They stood in the alcove for less than five minutes before the gate swung open. A voice boomed out, and Kaz recognized his own name, as well as ‘Big Bro Gravy’ and the others. Bella lifted her arms and ran through the door, bellowing out a roar that would have made a dragon proud. Eve was close behind her, though her yell was more like a whoop of joy. Raff clapped Kaz on the shoulder before following after them, and then Harper sauntered through the opening, hand lifted to shade her eyes.
Drawing in a deep breath, Kaz followed, and as he stepped into the brilliant sunlight, Li took off, her glittering scales catching the light as she swooped over his head. A noise that had been a steady roar shifted, and Kaz realized it was the sound of an unknown number of voices, all speaking or yelling at once. As they saw Li, however, the sound shifted to one of admiration, rather than excitement.
Kaz looked up, watching Li circle, then wobble as she took in the hundreds - thousands? - of faces looking at her. At first, he felt the flush of her pleasure as she finally received the admiration she deserved, but that faded quickly, leaving her overwhelmed and unsure what to do.
“Li!” he called, raising his arm, and gratefully she flew back down, landing on his forearm. Though she was slim and graceful, she was also solid muscle, and he was glad he’d refined his body far enough that he could easily support her. He didn’t draw her back against his body, though he did bring her down to his side.
“Way to steal the show,” Eve said as he joined the others. She grinned to show that she didn’t mean anything by it, but Bella was glowering even more than usual. Raff was busy staring out at a particular part of the crowd, near what looked like boxes built among the seats, separating a few people from the masses.
They stood on a large circle of packed earth surrounded by long, low seats that were built on stepped levels all the way around. People of all kinds surrounded them, packed in with very few gaps. It made Kaz uncomfortable just to look at them, and he wondered how they could stand to be so close to so many strangers. Or did they come in groups of tribe or family so they would know those nearest to them?
The loud voice was still speaking, and on the other side of the circle, Kaz saw another door open, releasing their opponents. Gathrak the Destroyer was first, and the crowd roared again as he ran in, arms raised, spinning in place so everyone could see his grinning face. Some members of the crowd threw glittering circles that looked like coins into the dirt at his feet, along with a few items of clothing.
The other four members of his team were almost ignored, and they walked up behind Gathrak, their expressions grim. Hands gripped weapons as mana gathered around them. The crowd continued to scream each time Gathrak lifted his arms, until the voice interrupted them with the words, “One minute!”
Immediately, Harper lifted her instrument, set her fingers to the strings, and began to sing as she plucked them. Music flowed over Kaz and Li, and to his surprise, mana came with it. It pushed against him, but found no purchase. Beside him, however, Raff almost seemed to glow, even in the bright sunlight, as did Eve and Bella.
Raff and Eve pulled in long breaths, their chests swelling. Raff’s mana grew thick, and even more red sparks flashed in it, but Eve had no dantians open, so the power just sank into her body, making her look like she had a soft fog inside her skin.
Bella, on the other hand, opened and closed her fists, then reached over her shoulder and slid a shield off her back. The mana in her body seemed to be pulled toward that shield, until a solid gray circle formed in front of her, merging with the mana in her arm until Kaz thought it would be easier to cut her arm off than to make her drop her shield.
Harper sang and played for the entire minute, building up the mana in all of them, though by the end she had opened her eyes and was staring directly at Kaz. Her expression was the most focused he’d ever seen it, and filled with curiosity. Could she tell that whatever she was doing didn’t work on him?
A loud bell rang, and for a moment, Kaz thought it was alerting them to another incursion, somehow happening in the middle of the day. Then he saw that the two groups were hurtling toward each other, and guessed that the minute was up and the battle begun.
Kaz remembered he was supposed to protect Harper, and looked around to see that she was still playing, though she was now walking in the direction of the rest of the group. Did she have to be near them in order to use her power, or did they have to be able to hear her? If so, would her music affect the other team as well, once they got close enough?
Watching closely, he saw that the answer to the second question was no. The human seemed to be able to decide where her power went. It continued to boost Raff, Eve, and Bella, without aiding their opponents. Satisfied, Kaz stepped between Harper and everyone else, pulling his shield around them both, though he was careful to imagine Harper’s music passing through unhindered.
Raff was wielding an axe almost as tall as Bella, and he swung it at Gathrak, who caught it on his equally large, mana-filled sword and shoved it away, roaring defiance. Eve swung her sword toward Gathrak’s exposed ribs, but mana coiled in his limbs, allowing him to leap several feet backwards just in time to avoid the attack.
Meanwhile, Bella was holding off three of the other four humans, her shield somehow managing to be in the right place every time the enemy swung their weapons. The fifth member of the other team was standing off to the side, watching all of this, holding one of the mana-sticks aloft, with power gathering at its tip.
Li spread her wings, turning them just so, as sunlight raced over her golden scales like fire. Kaz chuckled. That was a kind of show too, he supposed.
“Should we stop him from using his mana?” he murmured. He had only had to directly fight one mage before, and that was because Raff asked him to. Raff’s former friend, Ellie, had been working with a male named Lep. Lep had attempted to throw some mana at Kaz and his friends, but that mana had been so loosely bound together that it started unraveling on its own the moment it left Lep’s fingers. It had been a simple matter to finish dispersing it, allowing the mana to rejoin all of the other unformed power that constantly surrounded them.
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Behind him, the singing stopped. “What are you waiting for?” Harper asked, sounding genuinely curious. “Can you not hit him from here?” She immediately picked back up where she had left off, her fingers never having paused in their rapid plucking.
Well, that answered that. Stopping the mage was more important than a ‘show’. Kaz gave a sigh of relief to have that clarified, then flung up his arm, releasing Li into the air.
With a few beats of her wings, the dragon soared up high, then dove back down. As she did, she released a great roar, which almost succeeded in being audible above the continuing noise of the crowd. Kaz gathered his will, waiting for just the right moment, and when Li swooped over the mage’s head, causing him to look up, Kaz reached through the dragon and caught hold of the mana that had been building in the stick.
Mana was still tricky. It was ki, but it wasn’t. It contained all the elements, but wasn’t any of them. But the more time he spent surrounded by beings who used mana instead of ki, the more he realized that it didn’t matter. He couldn’t make mana the way he made ki, couldn’t manipulate it without great effort, but he could release it, almost as if that was something he was meant to do. So as the mage looked up, raising his stick to point at Li, all of his power simply…went away.
Kaz could see it, pouring out and away, mingling with other mana, then vanishing into gray wisps, no longer under the mage’s control. The mage had put a good bit of his power into it, too, so he was left with less than half of what had been stored in his body.
Li swung back up, enjoying the warm breeze that rose from the hot, dry dirt. The people screamed, watching her as she flew, and gradually, she relaxed into their admiration, accepting it as her due.
All except for the mage, who shook his stick, tapping it against his other hand impatiently. He glared up at Li, face twisted in anger, and lifted the stick again. This time the mana rose hard and fast, not as strong, but twisted into a fine point that he flicked toward Li before Kaz was ready.
Kaz sent the dragon a warning, and she spun, twisting and flicking a wing through the rising bolt, shattering it back into gray mist as easily as Kaz could have. Turning, she dove back toward the mage again, mouth wide as she prepared to blow fire or vapor into his face.
“No! Li!” Kaz called, leaving Harper behind as he raced across the dirt toward his dragon. For an instant, he thought she would ignore him, doing something that as far as he knew, no wyvern could, but at the last possible moment she pulled up, smacking the whip-like tip of her tail across the human’s face instead. Blood flew, and he shrieked in pain, clapping his hands to his face. His knees buckled, and his stick hit the ground.
Kaz dove, sliding across the dirt to scoop it up, then whirled and threw it away. It arced up, much further than he could have thrown anything before, bouncing across the ground close to Harper. Who was under attack.
The bard had stopped singing, and was running away from the smallest of the remaining four opponents. He held a large sword, and was already far too close to Kaz’s teammate. Kaz summoned power from his core, throwing a ki-bolt that burned into the male’s back, causing him to stumble and fall to his knees, skidding several feet as dust rose up in a cloud. When the dust settled, the male was flat on his face, arms splayed, his sword several feet from his limp hand. For an instant, Kaz was afraid he’d gone too far, and the human was dead. Then a hand twitched, and the male tried to roll over, failing miserably but clearly alive.
Harper stopped, as did the sound of the crowd. For one cycle of his core, the only sound was the clanging of metal on metal as the remaining six combatants continued to fight. Then the bell rang again, and the crowd roared.
“Match over! Team Big Bro Gravy wins!” shouted the impossibly loud voice.
Raff stepped away from his battle, staring at Kaz with his brows raised as he rested the haft of his axe on his shoulder. It was completely clean, and though all six of the humans who had still been fighting were dusty and sweaty, none of them had more than superficial scratches.
Kaz looked over at Harper, who was calmly putting away her instrument in a hard case that she slung across her back. “What happened?” he called, raising his voice to be heard over the almost angry buzz of the crowd.
Harper gave a grin so wide it threatened to split her face. “You won,” she said.
Li flew back down, and Kaz reached up absently, accepting her weight and bringing her around so he could stroke her head. “Are you all right?” he asked, inspecting the wing that had shattered the mage’s mana bolt.
He laughed, leaning forward to touch his nose to hers, drawing in her breath and her ki, then breathing out as their shared cycle spun on.
“Well, that wasn’t quite the way it was supposed to go,” Raff said, and Kaz looked up, seeing a lopsided grin on his friend’s face. Eve looked disappointed, while Bella’s face was almost completely blank, as if she hadn’t yet processed the fact that the match was over.
“What was supposed to happen?” Kaz asked, snuggling Li against his chest.
“Depends who you ask,” said Raff with a chuckle, hitching a thumb over his shoulder at Gathrak the Destroyer. “That guy thought he was going to whale on us until he had the crowd all riled up, then knock us out.”
“What did you think?” Eve asked, wiping her hand across her brow.
Raff shrugged. “It was obvious that we were going to win. I just figured I’d let you all have some fun first.”
Bella stared from Raff to Kaz. “Who in all the hells are you?” she asked. Pointing at Raff, she said, “You just played with the man most likely to win the sword category. I don’t even think you needed me or Eve.”
Switching her accusatory finger to Kaz, she said, “And you just took out a mage and a warrior without even using a wand or spell! You just looked at them! And that wyvern-!” She sputtered to a stop, and Raff began to gently urge them all toward the gate, which still stood open behind them.
“Well, I reckon it’s time to go get some grub,” he said, his axe vanishing into his inventory as they walked through the dark opening. “I’ve got a fight in a couple hours, after the solo sword competition runs. I kind of feel sorry for whoever that Gathrak fights. He’s a bit peeved.”
“Peeved?” Bella screeched. “We just knocked his team out of the competition!”
Raff grinned again. “I had nothin’ to do with it. It was all Kaz and his little friend.”
All eyes turned to Kaz, and he desperately wished he could flatten his ears as he turned away from their attention, walking back through the broad tunnel through the stadium.