesis’ nose, waking up the sleepy serpent.
“Can you handle them?” Liliana asked, and the serpent opened her fanged mouth in a large yawn before nodding and sliding off Liliana’s neck and arm to drop to the ground, where she burrowed into the earth.
Liliana closed her eyes again and looked through Polaris’ eyes, waiting for the serpent to emerge. It took a minute, during which time the students got to the lava moat, when Nemesis emerged behind them. She grew to her full size and before the students could even sense their danger, her large jaws unhinged and a cloud of noxious poison engulfed them.
Liliana quickly lost sight of the students, but evidently Nemesis did not, because she could hear the sounds of bodies impacting with reinforced scales and screams flooding from the cloud of thick poison. She got to watch one student get flung out of the cloud only to sink into the lava face first, and another fly right into the deadly thorns of the vines around their defenses.
The amusement Liliana got from the at first, screams of surprise, then screams of terror from the flung students was probably concerning, but she didn’t care. It was funny. It was a shame they were whisked away so quickly once their shields went red, truly. That one student’s struggling, somehow shoeless, foot as they slowly disappeared beneath the lava was peak comedy.
Liliana felt Polaris yawn, and he turned his attention elsewhere as Liliana left his mind to return to her own. Nemesis had things well in hand and Liliana gave her free permission to attack anyone else she felt like. The serpent sent back a feeling of excited happiness at the free rein Liliana had given her.
“Problem?” Koth’talan asked her as Liliana opened her eyes. Anya was bouncing in her seat, looking excited even as she carefully cradled her teacup in both her hands, as if she was afraid she’d shatter it.
She sent a mental communication to the group of the memories of the students being tossed out of the cloud of poison right as a few of them took a sip of tea. Liliana giggled into her cup when Emyr snorted tea out of his nose. He choked on tea and laugher as he got to see the student’s struggling, socked foot poking out of the lava as his shield slowly turned red. Basil let out an undignified snort when he saw the damage his vines did, and Anya whooped.
“Nemesis is handling some students who were smart enough to head our way. Nothing to be worried about.” Liliana explained the images as she sipped her tea, feeling herself starting to, of all things, relax.
Liliana shook her head and finished her tea and cookie before standing and moving to sit back in front of Lelantos. As nice, and utterly bizarre, as the break had been, they did still have a round to win and they couldn’t do it with their eyes on the ground occupied.
“Get ready. I’m heading back out.” Liliana warned them as she closed her eyes and activated [Astral Projection]. As her awareness left her body and returned to the fight outside their walls, she heard a cackle from Emyr that sent chills down her spine.
At times like this, she was really glad he was on her side.