The Aetherbright Academy’s practice arena was about as far removed from the average football pitch reserved for Sunday kickabouts as it was possible to be. The only thing it shared with those spaces was its size; it was roughly double the length of the average football pitch, although it was probably half as wide again.
Alfie and the rest of his cabal were ushered up into one of the elevated stands by Jollux. They all sat down and, admittedly, gazed around in open-mouthed stupefaction at the layout of the training arena.
“Remember, gentlemen,” Jollux said as a final word of parting, “the magic you see demonstrated here has taken the men and women demonstrating it at least a year of study to learn. This is your first lesson, no matter if the provost calls it an exhibition.”
“Don’t let our amazement get in the way of seeing what is going on, you mean?” Alfie asked.
“Precisely, sir,” Jollux said. “It is my understanding from working here that attention acts as a lightning rod. Merely by concentrating on what is before oneself causes endless opportunities to collect around it.”
“Very wise, Jollux,” Howie said earnestly. He reached into his pocket, extracted a dog-eared notebook and biro, and started scribbling a note.
The dwarf looked both astounded and touched that someone should be writing down something he had just said.
“Jollux has got a point,” Alfie agreed, looking at the other three. “I don’t know about where you guys went to school or anything, but I was always getting taught too much at school—too many subjects, I mean.”
“That’s because the education system is meant to craft kids into well-rounded individuals,” Teo pointed out. “Give them a taste of a bunch of stuff so that they can figure out what it is they want to do with themselves.”
“Maybe,” Alfie conceded. “Realistically, though, no one has time to do more than a few things well before they’re, say, twenty, yeah? And—this is just my experience—after the education system worked its magic on me, I was more mediocre in a bunch of stuff than I was good at any one thing.”
“What’s your point, Alfie?” Howie asked.
With the other cabals climbing up the stands to come and sit where they were, Alfie almost missed the big Enchanter’s quiet words.
“We’re going to be learning one thing here: battle magic—or whatever it’s called,” he said. “We’re going to be given everything we need to become the best we can, with very few outside distractions. So, let’s zone in on every bit of experience and use it to try and win this internal competition, okay?”
The others looked at him. One by one, grins spread across their faces.
“Sounds like a plan, Stan,” Will said.
They turned their attention back to the arena.
It was grand and impressive in its size, but there was also a sensible utility to it, too. The arena was large and spacious. Opening out into the air as it did, Alfie assumed that training would take place in here under whatever weather the High Weald’s local meteorology decided. Such an open layout also provided ample room for levitation spells or—and Alfie desperately hoped this would be on the curriculum—flying.
“Look at the floor,” he pointed out to the others. “Constructed of durable materials like that concrete segment over there, but it’s mostly sand and grass and bare mud.”
“I’d hypothesize that’s because they want it to be able to withstand the impact of powerful spells,” Howie said.
The practice pitch was surrounded by walls made of sturdy materials such as reinforced concrete and stone blocks. Alfie also guessed there was magical enhancement to the barriers, too, as there was a strange, very faint green sheen to them if they caught the light in the right way.
Probably to help the walls withstand the impact of spells, too, he thought.
There were, of course, the stands from which spectators could watch, but there was also an observation deck at either end of the pitch. Running up the front of these observation decks, which were constructed out of bronze scaffolding, were mundane climbing walls.
“These stands seem a little overboard, don’t you reckon?” Will said in Alfie’s ear.
Alfie looked around. There certainly seemed to be a lot more seating than the population of the Aetherbright Academy accounted for.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Maybe the school used to have more people training here back in the day? You know, during war time or what have you?”
“I think it was more to do with the fact that there used to be more friendly competition between the various universities and magical training facilities throughout Europe,” Howie said.
Alfie and Will looked at the big guy. Howie blushed.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he said quickly.
“No, carry on,” Alfie said. “It sounds like you know what you’re talking about. That’s a novelty after you’ve spent any length of time with our friend Mr. Savage here.”
Will punched Alfie on the arm.
“Well, I just think they erected this seating for when they used to have inter-university games—or whatever it is they might have called it,” Howie said.
“There are enough magical training centers to merit their own Olympics?” Alfie asked.
“Have you been living under a rock, Alfie?” Teo teased, his brown eyes glittering mischievously at the far end of his long, crooked nose. “You must have known that.”
“I literally know nothing,” Alfie said.
“Yeah, there are heaps of training facilities,” Teo said eagerly. “All over the place. Not as many as there are regular universities, of course, but still some absolute cracking establishments. Some of them specialize only in certain types of magic. The one called the Institoúto Mageías Krítis—the Institute of Magic Crete—doesn’t teach any offensive magic at all, only healing.”
“And all these different universities and schools of learning used to battle it out against one another?” Alfie asked.
“Yeah. Well, I mean, there are no records, as all that stuff was wreathed in as much secrecy as the universities themselves,” Teo gabbled enthusiastically. “There are more than enough stories that corroborate such games, though. I mean, what better way to have some fun and strengthen ties between centers of magical learning than kicking the snot out of one another for a few days? Besides, the most important thing that I bet all the heads of the universities and institutes were focusing on during those games was how dangerous the mages from other countries were looking. Can’t be accused of spying during a good old battle mage friendly.”
Within the arena itself, Alfie could make out a variety of differently themed areas. There was, as he had suspected there would be, a fun-looking obstacle course. There were also various, and no doubt supernatural, impediments: barriers and targets, dummies, and other props. All of these were currently stationary, but Alfie got the feeling that as soon as it was go-time, they’d be enchanted in some way that would act as a challenge and test for the mages on the pitch.
All in all, it looked like a controllable area designed to accommodate a wide range of magical combat scenarios and provide the necessary resources for trainee battle mages to improve their abilities and widen their skill sets.
The first hint that the exhibition was about to start was when a man, dressed in a black suit, black boots, and with a black overall coat, appeared on the observation deck farthest from where the three first-year cabals were sitting. Alfie couldn’t make out the man’s features, but the bright blond hair was enough for him to go on. It was the rather intense schoolman that he had seen chatting to Schoolman Cutty that morning over breakfast.
“Begin!” the man cried in a resounding voice.
Two teams, comprised of eight students each, came pelting out from apertures at either end of the pitch.
“Here we go, boys, here we go!” Will said enthusiastically. “Let’s see what high jinks these girls and boys get up to— Bloody hell, that bloke’s got a shotgun!”
The atmosphere had been excited and convivial at the initial appearance of the student combatants; Alfie had felt the same kind of camaraderie he might have experienced heading out to a sporting event with some new mates. The appearance of an actual gun changed things, though.
“He’s not the only one either,” Teo said, pointing to the other end of the pitch. “That lass has a rifle or something.”
“Sharpe did say that there was a mundane shooting range here,” Alfie said, his eyes glued to the action. “And he mentioned that there were some scenarios and situations in which you might not be able to use magic.”
As the teams spread out, Alfie noticed that the stands below him were filling up with other students. He recognized some of the faces as belonging to people who had been on the wyrm with them the previous day. That was understandable, as some of those who had decided that they didn’t want to be battle mages would still be living and studying on the school grounds. Alfie also got the impression that even those who had decided to move to some other offshoot of the Aetherbright Academy, or go home altogether, had been allowed to stay and watch this exhibition.
It seemed also that some of the second and third years had been allowed to come and watch, or else didn’t have lessons. There were a few schoolmen sitting down, too. It looked like a much of the academy’s staff and student body were taking some time off to enjoy the show.
And what a show it promised to be.
As soon as the students had entered the arena proper, the obstacles and impediments that had been standing idle glowed with a faint blue light and whirled into life. Dummies that were more like mannequins with segmented limbs than straw-filled dummies, ran across the open spaces, getting in the way of all combatants.
“Remember,” the blond man on the observation deck called in a booming voice, “the animated dummies are playing the roles of civilians! Points will be deducted for any collateral damage!”
The girl with the rifle had sprinted into a flanking position on one side of the pitch, dropped to one knee behind a collection of wooden crates, and tucked her rifle with an infantryman’s smoothness into the crook of her shoulder.
“They surely don’t fire live rounds do th—” Howie started to ask.
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There was a loud crack, and the rifle jolted in the young woman’s arms. Alfie found that he had subconsciously jumped to his feet as he might have if was watching Spurs play at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Harry Kane had just had a shot at goal in the eighty-ninth minute.
The athletic-looking young woman with a shaved head that the riflewoman had been drawing a bead on barely flinched as the round hit her. The reason for this was, Alfie quickly realized, because the round hadn’t, in actual fact, hit her. It had been stopped, in a spray of blue sparks, by some kind of forcefield or magical projection that jutted out an inch from the running woman’s skin.
“Holy shit! What was that?” Alfie exclaimed.
There was a derisive snort from somewhere behind him.
“Listen to this roaster, would you?” Charles Grant sneered. “You’d think he’s never seen mage-mail before.”
Alfie turned. For the time being, he was too interested in the concept of mage-mail to worry about being called a roaster—whatever that might mean to his cousins from north of the border.
“What’s that?” he asked Grant.
“Mage-mail,” Grant repeated, the word dripping with scorn.
“Hey, Grant, just repeating something isn’t the same as explaining it, mate,” Alfie pointed out.
“What would be the point of explaining it to you when I’m not able to understand it for you as well… What was your name again?”
“Alfie Turner.”
“Turner,” Grant said thoughtfully. “I knew a Turner once. From Edinburgh. Clever chap, so I doubt you’re related. You don’t look very intelligent.”
“Yeah, that might be so,” Alfie said calmly, “but then again, you don’t look like an asshole, Grant, and yet…”
Teo burst out laughing.
“That’s what I believe our brethren in the United States refer to as a ‘zinger’,” Howie said helpfully.
A few more of the other first years from the third cabal laughed. Grant’s ruddy and handsome face darkened. He opened his mouth to say something, but Alfie turned around and addressed Howie.
“Seeing as Grant doesn’t know, can you explain to me what mage-mail is, Howie?” he asked with more volume than was necessary.
“Uh, sure,” the big Enchanter said. “Essentially, it’s a shield of magical essence that a skilled practitioner can use to deflect and block mundane projectiles.”
“Like body armor?” Will asked.
“Yes, and no,” Howie said, leaning forward in his wooden seat.
Alfie noticed that the Enchanter’s eyes didn’t so much as stray back to the action taking place below them. His voice, while explaining what mage-mail was, had changed, too, taking on a more confident and fluid cadence.
“You see, depending on the mage in question’s strength, the mage-mail is capable of differing levels of protection,” Howie explained enthusiastically. “The mage-mail, which can actually become like visible armor if a battle mage’s essence is of sufficient strength, can be summoned at need and with the caster’s will, and the more powerful the mage, the more advanced the mage-mail or armor.”
Alfie heard Grant mimicking what Howie was saying in a high-pitched tattling voice behind him but ignored the idiot.
“So mage-mail might be able to deflect a bullet or shrapnel like regular body armor does, making the person feel like they’ve been punched or something, and other times it can just straight-up block the projectile like it wasn’t even there?” he asked.
“That’s right!” Howie said eagerly. “From what I’ve read, mage-mail can start off basic—like a buckler—and then improve until the caster can wear it like a full-body suit of armor. How cool is that?”
Very cool, indeed, Alfie thought, turning back to the battle below, which was now in full swing.
The young woman with the shaved head, who had demonstrated why mage-mail alone was well worth becoming magically competent to attain, had used a lurching mannequin as cover. She was jogging along beside it, while the riflewoman cursed from her position, unable to shoot in case she hit the ‘civilian’.
Meanwhile, another male mage was engaged with one of his opposing female numbers near the middle of the arena. The young man had a spear of what looked like gleaming obsidian in his hand.
“Must be an Earth Conjurer,” Teo muttered to himself.
As Alfie watched, the man flung the spear at the young woman, who crouched down in what Alfie would have called a superhero pose—the stance that all the most badass superheroes landed in when they dropped out of the sky.
The spear flew straight and true toward the crouched woman, but before it could strike her, she was suddenly the nexus in a blinding cage of crackling white energy.
“Voltaic Fortifier,” Howie whispered, his tone making it obvious he was extremely impressed.
The stone spear, which was as sharp as a giant needle, shattered as it came in contact with the electrical shield. Bits of stone shrapnel went whizzing in all directions, scoring lines in the grass and kicking up dirt. One such sliver of obsidian hissed ten yards through the air and buried itself in the thigh of a man who happened to be running past at that moment.
“Whoa, check that out!” someone in the stands crowed.
The man was spun off his feet with a cry of pain.
Alfie was amazed that the young man managed to get to his feet as quickly as his injury would allow.
He stuck out a fist and cast—so, he’s a Caster, Alfie noted—a blast of fire in the direction of a guy who was attempting to sneak up behind him, dressed in a suit of armor made from what looked like pure ice.
The guy in the ice armor—a Fortifier like himself, Alfie guessed—attempted to throw himself out of the way, but his protective ice suit must have been cumbersome because he didn’t manage it in time. There was a rushing explosion of steam as fire met ice, and the guy in the magical frosted armor was blown backward. The armor dissipated under the power of the conjured flame. He hit a low wall, which was part of the obstacle course, and Alfie heard his leg break with the sound of a gunshot.
Fritha Hookway, clutching her small pet tortoise, let out a little squeak of revulsion at the sound.
“That,” Will observed, “was no PG Hogwarts bullshit.”
“That’s one way to be put out of the fight,” Teo said grimly.
Alfie spared his cabal member a glance and saw that Teo was pale under his shock of flyaway hair.
Alfie wondered if he looked the same. He hadn’t been sure what he had expected, but this… this was more brutal than pop culture and movies had led him to believe.
You naïve wally, he berated himself as he watched the fire caster hobble away. What did you think that battle mage meant? They’re training spies and soldiers here—it’s like the bloody magical SAS, for crying out loud. Looks to me like there’s only one rule, and that’s winning and staying alive.
“This is why, ladies and gentlemen, that the teams consist of second and third years mixed!” the blond-haired schoolman standing on the observation deck bellowed, his voice echoing around the arena. “This is meant to more accurately emulate real life—after all, you’re not always going to be fighting people who are as skilled as you, are you? Sometimes they’ll be weaker and sometimes stronger! Being a competent battle mage with a long shelf life is all about observing your opponent and then adapting to your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses!”
Alfie watched the limping Thermal Caster catch sight of a running woman and thrust out his fist again.
Alfie’s gut clenched, but not for the running woman.
“He should’ve taken his chance to get into cover and check his wound,” he muttered.
That’s what Alfie would’ve done—if he’d been faced with that scenario in a computer game that is. If his player character had their health jeopardized in an RPG or something, Alfie would always try and play it smart by getting himself somewhere safe where he could evaluate his injury and, if he could, heal himself. Take care of yourself first, and worry about the enemy second. It was hard to beat them if you were dead.
If you were dead…
But they don’t set out knowing that an exercise could kill someone, do they? Alfie asked himself.
You heard Sharpe. Accidents happen, his brain replied.
The wounded Thermal Caster tracked the running woman, who looked oblivious to the fact that she had been marked by an enemy.
The lyrics of Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler popped into Alfie’s head as he watched the two-person drama play out.
The athletic woman who had conjured the mage-mail appeared in the Thermal Caster’s blind spot. Freezing in place, she allowed the animated mannequin she had been using as cover to jog on past her. Then, she coolly reached down to a pistol she had sitting in a thigh holster. In a single breath, she whipped it out, leveled it in two hands, and whistled.
The Thermal Caster glanced around.
The woman shot him right in the face.
A collective groan of sympathy went up from the spectators as, whatever kind of non-lethal round the gun was loaded with, punched into the Thermal Caster’s nose and flattened it in a bright burst of crimson.
“Didn’t even bother to use her magic,” Alfie murmured. “Cool as a cucumber.”
“I think I’m in love,” Will said loudly.
“Why wasn’t that dimwit Caster using any mage-mail?” Alfie heard someone to his right ask.
“Don’t you know anything?” came a tart female reply from someone who had the sort of accent that rhymed ‘yes’ with ‘arse’. “Mage-mail uses up your mana. If you use too much mana in a fight, you won’t have enough to power your mage-mail. It’s quite an expensive perk when you’re at the lower levels.”
Down on the arena floor, magic users were running and moving with all the intensity of special-ops soldiers breaching an enemy base or advancing on an enemy position. A lot of them, now that Alfie was looking, had pistols strapped to their thighs or under their arms in shoulder holsters. These looked to fire painful rubber bullets that were more than capable of leaving massive bruises.
In the space of a quarter of an hour, the arena was littered with the injured—including one woman who had been knocked out cold—and liberally splashed with blood.
“It’s like you said, Will,” Alfie commented. “It’s definitely not PG shit, huh?”
Will didn’t answer. He was too busy trying not to vomit after seeing one girl, who’d enchanted her pistol to fire stone pellets rather than rubber bullets, hit a bloke with a couple of well-placed magical rounds that blew his kneecaps off in twin gouts of blood, taking him out of the running.
Although it was a hell of a lot gorier than Alfie would have ever have imagined, it was also instructive. It was a fine demonstration of what the different ranks of mages were capable of, as well as how the different elements could be utilized.
For instance, one young man, an Earth Fortifier just like Alfie, seamlessly camouflaged himself with a boulder, so when the mage who’d been chasing him ran by his hiding spot, he was able to club him over the head with an arm turned to rock.
Much like I did to that pillock in old Furbelow’s shop, Alfie thought with quiet satisfaction. It made him feel good to see a similar spell being used by an older member of the Aetherbright Academy.
It just goes to show, sometimes, even if you have magic coming out of your ears, you can’t beat a blunt object to the coconut.
Another girl was washed off her feet by a torrent of manifested water but was saved by a teammate who was subsequently flung back to land in a charred, groaning heap by a crackling tendril of electrical discharge fired from the palm of a Voltaic Caster.
Another young man garnered cheers of encouragement from the watching crowd when he conjured an axe of ice from the ether and swung it this way and that, trying to keep a pair of almost invisible junkyard dogs—whipped up, quite literally, from thin air by a young woman with her brown hair tied up in pigtails—from latching onto him.
The first-year cabal groups whooped and cheered the man on with the rest of the gathered students. Alfie found he couldn’t look away as the man cut apart the first dog and then the second in matching explosions of compressed air that sent him stumbling backward.
“Go on, mate! Go! Give ’em hell!” Will was yelling as enthusiastically as any football fan.
“That chap is good with a melee weapon,” said Jason Bun—a member of one of the other cabals—grudgingly to his neighbor from down the row, “but he’s nothing compared to someone trained by Blade Master Sylphren.”
“How do you know that?” the neighboring spectator asked.
“That’s just what I’ve heard,” Jason said, twisting one of his dreadlocks. “My cousin told me.”
“Your cousin? Sure it wasn’t your cousin’s barber’s dog’s gynecologist?” the neighbor replied sarcastically.
“Can dogs have gynecologists?” Will asked Alfie under his breath.
“Is there really a master of the sword here?” someone else asked.
“That’s the rumor,” Jason Bun said. “I heard that…”
But what he had heard was lost to Alfie’s ears thanks to Will’s bellowing encouragement aimed at the man with the axe.
“That’s it my son, kebab the bastards!” Will yelled. “Give ’em— Oh, that must’ve hurt.”
The Hydro Conjurer was taken out of the fray via the expedient method of having a bolt of sharpened steel punched through his shoulder by the athletic woman with the shaved head who, it turned out, was an accomplished Metal Conjurer.
“Who is she?” Alfie whispered. “She’s incredible.”
“That’s Amirah Nasri,” someone said from the row in front of him, speaking over their shoulder.
“How do you know that?” Alfie asked.
Jason shrugged and flipped a dreadlock over his shoulder. “My sister and her are friends. She was around our house in Cornwall quite a bit over the summer.”
“Is she as intimidating sitting down to a meal or going to the beach with her as she is on the practice pitch?” Alfie asked with a small laugh.
“Nah,” Jason said.
“Well, that’s goo—”
“She’s scarier,” Jason said.
It was eye-opening to Alfie, as far as seeing what magic could be used to accomplish in the combat arena, but it was the blood and gore that impressed itself most vividly upon his memory. It was all far more visceral and terrifying than he had expected. It was this, more than any words, that made him realize just how serious this business was. It brought home to him that they were going to be playing for keeps, and what they were hoping to keep were their limbs and their lives.
There’s a lot on the line here, he thought as the blond man on the observation platform finally called a halt to the proceedings. Lives are lost. People are maimed. It’s the real deal. The knife edge.
A building muttering pulled Alfie’s head away from these slightly dismal thoughts. He looked down, following where Will was staring.
More dwarves dressed in white medical scrubs were rushing around the pitch. These dwarven medics, or thaumaclinicians, organized the badly hurt onto levitating stretchers. They tended them, even as the injured were strapped down and floated off the pitch, writhing and screaming in more than a few cases.
While these dwarves tended to the wounded, Cornelius Sharpe and Schoolman Cane walked nonchalantly across the practice pitch.
“What are these two up to?” Alfie mused.
“I don’t know,” Will said, “but having seen what an eccentric so-and-so Provost Sharpe is, I bet it’s going to be worth hearing or seeing.”