“We’re being booed,” he explained. “That means we’ve made it.”
“I think you may be confused about how humans show emotion.”
“No, no, think about it—you see a cool act, someone wins at a sports game, and you get into it, right? It’s easy to cheer. But when you hate someone, that’s when you’ve seen them enough to learn about them and care about them. We’re not simply some extra team anymore.”
“Uh…huh.” She looked dubious, but as their platform reached ground level, she plastered a smile on and waved. “That’s weird, the countdown hasn’t started yet.”
“No team has an advantage in this match,” the Master of Ceremonies announced. “However, there is one difference between this match and the others…”
The whole arena seemed to hold its breath, and Justin realized he was doing the same.
“Magic is unrestricted in this round,” the man shouted.
“Yes!” Justin yelled. He pumped his fist in the air.
“You can use magic?” Tina asked him.
“Hell yeah. I can set all kinds of things on fire—and reveal hidden things. And make a sword of fire. Oh, hell yes, I am so here for this.”
“Good. That’s good.” She danced nervously on the balls of her feet. “One more thing, Justin.”
“Yeah?” He darted her a glance but he barely paid attention. The countdown had begun in the sky and he scanned the vague outlines of the landscape.
“This doesn’t change the plan,” she warned him. “Remember that, Justin. It doesn’t change the plan. We find a defensible location and we wait. Okay?”
“Yeah. Yes.” Justin looked at her and nodded. “Of course. But we have magic once we get there.” He held one palm up and made a fireball.
“Oh, shit.” Tina’s eyes widened. “You actually can make—” She broke off as the walls disappeared.
He had never been to Scotland, but this was how he imagined it. The landscape seemed made half of rolling hills and half of jutting outcrops of rock that were mossy on one side and chalky white on the other. The air seemed to hold mist, cold as it broke against his skin, and he noticed different parts of the landscape appear and disappear.
For a split-second, he wondered if the people in the stands saw the mist or not.
Justin exhaled a breath and did the spell to reveal hidden items. He pictured a wave ebbing away from a beach, leaving shells and sand in its wake, and he was pleased to see several caches illuminate. Three were near his platform and a second-tier one was equidistant between their platform and the one that held Tayr.
“There,” Tina called and pointed at an outcrop. “That looks like a place where we will be defended from two of three sides, and it has high ground. You hold it, I’ll get the weapons.”
“Good. There, there, and there.” He pointed to the first, second, and third-tier caches. The third-tier one was close to the first-tier.
They nodded at one another and leapt down from the platform. The ground was surprisingly slick under his boots. He grimaced, regained his footing, and raced forward. As he ran, power coiled in his palms and his magic bar in the top left of his screen, which had been rendered in gray during the past matches, now glowed a steady blue.
Magic, at last. He was excited for this. The question was, which of the other teams had magic users?
He watched from inside the tumble of rocks as the Twins pushed directly toward him. “Tina! We’ll have company soon.”
Tina called something in return, which he hoped was an agreement. She didn’t sound panicked, anyway.
Dexi and Callie looked annoyingly sure-footed on the slick ground. He couldn’t make out their faces but he knew it was them. The two figures practically oozed arrogance as they ran. If they had stopped to pick weapons up, he hadn’t seen it.
Tayr circled behind the Twins—or, at least, he was fairly sure he saw flickers of people. He leaned forward and wished he had a spell for distance vision. He yelped when Tina arrived behind him with a clatter, and she dropped prone to avoid the fireball he barely refrained from throwing.
“No own goals,” she admonished him.
“Right. Sorry.” He gestured for her to look. “Tayr’s trying to pick the Twins off.”
She settled beside him. “Finally, a use for the fact that I can barely see at close range.”
He gave her a horrified look. “How do you fight one-on-one?”
“I aim for the blur,” she said and failed to reassure him at all. “Okay—Tayr has two of