Chapter Four
The weeks until our first game fly by. Because I force them to fly by.
To make sure all mention of my divisive lawsuit fades into the background, the team publicists are building a narrative with me and Alexo.
Teasing it out, keeping it simple. Aside from our coffee date, we don’t have any other face-to-face interactions scheduled until the game itself.
Alexo supposedly watches one of my practices, but I do not look around to see him.
I’m so focused on my plays that both the tank coach and the head coach tell me, in two separate asides, that if I keep playing like that, our defense will be an impassable brick wall.
I haven’t seen Seb either. Because I am very focused on training, thank you.
And not at all because he texted to see how my renouncing of Urzoth went, and when I told him I didn’t do it—it wasn’t the right time—we had a bit of a back-and-forth.
And then a day later, he texted me a link to a pro rawball article about my coffee date with Alexo, and asked if my sudden concern about timing had anything to do with this pretty little Urzoth cheerleader?
No. Yes. But no.
I’m even more of a poster boy for Urzoth now—much to the exultation of the group chat between my mom, my dad, and me, where my mom has been heaping praise on Alexo while berating me for not telling her that he’s a follower of Urzoth, too.
Luckily, there haven’t been more Galaxrien cult rituals and therefore no subsequent Urzoth responses, so mine and Alexo’s Urzoth ties haven’t needed to be too in-your-face.
But all the positive press from me and Alexo has Reverend Drach and Roesia happy, as told to me by a publicist who prepped me for a media blitz.
It took everything in me to keep from asking how Alexo was doing.
I know he leapt into practices with the same ferocity I did, but his reason was because he only had two weeks to get up to speed with the rest of his squad.
I didn’t ask about him because I didn’t need to know about him, like I didn’t text him because I didn’t need to text him.
I’ve slotted him into a healthy box like everyone else.
Alexo: PR stunt.
Simple as that.
Before I can catch my breath, I’m heading into Bwararax Stadium for the first game of the season and I’ve got everything in my life so compartmentalized that I’m basically a walking, talking IKEA storage system.
Alexo and I are scheduled for an interaction after the game, win or lose. It’ll be fine, a quick hug or something, then we’ll separate until our next scheduled interaction.
In the meantime, I’m here to play.
And I’m going to trust that my teammates are here to play, too.
None of them have given me shit during practices.
They haven’t from the start, but I dunno; I expected something to get bad after the lawsuit announcement, a reminder that I’m a traitor to the Urzoth community.
No one else on this team claims Urzoth as their god, though, so maybe that helps.
Plus, the positive press about me and Alexo seems to have usurped the lawsuit news.
Or Roesia’s attitude toward the lawsuit is indicative of the whole team’s stance.
There won’t be any repeats of stuff like what the Chimeras pulled.
Everything’s. Just. Fine.
The locker room’s mostly full already, everyone launching into their various pregame rituals or prep.
Darian’s in the corner restringing his guitar and cooing quietly to it; apparently it gets stage fright unless he assures it how good it sounds.
I’ve learned to take people at their word when it comes to enchanted rawball items.
Like how another of the tanks across the room is currently feeding strips of charred steak to her broadsword—yeah, how does that work—because if it doesn’t get a steady diet of flesh, it’ll cut opponents too deep, and we want to nick them, not mutilate them.
Then there are players like me, who go in with no weapons other than their body and fists, and get to pummel the shit out of the opposing team when they get too close to their designated offensive player.
Fucking love this game.
I dig through my locker for my gear. Shin guards, elbow guards, cup, chest shield, helmet, and more.
When I’m suited up, the last thing I pull out is my jersey. The Urzoth patch is sewn on the upper left shoulder.
This’ll be the first time I’m wearing my Hellhounds uniform for a game. I’d hoped to go in with just the Hellhounds logo and my number, 64. Nothing more.
My thumb runs over the stitched symbol of the axe in a stone.
I had an iron pendant with this symbol when I was younger. I’d cling to it and pray and pray and pray at Camp Merethyl. Begged that pendant, begged Urzoth for strength, for the pain to stop.
Strong as stone. Hard as rock. Stones don’t have feelings. Emotionless, tough, nothing hurts stone.
A door slams open and I startle, sniffing hard against the stinging in my eyes. Gets so damn dry down here.
I shove to my feet and tug on my jersey as the coaches file in.
The head coach is Arthur Riprak, an older dwarven man I’m pretty sure only shows emotion when the Hellhounds win. He claps twice. “Listen up! We got the field layout from the Gorgons.”
Rawball routine: the visiting team’s artificers choose and design the field’s layout. Which means the home team doesn’t know what they’re working with until the day of the game.
We all gather in the center of the massive room that always kind of smells like sweat and hand chalk. I up-nod Darian and Marlow, and they return it.
Behind me, there’s a groan like something shifting, stretching—
Then a willow tree shoots to the ceiling.
I look up at it. “Hey, Phei.”
Its branches droop into the crowd and someone bats one aside.
“We talked about forms that get all up in other people’s business when we’re not on the field, didn’t we?” that person groans. “Phei, can you—”
The tree vanishes, becoming a wobbling, see-through humanoid form made of … wind?
“Thanks,” the same person says, and Phei’s air form burbles assent.
“Are we all good?” Riprak calls. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Now, the field.”
He turns to his assistant coach, who splays her hands, and a miniature version of the field appears in an arcane whorl over all our heads.
The moment it does, Marlow’s eyes go huge and she leaps up onto a bench. “Water!”
I cock a smile.
The field is, indeed, almost entirely water, with a few sand islands scattered around.
On either side of the long field are each team’s goalposts.
A ref will hover over us, and once they drop the ball into the center of the field, it’s a free-for-all between both teams to get possession of it.
We’ll have to rely heavily on swimming or other underwater transportation to avoid magic attacks from the opposing team, grab the ball, then get it between the goalposts on the Gorgons’ side, all while defending our own goalposts and fighting off the Gorgons.
And Marlow is ecstatic, pumping her fists and doing the Hellhounds bark. “My time has fucking come!” she signs. “It’s over for you bitches. MVP! MVP!”
“Wow,” I say. We all wear the subtitling earrings when we’re in the locker room. “Do you talk to your mother with those hands?”
Marlow smiles sweetly at me. “Just yours.”
There’s a chorus of ohhs. Someone slaps me on the shoulder—good-naturedly, but I have to hold back a flinch.
It was a joke, and they all laughed, see?
“Keel, Monroe,” Riprak says to me and Marlow, “thank you for volunteering to go over which plays we’ll rely on for this type of field. Keel—get us started.”
Marlow doesn’t seem at all chastened by Coach’s obvious calling-out, and she starts noting areas of weakness on the field and which plays would be best. I offer advice where I can, but Marlow’s on a tear.
This is her first game on the Hellhounds like it is mine, but it’s also her first game, period, as a pro rawball athlete.
“Kid’s got something to prove,” a guy mutters next to me. Aaron. Human, one of the other defensive tanks—and the team captain.
He’s gripping a rawball in one big hand, tapping the twenty-sided leather ball against his opposite palm in a nervous tic.
I’ve trained alongside him the past few weeks, by nature of being a defensive tank, too, and he seems like a good guy.
Encouraging, smart, charismatic. All things you’d expect of a team captain.
The Chimeras’ captain was those things, too. But also an egotistical jackass. Aaron, so far, hasn’t exhibited any asshole qualities, but around him I still feel like I’m walking on one of those glass floors in a skyscraper, only the glass is splintering and it’s seconds away from shattering.
I eye him. “Yeah. And the field being water’s gotta be some kind of sign for her.”
“Shit.” Aaron scratches his chin. “You’re usually on her? All the luck to you. She’s going to be a nightmare to defend with this kind of energy.”
I give him a what can you do shrug.
It’s all very … civil.
Honestly, it’s freaking me out. Part of me wishes the team would turn on me; at least with the Chimeras, I knew where I stood.
Gods, that’s pathetic. This team hasn’t done a damn thing to earn my distrust, and I want them to be jerks?
What is this, middle school? I came here to get into a better situation.
And so far, it is a better situation; no passive-aggressive remarks in the locker room, no unnecessary force in practice drills, no outright cruelty or confrontations.
But they didn’t come to the Silver Hound when I invited them. If they really didn’t blame me for the lawsuit, they’d have come, right?
Yep.
This is middle school.
When Marlow finishes her breakdown, she topples off the bench and turns to Riprak like she’s expecting a pat on the head.
Riprak blinks stoically.
“Nothing to add,” he says. “Aaron, you got a word for us?”