There would be another couple of fights that would need to take place before they could start taking on the winners from the first round so they sat and watched how other groups performed. There was some good sparring going on and plenty of people who were good, but needed more training. Gavin looked relaxed and happy commenting here and there on what an individual was doing wrong. Lucy enjoyed watching Darren’s group with their first round too. They were classmates and friends. Lucy wanted them to do well and, at the same time, hoped that they would lose before they met up with her group. They fought well, but Lucy could see they would not be able to beat her group.
Their second fight went much like their first. By their third fight, they were developing a reputation as the group to beat. Gavin grinned and flexed his muscles. Lucy smiled as one of the female opponents swallowed nervously. Justin took this moment to make an attempt at diplomacy. He took a step forward and bowed.
“We enjoy this, but if you would rather, you do have the option to surrender now and enjoy the day watching the rest of the matches without any more bruises,” he said politely casual.
One of the group members looked as though he was considering the idea. Then he shook his head.
“We showed up to fight. We may not win, but we’d rather lose in a fair fight than surrender without even trying.”
Justin nodded and stepped back, and the teacher counted off to begin. Lucy barely raised her weapon before Gavin had already put two members of the group down. He started on the third while she and Justin worked on the fourth.
“Really Gavin, the rest of us want to play too,” said Justin.
“Sorry,” he said with a sheepish look on his face, “I was getting restless.”
“I know, but they will get harder when we face groups that have won more matches,” said Maya who hadn’t even gotten a hit in this bout.
The fourth and fifth fights did last longer, but not by much. What with the rests in between waiting for other matches to end to determine their next opponents, they weren’t even working up a sweat, though they were getting dirty. Justin still gave every group a chance to surrender, but no one took them up on it. Their sixth fight was their longest fight yet. Lucy even received a bruise or two before disarming her opponent. Gavin looked slightly happier after the seventh fight.
“We are starting to get a workout now,” he said as he wolfed down a sandwich while waiting for their next challengers.
Lucy sipped some water and watched Darren’s group lose. They fought well, but they were matched against older students with more training who were also in better shape. It was now late afternoon, the sun was hot and beating down, and some groups were starting to get tired. Lucy was glad they had trained so hard for this. She kept stretching her muscles in between matches trying to stay loose and ready.
They lined up for their ninth match. They were fighting a group of four women. Lucy wasn’t sure, but she thought it was the only all female group in the competition. She had watched them fight earlier. They were quick and good. They fought well together and used skill rather than relying on brute strength as some of the guys did. Justin offered them a chance to surrender, and a pretty brunette holding a staff laughed.
“I came here looking for a challenge. If we’ve found one, I certainly wouldn’t want to walk away from it.”
Lucy smiled. She liked the brunette. The professor counted to begin. The brunette ducked down as a blond used her back to vault herself over Maya to stand on the other side of Lucy’s group. Maya turned to stand back to back with Gavin and began to fight her. The brunette swept her staff at Gavin who jumped out of the way in time to meet a swing from a second brunette’s sword. Justin swung his staff at the female with the sword, leaving the leader for Gavin while Lucy used her short sword on the redhead.
The redhead was good. Had Lucy not spent so much time training with the best she would have easily been beaten. She blocked when she could, took hits when she couldn’t block, and made sure she gave as good as she got. She held her own and soon felt Justin beside her. He had beaten his brunette and helped her take down the redhead. Maya had taken care of the blond, and the only two left were Gavin and the lead brunette. They could have helped and left her terribly outnumbered, but that seemed unfair. Besides, Gavin was enjoying himself, so they sat back and watched.
The brunette showed no inclination to surrender. Even though they were going to lose, her group had made the best showing so far against Gavin, and that counted for something. Gavin kept picking up the speed of the fight, and she kept up. He wasn’t playing with her exactly so much as seeing how good she really was. Faster and faster they fought impressing most of the crowd watching them. After a while she made a mistake. She extended too far in an attack hit and didn’t pull back in time to block Gavin’s next stroke. He knocked the wind out of her, dropped his sword, grabbed her staff, twisted, and threw her to the ground. She landed hard and nodded her defeat.
The professor declared them the winners. Gavin helped the brunette to her feat and congratulated her. It wasn’t often that someone else earned Gavin’s respect in battle. While they discussed plans to meet up another time for sparring or other mutual entertainment, the rest of the group chatted for awhile and waited for their final match. Justin healed the few bruises they had sustained in the last bout. The professors weren’t healing minor injuries, but there was no rule against group members healing each other. Then, they had a quick bite to eat. Not so much that it would weigh them down, but enough to make them feel fresh and ready for the tenth and final fight. It was starting to get dark by the time the other groups had fought it out. They let the winners take a quick breather before entering the ring.
Lucy had hoped that if they made it this far it would be late and some of the observers would have lost interest. Well, it was late, but everyone was staying to watch how the final bout played out. At least during the day, with multiple bouts going on, people’s attention had been divided. It made Lucy nervous to think about all those eyes on her.
“Nervous?” asked Justin.
“Yes.” Honestly, did he read her mind, or was she simply that obvious?
“Why? We’ve done well so far. You’d think you would have relaxed by now or at least be too tired to be nervous.”
“It’s not the fight. I’m warmed up and ready to win that. I hate all the people watching. It makes me self-conscious. Doesn’t it bother you?”
“People have been watching me my whole life so far. You can either be paranoid by it, let it bother you, or choose to ignore it and not care. Some people flourish under the attention.”
“Fine, I’m not one of them.”
“True, but I don’t think Gavin minds the extra eyes, and he is our main strength in this part of the competition. Gavin lives for weapons challenges. He does not flaunt his abilities, but he has no problem if people find out he’s good by watching.”
Lucy shrugged. There wasn’t much to say to that. Besides, it was time for them to enter the ring and prepare to fight. The team they were fighting was all men this time. Lucy could be wrong, but she got the impression that they had built their team for winning anything physical and not for other options that could be a part of the competition. Gavin did not give them the option to surrender, but grinned at the broadest, thought not the tallest, of the men they were facing who seemed to be a leader of sorts. Lucy’s team was talented, but other than Gavin, they suddenly all looked very short. Orin was going to be monitoring this bout. Being a dwarf of few words, all he said was,
“I’ll club anyone who breaks the rules or fights like an idiot. Begin.”
And so it began. Each group of four looked at the other, waiting for someone to make a move. Lucy preferred to fight more defensively than offensively, so it wasn’t going to be her. Finally, after what seemed like a much longer time than it probably was, Gavin shrugged as if to say, you’ve had your chance and someone has to start this. He jabbed his sword at the leader. The leader blocked and returned th
e blow at which point Lucy did not have any more time to watch as she was busy trying to fight off her own large man.
He was at least a foot taller than Lucy and weighed half again as much. That kind of weight could be intimidating when you knew that the training everyone went through left very little fat on the body. He was all muscle. He used a mace as his preferred weapon, and he used it well. Lucy had to try to slide his weapon rather than block it outright. The pure force he was using would have taken more strength to stop than Lucy had without using magic and she was afraid he might be able to shatter her weapon if she met an attack head-on. After a few minutes of this, Lucy realized that he might be strong, but he wasn’t as fast as she was. He must be used to winning battles quickly with a few blows. She began to try to move faster and dodge blows rather than try to block all of them. However, he still had to put force behind the blows as he never knew which she was going to parry and which she was going to spin away from. Lucy was able to get a few hits in that way as well, but she was more afraid of getting hit with his mace than he was of her sword, which put her at another disadvantage. She was down to hoping he would get tired if she kept up her faster pace, but he was in such good shape that that seemed unlikely as well.
Lucy wanted to look and see how her teammates were doing, but it took her full concentration to keep up with her opponent. They kept going. Swing, spin, dodge, flick with sword, recover, block, duck, jab, spin, was that a scream or the crowd, parry, jab, spin, duck, block, spin, ouch. Lucy’s foot slipped as she dodged, sending her off balance while still in the direct path of the falling mace. The mace landed on her arm and even though they were using practice weapons, she could feel bone shattering and saw stars before her eyes as the impact sent her to the ground.
“Justin,” she was able to send with her mind just before she hit the ground hard and blacked out.
When she came to she was lying in the dirt; Justin’s face was above her.
“Careful, don’t move yet. I still have more to do, but you’ll be alright.”
Lucy could feel his hands on her shoulder.
“What happened?”
Justin gave a wry smile.
“If you had held on a moment longer, you might not have gotten hurt at all. Gavin was having a splendid time of it and assumed we were all having fun too. When he heard Maya scream, no, don’t move, she’s being tended to by Bree and will be fine. You can talk to her about it in a few minutes if you want, but neither of you should move or be moved just yet. I think her opponent disarmed her with one move and broke her leg on the counter move. Broke, but not shattered, so she screamed rather than passed out. Gavin heard the scream, realized this was not a friendly spar but a competition where the other team was out for blood, and got a bit angry.”
“A bit angry?” said Lucy with a half smile.
“I wouldn’t use the word berserk, but the rest of the bout was over in half a minute. He hit Maya’s opponent in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious, saw you fall and leapt at yours disarming then knocking the wind out of him. He bashed mine in the leg, and he fell. I kicked his weapon away and stood over him with my staff aimed at his head if he even thought about getting up. Then Gavin turned back to his original opponent who, after taking three or four quick hard hits, came to the conclusion that he was outmatched. He surrendered, and I came to check on you while Bree ran toward Maya. The other team seems fine although they were worried for a minute about the guy who Gavin knocked unconscious.”
“How’s Gavin?”
“Fired up. Once the battle rage subsided, he came to the conclusion that we won and has been celebrating that. It’s a good thing we don’t have a pub or I think he’d be drunk shortly and absolutely no good to us tomorrow. How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Besides, I didn’t know winning was supposed to hurt.”
Justin smiled. “You can try sitting up now if you want. You should feel sore but no stabbing pains. Let me know if that’s not the case.”
Lucy eased herself into a sitting position.
“Quiet please,” came Eric’s voice on the wind. “I would like to congratulate the team that won the first challenge of the competition. I expect to see you all at breakfast tomorrow morning for the explanation of the next challenge. Sleep well.”
Lucy checked on Maya who really was going to be fine and was also excited to see what the next challenge was. The purely physical challenge being out of the way, she was hoping for something more along her lines of expertise. Then, with Justin as escort, Lucy made her way to her room and fell asleep without taking a shower.
Chapter 31
Breakfast the next morning was an exciting place to be. Everyone was talking about yesterday’s challenge. Much of the nervousness and apprehension from before the competition had started had eased a little. People hit that point where they realized there was nothing else they could do to prepare. They could only do their best and try to have a good time. Lucy’s team received many smiles and waves of congratulations. Some teams that hadn’t faced them voiced their eagerness to take them on in another challenge. All serious injuries had been healed last night, but many people sill had bruises. Everyone was happily eating. About the time that people were done, Eric stood up.
“Good morning. Did everyone get something to eat? Wonderful. You have all been poisoned.”
People looked around wide-eyed, wondering if it was a joke. Maya, however, smiled.
“The poison will kill you in about 3 hours so you have 2 hours to work out an antidote. That way we have time to see if yours will work with time to spare. Also that will account for anomalies such as the fact that you are all different sizes and it might work faster on those of you who are smaller. Anyone who is not on a team and wishes to take the antidote now, please meet Nicodemus in the room across from us. The rest of you probably want to get started.”
Lucy could have laughed at the expressions on everyone’s faces. Some students looked shocked that the school had administered poison to their breakfasts. Some students looked sick. Some students, like Maya, who enjoyed potions and considered potion making an art looked excited at the challenge. After another moment of inactivity, one student threw up which urged everyone into motion. Some students rushed for the lab, some students rushed to the room across the hall, and some students rushed to the nearest bathroom to clean off the vomit or vomit themselves.
“Maya, to the lab, get everything set up. I’ll send Gavin with what you will need shortly. The rest of you, the study room now,” said Justin, taking charge and everyone moved.
Once they got to the study room and locked the door, Justin pulled out a vial and addressed the other two.
“Gavin, Lucy and I are going to study you, find the poison, remove it, and place it in this vial. Then, you will get this to Maya as fast as you can to start brewing the antidote. Lucy and I will locate other vials and get the poison out of each other and meet you in the potions room.”
Gavin and Lucy both nodded.
Justin looked at Lucy, nodded, and they both turned their attention to Gavin. Lucy reached out with her senses and studied the feel of everything flowing through his system. Having ironically enough practiced this same thing a few days ago, Lucy was familiar with the way Gavin’s body was supposed to feel. It did not take her long to find the poison. However, it felt odd to her.
“Justin?”
“Yes?”
“Is that one poison, or are there two there?”
“I was wondering that same thing. I can feel something working on his system, but it feels like this something has two separate agendas.”
“We only have one vial.”
“You go find some more vials. Hopefully, by the time you come back, I’ll have one of the poisons separated out,” instructed Justin.
Lucy thought of where she could go to find vials or bottles of some sort, and the first place that came to mind was the Apothecary’s. She ran there as quickly as she could. She banged open the door to shop,
instantly feeling bad as she startled Ted. He blinked at her looking confused.
“Are you supposed to be here? I wasn’t expecting you. Is it Tuesday? I get the days mixed up all the time. Have you ever seen such lovely raticula scales?” Ted gestured to the glittering blue pile in front of him that he had been sorting when Lucy burst in.
“Those are lovely scales. It’s not Tuesday. I need some vials or small bottles. Can I borrow some? I can bring them back in an hour or two.”
“Bottles? What are you going to put in them? I can’t give you the right equipment if I don’t know what you are doing.” He blinked. “Size and shape can be very important when dealing with bottles. You’d hate to estimate wrong and have too much or too many. One time I was collecting…”
“I’m sorry Ted, but I’m in a hurry. Can you tell me the story another time? I need eight bottles to be precise on count. They must be able to be stoppered. I plan to withdraw poison from my teammates so they don’t have to be very large.”
“Hmmm. That sounds like quite an undertaking. Poison. What kind of poison?”
“I’m not sure. We are going to take it out and study it, and Maya is going to create an antidote.”
“Is this for that contest thing that everyone has been spending so much valuable time talking about?”
“Yes, can I please have the bottles?”
“Certainly,” he walked towards the back room still talking, and Lucy missed some of what he was saying. “I might not agree with the waste of precious time…don’t find things like that interesting…why bother competing when one could…hmmm how did that get here…I wonder what would be better…the pink shouldn’t be with the yellow…here we are.” Ted emerged from the back room with eight bottles in a small bag so that Lucy could carry them.
The Eye of Elicion: The Kinowenn Chronicles Vol 1 Page 23