“Wowzers, that was sure exhilarating, huh?” Annabelle said when the Poisonball game was all over. “You guys can head on back to the stands now, thanks so much for playing.”

  As the Poisonball Players left through the gate, the Droog — still pinching his nose to quell the bleeding — made sure he passed by Lianna on the way out. I saw him lean in to say something to her, though I couldn’t hear what. Whatever it was, Lianna took deep offense and if it weren’t for Sigrid quickly grabbing her wrist mid-swing Lianna absolutely would’ve decked him one. He strutted away laughing, leaving both Lianna and Sigrid staring daggers at his back.

  When they got back and Lianna had taken her place beside me, I asked her what he’d said.

  “I’d rather not repeat it,” she said through gritted teeth. Then she turned toward Sigrid. “You shoulda let me hit him.”

  “No,” I said, before Sigrid could answer. “You would have regretted it.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He has a power that reflects physical damage back against the attacker. You only would’ve ended up hurting yourself. Literally.”

  “Ahhh,” Sigrid said. “So that’s why my danger sense got triggered. I knew it was a bad idea to hit him, I just didn’t know why. Sorry, Lianna.”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I made a customized version of his power that’s even better. Next time you meet him, I’ll share it with you and you can give him a taste of his own medicine.”

  Lianna sighed deeply. She closed her eyes and I could tell she was counting silently by the way her lips moved. When she reached ten, she opened her eyes and her demeanor completely flipped. The seething rage from moments ago had seeped away, replaced by her usual cool calmness.

  “Thank you, Sigrid,” she said, “for saving me from making an even bigger fool of myself down there.” Then she turned to me but wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “And sorry, Daniel, for letting you down.”

  For the first time ever, I copied Jane’s Captivating Presence power. I wasn’t a fan of manipulating people like that, but I had something to say to her that I wanted to make sure she heard. Like, really heard.

  “Lianna,” I said, putting the entire force of my enhanced presence behind my words. Her eyes snapped to my face and I locked onto them with mine. “How can you possibly think you let me down? I could not be more proud of my teammate. You showed incredible grace, poise, and class in the face of a situation that was doomed from the beginning. Do you really think anybody here,” I gestured widely around the entire arena to encompass every Player there, ”would have done any better?”

  “Damn straight,” Jane said.

  Lianna bit her lip. “You would’ve,” she said.

  “A-ha ha ha,” Chika laughed and slapped my leg a few times. “Senpai doesn’t count. He probably woulda turned the ball invisible or something.”

  “Or replicated ten balls and had them drop on everyone at the same time from portals over their heads,” Byron said.

  “Or put everybody to sleep and casually bonk them with his big red balls,” Sigrid said.

  “Ha! His big red bonking balls!” Jane said.

  “Jeez, Sigrid, watch your wording,” I said. “You make it sound like I’d teabag them.”

  “You make it sound like that was accidental,” Sigrid quipped back.

  That made Lianna smile a little.

  Nina reached forward and hugged Lianna from her seat behind us. “He’s right, you know. You did your best down there, that’s all that matters.”

  Lianna leaned back into the hug. “Thanks.”

  I was glad Nina did that. I could tell Lianna needed it, but it wasn’t something I could do for her.

  “Hey,” I said again, but without forcing her to pay attention with the borrowed power. She looked at me of her own accord this time. I jerked my head toward the other side of the stands where Teams Invictus, Droogs, and Overgeared were sitting together. They looked smug but I wasn’t sure why. The one among them who’d lasted longest was the tool from Overgeared who was the ninth knocked out, just before Achmed’s guy. The Droogs were the fourth knocked out and Invictus the third, so it’s not like they’d done spectacularly well either. I suppose simply lasting longer than us was enough to bring them joy.

  “Let them have this,” I said. “It’ll only make it that much sweeter when we kick their asses later.”

  “Oh, em, gee,” Chika said. “You made Senpai swear.”

  Before I could come up with a witty retort, Annabelle’s voice echoed around the arena, drowning out the countless other conversations going on in the stands.

  “Alrighty then,” the purple-haired NPC said, now dressed in her fairy armor again. “Who wants to know what the quest is?”

  I hadn’t even noticed Annabelle change back from high school gym teacher to warrior princess, but all eyes were on the bizarre woman. Everyone wanted to know what the quest was about.

  “This one’s called the Citadel Quest,” Annabelle said, “for reasons which should become readily apparent.”

  As she stepped off to the side of the arena floor towards where we were sitting, a 3D model of a castle quickly took shape around her, seemingly growing from the packed dirt floor. With my burgeoning talents in Magical Theory and Thaumaturgy, I could feel the glamor of the arena’s formation as it created the model.

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  It was not at all what I expected. I’d assumed the Citadel would be like a medieval castle, but it was more like something Gaudi would’ve designed. There wasn’t a sharp angle to be found anywhere, nothing but curves. It made my wonky anachronistic design for the Cathedral renovation look positively traditional.

  The Citadel sat on a big, round mound surrounded by a wide moat. The outer wall was, surprise, surprise, a large hexagon. Tall, round towers studded the wall at each vertex, one of which was larger than the others and contained the wide, arched entrance into the Citadel as well as the drawbridge that gave access to it.

  In the middle of the space enclosed by the outer wall, there was a dome structure surrounded by a second inner wall, also hexagonal with towers at each vertex, although its walls were not solid but composed of open archways topped by a continuous battlement.

  The space between the two walls was filled with ellipsoid structures of varying sizes, like giant peanut M&Ms; some of these oval structures were mashed together like a Barbapapa house while others stood alone, some rested on their sides, others perched on their ends like squat, swollen towers.

  These structures were connected to each other and the outer wall by a criss-crossed web of arched bridges and peppered with oval, pod-like balconies protruding like giant pimples from every surface. Serpentine raised veins wound through the spaces between these balconies, the purpose of which was anyone’s guess.

  The only thing breaking the continuity was a tall, cylindrical tower rising straight up from the largest structure, topped with a squat ovoid spire bubbling at the summit like the cap of a mushroom. This phallic tower was the only thing without the pod balconies and curious veins, it didn’t even have any obvious openings at all, making it seem like it wasn’t actually part of the place but had been hurled from the heavens to impale itself in the Citadel like a giant, bubble-topped spike.

  “The Citadel is a fortress,” Annabelle said, walking slowly around the model’s perimeter, “a fortress that was once the domain of the Faerie King, Oberon. It is now in the hands of the Demon King.”

  As she spoke, Annabelle’s gaze traveled over the crowd, never lingering on anyone in particular but encompassing everyone. That is, until she talked about the Faerie King, when I saw her eyes lock with mine. It was subtle, but I got the message. This backstory was important somehow.

  “Your quest is to liberate the Citadel from the demonic forces. The game you will be playing challenges you to control key locations within its walls.”

  The model of the Citadel spun as our view zoomed in on that dome in the courtyard surrounded by the inner wall then went inside. There was a rounded portico bubbling out to accommodate a single set of wide, double doors. The only thing inside was a transportation node, aka an affinity circle.

  “Your quest begins when you arrive at the Citadel. At twenty minute intervals, teams should assemble on the gazebo outside this arena when it is their turn for transport.”

  The view zoomed back out to show the entire Citadel again, then the outer walls of all the buildings became see-through making the arrangements of the rooms within visible. It reminded me of playing The Sims, only instead of tidy square or rectangular rooms, they were filled with rounded areas that reminded me for some reason of the inside of a wasp’s nest. Notably, the strange tower was the only structure whose walls remained opaque and we could not see what was inside it.

  Annabelle snapped her fingers and small golden dots appeared all over. Upon first glance they seemed randomly spaced, but looking closer I could see that they all appeared in rooms that were central to various areas. There was one in the dome we’d arrive in, too, but none in that strange tower.

  “These golden dots are tokens in the game, and indicate the key locations you must control. There are forty of these locations.”

  The view zoomed in to show the interior of a single room with a gold dot. Judging by the layout it seemed to be a dining hall or some other large meeting place. Seen this close, the gold dot was revealed to be a small golden orb about the size of a softball. As Annabelle went on to explain the game, a small human figure appeared in the room with an hourglass floating above its head.

  “For a team to take control of a location, at least one member must remain in the room for one full, uninterrupted hour. The first person to do so will get that room’s token for their team.”

  The sand drained quickly out of the hourglass and the gold orb flew over to the figure, which raised its arms and jumped up and down in a crude 8-bit animated celebration, then the view zoomed back out again.

  “The game will end after twenty-four hours. Rewards will be given out according to team rankings based on the number of tokens possessed at the end of the game.”

  The Citadel model melted away, leaving Annabelle alone down on the floor again.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Annabelle said, “can I take another team’s token? The answer, of course, is yes. There are three ways to transfer ownership of a token.”

  Everyone seemed to lean forward, eager to hear. This was important information.

  Annabelle held up her hand, counting on her fingers as she listed the three ways. “The first is for a Player to willingly give you their tokens.”

  This earned some titters. “Like that’ll ever happen,” someone in the crowd said loudly enough for everyone to hear.

  “It could happen,” Annabelle said with a sly smile. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it will.” Another finger went up. “The second way is to spend two uninterupted hours in the room the token was taken from. For someone else to take that room’s token after that, they’ll need to spend three hours there, and so on, adding another hour each time control of the token for that room changes teams.”

  Annabelle took a deep breath and her face became deadly serious. People had been pretty quiet up until this, listening to Annabelle and absorbing the rules of the game. But something about the way Annabelle was behaving gave the impression that the last rule about taking tokens was going to be a doozy. They were not disappointed.

  Annabelle’s third finger went up. “The final way to take someone's token is the most straight forward: you get all the tokens possessed by any Player you kill.”

  This created a stir and the arena erupted into cacophonous chattering as Players began talking to one another, no doubt devising plans. Annabelle stood still at the center of the arena floor, and after a few seconds amid the furor she pressed her finger to her lips.

  “Shhhhhhhh,” her amplified voice boomed and the hubbub quieted. “There’s one more thing. As of right now, any Player who actively attempts to initiate contact, direct or indirect, with a Player on another team before their own game begins will be removed from the quest and excluded from all rewards.”

  That shut some people up, most notably the Axis of Evil, whose Captains had all been conspiring together.

  “Without further adieu, Team Ninja won the poisonball game and should make their way to the gazebo transportation node for transit to the Citadel in five minutes. Good luck Players, and I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Annabelle gave us all a big wink, then a thick cloud of purple smoke appeared where she was standing and when it dispersed a few seconds later Annabelle had disappeared.

  I barely noticed this, because at that exact moment I got a strange feeling. The closest comparison I could make was that it was the kind of feeling you get when you put on your winter coat for the first time since last season and remember you’d left a twenty dollar bill in its pocket before hanging it up in the spring.

  What caused this pleasant sensation? I knew where the Citadel was.

  Up next: The Citadel Quest begins