“All goes well?” Baelin asked.

The ancient wizard floated high in the sky, speaking to what seemed to be nothing but empty air. Silence for five heartbeats followed his words, and then-

Whooosh!

-the wind rose up around him, rushing through his beard-braids and billowing his robes. His bronze beard clasps tinkled.

The wind carried a voice from the grounds of the university.

“All is peaceful, chancellor,” said Gemini’s voice in the proper, clipped way she spoke. Baelin could almost imagine that stoic expression surrounding her eyepatch.

“No reports of trouble on campus?” the ancient wizard pressed. “Or from the city’s investigators?”

“None, chancellor. All goes well here, and—with any luck—the Games of Roal will end without any sign of that demon summoning menace.”

“I see…” Baelin said. “Very well, thank you for the update. Good work. Roal would be proud.”

“Of course, chancellor,” The Watcher said.

The wind died down as the conversation ended.

“Damn,” he swore quietly. “Not going to take the bait, are we?”

He had hoped that his presence on Oreca’s Fall Island—away from the Generasi mainland—would be enough to make the demon summoner try another attack. From his read of the criminal, he’d expected that it might, but so far, they had shown restraint. This demon summoner appeared to be someone who was acting from a mix of tactical thinking, and emotional drive.

Tactically, they’d taken advantage of his absence to strike, which was indeed a sound tactical adjustment after he had destroyed their initial demonic forces. They had also changed the target of each attack, presumably to keep Generasi’s protectors guessing.

There was a damnable subtlety to their methods…but their motives seemed far more obvious. They’d attacked priests and made no demands; despite the in-depth investigations he, The Watchers, and the city investigators had undertaken, they’d found no links to any other crimes that making use of the demons to sow chaos could have been masking. So they’d concluded that the attacks did not appear to have been a smokescreen motivated by the need to hide other criminal activity.

By his guess, that left two likely explanations, though both needed confirmation: either the summoner struck out of an enmity toward priests, or a misguided attempt to garner sympathy for them to push their cause.

He still wondered if one or more of the city’s priests were behind the attacks, though his own investigations had indicated nothing suspicious from those dwelling in the temple district.

If a member of the priesthood wasn’t staging the attacks to advance their cause directly, then it was likely that whoever was engaging in them, was doing so from a more emotional drive.

And emotionally oriented individuals were far easier to provoke.

“Alas,” Baelin sighed. “It would appear this quarry will not take the bait.”

He scanned the isle again…then paused. The chancellor whirled in the air, spotting a cloud of steam and smoke rising from the grassy plain below.

An elemental knight was spraying earth onto a grass fire, smothering it before it could spread uncontrolled. Earlier, he’d recognised Indrajit Hanuman and his team close to that area, but there was no sign of them now.

“Too bad,” he mused. “That young man had the makings to win this…or at least to place quite well. But what was it that I-”

His eyes scanned each member of the knight’s team.

“Not you,” he said of the first elemental knight. “Hmmm, perhaps you…”

His eyes swept past the mercenaries and narrowed on the three archers from the Nephelean Plains.

“Aaaaah,” he said. “I see what you’ve done: no wonder you three seem to bear an even sharper edge this year.” The ancient wizard watched the Outcasts regroup and then continue pushing toward the mountain. “Clever thing to hide it, though I am surprised your kind can resist. And you have not violated any rules…well done.”

He paused in thought. “Perhaps…”

His mind drifted to the illusions that showed close-ups of the teams to the spectators back in the stadium.

“…perhaps your little secret will be of some use to me.”

He glanced at the mountain. “Yes…as long as you get a little push. And judging by-”

He looked at the forest west of the mountain where flame and lava were spewing through the air. Then he turned east to watch a group wearing purple shirts make their way toward the mountain, moving from copse of trees, to copse of trees, while staying low in the grass.

“-I daresay that someone is going to provide that necessary push. Hmmm. Oh dear.”

The Ursa-Lupine Brotherhood were not alone as they approached the mountain.

‘Fire!’ Alex thought.

Claygon emerged from a pile of rubble just outside the cave mouth near the base of the mountain.

Whooooosh!

He blasted three fire-beams, striking the enemy team approaching dead in their centre. A full five contestants were pulled from the competition in an instant.

The others cursed as Alex’s team emerged from cave mouths to rain arrows, bolts of mana, and crossbow bolts down on them.

They vanished under the deluge of projectiles.

“Hah! Well, do-” Khalik started.

“Teleports!” Alex cut him off, feeling the surge of teleportation magic. Their opponents had faked being transported away and materialised high above the cave mouths, shouting incantations.

Hsssss!

Clouds of green smoke billowed into the air, filling the caves. Alex’s sight was completely blocked, but his team had Orbs of Air around their heads: he had no doubt that the green cloud was a little more dangerous than ordinary smoke.

“Get out of the cloud!” Isolde cried. “The smoke is flammable!”

Fwooosh!

Alex saw a pair of fireball spells streaking toward the cave mouth. He bolted from the cave.

Booooom!

Explosions ripped through the rock behind them, and he rolled down the slight slope before bounding to his feet. He leapt aside while willing a Wizard’s Hand toward the flying wizards as bolts of force slammed into the ground nearby.

Crack!

It crushed a bottle of booby-trapped mana soothing potion, enveloping several in the gas, but he heard no coughing. It seemed they were also protected by Orbs of Air.

Crackle!

Isolde was roaring an incantation.

Alex felt pressure shift in the air.

Small booms of thunder clapped as blue lightning arced between the young woman’s arms and hands. Two orbs sprang to life above her palms, each blindingly bright with lightning bolts crackling back and forth between them.

He recognized the spell that she’d fired at the xyrthak: a modified Arc of Lightning spell.

The electric blue orbs shot into the air toward the enemy, who took one look at the incoming spell and began shouting incantations. He felt teleportation magic building.

“Oh no you don’t!” Alex shouted.

His three Wizard’s Hands—two of them still holding booby-trapped potions—flew right into three chanting wizards’ faces, pressing against their Orbs of Air hard enough to distract them and ruin their spells.

The wizards stopped spellcasting, avoiding mana reversals and batted at the Hands, but Alex was already pulling them back.

Isolde’s spell had appeared on either side of the trio.

Crackle, boom!

Lightning blasted between the two orbs and all three wizards as they vanished from the battlefield. Their remaining team member had teleported high above them. She’d just begun to chant a spell when something slammed into her back.

Najyah shrieked in victory as the woman disappeared mid-spell.

“There!” Khalik shouted. “Four teams annihilated! Now where is…ah! Najyah, fetch our little friend!”

Najyah swooped down right where the enemy team’s flag bearer hovered, and dragged the small flag from its hands. She flew over Khalik’s head, dropping the flag into the prince’s waiting hands. With a low cry, the eagle fluttered her wings and settled on his arm.

Theresa smiled as the prince posed with the flag, waving it above his head.

“That’ll be a sight for the illusions to show the audience,” she said, looking up at some rocks above the cave mouths.

“Indeed! They should have a show, for we are doing quite well!” he grinned, glancing up toward the mountaintop. “We might have a chance of winning, after all.”

“Perhaps we might,” Isolde said, her blue eyes dancing with excitement. “But how is our stamina? We should take account of our resources.”

“While you’re doing that.” Theresa looked up at the mountain’s slope. “Grimloch, why don’t you, Brutus and I scout out those rocks up there. We don’t want any surprises waiting for us.”

“Good plan,” Grimloch growled, lifting his spiked club.

“I’ll come too,” Svenia said. “An extra pair of eyes’ll help.”

The four of them made their way up the lower part of the mountain, while the others came together.

“You go too,” Khalik said to Najyah “See if anyone approaches us.”

He threw up his arm, and Najyah launched herself skyward, beating her enormous wings as she flew away. Then he turned to Isolde. “I am down to half my mana.”

“I’ve hardly cast anything,” Alex said. “So I’m good when it comes to mana…but I’ve used up a lot of the potions I brought.”

“I’m down to about half mine too,” Thundar said.

“Two thirds of mine remains,” said Isolde.

“And wounds?” She asked.

“Just a few bumps and bruises,” Thundar reported. “No problems here.”

The others agreed.

“Right,’ Alex said, looking at the position of the sun. He wished those timekeepers at school were smaller and portable. Maybe when the alchemy developed a little more.

He focused The Mark on telling the time from the position of the sun: it brought back memories of every time he’d done so in the past, filling his mind with images of the sun.

It was pretty pleasant, actually.

Imagery of the school’s timekeepers rose in his mind, as he coordinated a series of visuals showing multiple positions of the sun as they correlated to different times on the timekeepers.

It gave him an estimate as to how much time had passed.

“I think we’re about an hour into The Grand Battle,” he said.

“From the position of the sun, I would say the same,” Khalik said, squinting up at the sky toward where Najyah was circling. “Hmmm, we are burning resources quickly. At this rate, we will all run dry before half of the event is over.

“That will be a problem,” Isolde said. “I do want to wait for the Ursa-Lupines, but perhaps we should leave here, find a place to hide and regenerate some of our mana, and then push through to the end. I know that has been a viable strategy for teams in the past that surged ahead in points during the early parts of the contest: they gained a commanding lead, then retreated to rebuild their resources.”

“Right…” Alex said. “That’s not a bad ide-”

A screech ripped through the air high above, drawing all eyes to Najyah. The giant eagle was flapping her wings, flying back toward them. She folded them in for a dive, then spread them out at the last moment to glide onto Khalik’s waiting arm.

“What is it?” the prince asked. He waited, holding Najyah’s gaze.

“Blast it,” he said, suddenly looking toward the grassy plains to the east, his eyes narrowed as his gaze flicked from one copse of trees to another. “We might have a problem. Najyah spotted a group of blue shirted wizards on their way…and they were accompanied by two other teams.”

Isolde looked toward the east. “How many?”

Khalik met Najyah’s eyes. “Upwards of thirty. Maybe thirty-five. We should go back into the caves. Even if they’ve seen Najyah, it would not be good to let them know that the rest of us are here.”

“I shall go get the others.” He looked up to where Theresa, Grimloch, Svenia and Brutus had gone. “We’ll return shortly.”

The rest of them moved back into a cave.

“What do we do?” Thundar asked, peering outside the cave mouth. “Thirty-five is a lot. We should’ve known that the Hydras wouldn’t be the only team making alliances.”

“That is a lot of wizards,” Isolde said. She looked up at Claygon. “With Claygon at our side, I would say that very few teams can overwhelm us through raw power alone…but if many wizards have joined together, then that is a lot of power and versatility for us to handle with just our eight…nine team members, if we include Najyah.”

“Right…” Alex looked up. “It’d be nice if we could lure them into the caves…but if they know we’re here and how many of us there are, there’s no way they’ll follow us in here. And if they see us beforehand, we’ll be sitting ducks if they just throw a bunch of fireballs or lightning bolts in after us.”

He squinted up at the ceiling of the cavern.

“Facing them on open ground wouldn’t be the best idea…and we don’t have a bunch of illusions to trick them with.”

“Well, I’ve got my illusionary duplicate,” Thundar said. “And a few other illusion spells, but nothing as good as that forest we nearly got tricked by.”

“Hmmmm…” Alex thought about his own resources and the previous fights they’d been in.

Their biggest obstacle would be the wizards.

Theresa, Claygon, Grimloch and Thundar would be able to stomp anyone in melee combat, and Theresa and Svenia could shoot down a lot of people with their bows…but the question was how to stop that many enemy wizards from just burying them in spells.

Then he remembered his and Theresa’s fight against the vespara. He’d blocked that wizard’s mouth…and the vespara had seeded the wilderness with wasps.

“Maybe we shouldn’t lure them into the caves, after all. Maybe we want to fight them on open ground,” Alex said. “I think I have an idea.”