Chapter 43
Audra hadn’t the strength to reach out and grab the object, but luckily, she collided directly into the fucking thing.
Which was how she managed to explode headfirst, riding a wave of seawater, off the stage to land painfully not just in the muddy slush of the Rosen Holyvere Amphitheater, but on the object itself.
Which was the fucking glowing triangle Khari had given her to hold during the guild selection process.
She hadn’t realized then how fucking sharp the pointed tip of the pyramid was.
Ow, she tried to say, as she thrust the object away; it rolled once, twice, before landing on one of its flat sides, like it hadn’t just stabbed her in the shoulder.
But all that came out were wet, gargling, hacking coughs and more seawater than she thought possible.
And her lunch. And maybe everything she’d eaten in the last week.
So, she had inhaled the water. Damn.
So much for her willpower.
She heaved again, sliding her cut and bleeding arm across her mouth, before shaking off the string of mucus and saliva that trailed from her lips to her arm … And that was when she realized that not only was she not alone, but an entire stadium of initiates, nobles, and scholars were watching her.
“Welcome back, initiate. You are the first to return,” Scholar Khari said, beaming with pride, and breathing a little heavy as he had just raced down off the stage to be the first to greet her. He leaned down, gripped her under the arm, and hauled her up.
Audra was embarrassed that her legs almost gave out on her; they still screamed from exertion and cold, and then she remembered, old gods, forget her, she was wearing nothing but a translucent shift—but when she looked down at her body, she was wearing her school uniform again.
It was soaking wet with seawater, but all was accounted for, even her boots, which had a frond of kelp wrapped around the ankle.
She frowned. This struck her, somehow, as the oddest part of this whole ordeal.
She’d just been barefoot. Wearing nothing but a shift.
And yet … Odd.
How?
She was focusing on the wrong thing.
Scholar Khari was congratulating her on being the first to return again.
She barely managed to nod at him and collect the pyramid from the dirt, cradling it in her arms, before a collection of mediscribes surrounded her.
One with three earrings in a pointed ear wrapped a wool blanket around her shoulders, another with yellow hair like Fiera’s offered her a hot cup of broth, a third urged her toward the medi tent that had been built on the stage for the returning initiates.
She guessed no one had expected any of them to return by riding a wave straight off the damn thing.
Or maybe they did and just chose to put the tent on the stage. What did she know?
She was tucked into a blanket with heat incras sewn into the pattern, sitting on a cot, and halfway through her second cup of broth before it hit her that she’d survived.
She lived.
She was just about to allow herself a little, tiny cry, when the next initiate arrived.
She was so disappointed it wasn’t Wilder, Cersha, or Lottie (she needed them to arrive whole, safe, healthy, successful; the stress of waiting was going to eat her alive) that she initially forgot to be annoyed that it was Noel fucking Carda, who, without warning, appeared in the air ten feet above the stage, arms and legs flailing in a torrent of violent winds, before landing on …
both his fucking feet. Because, of course, he fell from a hole in the sky and managed to land on his feet.
At least he had the decency to stumble a little.
And after Scholar Khari had greeted him and he’d been ushered into the mediscribe tent to be attended to, Audra could see the sallow tint to his usually flawless complexion, the bleeding cut on his brow, his split lip, and the terror in his eyes that no doubt mirrored her own.
He’d just been through some shit. Some dry shit because she couldn’t see even a single drop of water on him, let alone an ocean’s worth.
She was suddenly extra glad she’d arrived before him, so he hadn’t seen her vomit and flail around in the mud.
She just wished that arriving first meant she’d won.
Judging was apparently, according to an apologetic Khari, not reliant on return order, but rather on how they survived their ordeal.
When she’d asked, her throat raw, her voice almost imperceptible, if everyone was expected to return, though—all he did was give her a closed-mouth smile and a shoulder squeeze.
So here she was, waiting.
Callum also had arrived but hadn’t been allowed into the tent—they’d turned him away, not even letting him on the stage, but from her cot by the door, she could see him standing by the stage and was able to wave to him, at least. He looked like chaos; his red hair stood up from his running his hands through it, and his face was red from yelling, trying to make them let him onstage.
She worried for a moment that he might actually explode from stress.
She needed Cersha to return soon.
Noel, wrapped in his own warming blanket, had picked the cot beside her, though he wasn’t soaking wet and didn’t seem like he even needed the blanket.
“So, the worst student in our guild managed to return before me. You must be proud,” drawled Noel from beneath his blanket.
Audra cut her eyes at him over her mug of steaming broth. He looked ridiculous wrapped in that blanket. She snorted. “Couldn’t find a way to cheat your way to ‘victory’ this time, huh?”
“Just because you arrived before me doesn’t mean you outperformed me. Maybe your trial was just easier than mine; you had less to do.”
Audra snorted again. “I doubt that. I barely made it back with my life. I barely made it back at all.” Shit. She’d meant to sound snarky, but she just sounded scared.
She braced herself for him to snap back with something annoying or witty or rude, but all he said was, “Yeah … me too.”
They sat in almost comfortable silence, sipping their broth, until the next initiate returned.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t anyone in Arcane Guild at all, but a Forge student Audra had somehow never even seen before.
They were covered in an atrocious-smelling yellow slime—inside and out.
They spent so long retching it up that Audra was concerned it would never end, and became genuinely worried for their life.
But eventually they got it all up and were congratulated by Scholar Khari, escorted to the tent, and given a blanket.
They collapsed onto a cot and began to cry silently.
Audra considered going to check on them, but a mediscribe attendant beat her to it.
Thankfully, because Audra had a sneaking suspicion that if she stood up just yet, her legs would buckle and she would collapse in a heap.
One by one, students returned.
Some arrived almost synchronously onto the stage so that they risked colliding into one another. Slowly, the tent began to fill with initiates, some crying, huddled on the same cot, under the same blanket, holding each other.
Others were so injured they were rushed to another room in the tent so their wounds could be attended to.
This was the worst, when they showed up covered in blood, howling, some missing a limb, or their organs spilling out, their hands clasping them, trying to stuff them back in.
Others arrived unconscious and it was everything the mediscribes could do to put them on a stretcher and keep them alive.
Audra was about to go mad with worry when Wilder finally appeared. Audra gasped, exploding off her cot and rushing toward the front of the stage where Wilder had just blinked into existence.
“Initiate, back up, we have to assess her inj—”
“Back the fuck up, mediscribe, and let me hug my friend,” Wilder said, her tone horrifying. The mediscribe actually halted their hands in midair as Wilder swept Audra into an embrace. Audra squeezed her so hard, Wilder squeaked. “Watch out for my ribs, I think they’re broken.”
“Oh, sorry,” Audra said, wiping at her eyes with the palm of her hand. They’d been dry in the tent, but the relief of seeing Wilder released the flood. Shit. She pulled back but kept a loose arm around Wilder’s waist. “Let’s get you to the tent so they can fix you up.”
Wilder leaned on her, favoring her left leg. Her ribs weren’t her only injury, then. “Where’s Cersha? Lottie?” Wilder asked, looking around the tent.
“Almost all of us are back now, so I expect they will be any minute,” Audra said, keeping her voice positive.
Wilder nodded but a mediscribe escorted her to the back.
Audra sat back down on her cot, playing with the frayed edge of the bandage wrapped around the cut on her arm.
So many were devastatingly injured.
She’d gotten lucky—just one small cut on her arm and two burst eardrums—which, with the incra the mediscribe had scrawled behind each ear, were feeling better with every minute.
Wilder rested on her side behind Audra, one arm hooked around her waist, the other curled beneath her head.
Audra encouraged Wilder to lie on the cot, choosing to sit on the edge, her eyes glued to the stage.
Wilder wasn’t truly asleep; she was just meditating, but she made Audra promise that she’d alert her the moment either Cersha or Lottie arrived.
The archemical tonic they’d given Wilder for her injuries, not to mention extensive internal bleeding, made her drowsy and facilitated healing more than just an incra alone.
Almost every cot was taken up by an initiate, and the moon was high by the time Lottie arrived.
She appeared, just standing there, on the stage, covered in blood from head to toe, her eyes blank, her lips moving slowly as though she were praying, though no sound came out, clutching her pyramid-shaped object with a clawlike grip.
“Mist, Wilder. Lottie is back!”
Wilder was up in a second; she hobbled behind Audra, who swept Lottie into a hug.
“Lottie, you returned!”
Lottie didn’t seem to notice Audra, or much of anything. Her gaze was blank, far away, even as the blood began to clump and dry on her skin. “This isn’t your blood, is it, Lottie? Are you hurt?” Audra asked, stepping back, afraid she would press a painful spot or injure her further.
Lottie just kept mouthing words and staring off. But one hand released her object to grip Audra’s coat.
Wilder cupped Lottie’s cheek gently. “Lottie, love. You’re back with us. You’re safe.”
Wilder’s words, or maybe her voice, was what did it, because Lottie blinked the blood from her eyes and looked at them for the first time.
“Oh, gods. It worked. It worked. I can’t believe it worked.” Then, she got scared for a moment and asked, “I’m back?”
Audra smiled encouragingly. “Yes, you made it back.”
And then Lottie collapsed into tears, pressing her pointed face into Wilder’s shoulder and heaving with sobs.
Wilder squeezed her, petting her hair and whispering encouragement in her ear, until the mediscribes, who were too few for the number of initiates needing attention at this point, finally attended to Lottie.
Lottie was mostly unhurt, just bruising and shallow cuts.
The healers wiped away the worst of the blood (which wasn’t hers and no, she wouldn’t answer who or what the blood belonged to) from her eyes.
She could’ve had a cot to herself; there were two left, but she chose to sit between Audra and Wilder.
They didn’t speak, their eyes on the stage.
It took another hour for the first timepiece to drop onto the stage, without its initiate.
Everyone close enough to the entrance and alert enough to notice stilled, their eyes on the slim, metal bracelet.
Scholar Khari walked slowly toward it, as though he didn’t want to pick it up.
With a grim face, he plucked it between thumb and finger.
A wave of a finger, an incra inscribed so fast his hand had been a blur, and he called out a name.
“Magnolia Jillu, Sabre Guild.”
Someone uttered a pained keen, but Audra, Lottie, and Wilder sighed with relief and huddled closer.
That was, until another timepiece plinked onto the wooden stage. And then another, and another.
It took another two hours before Scholar Khari called out Cersha’s name to the initiates left waiting in the amphitheater, followed by Callum’s anguished cry.