Chapter 42 #2
Her triumphant grin was visible even through the blowing sand. She raised one hand, fingers spread, and the wind in the corridor redoubled.
The pressure on my chest became unbearable. My ribs creaked. Each breath was a battle, drawn in through clenched teeth against air that wanted to stay outside my lungs. I felt my body sliding backward across the corridor’s polished stone floor, my fingers scrabbling futilely for purchase.
Elio’s hand closed around my wrist. Water magic bloomed around us in a shimmering dome that dampened the worst of the turbulence. The pressure eased—not enough to stand, but enough to breathe, to think, to keep crawling forward.
“Cresta wasn’t fighting the wind,” he shouted over the wind’s scream. “She worked with it. That’s what we need to do!”
He was right. I’d been pushing back against the wind like it was an enemy. What if I treated it like a river current?
Imagining the wind as river currents, I let the gale flow around my outstretched hands and guided it with a spell in the same way fishermen set traps in the river to guide fish into them so gently the fish noticed nothing wrong until it was too late to escape.
The gale’s pressure didn’t vanish, but it shifted, flowing around my body instead of trying to push through it.
It was suddenly much easier to crawl forward. But our delay at this obstacle had cost us more precious seconds we couldn’t afford to lose. Ahead, Cresta and Bernardo had already reached the corridor’s end and were busily rampaging through the next stage.
The Living Rampart awaited us as we emerged from the wind tunnel.
Stone guardians erupted from the platforms and walls like tumors, magical constructs that reached for us with blunt, powerful hands. Their faces were blank, featureless, but they moved with purpose, blocking the narrowest passages and the most direct routes to the next stage.
Cresta and Bernardo were already deep among them.
I watched as Bernardo’s Earth magic shattered a guardian standing in his way with a single focused strike.
The stone exploded upward and outward, fragments spraying across the course in a cloud of pale dust. Cresta followed up with a blast that cleared the debris from their path and sent three more guardians reeling backward into the walls.
The two of them didn’t slow down. They didn’t negotiate with the constructs. They simply destroyed everything in their path with ruthless efficiency.
Each guardian they shattered sent a tremor through the course.
I felt it through the soles of my boots, a deep, groaning vibration that traveled up through the stone and into my bones.
The platform housing The Living Rampart tilted more sharply with each explosion.
Cracks appeared in the floor and walls, hairline fractures that widened with each successive spell Bernardo cast.
“They’re breaking it,” I said, my voice raw from the wind.
Elio nodded. His face was a mask of stone dust streaked with sweat, and I knew I must look the same. “We just have to keep it together until we’ve passed through.”
Which slowed down our progress to a painfully slow plod. Where Cresta and Bernardo had shattered, we stabilized. My Earth spells weren’t as complex as Bernardo’s—he had years of classes and training I didn’t—but they were just as powerful.
I found the fractures in each guardian’s structure and reinforced them just enough to create a path through, not around. Elio’s Water magic lubricated the joints of the stone constructs, persuading them to step aside rather than fight.
It worked. It was also, agonizingly, far too slow.
By the time we dodged the last of the stone guardians and completed the Living Rampart, Cresta and Bernardo had invoked a levitation spell and were already skimming up the steps of the final stage of the course, the Ascendant Platform.
It rose before us, a single massive slab of stone climbing toward the summit on a steep, uneven staircase, all its steps tilted at crazy angles and shining with treacherous slickness. No wonder our opponents had chosen to bypass this obstacle.
Especially since no one is going to penalize them for it, I thought bitterly. I guess the rule against bypassing obstacles is just for Elio and me.
Floating at its peak, the Aurelian Ring spun slowly in the winter light. It had been fashioned from something that looked like gold but glowed with an inner fire that no ordinary metal could match. It was the size of a wagon wheel, intricately engraved with glowing runes, and impossibly beautiful.
And Cresta and Bernardo were already halfway to the top, skimming over the slick, treacherous surface of the steps while doing their best to destroy the course behind them.
Not that Elio and I had any chance of winning now. We were simply too far behind our opponents.
The realization seared through my gut as if I’d swallowed a tankard of pure acid.
We’re going to lose. And, finalist or not, Julissa is going to expel me at the end of the year.
The crowd’s roar reached a pitch I’d never heard before, a sustained, animal sound of anticipation.
The aristocratic students and guests were on their feet, arms raised, voices crashing together in screams of triumph.
In the dignitaries’ box, Cresta and Bernardo’s parents surged to their feet, their faces alight with pride and joy.
Domina-Regent Jacinthe watched with her hands folded in her lap, a delighted smile on her beautiful face.
My chest tightened. Despite our best efforts, Elio and I were moments away from defeat.
And we hadn’t lost by a narrow margin.
We’d been demolished. Utterly outclassed.
Cresta and Bernardo could have crawled up the steps to the Ascendant Platform on their hands and knees instead of levitating, and they still would’ve triumphed with a comfortable lead over us.
Elio turned his head and met my gaze through red-rimmed eyes. He said nothing. The despair in his face was comment enough.
Still, we pushed forward out of pride and sheer stubbornness.
By all Twelve Gods, we’re going to finish this course instead of quitting!
As we scrambled onto the base of the Ascendant Platform and began staggering up the treacherous stairs, a steady rain of debris showered down around us. The slippery ice-covered steps trembled beneath our feet.
Each spell Bernardo cast as he floated in Cresta’s wake sent fresh cracks racing through the stones, chunks breaking free and tumbling into the arena sand below.
We were halfway up the stairs, our lungs and leg muscles burning with the effort, when Cresta and Bernardo reached the tiny platform at the top.
Cresta stood there, her academic gown whipping around her legs in the wind. She’d lost her diamond hairclips somewhere along the course and her dark braids now streamed behind her like banners.
The Aurelian Ring hung above her head, close enough to touch if she went up on tiptoes.
The crowd fell silent, as if holding its breath.
Bernardo reached her side a heartbeat later. He was breathing hard from the effort of levitating for an extended period, his face flushed with effort. He staggered a little as he touched down on the summit and the shifting stones beneath their feet threw off his balance.
Cresta looked up at the Aurelian Ring shining above her.
Then she laughed.
The sound carried down to where Elio and I were struggling up the steps, magically amplified by the acoustics of the stone bowl or by a spell.
Then, instead of reaching for her prize, she turned to look down at Elio and me.
Her smile widened, dimples appearing in her cheeks.
She raised both hands, her lips moving as she invoked a spell.
Blue magic bloomed around her palms, coiling through her fingers in thick, pulsing tendrils.
We’d been so far behind Cresta and Bernardo for most of the course that they hadn’t bothered to attack us directly.
Until now.
We froze on the steps.
“What… is she doing?” Elio panted.
“Teaching us… a lesson,” I said bitterly, my words coming out in gasps as I heaved for breath.
His hand found mine. His fingers were hot and sweaty, but still comforting.
Apparently it wasn’t enough for Lady Cresta, daughter and heir to the Count of Pomerado, to simply win this match.
No, she needed more.
She needed to hurt us. To humiliate us.
To make sure that everyone watching—the Domina-Regent, the imperial officials, the staff, and most importantly, our fellow students and members of The Open Hand—understood exactly what happened to commoners who tried to reach above their station.