Wisps of mist clung to my heels as I entered the Guild Hall, the sun only now beginning to burn away the morning fog. I wasn’t as early as I was yesterday, several people already filled the common room. quiet chatter filled the space while they waited for the program to begin. I did a quick scan of the room for people I recognized and only spotted Ellen Smallbard and Mika Hillhome. Seated together at a table near the bar, the pair spoke amicably. There was an ease to their postures that told me they were at least familiar with one another. I chose a table near the entrance to the training yard and settled in to wait the half hour until the program began.

  I closed my eyes and leaned against the plaster wall behind me, content to rest for the moment. Yesterday was long, and I’d made it longer by training after the fact. I let the easy air of the common room relax me and felt the tension leak out of my shoulders. After ten minutes, I heard the bench across from me scrape back against the stone floor of the common room.

  When I looked up, Nora was across from me, arms above her head in a cat-like stretch. A loud pop filled the silence and she let out a contented groan before resting her arms back on the table.

  “Morning Bran!” Her voice was chipper and free of the morning grogginess I felt. “How was your night?”

  I was pleasantly surprised she’d sat with me again. I’d enjoyed her company and that she’d enjoyed mine was a relief. We chatted for a bit, just small talk about how our nights went, but it was fun and I had to fight down some disappointment when the trainers came in from the yard.

  They murmured amongst themselves as they lined up, but when Ruth stepped forward, the others stopped talking. All attention in the room now on her.

  “Focus up. Here’s what we’re doing today. Tammy and Lille will lead you all in some team-building exercises. After that, Regis and I will run you through the basic skills required to hack it as an adventurer. And after that, there’ll be a mixer for the rest of the day.

  “Our hope is you’ll spend the time getting to know the people you’re more than likely going to start your careers with. Attendance isn’t mandatory, but we’ve hired the Golden Trust for the music and there’ll be free food. That said, head out, Tammy and Lille will take over.”

  When Ruth finished, I looked over at Nora to see her vibrating with excitement.

  “What’s got you so excited?” I asked as I stood and made to follow the crowd.

  “The Golden Trust!” She scream whispered at me. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of them!”

  “Never heard of them. Don’t get many outside performers back home.”

  “Okay, well, they’re this all [Bard] party that moved here recently, and they’re amazing! Not only are they Woodsedge’s first master party, but they’re also super exclusive. As far as I know, they’ve only ever played for the Smallbards and even then, Ellen said it cost thousands of gold!”

  “Huh, why’d they move out here?”

  “The Emerald Ocean,” she said with a glance at me. “They’re planning a campaign and want to use Woodsedge as their rally point!”

  I briefly wondered if they’d stick to the uninhabited parts or if they’d work through one of the cults.

  “Quiet!” Lille, the now named mana trainer, said. “I know you’re all excited, but I need your attention.”

  The murmurs that’d slowly built in volume since the announcement died off as people focused back on why we were really here.

  “Alright. First thing on the docket is a round of siege. Tammy and I are going to split you into two groups, go over the rules, then we’ll play.”

  Lille and Tammy did a quick headcount, numbering people as they went. I was twenty-fifth and Nora who switched positions with the person beside her was twenty-seventh.

  “Odds you’re with Tammy, evens you’re me.” Lille called.

  It took a few minutes of jostling and milling about for the trainers to settle everyone in their groups. But both trainers eventually got their groups ready.

  “I’m sure most of you have played siege at one point or another, but I’m still going to go over the rules for those who haven’t. First, the goal is to capture the opposing player designated as the Lord or Lady and drag them over to your side.

  “The Lord or Lady has to stay in the ‘keep’,” Tammy pointed to a grey circle painted in the sand. “for the entire game, but if someone on the other team gets close or captures them, they’re free to fight like a wind dervish to get free. Second, no weapons and no armor. Physical combatants, you’re stuck with what you can do with your bodies. [Mages] you’re limited to spells you can cast without a skill. You’re not trying to kill each other. Remember that.”

  Tammy looked right at me for the last sentence.

  “Last, see that line in the middle?” There was a brief chorus of ‘yes’ in response. “That’s the border. Cross that and you’re in opposing territory. That’s it for the rules. You’ve got five minutes to choose your Lord or Lady and discuss strategy. Your time starts now!” Tammy declared and walked over to the border where Lille was already waiting for her.

  People scrambled to organize into small cliques after Tammy finished, and before long, ten people were trying to see who could bully the others out of leadership.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Not going to throw your cap in the ring?” Nora asked and nodded to where the princess with the ratty equipment argued with a small kid with a bun of curly brown hair about who got to be the Lord for our team.

  “Not much point.” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m an outsider here. It will take more than five minutes for me to establish enough credibility to be taken seriously.”

  Nora gazed up at me for a moment before she turned back to the argument, which now included Mika. The original pair were heated and, rather than being productive, now screamed at one another. Spittle flew across the shrinking gap between them while Mika tried to calm them down.

  I watched him get frustrated with the pair and give up to scan the surrounding crowd. Eventually, his eyes landed on Nora and she waved back at him. I looked back down at Nora, wondering how they knew each other, to see her pointing up at me insistently. When I looked back at Mika, he looked like he’d just remembered something.

  “Bran! Your style is pretty defensive, right?”

  “It is.” I said and looked down at a smug grin from Nora.

  “Great. Therese, Marcell, look at him. With his size, they’re going to have a hard enough time moving him, let alone when he’s fighting back. Bran’s got to be our Lord.” Mika said, his attention now back onto the two unelected leaders.

  I watched Mika convince them and eventually lead them through a discussion of what our strategy should be like a fish in water. Eventually, they decided I could be trusted to hold my own on defense while they committed everyone else to offense. My entire role was to fight long enough that they could overwhelm the other team.

  Mika’s one concession to the full offensive was allowing the decay princess, Therese’s, friend, to stay behind with me. Apparently, he had a spell that would buff my Strength and Agility.

  Tactic decided my team lined up on the border in a great horde. Myself and the buffing [Mage], Andrew, left comfortably behind the crowd. I noticed with some amusement that both sides had someone stalking across the border like big cats.

  “Call out your noble!” Lille yelled from the sidelines.

  “Darius!” Came a voice from beyond our horde

  “Bran!” Marcell shouted back.

  “We begin in three… two… one!”

  I stood wordlessly in my ‘keep’ while the two forces of teenagers clashed. The thrill of Andrew’s magic along my spine played in discordant harmony with the screams and cries from the mass of people in front of me.

  On both sides, [Mages] held back from the melee and now launched free form spells over the pile. All the spells I saw were weak or misshapen as people improvised new spells on the fly. Small bolts of flame withered into drifting embers, chunks of earth fell apart and rained pebbles on the melee. Vines grew from the earth only to wither and die moments later.

  Magic was incredibly hard to do and often took immense amounts of study to master. When I was young and my mom first tried to teach me how to wield mana; she confided that if it wasn’t for the efficient spell forms taught by the System; she doubted even a percent of all the magi the System created would be as good as they are now.

  Both sides stayed locked in the center, neither gaining ground, but eventually the sheer amount of people we’d committed forward won out. Like the first boulders in a landslide, I saw people from my team force their way out of the crowd and toward the enemy ‘keep’.

  Briefly I thought I might not face any challengers this round, but as more and more of my team slipped through the few people the other side committed forward got through our non-existent defense. The first to do so was a group of three that squeezed past the side of the pile and raced along the sidelines to me and Andrew.

  While obvious the group never worked together before, each of them moved well and carried themselves with the grace of those trained for combat. All of them wanted to be the first to reach me and raced in front of their fellows to claim the honor.

  I settled into a basic unarmed combat stance, more similar to one taught in Beginner’s Shield Art, than in the Willow’s Wrath. Behind me, Andrew shuffled just far enough away that it was clear to all he wouldn’t be helping me fight.

  To keep ahead of his peers, the first to reach me went low, trying to tackle my legs out from under me. I let him connect, but rather than carry me off my feet, he drove me back a step. He wasn’t a small man, but I had at least fifty pounds on him and my legs braced against this exact move.

  Like driving in a bothersome nail, I slammed my elbow down on his back. The man cried out in pain and dropped, but before I could finish him with a kick, he rolled to the side and rejoined his peers. The three of them now more circumspect after the first failure.

  I could do nothing but watch as the trio circled my ‘keep’. By the rules of this game, I couldn’t leave the circle unless they pulled me from it. A flaw in my team’s strategy became clear when, rather than attacking me, they went after Andrew. Forcing me to watch as they quickly made the small man to yield.

  “Remove the buffs!” Lille called from the border as soon as Andrew surrendered.

  It felt like an invisible hand pinched the top of my spine and dragged something vital out. Dullness replaced the surge of energy Andrew’s buff gave me. [Mage] dealt with. The trio approached and split. Each person formed a point in a triangle around me. I did my best to monitor all three but one always positioned themselves just outside of eyeline.

  As if by the command of an [Ephemeral General], the trio charged me in unison. I tried again to get all of them in view at once, but gave up when I saw two more people from the other side break off and cross the border.

  I pivoted and punched out at the man behind me. He stopped on a coin just outside of my range and my knuckles brushed across his nose.

  An arm snaked across my throat, and before I could stop it, someone jumped onto my back and choked me. I tried to break the grip on my neck briefly, but they held tight. My attention shifted from the arm when someone hammered into my ribs. I bent to the side to protect myself and barely avoided the third as his punch whistled through the space my head had been.

  I needed to get this person off my back, and quick. In a moment of recklessness, I jumped and landed on my back. All three hundred pounds of me landing solely on the person latched onto my neck. Something beneath me crunched and the arm against my throat relaxed. I rolled away to the sound of someone desperately trying to gasp in air but unable to breathe.

  Being on the ground is a dangerous gambit and both people still able to breathe rushed in to take advantage of that. Before I could get up, one of them pounced. Knees, elbows, and fists landed where ever there was space. If this was anything but a game, I’d be dead. Stabbed to death ten times over in the time it took for me to get up and tackle the guy not currently attacking me.

  Just before my shoulder made impact with the man’s stomach, I felt the paradoxical heat of winter fill my chest and a spiritual hand caress the back of my neck. Iona’s attention was focused on me, but she had not yet granted me the Touch of the Black Hand.

  I sprung to my knees and elbowed the man I’d tackled in the face over and over until he passed out. It took barely five seconds from the tackle to the knockout for me to turn around and launch myself at the legs of the last opponent, who rushed to join the fray again. I got him at the knees and briefly worried that one, if not both, would break on impact, but he toppled before that could happen.

  I got to my knees and pulled him towards me, his body left a furrow in the sand. His nose broke beneath my fist and I grabbed his throat before he could do anything. I didn’t squeeze hard because I thought he would realize I’d beaten him and yield, but when I felt a fist come up and hammered at my ribs, I lifted his head and slammed it into the sand. Soft enough not to deal any lasting damage but just enough to let him know I could kill him if I wished.

  “He yields Bran! Let him go!” Tammy called.

  I followed her order and used the man’s chest to push myself up. The guy looked like he might do something, but Tammy called out again.

  “You have yielded. Come here.”

  Her tone brooked no argument and sullenly the man stood to join a group of fifteen people who milled near the trainers to watch the action on the other side

  The pair who rushed at me came at once, but were as a whole less trained than the last three. All it took was a nearly broken leg and a punch to the sternum to have both of them yield and walk to join the rest. I got to watch for a moment as the uncoordinated mass of people that was my team swarmed over the opposite side. Brief pockets of resistance formed before they got overwhelmed and forced to yield.

  Over the next twenty minutes, three more stragglers broke free from the encirclement around their ‘keep’ and made it over to our side to capture me. I didn’t know how they were slipping out at first but as I watched, I noticed that whenever someone desperately tried to get out, my team just let them get passed until they faced the choice of coming to me or trying to fight back to their keep. All of them choose to come after me and all of them yielded.

  Eventually, after another ten minutes, enough people on the other team surrendered that a swarm of ten rushed into the opposing keep and lifted a struggling Darius into the air. It didn’t matter how Darius thrashed, slowly, carefully. They lifted him over the border and onto our side. When his feet touched the sand on our side of the border, Tammy called out our victory.

  The people who remained screamed out in victory and our teammates who’d surrendered rushed towards them.

  Across from us, the people on the other team trudged back to their keep, beginning another session of strategy. Some people limped, and a few were bruised, but no one was hurt bad enough that the approaching [Healers] couldn’t tend them.

  “Why are you brooding, you big lug, come on!” Nora said, her voice filled with a quiet pride as she tugged at my sleeve.

  “I’m not.” I replied, but still allowed her to pull me towards the celebrating group.