Chapter 36
Lukhan
Our crimson standard stood tall and bright in my grip, its light pulsing in that steady, authoritative rhythm that had made the commoners’ sections fall silent with awe.
But beneath the surface brilliance, the banner felt wrong. Tight. Overstretched, like a muscle pulled past endurance.
Each surge of power I directed into the standard made the air around the pole vibrate with an uncomfortable, buzzing heat. The spell-thread hummed at a pitch that set my teeth on edge.
I ignored it. I needed every bit of power Damien and I could store. Because I wanted to teach our opponents a lesson they’d never forget.
On the other side of the arena, Miss Fishwife and her pet merchant-boy were still fumbling with their blue standard.
Their banner rippled weakly, its light pulsing in that pathetic, irregular cadence that marked amateur spellwork.
I saw when they finally figured out how to charge their banner, but their time had nearly run out.
Good.
Finally, I heard the announcement that the attuning and charging period had ended, and we were free to launch an attack.
The amphitheater roared around us. Three thousand voices, most of them commoner trash cheering for their champions, the rest a surge of aristocratic expectation.
I’d overheard a conversation between some of the other second-years in our common room yesterday evening, after dinner.
Do you think they’ll make it to the finals? Those first-years?
They might. Ferraro’s clever, and that island girl’s got something unusual going on with her magic. They’re a strong team.
What about Lord Jofre? Or Lord Berengar?
A laugh. My money’s on the Espolan lords over Lady Cresta and Lord Bernardo. But stilI… it would be something to see a pair of commoners make it to the finals. First time ever, right?
Not a word about me. Not a single question about whether Damien and I might advance to the finals.
As if we were an afterthought.
As if we counted for nothing against the spectacle of an island hick and a merchant’s son making a splash.
The careless insult burned hotter than any spell.
I would break them here and now. Not just defeat them—break them.
I would take that blue banner from their grasping commoner hands and raise it high where everyone could see. I would make sure Miss Fishwife understood what happened to upstarts who fancied themselves my equals.
If Damien and I won today, she’d be expelled at the end of the year. And if I had my way, she wouldn’t even last the rest of this term.
I cast my first attack spell and directed it at the merchant boy.
Predictably, he raised a barrier of water.
I grinned and drew on the power of the banner to power my spell. In another instant, Elio Ferraro would regret—
Nothing happened.
Trying to grab hold of the magic we’d fed the banner felt like trying to grab handfuls of water. It slipped out of my grasp, leaving me with nothing.
My spell hit Elio’s barrier and fizzled out.
Damien’s hands tightened on my shoulders. “What happened? You didn’t use any of our stored magic!”
“I know,” I gritted.
It was meant to be our reservoir of power. So why, in the name of all Twelve Gods, couldn’t I draw on it?
I tried again. Again, it evaded me.
Frustration burned through me. The power was right there. I could feel it. Could see it lighting up the spell-threads.
So, why couldn’t I use it?
Then the banner shrieked, a vibration that traveled down the pole and into my bones, making my head throb with sharp bursts of pain.
The spell-threads flared violently, bright enough to cast sharp shadows across the arena floor.
Across the way, Miss Fishwife’s head snapped up.
“Stop!” she screamed. Her voice carried over the arena’s noise, raw and desperate. “You’re hurting it!”
I laughed, hardly able to believe my ears.
Hurting it? The banner was a military-grade enchantment designed specifically to be used as a weapon. The absurdity of it, the sentimentality, and the profound commoner stupidity, would have been amusing if it weren’t so pathetic.
“It’s a banner, Miss Fishwife,” I called back, pitching my voice to carry. “Not a pet. Or a baby. Do you want me to sing it a lullaby?”
The nobles’ sections chuckled. Lady Beatrix’s tittering laugh carried clearly from the front row.
Miss Fishwife cast a Wood spell—green-tinged and absurdly gentle. It reached toward our banner like a hand extended toward a wounded animal.
Did she seriously just use a healing spell as her attack? What in the world is she thinking?
I swatted her pathetic effort aside with a counterspell and it dissipated with a sad sigh.
I responded by driving another surge of Earth magic into the banner with everything I had, trying to pry the stored magic free with brute force.
The banner screamed.
As I winced, its spell-threads brightened further, straining at the edges of what the enchantment could safely contain. The air around the pole shimmered with heat, warping the light.
Ferraro tried an attack.
Damien anchored our defense spell from behind me, his broad hands braced against my shoulders.
Earth magic flowed between us—his cooler, steadier, compensating for the instability in mine with the practiced precision of someone who had been doing this for years.
Without him, the banner’s pole would have bucked out of my grip entirely.
“The banner’s not responding to me,” I confessed. “You try drawing on it for an attack.”
“All right.” I felt the prickle of Earth magic as his spell shaped it into a compact, focused strike designed to pierce through watery defenses.
To my dismay, it left Damien’s hands with considerably less force than it should have.
What are we doing wrong? Unlike our opponents, we’d had no difficulty getting our banner to accept the magic we fed it.
What was the secret to getting it to release the power again?
The merchant boy’s barrier absorbed Damien’s attack without so much as a ripple.
Elio Ferraro didn’t even flinch. He stood with one hand on the blue banner’s pole, the other extended toward us, his shield-spell frustratingly resilient.
Meanwhile, Miss Fishwife was still feeding the banner her power, though at a mere trickle compared to the torrent that Damien and I had pushed into ours.
So far, neither she nor Ferraro had launched a banner-assisted attack against us. Ferraro’s counterspells had all been puny things, easily deflected by Damien’s Earth magic shield.
Well, maybe they can’t draw on their stored magic, either.
If that’s the case… what’s the point of the banners? Are they some kind of trick?
Or some kind of test?
If it were a test, I couldn’t afford to fail it. Father would be enraged if I didn’t at least make it to the finals.
Damien’s mouth tightened. “It’s not releasing any magic to me, either.” His voice was low, urgent, meant for my ears alone. “The banner’s still drawing power in, but it’s holding on to everything. And it’s not just drawing on us anymore.”
He was right.
I felt the banner reaching beyond me, beyond Damien, into the fabric of the arena itself. The faint blue shimmer of the protective wards lining the amphitheater’s curved walls dimmed perceptibly. Their glow faltered, then steadied at a lower, sicker intensity.
Divine Mother preserve us! Our banner was leeching power from the arena’s wards.
“Shit. Something must be broken!” Damien exclaimed. “The enchantment’s compromised. It can only draw inward. It can’t release.”
Ice settled in my stomach.
Military-grade enchantments simply didn’t break. They were created by the imperial armed forces’ finest battle-mages, tested under conditions far more extreme than anything an academy tournament could produce.
They were designed to withstand extreme magical attacks. And to give battle-mages the ability to respond with overwhelming force.
They were not meant to malfunction like this.
Across the arena, Miss Fishwife’s banner held steady in her grasp. Its light pulsed in a slow, even rhythm, warm and alive beneath her hands.
Meanwhile, our banner thrummed violently in my grip. The spell-threads vibrated like drawn bowstrings, and the light pouring from them was so bright it hurt to look at them directly.
Each pulse sent a jolt of discomfort through my arms and into my chest, a dull, persistent ache that deepened with every passing second.
The timer floating above our heads read 0:00. A bell sounded.
The herald’s voice boomed across the amphitheater. “Both teams maintain control of their banners. The trial now enters overtime.”
The crowd erupted with whistles and shouts. The commoners sprang to their feet, waving and cheering. My fellow nobles leaned forward in their seats, expressions sharp with interest.
Damien and I had to end this quickly.
Our banner shuddered in my grip. The spell-thread coiled tighter, drinking down power with a voracity that made my skin crawl.
I could still salvage this. I needed to come up with a spell that could do two things at once: attack our opponents with overwhelming might while also releasing the pressure building inside our banner before disaster struck.
The spell took shape between my palms—Earth and Wood combined, channeled through the banner’s straining spell-threads with everything I had left.
I shaped it with the precision my father had drilled into me through years of private lessons: compact, focused, designed to pierce through defenses and strike with surgical accuracy.
At the same time, I built a release valve into the working—a secondary channel meant to give the banner’s accumulated power somewhere to go besides my own overtaxed body.
Attack and relief. One spell, two purposes.
The merchant boy’s barrier wouldn’t hold against this. Nothing would. I’d seen the way his Water magic adapted—fluid, responsive, clever—but adaptation had limits. Every defense had a breaking point, and I was about to find his.
Across the arena, Miss Fishwife stood with her hands on the blue banner’s pole, her Wood magic flowing through the spell-thread in that absurd, gentle current. She looked calm. Certain. As if she’d already decided how this would end.