The Third Step: Chapter Fifty-Eight

I sat in the waiting room, a handful of other people buzzing around me, Dusk sitting on my shoulder. I took a long, slow, deep breath as I prepared for the first round of the Elysian Mastery Tournament.  

True to his word, the Craftsman had left my staff sitting on the nightstand of the room that the Silent River Sect had given to the competitors for me to find the following morning. It now revolved around in my ungated mana, allowing me to keep both of my hands free. I couldn’t direct its power quite as effectively without drawing it out, but my staff’s shape was fairly distinct. Best to keep people guessing, at least for now. 

I was pulled from my borderline meditation by one of the attendants, an Arcanist knowledge mage, who cast a handful of spells over Dusk and myself. I had initially assumed that I’d be searched with detection spells,but as a spatial mage, it was nearly impossible to actually check every nook and cranny where I might have hidden something. Instead, these spells were designed to detect if I used something against the tournament rules. After all, it didn’t matter if I had a Magi killing weapon tucked away in storage if I didn’t use it in the tournament. If I did violate the rules by drawing on something like my Arcanist level blademoss, it would trigger the defensive crest.

Said crest was the next thing that I was given, a smooth blue bracelet that molded to my wrist. They were staggeringly complex enchantments that had to have cost an absurd amount to produce, but they ran a thin current of magic through me, and would use a teleportation spell to pull me out an instant before I took a blow that would be considered lethal or debilitating, but let me fight through minor cuts and scrapes. Of course even with the crests, a group of healers, and the Healer himself all on standby to treat people, it was possible for accidents to happen, but nobody had died in nearly a century. Even then, it hadn’t been in the main tournament, but an accidental drowning in one of the ocean based events when their tethers had failed to pull them out of the water. 

I shook the thought of accidental death off as the attendant finished layering the spells on me and moved onto the next person to do the same thing. I closed my eyes and sunk into my mana-garden one last time, doing some last minute trimming, giving it an intentional and powerful cycle, and trying to ensure that I was in the absolute best state that I could manage, until the doors on the far side of the room slid open, revealing a long, flat field of grass – a strange breed that glowed with Arcanist level abnegation mana. 

Overhead there were eight floating circles of stone, also covered in the same grass, making slow, lazy orbits over the field, and a thick dome of shimmering white magic surrounding us, lighting up the whole field. From the audience’s perspective, it would be no more opaque than glass, but to us, we might as well have been in our own world. I was honestly glad that it shut them out. It made it easier to focus on performing my best, rather than on the tens of thousands of people in the crowd, or the massive recording crystals that would be broadcasting the fight out to everyone in the entire world. 

The River Lord, Patriarch of the Silent River Sect, slid through the dome so that he was floating over us, his hands spread wide. This close, I could see that he’d not only kept his eyes when taking on a human form, but also had patches of white and purple scales on the back of his hands, running up his arms. His silk outfit, the traditional battle outfit not entirely unlike the ancient witch or wizard robes of Mossford, fluttered in the wind around him as he swept his eyes over us. 

“One hundred and twenty eight of you enter,” he said. “Only sixty-four of you will remain in the tournament.” 

His voice was quiet, but somehow carried nevertheless. I suspected enchantments were involved, and they likely further projected his voice out to the crowd. 

“Begin!” he snapped. I was stunned for an instant, as I’d expected him to continue talking, but was snapped out of my shock by the sound of spells ripping through the air. 

I spun and unleashed my mana senses in a wave around me, casting Sky Dragon’s Senses as I did. I didn’t power any of my additional spells, not wanting to tip my hand so soon, but letting my senses ride through the waves of air, light, shadows, and moving particulates of other mana sources was enough for now. I spun out of the way of a blow, casting Lesser Image Recall and Refine Illusion in tandem to let it streak through a false copy of me, before I flicked my hand and released a ball of Foxfyre through the illusion. That ingrained effect was a strange one, as it felt like I was flicking it from my hand, only for it to launch out of the illusion. 

Even as I teleported us out of the way, a series of arrows was raining down across the field where I was. Each arrow glowed with the power of a spell interwoven into it. Even as they poured down on us, Dusk thrust her hand upward, launching a pulsing shockwave that battered them out of the sky. I skittered back and teleported off to one side, dismissing the illusion I’d left, even as a spear with a massive bladed head – halberd? Glaive? Guandao? I wasn't sure what it was – sliced through the air where I’d been an instant earlier. More slices of force shot toward me, nearly clipping my tail as I dove out of the way. 

Alright. I needed to put some distance between me and these people. There was a gumiho spell that Ikki had described, and putting it into practice had been easy enough: cloudwalking. 

A real gumiho would essentially forge clouds of of mana and their own body’s energy that they could stand on for an instant, letting them walk on air. It was horribly inefficient when it came to time and mana cost when compared to its fellow third gate flight spells, but it was a known ability of theirs. I imitated it, running into the air by casting an Immovable Lock on one leg at a time as I stepped, and pulling out some of the perpetual fog flowing through Dusk’s realm around the Mistshrooms and the outdoor fungal folk in order to imitate the appearance of cloudwalking. 

I had made it halfway to one of the nearby stone discs when I felt a flicker in the air from Sky Dragon’s Senses, and just barely managed to teleport out of the way of a sharp dagger slashing through the air. I turned to see a tall man with long, flowing dark hair. He had eight Force Hand spells floating around him, each one holding a dagger that glowed brightly with cutting enchantments, even as he maintained his flight spell. Given the rules of the tournament, he’d likely made them himself. I only had an instant to weigh the merits of forming hands that held the daggers, rather than just creating force daggers before he thrust one of his flesh hands out, and all of the blades were racing toward me. 

“Tricks and illusions won’t work on me! My hands can be anywhere, and you’ve chosen to fight me in the air!” 

Dusk laughed, calling out that the man had made a mistake as she punched out with a Sandstorm Lance. Her blow struck a translucent glowing bubble of force that formed around him, and stopped paying quite so much attention to their fight as I focused on the hands. I swept both of my arms out in a circle, quickly triggering the Captured Moments stored within them as I cast Lesser Image Recall. In a second, I’d formed eight illusionary hands of my own, and I called eight balls of Foxfyre through them. Purple flames were thrown at angles, striking the force hands, where the properties of devouring forged mana went to work. I cast a Material Echo to take my place, even as I teleported behind the bubble of the man and slammed two physical handfuls of Foxfyre into his bubble shield. 

It was already splintering with cracks, and my flame was enough to simply melt through the defense, where Dusk immediately caught him in a spinning orb of snow. The daggers, clutched in newly reforged hands, rushed at us, but I teleported Dusk to me, Foxstepped a dozen feet away, and launched one more wave of Foxfyre from my illusionary hands. Even though several of them missed as they weren’t directly in the line of the hand’s travel paths, it was clearly distracting, and bought me time to dismiss the illusions and flee. 

“Come back here and fight me like a man!” the dagger user shouted, even as I sprinted away on clouds. I considered that for a moment. I was confident in being able to beat the mage, given enough time, but not while keeping the disguise as a variant on a gumiho or similar fox breed. And did I even need to beat him? I just needed to be one of the sixty-four left standing, not necessarily eliminate anyone.

“No!” I shouted. Then I leapt, and was on top of one of the discs of stone. A fight was raging between three people atop it. On one side was a woman with a glowing enchanted sword while wearing what looked like full plate and kite shield, both made of some sort of green mineral I didn’t recognize. They were also covered in enchantments. Next to her was a man, flute pressed to his lips. As he played, I felt ambient energy in the entire area coursing into the song, building up as it spun into the form of spell patterns.

On the other side, the guy who I’d seen on the train was floating, staff in hand, tiny motes of lightning spinning around his body in a defensive lattice. Below him was a pair of enormous crabs, easily the size of my body, made out of what looked to be coal or charcoal, streaked with flame, while a strange creature that looked like a fish made of gemstones floated around his head in the air, and a sparkling mouse that looked to be carved entirely from gold perched on his shoulder. There was even more magic coming from him since he’d dropped the veil, and I could have sworn he was somehow bonded to both of the creatures, the tattoo I could feel around his head, and the tri-colored staff. Maybe other things, too. Weird.

Even as I landed, the fight was on, the knight woman catching a hammering blow from one of the crabs on her shield while striking at the other, as the man’s flute crackled and unleashed a wave of sonic power right at the summoner, who met it with a burst of his own sound magic, while he pointed his staff at one of the crabs. I felt the resonance rush from the staff in a line that struck one of the ember-crabs, whose magic immediately increased in potency began to crack the kite shield, spewing flames at the woman from its mouth like a normal crab would spew bubbles.

I tossed a handful of Foxfyre through the air where the enviornmental energy was gathering again, disrupting it slightly, and the woman groaned, even as the fluting man spun and shot sonic energy at me. I teleported to the side, letting the soundwaves explode a Material Echo instead.

That instant of distraction was all the opening that the summoner needed. He swept down two fingers and a whip of lightning the thickness of my entire arm slammed into the back of the flutist’s head. To the musician’s credit, three quick notes was enough to create a spinning mesh of defensive lightning that stopped him from being eliminated, even as he was thrown off the side of the disk. 

The armored woman let out a shout, slamming her sword at the empowered crab, even as the other one circled her, snipping and spewing flames. I flickered next to her, letting a fist crash into the side of her head, before another whip of lightning struck her. There was a warp of space, and then she was gone, even while the flutist rose up. A flock of sparrows, each one crackling with lightning, swarmed him, unleashing bolts. That was when a Sandstorm Lance slammed into the flutist’s head, and he vanished as well. 

I tensed as I turned to face the summoner, prepared to flee if things got out of hand. He looked at me, tilting his head as he listened to the tiny mouse chittering away on his shoulder. He didn’t dismiss the flock of sparrows or the crabs, but nor did he attack me. Instead, he asked a question. 

“Help me hold the disc?”