Like all good things, the quiet half of break eventually came to an abrupt and violent end. Students who’d left for the first half of the break flooded back into Avalon and the blissfully empty public areas of the Academy were once more filled with people. One day I could easily wander the halls without risking running into anyone, and the next I walked into the aftermath of a bloodbath on my way to lunch.

  I––not being an idiot––immediately turned around and used a different path, but I got the details from Miranda later. It was even stupider than I had expected. Over the break, two second years had had their engagement broken off by their families after a series of messy assassinations in the late fall had severely changed the balance of power in their home kingdom. One of them had been considerably less upset about this than the other and had made full use of his new bachelorhood to sleep with as many courtesans, lesser nobles, and attractive peasants as he possibly could in the two weeks he’d spent back home.

  That could have been bad enough, but unfortunately, one of those ‘peasants’ turned out to be his former fiance's bastard half-sister. Miranda wasn’t completely certain of the circumstances surrounding how exactly that particular clusterfuck had unfolded, but her theory was that the girl had accompanied the main family during a trip to the king’s winter ball and ended up wandering into exactly the wrong tavern.

  The girl in question had not been particularly receptive to the young noble’s advances, but he hadn’t been willing to take no for an answer. By all accounts she had apparently been forced to crawl home after the noble and his men were done with her and had been lucky to survive the experience. She would have died or been permanently crippled without the help of very expensive magical healing.

  Needless to say, when his former fiance found out what had happened later that night, she was none too pleased. However, instead of confronting him outside of Avalon where his family was far more regionally dominant then her own, she’d decided to bide her time.

  Their eventual ‘fight’, if it could even be called that, had been short, brutal, and had no real winner. She had confronted him in the hallway surrounded by a dozen other students, and less than a minute later there had only been a single survivor. Miranda hadn’t been able to get her hands on a memory of the incident, but apparently it had involved multiple idiots throwing around indiscriminate spells while surrounded by upperclassmen, a half-dozen vials of blasting potion, and one very annoyed sixth year.

  As much as I would have liked for the peace and quiet to last a little longer, I was content with how I’d spent my time. I knew what classes I’d be taking next semester and had already registered for several of them, had greatly advanced my understanding of both my ritually acquired circulations and the field in general, and had finally put to rest one of the things that had been weighing most heavily on my mind these past weeks––what to do about Lea Sweetglass, the last remnant of my lost childhood.

  There was still much to do and many things I wanted to investigate, but it was not like I was fully out of time. There were a handful of events coming up that would require some of my attention, but I’d still have more time to pursue personal projects than I did once the next semester began.

  As it was every year, the first event scheduled was the dueling challenge. Two weeks was enough time to recover from most end-of-year injuries or rituals, and, in the words of the Myrddin, there was no point wasting resources by including dead men in other events.

  Students were not technically required to attend the dueling challenge. Practically speaking however, just about everyone did. Not only was it an invaluable opportunity to witness the skill level of your fellow students first-hand, but there was another reason that few people risked skipping it.

  Specifically, there was also no real way to know if you were going to be fighting unless you’d fought the previous semester and were exempted. The challenged were not warned ahead of time so, if you were challenged and not actively present, you would be retrieved.

  Depending on where exactly you were at the time and which faculty member was selected to go fetch you, this could range anywhere from a polite knock on your dorm room door to an irate archmage shattering the wards around your home, murdering your guards and family, and physically dragging you into the arena.

  The latter situation was not necessarily common, but neither was it unheard of. A few centuries back, a rather cowardly but very well connected third-year had discovered ahead of time that he had been challenged by one of his classmates and had tried to run and hide behind as many powerful people as he possibly could. The resulting retrieval had toppled a moderately prosperous kingdom, killed nearly a quarter of a million people, and reminded everyone why even the most ancient elves respected Avalon’s authority over its own.

  The event began early in the morning. More than three-thousand people––the entire school population and a sizable number of teachers, faculty members, and alumni––piled into the colossal open-air arena that stood a ten minute walk away from the main Academy building. For the first time in half a year, I felt mostly at ease despite being surrounded by thousands of other mages. The only violence permitted between students on this day were the challenges themselves.

  The stadium was built like a horseshoe and could have easily sat another few thousand people. At the center was a large, rectangular field of red sand surrounded by powerful wards meant to contain any stray spells. Around the field were two-dozen tiered rows of seats arranged in small clusters, each with a far-viewing enchantment to give the people sitting there a clear view no matter how far they were from the heart of the action. The first two rows were reserved for Avalon staff members. Then there was one row each for seventh through fifth years, two each for fourth through second years, and three rows for first years. The rest were available to anyone who didn’t want to sit with their yearmates.

  I had intended to arrive early to claim a group of seats for myself, but apparently half an hour before the event was intended to start wasn’t early enough. Most of the clusters already had one or two of the seats taken, and those that didn’t were at the very edges of the stadium from where it was hard to see things even with the viewing enchantments.

  Miranda, who’d accompanied me, tapped my shoulder and pointed towards where Alan, Ulan, and a girl whose name I didn’t know were sitting together. There were three more seats open in their cluster, which was perfect since Camille wasn’t far behind me and Brenda was probably still asleep or getting ready for the day. She was both not a morning person and exactly the sort of person who wouldn’t care too much about actually coming to the event on time. There were very few people willing to cross the Goodwitch family and doing so in such a public forum was just a fancy way of committing suicide. She’d be here––I’d heard she’d arrived back at Avalon last night though I had thankfully managed to avoid her so far––but not for some time yet.

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  I made a beeline towards the trio, Miranda trailing just a step behind me. Today she was wearing a long, flowing gown that fluttered in the breeze and contained more fabric than any three of her usual dresses. Not that it was any more modest than the others. It was made out of some pale pink gossamer fabric that was almost completely transparent under the light of Avalon’s fake sun, her non-existent modesty preserved only by strategically embroidered orchids and butterflies.

  I was almost certain the dress was supposed to be worn with something else underneath it, but then again so were most of the dresses Miranda wore and that had never managed to stop her before. I would call it an impractical thing to wear on a day like today, except it was absolutely blazing with protective enchantments. A gift from an admirer in Oratrice City, according to Miranda. One she was extremely pleased with.

  “Is anyone using these?” I asked as I approached, gesturing to the trio of chairs.

  Alan and Ulan turned to face me with perfect synchronicity, identical smiles blooming on their identical faces when they saw me.

  “Orion!” Alan exclaimed. “We were just waiting on Camille––”

  “––but you two are welcome to join us,” Ulan finished.

  “Great. Camille should be here in just a minute. She was finishing up her breakfast when I left.” I was about to sit down when I felt one of my circulations stir and a faint feeling nudged against my thoughts. I paused for a moment to parse it, then stepped to the side. “Oh, I’m not sure if you guys have met. This is Miranda. We met in one of our first-year classes and she’s been a good friend.”

  Then I turned to Miranda, even though I knew for a fact that she knew who Alan and Ulan were. I’d had her investigate them for me, after all. “Miranda, meet Alan and Ulan. They were both in my rituals classes with Camille and the four of us studied together outside of class most weeks.”

  Miranda curtsied smoothly, “It's always a pleasure to meet more of Orion’s friends.” She leaned in and conspiratorially whispered, “He can be so secretive sometimes, but I didn’t think he was holding out on introducing me to two such handsome young men.”

  Alan laughed while Ulan looked rather flustered, his cheeks reddening visibly and his eyes struggling to focus on Miranda’s face. She was standing directly in front of him and her deep curtsey had given him an even clearer view down the front of her gown.

  The girl who was sitting on Alan’s other side smacked the boy on the shoulder. “You should be nicer to your brother,” she chided, but I could tell that there was no heat in her tone of voice. “Now, introduce us.”

  Alan snickered one more time, then composed himself and smacked Ulan on the shoulder. He stood up and extended a hand out towards Miranda. “Pleasure to meetcha. I think we’ve seen you around a couple of times, but I don’t know that we’ve ever been formally introduced.”

  Miranda placed her hand in his and he leaned down to brush his lips against her knuckles. A frown flickered across my lips, but I quashed it as quickly as it had appeared, another thought nudging against my mind.

  I turned towards the unfamiliar girl and tilted my head towards Alan and Miranda, then rolled my eyes. “It looks like they’re going to be a while,” I deadpanned.

  She laughed, but it was a carefully controlled laugh, not a natural one. My expression smoothed out and I extended a hand out towards her. “Orion Hunter,” I said simply.

  She regarded me for a moment, then brushed her middle three fingers against my own. “Ayula Yelloweye.”

  I waited for a moment, then raised a single eyebrow. “That sounds like false advertising. They look pretty brown to me.”

  Her mask cracked and she snorted in amusement. “You know, that was the very first thing that Alan told me when we met during our first year.”

  “Well, he seems to still have all of his limbs attached, so I’ll take that as a good sign.”

  She didn’t respond immediately, instead looking me up and down with slightly narrowed eyes. I did the same, carefully observing her with more than just my physical senses without being too obvious about it.

  She was a short and slender young woman, with heavily tanned skin and short-cropped brown hair. Her clothing reminded me somewhat of an elf’s, though adjusted to fit her much slighter build. She wore a tight-fitting green tunic embroidered with hundreds of tessellating squares and triangles done in metallic thread along with a matching pair of equally tight shorts that went down to just above her knees. Her bare arms were well muscled, and there were dozens of long, faded scars extending from her wrists to her elbows.

  Magically speaking, I put her somewhere near the middle of our year, though that was more an educated guess than anything else. She was clearly a third-circle mage with a well-formed core, but anything else would require a much more intrusive examination. Stiil, if she was exceptional, Miranda would have told me about her, and she looked too self-confident to be at the bottom of the class.

  “I heard what you did to Kwesta,” she said finally. “Very decisive. I can see why Alan and Ulan speak so highly of you.” Then she turned away from me and butted into Miranda’s conversation with the twins.

  I ended up taking the middle of the three open seats and Miranda sat to my right, leaving an open space between Ulan and I. Camille arrived not longer after and cheerily took the final spot, immediately starting up a conversation with Ulan about elven runework. My eyes met Ayula’s from across the cluster of seats and I smiled as she sighed dramatically. I had a feeling she wasn’t much of a warder, crafter, or ritualist and that most of their conversation was going right over her head.

  There were only a handful of minutes left before the event was scheduled to start when I noticed three very familiar upperclassmen moving towards us. Clarient, Kwesta, and Cain Marrowood, one of Clarient’s fifth-year allies. They stopped a few meters away and Clarient exchanged a few words with the other two before continuing towards us on her own.

  I glanced past her and my eyes met Kwesta’s. She took a hasty step back, nearly tripping over her own feet as she tried to hide behind Cain’s broad shoulders, and quickly looked away. Clarient glanced behind her and pursed her lips, but continued towards me undeterred.

  I rose to meet her, folding my hands behind my back and squaring my shoulders. “Clarient.”

  “Orion.” There was a moment of silence. “So?”

  I was almost tempted to play dumb, but I didn’t need magic to tell me that would be a bad idea. There was no need to worsen things between us. “I can’t promise anything, but, like I said before, I’ll do my best to keep him in one piece.”

  The tension in her shoulders slackened just a little, her golden armor clinking softly as she shifted. She exhaled heavily. “That’s all I can really ask for, huh.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again. “I appreciate it, Orion.” It clearly pained her to say those words. It spoke volumes about how much she valued this exchange that she said them anyway.

  I smiled faintly. “Of course. What’s a few favors between friends?” I pitched my voice to carry, easily audible to the second, third, and fourth years seated in the rows around us.

  Her smile was perfect and sharp as a razor’s edge. “Precisely. Good luck, Orion.”

  “Thank you, Clarient. Enjoy the fights.”

  “I certainly plan too.”

  Then she spun around and marched away. I very deliberately looked back towards where Kwesta was still hiding behind Cain and firmly refusing to look in my direction. I could feel the eyes on me, dozens of them from all up and down the stands.

  Miranda was right. Anonymity was lost to me. Now, strength would have to be my shield.

  I could make that work.

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