sticks till I fell, keeping just out of flame distance. The fuel on my avatar’s left hand was gone, the bronze blackened. But the righthand piece was still there and I had a couple of chips of rune-carved wood on my root vest. Activating a chip, I tossed it left handed into the pack of improbably proportioned female figures while pulling the little bronze sword. The chip exploded in a puff of fire, scattering the Barbizoids. One was burned outright, one fell, and the two highest up the hill held their positions and their sticks. But they were now off balance and I was close enough to rush them, my sword hitting their sticks hard enough to break them, my backswings knocking them off their plastic feet. I grabbed two seismic stones from my vest and prepared to throw them into the dirt just above the fallen dolls. Avalanche time.
“Enough. I’m calling it for the mud kid,” my aunt said before I could fire off my rock grenades.
“But he cheated! He used magic,” Erika immediately protested. Back on the other side of the course, I stood up and moved toward the class, Delwood following behind, looking thoughtful.
“Nothing wrong with magic, as long as it’s just used on yer avatar or on anything the avatar carries. He made little Molotovs is all. But look at his figure, will you. Made of fire resistant mud over a metal frame. Is that your bracelets, is it?” she asked me.
I nodded, walking the dirt dude closer to the class so they could see him.
“Brass feet and hands for digging, climbing, and even fighting. Nice. Even a wee little sword and a vest of roots to carry his bombs and… rocks?” Aunt Ash looked to me for an explanation.
I pulled pen and paper and wrote. Seismic sensors or to cause avalanches.
“Ah, ye see. He can’t use magic on the course but he can on a stone what his fella there was carrying.”
“But he’s been playing this his whole life,” Paige protested.
“Course he has, dear. I expected him to clean ye all up. But more to the point, he used material that worked for him to build a player that was much better suited to the game then a plastic bimbo, now didn’t he?” Ashling answered. “So here’s the thing. I want you all to design something between now and next Monday that uses your strengths and shields your weaknesses. I expect a much different outcome when next we play, and I expect that yon laddie will help you with yer ideas and such. Afterall, he’s always been wanting skilled opponents, he has. Ye can also be thinking up some better tactics. Ye’ve got a tactical expert in Caeco here, and I think ye could be employing yer classmates skills better, as well. Think like a team, not individual heroes. Use the remaining time to study the game pitch and ask questions.”
A hand shot up, Michelle’s.
“Yes dear?” my aunt asked.
“Okay, I get that Declan is freaky strong, especially for a boy, but how can any one witch hold enough power to make all that dirt take a form and walk like a puppy—I don’t think my entire circle at home could do that.”
“Ah, that’s an excellent question, dear, something I meant to discuss but it slipped me mind. Okay, so how did me boy work so much power? Any guesses?” Aunt Ash asked.
“Human sacrifice?” Erika joked. At least I think she was joking, but then, I hadn’t thought she had much of a sense of humor before this.
“Actually, that’s one way to do it, harvesting the life energy of a ritually murdered human. Is that what ye did, boy?” she asked me. I shook my head. “No? I guess not.”
She put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “What Declan did was a bit of a trade secret to me clan. Ex-clan, that is. The main method for using the power, as ye all know, is to absorb energy and hold it inside yourself. You psychics do that, too. Consider it a reservoir, a pool of magic, or for you modern thinkers, a battery of sorts. The amount of power each witch can hold is part of her individual strength. The other part of magical strength is how much ye can channel, like the difference between a drinking straw and a fire hose, ye see?
“And me lad over there can handle a bunch of both, but that’s not what he did, right? How do