[A picture of the head of a female elf poking out of a thicket with a deer beside her.]
R is for rangers, Assuine’s agents, they protect her woods and gather reagents. Some wield great power, while others small, but they all serve their goddess and give her their all.
-Sally Rider’s ABCs of Magic
—
As with all competitive hardball matches, the PREVENT final hardball battle royale was heavily bet upon. The class rankings weren’t publicized, but a few cheap bribes to confirm the accuracy of the information ensured that all the bookies had enough information to base odds on. The Ice Picks and Risen Dahn were favored to win, as both had ended the semester tied for first.
The Forsaken weren’t third, but they still had decent odds. They had been tied for first before their disappearance, but the lack of information around that made people reluctant to give them the odds they probably deserved.
Their no-show status at the originally scheduled match and subsequent reappearance and admittance had the bookies split. Some moved the odds in their favor, while others zigged where they zagged.
In either case, it didn’t matter. The Forsaken did not win. While Kole’s Will poisoning saw him out early, Rakin didn’t last much longer, his body not fully recovered from the night before, and he suffered a leg cramp. A leg cramp he valiantly fought through, but in the end he couldn’t keep up and was taken out by a bolt of lightning.
Zale held her own for a while longer, but Zale too was exhausted. She ended up misting out of her armor to free her from the burden of it when she had to slow—without losing the clothes this time—but that only bought her a little more time before she too fell.
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Doug, well, Doug did great. He hadn’t exerted himself as much as the others and the battle royale was in his ideal environment. He supported the team, keeping hidden in the undergrowth, parting the brambles to give covering fire before disappearing as effectively as Kole could only to reappear elsewhere.
When Zale fell, he vanished into the forest to hunt out a hardball. Asking a few birds, he found one ball hidden in a disgruntled robin’s nest, and proceeded to evade capture until he could get it back to his door, and then destroyed it. Afterward, he hid, not exactly sure on the rules, and not wanting to risk the team getting eliminated.
So, with a single point, the Forsaken scored in the dead center of the class, or as dead center as you could in an even number of teams. They came in 11th, which was a respectable score but wouldn’t have been enough to place them in the top of the class.
But then there was the ‘extra credit.’
“I would like to congratulate the Ice Picks on their victory in hardball royale,” Underbrook said to the gathered students in the Griffin’s Roost during the after-party. “And, Tigereye would like to announce the top classes of the first semester of PREVENT!”
Underbrook sent illusory lights into the air again, and Kole still felt no connection to the Fonts through his casting, telling him he probably was still suffering from Will poisoning.
“Just some boring fine print,” Underbrook said quickly. “Rankings are not indications of whether or not you as an individual passed. Individual evaluations will be held at the end of the year.”
With none of the fanfare, flair, or flares of his associate, Tigereye read out a list, starting at the bottom. With each name, Kole expected to hear their own but it didn’t come.
“The Risen Dahn, third place,” Tigereye said, and the room grew silent with bated breath. One could even think Tigereye was adding a dramatic pause if they didn’t know him.
“The Ice Picks, second place.”
The tavern broke out into chaos, and it was only due to Tigereye’s booming voice that anyone could hear the pronoucement of The Forsaken as the top team in the class.