by Isla Frost
A collective murmur ran through the students, and Cricklewood stomped his staff for order. “A scenario you combat virgins might want to get comfortable with.”
Dunraven resumed his narrative. “Your magic has been depleted—which means any team member caught using it will be counted as a casualty.” He paused to let that sink in.
“Most of your unit has already fallen, leaving your group of five as the only survivors. And two of you are so near to joining your fellow warriors in death that you will need carrying.”
Cricklewood opened an ornate wooden box and held it up so everyone could see its contents. Two garnet-colored beetles the size and shape of a walnut lay against black fabric. They sparkled in the daylight like precious gemstones, and I thought they were jewelry until Cricklewood stroked one’s back and it fluttered iridescent wings.
Animated or real?
Dunraven gestured at the display. “To help the theoretically injured teammates stick to their roles, they will be wearing a bloodjewel beetle pin, which will temporarily paralyze them from the neck down.”
My eyes snapped back to the beetles. The decorative pieces were a far cry from the plain armbands that mirrored wounds from one wearer to another. I couldn’t imagine the pretty red jewels had been made just for the academy and wasn’t sure I wanted to know what they’d historically been used for.
I decided just to be grateful that none of my friends had been grouped with any of Ellbereth’s. I didn’t think she’d try anything in front of such a large audience—she’d gone to pains to keep her endeavors unwitnessed by any but those loyal to her. Still, I wouldn’t have wanted to be teamed up with the murderous councilwoman’s daughter and then rendered helpless by one of those beetle pins.
Had Cricklewood made sure that wouldn’t happen?
“Your mission,” Dunraven continued, “is to work together to conduct a strategic retreat without sacrificing any more lives. Between you and safety—in this case, the opposite side of the arena—is a stretch of land thick with Malus-possessed creatures.”
Multiple heads turned in my direction at the mention of Malus possession. I held back a wince.
“If you have to leave your bloodjewel-wearing teammates behind, they’ll be considered lost. If you have to use your magic, you’ll be considered lost. And of course, if you take a life-threatening injury, you’ll be considered lost and might even become so in actuality.”
Fabulous.
But for all my personal issues and the skepticism that sprang from them, these trials were having an impact. Walkers and humans weren’t becoming buddies, but they were starting to treat each other with something like respect.
With some notable exceptions anyway.
The group chosen to go first contained two of those exceptions. When Cricklewood joined them at the bottom of the arena to apply the beetle pins, I heard one of the walkers say, “Professor, the humans should be the wounded ones. They’re weak, so they’d fall first.”
“If they even make it as far as the battlefield,” a second group member put in.
Cricklewood smiled. But it wasn’t a nice smile. “Just for that, you two can be the paralyzed team members.”
The two beetles flew from their nest of fabric and landed on the chests of their two targets. The walkers crumpled to the ground like boneless sacks of grain without so much as a hand to break their falls.
It did not stop them complaining.
That left two humans and one walker as the able-bodied members of the team. The humans didn’t look any more thrilled about that than the walkers.
I didn’t blame them. Especially as, after a quick discussion, the stronger of the two humans tried and failed to lift one of the paralyzed walkers off the ground. I’d never had to lift a walker myself, but I knew from lugging one of their bones around as a wand, ahem, a thaumaturgy rod, that they must weigh more than we did.
The single non-paralyzed walker, a girl with hair so black it was almost blue, assisted by hoisting the “injured” party up and slinging them over the human’s shoulder. The kid, despite being fit and muscled from Cricklewood’s classes, staggered under the weight. His ability to fight while shouldering the burden would be almost nonexistent, but the third able-bodied teammate, a slight human girl, would have been a worse choice to carry the load.
The black-haired walker lifted the other “injured” teammate over her shoulder with relative ease, leaving her sword arm free.
And then every inch of the arena floor erupted.
A multitude of animated enemies made of stone and wood and dirt poured from the earth. Their forms were too many to catalog and their numbers too numerous to count. Animals, large and small, real and mythical, humanoid figures wielding crude but effective weapons hewn from the same materials they were, and the occasional flying creature as well.
They were smaller than the golems from the first trial but infinitely more abundant. And as I watched, the struggling team all but disappeared under the seething mass of adversaries.
Somehow the team managed to fight their way forward, slashing and hacking in frenzied concentration. It was probably hard not to hit something.
But they were only a quarter of the way across when their momentum slowed. Stopped. Hemmed in by too many enemies and not enough fighters.
The unencumbered human girl seemed to be putting in a heroic effort, but her staff, while good for keeping the foes out of striking distance, failed to fell them fast enough. The black-haired walker was swift and skilled but hindered by her efforts to protect the guy slung over her shoulder. And the guy carrying the second walker tried to lend what assistance he could whenever one of them came close to being overwhelmed, but that help was limited.
I didn’t see what happened. Not exactly. Perhaps one of the enemies got clever and yanked the staff out of the human girl’s hands. Perhaps as she tired, one of them finally slipped through her defense and she was unable to stop the torrent of creatures that followed. But suddenly someone was screaming and then a blast of magic sent every animated monster stumbling back.
It didn’t stop the screaming though.
A moment later, the enemies fell where they stood, much as the beetle-wearing walkers had. Someone among the professors must have decided it had gone far enough.
But that didn’t stop the screaming either.
Then one of the walkers who’d been wearing a bloodjewel pin was being carried past me on his way to the infirmary. They passed close enough that I could see the large bite out of his side. So large that several of his ribs and the pinks and dark reds of his organs were visible.
The girl who’d been wielding the staff followed, pale-faced and nursing her arm like it might’ve been broken.
The remaining three were shaken but okay. They wiped sweat from their faces and settled down to watch the next unfortunate team.
Cricklewood’s beetles had flown back to him at some point, and when his eyes landed on me, I knew.
He crooked a finger at us. “You’re up next.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I wanted to swallow, but my mouth was feeling awfully dry right then.
We trudged down into the arena. Well, I trudged. Lirielle had a floaty sort of spring in her step that suggested she was en route to a night of merrymaking rather than battle.
Tall, bright, and handsome, whose ugly sneer made me want to change his nickname, doubtless would’ve preferred the two humans of our group to be paralyzed, but after what happened with the first team, he was wise enough not to voice his opinion.
We waited with bated breath for Cricklewood to choose.
The bloodjewel beetles, which were exquisite up close, flew to Dexter and Luthien. One human, one walker. Both large, heavy males.
That left me, Lirielle, and Sneer Face to carry the “wounded” and fight our way across the arena. Sixty yards had never seemed so far.
Sneer Face shouldered the paralyzed walker and turned to Lirielle. “Looks like you and I will have to take
on the burden since the human can barely lift her sword without the stolen life force of others.
“Fine with me,” Lirielle said. “I prefer to be challenged than bored.”
My head whipped in her direction. I’d spent quite a lot of time with Lirielle recently—in addition to protecting my back in the forest every day, she and Theus had taken to joining us for the occasional meal. So I was accustomed to her quirks. While she was with us in body and vaguely aware of what was going on in her immediate surroundings, the larger part of her mind was usually soaring elsewhere along paths unknown. Except now, she sounded so… well, present.
“Back to back to back,” she ordered, scooping up the human male with an ease that should’ve been impossible with her slender frame. A naked sword gleamed in her hand, and there was a second sheathed at her waist.
I tore my eyes from Lirielle to the goal on the far side of the arena. “Why don’t we travel along the wall so we only need to defend on one front?”
Lirielle canted her head. “Because along the wall is near twice the distance, and with three of us fighting, our ability to swing a sword will be severely hampered by the risk of hitting an ally.”
Both were good points, but I didn’t get a chance to tell her so because right then the disassembled army erupted into menacing life.
We put our backs together, each of us forming one point of a defensive triangle formation. I took the lead point. Unencumbered, it made sense to put me on path-clearing duty.
Or so I thought until I saw Lirielle fight. I’d watched her in other trials and marveled at her skill with both one and two blades. But it was a whole new level of amazing to experience it at close quarters. If I hadn’t been so busy holding up my own section of the defense, I would’ve loved to gawk.
Gus did one of his sighs. Yes. I don’t know why she couldn’t have become my wielder.
“Oh please,” I muttered. “You would hate having to share the glory with a second sword.”
He harrumphed but didn’t gainsay me.
The sheer mass of creatures jostling to kill us was almost overwhelming. Everything from large bears or mythological monsters to floppy clay-eared rabbits, vicious raccoons and the occasional humanoid or goblin. Some bore crude weapons like clubs or axes made from extensions of themselves. Others used claws or horns or tusks or teeth to rip and render flesh.
All of them were out for our blood.
But in their disorganized, crowded frenzy, they bumped and shoved and impeded each other’s attacks—making them easy targets for my blade. And perhaps due to Gus’s ability to slice through magic, they fell to his wicked black edge like wheat before a scythe.
Our adversaries were poor fighters with crude weapons, but in a numbers game like this one, they’d win out eventually. There would be no doubt of the outcome in a real battle.
But we didn’t need to kill them all. We just needed to reach the other side of the arena.
So I slashed and parried and occasionally dodged, careful not to leave an opening that an ambitious clay creature could use to attack my companions’ backs. We pushed onward, gaining ground slowly but surely with relentless intent. And though I could feel myself tiring, I started to think we might make it.
We were halfway across the arena when our plan went to hell.
Sneer Face staggered against my side. “Stars and suns,” he cursed. “I lost my sword. We need to get it back.”
In my peripheral vision, I saw Lirielle flick a glance over her shoulder while simultaneously decapitating her nearest foe. “Your arm’s broken. How are you going to wield it?”
“I’ll figure something out. Just help me, dammit.”
Sneer Face kicked a rocky rodent into the face of an oncoming humanoid, and I cut down the club-wielding gorilla thing that rushed into the small opening that provided. I barely spun in time to meet the next opponent.
Getting his sword was easier said than done. It would be a miracle if we could find the blade under the piles of bodies—or more accurately, piles of rubble—around us.
“How are you at fighting left-handed?” I dared to inquire while slamming Gus into the chest of a large hunting cat that had shoved the other opponents aside. I wasn’t about to risk our necks to retrieve a weapon he could barely use.
“Fine.”
“Crap,” Lirielle countered.
She would know since she could fight equally well with a sword in each hand. Though right now she was using only one of her blades since the human draped over her shoulder limited the motion on that side of her body.
“Why not borrow Lirielle’s spare?” I suggested.
“No!” Lirielle and Sneer Face shouted at once.
“Then forget about your sword,” I said. “Take the injured guy from Lirielle so she’s free to fight with both hands.”
“No way,” he snarled. “Then I’ll be completely defenseless. I’m not trusting my life to a human brat!”
Lirielle’s sword made a sweeping arc in the edge of my vision, and two more stone creatures crumpled. “A human brat who’s outdone you at every challenge since the transformation,” she pointed out.
“Only because she’s not pulling her fair share of the weight by carrying anyone right now.”
Lirielle cut down a wolf that was racing at Sneer Face while I caught an eagle in the gut. “Neither are you since you dropped your weapon,” she retorted. “Stop arguing with reason and take Dexter already. If one of us fails to protect you, you can always defend yourself with magic.”
Muttering and whining about how well that turned out for the first team, Sneer Face conceded. And at last we were able to resume our slow progress across the arena.
My skin was slick with sweat and dirt turned to mud, and the fighting was so fierce I hadn’t dared block my vision for the split second it would take me to wipe my brow. But Gus was brilliant, and Lirielle even more so. (Not that I’d share that comparison with my pointy companion if I could help it.)
She was a whirlwind of wicked edges and moved so fast I wasn’t convinced I could best her even if I’d been powered by additional life force. Trying to defend a wider angle meant I could see less of Lirielle now, but I didn’t miss the number of occasions one of her flashing swords encroached into my territory to save my ass whenever I risked being inundated.
By Gus’s and Lirielle’s skill and my sheer determination, we made it across the arena.
Sneer Face bore our two paralyzed teammates roughly to the ground and strode off to find his sword (and then probably the infirmary) without a backward glance.
Lirielle shot me a triumphant grin not in the least bit dimmed by the mud and dust spattering her face.
“It was a pleasure to fight by your side, Wildcard.”
Then she sheathed her swords, and I could see her mind already untethering itself from the material world as she drifted up the stairs.
Bemused but smiling, I trailed after her.
In the end, we were one of only three groups to reach the far side of the arena with every team member “alive.”
But my friends made it out healthy and whole, and that was all I cared about.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
If someone had told me a few months ago that a snail infestation would radically change my life, I’d have backed away slowly and then avoided that person ever after.
Yet that’s exactly what happened. The snail revolution thing, that is. Not somebody predicting it.
I was eating breakfast when Glenn and Glennys came into the dining hall, muttering about the damage a magical snail infestation was wreaking on their roses.
In a flash of inspiration, I promised them I’d take care of it. And when the time came for Grimwort’s Advanced Magic lesson, I set to work.
One snail at a time.
I didn’t regret draining the snails of their life force. Heck, I was even doing community service at the same time. Though I did feel bad about scraping their gelatinous gummy sides with a needle first.
The
us, green eyes sparkling, watched on with great amusement while Lirielle spent most of the hour far away in her own dreamy preoccupations. But they were guarding my back, so I limited my protests to an occasional half-hearted glower in Theus’s direction.
It only made his smile deepen.
Still, the slimy, gloopy mollusks were perfect for practicing my magic on. Draining their tiny life forces required finesse and allowed me to experiment for longer periods and multiple drawings without risk of becoming overly supercharged. That in turn meant I didn’t wind up with anything worse than minor nausea during withdrawal.
Even better, this particular variety possessed a tiny amount of magic of their own. Unlike most snails, they could exude slime from every part of their body and used the slime’s vaguely magical properties to taste foul to natural predators as well as protect themselves from poisons absorbed through the skin and shell.
It wasn’t the most useful magic ability for me to steal—and I wasn’t stoked about exuding snail goo from my own skin—but I could still practice the mechanics of stealing and wielding it. Plus it convinced Gus to refrain from his scathing commentary on occasion when I threatened to gum up his hilt with slime.
After each day’s official lessons were done, Ameline and Bryn relieved Theus and Lirielle of their Nova-sitting duties.
Bryn was itching for Ellbereth to try something so she could vent some of her fiery displeasure, but as the sky darkened and other students took time for recreation or extra sleep, the academy grounds were empty except for us and Cricklewood or Glenn and Glennys occasionally passing by. So Bryn made do with juggling fireballs and keeping us all warm in the winter evening chill. Sometimes Ameline would encourage Griff, whose feathers were becoming less scraggly and who was getting better at flying every day now, to fly through Bryn’s fireballs like an obstacle course or hunt down his own food. He turned his nose up at the foul-tasting snails, preferring instead to prey on the juicy moths and tiny bats that came out after dark.