Later that evening, the team gathered in Akari’s hotel room to discuss their match. A TV sat on top of the dresser, showing the footage from various perspectives. Akari, Kalden, and Relia sat on one bed, while Arturo sprawled across the other. Zukan sat on the floor, while Elise leaned against the wall with her arms crossed.

This footage confirmed their suspicions about the match. Garriland’s wind and gravity artists had flown their teammates straight to the center in less than ten seconds. This gave the tech specialist time to set his traps while the Artisan ambushed Zukan’s squad.

Talk about a risky tactic. One wrong move, and those guys could have flown straight into a cloud of Relia’s death mana. Or, if Akari’s squad had been faster, they could have caught the tech specialist with his pants down.

But their opponents had been the underdogs here, so they’d thrown everything into this plan. The odds were against them, but it paid off in the end.

The match itself had barely lasted three minutes, but they had over thirty minutes of footage to review. This included perspectives from each squad, along with the various slow-motion replays. Akari and the others watched until the end. Then it was time to share their thoughts.

“First things first,” Kalden said “The decks were stacked against us today. The game mode, the arena . . . it all favored our opponents. That was no one’s fault.”

“Plus, we’ve got no experience with team games,” Arturo said. “Not dumping on Elend here, just stating a fact.”

Kalden nodded. “I looked up Hightower’s team, and they’ve been together for years. Even Masters can beat Mystics when they have a well-coordinated plan.”

“It was a hell of a plan,” Arturo agreed. “They inferred a lot about the arena in a short time. That sort of planning only comes with years of experience.”

“Okay.” Akari let out a long breath and stared down at her notebook. As captain, it was her job to share their reflections with Elend, and they were supposed to start with the positives. “So . . . what did we do right today?”

Elise cleared her throat from the doorway. “You three managed to take out five opponents by yourselves. That counts for something.”

Akari jotted that down. It felt weird to get a compliment from Elise Moonfire, but the other girl wasn’t wrong.

“And we almost got that Artisan!” Relia said in a cheerful tone. “Akari’s plan would have worked if he wasn’t a stone artist.”

Arturo leaned forward. “I’m surprised the lava got you, spira. Thought you were untouchable between your Artisan body and your Life Cloak . . .”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe I could survive real lava for a few seconds, I didn’t have a good escape plan here. That’s probably why the judges called it an instant death.”

Akari jotted down Relia’s point. Today’s loss was hard on everyone, but it didn’t seem so bad when you framed it this way. The decks had been stacked against them from the start, just like Kalden said. For all that, they’d still come close to winning.

Unfortunately, the positivity ended there, and her team had a good long symposium about how much they sucked. On the bright side, most of her teammates took responsibility rather than pointing fingers.

“I could have used my dream mana to scout ahead,” Elise said. “Like I did during the qualifying rounds.”

Kalden furrowed his brow. “I thought you could only scout a dozen yards.”

“Yeah, but I can go farther with an amplifier. Arturo could have built one if we’d planned ahead.”

“We could have jogged in a looser formation,” Zukan offered. “If I’d gone ahead, I could have held off Hightower while you two escaped.”

“That’s true,” Elise said. “It’s not like my illusion worked on him anyway.” Her tone came out bitter, and she stared down at her arms. Elise had been asking for a training partner to improve the potency of her illusions, but everyone had refused. Oh well. That was Elend’s fault for giving them a teammate they couldn’t trust.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Kalden took the remote and skipped ahead several scenes. “Crossing the canyon might have been our biggest mistake. We ignored the most basic rule of warfare. We forgot to ask what our enemy wanted.”

“They wanted to kill us,” Relia said with a frown. “That’s why we jumped over.”

“It was more than that. Look at that replay, where Hightower killed the other squad. He did it as loudly as possible. He gave Elise just enough time to warn us before he finished her.”

Akari sank back into her pillow, bracing herself for his next words.

“Hightower knew his enemy,” Kalden said. “He knew Akari was a spacetime artist who favored distance.” He reached out with the remote and paused the TV. “But Relia could have killed him with one technique. He wanted her as far away as possible. He even stayed hidden until she was down.”

The implication was clear. Akari had been thinking of herself and her own safety. She hadn’t thought of her team as a unit, or how they could have used Relia’s aspect in the narrow space.

Kalden reached over and squeezed her hand. “This is no one’s fault. Anyone could have spoken up before Akari opened that portal. Especially me.”

“Yeah, shoko. Why’d you wait to speak up?” Arturo gestured at the screen. “I saw you cycling your battle mana there.”

Kalden shook his head. “My aspect still doesn’t have a proper Cloak technique, or a Second Brain. It warns me sometimes, but it’s too slow.”

Akari knew that feeling all too well. She and Kalden had been plunging forward with limited techniques for several weeks now. Their luck was bound to run out sooner or later. It just happened to be today. Her gaze flicked toward Kalden, but he seemed to avoid her for several heartbeats. When they finally locked eyes, he gave her a forced smile.

“There’s more,” Akari said. “Might as well spit it out.”

He considered that for a moment, then he skipped ahead to where the grenades knocked Relia off the ledge. “Remember when we first landed in Vordica?"

She nodded.

“You made a portal and grabbed everyone from the air.”

“Sure,” Akari said. “I thought about doing that here, but it seemed like a trap. That light artist would have shot me in the head.”

“It would have been worth it,” he said. “With Relia gone, we had zero chance of beating Hightower. But if you’d sacrificed yourself to save her . . . ”

Damnit. He was right. She’d thrown the Artisan head-first into the lava, and he’d still survived. The truth hit her like a train a second later. The others could all talk about hypothetical plans, but those only made sense in hindsight. Yes, Arturo could have brought an amplifier to help Elise scout ahead. But most arenas had wide open spaces, like deserts, forests, hills, or grasslands. In those cases, scouting would have been a waste of time and resources.

Even Kalden’s last point wasn’t as ironclad as it sounded. Yes, Akari had played into her enemy’s hand, but the move had still been logical at the time. Hightower could have emerged from the wall at any second. What if they’d spent ten more seconds debating their next move, only to die in a cave-in? Maybe Relia could have handled his techniques—maybe not.

But this part with Relia was different. Akari had the chance to act like a real captain, but she’d worried more about her own survival. She’d been so focused on impressing the Solidors, and she’d done the exact opposite.

“Lena and her patrons think you’re going to fail,” Elend had told her several weeks before. “But I remember a girl who jumped off a boat, risking her own freedom to save her friend from the Martials. Not because it brought her more power, or because it moved her closer to some long-term goal. She helped him because she could. Because she knew, in her heart, that it was right.”

She’d only been a Silver that day when she saved Kalden from the Martials. Was she getting worse? No . . . she’d always been this way—too focused on herself and her own power. That time on Arkala was just a fluke. A moment of true clarity, where the right choice had been obvious.

Relia was the first to break the silence. “There’s no guarantee I would have beaten Hightower.”

“No.” Akari waved that away. “Kalden’s right. I messed up.”

“What’s done is done,” Zukan said in his stoic voice.

“Right.” Arturo sat up and planted his feet on the floor. “So, how can we do better tomorrow? Not to be a storm cloud here, but this is double elimination. We can’t lose twice.”

Akari opened her mouth to reply, then stopped herself. What could she say that wasn’t an empty promise? She’d always been a bad teammate, even back with Nico and the others. Now, she was an even worse captain. She couldn’t snap her fingers and fix that overnight.

“I’ll talk to Irina,” she finally said. “Maybe she can give me some advice before the next match.”

Arturo nodded, then his face broke into a grin. “And you’ll actually follow her advice?”

“Of course.”

“You sure?” He raised his eyebrows. “You won’t storm off and say ‘that’s bullshit’?” He said the last part in a comically bad impression of Akari’s voice, and laughter rippled through the room. Even Zukan cracked a rare smile.

Akari glared at Arturo, but she probably deserved that comment. In fact, she’d muttered that exact phrase the last time Elend gave her advice.

“Fine.” She threw up her hands in surrender. “I promise. I’ll do whatever Irina says.”

That seemed to appease everyone, and Arturo, Elise, and Zukan all retired. Meanwhile, Relia decided to go for a jog around campus. She also announced, with a wink, that she’d be back in exactly one hour.

Needless to say, Akari and Kalden took full advantage of the empty room. The day had been light in terms of training, but the match itself was exhausting in its own way. Not to mention the stress that came with their defeat.

If they lost tomorrow, they’d be out of the winners’ bracket. Then this team was as good as done.