by Tom Early
I nodded. “Enchanter and healer, I guess. Or maybe some sort of magic bodyguard thing.”
She snorted. “Yeah, no. I don’t see you doing any of that.” A street started to take shape on the page, shops springing up and the outlines of people walking by. “Look, Gaia’s just our world plus magic, right? If your magic is about safety and stuff, let it do that. But that doesn’t need to be your focus. They’ve got cities; Aiden said so. Pretty much every job you’ve got on Earth, you’ve got here.” She sat up, hunching over her sketchpad as she started working on the finer details. “You can be whoever you want to be. All this Infusion stuff means is that you’re going to be extra secure too.”
“You know, your random wisdom always comes at the weirdest times,” I remarked. “How are you so calm about all this?”
Sam twirled her pencil in the air. “I guess I’m just that awesome.”
“You’re definitely something.”
“Rude. Besides, you haven’t even asked me what my results are yet.”
I pretended to look thoughtful. “Let me guess… it couldn’t be Evocation, could it?”
Sam threw her pen at me. “You could at least pretend to be surprised.”
I laughed. “Sam, the only people who could possibly be surprised by you getting Evocation are the ones who have never met you.” I gave her a broad smile. “But seriously, congrats. You’re going to destroy the competition in whatever you do. Probably literally.”
“Did you know they have a special police force in Gaia?” Sam asked, her eyes sparkling. “You have to be crazy good at magic to even have a chance to get in. If you do, though, you essentially get trained to be a one-woman strike team.”
I tried to picture an even deadlier version of Sam, and nope, that was way too terrifying a train of thought. “Remind me not to get in trouble with the law, then.”
Sam grinned. “Better not. My dad’s gonna be so proud when I tell him.”
“You, uh, kinda have to graduate and get the job first,” I pointed out. “Maybe that’s jumping the gun?”
Sam snorted. “Please. As if I’d fail in something like this. Fay, it’s literally just me getting better at fighting. How could I possibly do badly with something like that?”
“By overestimating your skills and getting taken down by someone who’s known about magic their whole life? Just saying, it might not be as easy as you think.”
I was treated to a shrug. “I’m not too worried. But you’re right; that’s a long time off. First it’s time to show what we can do in the Arena.” Sam gave me a cautious look. “How do you think you’ll manage on your own? Do you even think it’s a good idea to summon Tyler here?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think Tyler and I can probably work out scheduling, and since I got Infusion, there has to be something I can do to make him better at fighting. Speaker Alferon promised to help me figure out how to use Infusion to fight well too, so I guess there’s that.”
“You got to meet with your Speaker?” Sam asked, her tone jealous. “I didn’t think anyone except the juniors and seniors got to do that.”
I frowned. “Really? Professor Amara just told me to go straight to him.”
Sam looked blank. “I have no idea who Professor Amara is, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the norm.” Her expression soured. “I bet it’s Didas meddling again. If this turns out to be another way to use you, I’ll make him regret it.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said, letting my chin fall into my hands. “He’d probably just turn you into a frog and be done with it.”
“If he turns me into a frog, I’ll pee on his hands,” Sam said without hesitation, startling another laugh out of me.
“What?”
“You remember frog catching in the stream in my backyard,” Sam said. “Every time I actually managed to get one of those little fuckers in my hands, they’d just pee all over the place. It was gross.”
“So,” I said, feeling the grin stretch across my face, “what you’re saying is your plan of attack is just to pee on the all-powerful mage?”
“Yep.”
“You’re so weird,” I said. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
“I followed you here, angsty magic winter boy. You don’t get to pull that card on me.” Sam punched me on the arm, grinning, and we leaned into each other after that. It was good that we could still just talk like this, even here. It felt normal, even when pretty much nothing else did.
Sam paused in her sketching and gave me a look, her eyes wide. “Oh, Fay, I just remembered. There’s something I have to tell you.”
She looked serious. “What is it?” I asked, suddenly nervous.
“So you know how my roommate Lailah is a total bookworm, right? Even more than you?”
“Yeah…?”
Sam grinned at me. “Did you know Gaia has fiction books that aren’t even published on Earth at all?”
My jaw dropped. “No way.”
Sam rifled through her backpack and pulled out a book in a gleaming navy-blue binding. “Any interest in reading one?”
“Gimme.” I grabbed the book out of her hands and then paused for a moment. “Wait… you did ask before taking this, right?”
“Nah, I just took it.” I must’ve looked horrified because she snorted. “No, dumbass, I asked first. I have to live with her for a year. I’d rather not piss her off.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Great. Can you thank her for me?”
“Thank her yourself. You’re like twenty feet down the hall.”
She might have continued talking, but by then I had opened the book and that was that. For the next couple hours all I did was read, and Sam drew next to me. Some things, I supposed, were never going to change.
Chapter Ten
“THE ARENA matches, like you might have guessed, are quite similar to the Trials you all had to take before arriving here. The only difference is that here, you will not always be fighting in teams.” Aiden was leading Sam and me and the rest of the first-years over to a corner of the campus I hadn’t yet visited. “Those of you who wish to pursue a more combat-oriented education will, of course, be able to request more duels and team battles than the average student, but for the rest of you the Arena is merely a way to gauge your self-defense ability. As such, most of your battles will be on your own.”
“Are we all being tested today?” Sam asked. “The Arena didn’t seem large enough to test everyone at once last time I was there.”
“You only saw the main Arena,” Aiden said, continuing to lead us away from the center of campus, toward one of the hills that bordered our vision. There was a strange shimmer to the air at the top of the grassy rise. “There are others, of course, though of a less grand scale. But today we are going to the main Arena, which has been divided up into smaller sections to accelerate basic testing. We aren’t looking for a full-on battle, merely for enough information to accurately place you in the rankings.” He paused just in front of the strangely shifting air. “Who can tell me what this is?”
One of the werewolf twins, I wasn’t sure which one, raised a hand. “It’s a portal to Limbo.”
“Correct,” Aiden said. “Which means that stepping through this could lead to anywhere. Only Janus University has access to Limbo, however, so you needn’t worry about running into trouble.” He pulled a key from his pocket and drew a line through the air with it, a crackle of light following his path. He put his hands into the arc of light and widened the gap until it stood as tall and broad as a door. “Step on through, please,” he said, standing to one side.
The door to Limbo was a coruscating mass of color and light, completely opaque and almost painful to look at directly. I swore I could actually hear the laws of physics whimpering. Sam bounded through without a second thought while everyone else was still hesitating. There was a moment of shared silence, and then Sofia sighed, tossed her hair, and stepped through as well. I shook my head and walked in, screwing my eyes shut until my fe
et felt like they were on something solid again. There was a moment when it felt like there was nothing at all around me, and then I was somewhere else, and the sun was shining brightly on my face.
My eyes took a moment to adjust, and then I saw the familiar coliseum structure in front of me, with the dirt circle in the center divided into dozens of smaller circles, each having a black-suited figure, with a completely featureless white face, standing in the center. Homunculi. There were other students already in the Arena, some sitting in groups in the stands, others lining up to step into the circles. One of them stepped into a circle and promptly vanished from sight. I frowned and rubbed my eyes, but the circle was still empty save for the homunculus standing motionless inside it.
“Hey, Sam, did you see that?” I asked, pointing to another student who stepped into a circle and disappeared. “What’s going on?”
“The best way to comprehensively test each student is to have an opponent who can, quite literally, be any enemy,” Aiden said from where he stood to my right, making me jump. “Stepping into the circle takes you into a pocket of Limbo, where the homunculus can assume any form and fully judge your abilities.”
The homunculi were still probably the creepiest things I’d encountered since I started all of this last year. Except maybe for the Dullahan, because headless horsemen grim reapers were on an entirely different level. They looked like store mannequins come to life, and I’d seen them fight before. They threw themselves in waves at the enemy, back when whatever those shadows were had attacked the Trials. No matter how many of them the shadows had cut down, there were always more. I wasn’t looking forward to fighting them now.
Once everyone had passed through, Aiden stepped down a few levels and addressed us as a group. “Please line up at the base for your testing. When a student exits, the next one in line goes in. Understand?”
I nodded, and we all filed down after him, Sam leading the way, followed by Sofia, and then the rest of us as a crowd. It was about a minute before a blond-haired boy stepped out of one of the circles, looking a bit disoriented, and exited the base. Sam strode in confidently and headed for the same circle the boy had just left, the air folding around her as soon as she entered. I tried not to shudder. Seeing people just vanish was probably always going to be unnerving.
It was another ten minutes before I was called into the ring and stepped toward a circle where a homunculus was beckoning to me. There was a flash of light, and all of a sudden I was back in Limbo, with a man I didn’t recognize standing in front of me, wearing the same outfit as the homunculus.
The man gave me a stiff nod. “Welcome. We will begin testing by having you demonstrate your casting capabilities, and then follow up with a basic practical examination. Begin by attacking this target, please.” He waved a hand, and a bullseye target appeared about thirty feet away from me. It would have been at home in any summer camp archery program ever. “Use whatever method you prefer.”
I let myself have a brief moment where I wished I could still just create ice, and then pushed it away before the crushing guilt followed. I could still do this. I just had to use normal spells, like I’d been practicing with. I took a breath and repeated the incantation for Minor Orb, feeling the familiar tug of energy as the hardened ball of air formed above my palm. It would go wherever I wanted it to go, as long as it was within my sight and I thought clearly. That was why Sam was so much better than me at the combat stuff. Her mind cleared when she went into battle mode. I froze up. The only reason I’d been good at using my innate powers was because I’d spent my entire life getting used to them.
I pointed at the target and fixed the image of it firmly in my mind. My orb flew forward and slammed into the center of the target, causing it to shatter into dozens of shards of light that slowly faded away.
“Very good. Next, please hit this moving target.” The homunculus was now standing next to me, impassively observing the event while wearing a face that was uncomfortably still.
Another target formed in front of me and immediately started backing up and weaving side to side. There was a pattern to its movement, but damned if I knew what it was. I called up another orb and sent it flying toward the target, only to watch in surprise as the target sped up and moved out of the way to let the orb fly harmlessly wide. I gritted my teeth and pointed again at the target, and the orb doubled back and shot toward it, only to miss again as the target veered sharply left. The delay between what I saw and what I ordered the orb to do was just a little bit off. I folded my arms and kept the orb chasing the target. It would start by moving backward away from the orb, and then would usually feint left just before it was hit. Every fourth time the orb got close it would dodge right, and not nearly as far. I counted off three times and then aimed a little to the right of the target for the last strike. I was rewarded with clipping the target on the side instead of the center, but it still disappeared.
“Good work” came the toneless voice again. “Next, take out this target while it attempts to hit you.”
I had a moment to process what he’d said before another target appeared, this one humanoid in shape and carrying a club. It ran toward me, club raised, and almost without thinking I threw up a Ward. The club bounced off it harmlessly, sending ripples through the hardened air. Ward worked on the same principle as Minor Orb—it just made the air more like a shield instead of a ball. The figure raised the club a second time, and I made a hasty modification of the Ward to reflect the impact, making the same mirror motion I had back when Sam had decided to spar with me. The amount of focus it took for me to picture the club rebounding was a lot more taxing, but I held the Ward out and watched with some satisfaction as the figure was blasted backward with exactly the same amount of force as it had brought to bear with the club. It shattered as well, fading back into the white expanse of Limbo without the slightest noise.
The homunculus stepped forward. “Good work. You’ve proven yourself capable of basic defense against a nonmagical opponent. Now you will be tested against another mage.” He gestured to his face. “I am currently mimicking an average spellcaster and will cycle through each of the Forms. Your objective is to squarely hit me without being hit in return.”
I nodded. “I’m ready.”
The man’s blank face suddenly became animated, and his eyes focused on me. He frowned and took several steps backward while uttering an incantation before slamming his palm into the ground and summoning what looked like a moving clump of dirt. He clapped and a moving tornado appeared as well. Summoning Form, then. He kept backing away, and the shimmer in the air seemed to indicate some kind of Ward as well.
The things he’d summoned looked like elementals. I tried to remember what my textbooks had said about Summoning as well as my own experience with it, while I backed away slowly. I remembered how much work it had been to keep the cat sídhe around, and the yuki-onna from the Trials as well. The stronger the summoner, the more powerful the beings he could summon, and in greater number as well. Summoners didn’t tend to do too much fighting—they usually gave themselves some form of defense while letting their summons do the fighting for them.
I glanced warily at the creatures before throwing up a Ward of my own again. Beating up what the summoner had called out wasn’t the best approach. It’d tire him out eventually, but until it did he could just keep summoning more. I had to keep them off me while going for him directly. The elementals didn’t look so tough. Maybe my Ward would be enough.
The earth elemental disappeared, vanishing beneath what was essentially the “ground” of Limbo. The air elemental sped up and seemed to increase in size, the whirling air suddenly a lot more threatening as it grew to ten feet tall and swept toward me. I reinforced my Ward hastily and glanced around for the earth elemental. Not in front of me, not to my sides, and that meant… I threw up a Ward behind me as well, just in time to block the stony fist aimed for my legs. The air elemental attacked my front as well, and I could feel the barest gust making it thr
ough my barrier. Small cracks were forming from their attacks, but I could repair the damage easily enough, at least for now. I had to take care of the summoner before I became too tired to keep my Ward active.
Fine. If he was going to use Summoning, then I was too. I said the words and quietly promised a saucer of milk for it the next time I had a chance. There was a brief moment of silence, and then I felt the slightest pressure at the edge of my mind, but nothing happened and then everything froze. The elementals paused in the middle of their assault. The homunculus cleared his throat.
“The only beings allowed into Limbo are those associated with Janus University. Attempting to summon anything into Limbo will fail to make it through. What were you attempting to summon?”
I blinked. “Uh… a cat sídhe?”
The homunculus’s eyes faded to white for a moment before flickering back to brown. “We resume in three, two, one….”
The elementals sprang back into motion, and I hastily focused back on my Wards. To my left the air coalesced into a giant cat that looked very similar to the cat sídhe I’d summoned back home, but I didn’t feel the slightest connection to it, and its eyes were all white, like Limbo. I tentatively directed it to take care of the elementals, and thankfully it still responded, springing into motion and raking its claws into the earth elemental’s sides, spilling dirt everywhere. The elementals responded by shifting their attention to the cat, and I was rewarded with an unblocked view of the homunculus, still about fifty feet away. I chanted the words for Minor Orb again, summoning three, my max limit. I followed it up with a Dispel and pictured the two spells fusing in my mind until the Orbs had the faintest blue tinge to them. I sent the first of them flying at the man and watched with some satisfaction as it smashed through his Ward, barely missing him as he threw himself to the side. That, however, had the lovely effect of setting him off-balance, just in time to get hit by my second orb as my third hovered at the ready, in case he tried something else. The orb slammed into the homunculus’s chest, hard enough to send him sprawling. The homunculus’s features were blurred by the assault—for a moment, it almost looked like he had two faces on his head, not one, and then he snapped back into focus.