Azura stood on the open field that had been cordoned off for the event, and had a rather startling realization. It seemed the students from all 4 years would be participating in these games. In other words, well rested or not their chances of victory were practically 0. To be honest he was a little relieved. At least now there was no chance that his exhaustion would be the difference between victory or defeat. He wasn’t the only one in his group that had seen some of the higher years fight, and it seemed similar thoughts were going through all of their heads.
“This is starting us off easy?” Katy gave an exasperated look and then she gestured to the assembled students. He sighed. Technically the teachers had said the event itself would be easy. They made no mention of the competitors. Before he had a chance to say as much a loud ringing echoed through the fields. It was as if the world's loudest bell had been rung, but it didn’t come from the school’s bell tower.
“Hello students, so glad this many of you could make it to our little games. Now everyone 2nd year and up no doubt has the gist of how these events work, but I’ll give a little explanation for all the firsties in the crowd. I am Professor Roads, and this particular event is called the fall festival. This is the only event that’s the same every year.Our little welcome to the new students.”
Azura had no idea where the voice was coming from. The voice was clearly male, but no matter where he looked he didn’t see who could be talking or even any equipment for him to project his voice with. It wouldn’t be unusual to use magic for that, but to make it so the sound seemed to come from all directions for each and every one of the students was beyond impressive. However something about the voice reminded him of the info they had received about this event already.
“Now as all of you have no doubt been informed since this is the first event for all you first years we are going to keep it simple.” Yup that was it, they hadn’t said easy, they had said simple. If he had been nervous before with just having the upper years he was panicking a little now. He had to remind himself that he wasn’t at the castle. There would be no consequences if he failed at this event. “So first years all you have to do once I ring the bell again is return to your dorms. If you get there before 4 hours after noon you win. As for all the higher years, as you already know your job is to stop them from leaving.”
Well shit, that didn’t bode well. The first years were both obviously outnumbered, and outmatched. His team included. Worse, it had already been made clear familiars wouldn’t be allowed for this event, so his first thought for evening the odds went out the window. At least now he knew why all the older students had made a point of being on the outside edge of the clearly marked space. Although the space itself was no doubt a trap. Some people might relax if they managed to make it past the marked off space, but Prof. Roads had clearly stated they won if they made it to their dorms, not past the line. “This isn’t going to go well at all.”
Sure enough as soon as the bell rang the field erupted into chaos. He growled, they hadn’t even been given time to strategize, and they couldn’t just sit and wait either, the chaos from the start of the games was probably their best chance, and they couldn’t just waste it. “Katy make us invisible!” He knew they were on a time limit. They had several hours before the event ended, but chaos caused by the panic of the first years wouldn’t last long. “Cynthia, connect us all!” He felt the subtle shift in his head as Cynthia connected all of their thoughts. Thankfully they all had enough practice with it that they no longer sent thoughts accidentally like they had at first.
“This illusion won’t hold up to close scrutiny, If they are actively looking for us they will know we’re here.” He knew Katy’s limitations, but that was fine he didn’t need it to hold up, the older students would definitely sense the magic and know something was up anyway, all he needed was to make it so they didn’t know their location, and Katy’s illusion would definitely manage that.
“That’s fine we don’t need it to hide our presence, just our location” He scanned the field watching as several first years made mad scrambles for the edge of the blocked area some even running in the opposite direction of the dorms obviously fooled by the lines. It was pretty clear making it past the higher year teams wasn’t going to happen. At least not by normal means. He stabbed his sword into the ground, and moved his mana through the earth shard within it. It didn’t take long for a deep hole to form.
Katy’s illusion was basically just an image of the area without them in it, laid over the actual area. Meaning that anything they did to change the area wouldn’t be seen, but they could see each other so it didn’t take long for his friends to catch on to his plan and jump in the hole. “If we can’t go through we go under, it’s a good plan, but part of me really wanted to test my mettle against an older student.” He snorted, leave it to Roran to want to do something crazy like that.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I’d rather us have an actual chance at victory.” He quickly sealed the top of the hole he had made, making sure to leave a few small openings for air to get through. Honestly he was a little proud of how well they all worked together now. Even after they went underground they were all still only communicating via Cynthia’s telepathy. They always joked about him being over cautious, but they never hesitated to follow his lead.
“What do we do if one of the older students senses us and comes down to stop us?” Luna asked. Roran had taken over the magic tunneling, so he pondered on how to answer her question. Frankly he doubted they would stand a chance at winning but…
“Make as many tunnels as possible and scatter. Splitting up makes us weaker in combat, but we don’t stand a chance in combat anyway so speed is going to be the most important thing in that scenario.” He wished he could say that was an unlikely event, Roran’s control was exceptional, so it would take some incredibly strong mana senses to detect them from the surface, but he didn’t doubt there being at least a few older students capable of doing that.
He noticed Luna tense up, and then a second later he realized why as the group of older students entered his own clairvoyance range, and they were closing fast. “They're coming from behind!” Luna's announcement pulled him out of his surprise. They didn’t have long before the older group caught up to them, so they’d have to move fast.
“Make as many tunnels as you can! Make sure they reach the surface, people falling in will help us hide in the confusion!” Everyone in the group was capable of earth magic as simple as moving dirt out of the way to make a tunnel, and with him and Roran each capable of making several at once somewhere around 30 tunnels opened up in all directions including one that went straight up, he could already sense a few students of varying years falling in the sudden pits that opened up beneath them.
Without any further command everyone on his team picked a tunnel and started sprinting down it. He cursed at his oversight. One of the older students must have noticed them turn invisible, and then when the magic making them invisible dropped, and they were nowhere to be found they must have gone to investigate. Not much he really could have done differently though, perhaps he could have opened up air holes away from their starting point instead, or closed the tunnel behind them as they walked. Both of those would have come with their own risks attached though, so no guarantee they would have worked any better.
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He growled, one of the older students, a 2nd year by the looks of it had picked his tunnel. There wasn’t anyone ahead of him that he could see with clairvoyance though, so he stopped focusing on suppressing his presence and poured on the speed. He could ‘see’ the smile his pursuer got when they sensed his presence. The student was a rather plain looking boy, but he had no illusions about their ability to beat him in a 1 on 1. He probably only had 30 seconds before he was in the students line of sight, and he didn’t like his odds of escape after that point.
He wouldn’t make it to the tunnel exit by then. He could make more tunnels, and try to suppress his magic again, but at this distance the student might see him go into a tunnel, and then he would have slowed down for no reason. Well no choice but to hope the older students didn’t know about his unique magic. He made a copy with a decent amount of mana without slowing down. He suppressed his presence enough that it wouldn’t be noticeable with his identical copy closer and not suppressing his at all.
They would be able to beat his copy easily enough, but his real hope was that they captured the copy and assumed it was the real thing. He saw the student say something as it dodged the ice spikes his copy had shot at them. Unfortunately clairvoyance didn’t come with volume, so he had no idea what was being said. He supposed he’d find out later.
***
Azura’s copy shot a wave of ice spikes at his quickly approaching foe. If he went straight to talking to try and stall the student might be suspicious, he needed to make this look like a convincing last stand where he was actually trying to win.
“It was a good try. Tunneling was really smart, you have definitely done better than I did last year, but trust me you don’t want to get past me. The 4th years are brutal.” His opponent shivered a little from his position clinging onto the side of the tunnel wall.
“You speaking from experience?” He made a show of edging backward as if preparing to run if given a chance.
“Yeah, I didn’t really have a group at the time, so I just rushed towards the line. I barely even knew what happened before I found myself on my ass struggling desperately to breathe.” His opponent was chatty? That was uncharacteristically lucky. Then again, his time in the selection grounds actually hadn’t been too bad either… well at least the end result and the beginning of it. The stuff in the middle wasn’t great.
“Not like a group would have made a difference. I had mine split up in the tunnels for a reason.” They weren’t skilled enough to hide their tracks with a group that big, and then it wouldn’t have been a game of chance, all of their pursuers would have followed them down whichever tunnel they chose.
“I was pretty impressed with that. I can’t believe first years were able to detect me when I was hiding my presence, well I suppose it could have been one of the others you guys sensed, but either way I thought for sure we’d get to take you guys by surprise.” That was good. They didn’t know how he and Luna had detected them. Not that he could blame them, it was a very clever use of light magic, and extremely subtle. He hadn’t really noticed it until she explained it either.
“If it’s any consolation I didn’t sense you coming after me through the tunnel, I used a different method to know if someone picked my tunnel.” He wouldn’t give any hints, but the more the student stood and talked with him, the further the original would get.
“Keeping your abilities close to the chest huh? You’re going to do well here. If I didn’t know any better I’d never guess you were a first year. Still there are some things you can’t think your way out of.” His opponent took a fighting stance. He winced looked like the stalling by talking option had ended. He made an ice wall to block the snake shaped water his opponent had shot at him. The wall immediately shattered sending ice shards flying at him. He couldn’t afford to waste mana on shielding himself from the shards so he dodged them as best he could, allowing the ones he couldn’t fully dodge to cut into his skin.
It turned out to be a mistake to allow the ice to get behind him, the young man he faced seemed to have excellent control of his water and ice magic, because the ice behind him all gathered and forged into a small dragon. He dashed forward hoping to catch his opponent off guard, but the older student just smiled and materialized a staff made of ice. His opponent caught his sword with his staff and quickly twisted it sideways to diffuse the momentum. He retracted his sword to stop himself from being twisted into a bad position, and dove past the student rolling under the counter swipe from his opponent. The tunnel was too small for his opponent and the ice dragon to come at him at the same time now that they were both in front of him.
The 2nd year laughed. “Well you aren’t being flanked anymore, but now you have to get past me and my ice golem to get to the exit.” He resisted the smirk that wanted to come to his face and put on a grimace instead. The more he retreated here the further this man would be from the original.
“There are plenty of other exits down here.” Not that he had any chance of making it to another tunnel, let alone all the way to another exit. Then again it didn’t really matter if he made it or not, only that his opponent didn’t finish going down this one. He slammed his sword into the ground making several rock walls between him and his opponent before turning and sprinting back down the tunnel. He heard the rocks explode, but didn’t slow down.
***
Azura was quite pleased. His copy was doing an amazing job stalling his pursuer, because he couldn’t see them with clairvoyance anymore. Not that there weren’t other high years in his sensory range, but at least those didn’t know he was here yet. He wondered how the others were doing. Katy and Luna probably had the best shot. Katy being the most stealthy and Luna’s sensory range being a fair bit bigger than his own. Roran and Lily could probably hold their own in a fight against a 2nd year, but escape wasn’t really what their skill set was designed for.
He proceeded carefully, disguising his presence as much as possible as he moved in the shadows of the various buildings. He had made it back to the academy proper, but he wasn’t safe until he reached his dorm. The worst part is that there were no doubt plenty of students around that weren’t participating and thus weren’t any danger to him, but he had no way of distinguishing that.
“Wow, you made it all the way back to school grounds huh? That’s pretty impressive firstie.” He dove forward and shot a lightning bolt towards the person who for all intents and purposes had just materialized behind him. The much older student casually blocked the lightning with his hand, an amused smile on his face. The student was easily a head taller than him, with messy red hair, and darker red eyes. He wore a red undershirt, with a black overcoat and nice black trousers. “My name is Kaiser Crimson, and I was looking for a firstie to play with, but all the ones in the field were soooo boring. You seem like you might be pretty fun though.”
Well this was the worst possible outcome for him. His copy hadn’t been a match for a 2nd year, and he knew he definitely wasn’t a match for the 4th year currently in front of him. Was there any point in stalling? He wasn’t a copy, and even if he maxed out his copies to get 3 more of him his chance of escaping the man in front of him was 0. “Do you take bribes by any chance?” He did his best to sound calm. His voice came out light and with just a hint of humor. Like he knew the answer was probably no, but was dead serious about bribing him. Which he was.
Kaiser’s eyes widened in surprise before the older student burst out laughing. “A fun little firstie indeed. I’ll tell you what give me your name, and promise to spar with me whenever I want and I’ll let you go.” He sighed, not a chance. He didn’t mind giving his name, but this guy gave off all kinds of creepy vibes, and Garrion wouldn’t be able to get him out of this contract.
“My name is Azura Silver. As for the other thing, that seems dangerous to my health, I get the feeling you don’t hold back much.” Kaiser laughed again. Luckily the over eager student didn’t seem to take offense. Rather the noble seemed even more interested than before. He tried desperately to search his memory for anything relevant about the house of Crimson. Suddenly the reason the name had been familiar shot to the forefront of his mind. “Oh… Shit.” Kaiser’s smile grew wider.