Jeff was going over his attire for the upcoming bouts. The armor he wore was a full body piece of interlocking plates of metal with special padding around his neck. The helmet in his hand was a custom piece as well, with small holes around his mouth and thick plates around the eyes offering the only distinguishing feature on the otherwise nearly spherical helm. It was one of a twin pair with his painted yellow to reflect his dual element, lightning.

The item that really made this special was the gloves. On the knuckles were some small mana crystals that would shoot out a jet of water or a spike of earth. He thought about using fire and wind as they were his base elements but decided that having a more rounded kit was preferable.

The other set was a red armor piece matching his. Andrew's fire element would be reflected not just in his color but with his sword that had a magic crystal in its handle that would shoot out flames. Not terribly imaginative but that didn't make it any less effective.

Speaking of the devil, Andrew came through the door to his room with the plain sword Jeff would be using.

"All right, lets get going before the armorer skins us for staring at ourselves too much." Andrew said as he handed Jeff the sword. Doing heavy practice before the match wasn't a good idea so they decided to spend the day making fine tuned adjustments to the armor and light practice.

Making their way down to the ground floor the living room, done up in the typical thick dark wood floor and stone walls, had all of its furniture vacated to prevent damage. Since the point of the competition was to win, giving away free intel by going outside was not an option. Annie and a gruff looking man with grey hair were looking them over.

"So, any more adjustments?" the armorer asked.

"Just a little more give putting up the right arm and I should be good." Andrew said.

"I'm good now" Jeff said.

"So what was this business with the silver haired fellow? God knows everyone else had been asking me about it" Andrew asked as his arm piece was taken away by the armorer to be worked on in his makeshift workshop out back.

"I got him a few constructs for his crafts and he helped me with a crafting problem I was having" Jeff replied as he stripped out of his armor with Annie trying to help him wiggle out of the leg section. 'is everything I do here is under surveillance?' he grumbled to himself.

"Hmm, you don't really like being with any of the other students here, let alone help them. Why him?" Annie asked as she put the rest of the armor pieces onto a dummy to hold them.

"When he looks at me I can tell he doesn't care" Jeff idly said to himself.

"Veronica tries to hide it but it's obvious she's curious. Also she has looked us up and gotten a good look at out abilities. All the others are just needy parasites trying to work an angle. But Eli? When we finished he asked me my name. Didn't care enough about my background or what he could get from me in some scheme to even learn my name."

Annie looked at him thoughtfully as he talked while Andrew just snorted.

"Maybe it's because I'm taking all the spotlight. Couldn't see you behind this hulking tower of a man" Andrew said looking quite smug.

"Pfft, your just the snorer to him. Annie, remind me to tell father that Andrew is sleeping in his study sessions." Jeff said with mock sternness.

Andrew got a sour look and sputtered indignantly as the armorer put his am piece back on.

"Of course, sir" She said, looking at Andrew like a delinquent puppy.

"When does the trial start?" Andrew said, trying to divert the conversation from himself.

"About an hour after sun rise. It's to give the crafters time to give their items to their soldiers and give the soldiers enough practice to get used to their items." Annie said as she stood to the side.

"All right then, Lets go over your foot work. I don't want to make it look too easy when I kick your ass" Andrew said as he and Jeff got into position to practice sword techniques.

___________________________________________________________________________

"All the Inns are full and we've bought all the cows, chickens, and pigs we could get our hands on. The trials are now officially here" Aki said as he went over other items for storage and preparation.

Tansen sat back going over all of the items in his head. It was all pretty typical for hosting the trials with the long feast afterwards. The biggest disruptions were the participants in the trials. The ranks would be crafters items going first in arena contests with the winner going on to compete in the casters portion, who would then be quickly defeated.

Through those rounds Jeff as a duel element would win, of course, and go on to the final bouts with him going up against a randomly selected opponent. Then the real meat of the event would start. Scions were tougher and had access to special spells only they could cast, which would have left Jeff as an automatic loss but the scions in this fight were not official mages or developed enough to manifest their familiars so it was actually a pretty fair fight.

So much speculation and betting was going on behind the scenes, especially in the taverns. Sure who would advance in the caster rounds was certain, as was the crafters defeat in the casters first round but there was a lot of room for wheeling and dealing in-between these facts.

"Any fights we need to keep an eye on?" Tansen asked his guardian.

"Not at the moment. Just the typical scuffles between parents who think their kids are all secretly ultimate mages that could only shine if everyone else in the world would stop getting in their way. Although I think the competition between the parents is heating up more than ever in the scions ring. If I may be so bold as to say that Agatha is worried her precious water genius daughter will have her due spotlight taken from her by the upstarts taking up space on her field."

Tansen gave a light laugh at this.

"Oh and as always there is the typical complaints about the unfairness of the match structure which I took very careful considerate care of when I put them in the kitchen oven."

A loud sigh and a slap to the forehead was Tansen's first response.

"Yes, putting them against opponents with no consideration of elements or power would put some some of them at unfair disadvantage. But life doesn't do fair. Who will they write complaints too when their fire aligned spawn gets their throat cut open by a water naga or when their precious wind prodigy gets crushed like a bug by an earth troll? What do they think the point of putting them in this academy is?" Tansen raged, as if he could throttle of all those short sighted fools in one crushing speech.

Aki only smiled at his charges misfortune, both in sympathy and amusement.

Tansen calmed down and got to the last piece of business.

"While it probably won't do any good, we will need to keep our promise to our elf friend. Put out the word of a big announcement concerning international business. He will be giving the address that will make what we have already been doing here official"

That last bit was more important than some paperwork. You weren't officially forced to reveal contracts with elves, but not doing so would irritate some members of the Coalitions government who wanted such dealings taxed. This would be just another item on a long list of their examples justifying the forced turning over of all elven contracts to the government. How they would go about enforcing this rule was something of a diplomatic haze as not even the measures most ardent supporters would suggest telling the elves who they could do business with.

"Well be that as it may, we have been getting some weird reports. The bandits in the area have been acting up more than usual." Aki said, looking over the latest figures for robberies.

"No rest for the weary. Weird in what way?"Tansen asked.

"They have been getting mighty bold. There are even some incidents of attacks in broad daylight but as far as we can tell they haven't gotten any increased magical power or swelling of numbers to justify such confidence."

"Get the documents ready to officially put out a bounty on all known bandits, as well as any members of their gangs. It past time we cleaned house."

Aki bowed at this command and went out to run the figures on the appropriate bounty amounts.