Chương 13: 13 Loop 0, Part 13

The Crucible was louder than yesterday. There were more bodies in the stands, more noise bouncing off the tiered stone, more of that particular energy that happened when people gathered to watch others get hurt. It was round 2. The brackets had thinned, and the remaining matches meant a little more now, or at least a little more to the people that cared about that kind of thing. I glided in on [Stride], a few inches off the ground, my shoes humming. Heads turned to watch me, not that I cared. A few people laughed.

A couple of people even pointed. I tried to ignore it, but the worst part of [Wideview] was you couldn't not see people reacting to you. I promise I didn't care. I found my seat and sat down, which was less a deliberate action and more a controlled collision with stone. I was beat." [Scarecrow]." [Scarecrow - Soul] Cost: 6 mana. Maintains the appearance of wakefulness in the caster. Eyes remain open. Pupils track ambient motion. Duration: two hours or until dispelled. My eyelids locked open, my pupils tracking.

To everyone around me, I looked awake and attentive, which, of course, I wasn't. Behind the spell, I watched the rest of the Crucible fill through [Wideview] and tried to sleep. Sleep didn't come because the fucking body was standing again, its hand raised. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Get out of my head. I blinked, but nobody saw it, I think. Instead of sleep, I started to people-watch. The stands were more crowded than yesterday, of course.

There were people I didn't recognize sitting in the upper tiers in the faculty section. A cluster of people in formal robes occupied the far corner, their clothing too expensive and their posture too rigid to just be stuffy academics. The campus was big enough that I didn't know everybody on staff, even with my uncle running the place. I assumed they were political types. My uncle had them in his office twice a week growing up, and they all carried themselves the same way.

Two of them were watching the tournament, but the rest were watching the faculty entrance. Waiting for someone. None of them were enjoying themselves, of course. These weren't the kind of people that enjoyed life. They were stuffy and hell-bent on making people work hard to earn their keep. Exactly the kind of people I hated. They made my skin itch the same way the grey man had made my skin itch yesterday. The body stood, hand raised. I coughed. Sara was warming up on the practice strip right in front of me.

I knew I should have climbed more stairs, but I didn't want to put in the effort. That lack of effort hadn't paid off, clearly, because now here I was about to get into a conversation. Emphasis on the word conversation.

"Yarrow." She glanced at the floating shoes, then at my face.

"Six AM tomorrow. Don't forget."

"I won't forget, I'm lazy not stupid. Besides, I can still feel the heat from her anger. It's gonna keep me warm tonight. The actual waking up at six part, I've chosen to suppress."

"Don't be late. She'll just make things worse for all of us."

"She can't make kitchen duty worse. Kitchen duty is already the worst thing. That's the whole point of kitchen duty. It's a closed system of suffering." Sara studied me for a moment. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it, or she found too much of it, because she just nodded and went back to her warmup. That was weird. She cast three [Access Wards] in a row on a practice dummy, each one cleaner than the last, adjusting her footing between each rep.

She prepared for everything and used everything we learned. It was part of her style. She, unlike me, actually believed preparation mattered. Finn's match was called first, and since I couldn't sleep, I figured I'd watch. Finn's opponent was bigger than his one from yesterday, clearly combat track with an elemental focus if the fire-edged [Force Bolt]s cracking from his wand were any indication. As soon as the match started, the guy burst into motion.

Each bolt left a brief orange afterimage, and the sound was wrong for a practice match. The guy was clearly putting more power into his spells than he needed to. Finn's first shield took three hits before it fractured. His second lasted only two. But that was the awesome thing about Finn. He absorbed the damage without flinching. He healed himself. He outlasted. That was always the plan with Finn. Out-shield, out-heal, outlast. And it always looked like it wasn't going to work right up until it did.

He took a [Force Bolt] to the ribs midway through that bent him double, and [Healing] fired before he'd finished exhaling from the pain. Green light crawled up from his palms, his ribs knitting back together, while his opponent wound up the next shot. He straightened, cast a ward, and launched forward with surprising speed. Finn punched the other man in the face. Blood went flying. It was brutal. The stands went loud. They liked Finn. Everyone liked Finn. They saw his heart, his passion, his glory. He won by yield.

The opponent's mana ran out before Finn's patience did. Finn stood in the center of the platform, breathing hard, hand pressed to his side where the last of his healing was fading. He looked up at the crowd with his mouth half open, like he'd lost track of where he was, and put a fist in the air. They screamed so loud my ears hurt. He climbed back up to the stands afterward, sweat plastering his hair, and found a seat right next to me. Found me with [Scarecrow] eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

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"You missed it!" he said, his hair tousled to the right like it had just crawled out of bed, a sweaty grin on his face.

"I had [Wideview] on the whole time. [Scarecrow] didn't really work well."

"And you saw I almost lost," he grinned.

"You didn't almost lose. Your opponent almost won. There's a difference, and I'll die on that hill. Mostly because standing up to die on a different hill sounds exhausting."

"Laz."

"What? I'm being supportive. You won! Congratulations! Your strategy of getting punched until the other guy got tired worked again. I'm genuinely going to nominate it for an award." He was doing the thing. The Finn thing where he stopped laughing at my jokes because he'd decided something was wrong with me and no amount of material was going to fix it.

"You okay, Laz? You sound a little off." I scratched the back of my head.

"I'm fine. My legs work again. I walked down here under my own power and everything." I lied through my teeth.

"That's personal growth, Finn. You should be proud of me. I'm practically an athlete." I'd walked here using [Stride] and Finn knew it, but he let it go. I almost shed a tear. Between matches, arena staff walked the platform, dispelling residual magic, repairing broken parts of the stage and stadium. You could see their mana lift off the stone in thin ribbons of color, orange and white and a faint sour yellow from the spell. The containment wards cycled, gold light pulsing once as the system cleared itself.

Students milled around in the aisles. Staff from the kitchens were selling roasted nuts from a cart near the entrance, which means I could hear them screaming as much as I could see the [Subtitle]. The smell drifted up to where I was sitting, one row up. Through [Wideview], I caught the political guests again. I watched them for a few seconds, and then I tried again to sleep. Finn shoved me awake just as the announcer finished talking.

"Section 4, Match 2. Yarrow versus Holt" I stood up, yawned, stretched. [Stride] had dissipated sometime during the past hour or so. I had somehow missed Sara's match, and she was glaring daggers at me, though trying to hide it unsuccessfully. My legs felt sore and they were stiff, but I could put weight on them. I walked down to the platform under my own power for the first time all day, and it sucked. Without even thinking about it, I recast [Stride]. The crowd noise shifted as I got to the stairs.

People recognized my floating shoes and started explaining to the people next to them. [Subtitle] caught fragments of conversation, but I paid it no mind. I floated gracefully onto the platform. For some reason, Frost was glaring daggers at me, and I had no clue why until she pointed at my feet hovering off the ground. She could have asked nicely, but I dispelled the enchantment, and shrugged. Thankfully, she didn't know about [Wideview] or [Subtitle]. Holt was already there.

He was a third-year combat track student, red-brown hair cropped short, square jaw, built wider than Marsh with a lower center of gravity. He wore slip-on boots without laces, using buckled leather straps instead. The crowd noticed before I did and a few people laughed. [Trip] was off the table and he wanted everyone to know it. He wore tinted goggles pushed up on his forehead, the amber Manifestation lab kind rated for combat-level light spells. The [Light] and [Enlarge] flash combo was off the table too.

It was like this guy had come in thinking all I could do were the silly spells I'd used earlier. He'd watched yesterday, practically frame by frame, and decided to be everything Marsh wasn't. He wouldn't be charging and he wouldn't be aggressive. No, he was going to make me come to him. Honestly, I should have felt something. Admiration, respect, or even just irritation at the effort he was going to put up a fight against me.

But honestly, I was over today, and I just wanted this match to be over quickly so I could go back to the stands and sleep the rest of my day away. Besides, there was a problem here. Enchanters didn't fight mages. That was the first mistake everyone kept making. Mages fought mages. They pointed wands at each other and threw force and fire and light around until somebody fell down, yielded, or discovered an exciting new relationship with the infirmary ceiling. But enchanters, well, we fought wardrobes.

And Holt had dressed for me. That was almost flattering. The judge raised her wand. Holt lowered his goggles. Frost wore the same severe expression as yesterday, and gave the same fucking speech.

"Standard rules. Match ends on a yield, incapacitation, ring-out, or judge's call. Lethal force is prohibited. Permanent harm is prohibited. Property damage is discouraged. Begin on my signal." And people called me lazy. Property damage was discouraged, I scoffed. That was a MIRKS sentence, if I ever heard one. People could be concussed for educational purposes, sure, but God forbid we chipped marble and disappointed the budget office. Her signal cracked gold between us, but Holt didn't move. Smart.

Annoying, but smart was still smart. Wouldn't do him any good. He stayed low behind his shield construct. His wand arm was tucked safely behind him. He didn't charge in or give a dramatic battle cry like Marsh, who had apparently believed momentum was a philosophy. No, Holt had watched yesterday and learned the wrong lesson. He thought I had tricks. I didn't have fucking tricks. I had principles. Principles like this. Glass wanted darkness. Rubber wanted tension. Metal wanted corrosion. Leather wanted to curl.

The entire world was a collection of lazy little objects pretending to behave. And I was the only honest person in the Crucible, ready to give them what they wanted. But you know what I really wanted? I wanted the match over. I wanted my seat. I wanted [Scarecrow] holding my face together while the rest of me went somewhere quiet and blank. But just like that, anytime I thought about rest, the body was standing again. One hand raised. Still making its point to nobody.

I shook my head, pointed my wand at Holt's goggles, and yelled, " [Blackout]." [Blackout - Enchantment] Cost: 5 mana. Enchants a transparent surface to become fully opaque. Duration: until dispelled. The match had finally begun.