freenovelworld Book II. Chapter 75 -
Book II. Chapter 75 -
Chapter 75Agatha had left before Ardan. He’d lingered a while on the training grounds, practicing with the doll. Since the fee for using the club’s equipment had been charged to her account, Ardan had had no intention of letting those exes go to waste. He wasn’t particularly worried about the fact that his future opponent had glimpsed one of his trump cards ahead of their bout. The atmosphere of the Magical Boxing League—at least the qualifier bracket—encouraged one not to fret over such prosaic matters.
Agatha, Lucius, Nars, and all the rest reminded him a bit of Professor an Manish’s bureau. The young man sighed and set his cup back on its saucer. Naturally, despite the professor’s words, Ardan’s internship at his company was over. On paper, he was probably still serving his “penance,” but in reality… It was unlikely that anyone would be happy to see him drop by after he’d already missed almost two weeks of work, so…
Ardi sighed again. He liked the company of the slightly mad engineers who knew no moderation when it came to tobacco or their use of abstruse jargon. He liked it far more than the sound of gunshots and the flash of deadly spells.
For the past half hour, Ardi had been resting in the club’s café where, aside from the waitstaff and himself, there was no one else to be found at all. It made for a comfortable and even cozy setting, with no conversations or smells so vigorously assailing his not-quite-human nose. Ard sat by the window, sipping tea and watching the street buzz and hum. Thoughts swarmed in his head like an agitated hive, but the young man strove to ignore them. He simply sat, drank his tea, and observed the passersby bundled in their sometimes-ridiculous attire—ridiculous not because of its appearance, but because of the season.
In the Metropolis, when it was on the cusp of winter, the morning might bring sunlight with a touch of warmth; by the afternoon, a cold, stinging rain would be lashing down on awnings, umbrellas and faces; and by the evening, the first timid snowflakes would be swirling overhead, only to melt before they could touch the asphalt or cobblestones. And so the townsfolk, trying to outguess the weather, each dressed as best they could. Some sweltered in heavy winter furs, others shivered in light wool cloaks suitable for autumn, and others still…
“I hope I’m not disturbing you too much, Ard.”
Ard flinched. He had been so intent on blocking out the world, focused on the cadence of his own breathing and the shifting gray tableau beyond the window, that he hadn’t noticed a stranger appear at his table. The young man glanced over at the waiters, but they only spread their arms out helplessly.
“I have a journalist’s license, Ard,” the woman said as she produced a compact and mirror to touch up her makeup. “It doesn’t open nearly as many doors as those black leather documents of yours, but it’s enough to spare me from having to bang my head against ‘Closed’ signs.”
Sitting before Ard, in an evening cocktail dress with brazen cutouts that looked a bit out of place in the café’s otherwise unremarkable surroundings, was a woman of about twenty-seven. Before meeting Cassara, Ardi would have called her beautiful, and before meeting Tess, maybe even enchanting. But now, all he saw was a pleasant-looking lady with thick black hair, bold, bushy brows, high cheekbones, a fine nose, full lips, and bright blue irises with dark, deep pupils.
This was Taisia Shpritz, one of the most scandalous—and therefore well-known—investigative journalists in the Empire. She was welcome even in the highest circles of society, could draw information from the most incredible sources, and possessed a simply unbelievable brazenness tempered by natural charm and an absolute lack of fear. Either that, or she masked her fear so well that even a former student of the Alcade hunters couldn’t detect a hint of trepidation in Taisia’s stately posture or steady breathing.
“How did you find me?” Ardan asked for no good reason, as though the answer had any significance.
Smacking her lips and snapping the compact shut, she slipped it into a shiny, fashionable handbag—a handbag that likely wouldn’t even fit an umbrella inside it.
“You truly have no idea about how to talk to a lady, Ard,” Taisia said, snapping her fingers and motioning first to his cup, then to the table in front of her. “You could have paid me a compliment on my looks, or inquired whether my emotional state was all right.”
Ardi only shrugged. Perhaps he have done so, if he’d cared about any of the above in the slightest.
“Thank you,” the journalist nodded to the waiter who brought her tea, then turned back to Ard. “You might be surprised to learn this, Ard, but you’re a rather conspicuous figure. Especially after Her Imperial Majesty gave that sensational interview… Alas, I didn’t get to talk to her.”
“Jealous?” Ardan asked, clasping his teacup in both hands and planting his elbows on the table’s edge. It wasn’t the most genteel posture by high-society standards, but it made him feel more at ease. Not that Taisia Shpritz, all fifty-odd kilograms of her, was particularly intimidating, but… still…
“Jealous of the chance to break the story that has been front-page news across the entire Empire and in our neighboring countries for four days straight?” Taisia raised a brow slightly as she sipped her tea, her pinky instinctively extended—a hint of her, if not noble origin, then at least exacting upbringing. “Absolutely, Ard. Many of my colleagues hunt their whole lives for a whale like that and never get within sight of its tail.”
Ardi remained silent. He was now convinced that he’d finally pinpointed why Taisia unnerved him so much. In his life, through the prism of others’ eyes, Ardi had seen himself as prey, as a dangerous hunter, as a mere bystander, a curious rarity, a witless beast, and… many other things besides. But only Taisia contrived to make him feel like an
She regarded him the way he regarded old grimoires and treatises on Star Magic—something inanimate, just a source of information, only in this case, one that happened to be able to talk.
“You’re not here on a date,” Ardi said, sweeping his gaze over Taisia’s figure. “And I doubt you go on many of those. Men are willing to spend a night with you, but not a day… and you’ve long since gotten used to that. Which is exactly why you’re not in the least bit bothered by the fact that the waiter who served your tea still hasn’t managed to drag his eyes out of your neckline.”
For an instant, Ardan thought that Taisia might once again reach out to slap him, but the feeling passed as quickly as it came.
“Investigator,” she whispered to herself, and then, much louder, added, “I think we’re even now, seeing as you were so very eager to wound a lady.”
“You’re no Madam Shpritz,” Ardan said, shaking his head. “You’re one of the most dangerous people I’ve ever met. And that’s saying quite a lot.”
Her blue eyes flashed smugly, and at the same time, in a way almost no one else would’ve noticed, a touch sadly as well.
“At your fiancée’s concert, we agreed-”
“We agreed on nothing,” Ardi hurried to interrupt her. “You relayed your proposal to me, and a business card, but I don’t recall ever accepting it.”
“Oh, don’t play coy with me, Ard,” Taisia waved a hand dismissively. “Your eyes made it obvious that you were interested.”
“Interest doesn’t equal consent or commitment.”
“For normal people—no,” Taisia conceded. “But for men, that’s exactly what it equals.”
“I-”
“And you’re not shooing me away,” she interjected before he could continue. “Even though you understand perfectly well that I wouldn’t have sought out your, I must confess, far-from-pleasant company, unless I had a reason to. Believe me, Ard, I’d rather spend time with that waiter you just mentioned than with you.”
Taisia’s heartbeat was steady. She wasn’t lying. Madam Taisia Shpritz found Ardan Egobar’s company every bit as unpleasant as he found hers. Perhaps that was precisely why they somehow managed, time after time, to find common ground.
“To what do I owe the honor of your visit?” Ardi finally posed the most crucial question.
“So soon?” The journalist made a show of looking hurt. “I dread to imagine how unlucky Baroness Orman is if you wrap up your preludes this quickly.”
“Miss Shpritz!” Ardan protested.
Taisia laughed—caustically and triumphantly. It was as if she’d just won a contest that only she knew was being held.
“I’m off to a rendezvous, Ard. With a rather distinguished, if long past his prime, gentleman.”
Ardi could have retorted with some barb (), but he understood that this was only part of the truth, and Taisia was simply playing some silly game with him.
“Oh,” she rolled her eyes. “You’re dull, Ard… At the Baliero Concert Hall, we agreed that, in exchange for information on Navalov, I’d share what I have on the Hunters’ Guild with you.”
“Suppose we did,” Ard responded evasively.
“And considering the fact that I’m sure you gathered some information—right before you nearly blew the Tazidahian embassy sky-high—I can’t fulfill my side of the bargain just yet.”
Ardan didn’t bother to clarify that the embassy building was still safe and sound.
“And what does your rendezvous have to do with our deal?” Ardi pressed. “And please, spare me any bawdy jokes or horizontal insinuations.”
“As you wish, Sir Investigator,” Taisia quipped, giving him a mock salute with her teacup. “I have had the honor of being invited by Senior Magister Chaz Nalenski to the opening of the Metropolis Racetrack. The event, of course, takes place this very evening.”
Ardi, thanks to his friendship with Lord Boris Fahtov, knew of this phenomenon called racing. Automotive companies and bureaus of enthusiastic inventors would build contraptions capable of achieving utterly insane speeds, and then they’d have them compete on specially-constructed tracks. It was a form of entertainment absolutely lost on Ardan, but apparently, one with a bright future, since even Agatha Spree had mentioned it. Though, given her passion for fast driving, the word “even” perhaps wasn’t warranted here.
“And?” Ardan prompted insistently.
“And, Ard, Lord Nalenski holds the post of First Assistant to the Chief Anomalies Researcher in the central branch of the Hunters’ Guild,” Taisia answered, lowering her voice and leaning forward as if afraid of being overheard. “And I hope that you can remember why I—and apparently you as well—are interested in that organization.”
“I remember,” Ardan confirmed.
“So,” Taisia straightened up and took another sip of tea, “if one week from now, at this time exactly, you do see me on the doorstep of ‘Bruce’s,’ please try to find me.”
Ardan blinked a few times. However he might’ve felt about the journalist Taisia Shpritz—no matter how unpleasant, overly persistent, or boundlessly brazen of a person she was—he still didn’t want anything to happen to her. Especially nothing dire. Just as he wouldn’t want it to happen to anyone at all.
“In that case, perhaps this isn’t the best idea, Miss Shpritz?” Ardan suggested gently. “It’s not my place to tell you what to do, but-”
“You are absolutely right, Ard,” Taisia cut him off proudly. “It’s not your place—nor anyone else’s—to advise me on anything.”
“Then why ask me to come find you if you’re the one sticking your head in a noose?”
“Because you need my information, Ard,” Taisia replied with a thin, razor-sharp smile. “And because I have complete faith in your skills as an investigator. And now, please excuse me—I have a date to get to, and I hope that I have a couple of nights ahead of me in which I can combine business with pleasure. Good day, Ard.”
“Good day, Miss Shpritz,” Ardan echoed.
As she stepped out onto the street, where her expensive car awaited, Taisia halted and shot him a brief glance.
“Have you ever wondered why, after that article, a swarm of journalists buzzing around you and your fiancée?”
Ardi just gave her a short nod. He understood perfectly well why none of her colleagues were bothering them.
The Empress had forbidden it.
“Whether you like it or not, Mr. Egobar, you’re quite a public figure now,” Taisia observed, looking him up and down from her modest height with a mix of mockery and mild distaste. “...You might want to tend a bit to your appearance. You look like a bankrupt furniture dealer.”
Satisfied with her barbed remark, she exited the club building, flitted between the raindrops and, settling into her car, tore off down the street. Ardan was left alone with a half-full cup of someone else’s tea. Tea, and a city that hadn’t even noticed the brief conversation—one that had oozed danger and the tang of gunpowder.
Ardi hoped that he see Taisia exactly one week from now at the appointed time, but for some reason, he found himself fiddling with a Second Chancery signal medallion. He really did prefer an Manish’s company…
***
Ardi was leafing intently through the pages of his grimoire, once again erecting the imaginary stage of the Arena in his mind. He’d have to face Agatha Spree there soon. A Blue Star battlemage. In that fight, as Lord Aversky had once warned him, neither cunning nor trickery, nor the ability to swiftly read the terrain and turn it to his advantage, would help Ardan.
Only his raw spellcasting skills would matter, and nothing more.
Ardi sighed and, closing the book, looked at the mask hanging on the edge of a small table. He was sitting in a “ready room” beneath the stands. Such rooms were provided to every participant, but mostly—in the qualifier bracket, at least—competitors preferred the communal locker rooms. Ardi, however, was seeking silence, so he’d holed up here in this little chamber which, aside from a few lockers, a bench, and a curtained-off privy, held nothing at all.
Save for the table.
And the mask.
It was a simple leather mask with rough stitching and cutouts for the mouth, nose, eyes and, of course, the ears. It stared at the young man with hollow, empty eye sockets, and… Ardi couldn’t shake the thought that perhaps he shouldn’t have stepped onto the stage after all.
Why?
He kept recalling his momentary elation when Agatha had failed to handle the seal Ardan had created. And even though it was crooked and clumsy, containing not prototypes so much as of the prototypes of transmutational runic links… He’d still felt something odd at the time. A pleasurable feeling, and at the same time, somehow scalding. Corrosive from within.
He had never felt something like it before.
Had Allane’Eari been right when she’d warned him that he would eventually fail to hold back the onslaught of the stain he himself had, of his own free will, fouled his soul with? And he’d done so long before he’d encountered the Aean’Hane elf in the Imperial Bank. He’d tainted his soul the same night the Shanti’Ra had burned Evergale, and Ergar, in the form of a figurine, had yelled at him
Or so the young man had thought at the time.
Now he understood more clearly that what he’d called upon back then wasn’t flame at all… Or at least not the kind that billowed above burning buildings. It was something else. Something that devoured, yes, but not wood. It consumed with the frenzied desperation of a starving monster the flesh of the dead and wounded.
Or perhaps he was merely imagining it, and Milar was right—Ardi was catching Edward’s snobbery and perhaps Mshisty’s fervor as well, which had found fertile ground in Ergar’s worldview. The same worldview the snow leopard had tried to impart to his “overly peaceful student.”
Ardan raised his wrist and stared at the gradually-fading mark left by the Winter Princess’ lips.
Maybe he simply missed his friend… A few days ago had already marked the sixth time that Poplar had failed to deliver a letter from Anastasia. Ardi hadn’t realized just how dearly he’d come to treasure his correspondence with Her Imperial Highness, the Grand Princess. Who would have thought that exchanging letters with a little girl, who was now already fourteen years old, would become so important to him?
As Aror had once aptly put it, Ardi had needed to cross the entire continent to find someone who could understand the wanderings of his heart. And in that same manner, he understood the worries of that stranger. Stranger? No—she was a friend. And, incidentally, the heir to the Empire’s throne.
Common sense whispered that their friendship would lead to no good.
But if Ardi had always listened to his own good sense and logic, then perhaps his life would have been much simpler and—
…A draft from the doorway brought a waft of two familiar scents: spring flowers blooming by a stream, and damp wood mixed with cooled coal…
—far lonelier.
“Ah, here’s our boxer!” Boris boomed as he burst in, nearly yanking the door off its hinges. Right behind him came Tess.
Ardi clasped his friend’s big hand and embraced his fiancée.
“And where’s your wife, Boris?” Ardi asked, sensing that no one else was coming down the corridor.
“They only discharged Elena from the hospital recently,” the red-haired lord said as he stepped over to the table and snatched up the mask, beginning to twirl it on his finger. He was acting like an excited boy rather than a grown man who would soon become a father. “She stayed home to rest. After all the procedures and medicines, Elena sleeps almost eighteen hours a day and only gets up to… Well, those details, my dear friends, are unnecessary.”
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Noticing how relaxed and calm Boris seemed, Ardan refrained from any further questions. Knowing his friend, if Elena had needed even the slightest bit of help or if Boris had felt even the tiniest bit of worry, he would never have left his wife alone. Which meant that things were, relatively speaking, in order.
“Boris swung by ‘Bruce’s’ to pick me up,” Tess said, gently stroking the back of Ardi’s hand as she always did when she could manage it. “We came to cheer you on.”
The young man grimaced and squinted at his comrade.
“You know I’m up against a Blue Star Mage today…”
“Oh, am I hearing that right?” Boris made no real effort to disguise his feigned surprise as genuine. “Well, who could’ve guessed… I had no idea. Ah, forgive me, Tess, but it seems like we’ve come to witness the drubbing of your fiancé… The upside is, it won’t take long! Then we’ll swing by to get Elena—she’ll be awake by then—and then we’re off to a restaurant! To celebrate!”
“To celebrate what, exactly, Boris?” Tess asked with a soft laugh.
“Why, the fact that, my dear ones, my searing, raging envy toward my one and only friend—” Boris gave Ard a squeeze around the shoulders, “—will die down a bit. And the more soundly you get thrashed, the bigger my appetite will grow!”
Ardi didn’t need to hear Boris’ heartbeat to know that he was joking. These days, he didn’t need to, at least. A year ago, Ardan, not yet so well-versed in the use of human humor among close friends, might have been a touch bewildered.
“Alright, joking aside,” Boris said, turning a bit more serious and stepping away, “do you have at least some kind of plan? A strategy? Have you figured out your accumulator loadout?”
Ardan nodded.
“More or less…”
“‘More or less,’” Boris repeated, clicking his tongue. “Alright, I’m going to steal your bride now, my friend, and we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for you. Do try your best… Mister Abar, son of the famous major. You sure picked yourself a pseudonym, Ardi, one that’s inconspicuous.”
Winking, Boris offered his elbow. Tess accepted the gesture, giving Ard a warm smile and silently mouthing:
The two of them departed back down the corridor, headed for the stands. As usual, they would no doubt be empty. Magical Boxing—when it wasn’t the main tournament bouts between Yellow and Pink Star Mages—didn’t really interest many people.
For a few more minutes, Ardan stayed in complete silence, until the quiet was broken by a prolonged metallic trill, which rattled a bit due to the rust eating at the bell.
Ardi donned the mask, grabbed his staff, and stepped into the corridor, where, at an intersection, he turned not toward the stairs, but the opposite way—toward a long, broad ramp sloping downward. About halfway along, Agatha joined him, emerging from another turn. With her trademark tight bun, no makeup, and clad in a snug, quilted leather suit that vaguely resembled the kind that court ladies had once worn for hunting, she looked composed.
“I’ll say this up front, Ard: I’m not going to go easy on you or hand you a point just so you can make it into the main bracket,” Agatha said at once.
She spoke without any hostility, merely stating a simple fact.
“Of course, Agatha,” Ardi replied with a nod.
They walked a few steps in silence, but just before the spotlights painted the final stretch of the ramp leading down to the Arena, Agatha added:
“I saw your fiancée, Ard,” she said with a slight curl at the corner of her lips. “She’s even more beautiful than in the newspaper photos… You’re a very lucky man.”
“Um…” Ardi mumbled, not quite sure how to respond to that. “Thank you… I suppose.”
Agatha laughed and then her face turned grim once more.
“On my way home, I decided to stop by the Spell Market. I’d recently heard from an old school friend who works at a design bureau about a new spell that makes it easier to test shields for vulnerabilities. And I had a nagging suspicion….” Agatha tapped her staff against the ground in time with their steps—a staff that was far from new, but still a decent enough implement. “The is nothing like what you asked me to cast earlier today, but I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something it has in common with that spell.”
Ardi answered her with silence. Anything he might’ve said here would’ve been irrelevant.
“Ard… If what you showed me today isn’t related to the Second Chancery,” Agatha went on, stopping for a moment and tugging Ard to a halt as well, meeting his eyes, “then don’t show that diagram to anyone else. I have no idea what you’re working on, but it’s something unbelievable. Keep it close, so you don’t accidentally show it to someone who has no business seeing it.”
Ardi nodded. And then he couldn’t keep the question bursting with curiosity from escaping his lips.
“Why are you being so kind to me, Madam Spree?”
She stood there dumbstruck for a few heartbeats, then gazed at Ardi with empathy, and even a touch of regret.
“Maybe it’s your professional paranoia, Ard, but out in the everyday world, most people really aren’t looking to backstab, exploit someone, or what-have-you,” she said. “And yes, I realize I’m contradicting my own advice by saying so, but still…” She regarded him almost as gently as she had looked at her daughter that afternoon. “Besides, we agreed to use first names! Now let’s pick up the pace!”
Ardi hurried after Agatha, who had quickened her stride, and before he knew it, they were already walking under the glare of bright floodlights, their boots squelching on ground made muddy by snow and rain.
***
The judge, who’d finished reminding them of the rules, now held out a box of accumulators. Agatha got to choose first due to how the lots had been drawn.
“Agatha Spree, six red, six green, and seven Blue Star rays,” the mage introduced herself. Poising her hand over the box, she pondered for a few seconds, then made a rather unexpected decision: “I’ll take three reds.”
Deftly plucking out three red accumulators, she stepped aside. It was now Ard’s turn. Feeling the gazes of only a few dozen people (), Ardan approached the judge, who was holding the box in one hand and an umbrella in the other.
Wet snow was falling from the sky, swirling on the damp breeze.
“Ad Abar, seven red and nine Green Star rays,” Ardan announced, unconsciously touching the mask that concealed his face. “I’ll take two greens, one red.”
“To your corners!” The judge ordered once both combatants had stowed their accumulators into their rings.
Agatha and Ard obeyed the command, heading to opposite edges of the Rhombus. By the time each of them had paced off their fifty meters, the judge had descended the steps, and the Arena’s operators activated the complex stationary shield above the stage.
“Prepare yourselves!” The judge shouted, raising the signal revolver high so as not to shoot his own umbrella.
Ard hefted his staff over the wooden platform, watching Agatha closely. She looked focused, true, but also somewhat relaxed. Ardan had no idea why a Blue Star Mage had apparently spent several years never advancing beyond the qualifier bracket—deliberately, at that. But at that moment, his only concern was her staff and her spells, not any hazy conjectures.
The shot rang out.
At that same instant, Agatha struck the platform with her staff. Ardi knew that Blue Star Mages fought battles quite differently than those who bore only the first two Stars. Their tactical arsenal contained far more tools than the standard rapid and multi-casting methods of deploying battle spells.
And what Agatha demonstrated now belonged squarely to Blue Star Mage tactics.
Beneath her feet, two half-formed seals flared to life at once. Under her right foot, Ardi saw something from the realm of kinetic rather than elemental battle magic; and under her left, a dual-element seal blazed, melding air and fire to produce scalding gas.
And both of them churned and bubbled, continuously restructuring a shared design, switching up their runic connections and breaking their own vectors.
Ardan could think of nothing better to do, and so he immediately drew on the Ley from his accumulators and unleashed a modified
The wet snow swirling above his head began to dance around the tip of his wooden staff, and a pristine white seal kindled under Ard’s boots. Threads of ice wove together before him, forming soaring walls of frost one after another. They weren’t very thick, but there were four of them. With half-meter gaps between each of them, they lined up four and a half meters ahead of him.
Whatever Agatha was constructing, Ardi could see no manipulation of any attack vectors in her design, and against a direct threat, he…
She gave him a patronizing smile, and a moment later, something happened that Ardi could not have predicted or seen anywhere before. After all, this truly was the first time in his life that he was engaging in an honest, fair duel against a Blue Star battlemage.
Agatha’s half-seal—the one in which she had fused air and fire— But not of its own accord—by Agatha’s own will. She had already managed to pour enough Ley into the construct that an orange haze spilled out from the tip of her staff and into the surrounding area. Incandescent steam unfurled above the platform of the Rhombus like the bud of a burgeoning fire.
By all the laws of Broken Seals, Agatha ought to have fallen victim to her own spell, but of course, everything went quite differently. Liberating her mind from the burden of simultaneously shaping two seals, she cast the remaining one.
All of it happened in but a fraction of a second.
By the time the last, fourth wall had risen from the icy gale in front of Ardan, Agatha had already directed a strike at the youth. Above the blue household accumulator hidden in the Ertalain alloy mounting of her staff, the air began to shudder. An invisible blast of pure kinetic force redirected the expanding, blazing fog straight into the center of the ice walls. It spun into a sharp drill and, after easily boring through the first three walls, slowed for just a heartbeat at the fourth.
It stalled for just long enough that Agatha could slam her staff down again. This time, a single seal formed and materialized beneath her feet so fast that Ardan, despite all his months of training, failed to discern even half of its primary nodes.
All he grasped was that another kinetic blow was coming from somewhere to his right.
The young man, tapping into his Stars, cast Raindrops swirled before him in a barely-perceptible curtain, shimmering under the floodlights and catching the reflections of the fiery drill that had nearly chewed through the final wall.
Ardan made it just in time. Before the dust from Agatha’s first shattered accumulator could even settle on the boards, a pulsing distortion slammed into the translucent, watery shroud, coming from the direction Ardan had predicted it would.
“Damn,” Ardan had time to curse to himself. “Miscalculated.”
The spell was powerful enough to rip through his defenses and fling Ard aside—he hadn’t managed to gauge its intensity. And while he was sent flying, Agatha had already managed to trigger her Resonance. She did so with just two spells—the simplest and least costly kind.
Another amorphous blob, vibrating and twitching, bending light and warping space around itself, collided with the still-growing, fiery drill.
It detonated with enough force that the flames curving around the ice wall licked Ardan’s face and chest. Because he was still airborne and had lost contact with the ground, he couldn’t even attempt to prevent the clever combination from landing.
When Ardan—without even losing his footing—came down on his feet, he quickly smothered the small flames singeing his stubble, hair and eyebrows with his hand.
In a real fight, he wouldn’t have even noticed such a “wound,” but…
This was Magical Boxing, and that meant that Agatha Spree had just scored the first point. The first round wouldn’t be called until someone reached two, so their duel continued.
After her Resonance, Agatha needed a moment to shift her focus back to her Stars and accumulators—a moment Ardan immediately took advantage of.
Driving his staff hard into the boards, he drew upon Ley from both his Stars and his accumulators at once. He saw no sense in overcomplicating his casting against a Blue Star Mage, so he relied on raw speed of execution. It felt like a hammer blow to his skull, but not even a split second elapsed before the first spark of his nascent seal turned into three shells that burst forth from Ard’s staff.
Buzzing so furiously that the whirr made his ears pop, the ice orbs—smaller than the basic version—hurtled away in a rapid volley. Each of them left behind a whitish trail of shattered air. One flew straight ahead, and two of them took curving paths. A simple kinetic shield wouldn’t help Agatha, since the impact would send a spray of icy shrapnel through, and so she struck the platform without delay and, twisting like a tornado, a fiery whirlwind leaped up around her.
Ardan, who’d been counting on precisely that, had already cast another spell by then. He did so just as swiftly as—if not faster than—before. He felt a trickle of blood run down his upper lip due to the overstrain, but at the moment, it didn’t matter.
Above the tip of his staff, a miniature copy of Agatha’s vortex was swirling—only this one wasn’t made of fire, but nearly invisible air.
The simplest, most basic version of a spell one learned in their first year at the Grand University, which formed a single blade of air, flew after the shells. It did so with a barely-noticeable, but oh-so-crucial delay.
The ice spheres, one after another, shattered against the impenetrable wall of the fiery whirlwind. Unable to even disturb that barrier, they left behind a dense cloud of hot steam. And while Agatha could surely see through her own shield without much trouble given the nodes Ardan had glimpsed in its design, he figured that a completely natural fog would be far trickier.
Yes, she had noticed his seal thanks to her Blue Star and was likely already forming a counterattack, but Agatha was not the only one who knew how to harness Resonance.
Ardan reached for the lingering motes of his own Ley still sparkling in the air, scattered there by the prior spells. He reached out even the gust of wind had a chance to surge out of the tip of his staff. That was why he had strained himself so much with his rapid casting.
When switching elements, the ambient Ley became too “muddied,” and Resonance was rendered impossible—but if one managed to catch that tiny, nearly imperceptible window elemental shifts, a mage could still draw upon the spilled Ley before it turned unusable from impurities.
Before the blade of wind shot forth—exactly as the first tendrils of steam were shrouding Agatha—Ardan, shattering his first green accumulator and using Resonance, created three ice walls behind and around his opponent. A fourth—meant to be the lid—vanished instantly into the still-roaring fire vortex. And the first three rapidly vanished as well.
In less than a second, Ardan had formed and cast three spells—a feat that the vast majority of not only the second-year students at the Grand, but even those in their final year who were preparing for graduation, could not achieve. Except, of course, the students of the Military Faculty.
Unfortunately, Agatha had long since left her student years behind. And she had far more experience than a scant year and a half spent as a junior investigator.
Ardi’s plan had been for Agatha to react instinctively to his Resonance (). He’d wanted her to waste that precious moment and fail to counter the which, by uniting steam, fire, and a zone of high pressure, would have yielded a rather formidable explosion.
In other words—Ard had executed nearly the exact same combination that Agatha had earlier.
Only…
This was a Blue Star Mage. Seasoned and deadly.
Before the scythe of razor wind capable of slicing through steel rebar could reach the clumps of steam, the roar of the fire vortex ceased. Agatha’s shield, spiraling inward at breakneck speed and pulling the steam, the wind, and even shards of the ice wall into itself, suddenly contracted to the size of a billiard ball.
A compressed, hot yellow orb—so hot that even from so far away, Ardan could still feel its heat—spun in the air a few meters in front of Agatha. And, with another slam of her staff, an invisible cue stick—this time not a vague blur, but a stream of kinetic energy visible only thanks to the rain and snow—sent the orb hurtling forward.
Everywhere it passed, the wooden platform ignited in bright flames that were immediately devoured by the stationary shield above the Rhombus. Ardi, who had managed to catch sight of both of Agatha’s seals, knew that he likely couldn’t defend against this. The spell, which had apparently converted an elemental shield into something akin to his own in some way, and had also been augmented by kinetic force, carried a threat on the level of seventy-seven Red Star rays ().
wouldn’t save him—all twelve discs would be shattered by that kinetic blast. And a strong enough which could have snuffed out such powerful flames, was beyond Ardan’s ability to cast due to his lack of a Blue Star.
And so Ardan resorted to the one correct, if absurd, method of defense.
Skusty would have been proud…
The young man slammed his staff into the platform, and before Agatha’s monstrous attack struck home, four ice walls materialized around him, their sharp spikes cutting into his shoulders.
“Round!” trilled the chief judge at the table, and the stationary shield above the Rhombus promptly swallowed both spells. “First point: Agatha Spree’s Resonated spell completed her combination and dealt damage to Ad Abar. Second point: Ad Abar, having erroneously formed an improper countermeasure against Agatha Spree’s spell, inflicted an injury upon himself and yielded one point to his opponent. To your corners, ten seconds!”
Ardi exhaled and gave himself a little shake, as if that might throw off the wave of fatigue creeping over him. His mind was gradually submerging into a cool, viscous wooliness.
“Not half bad, Ad!” Agatha called out merrily. “Good thing we’re in the Arena, otherwise they’d be scraping you off the walls of your own
Ardan, smiling absently, gave her an equally-absent nod. She was right. Had this been a real battle instead of a Magical Boxing duel, Ardan would’ve already been trudging along the paths of the Sleeping Spirits.
The judge began counting down, and Ardi and Agatha, both suddenly refocusing on their opponent, raised their staves above the Rhombus’ boards. There was no way Ardan could win now. However, he could if he achieved one single thing—getting that last, third point that would allow him to advance into the main tournament bracket.
“To battle!”
Ardan struck first. The butt of his staff touched the platform a hairsbreadth before Agatha’s did, prompting her to switch instantly to defense. Around her feet, a defensive seal seethed, rewriting itself on the fly even as Ardan’s own seal took shape.
Agatha’s eyebrows inched upward and her eyes went wide with surprise—perhaps an ordinary human wouldn’t have seen it at that distance, but Ardan was no ordinary human.
The seal—consuming his final accumulator—was taking far longer to form than any offensive spell ought to, but Ardan simply had no way to shape it faster.
By the time a small ice lynx slid off his staff tip, gliding forward through the streams of wet snow, Agatha had already surrounded herself with a fiery whirlwind again. All she’d been able to discern in his diagram was a fusion of wind and water, which formed ice. That was all.
Ardi, who nearly lost his balance as a sudden heaviness washed over him, still managed to conjure Only now did it become clear why Agatha had needed three red accumulators. This whole time, she had scarcely cast any energy-intensive spells, relying on combinations and on using her opponent’s Ley against him.
And now, from inside her fiery vortex, a whole volley of modified… came flying toward Ardan. One after another, stealing two red rays from Agatha with each shot, they slammed in a machine-gun spray against the discs, which were cracking and glittering with powdery shards.
It would’ve seemed like a completely useless cascade of spells if one didn’t know what it was leading to. Agatha needed to inflict no actual harm with her avalanche of spells. Not in the least. All she was aiming to do was spill enough Ley into the arena to leverage her Resonance.
And said Resonance did not tarry. The fire vortex that, by all indications, Agatha had prepared specifically for Ardi, compressed once more into a single sphere. Only this time, the kinetic energy didn’t launch it, but tore it apart into five pieces, fusing the flaming beads the color of molten gold. They hung like a ghastly corona over Agatha’s staff.
—it was a spell that, under other circumstances, would have cost Agatha nine red rays, three green ones, and four Blue Star ones, but thanks to Resonance, she merely had to shatter her last accumulator.
She gave her staff a slight swing, and one of the pearls shot forth, punching through the last three of Orlovsky’s discs in a single burst and, after slamming into the ground beside Ard, it exploded in a blinding flash. This would’ve been enough to burn through any of Ardan’s shields and take off his legs, too (). The young man, in flagrant violation of all rules of magical combat, leaped aside, no longer in contact with the ground.
Agatha, sighing in disappointment, sent three more spheres hurtling after him, leaving the final one in reserve just in case. A prudent decision.
Prudent… and at the same time, wrong.
Perhaps if she’d loosed all four at once, the duel would have ended in Ardan’s total defeat. But that was no blunder on Agatha’s part. There was simply no way that she could have anticipated that a Green Star Mage might also employ a delayed-action spell—something available only from the Blue Star onward.
The ice lynx, which had climbed a few dozen meters into the air, suddenly swelled in size. All this time, Ardi’s spell, thanks to its prototype transmutation links, had been absorbing the Ley from the ambient space. Like a time bomb.
A bomb that now burst in midair and turned into a multiton avalanche. Opening its maw wide—one that only vaguely resembled that of a lynx—it came crashing down with a roar. It hissed and melted as it engulfed and crushed the three flaming spheres of Blue Star caliber. It shrank to nearly twenty percent of its initial colossal mass, but even that remaining fifth was enough to force Agatha to expend her last pearl.
That one detonated right in front of the nearly-dissolved lynx’s jaws, obliterating the entirely, but in doing so, it nullified Agatha’s Resonance as well.
Ardan, breathing hard, leaned his full weight on his staff. Agatha, only a little pale, merely wiped the sweat from her brow.
“Shall we call it here?” She asked. “You have one red ray left; I still have one ray of each color.”
She wasn’t lying. Ardan had been keeping count as well. Both of them were out of accumulators, but Agatha, by virtue of an entire extra Star, had far more strength remaining.
“You’ve fought magnificently, Ad. I understand that you don’t want to yield, so…” Agatha raised her staff over the platform.
After all, Ard had already shown himself in the best possible light, hadn’t he? He had all but erased the gap of a full Star between them. Anyone would say that Ardan had achieved the impossible. A Green Star Mage who’d made a Blue Star one strain themselves in a fair duel? That alone was something to be proud of.
But why, then, could Ardan feel no pride? Why could he still not take his eyes off Agatha’s staff? Why could he hear in his mind Ergar’s quiet, visceral growl; Edward’s mocking, imperious comments; and Mshisty’s calm baritone?
For the first time in his life, Ardan Because now… now it mattered. Unlike his brawls with the predators of the Alcade’s expanses; unlike those silly troubles at the Grand University; unlike everything else—this duel against a Blue Star Mage, someone inherently far stronger than Ard, someone whom one of Ergar’s prime laws had forbidden him from fighting— mattered.
Time didn’t slow around him. It was simply that his tired mind sped up, if only briefly. Just enough for Ardan to hear a whisper. Playful and gleeful. It came from somewhere amid the languid snowflakes drifting down onto their heads and shoulders. Ardan heard laughter and felt a thrill, and couldn’t tell whether it belonged to a tiny fragment of the Name of Ice and Snow or to himself.
He wanted to win.
Agatha’s staff never managed to touch the battle-scarred platform. Its butt was ensnared by a barely-visible lattice of icy filigree that materialized midair, halting her motion for just a fraction of a second.
Just long enough for Ardan…
…to swing his right arm back and, with inhuman strength, hurl his own staff at his opponent. And before the thunderstruck Agatha could react, the ancient oaken branch slammed into her shoulder and, tearing through her clothing, grazed her delicate skin.
A crack of gunfire hammered his ears—the signal revolver.
“Match over!”