Kyle cut in line. There wasn’t as much resistance as he had expected. The cafeteria was so packed, the crowd unraveled the tenuous lines of the buffet. “Took you long enough,” he greeted Lisa after two months. “When did you get back?”
She barely reacted. Had she seen him coming? “A couple of days ago. And hey.”
“Hey. You didn’t come here right away?”
“No?”
So she didn’t know yet. That made this easier. “Figures you would head straight for breakfast.”
“I haven’t eaten yet this morning. ‘Been kind of busy.”
“Sure, sure …” He trailed after her, idly tonging some food onto his plate, before he said, “Ryan and Micah got into a fight.”
Lisa startled. “Huh?”
“Two days ago. Micah wouldn’t say about what, but they aren’t on speaking terms. Just as a heads-up.” He nodded toward a table on the edges of the crowded cafeteria where Micah sat with some girls and one guy whose names he did not know. Stephanie, maybe?
Then he turned toward the register, where Ryan stood in line to pay for a banana and a sandwich in a paper lunch bag.
Lisa followed his eyes and looked like she didn’t know how to parse that information, but he could see she was headed toward disbelief. Dismissing what he said. So, he piled on.
“And Micah got into a fistfight with Sion Shala. They aren’t on speaking terms either.”
“What?” Lisa stopped, and the people behind them in line had to stretch their tongs out or walk around them to reach the food they were blocking. “Why? What happened?”
“I don’t have the full story, but Madin told Thomas told Felix told Lukas told me that Anne apparently got back from her family vacation early and had a few days to waste on the beach in Lighthouse. And Sion was there … He asked her out.”
Her frown wrinkled up her nose. Kyle understood her confusion well. He remembered a night in the fanciest building he had ever been in, watching Anne and Micah dance beside her.
“So Anne tells him the truth, that it happened, and Micah confronts him about it?” she concluded for herself.
“No. Anne says yes. She and Shala are together. Micah punches Shala. Oh,” Kyle remembered, “and she and Micah aren’t on speaking terms, either.”
Lisa stared at him, took a deep breath, and stifled a groan. “How am I supposed to …?” Her head turned left and right to search for Micah and Ryan in the crowd. She seemed to settle on Ryan. “Nevermind.”
“Yeah,” Kyle agreed. “Stranya is mostly hanging out with us now, but Payne has been bobbing around school on his own. I figured you could look after him, I will look after the kid, and we meet up to compare notes?”
Lisa started to nod in agreement before she caught herself and turned on him with suspicion.
Oh, great. Was she about to bother him about shit like being nice? He prepared himself to leave—she had practically already agreed—but then she glanced at … his ear? It made her look contemplative.
“You didn’t grow your rat tail back? I liked it. You look different without it.”
“Uh … ha? Yeah, people are supposed to look different with time. And you can’t grow one of those in two months.”
She frowned at him. Or at his defensive tone, maybe, because she said, “I meant it. I liked it. It made you stand out.”
Kyle hesitated, because she was being nice all of a sudden. He brushed past her to grab an empty bowl and said, “If you’re trying to flirt with me, that ship has sailed.”
She’d been gone for the entire summer. Practically a lifetime. And she hadn’t changed a bit. He had used to find that appealing, but he found himself oddly disappointed now.
“What?” She made a face. “Obviously not. And obviously, you’re taking Micah. It’s not like you could look after Ryan.”
He shrugged. “I figured the only way I could help him vent would be to spar with him. Or to point him toward the right kind of private bathhouse.”
Lisa nodded, then frowned. Cogs slowly turned in her eyes and she made a different face. “Are you still on about that? Ryan does not have a thing for Micah.”
He shrugged. “Don’t say that around him. You might hurt his feelings. And if you want to catch him, you should hurry.” He nodded toward the exit, where Ryan was leaving.
Lisa perked up, remembered her food, and hesitated before she dropped her tray on a counter with a groan. “Bye,” she said and left.
Kyle watched her go and took her food from the tray. No sense in wasting food. And it would be rude to make the staff clean it up.
----------------------------------------
Ryan turned the bookmark with a silent clack. It was one of a few hundred bookmarks that extended out from the glass display case like hooks, and each was meant to separate one of the few hundred pages of the thick spell tome that lay in the cradle inside.
It detailed a few dozen basic spells in various styles so you could find one that suited you.
Expensive.
But that was just one of many changes the school had undergone in his absence. There were new maps painted on the common room walls, new benches and tables outside, new hallways full of renovated dorm rooms and classrooms extending into the Guild.
Everything looked neat and tidy as if the school had gone through Spring Cleaning a few days ago.
And apparently, they had also bought new equipment and hired new staff to host the entrance exams in the gyms—as was the standard in other schools.
He didn’t know where they had found the budget for it all. He also didn’t know if he should be proud or annoyed that the school had finally gotten its act together.
Principal Denner had planned to use their proximity to the Tower to save costs—of course, that had fallen through after the changes—but couldn’t she have done all this a little sooner for them?
… And yet, he couldn’t deny his own excitement. There was going to be a sign-up schedule for reading times on these in the new year. But for now, it was a free-for-all, and he had managed to snag a spot by coming on a Saturday during breakfast.
The red hooks separated different chapters in the spellbook. He quickly found the spell he was looking for. [Longstrider].
Saga was right. He should have learned it by now after sitting on it for seven months. And it was about time he got his own act together.
The spellscripts were somewhat rigged—the placard said the book was best suited to [Wizards] and [Spell Casters]—but he could use some structure right now.
He bit into his sandwich inside his paper lunch bag as he studied the first page. Lisa dropped a chair next to him and sat down with a, “Hi.”
“Mm!” Ryan forced his bite down, put the bag away, and gave her a hug. “Lisa! You’re back! How was uh, home? How was your family?”
He didn’t know why she seemed surprised by his reaction, but at his question, she awkwardly looked away. “There were great. Some stuff happened. I can’t tell you everything here, but—”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. School’s freaking flooded.” He scratched his eyebrow and turned in his seat, though the library had been spared from the worst of it.
The only students hanging out here were bookworms, overachievers, and those who were looking to save some coin by borrowing books instead of buying them.
“I was thinking, if it stays this hectic the entire year, maybe we can hang out at your place—”
“No,” Lisa cut him off.
Ryan stared.
“No uh, Garen has some … guests right now. We shouldn’t poke them. I barely got away this morning.”
“Oh. Cool.” He nodded. And continued to stare. Two months. She barely looked any different. It almost felt like no time had passed at all. “Oh, here. Check this out. The school got new stuff.”
She read the page and furrowed her brows. “Momentum … locomotion? Ah, some sort of movement efficiency spell?”
“More like movement buff—”
“Hm?” She glanced at the page again. “[Longstrider], right? You should focus on efficiency with that one. Your body already has more kinetic energy than it knows what to do with. If you want to add more, you should learn a spell that adds a burst of energy. And then you can learn one that does both, like [Haste].”
“Ah. That uh— that helps.” Ryan was distracted by how familiar this already felt. It was good to have her back. He kind of wanted to hug her again.
She turned on him and seemed to remember something. “Wait, did you consolidate?”
He suppressed a wince. “No. I decided to explore different directions. Like this.” He gestured at the book. “I was hoping to get a headstart so I can move on to greater spells.”
She nodded. “Getting stronger. That’s good. If you want, I can teach you some of my magic—”
“Nah, but thanks,” Ryan stopped her. “It’s not that I’m looking to get stronger exactly. I’m plenty strong for my age—”
She squinted. “Are you, though?”
“—I just want to explore new things, to see what I like.” He shrugged. “The other stuff can wait. I figured I need to start making commitments to who I want to be.”
“And that is …?”
“Famous, like Garen or Allison. They can do whatever they want, but people still look up to them, you know? They can make a difference.”
She looked concerned, but she didn’t press the issue—unlike another person Ryan didn’t want to think of. “And you’re sure you don’t want me to teach you …?”
“I— No. I have a plan, but thanks. Have you had breakfast yet, or do you still need to move into your new room?”
“I could do both. Why?”
“Because the librarian is glaring at us.” Ryan nodded over her shoulder. “I doubt I can hog this spot for more than an hour or two. Maybe we could hang out afterward?”
“Sure. I can get Sam and then we can— Do you know if the gyms are open? Or we could go into the Tower for practice.”
“Huh? Oh, no. I didn’t mean train. I meant hang out. Do something fun. You and me.” He grinned at her. “Have you ever been rock climbing?”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
She looked at him, and he desperately hoped she would smile back. Instead, she said the words he had hoped to avoid. Worse, because he had been afraid she would want to invite Micah. Instead, she knew already.
“I heard you and Micah got into a fight …?”
Ryan nodded and tried to sound casual. “Yeah. He got on my nerves. I told him off and … I was kind of mean about it. I should probably apologize sometime, but I saw him hanging out with Brent and the others. That’s good. He could stand to make new friends.”
“I guess …” Lisa trailed off but seemed to move on. “So, you want to do something fun?” She looked contemplative.
“Sure. Rock climbing?”
“Not rock climbing.”
“I’ll try not to feel offended on behalf of rock climbing by your blatant dismissal. But if you have a better idea, I’m all ears.” She looked like she had a better idea.
“I have been rock climbing before. Once or twice. And In the Tower, I guess. But we can do that some other time. I have another idea. Do you still have your rainjacket?”
His face fell. “Yeah, uh— Micah has it. We were wanting to sell. Why?”
“I’ll get it from him then. Once the librarian kicks you out, pack your stuff as if to head into the Tower. I’ll pick you up around two at the entrance.” She began to leave.
“What are we doing?” he hissed after her.
“Trust me. It’s a surprise.”
Ryan did trust her so he didn’t try to stop her, but his smile was shaky. When she was far enough away, he mumbled to himself, “It’s a date.”
Objectively, Ryan had known Lisa worked in an arena. She rarely mentioned it, but there were times she couldn’t hang out because of work.
Conjuration was a difficult school of magic and highly-prized, so skilled summoners were in high demand all over the city. Of course, she could earn money with her skills.
But her schedule had tempered his expectations—he had assumed she had a day worker type deal—and he had never been to her place of work before.
The Park Theatre was surprisingly luxurious. It wasn’t some struggling gym or a shady fight club. It looked like an actual theatre with its high windows and spacious lobby.
They had a fountain near the entrance. Coins glimmered in the water, and a small stream flowed through some grass.
Ryan stared. “You promised you would take me to go watch a match someday … but we aren’t here to watch, are we?”
“Nope.” Lisa led him to a side door with a grin and waved to someone she knew in passing.
“Business has been booming since the changes happened. The arenas are all competing to recreate the most exciting floors of the new Towers, and their monsters, for the public to experience. They hosted a junior tournament for the students who got stuck outside because of school rules, or who wanted to show off what they gained by dropping out.”
She nodded at a banner that depicted splashes of color and thick, jagged writing over the reception. “Semi-finals were yesterday.”
Ryan had been here yesterday. If he had known—he had almost fallen back into his old routine and struggled to find things to do in the afternoon. Had he known, he could have come to watch.
So many famous climbers had a career in show fights, and even more dipped their toes into it just to earn some more levels from the novelty.
Lisa was going on ahead. Ryan realized he was staring at the banner and snapped out of it to catch the door behind her. The drab hallway they stepped into was … a lot less glamorous than the outside.
It looked like a basement, but he could hear the tell-tale sounds of office spaces and gym equipment in the distance.
“So if the semi-finals were yesterday, what are we doing here? I doubt you can sneak us into the tournament at the end, right?” Ryan hesitated. “Right?”
He was suddenly anxious because with Lisa, you could never know what she would do.
She made a face that said, No, don’t be ridiculous.
“The thing is that people aren’t just satisfied with the tournaments. Many can’t make it to the matches because of their schedules, and others can’t afford a ticket. Arenas tend to host illusory repeats of the fights on the days afterward, where they show the highlights. And they intersperse those with volunteer and exhibition matches for the fans and the contestants, or both, to earn more money and boost engagement.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“And I did manage to sneak us into one of those on short notice.” They stopped near a locker room and Lisa gestured at the door. “Get changed. We’re on at quarter past five.”
“Wait, huh? Like, in front of an audience?”
“Yeah. What did you think we were going to do here?”
“I don’t know, sign up for a test day at a self-defense course or something, Lisa? Just— I’ve never even fought in an arena before. I don’t know— How do we …?”
“You have gone into the Tower hundreds of times, Ryan. This is no different. There are just more people watching than just me.”
“Don’t you have to qualify for events like this? I don’t have [Thick Skin] or [Lesser Regeneration] and— Wait, neither do you,” he accused her.
“I am a mage. My defensive requirements are lower. You have the raincoat, also known as the Yellow Fleece. Those have been popping up in treasure maps more and more often. They’re apparently part of a set of thirteen. And I told Valles you’re looking to sell.”
A bit of his excitement crumpled at her explanation. “So without it … I wouldn’t have qualified?”
“Not unless you have something similar, like a ring of protection. But I also promised him you’re much more charismatic than Kyle.”
Ryan recoiled. “Kyle?”
“Yeah, he apparently flunked out in the quarter-finals due to debilitation. He has his regeneration, but he fell into a trap. Valles complained that he isn’t a crowd-pleaser.”
“No shit.” If that was the standard, and someone like him could make it to the quarter-finals, then maybe …
Or maybe it just means that Kyle better than me.
“Get changed,” Lisa gently reminded him, bringing him back from the thought. “Don’t take too long, though. We’ll have to go over your outfit anyway.”
He furrowed his brows. “You compared this to going into the Tower. Shouldn’t I wear authentic armor?”
“A little showmanship never hurts, here,” Lisa told him and pulled her hands apart. A dark red, leather cord pulled itself apart between her palms. “And I can make you something better.”
Right. [Summoner]. Ryan hesitated, not sure if he should follow her lead or … if he could step out of line. He thought of book covers and an art book someone had given him for his birthday, and of adventurers in impractically awesome armor.
He decided to stick to his commitments. “Can you—” He cleared his throat and spoke up. “If I describe some stuff to you, can you make it for me?”
The muffled voices of the commentators and the crowd pierced the stone walls, and Ryan listened with one ear as they gossiped about the highlights of yesterday’s match.
The occasional sounds of combat were loud enough to rival their voices—the boom of a fireball, or a heavy impact—but it was the third sound that made him anxious: the faint shattering of applause.
And yet, somehow, his anxiety felt hollow. Fake. A voice inside of him called him out: Why was he pretending to be nervous? He didn’t give a fuck about anything. If he lost or if he embarrassed himself, it would be more of the same. Really, wasn’t that what he wanted?
No, he thought. Then he repeated it to himself to make it real, “No.” Rather than deny the feelings that made his hands shake, he tried to appease them.
This wasn’t the real deal. This was amateur hour. The crowd wasn’t going to be that large.
He was wrong.
The stadium was reminiscent of a school gym: a bottom arena floor, a space between the ‘arena’ proper and the walls that surrounded it, and elevated seats above those walls that looked down on the action.
Reinforced nets shielded the audience like his old school’s gym, somewhat obscuring their vision, but illusions floated in the air that showed glimpsed of the artificial Tower terrain the arena had built—patches of grass, a handful of trees, large boulders, ruined walls, and a pond.
That was about where the similarities to school stopped, because the arena floor on its own was about the size of their largest gym, where the school held their assemblies, and the entire ceiling was a skylight that let in clean sunlight. Its glass was protected by a metal cage.
Ryan only glanced at all of that, because then he was stuck on the hundreds upon hundreds of people in the audience.
They chatted with each other. Some sat in groups facing away from the arena like cliques at school. Others milled about or returned to their seats with food. He saw parents with little children who ran circles around them.
It didn’t have the air of people paying rapt attention to a performance, and instead seemed … more like people hanging around the park, with the fights that happened below being convenient entertainment for them.
He supposed this was the difference between the repeat days and the nights of the main event.
Still, the commentators tried their best to grab their attention. Giant illusory images of fighters began to appear above the seats.
And then a giant illusory image of Lisa, Sam, and himself appeared on their right.
The sight of a giant version of himself hanging in the air brought him an odd sense of deja vu—as well as equal parts pure terror, and calm reassurance. His meditation space was supposed to be private—this sense was supposed to be private—but it still reassured him.
The two emotions balanced each other out. Then he just stared at himself like a child.
He’d seen himself in the mirror before he came out. The sight wasn’t a surprise. And yet— Ryan raised his hand. The Giant Ryan raised a hand.
“Wow,” he mumbled and his mouth moved, but the only voice he heard was the commentators’ as they announced the contestants of this raid royale.
Lisa said something to him—Ryan knew because he saw Giant Lisa’s mouth move in the illusion—but he wasn’t paying attention.
He wore a dark grey compression pants and shorts combo, similar to the pants some runners like to wear in the winter. They were actually magic. Not just magic, they had a three-part enchantment, which meant they had been ridiculously expensive.
But Ryan had had nothing better to do than to get ready for the new school year yesterday, so he had dropped by the Guild brokers to check on the request he’d handed in at the beginning of summer break, and the pants had been a limited time offer …
He’d bought them on a whim. They had a form of weather resistance that worked by regulating temperature, which was perfect for him, and they also had a weaker version of the Growing Boots enchantment where they could fix small tears on their own and adjust to fit him.
They knew how to do all that by bonding to his spirit, which was … a bit creepy for pants to be able to do, in his opinion, but he felt comfortable in them.
The hem of his sandy gambeson and the yellow raincoat covered most of his shorts from view, almost like a skirt.
They had used dark red cords to replace the buttons of the rain jacket with stylized knots that looped around the inside to keep it close to his torso, along with his usual brown dual belt that did the same around his hip.
The real difference were the dark gaiters he wore that stretched up his calf and thickened into red knee pads with a fire theme—the knee pads themselves were real and his; Lisa had just given them a second skin.
They’d done the same with his elbow pads, his leather pauldrons, and his helmet, giving them a skin of fiery scales. And she had added tiny red antennae to his helmet like some of the higher floor Salamanders had.
His boots and belt, those they had kept brown to bridge the yellow, tan, and red color schemes.
Sam was practically their mascot in this fight—and practically their team mascot in the Tower. He’d figured they might as well style their armor after him.
Lisa matched him with her high riding boots and gambeson that she’d given a red scale theme. Her brown pants matched his belt and own boots.
She looked awesome. He looked …
Awesome.
Ridiculous.
Somehow, he had both thoughts at the same time, and somehow, both were true.
But the commentators started talking about them, and the other contestants were beginning to walk toward the stage, and his every move was projected up there for the audience to see—
The side of him that thought he looked ridiculous was gaining traction. This was a mistake, this was a mistake, this was a mistake.
He wanted to duck back out of the door they had come from, change into sweatpants and an undershirt, and huddle up under a blanket.
But Lisa took the lead and waved. And Ryan had to take a shaky step after her—
Someone whooped and cheered.
His head jerked up and he searched the crowd, but he couldn’t see who had done it, and he didn’t even know if it had been for them, but … it helped. He remembered to breathe.
“You’ve loved her monsters. Instead of slaying dragons, she’s summoning them; give a warm welcome to our very own summoner, Lisa Chandler. Yes, that Chandler.”
“Next to her, the bearer of the Yellow Fleece, granted to him by Hadica’s own Guest; he was there when the Hermit Enon felled the Brood Guardian. Maybe he even helped …?”
There came a series of faint chuckles, and Ryan gave a bewildered face for the audience. The chuckles became laughter.
“Maybe not,” the commentator amended his statement, “but he’s here to show us his skills with a spear, Ryan Payne!”
The applause was measured, but it had been the same way for all of the other fighters as well, and even Lisa before him, so Ryan took it in stride. Only a little over half of the audience seemed to be paying attention to the introductions at all anyway.
Amateur hour, he reminded himself. It tempered his expectations and soothed his racing heart.
“They're teammates and they signed up as a duo— Excuse me, trio, with their summoned Teacup Salamander, Sam!”
The image of the three of them became the single image of Sam waddling along the ground next to Lisa’s heel, and it stared up at its giant self with wide eyes.
Somehow, of all the fighters that had been introduced so far, Sam got more applause than anyone else.
But it only lasted seconds. Then, the illusion showed the three of them again, at the edge of thr artificial Tower terrain, and the commentator shouted, “Introducing, the Salamanders!”