Awaken Online: Ember (Tarot #1)

by Bagwell, Travis

  The clone didn’t bother to dodge and soon dissipated into a harmless glob of water. Meanwhile, the remainder of the group started to backpedal out of the circle.

  However, Finn wasn’t done. He arced the blade through the air directly toward the real Vanessa while attacking with his second blade from behind. One blade went high, causing her to duck under the attack. The second went low, but she managed to twist away in time, anticipating the attack. The second blade cut through her robe at the waist but left only a thin trail of blood in its wake.

  Finn grimaced but was unable to follow up on the attack as another hail of Ice Bolts rained down on his position. He gritted his teeth as he felt a bolt slice through his arm, and frozen shrapnel embedded itself in his thigh. Gritting his teeth, he pushed through the pain. He had to keep moving forward. He needed to make it to the center of the circle. Vanessa and her clones had completely relinquished the protective ring of ice now and were blasting away at Finn.

  He barely deflected another Ice Bolt in time, but it was a fake, the bolt crumbling into water. The momentary distraction allowed a real bolt to slip past his defenses as Vanessa changed the angle at the last moment.

  Finn’s eyes widened, and one of his daggers lanced forward, just barely knocking it off course. However, the missile landed beside Finn, and he was caught in the edge of the blast. The water began to freeze, and Finn promptly stumbled and fell to his knees with a splash. As the ice fully hardened around his leg, it locked him in place.

  Red notifications were flashing in his peripheral vision, and Finn knew he was on his last leg – both literally and figuratively. His health was red-lining, and his mana and stamina were nearly empty. He was approaching the end of the line.

  He heard a clucking sound and looked up to see four Vanessas watching him with the same familiar smirk. Another eight Ice Bolts already drifted around her clones. “This is the almighty Finn that people keep talking about?” she taunted. “You don’t seem so tough.”

  Finn didn’t say anything. While Vanessa spoke, his hands had been moving under the water. He could see that ice was slowly creeping through the water as it continued to expand and it was growing colder by the moment. He needed to hurry, but he forced himself to keep his movements slow and deliberate.

  She cocked her head. “In fact, that last charge was probably the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a long time – even if you did manage to figure out which of the clones was real. Zane put up a better fight!”

  Finn needed to buy himself a bit more time. He would have to prey on one of Vanessa’s weaknesses. It wasn’t her spellcasting this time. It was a flaw he knew well.

  He’d have to take advantage of that pride that shone in her eyes.

  “And people think I’m the cheater,” Finn retorted, shaking his head mournfully. “I wonder how you came to have that wand. You wouldn’t be able to pull off half of those spells without that weapon.”

  Vanessa’s expression warped into anger. “How dare you? You think I cheated here? This was skill, talent, and hard work. I deserve this win. I fucking outplayed you.”

  “Ahh, it seems like I touched a nerve.” Finn gestured at the water elemental that floated above the field. “Don’t worry. I’m sure the rest of the students will agree with me. It’s okay to admit that you got carried by your gear.”

  Vanessa’s eyes skimmed to the elemental, and her eyes flashed a brilliant sapphire, her anger evaporating under the effects of her mana. She snorted. “Or are these the empty taunts of a man that’s frozen to the ground and half-dead.

  “If this guild has taught us anything, it’s that only the results matter. A win is a win.”

  Finn’s fingers found a hard object beneath the water’s surface. His face was haggard, his body drenched with a mixture of water, mud, and his own blood. Yet his eyes raged with a blazing, triumphant fire as he met Vanessa’s gaze, a grin tugging at his lips.

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” Finn replied. “That makes this easier.”

  He lifted his arms from the water, revealing Vanessa’s token in his right hand and his own token in his left. Vanessa’s eyes went round, and she patted at her robes, feeling the gash in her pocket where Finn’s blade had sliced through the fabric.

  “How…?” she began.

  “To use your own words, you were outplayed,” Finn replied simply.

  Vanessa realized what Finn was about to do. Moving quickly, she tried to stop him, launching her Ice Bolts forward and the hail of missiles barreling toward Finn’s position. The bolts exploded on impact, creating a frozen nova that showered the area and created a massive block of ice. As the debris cleared, Vanessa scanned the area anxiously.

  However, she was too late.

  Finn was already gone.

  Chapter 38 - Hesitant

  When Finn reappeared in the courtyard, he immediately slumped to his knees. Red notifications continued to flash in his peripheral vision, as though he might have somehow forgotten that he was half-dead. Frozen fragments of ice were still embedded in his skin, his left leg was encased in ice – which blessedly helped numb the pain – and blood trickled down his arms and dripped from his fingers.

  Even more strange was the silence. It was a heavy, palpable thing – the hesitation of hundreds of onlookers who stared at Finn’s broken body with a mixture of admiration, disbelief, and anger.

  Then a single cry rose from the crowd. Even with his vision swimming, Finn could see Julia leap from her seat. “Finn!” she cried, pumping her fist into the air.

  It was like she had opened a release valve, giving voice to the pressure that had been building. A roar rippled across the courtyard, cascading down from the terraces before sweeping across the crowd of mages. The wall of sound was almost tangible as it struck Finn, shaking his bones and rattling his teeth. The vibration caused the icy shrapnel to shift in place, and Finn let out a hissing breath.

  The noise soon condensed into a rhythm, and it took Finn a few seconds to realize that he was hearing a chant.

  “FINN! FINN! FINN!”

  His eyes swept across the crowd. They were chanting his name. Despite his injuries, his fire mana immediately began to respond, an ember burning in his chest and faint tendrils of flames curling in his irises. Yet he forcibly dismissed the mana. It wasn’t the time. Besides, he hadn’t exactly managed to beat Vanessa; he’d just relied on a simple trick to help even the odds a bit.

  “Congratulations to Finn!” Nefreet said, his voice somehow carrying over the cries of the crowd. “He has bested all of the travelers and will move on to the final match.”

  Despite his tone, Finn noticed Nefreet glance at him, a faint frown tugging at the corners of his lips. It seemed the headmaster was forced to acknowledge the win, despite the fact that Finn hadn’t actually killed Vanessa. The rules of the duels had always been clear. The winner was whoever returned first.

  Finn didn’t shy away from Nefreet’s gaze, meeting it evenly. Despite his strong words to Vanessa, he suspected most students wouldn’t appreciate how rare and powerful that wand had been. Yet the headmaster couldn’t plead ignorance. However, Finn noted no trace of guilt or hesitation in the man’s eyes. He simply turned back to the crowd.

  He knows. He knows someone is tampering with the duels, Finn thought feebly.

  He could see green-robed healers rushing to his side as Nefreet turned back to the crowd, raising a hand to quiet their chant. “That concludes the duels among the travelers. We will move on to the final elimination round among the residents, and then tomorrow we will have one final duel to choose a champion to represent the guild in the Emir’s competition.

  “I suspect many of you have questions regarding this final duel. For example, how will we pit a resident against a traveler?”

  A pause. “In short, tomorrow’s final duel will be to the death.”

  Finn’s eyes widened slightly. What? I’m going to have to kill a resident?

  “Since the travelers cannot truly die, the faculty
has decided to impose additional constraints in order to even the stakes. If Finn loses, his mana shall be purged, and he shall be exiled into the sands.” Nefreet looked back at the other instructors and Finn could see Lamia glaring at him like he had just kicked her dog. Apparently, even this penalty didn’t seem sufficient for some of the faculty. “We have decided that this should give both our contestants appropriate incentive.”

  An incentive to permanently kill a resident? Finn thought bitterly. He also hadn’t missed that his punishment gave the faculty one more chance to get rid of him for good.

  “With that out of the way, let us focus on our final duel among the residents…”

  Finn had difficulty paying attention to the remainder of Nefreet’s speech. His vision swam, and his body felt like it had been run through a woodchipper. Since he couldn’t easily stand, Abbad approached Finn, and his hands wound through a rapid series of gestures. Finn soon felt himself rise from the ground, green-robed healers hovering nearby and tendrils of healing energy wrapping around his wounds. The group then started moving off the dais, the librarian maintaining his spell.

  Finn closed his eyes, his thoughts racing. He wasn’t sure what tomorrow would bring, and he still didn’t know who was manipulating the duels, but he felt relatively certain about one thing. The final duel tomorrow wasn’t going to be a fair and even match.

  ***

  A few hours later, Finn sat on the dais in the center of the courtyard. His eyes were closed, but he knew that twilight had come to the Mage Guild. The sun had finally sunk toward the horizon, and the blistering heat gave way to the promise of chill desert air. The crowd of mages had long ago dispersed; only a few pockets of students lingered nearby in the sands.

  Globes of fiery energy swam around Finn, the spheres weaving an intricate pattern that revolved out toward his maximum control range before spiraling back toward Finn – only to repeat in an endless loop. At this stage, the pattern was almost like breathing, an undulating, natural rhythm. He didn’t even have to watch the dancing orbs to know what was happening.

  “Is that Finn?” someone murmured as they passed through the sands of the courtyard.

  “Quiet,” another novice hissed. “Just avoid him. You saw what he did to Kyyle and Vanessa.”

  “How did he learn those spells, though? Is he really even a traveler? How could he have planned that fight against Vanessa with such precision?” another asked, their voice incredulous.

  Finn had heard many of these comments while sitting upon the dais. Even more strange were the stares and murmurs as he passed in the halls. Students went out of their way to avoid him. It seemed he had only added to his reputation. Most of the other novices no longer claimed that he was a cheater – although that theory seemed to have been replaced with a new one. Apparently, he was some sort of robot?

  He supposed that was an improvement.

  Finn’s brow furrowed as he felt one of his orbs whisked away. It felt as though the sphere had struck something solid – although that was impossible. Finn hadn’t detected any sound of someone approaching. He also didn’t hear any shout of alarm or pain. His eyes snapped open, burning with a soft orange glow and training on a spot a few feet to his right where the sphere should have been.

  As he stared at that spot, Finn thought he could detect a strange irregularity – as though the air was warped. It almost looked like the ripple of heat radiating off hot pavement. Acting on instinct, he directed the remainder of his orbs to that spot, encircling the space. Simultaneously, they all struck something solid, and the flames were soon blown away.

  A moment later, the air rippled more forcefully, and it was like a mirror slid away, revealing Abbad standing upon the dais.

  “That’s a neat trick,” Finn observed, trying to keep his tone neutral. “You’re manipulating the air, aren’t you? Creating a reflective bubble around yourself?”

  “Indeed,” Abbad replied and stepped over toward Finn, sinking down onto the dais until he was sitting beside him.

  Despite his calm demeanor, Finn was processing the implications of Abbad’s invisibility spell. If the librarian could walk around the Mage Guild undetected, he might be aware of far more than he let on. Combined with his ability to project his voice and several other potential applications of air magic – listening, sound dampening, etc. – he would have free rein to explore the school without being detected. He could listen in on practically any conversation.

  As he sat there, Finn was already thinking through a few ideas for how he might detect that invisibility bubble. Tracing an area with his orbs was a start. Maybe he could create a default pattern to sweep a room or large area. At this point, he could summon up to four of the globes, and they moved quite quickly. Some sort of smoke bomb might also work, giving away Abbad’s location with ease.

  Although, this all begged the real question. Why was Abbad here?

  “Come to check on me before tomorrow?” Finn asked, finally breaking the silence.

  Abbad tilted his head in thought, his eyes sweeping across the courtyard and following the handful of novices that drifted through the sands. “I suspect what you wish to ask is how long have I been watching you?”

  “I’ll admit, I’m curious,” Finn acknowledged.

  “Since the beginning,” Abbad responded bluntly. He looked at Finn then, his eyes sharp and piercing. “I watched as you studied. As your thief friend reached out. As you trained with Brutus. As you slaughtered the other students among the halls. And as you learned to create your own spells.”

  Finn swallowed hard, too caught off guard to mask his reaction.

  “You seem surprised,” Abbad noted. “However, you weren’t the first to discover Spellcrafting. I noticed that you reviewed several of Bilel’s original workbooks – what we offer to the other students as novice spellbooks. You and Bilel share many similarities, you know. He was also a creative soul, one far ahead of his time.”

  Finn’s mind was practically buzzing with questions, and he was having difficulty deciding what to ask first. Although, one question rose to the top of the heap. “Why aren’t there more spellbooks? Why was Spellcrafting forgotten?”

  “The simple answer? Control,” Abbad said. He glanced at Finn. “The guild carefully regulates the information it doles out to its mages, using the duels as a mechanism to reward its students.” He waved a hand at the courtyard. “It is all a distraction. An attempt to slow down and impose order upon the masses.”

  Finn chewed on that. Abbad had said something similar in the past. Although, now that Finn was aware that the librarian had been watching for some time, that also raised additional questions. And Abbad had already implied an answer.

  “You knew about the infighting among the students, didn’t you? Which means the other faculty must have been aware of what was going on long before I was brought before Nefreet and the other instructors.” Finn looked at Abbad. “Was that a form of control as well? Were the faculty intentionally permitting the assassination attempts?”

  A ghost of a smile tugged at Abbad’s lips. “Indeed. It served multiple purposes. It identified the strongest among the students and the most creative. It also provided an additional dash of celebrity. As I said, the goal is partly to distract. It is easier to supervise a prisoner who is eyeing the other inmates instead of the guards.”

  “And these duels are more of the same then?” Finn asked.

  Abbad gave him a questioning glance.

  “Matching me against Kyyle first. Teleporting me into environments that heavily favor my opponent. And I certainly didn’t miss the fact that Vanessa was wielding one hell of a wand. Is this more of the headmaster’s influence at work?”

  Abbad let out a soft snort. “Do you really believe that? What could be Nefreet’s goal in manipulating the duels or stacking the challenge against you?”

  Finn didn’t have a good answer for that question. It was one he had been struggling with for days – even during his last discussion with Kyyle. The prob
lem was one of motive.

  “Individual motivations are a tricky thing,” Abbad murmured, mirroring Finn’s thoughts. “The mob acts in uniformity. It is predictable. Like the tides of the ocean. Yet the individual is a chaotic mass of emotions that often defies easy prediction.

  “Nefreet is intelligent and observant – and my talents certainly assist him. However, the rest of the faculty are also ambitious. This is a problem that the guild has faced for the last hundred years. We have a system that regulates and controls our students, but what about our instructors – those we raise above the others and reward with valuable and powerful abilities?”

  “Are you suggesting that one of the instructors has gone rogue?”

  Abbad shrugged. “I do not offer any conclusions, only observations. Although, if I were to add one more, I might suggest that you focus on who among the travelers managed to reach the top of the heap, stay there, and, in your own words, wield one hell of a wand. That fact might be telling, in and of itself.”

  Finn’s eyes widened slightly. Abbad was talking about Vanessa. Since the water mage had been sponsored by Lamia, that suggested that the water mage master was behind the attacks and manipulation. Finn had suspected as much for some time. Lamia had made it clear she had little love for the travelers, and she was in a position to influence the duels since she had taken charge of monitoring the event. She also likely had a personal vendetta against Finn after he had embarrassed her in front of the other faculty.

  At the same time, that explanation felt slightly off. It felt too neat – too obvious. Something pre-packaged for Finn’s consumption. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. On the other hand, he didn’t have any reason to believe that something more was going on here and Abbad had as much as admitted to the situation.

  More importantly, this all led to the single question that seemed to rise above the rest of the pack, taunting Finn.

  What the hell was he going to do about it?

  He let out a soft sigh, rubbing at his eyes. Finn felt tired. He had been grinding away at his training for weeks now, with little sleep and few breaks. It also appeared that one or more of the faculty had it out for him. To top it all off, tomorrow he either needed to kill a resident – permanently – or lose all of the progress he had made so far. He didn’t relish either option. From his experience, this world’s residents were exceptionally realistic. Somehow the prospect of killing someone like Abbad or Charlotte felt… wrong.