The next major item on my agenda was to visit Professor Vellum. She was the closest thing I had to an Enchanting mentor, as eccentric as she was, and I needed her advice. But first, it was finally time to go back to class.
Chapter III – Mismatch
If I’d wanted to take it slowly, I probably could have skipped a few days of class without a tremendous risk to my grades.
My next class on the schedule happened to be one of Lord Teft’s: dueling class. That would have made it even easier to skip, since he knew about my situation.
But I wasn’t interested in a vacation. I’d seen how far behind I was in terms of raw power in the tower, and I needed all the fighting practice I could get.
More importantly, I needed every point I could earn.
Not only was I still worried about graduating, I also knew that with the growing chaos in my life, it was likely that my second year would be even harder.
The points I earned this year impacted my placement for the second year, if I graduated. That meant that getting as high of a score as physically possible was a priority, because I wanted to have a safety net for the second year.
Finishing my second year with a high score was also a must, because I wanted to be able to choose to be assigned to be a climber. The knowledge that Tristan was alive hadn’t changed that in the slightest.
If he’d already been stuck in the spire for five years, clearly there was something keeping him from leaving. Being assigned to a climber role would give me the best chance of figuring that out and getting him home.
I’d obviously get him out sooner if I could, but I couldn’t count on that.
Finally, I had one more reason to go to the class: I wanted to see how my new attunement worked in action.
That wasn’t going to be ideal, however, since today’s dueling class was dedicated to something we rarely seemed to discuss—
Dueling.
We were actually fighting duels.
That…still wasn’t exactly my area of strength, but I did have a much better chance than when I’d first started the semester.
Knowing Teft, there’d be some kind of spin on it, but I didn’t know exactly what that was going to be when I walked in.
Teft leaned up against the lectern, addressing the class. “While most classes will have final exams in the last two weeks of the school year, I’ve found that I get far better results when my students aren’t prepared. And thus, today, we begin the first stage of your final exams.”
He waved a hand. “Follow me to the dueling arena, class.”
I winced. I wasn’t ready for a final exam, but that wasn’t my primary concern.
Sera was sitting right next to me. She still couldn’t use her attunement.
But Teft knew that, didn’t he? Would he pair her with someone who wasn’t a good duelist, or maybe let her skip the test until she recovered?
We exchanged doubtful looks as we stood and followed Teft out of our usual open-air lecture area toward… I wasn’t really sure. I thought that classroom was considered the dueling arena, although we’d used different rooms for a few training exercises.
I should have known better than to expect a normal dueling arena out of Teft.
True, the location he led us toward was a sports arena — one used for vaban, a popular ball game designed for attuned. The vaban court itself, however, had been modified for our activity.
The arena floor was gray stone, about a hundred feet across and roughly fifty feet wide. Normally, the only marks would be dividing lines every ten feet to mark increments of distance.
Today, the court had been covered in square tiles etched with runes.
With a snap of Teft’s fingers, the squares began to glow a variety of colors—
In specific: red, orange, yellow, and green.
I noted that a handful of squares remained unchanged as well.
I did not like where this was going.
I hated colored tile puzzles.
From the groans of the students around me, I could tell that many of the other students agreed.
Teft gestured to the battlefield. “Today, you will be fighting in team matches on the field below. Rather than traditional dueling, this challenge combines the difficulties of dueling with the risks of a standard format for tower chambers — tiles with different magical effects.”
He glanced around to the class. “For the moment, divide yourself into teams of four.”
I breathed a sigh of relief at that, since I already had three people with me.
“Where’s Roland?” Patrick asked, glancing around.
I frowned, both because adding Roland into the formula would disrupt my perfect team of four and because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him.
Where was Roland?
He wasn’t in class, certainly.
“Don’t see him,” I replied, “But we’ve got a solid team of four right here.” I was talking about Patrick, Marissa, and Sera, of course.
“Might not be so wise, m’lord Corin. I’m still not in the best of fightin’ shape, nor is Sera. Maybe we could get a pass, given that we’re still recovering?”
It was savvy of Marissa to phrase it that way, since it didn’t put the entire burden on Sera. And, in fairness, Marissa was probably still recovering from that burst of extra mana that Katashi had given her. It had only been a few days since then, even if it felt like weeks.
…Wait; did Katashi use the Arbiter attunement to give her that power increase? Was his ability the same one that I have?
It seemed functionally similar, even if Katashi had the extra flashiness of drawing on the extra line of the rune for her next attunement level. He’d given her more than twice her previous maximum in mana, too, which I wasn’t supposed to do…
…But maybe that was the reason it was taking her so long to recover. It was possible Katashi had risked her health by giving her so much power at once, and it was also possible that he knew better than the Researcher did exactly how much power was safe to transfer at once.
Maybe there were other, more complex factors in play — for example, the Guardian attunement was defensive in nature, and that might have allowed Marissa to tolerate more mana safely. I didn’t know, but it seemed like it was worth researching eventually, or just asking Katashi about it if I saw him and didn’t have anything more important to discuss.
“I’ll go ask Teft if we can get you two excused from this, or maybe all four of us.” Patrick offered, jarring me out of my introspection. I nodded as Patrick headed in Teft’s direction.
I turned to Sera in the meantime. “Have you been feeling any better?”
Sera shrugged.
“I went to the Divinatory to do some research earlier. I found a few options we can investigate. I’ll tell you more after class.”
She gave me the weakest smile I’d ever seen, then turned her head away.
Patrick came back with Teft a few moments later.
Teft walked straight over to Sera. “Miss Cadence, I was aware that you were injured in the tower, but not the degree of severity. That said, there will be many times in life when you are forced to fight at a disadvantage.”
He folded his arms. “Given your circumstances, it is within reason for you to skip this week’s test to recover. If you choose to do so, I will give you a below average, but passing grade for the exam. Due to the structure, it would not be possible to take the test at a later time. Would you like to take that option? This is not a trick question.”
Sera glanced to the rest of us, her lips twisted into a frown.