by Andrew Rowe
The robed figure on the opposite side of the clearing hit her with another blast of lightning. More cracks formed in her shield, and it was evident it wouldn’t hold much longer.
Closing the distance would have taken seconds, but attacking from here was faster.
I swung my sword and projected a wave of force, which hit the green-scaled creature in the back.
As it gasped in pain, Marissa adjusted her stance and hurled it over her head, right into the blades protruding from the top of the wolf.
The results were...messy. But effective.
The scaled monster vanished a moment later.
I rushed forward after that, while Marissa dodged a charge from the bear-like monster and hopped over a sword-strike from the animated suit of armor.
With that, I was at her side. Marissa grinned brightly at me. “Took you long enough.”
“Oh, yes, let’s complain about our rescuer. That seems reasonable.” I blocked a swing from the walking suit of armor.
Marissa rolled her eyes. “Rescue? Is that what this is? Thought you just couldn’t stand two minutes without me.”
The bear-like monster swung around and tried to maim her with a claw, but Marissa danced backward, then swept upward with a kick. Her aura whipped forward and sliced the creature’s head clean in half.
The monster collapsed, then vanished.
“That’s a new one. Haven’t seen you do that with a kick.” I side-stepped a lunge from the blade-covered wolf, jabbing my sword into its side.
The wolf howled, then took a deep breath. A sphere of flame began to form within its jaws.
“Nope, not happening.” I stabbed right through its neck. It vanished a moment later.
A blast of lightning caught me in the side, knocking me back a step and leaving a dangerous web of cracks in my barrier.
I cast a glance at the figure in the woods, then blocked another swing from the suit of armor.
Marissa smashed the armor with a fist, staggering it, and I followed it with a cut that knocked the sword out of its hands.
After that, Marissa punched the helmet right off it. There was no head inside, of course, but it still looked pretty brutal.
Fortunately, it fell and vanished a moment after that.
I slashed another blast of lightning out of the air, then attached a thread of mana to my shield sigil with my other hand. It was something I should have done a lot sooner, but I’d been distracted.
Then I stepped back, avoiding another blast, and began to recharge my sigil.
The last remaining monster was a slime. Marissa kicked it. It died.
“Left or right?” Marissa asked, glancing to the two remaining students, who were slowly beginning to back away.
“One second first. C’mere.”
Marissa raised an eyebrow and turned toward me. “I know I was talkin’ about missing me, but now is hardly the place or the time—”
“Ssh.” I put a hand on her shield sigil and poured mana into it. The cracks faded. “There. And left, by the way.”
Marissa laughed. “Aww, I wanted that guy. But fine.”
We charged in two different directions.
For the sake of symmetry, I sheathed my sword and charged more mana into my fist.
“Star descends from sky!” Marissa shouted in the distance.
“Uh...explodey fist!” I tried.
“Explodey fist?” The cloaked student had just enough time to question my attack naming abilities before I slammed a glowing fist into his chest.
He flew back just like the previous one had. His barrier cracked and shattered.
I rushed over to make sure he wasn’t too badly hurt, but he was already picking himself back up. The shields didn’t stop an attack completely, but they did a pretty good job of stopping a single punch — even a strong one - from causing permanent harm.
I didn’t bother to check on Marissa’s fight immediately. I went to the other student I’d smashed right at the beginning of the fight.
His eyes were reddened, and he still had a trail of tears along his sleeve.
I paused at a few paces away. “You okay?”
“...Yeah. Just disappointed.”
I nodded. “Sorry about that. You did a good job with the ambush.”
“Not good enough, I guess. You’d think with two Summoners and an Elementalist we could have handled two other students.”
I shook my head. “It was a good strategy.” I offered him a hand and helped him to his feet. “Marissa and I are two of the top students in a dueling class. You had bad luck, that’s all.”
“Bad luck.” He shook his head. “Guess that makes me feel a little better, at least. But Dad is still going to beat the resh out of me when I get sent home.”
My fist tightened when I heard that.
I glanced from side to side. No one else was watching us.
“Give me your shield sigil for a second.”
The student frowned, but complied. “Why? I already failed. There’ll be a signal going to the Soaring Wings.”
“They may not be able to tell how many signals are coming from one area.”
I knew how the sigil monitors worked. This one was only slightly different from the ones we’d used in the dueling class.
I sent a hint of mana into the shield sigil, recharging it with just a fraction of the sigil’s capacity. Then I reset the monitoring rune.
With that, it would detect that the shield was still intact. And, hopefully, it would stop signaling the Soaring Wings.
“What are you...?”
I handed it back to him. “Put it back on. It may register as not completely broken. No promises, I haven’t tested this before. Hide until the Soaring Wings show up, then have them check the sigil. They may let you stay.”
“I...thank you. I don’t know what to...”
“Don’t attack my group again. Period.”
The other student nodded weakly.
“Good. I’m going to go check on the others now.”
I started to head toward Marissa.
“Wait.”
I turned my head. “Yeah?”
“One of the traitors in your group is one of the second-years. Kathy.”
I opened and closed my jaw, but no sound came out. One of the second-years? That wasn’t even close to fair.
But of course it wasn’t.
They must have known we wouldn’t consider the second-years an option. That made discovering them much less likely.
And we didn’t even know what Kathy’s attunement was. It hadn’t been listed.
I took a breath. “Thank you. Do you know if there are others?”
The student shook his head. “No, sorry. Kathy was our contact.”
“Got it. Take care of yourself.”
“Thanks... I’m Ryan, by the way.”
“Corin. I’ll see you later.”
I waved and headed over to where Marissa was, weirdly, still facing off against the third student.
I’d expected it to be over with one punch.
Upon arriving at the scene, I could see why it wasn’t. Marissa had just finished pummeling two more monsters into a pulp.
This third student was not only a Summoner, they were a strong one if they still had enough mana for more at this point.
They weren’t even breathing hard. They just stood on that rock, arms folded as Marissa and I approached.
“Fools. This land belongs to the Tails of Orochi. And, like our master, if you cut off a single head—”
“Punching you now.” Marissa slammed a fist into the student’s stomach.
I was mildly disappointed. I’d been enjoying the evil monologue.
The student doubled over, coughing. “Ow.”
“Sorry. Looks like it’s going to take one more.”
Slam.
The student’s shield shattered.
“Ugh. You could have at least let me finish my speech.”
Marissa scoffed. “That is literally nev
er a good idea.”
I walked over. “You both okay?”
“Just a couple scrapes and bruises. Nothin’ yer phoenix sigil won’t fix.” She jerked a thumb at the other student. “And I didn’t hit this guy too hard.”
“Your standards for ‘hard’ are absurd,” the student complained, then broke into a cough.
“All right. Looks like everyone is alive.” I considered casting a lesser regeneration spell on each of the students to help them recover faster, but I still had no experience at actually casting healing spells on other people. Even though regeneration spells were ostensibly safe, they didn’t seem injured badly enough that I should take any sort of risk. I needed to practice healing in a controlled environment first.
“Okay, Mara. Any idea where the horses went?”
“Off the trail. Monsters spooked ‘em.”
“You want to try to follow them into the woods?”
“Nah.”
“Neither do I. Let’s head back to the others. Thanks for coming to help me.”
Marissa grabbed me in a hug.
I froze.
Marissa pulled off. “Somethin’ wrong?”
“Little warning next time, Mara. I’m...sort of sensitive about people grabbing me.”
“Oh. Uh, sorry. I uh, thought it was okay. We’re friends, right?”
“It’s not... Of course we are, I’m just not good at dealing with being touched. I have trouble even with Sera.” I sighed. “It’s nothing personal.”
She frowned. From her expression, I wasn’t sure she believed me. “Oh, okay. I’ll try to be a little more careful, yeah?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Do you, um, want to talk about it?”
“It?”
“Why you’re like that?”
I shook my head. “No. No, I do not.”
“Okay. I understand.”
I doubted that, but I wasn’t going to argue further.
We walked back to the others in silence.
Maybe I should have talked to her.
It might have helped keep the intrusive thoughts — and memories — from running through my head.
***
“You made it back!”
Patrick’s excited tone was a sharp contrast to the tone of my thoughts.
I tried to focus. But sometimes the more I tried to ignore something, the more it forced itself into my mind.
Fortunately, Mara did the talking. “Got jumped by three students on the Orochi team. Got to thinkin’ that this wasn’t a coincidence.”
“We concur.” Vyers said as he approached. “In fact, Corin is suspected of working with them.”
“Unless their team wins by bein’ punched, I doubt that.” Marissa folded her arms. “Ran right out and helped me, unlike the rest of you. Not that I needed any helpin’, mind you.”
Vyers turned to Kyra. “We only have their word for it. She could be one of them, too.”
Kyra nodded. “I’ll go check it out and see if there really are other students out there.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” I suggested. “Assuming their teams are structured like ours, three of them being there means there are still at least two others out there.”
“Unless those two others are already inside our group,” Vyers pointed out.
Possible, I considered, but more likely they’d have a full five and then the infiltrators on top of that.
Still, I couldn’t know for sure.
“All right.” Kyra gestured to Rupert. “Kent, you’re with me.”
Rupert gave Marissa a long look as the pair of them walked past us. Her hands balled into fists, but she didn’t say anything.
“I need to talk to Roland.” I started heading back toward the rest of the group, but Vyers stepped in front of me.
“Don’t think so. Not by yourself, at least. You’ve been having a lot of one-on-one conversations already. That’s more than a little suspicious.”
I nodded. “Sure. I’ve had time alone with Roland, Jin, and Marissa. You can’t honestly think we have four infiltrators, though, can you? That’d be an absurd ratio.”
Vyers shrugged. “I’m not dismissing any possibilities at this point. Could be half of us for all I know.”
“That’d be patently unfair.”
“Do we even know we have an infiltrator?” Marissa asked. “I mean, couldn’t someone have just fireballed that wagon from a distance?”
“You missed it. We found an explosive device in the wagon,” Patrick explained. “But that doesn’t mean it was any one of us. Maybe they had someone who was invisible that planted it.”
“Oh.” Marissa frowned. “Huh.”
“Not impossible,” Vyers turned toward Patrick, “But extremely unlikely.”
“Okay, Vyers. Why don’t you come with me to talk to Roland? You can hear what I have to say.”
“Acceptable.” He nodded. “Let’s go.”
“Any reason why we couldn’t come?” Patrick asked.
I hesitated, but Vyers answered for me. “Information control may be important if we do have an infiltrator in our group. Corin must have something he wants to keep confined for now.”
I made an apologetic expression. “Sorry, Patrick. My intent is to let everyone in on this soon, but I’m under some restrictions right now.”
“Okay.” He raised three fingers in a symbol of good luck. “You’ve got this.”
“Thanks.”
Vyers and I went to talk to Roland.
Of course, Vyers was one of the most suspicious people himself — he’d been weirdly quiet at the beginning, allowing Kyra to take charge, and now he was being much more assertive.
Maybe the explosions had just encouraged him to step up his leadership, but it was plausible there was something more than that going on.
“Roland, step away with us for a moment?” I asked.
“Sure.” Roland nodded, and we found a corner to talk in private. “You found something?”
“Yes. Can I say your attunement in front of other people?”
Roland frowned. “Sure, if you actually know it. But that was awfully quick. You sure you—”
“You’re a Diviner. Right leg.”
“That was...awfully quick. Can I ask?”
“I’ll explain later. For the moment, I’m in need of your expertise.”
“Sure. I can help you now that you’ve identified my attunement.”
Vyers frowned. “Is that part of the test somehow?”
“Not exactly,” Roland explained. “More of a broader school restriction.”
Vyers gave Roland a skeptical look.
I needed to act quickly, in case Vyers was about to stab us in the back. “As a Diviner, you can make memory crystals, correct?”
“Certainly.”
“Can you make them from other people, or just from your own memories?”
“Just my own, unfortunately. Making them from other people is a much more advanced skill.”
“That’s unfortunate. I was hoping you could make memory crystals of everyone reading their assignments.”
Vyers looked at me with an expression of surprise. “That’s...actually a pretty good idea.”
I nodded. “Ideally, that’d let us circumvent the ‘no looking at other people’s paperwork’ rule. For the moment, though, it seems we can only use it to verify Roland’s assignment.”
“I can do that. Hold on a minute.” Roland closed his eyes and opened his palm. It took him a minute or two to form a crystal, which he then handed to me. “It’s not one of the self-triggering ones. I’ll need to cast a spell on you to enable you to view it, and you’ll be incapacitated while you watch.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Let me do it in the middle of the group. Then we can pass it around.”
“Let me watch it first.” Vyers gestured to the crystal. “But still within the group. And you can watch it second. I need to make sure you don’t tamper with it somehow.”
I d
idn’t have any way of doing that, but that was fine. I appreciated a degree of paranoia. Respected it, even. I handed Vyers the crystal.
“Let’s go.”
We met up with everyone, forming a circle, and explained the situation.
Vyers sat and held the crystal.
Roland pressed two fingers against Vyers’ forehead. “View memory.”
The crystal shimmered.
Then we waited.
Kyra and Rupert returned while Vyers was still watching the crystal vision. “What’s this about?” Kyra asked.
We explained.
“Is this really necessary?” Rupert asked. “It’s obviously gotta be an Enchanter and an Elementalist working together. And it wasn’t me.”
“There could be any number of our members involved,” Sera replied, “Or none at all. Being able to validate that a Diviner is not a member of the opposition is extremely useful. Even if he can’t make crystals from the rest of us, Roland may have other spells he can use to gather information.”
“Fine, fine. Let’s get this over with.”
“Did you find three students?” Sera asked.
Kyra replied. “Two. But they explained they had a third with them that just got away.”
Marissa frowned and glanced at me. “Guess you didn’t hit them all quite hard enough.”
I felt just a little guilty, but if I had the chance to help that student — Ryan — escape from a situation anything like my own...
“I’ll be more careful next time.” It was the best I could manage to say.
Vyers reopened his eyes. “Think he’s clear. You all can watch, too.”
He passed the crystal to me, and Roland repeated the spell.
This wasn’t my first time viewing a memory crystal, but it was still disorienting seeing through someone else’s eyes.
At least in this case, I didn’t need to see much. The memory was from him reading the paperwork, so I just had to read what he had been reading.
There was nothing in the memories aside from the paper — I couldn’t even hear anyone talking in the background. He must have gone somewhere quiet to read.
Royce, Roland
Platoon Designation: Phoenix Omega
Primary Assignment: Delivery of goods to designated settlement. When you have reached the designated location, goods will be checked by your contact (see Student Supervisor for information on mission contact).