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.

Sarah 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.”

Sarah 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.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“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.”