“What’s taking them so long?” complained a thin onlooker.
“Their spymaster’s not paying attention, look at her! She’s not even facing them.”
“That one short kid’s saying something.”
“Is he old enough to be here?”
Teal’s thumbs circled the other as she watched from the frontmost row. “Do you think the Young Master will win?”
“I do not know. I do think it is, however, unlikely he will succeed,” she replied.
Teal pursed her lips. It was rare for the Young Master to go outside the palace. She didn’t want this limited freedom he had to be taken away so soon. He also seemed different ever since his bracelet went missing. She had a clue to who may have stolen it but it was hard to find evidence.
“I-Is there a reason for that?”
“Those two young men,” she pointed to the blue haired pair, “Are the twin sons of Abudan Warf, a Watcher who also holds the military rank of Elder Demon. He is a strong man and I have heard his children, especially the eldest and those two, take after him.”
“What about the Young Master’s training then?” she asked.
“Teal, your worrying will not help him.”
Her shoulders sagged. She shook herself up and forced her hands onto her lap. No fiddling, good posture, deep breath. That would calm the mind.
Alexandra continued unexpectedly, “The gap between him and the children of noble houses will be noticeable, I presume. His training began much later than theirs and he disregarded many sessions while at the Loftus House as well. While the Young Master has acquired Raah, a skill even many adults do not possess, it will do little here. Even his greatest advantage, the amount of Essence holds, will be rendered mute by the difference of age.”
The grim remark left by Alexandra did not raise her hopes at all. He still hadn’t recovered from the events at the Loftus Manor after all. Had she the authority, she would have postponed his training for a while longer but she had neither the power nor the right. She would have to work harder.
More time passed and the crowd’s displeasure grew to the point where, had Overlord Kaal’un not been present, food items may have gotten thrown. The Young Master’s group dispersed, spreading themselves evenly apart. Their spymaster arrived in the middle of the arena where both guides for each side and Overlord Kaal’un were present.
“Team One wil ask their question first,” announced the Overlord.
Team One was the team of the twins.
“Is your king a man or woman?” asked the man with the pony-tail.
“A man,” the freckled girl answered. Teal squirmed a bit in her seat. “My turn. Is your king a man or a woman?”
“I will refuse that question.”
It made sense he would. Both sides had a near equal balance of the sexes and such a question narrowed the potential candidates in half. It would have been the best question for the spymaster on the Young Master’s team to refuse as well but it was too late.
She gestured to him and he shook his head.
“Go again. I know you’ll just refuse my question anyway.”
She snorted, “Alrighty then, are one of those two the king?” she pointed to the twins.
“What?” he looked to the Overlord and the guides. “That kind of question isn’t allowed.”
“No,” the Overlord said. “It is allowed. The restriction applied to the specific question, “Who is the king”, nothing else.”
The Overlord’s clarification hit the crowd in a collective wave. Teal verbalized her realization, adding to the sudden noise in the stands. Among those in the Young Master’s group, someone must have known the identities of the twins and devised a plan with that information. Their blue hair, reminiscent of her own, distinguished them as descendants of the northern territory.
Hesitation and frustration seeped into his voice, “Yes…” he finally replied. She waited for his final question. Perhaps knowing it would be refused but still holding onto the humiliation suffered mere moments ago, he asked, “Is your king one of those two farthest in the back?”
The two people he referred to were the arrogant noble boy who greeted them when they arrived, Bilal Ganton, and the Young Master. It was a pointless question as she still retained her refusal.
The freckled girl glanced back and it looked like the Young Master nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”
“What?” she shot out of her seat, hands gripping the rails as she leaned over the edge. Her voice, loud as it was, mixed in with the thousands of other cries. “R-Refuse! Why didn’t you refuse?”
“Teal,” Alexandra’s voice, even when thousands reverberated through the air, cut straight through. “Sit. That is no way to act.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” she said, the wind knocked from her non-existent wings. What was the girl thinking? In spite of the absurdity of the situation, a part of her was glad. The Young Master got a big role! Although it hadn’t been confirmed, she knew it was true, or at least hoped so.
“You didn’t refuse?” he seemed to fight the urge to ask the Overlord about the situation. “If you’re pitying me it’ll be your mistake,” he warned. The two spymasters returned to their teams.
“The match will begin,” he paused with his arm in the air.
A scramble ensued as each side got into position. The Young Master and the arrogant boy remained in the back, protected by three of their own arranged in a triangular formation with the blonde noblewoman as the focal point of the defense. In regards to the assignment of roles, she predicted that three of the five in the back were defenders, while the Young Master and another could use the bolt spell. Reason for this assessment being that they had, unfortunately, not yet taught him the barrier spell.
Even as inexperienced as she was with magic, Teal knew the spell. It was the first spell she was taught while she trained to become the Young Master’s caregiver and one of the few spells cast with the ancient language as its base. Simple as the spell was, Alexandra decided he was not to learn it yet. Her reasoning being that he’d lean too heavily on such a spell and neglect training his body.
Another rationale was because of its draining nature. As useful as it proved for protection, maintaining one proved difficult and they often broke after a single offensive spell if not constantly supplied with Essence.
Six of the Young Master’s group broke off into three pairs and went to the vanguard. Five others were in the middle, acting as a buffer for the Young Master. The opposing team was all lined up near the border of their respective side. The twins formed the center with two others and the remaining twelve were stacked at the ends.
“Now,” the Overlord declared. The moment he started the match, the twins unleashed Essence charged bolts of fire and air. A barrier was erected but shattered on impact.
A counter bolt flew at the twins. They dodged and closed the gap. Their blunted swords flashed and the pair at the front fell like flies. They clutched their arms, groaning in agony and scrambling away from the trailing enemy, the spymaster and a girl in a simple black dress. Those in the way of the twins retreated, searching for an angle of attack.
Pressed against the wall, two pairs of the Young Master’s team held off against six people each. Against such an overwhelming force, they gave up more ground, falling back deeper into friendly territory.
Another issue with barriers related to their dual edged nature. As long as it remained up, offense wasn’t an option. Weapons and fists slammed against the barrier, cracks forming wherever they landed.
Whenever those cracks, signalling the breaking point, appeared, the caster would pour more energy into repairing it. It was only a matter of time until they succumbed. The twin brothers by themselves were steadily gaining the upper hand. Two more of the Young Master’s team had exhausted their strength against the twins, using their weapons as support for their collapsing bodies.
The vanguard of the Young Master’s team, who dealt with the remaining twelve members, unleashed their gifts. Claws, horns, and tails grew from their bodies. Seeing the change in their opponents, the twins’ team unleashed theirs as well. Why now of all times? It may have made sense for the nobleborn, brought up to hold their blessings in high regard and bring them forth only within a proper setting, however, that seemed inapplicable to the commonborn. Their gifts were respected and treasured, sure, but the restraint surrounding their use should not have been a factor.
Unless…
The barriers shattered. Now exposed, the groups of six cast spell after spell. The arena rocked at the combined power and Teal, sitting right above the cause, reared back as their attacks kicked up clouds of dust.
She couldn't believe her eyes. As the arena cleared, the fading golden hue of the half-destroyed barriers shone. It shouldn’t have been possible. Reconjuration of a destroyed barrier was another weakness particular to the spell. Given every benefit, even with the grace of a spell circle, the lag between would have been one second even at the shortest. That one second would have been enough for the bolts to slip through.
Then she realized it. The new barriers weren’t created by the same people. Of the Young Master’s vanguard team, five of the six were defenders. The twins’ members looked at the barriers in a daze.
Three of the Young Master’s group had fled to the walls of the arena, allowing the twins to march forward. Although they expended at least three bolts each, and pushed past the front and middle enemies, they showed no signs of fatigue. Their blessings weren’t even used.
“It would have been smarter to have attacked while it was only us,” one of the twins remarked.
“Now you’ve lost your chance at victory,” the other added.
Two from the Young Master’s side had their gloves taken and laid sprawled on the ground. The pony-tailed spymaster and the girl in the black dress emerged from the side of the blue-haired nobles.
Someone on the twins’ team had caught on, “Something’s wrong!”
And they hurried to warn the four, “Watch out!”
Too late. The core of Team One, the twins, the spymaster, and the girl in the black dress, were bombarded from the front and side by seven different casters. Right before the spells struck, golden light surrounded them, but its light scattered in the air like mist. Teal shot up from her seat as if the higher vantage would pry out the conclusion a second sooner.
The air cleared and her hopes were dashed. Torn were their clothes, faces covered in the stirred dust that turned their gloves brown, but the four silhouettes stood tall after the chaos of the unified strike. The Young Master, with his hand planted on his knee, panting, looked on with disbelief frozen firm onto the faces of him and his comrades.
Pearl white claws and horns, scales that protected their necks and covered their arms proved the deciding factor. On the hand of the taller twin she spotted the mark of the king, unblemished by the grime.
And, at the right hand of the other, she saw...
