94. Seb
SEB
In the seconds it took him to process what was happening, he got hit by Danielson’s spitting orange fireball.
Instinctively, he tried to block it with his foil, but it was empty.
He threw up his arms to protect his face, and the inferno, given weight and substance without fuel, crashed into him.
It scalded his face raw. He heard his eyebrows singe.
Dry, suffocating heat roared into his mouth, devouring his oxygen.
It was as he hit the ground, rolling in the sand like an idiot to avoid the physical charge that Danielson followed it with, that Raf’s voice came back to him from the other night.
“Is that Hawleyhurst? Who’s he with?” Asher said, swiveling, to no one in particular.
“That’s Evan Danielson,” Rafael craned to follow Asher’s gaze. “Dunmoody.”
“What the hell are they doing together?”
What the hell indeed.
Well, Seb knew now.
He scrambled back into a physical zone, his brain moving so fast that it could hardly be called thinking at all.
He had no magic.
He was in the quarterfinals of the National Collegiate Cantrèjeux Championships, three bouts between him and victory, with at least one broken rib, on the second match of the day, and he had no magic.
It was almost funny, in another light. If he weren’t ten points down seconds into the bout, and if he didn’t really, really want to win, he might have even enjoyed the challenge.
Herculean was Seb’s favorite kind of task, the only kind worth doing, really.
He thrived on long odds and slim margins.
Solve an impossible riddle? Done. Get into an impossible graduate program?
Fine. Break an unbearable curse? Hold my drink.
But Cantrèa wasn’t meant to be played without magic, and staring down the next minutes of his life made him want to smash his own Orb against the sand.
As he dodged and spiraled out of Danielson’s furious attacks, it became easier to push the anxiety aside, to study Danielson’s new patterns and formulate new strategies. Most of what he’d observed the day before was useless, but not all of it.
Even without magic, he was playing Cantrèa, and he loved Cantrèa. And, he reminded himself as he dove headfirst and came up on his feet, blood thrumming, you’re fucking good at it.
His avenue toward victory was thin and fraught with danger.
Step off the path once, and it would be over.
But there was a path, and it was straightforward.
Stay close and force Danielson into physical play.
Exhaust his spells until they were on even ground.
Seb would find the stamina to make it work.
Once Danielson was out of spells, this match would be his.
He smiled thinly as Danielson lunged.