Chapter 35 #2
Damien anchored Lukhan from behind, his broad hands braced against his friend’s shoulders. Their banner pulsed as if in time with their shared heartbeat, each surge of power making the standard’s polished wooden pole vibrate against its square stone base.
They made it look effortless.
Elio and I reached our blue standard together. The pole felt smooth as glass against my palms. The cobalt-blue banner above us rippled gently.
“Together on the count of three,” Elio said. His hand closed over mine on the pole.
“Three… two… one,” we chanted in unison.
I drew on his power and pushed our magic into the banner, expecting it to respond with the same eager obedience Lukhan and Damien’s banner had shown.
Instead, it recoiled, shedding magic like a wave hitting a fisherman’s oilcloth jacket.
The spell-threads woven through the fabric flared violently, then dimmed almost instantly, like a candle guttering in a draft. The banner rippled in sharp, erratic waves, its light pulsing in a frantic, uneven rhythm.
A magical recoil hit me with a jolt that traveled up my arms and settled behind my eyes with a dull, sick ache.
“It’s not absorbing any of our power,” Elio said, his voice tight with strain. “Why is it fighting us?”
I shook my head. “Don’t know. Maybe someone is trying to stop us from winning against Lukhan and Damien.”
It wasn’t the first time that we’d had inexplicable difficulties using our powers in this arena.
Based on what we’d heard from the other commoner teams who’d competed in the Trials, everyone suspected covert throttling charms had been used against the commoners to give the aristocratic teams an advantage.
On the other side of the arena, our opponents’ banner appeared to be drinking in their magic, absorbing it like a sponge and glowing white-hot like a star.
I pushed harder, channeling more power into the stubborn fabric that was now hanging limply above us.
The pole between my hands warmed, then grew hot as the banner’s resistance only intensified. The spell-threads flickered wildly, bright-dim-bright-dim, like something trapped and panicking.
We were losing time. And losing ground to our opponents. Only a couple more minutes remained to charge our banner before our duel started.
And then I felt it.
Beneath the banner’s frantic resistance, I sensed the same pained cadence I’d felt before in our family’s clinic, when a patient’s body was resisting a healing spell.
What if this banner isn’t resisting us out of tampering or malice?
What if it’s distressed? And fighting against our attempts to dominate it, the way an injured and frightened animal fights a healer’s grip—not out of spite, but out of sheer, blind terror?
“Stop,” I ordered. “Elio, I think we’re doing this the wrong way.”
He shot me a look, but I felt his magic recede.
“We’re doing it the same way they are.” He pointed at Lukhan and Damien with his chin.
“Yes, but it isn’t working for us. Let me try a different way.”
If I’m wrong about this, we’ll be out of time with nothing to show for it and facing opponents with a fully charged banner.
Wood was the element of growth, of healing, of life itself. Mama had taught that healing couldn’t be forced, only coaxed.
What if I treated our banner like a gravely injured patient instead of forcing raw power into it?
I summoned a healing spell and sent a thin tendril out to touch the fabric. Not a command. Not a push. But a polite request to allow me entry.
And this time, there was no resistance, and no recoil.
My Wood magic flowed into the banner’s spell-thread like water finding the bed of a dry stream. I didn’t push. I didn’t demand. Instead, I spread my magic along the spell-threads like applying salve to a wound.
I murmured to the banner the way Mama whispered to her most difficult patients: It’s all right. I’m here. You’re safe.
And it worked, thank the Divine Mother!
Above us, the banner stirred, then snapped out to its full length, as if caught in a stiff breeze. It glowed with pulsing golden light as it eagerly drank in all the power I offered it.
“Now, Elio,” I whispered. “Now we can feed it. But gently.”
And we did, offering it a steady stream of our power. I could feel it humming with happiness and growing stronger by the instant as it absorbed everything we gave it.
All too soon, the bell sounded and the herald’s voice boomed across the arena: “The attuning and charging period has ended. Competitors, you may now engage.”
Lukhan and Damien didn’t wait.
Their attack came as a single, coordinated strike. Their spell sizzled through the air like a fiery lance, heading straight towards our banner.
Elio reacted before I did. A Water spell erupted from his fingertips in a fluid, sweeping arc.
He didn’t create a wall of ice this time, but a membrane, thick and shifting, that absorbed the impact of Lukhan and Damien’s attack the way a deep pool absorbed a thrown stone.
The spell hit his barrier and dissipated, its energy scattering in harmless ripples across the surface.
The blue banner shuddered behind us, but it didn’t falter. Elio had caught the attack without disrupting the delicate balance I was building.
“Don’t stop charging our banner,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ll handle defense. You keep feeding it power as long as you can.”
“Thank you.” I turned my attention back to feeding magic through the spell-threads with gentle persistence.
The pulses of light from the spell-threads were slower now, more regular. They radiated warmth, like sunlight.
Best of all, where before the banner had felt frantic, defensive, it was now calm. Alert. Present in a way that made the hair on my arms stand on end.
Then it did something I hadn’t expected.
It reached for me.
The sensation was unmistakable. The banner’s magic—its own magic, not the power we were feeding it—curled around my spell like a vine finding a trellis. It twined through the green-tinged light, following it back to the source, and when it reached me, it didn’t push or pull or demand.
It settled.
The banner’s magic flowed into me with the same warm, singing certainty that Elio’s had during our first match. It filled my core and hummed there, alive and patient and utterly, terrifyingly aware.
This wasn’t just a magical battery or a mere tool.
The banner was alive. Not in the way a person was alive. It had no thoughts, no voice, no capacity for language or reasoning. But it was aware.
It could feel. It could respond. It could choose.
And it had chosen to trust me.
Across the arena, Lukhan’s banner pulsed in its steady, authoritative rhythm. But something about it had changed. The spell-threads were too bright now, strained, vibrating at a frequency that made the air around the pole shimmer with uncomfortable heat.
Our banner held steady in my grasp, alive but calm. Its pulse matched my heartbeat. Slow. Steady. Certain. And more power than I’d ever wielded before hummed warm inside me and above me.
“We’re fully charged,” I informed Elio, who was continuing to deflect Lukhan and Damien’s probing attacks.
“It’s strange,” he said. “They’ve stored up all that power, but they’re not using any of it yet.”
I stared at Lukhan and Damien’s banner, which burned with eye-searing intensity, and wondered what they were planning to do with it.