“It’s a magical passageway or door to somewhere else,” he explains.
“I know what a portal is,” I tell him with a roll of my eyes. “I mean, what is a portal in Ludares?”
“Exactly the same thing,” Eden tells me. “When you’re up here so close to the North Pole, several portals exist anyway, in nature. Ludares kind of takes advantage of that. Some of the school staff taps into the same kind of energy that opens portals between the poles and the sun and channels it into portals all over the arena that you can fall into.”
“Ours don’t take you to the sun, though,” Macy finishes. “They just take you around the arena. But each one is different, and you don’t know where you’re going to be when you enter a portal. You may end up at the finish line, or you may end up all the way at the other end of the field and you have to start over.”
“So I just jump into a portal over there”—I gesture to an area right inside the field’s boundaries—“and I could end up all the way over there?” I point to the goalpost.
“Exactly!” Eden tells me with a grin that lights up her whole face. “Or you could end up over there.” She points in the opposite direction. “With half of the opposing team crawling up your ass.”
“That does sound like fun,” I say, tongue totally in cheek, but the others just laugh.
“Once you play it, you’ll see how cool it is,” Xavier assures me. “Especially since everyone gets to use their magic however they want—so the game gets really wild sometimes.”
“Right?” Eden agrees. “Remember sophomore year, when Alejandro turned everyone on the opposing team into turtles and then he and his teammates just ran the ball all the way down the field?”
“Well, until the witch used up all her energy and couldn’t block the opposing wolves who broke free and ran them down,” Xavier adds with a gleam in his eyes.
“I remember Sancha turning herself into a giant snapping turtle and nearly snapping Felicity’s hand right off. That was something to see,” Flint says.
“Or when Drew turned the entire arena into a lightning storm and Foster nearly got struck?” Jaxon reminisces.
“My dad was so mad. He walked around with his hair sticking up for three days straight.” Macy giggles.
“So yeah,” Jaxon tells me. “Lots of wild times on the Ludares field.”
A horrifying thought occurs to me. “Can’t the dragons just burn everyone on the other team?” And then another thought. “Can’t the vamps just fade to the end and win in thirty seconds?”
Xavier’s grin gets even wider. “I like how this one thinks.”
But Jaxon shakes his head and clarifies, “There are magical safeguards that prevent any spell or speed burst lasting more than ten seconds. Think of it as everyone wearing a personal handicap device. Our abilities are tempered.” Jaxon winks at me. “Otherwise, obviously, I’d win in seconds.”
Everyone laughs at his joke.
Everyone except Hudson, who turns his attention from studying Xavier to Jaxon, his eyebrows raised. “And I thought my ego was huge.”
“So how do you win?” I snark. “Whoever’s not dead or a turtle by the end?”
“We’re not quite that sadistic,” Eden says with a laugh, “but I like your style.”
Xavier picks up where Macy and Eden left off, his green eyes dancing with excitement. “Whoever gets the ball over the other team’s goal line first wins. No excuses. No second chances.”
“That’s it? You just run the hot ball down the field and cross a goal line with it?” I ask.
“Don’t forget the ‘try not to die’ portion of that equation,” Jaxon tells me.
“Yeah,” Eden agrees. “And believe me, that’s easier said than done at least half the time. Especially since this is the big magic show of the year—everyone is using their powers at the most spectacular level trying to shock and awe the other team.”
“And everyone else in the arena,” Xavier adds.
“True dat,” Flint agrees with the biggest grin I’ve ever seen from him, and that’s saying something.
“So, just to be clear, there’re a bunch of portals you can wander into all over the stadium.”
“Yeah.” Flint grins. “I mean, not now. They set them up the day of the event, but yeah. It’s super fun.”
I nod. “And even if you’re almost at the goal line, if you fall through a surprise portal the last couple of seconds, then you could be