Chapter 102: Reunite, pt. 1 (Patreon)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1poeyeyWtMm2DuYF04k7370CZ8_9JMmFpZKpIu5_CBQs/edit?usp=sharing

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As Cayden followed the rest of his teammates into the tunnels of the arena behind Instructor Blyre, he considered their opponents.

It was obvious that at least some of the assigned teams at the academy had been chosen intentionally. Delphia’s admission of her having the choice to join a fully stealth-focused team made that clear. And Ignar’s team was an example of that.

Everyone on the team was fast.

Cayden had no personal experience with any of Ignar’s teammates, but he’d sparred enough with Ignar to grow extremely familiar with the boy’s agile dodge-tank style of frontlining – and Ignar was reportedly one of the slower ones on his team. Only the team’s support, a boy who focused on setting semi-magical traps, was slower, and even he was reportedly much quicker than Cayden.

And Cayden was one of the faster ones on his team. Delphia was about on par with Cayden in terms of agility, due to her shaeden race, but Velic especially was much slower than anyone on the other team. And while Marvenal was quick when he needed to be, his stats were more balanced than the rest of theirs. Luckily, they weren’t entirely helpless against their opponents’ agility. Marvenal’s shadow-webbing would be extremely effective on anyone he managed to hit, and obviously nothing could outrun Velic’s lasers.

If it came down to a straight-up four-versus-four fight, Cayden figured it would entirely come down to how quickly their opponents could take down Velic – with him out of the picture, they’d be able to run circles around the rest of them.

But it wasn’t going to be a direct fight, Cayden reminded himself. And until they saw the nature of their variation, it was useless to speculate on refinements to their strategies, so he refocused on their surroundings as Instructor Blyre led them into a small room.

Dramatic as ever, Cassius stepped from the shadows to begin applying his skill, but his entrance was somewhat undercut by the sweat that was dripping from his brow. Eight applications of his skill at a time – Cayden wondered how close to his limit that was, and whether that was the reason for the gaps between each of the matches.

The room was silent as Cassius cast his skill, the tension between the two teams palpable. Cayden noticed Ignar giving him a half-nod of greeting from across the room, and Cayden returned it without looking at him directly. They were enemies now, but he hoped there would be no bad blood between them after the match; he quite enjoyed his spars with the slitherkin boy.

Eventually, two more instructors showed up to lead the teams to their respective starting territories. And before he knew it, Cayden and his teammates stood in the rain around their lover, waiting for the match to start.

“Students in position…begin!” Instructor Blyre’s magically-amplified voice echoed over the arena, and their focus zeroed in on the lover, eager to determine their variation.

“No obvious physical changes,” Velic noted, hefting the pole. He swung it around himself twice before frowning. “Doesn’t seem different at all, from what I can see.”

He handed it to Marvenal, who began his own examination with his higher perception.

“...is it possible for there to be no variation?” Delphia asked.

“Perhaps. Though I would have thought an instructor would have mentioned it if that were the case. I find it more likely that the variation only triggers under certain circumstances.”

“What do we do, then? Just assume it’s normal?” Cayden asked. It pained him to defer so heavily to Velic, but the noble boy was their leader – his ego wasn’t as important as following the established chain of command, something Instructor Barry had been extremely insistent as to the importance of.

“Hm. As of now, I think we can…” Velic began, but before he could finish his sentence, he was cut off by a quiet chime from the lover.

All eyes turned to the pole in Marvenal’s hands. The rogue looked confused until his own eyes widened and he stepped away – leaving the lover behind, floating immobile in the air.

“...well that’s different,” Cayden remarked after a few moments of stunned silence. Velic opened his mouth to respond when the lover emitted another chime before dropping to the forest floor.

Hesitantly, Marvenal picked it back up and swung it around himself. “Seems back to normal,” he stated.

They crowded around the lover even closer, each searching for what could have been the trigger to lock it in space. They were wasting precious minutes of the test, but understanding exactly how the variation worked was essential to choosing the correct strategy.

It took another two minutes, but eventually they figured it out. Every minute the lover would lock itself in space, similar to how Cayden’s old [Hold the Line] skill functioned, for around ten seconds. For those seconds, it was impossible to move – at least by anything at their team’s disposal – until the spacial lock was removed. The length of the spatial lock didn’t seem set, as Cayden counted out a different duration each time, but from their small sample size, ten seconds was a good approximation.

“Well, we can definitely work with this,” Velic said with a growing smile.

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Cayden ran through the forest, heedless of the undergrowth he stomped his way through. What had been only a light rain earlier that morning had increased as the day wore on, and visibility was at a minimum. It wasn’t quite at what Cayden would describe as a ‘downpour’, but it was getting close.

Luckily, he had the advantage of watching the previous matches. So far, each team had started out roughly in the same area of their territory. The arena was large, but not that big. He just needed to get to the correct area, and he’d be able to hear the chime that signaled the start of the variation.

The variation certainly complicated things, but Cayden’s saw it as an absolute positive for their team. On a day with poor visibility and without anyone who could keep up with their opponents’ speed, the best they could’ve possibly hoped for against Ignar’s team would have been a draw. But with the variation locking down the lover for ten seconds out of every minute, their options expanded significantly.

As expected, Cayden ran through a few traps placed by the opposing team’s support. They were semi-magical traps – according to Velic’s report, that meant that while the triggers for the traps were magical in nature, the traps themselves were entirely mundane. Arrows launched from trees, spiked poles ejected themselves from the ground, and nets draped themselves over Cayden as he ran, but nothing could slow him down for more than a few seconds. That was the downside of the traps themselves being mundane – they could do little against someone with as high of vitality and strength as Cayden. Not when his opponent had so little time and materials to set them up.

Cayden suspected that there was also magic involved in that process too, or else it would have been impossible to set up so many traps in such a short time, even accounting for his opponent’s high agility. He’d hoped to use the traps as a guide to find the lover, assuming that the traps would encircle his target, but his opponents seemed to account for this – the traps were spread more or less evenly near the border between the two territories, and after pushing through a few layers of traps, he encountered no more.

He ran until he could see the far side of the arena at the rear of his opponents’ territory, and then he paused. He knew he was close to where previous teams started – he could see the footprints in the mud and even the four protruding earthen spires that marked where the previous teams had fought – but unfortunately, he saw no signs of Ignar, his teammates, or the lover. He waited, hoping to hear the chime of the lover, but all he could hear was the dripping of raindrops. With a mutter of frustration, he chose a direction at random and resumed his run.

There was no hope of Cayden ‘tracking’ the lover. Between the rain and disturbances from previous matches, any clues that a skilled tracker might pick up were all but lost in the noise – and Cayden was far from a skilled tracker. He just had to hope he got lucky, and…

He paused, straining his ears and looking to where he thought he heard a chime.

Cayden couldn’t see anything, but that wasn’t saying much in all the rain. He took a step toward where he thought the noise came from, on the alert for traps and ambushes. He took another step…

Ignar stepped out of the shadows of the trees in front of him, his tail dragging behind him in the mud and grass.

“Well, well, well…fancy seeing you here.”

Cayden raised his claws and took a step back, on the alert for Ignar’s teammates.

“Don’t bother,” Ignar continued. “Seamus wanted to be the one to guard our lover with traps, but I talked him out of it. As useful as his traps are, I doubt they would have been enough to do more than slow you down. Me, on the other hand…” He drew his twin grey shortswords. “We know I can stop you.”

“That’s in the sparring ring,” Cayden finally responded. He wasn’t sure why Ignar was stalling – perhaps the noble boy wasn’t quite as confident in his ability to defeat Cayden as he stated. But Cayden wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. “I’ve got a few tricks that I think might surprise you.”

“Heh, I could say the same. I guess we’ll just have to see who’s tricks are better.”

Cayden’s eyes continued to dart around the clearing as Ignar simply stared at him. Neither moved to engage the other as they stood in a temporary fragile truce.

From behind Ignar, a gentle chime sounded – and both boys moved.

Ignar moved back, his form already blurring into his escape skill as he retreated. That was his plan, Cayden realized – to stall Cayden until the lover lost its spatial lock, and use the next minute and his superior agility to escape, likely while the rest of his team retrieved his own lover.

But as fast as Ignar was, all Cayden had to do was turn his head. For the first time since he’d entered the arena, Cayden truly looked at someone not on his team – and Ignar stumbled into the dirt out of his escape skill.

The One Who Watches (passive): No evil shall escape your sight. No movement abilities can activate under your gaze.

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