Chapter 8: Magiball

It was the weekend again, and today he’d decided to just lounge in bed and wallow. But then there was a soft tapping sound at the window that roused him.

He crossed the room to the window, where he found a paper airplane hovering just outside, flapping its wings to stay aloft and ramming itself rhythmically against the glass. Its nose was slightly crunched.

When he opened the window, the paper airplane shot right past him, nearly steering directly into his eye, then settled on his pristine desk—Cassian didn’t have a lot of things, but the things he had he kept clean.

Carefully unfolding the airplane lest it come back to life and try something, he found a note written in a surprisingly elegant hand. It felt like something you'd see in a fancy invitation. Except it read:

"Hey man, if you're not doing anything, join me in the Magiball court - G."

He didn’t feel like going. But he didn’t think wallowing was a better option. So he changed into something he could sweat in and head out the door.

Cassian met Gareth at the Magiball court, which was located in an open-air arena with packed dirt for the court. The magical zones were marked with glowing runes that changed colors based on their enhancements, adding a dynamic and unpredictable element to the game.

The game was similar to basketball but with a magical twist: players used wands or hand gestures to control the ball's movement and enhance their physical abilities. One could also use spells of a certain level to throw your opponent off guard. The court had magical zones that could temporarily boost speed, strength, or agility.

Cassian noticed two other students warming up on the court. “You remember Leonard and Vexia from the party last night?” Gareth asked, pointing to a tall, lanky human and a fox-like demihuman with a bushy tail. They were getting ready for a two-on-two match, something that immediately reminded Cassian of basketball.

He couldn’t help but wonder whether he had been any good in his previous life? The hoop they had to toss the ball through was vertical rather than horizontal, and slightly larger, as well as higher off the ground. Maybe it wouldn't be that hard to adjust.

“Alright, let's do this,” Gareth said, tossing the ball to Cassian.

They started playing, and Cassian found himself relying on his basketball skills from his previous life. Spin move. Behind the back dribble, euro step. Despite his lack of magic, his speed, agility, and surprisingly excellent dribbling skills allowed him to keep up with the others. Leonard and Vexia were formidable opponents, using air balls and some kind of telekinesis to enhance their plays, but Cassian and Gareth held their own. It also helped that there were limits to how many spells one could cast per round, which is when Cassian shined.

During a water break, Cassian decided to confide in Gareth, albeit vaguely. “Hey Gareth, what would you do if you did something to someone that you didn't mean to, and it's a big deal because they didn't want you to do it, but you don't know how it happened, and now you need to fix it but you don't know how?”

Gareth barked a laugh. “You're talking about Professor Lyra, right? You didn't give her some kind of disease, did you? She's a master with plants and healing. You don't need to worry about it. She can cure anything. I'm sure it will blow over. Though she might not pick you as her partner for a while. Or she might. Depends on how good you are in the sack.”

Cassian felt a mix of mortification and awe. Gareth had hit closer to the mark than he could have imagined possible.

Before they could continue their conversation, they were interrupted by Darian and his lackeys. Darian, still nursing a grudge from their earlier confrontation, swaggered over with a smirk.

“Well, well, look who it is,” Darian sneered. “Fancy a game, Varn?”

“Yeah, no thanks.” Cassian wanted nothing to do with him. He was the consummate bully, according to everyone he’d talked to. And Isolde had mentioned that it wasn’t unusual for someone to get seriously injured during an altercation with him. The fact that I had downed him with a single punch had quickly become the stuff of legend.

“Awww. Is the null scared?

Gareth rolled his eyes. “Really, Darian? I bet you’re just sore about what happened when you got punched out.”

Darian grinned maliciously, his smile failing to touch his eyes.. “Just thought we could settle things properly. I’ve been watching you. Even without magic you’re not half bad. What do you say? Or are you actually scared?”

Cassian and Gareth exchanged glances. “Alright,” Cassian said, “Let’s play.”

The game began, and it quickly became clear that Darian was playing rough. He used his magic to harass Cassian, even when it had nothing to do with the current play. He often infused the ball with fire and "accidentally" threw it in Cassian's direction, forcing him to dodge and whatever player caught it to douse the flames with a counterspell. It wasn’t exactly illegal. Just malicious and in poor taste, as it wasn’t something anyone did to someone who would be unable to respond appropriately. Cassian struggled without the ability to use magic and relied on his physical abilities and basketball experience to keep up.

The action was fast and intense, with magical zones boosting players' abilities at crucial moments. Despite Cassian's disadvantage, his quick reflexes and understanding of the game kept him in the match, frustrating Darian further.

“Watch out, Varn!” Darian shouted, launching the ball, this time surrounded by a spiraling barely visible tunnel of wind.

Gareth intercepted the ball, canceling the spell and passed it to Cassian, who made a quick move towards the hoop. He leapt, aiming for a perfect shot, but Darian used another burst of magic to knock him off his feet. Cassian didn’t give him the pleasure of complaining however. And though Gareth, Leonard, and Vexia each had a moment where they wanted to intervene, Cassian’s glare was enough to let them know that he wanted them to do nothing of the sort.

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Cassian would win even with the deck stacked against him. This he resolved.

As the game progressed, Darian's tactics became even more violent, clearly designed to get a rise out of Cassian. Darian had caught on to his true game. And the bastard was determined to get Cassian to complain. Or say anything for that matter.

Despite everything, the score had been close the whole game, though the reason for that had more to do with Darian being such a poor player on his team. The others looked frustrated, though there was some hierarchy between them that precluded them from saying anything to stop him. Instead, they worked hard to carry the game. Cassian performed a particularly deft crossover dribble to fake out one of Darian’s cronies (who he hadn’t bothered to learn their name), then he leapt and…

“Swish!” Cassian exclaimed. Bringing the score to 21, the standard for winning that he had proposed in honor of a pickup game in a world no one here had ever heard of.

Darian lost his temper.

Cassian could feel the swell of magic even before he saw it. He gathered the weave into his hand and ran toward him. A ball of fire that, with so much mana, wouldn’t just sting.

Cassian lashed out instinctively, connecting with the only thing he could. The earth beneath Darian’s feet. There were infinitesimally small seeds there. Bindweed, carried there by the wind and just waiting for a chance to—seeds exploded into life, growing at an impossible speed, tangling, thickening, trapped and crushed one of his ankles. He tripped and fell, crying out as his ankle twisted in a sickening bloody snap.

The court fell silent as everyone stared in shock. Cassian’s heart pounded in his chest. That was a bad injury. Darian just stared at his mangled leg for a few moments, struck with shock. Then the pain came and he screamed.

Vexia wasn’t the closest, but Darian’s other teammates just stared and did nothing. To be fair, so did everyone else. She knelt by Darian and cast a short spell to disintegrate the roots of the vines that were still thickening and visibly drinking in Darian’s blood. Blood and plant detritus mixed into the awful wound; his bone stuck out, white and jagged

Vexia looked up and around and shouted to be heard over Darian’s shrieks. “Does anyone know healing magic? I’m not proficient enough to handle this.” She removed her belt and tied it around Darian’s leg like a tourniquet. First aid is first aid in any world.

They all exchanged hopeless looks, and one of Darian’s cronies vomited. Another ran off for help. And the last, the only female in the group, a raven haired girl with black lines tattooed on her face that reminded him of Naruto’s whiskers. She had the presence of mind to ask for a second belt (which Leonard, the only other person wearing one, provided). She put it in Darian’s mouth and had him bite down on it.

Well, shit, Cassian thought. That wasn’t exactly what I wanted.

On the other hand, Darian had meant to inflict harm on him, so wasn’t it self defense?

Something stirred in Cassian’s subconscious. Once again, there was knowledge in him that bubbled to the surface. Something foreign that was suddenly familiar. He knew without knowing how he knew, that he could heal Darian’s ankle.

It was more out of morbid curiosity than any desire to help. He told everyone to stand back and made to lay his hands on Darian’s leg. The raven haired girl gripped him by the wrist and stared daggers at him. “Haven’t you done enough? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He understood where she was coming from, but he needed to see what he could do. “Would you believe me if I said I just had an awakening?”

She looked at him with unfaltering fury, her grip feeling like she never intended to let up, not until she heard the bones crunch.. But then, maybe she saw something in Cassian’s eye. It certainly wasn’t his sincerity or compassion, was it his determination? Maybe she just thought that he really couldn’t do any worse.

“If you try something stupid, I’ll kill you.” The raven haired girl’s dry, cold tone left no question that she meant it.

“You know what you’re doing?” Gareth said from behind Cassian. But he wasn’t going to pay any more attention to what was going on around him. There was only the knowledge in his head, and the certainty that he knew exactly what to do.

There was life. It was eking away. There was pain. There was mud in the bloody wound. He could feel the Darian’s body screaming, rushing to stem the bleeding, to fix the bone. To heal the injury. But they could not do it fast enough.

So Cassian helped.

He pulled that same life force from other parts of Darian’s body, and pooled it along the broken ankle. He willed the mud and dirt in the wound to slough away. The water in the blood to wash away any and all foreign agents that could lead to infection. And then he urged the body to knit itself back together.

To everyone’s amazement, the wound began to close, the bone to pull itself back into place, though it struggled to do so. A white glow began to emanate from Cassian’s hands and into Darian’s ankle. Darian’s screaming halted as the pain suddenly ceased. The other players watched in awe as Cassian healed Darian without uttering a single incantation.

“I need someone to set the bone. Just get it close enough that his body will do the rest.” Cassian spoke with the confidence of someone who knew what he was doing. Even if, in truth, he went back and forth between believing that he did, and that he didn’t really have a clue what he was doing. It was as if the knowledge of two persons was in his head. It was like there were two Cassian’s. The one who knew, and the one who was screaming to let someone more qualified deal with the situation.

That didn’ seem to matter to the raven haired girl or Vexia. They had seen the wound start to heal, and they knew healing magic when they saw it. They worked together to pull the bone into place while Darian morbidly watched his bones crunch into place, his eyes wide, mouth agape.

Blocking Darian’s pain wasn’t necessarily a requirement of the healing process. But ultimately Cassian decided it would be better if the idiot didn’t squirm in pain and make setting his bone more difficult than it had to be.

Cassian felt when the bone was finally healed. The muscle, then the skin knit together. Only a faded spot of pink where the bone had protruded remained. In the end Cassian needed to draw mana from the air and ground, and even from his own life force lest he drain all of Darian’s away and leave him worse off. But it was done. And once it was done, that sense of knowing faded away along with his energy, and he sat down hard.

When he was done, Cassian could feel everyone’s eyes on him. It was time for the aftermath. How was he supposed to explain this to anyone?

There was muttering around that he tried to ignore. “Did you see that?” “No incantation.” “High level healing.” “But isn’t he a first year?”

At least Gareth acted normal enough. He just patted Cassian on the back and told him “Good job. Never doubted you for a second, buddy.”

Cassian was vaguely aware that a crowd had gathered to watch his healing process, something that had taken more time than he thought.

Even Darian’s cronies had returned, having brought a white robed Celestial with pale skin nearly the color of her robe. Her eyes sported the only color on her person. A deep black that hid whether or not she had pupils. Celestials were one of those races that are identical to humans in every way except their skin color and elemental affinities. They come in all kinds of colors. But he’d never seen white. He wondered if that was rare. When Cassian’s eyes met the Celestial, she was tapping her chin with a slender finger, and giving him an assessing look. Cassian couldn’t say if it was a good or bad thing.

She must have been important because when others realized she was among them, their chattering stopped, and eventually silence fell on the court and all eyes were on her. Finally, she said, in a voice like a blade over ice, three words.

“Come with me.” And she turned, never doubting that he would follow.