There’s a duelling tournament over in Morocco, a weeklong elimination-style tournament meant for amateurs. Luca completely lost track of time but he’s fought here before. Apparently, Nicholas goes every time because the week overlaps with his birthday. Ayads follow the old practices though so they don’t really do birthdays. Instead of celebrating with cake and presents, Nicholas goes out to have fun violence.
Nicholas explained to Luca that he normally makes it a couple rounds in before he gets knocked out. Not because he isn't strong or fast enough, certainly not because he isn't creative or can't play the tactics. Nicholas just doesn't really see the point in getting worked up and stressed out over something meant to be fun.
Luca blinks at Nicholas for that because duelling has never been fun for him, there’s always too much weight behind it. That won’t change this tournament either.
They spend the day before the registration opens running through the magic districts of Morocco which are open to mundane so the crowds are even heavier. Nicholas drags Luca along and the two boys get themselves lost every other street so they have to keep casting tracking spells to find Vinaya and Jordan again.
At one point Nicholas runs off with Vinaya to get street food and Luca takes a seat on a low wall with Jordan to wait, chatting about going back to school soon.
“You’re going to get into a lot of trouble,” Jordan explains. “No, sorry, Nicky will get you into a lot of trouble. Please understand that you’re allowed to say no to him.”
“I’ll try,” Luca says honestly. “I’ll also try to keep him out of-“
Luca does a hard double-take towards a billboard sitting on the roof of a squat building. It's an empty frame to allow for enchantment, the words bold and floating mid-air. It's something about a shoe brand so famous even Luca knows about them, in conjunction with the ILL, International Loops League.
What caught Luca's attention was the boy that grabs the bottom edge of the billboard and pulls himself up into view, landing in a crouch, angled to show off the flaming red, chunky shoes.
Nicholas' image is larger than life, with a wide grin as he peers down at the street, eyes alight with inner power. His glasses are the same red as the shoes and the stylists have put him in black joggers, one pants leg pulled up, and a loose black singlet with the word ILL dripping down the side and pulsing in neon. His apprentice wand is stuck to the outside of his thigh in a holster spell and they've grown his hair out and braided it tight with cords of light.
“Ah, it took some time for the ad to come out,” Jordan muses and explains further since Luca is so preoccupied. “My team helped design the technomancy shoes -really interesting gyroscopic gravity spells in there actually- but there was a huge fuss with marketing. It's not actually angled towards Loops players but for mundanes, so there was a lot of arguments about if they should bring in an athlete or not and whether to even use a mage.”
They've clearly gone with displaying the mage angle with how blatant it is on the image of Nicholas. The giant figure surges up and into a series of flips and somersaults down the bottom edge of the billboard, not unlike the acrobatic Loops players falling through the air but far more flashy. The shoes explode in a burst of flames every time they impact the ground.
“Nicholas was with me one day,” Jordan continues. “I lost sight of him for barely half a second and suddenly he has his hands on a demo pair of shoes. He tried them on and, well, you know him. Started running around, running up walls.”
The image of Nicholas backflips, jumping high and flinging out his feet instead of tucking in. Like on the Loops rings, gravity slows and catches again, Nicholas landing on the top of the frame with a plume of fire. The shoes effect local gravity it seems, not everything, so Nicholas' lengthened hair hangs down in streaks of neon lights and his singlet drops to show the shadow of cut abs.
“The marketing team decided he was perfect for their target audience.” Jordan shrugs, uncaring. “Not that Nicholas needs fancy shoes to get into trouble but it's selling a dream and not the product, you know? Nicholas is worth a lot more than what they first offered though so I brought in Vinaya to take over. I'm not good at that sort of stuff so I never bother to keep in check about when the ad was coming out.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Nicholas dramatically falls sideways onto the frame then rolls outside and on top of the billboard, doing a few push-ups to show off his biceps just for a joke before jumping up and taking a running step into a set of flips for a round off that sends him over the corner of the billboard. He lands on the outside edge of the side, stretched out over the street, and winks at the cars passing underneath.
Selling the dream, huh? Luca remembers watching mage ads at home on TV, or wandering the street with friends and peering into the hype shops, joking about the ridiculous prices and ugly style but still not daring to touch anything. There was a time when Luca wanted to be a mage, daydreamed of the power, wanted to be special. Reality was a bitch.
Nicholas reaches down and grabs the edge, flipping back inside the side of the frame and up into a handstand. He lowers himself until his head almost touches the frame, and pushes hard, hands leaving the edge. His body slows, wavers, then gravity catches again and he falls sideways through the billboard, burning the words to ash as he passes through them. He falls past the edge of the frame and disappears.
The next ad is about perfume or something.
Luca isn't exactly surprised, really. Nicholas is the perfect image of a charming, rich and powerful mage with an infectious sort of confidence and the athleticism to back himself up whenever he gets into trouble. He's the poster boy for what mundanes -everyone actually- thinks a heritage is.
Luca has noticed in this time that people are rather obsessed with mages. A lot of products tempt people with simple folk magic spells to help advertise. All the expensive boutiques have magic in their display windows. Heritage -and high mages especially- are celebrities. When Luca arrived here and was researching the timeline, it felt like almost half the internet was filled with paparazzi shots of high mages.
In Luca's timeline, high mages are distant, apathetic rulers to be feared. Heritage are mourned after Xia wiped them all out and it's not odd to see a monument in most cities. Magic has become more of a utility like security wards and construction, instead of a free-flowing art form the way it is now in the past.
The war changed so much.
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They waste too much time the next day showing Luca the Morocco manor they have. They’re still an hour early to the registrations opening but there’s already a massive three-hour long line of waiting in the sun. Or there is a line, until Nicholas gets bored waiting, completely ignores the fact that he wisely told Luca it was a part of the authentic experience, and waves over a staff member.
The woman immediately recognises the Ayads and leads them off to a cool tent to get them signed in. Luca refuses a shield wristband – he doesn’t mind getting hit and as long as he keeps getting up again he can still fight, instead of getting kicked from the arena as soon as the shield drops into the red level.
They skip through the usual ‘if you die it’s not our fault’ contracts and Luca signs his name in blood on the dotted line. It’s not a binding contract for Luca because his blood is actually mixed with – well, that’s not important right now.
Luca turns to his dad, but Nicholas is indecisive.
“I want to watch you,” Nicholas whines.
“We can watch each other,” Luca says, confused as to what the problem is. Nicholas is still under 18s so they’d have a different arena and the fights should be staggered enough that they can watch each other.
“No, but I want to watch all your fights and I can’t do that if I’m also participating.” Nicholas turns and grasps Luca’s hands. “Baby, good luck! I’ll wait for you in the seats!”
“You’re not going to duel?” Lucas asks in shock. “But – Stavros said you always do this for your birthday.”
“I’ll do it next birthday as well,” Nicholas says dismissively. “I believe in you, you’re going to do so well!”
“Kill them out there, darling,” Vinaya says eagerly and nudges Jordan who’s reading the fine print of the contract.
“Yes!” Jordan chimes in, looking up with a broad smile, the squint of his eyes like Nicholas’. “I bet we’ll see you in the third round.”
Luca smiles back. “I’ll try my best.”
Nicholas splutters. “What happened to ‘just have a fun time’ and ‘don’t stress, it’s only a game’?”
Vinaya raises an eyebrow. “You’re the one running around bragging constantly about Luca’s duelling ability – and Luca’s everything else too. You’ve got me excited to see it.”
Nicholas is still incredulous. “Have you wanted to see me win all these years? I can win.”
“I’ve wanted to see you enjoy yourself all these years,” Jordan corrects, then holds up the contract. “And – well, honestly I want you to read the contract at least once. This is why you keep getting disqualified.”
“That was a genius move,” Nicholas scoffs and smirks at Luca. “Okay, so the contract says no deadly spells, right? And I never used one - but if you shout the spell name and have the spell body look the same colour, people freak out and forfeit.”
“That’s a genuine duelling technique,” Luca confirms. Pretending to try and kill someone with it is a bit next level though. He can definitely imagine Nicholas doing it.
“Ha!” Nicholas crows in delight.