It was not the days before the event that brought upon the most anxiety. Every passing moment the emotion escalated. A subtle itch became a cold dread. Each day the anticipation found new limits, until the time finally arrived, and the weight of expectation is relieved, replaced by disappointment or reprieve. At least, that was supposed to be the case for most things in life people looked forward to. But this was the first day of the M.A.G.E Annual. The arrival was worst.

Lyssa spent the night before staring at the ceiling. She spent hours in what could only be described as a conscious suspended animation. She had dreaded exams before. This was no exam.

And now she stood before the gates. To her right a hundred, gifted students. To her left, a hundred more. A hundred more to come when the third wave of shuttles arrived. The first game would begin once all the waves were here. She could not find her roommates. They had been unceremoniously rushed into the buses and deposited onsite. It was seven a.m. on a Friday.

Drones flitted through the air, affixing the contestants with their judgmental eyes. Behind those lens laid impressionable youth, cubicle workers, stay-at-home folk, internet denizens, the list goes on.

Lyssa caught the voices of the students close by.

“My father is taking a day off work to see me,” said a student whose skin was covered in jagged stone.

“Mine can’t,” another was saying, “His team’s been trying to catch those illegal betting rings that pop up every time M.A.G.E does one of these things.”

Millions were watching. Many for entertainment. Some for practical purposes. Lyssa wondered how many villains were watching, gathering data on the new wave of hero recruits. Tournaments where heroes competed against each other? A genius idea for selling tickets. But it must have compromised the participants’ strengths to some degree. M.A.G.E must have taken this into account somehow, right?

A pneumatic hiss pulled her back to reality. Lyssa heard the last of the buses pull away. The last of the students had arrived. A thousand powered young men and women stood in front of Langshir Park. Nervous feet stood at the starting line, the entrance of the forest.

“Good morning, kiddies.” Tobias, the gift instructor’s voice boomed. “Welcome to the thirty-first M.A.G.E Annual Tournament!”

The students roared in unison.

“Me and my colleagues have been putting you lot through the ringer haven’t me? That was to get you all into shape. To prepare you for this. Think of this as the biggest practicum so far. When you all passed the entrance test, you proved to us that you deserved to learn. Make it out of this one, and the world will have to prove that it deserves you!”

Another ear-trembling wave of agreement. Knuckles rapped against knuckle. Shoulders and necks were stretched. Even without access to telepathy, Lyssa could tell this would be dangerous. A thousand people high on hormones and a penchant for vainglory. A thousand variables with superpowers.

“Enough talk! Three!”

Lyssa opened her doors. She felt her selves leave the compartments of her thoughts and stand at her back. Except for Izanami. Lyssa could not feel her in her room, or anywhere in the mansion of her thoughts. It was too late for her to think about why.

“Two!”

A shadow passed over the starting line. There was a zeppelin hanging low above the forest, a flying station for the drones that would be watching them throughout the game.

“One!”

The first gusts of wind came from those with speed gifts. They were already gone, leaving a wake of rustling branches and crushed leaves. The rest of them broke into a run. Lyssa watched how quickly her neighboring students moved and tried to match their pace. It seemed to her that if they rushed so early on, they’d run out of stamina and get picked off by the men with the paintball guns. The form-fitting FASE suits made it easier to move.

She followed a group of talkative students from a distance, eavesdropping to see if they happened to know anything she did not.

“Do you think there’s a break zone?” One of them asked.

“The last time they did an endurance game like this, there was. You had an hour to drink water and go to the bathroom. Can’t imagine that we’d be expected to travel 100 kilometers in one go.”

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“Maybe that’s when they’ll distribute our gear.”

Lyssa turned away. She heard nothing that she could not already guess. Maybe that was a part of the game, the lack of clear rules. It produced a certain kind of tension. Anything might happen, but there wasn’t much they weren’t allowed to do in response.

“Your heart rate is spiking. Calm down.”

“Calm down?! They could be anywhere! Harden your skin!”

The bickering in her mind has only gotten worse since the game began. She nearly tripped on a bump in the ground on more than one occasion.

“They’re looooking.” Lyssa dreaded that self most of all. Bildungsroman’s voice was as chilling as ever. Every word was sardonic and venomous. “Would you like to peek?”

“Mindreading is illegal,” Lyssa spoke in her mind, “Stop.”

“I’m only reading the words they’re saying out of earshot. They noticed you fumble your step. They think you’re-”

“Should I care?”

“If you want to make it.”

“I can do fine on…”

“Ha ha ha, you almost said ‘on my own’. You can’t do anything on your own. You rely on your rage, your loneliness, your stress. Why not me?”

“Because even I know better.”

“Then I won’t tell you.”

“Tell me what? Wait. What are you-?”

A cry sounded in the distance. Lyssa ducked on instinct. The students leapt behind the pillars of bark. In an instant, all conversation ceased. Lyssa’s palm went to her chest, as if to smother the thumping within.

Nobody dared to speak. The woodland was silent. Not even the wind interrupted the quiescence. Orange-gold light sifted through the branches and leaves from the still rising sun. A wayward beam refracted through a single droplet of water hanging on the precipice of a leaf. Until the slightest vibration flicked it off, replaced by a thin line of red that streaked across the green. Lyssa squinted at the leaf, confused.

A piece of bark splintered close to her face, a wet shard bouncing across her cheek, marking it with a tinge of red.

Someone finally broke the silence, shouting, “We’re under fire!”

The air rushed with the sounds of projectiles, nearly silent until they met bark or ground, splattering into splotches of red paint. Lyssa fell to the floor of the forest. All around her, gifts activated. Wood snapped as a student tore a tree down to use as more cover. Shuriken-shaped pieces of bone were flung. Lightning bolts and energy blasts shot towards seemingly random directions.

From where she took cover, Lyssa saw a student’s suit get smeared with red as a dozen paintballs slammed into his center of mass. An orange ring lit up by his neck; he was out of the game. There was pain there, but mostly sadness, and the realization that he was one of the first. Someone had to be.

She looked away. She had her own success to keep in mind. None of the students could tell where the shots were coming from. If she had telepathy, she would be able to sense the thoughts of the soldiers hiding in the shrubbery. All she could see was a wall of green with great poles made of deciduous trees.

“Even the playing field!” Sethlana was shouting in her mind.

It was getting harder to block her out. That made Lyssa more frustrated. And the more frustrated she became, the angrier she became, and the louder Sethlana’s voice grew.

“Stop hiding and come out!” A ten-feet-tall student rolled into a ball, his back full of bristling quills, and began to roll blindly forward. He bounced off trees, partially uprooting many of them. A trail of flattened ground and shattered sticks followed in his wake. He drew the fire of dozens of paintballs. But no orange ring lit up; the paintballs were hitting the quills, not the suit.

“I see them!” Another student stood to her feet. She extended her hands, releasing massive waves of wind. The forest filled with the loud whispers of rustling leaves. Look hard enough, and some of the leaves had a shape, a human silhouette.

“They’re retreating!”

The students began to advance. A few more were felled by the paint as they left their cover.

“Even the playing field! Do it!”

“I don’t know what you mean!” Lyssa said out loud.

Hot rock formed over her arms. Fire blades extended from her fingernails. She glanced around her. She saw students panicking, students staying calm, abilities fly, shattering rock and wood and flinging up bits of dry dirt and fallen branches. Her eyes were urged to look own.

Lyssa dug her claws into the earth and ran in a line, crossing the paths of her peers. Her teeth clenched as she felt the breeze of paintballs coming within inches of her. The dry detritus on the forest floor lit up and began to slowly spread. The smoke rose, steadily, inexorably.

She stopped behind a tree, panting.

“I don’t know about this,” Lyssa muttered.

The fire was spreading. And so was the smoke. Walls of dark grey obscuration grew exponentially. Sethlana finally grew quiet.

Mercurial stepped to the forefront of her psyche.

“We can make it. I can take us past them.”

“What about everyone else here?” Lyssa thought.

A great gust of wind blew through the forest, feeding the flames. The smoke became denser and fell forward as a dark cloud. Among the crackling fire and breaking branches, coughing could be heard.

“Follow me!” The student generating the wind said. “Break their guns!”

One by one the camouflaged soldiers were discovered. Their guns were confiscated with ease. They slapped a button on their shoulder, prompting a white flag to pop out of their clothes, a universal symbol.

“Keep moving forward!”

Lyssa stayed with the crowd. As a horde they moved forward, leaving behind a trail of smoking woodland. She looked back. Medical crew were rappelling from helicopters, collecting any injured, soldiers and students alike. Some of her defeated peers swatted help away, their anger and disappointment palpable.

She had gotten lucky, suffering no more than a few near misses. There were ninety-nine kilometers to go.