“Spell tome possession is quite a dangerous technique, Mr. Vellden. I recommend using it more cautiously in the future,” Professor Kaylastal said.

The image in the artifact returned to a lineup of our classmates and began the next selection immediately.

Sinking back into his chair and dropping his face on the table, Alex raised his hand with a thumb up. After a few seconds, he let it drop, falling limp on the table.

“Lilian Clair, Saria Bashire, please step forward.”

A pair of students teleported out. A short girl with white hair stood with a look of disgust across her face, while her opponent, a girl with short blue hair, looked at her nervously.

“Oh, don’t be such a squimby,” Thor gripped, jostling Alex with his elbow. “If you really don’t like it, then get strong enough to stop me.”

Alex gave a weak laugh then whispered, “Yea, I should’ve thought of that myself. I’ll get so powerful I can just fight all by myself, without using a spell to—”

“Think,” the professor boomed, “before you speak heresy here!”

Alex swallowed hard as the professor's dark gaze bored through him. He looked up, then dropped his head back on the table, cowering as a bead of sweat fell from his forehead.

“Begin,” professor Kaylastal commanded.

Lilian and Saria began chanting immediately, but Lilian was quicker. “Sword dance of the jaded maiden, cleanse all hearts of pain.”

Seventeen fine blades, all as thin as paper, appeared in a circle around Saria. She froze, apparently forgetting the rest of her spell.

Moving in unison, the blades twirled and spun gracefully, drawing red lines of crimson with every motion. Saria collapsed, as blood pooled around her.

“Saria Bashier eliminated. Lilian Clair victorious.”

The match was over in a blink.

The girls teleported back and Lilian returned to her seat while the woman with maroon hair attended to Saria's injuries.

“Seth Remlie, Dexter Maele, please step forward.”

Saria was still being treated when the professor called out. I hadn’t even noticed the artifact rotating through students. Everything happened so quickly, but time seemed to crawl at a slug’s pace.

A sense of dread washed over me. My mouth dried, and my hands trembled. Seth stood, walking with a smooth swagger and confident stride. He was the absolute worst person for me to fight. I remembered his tome clearly, the spell tome of destruction with a world ending snake on its cover.

“Dexter?” Valentina called back.

She had already taken several steps toward the professor, but my legs didn’t have the strength to stand.

Valentina smiled, reverting into a spell tome and drifting into my arms. “We can do this,” she whispered.

Taking a deep breath, I willed myself to stand, then afraid my courage would wane, I hurried to the professor, clutching my spell tome close to my chest.

He teleported us away.

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The arena was barren, with white stone floor, ceiling, and walls. The room was so perfectly white that everything looked like a blurry mass. Only Seth seemed real.

His disinterested gaze rolled over me like a blade, stinging my pride. My knees felt heavy, my mind went blank and I had to steel myself to keep from flinching under his cruel eyes that I felt sure would soon cut me to pieces.

In that moment, I didn’t care about what kind of future I would have, or whether my parents would be disappointed in me, or when I might get the chance to fly on an airship. All I cared about was not dying.

Seth glanced away from me, looking around the room casually. He took a single long breath, inhaling so intensely that I thought he might suck up all the oxygen in one go. Then, exhaling with a bored sigh, he held his tome out for me to see and said, with a soft voice, “Do you want to go first?”

I shook my head.

“Then I guess I'll get started.”

Fuck! I should’ve said yes! Why the hell did I—

“Break,” Seth said.

Blood pounded in my ears. My pulse was deafening as the stone cracked beneath me. The ground pulled apart, opening a chasm that I couldn't see the end of. I stood above the divide with a foot on either side. Pivoting right, I got both on one side just as the rift pulled further apart.

“Fracture.”

The ground beneath me quaked in response to Seth’s calm voice. Jagged lines drew odd shapes on the floor, then parts of the surface sprang up while others dropped down. A rough edge jutted up, striking my chest and chin as it formed. I fell back against a bent and crooked surface as I caught my breath. The pain was sharp and searing, paralyzing my body with tremors.

“Still standing?” Seth asked, seeming genuinely impressed.

I wasn’t really, more like propped against the fractured earth, but I couldn’t say that or even shake my head.

“It’s too bad you didn’t go first. I hope they don’t penalize you too harshly for not casting even one spell.”

I didn’t answer. My gaze was locked on Seth and his tome, or rather on the snake eating it’s own tail on the cover.

His gaze rolled over me again and I saw something like disappointment in his eyes. “Crumble,” he said with a sigh.

My stomach flipped.

The room shuddered. Dust and small pebbles rained down from the ceiling. As the earth shook and trembled, I dropped to my knees. My eyes widened with terror.

“Dexter,” Valentina called as a spell sounded in my mind. “Cast, now!”

“Break through the void, in the unseen hollows of space, shelter me from harm.”

The rock behind me popped apart, but I didn’t fall back. Sediment fell on top of me, but clattered off an invisible wall. The chasm in the floor widened as more and more stone crumbled into dust. The floor beneath me fell away, but some invisible surface remained and held me up.

Seth stepped to the edge of his chasm, looking at me with wide eyes as if to confirm something. I watched in silence as his tome flipped open. When the book settled, he glanced at me again, then looked back at the page.

His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he said.

What remained of the room shook violently, sending rocks flying in every direction. Dust and pebbles bounced off the invisible barrier as they rained down all over the place.

My vision blurred. The room lurched back and forth and up and down, rocking, spinning , tumbling like it had been picked up in a cyclone. Great chunks of stone spun off the walls floor and ceiling, crashing into each other and blasting professor Kaylastal sized rocks in every direction.

Seth was lost in the storm as if a hurricane had just exploded in the room and he was nowhere to be seen.

A huge boulder smashed into my pocket space, knocking me off my feet with its force.

The barrier held, digging a hole through the stone as it continued falling, its speed and crushing power unhindered. A long cylinder of smooth rock teetered left, then fell right, after the boulder passed. I clung to my spell tome, tightly wrapping my free hand around the book in a desperate attempt to keep my only safety.

More stones flew towards me, each leaving cracks on the various surfaces of the barrier.

Gripping Valentina tighter, I cried, “What should I do?”

As Seth's spell continued to decimate the room, my thoughts raced and I panicked.

“We need to—”

The space ripped apart, dropping me into a roaring cacophony of tumbling rocks and deafening chaos. My face collided with something hard then everything went black.