Chapter 44: Wherein There Is A Wet Bloody Mess Touched By Golden Wings

He used light to vanish half of me from myself. Suddenly I was seeing everything from only one eye; only one leg was standing on the ice, only one hand was waving about trying to find balance for half my stomach, half my chest, half my neck. We both fell back at the same time. I stuck my thumb in my half-mouth and blew out my cheek until my missing half swelled out from my present half.

Meanwhile, Gruitfeld untied the knot from his shadow. We both got to our feet and faced each other again. My mind could sense that somewhere behind me, Burgen had recovered and was now fighting Effe, but my eyes were fixed on Gruitfeld's blue eyes; my focus was on him and on him alone.

I do not want to take away from the value of group magic competition. It is perhaps the best simulation of what a real war is like. But the real challenge begins one-on-one. That is when you take war magic to the next level.

We both attacked and blocked at the same time. It didn't matter which spells were used, now when we were completely locked on each other, the whole point was to get something, anything, in.

I knew that Gruitfeld wasn't interested in fighting Burgen, just as I didn't particularly care about Effe. Effe might have made a grand name for himself, but he was old, and he wasn't going to develop any further. The impressive ones were the young ones, who had surpassed the old ones and would be even greater when they themselves would be old.

Defence and attack, it was a fight more of concentration rather than of magic. We danced in circles around the ice, several feet apart but locked together. Breaking away would be fatal.

So far, we were matched in speed and in strength. Whenever I tried to take it up a notch, he was right there with me. It is an intimate situation, to fall so closely with your opponent. We were completely immersed in one another's rhythm, our heartbeats synched in perfect harmony. Gruitfeld was young for a magician, but much older than me. While his face was fair and his eyes looked clear of evil, I wasn't fooled. He was a suspect; could this be Cooper's rival? Could this perhaps be the man I was going to destroy?

All I needed was for him to make a mistake; all I needed was one small crack, which I would turn into a chasm.

A splash somewhere in the arena did not break my concentration, but he turned his head to see who fell into the water. I didn't care, whether it was Burgen or Effe, it mattered not. I found my moment and shot out with a cutting wind, I turned Gruitfeld's limbs into rubber, pulling them back into a binding knot. He fell forward comically, right on his face, with his limbs tied in bowknots behind his back. I plunged him into darkness and made to whisk him off the ice, but just then I felt the forming of magic somewhere behind me and a little to the right.

I slashed Effe's spell in half, but was hit by its motive force – apparently, Effe had tried to take me down with all he had. It blew me off the ice, but I made the weight of my body insubstantial just on time, skidding across the surface of the water until I reached the nearest ice platform.

Burgen was down and I was left alone with Effe and Gruitfeld. That wouldn't do. I needed Gruitfeld alone. With Effe distracting me, stabbing me in the back, Gruitfeld would have his way with me.

My only choice was to do something unexpected. There were still probably a few seconds until Gruitfeld released himself from my spell; in the meantime, Effe was rushing my way. I sent out a hook that pulled him toward me. The force of my little spell mingled with the force of his movement made him come hurtling my way, his body nearly slamming into mine. Before he could realise what had happened to him, I stole the light from his eyes, made his feet heavier than boulders and pushed him into the water. He satisfied me with a short scream as one of the sharks took a particularly keen interest in him. He went down with a dull splash and didn't come up again.

It was a dangerous game we played. I had never given it much thought, but if Effe suddenly forgot how to breathe underwater and died as a result of my actions, would that count for me as one out of seven of the lives I had taken from him? Would that mean that I had just one year to live? I vaguely knew that intention was an important player in this magical principle, but for a moment the unpleasant thought that I killed Effe wormed its way through my mind.

Which was exactly the opening in my thoughts that Gruitfeld needed to land one on me. I fell flat on my stomach, my cheek plastered to the ice as the force of all of cold hell bore down on me in one instant. I felt my bones grinding under the strain; every nerve in my body screamed, but I could not cry out, let alone breathe, I couldn't move. I was being squashed into surrender.

Like when I first met Quintox, when I first learned that I was a Wielder and lost Fizz. The real difference was that Gruitfeld was a true magician.

But so was I.

I moved my left thumb first, just half an inch, then my whole hand, and my arm, my shoulder moved inside its socket, with difficulty, I pushed myself to the side. I felt Gruitfeld's will try to lock on my own, but it was like cracks in the ice, he couldn't hold it together, not against me. But he couldn't pull away all at once either, because he knew that at precisely the moment that he would be between retreating and attacking, I would have him.

So I pushed to get to my knees and rise to my feet; I kept pushing until we were finally even, until it was as if we were leaning against one another.

And we began our dance again, two predators, locked on each other in a trance, searching for the first signs of weakness.

We were perfectly matched, but while Gruitfeld was young, he was older than me. I had not yet reached the full peak of my potential, I still had the ability to step higher, to become greater, stronger, faster – and what better time to become better than the present?

Then, there it was, not even a flicker, not even a shadow, just a slim semi-opportunity that I charged into with all my might, forth my magic into a web so tangled he would never get out of it in time.

I realised too late how clever Gruitfeld was; I had walked right into his trap. But while it was too late to get out unscathed, I understood my error in time to ruin his plan.

Within my woven magic, the distances between us had collapsed, and we stood close enough to touch. I shot out my arm right into his chest and closed my fist over his beating heart. In that instant I touched my blood to his and made his skin mine. I made him part of me and thus he had to share my fate. It was a feeble bond, baseless and light as air, but still not one he could easily break.

At that moment I knew that I had been given the advantage; now I was going to win. I understood the connections between the various magicks we were caught among far better than he. While Gruitfeld began the long and exhausting task of ripping and unraveling, I added more bonds and complications, taking them from around me and adding them around him, until he was immersed in the fog of my magic, deep within a little world I had created for him.

Then I broke our bond, broke free of the magic, and sent him into the water. He slipped in with no splash. I watched the ripples in the water his fall created, moving away from the edge of the ice in case he tried to pull me in with him. I spread out my awareness into the water, but with the sharks and my spells, I couldn't even find him.

I waited and all around me, in rows upon rows, the crowd held its breath, waiting too. Two minutes, two minutes was all that I needed. My eyes looked up at the torch: it was almost gone, it had almost burnt out. A minute passed and I began feeling ripples of joy somewhere in my stomach. One more minute to wait, one more minute to be alert.

Thirty seconds. My muscles began relaxing, the silence was absolute, even the wind stopped its blowing.

A sound like dry cackling broke the silence, black cracks appeared all along the surface of the ice, I leapt into the air as the platform I was standing on shattered into a million pieces.

And there sat Gruitfeld, riding on the back of a shark. I kept myself airborne and out of something that could only be considered reflex, I plunged into the shark's mind, seizing control from my opponent with ease. Disappointed as I was that the fight was not yet over, I knew that at least my understanding of how the inner workings of animals worked could not be rivalled by anyone.

Neither was it hard to prompt the shark to attack the human being that had violated it. I gave the shark strength to make the attack, the whole while maintaining my position in the air as best I could. Gruitfeld was thrown off into the water, splashing and kicking, attempting with all his might and magic to fend off those beastly jaws.

He was forbidden to kill it. I could see the fear on his face, he knew he would live but he was at risk at losing a fair part of his limbs.

He tugged at me, trying to pull me toward him. It takes a lot of power to remain airborne while focusing on something else. My mind went three ways then, as I fought against Gruitfeld's pull. There was a breaking point though, and I plunged downward into the freezing water, the air knocked out of my lungs as my body smashed into Gruitfeld. Then I experienced the terror of facing an angry shark.  I noticed it had more than one row of teeth on each jaw. If I bent my mind over it, then Gruitfeld was sure to get me, but if I didn't, then the shark would get me.

In desperation, I sent my arms out and clung to Gruitfeld, hoping to use him as my shield. He, on the other hand, had been forming other plans. He shot himself backwards, like a missile, out of the water with me clinging to his back like a leech.

Unfortunately, I hit the ice first, my wet tunic sticking to it and ripping as the force of our flight made us slip backwards, I cried out as I felt the burn of the ice across the scars on my back, the pain making my mind go blank for a moment.

"DRAW!" boomed the voice of the Sky Monk over the roaring of the crowd. "The torch has burnt out before the duel was concluded! This duel is a draw!"

From where I lay with Gruitfeld's body atop of me, I could only see the blue spring sky. But it wasn't just because the man was particularly heavy that I couldn't move. My heart felt like it had turned to lead and fell down from my ribcage and into my stomach.

Gruitfeld rolled off of me and sighed, "I need a drink," he said as he sat on his bottom. It was the first time I heard him speak. He had a very light Bordinrian accent, but his Auranoran was otherwise perfect.

I said nothing at first, made no attempt to move, but then I thought how pathetic I looked lying on the ice, so I tried to sit up and winced in pain as my back began to burn.

Gruitfeld heard me, and surprised me by looking at me with concerned eyes. Up close his face looked a lot softer than it had seemed throughout our battle. He lightly got to his feet and offered me his hand.

I scowled, "I'm fine." I said quickly, but I took his hand anyway, mostly because my legs were numb with disappointment, but also, I told myself, because it made for good appearances. I wouldn't have anyone think that I was a sore loser.

With one pull he whisked me to my feet, and then my body froze with shock as he pulled me into a hug. The smell of his sweat made my stomach turn, I was not used to hugs. "Harlock told me to be expecting you," he whispered in my ear, "I didn't believe his plan would work until I saw you. We can't talk here. I'll arrange for us to meet after the last round. Wait for my message."

I pulled away from him and stared, Cooper knew this man? Cooper knew I would be here? There was a plan? A real plan? I could only gape, a chill of excitement running through my body.

Before I could say anything, however, a shadow passed over us. While my mind told me that it was probably the Sky Monk, I looked up anyway.

It was a Sky Monk, but a different one: a woman, whose golden skin gleamed so brightly in the sun that it was almost blinding to look at her, but I was mesmerised by her beauty, and I couldn't look away,

And there were more. They passed over us in flashes of gold through the clear sky, their wings silently beating the air, they flew in groups of two and three, and alone. I don't know how many of them passed over us, perhaps a hundred, perhaps that was the world's entire community of Sky Monks.

"Where are they going?" Gruitfeld asked in an awed whisper, I shook my head, unable to think, for seeing them felt like a dream.

But when the last of them passed and the sky was left empty, thoughts flooded my mind. "Weren't they flying in the direction of the palace?" I mumbled.

And then it dawned on me. "They..." I couldn't speak, my heart at once refused to acknowledge, and at the same time I felt relief. "They came to get her." I said, stunned.

"Get whom?" Gruitfeld wondered.

"Varemini," my lips moved over her name. She hadn't come to watch this round and now she was going away. She was leaving, they would take her and I would be left here alone without her. I was never going to see her again. My throat was tight and I felt as if I was about to cry.

But at least, I vigorously scolded myself, at least now she would be free.

They appeared again in the sky, this time they flew in close formation, protecting their new charge. And there she sat in a hammock held between two golden men. Next to them she almost looked like an ordinary woman.

But she was still the most beautiful woman in the world.

"Varemini!" I called to her, tears suddenly blurring my vision. But she was too high up to hear me or see me. They rapidly passed over us and then they were gone. I wiped away my tears before anyone would see, as a group of Auranoran magicians and nurses came to escort me away.