“In third place, Mage Georgios”, a new elf announced, voice echoing loudly in the hall. There was polite clapping while the mercenary-looking guy dejectedly smiled in an “eh, good enough”, way. Sighs of disappointment escaped the other contestants as the other two winning candidates seemed obvious enough. Vic couldn’t blame them.

  “Congratulations on your performance. Your reward of ten golden honours awaits you at the clerk’s desk”, the elf continued, and now the man had a wider little smile.

  How strange, though, that only mages would be in the rankings.

  There had only been one sorceress in it, and she’d gotten sixth place, which was just below any memorable consolation prizes that people could get by still being in the top 5. Was that lack of sorcery in today’s contest just accidental? It could be. But it was still a fairly fanatical city, maybe they wouldn’t look kindly on people who worshipped other gods or made pacts with lesser creatures. That stayed a possibility.

  “And now, in second place…”, the elf said, and Vic stared and blinked a few times at Thalis, who was positively shaking her arms while holding her fists firmly clenched close. Her fidgeting had reached a certain point where even Vic was getting worried. Who even cared that much about competitions? It was just about the money. Vic carefully removed her good old glove and massaged her hand, pulling quickly the glove in a satchel.

  ‘Huh, what a weirdo’, Vic thought, while picking her nose. She stared at the finger that had just left her left nostril. Oh whoops, now she had a booger to dispose of. She hid her crime with her other hand, she just needed to figure out where to get rid of the evidence.

  Anyway, she wasn’t that invested anymore. The jury’s decision to value raw power over technical prowess was all their own. Maybe they’d try to snare her with the appeal of money by giving her the first prize. Maybe they’d value something else.

  It didn’t matter. What was done was done. She couldn’t affect that result anymore. She would be a fool to care.

  “…Mage Thalis”, the elf announced. Vic awkwardly stared around, trying to avoid the way that that girl was now deflating with something akin to despair and increasing levels of shame. “Congratulations on your performance”, the elf continued, which just had to rub it in. “Your reward of twenty-five golden honours awaits you at the clerk’s desk, but before, please discuss matters with our currently present High Priestess that gracefully has a few words to offer you.”

  Vic tilted her head as Thalis started walking in the judges’ direction. Which also happened to be in Vic’s direction. They were going to cross paths one last time, huh. The said high priestess had gotten up and apparently wanted to give a little speech of reassurances to the city’s dimming superstar.

  Vic considered her options. It did feel kind of bad for her. It was a rough world out there. And that had been a lot of money lost to her, despite having a pretty innovative spell, just because Vic stumbled into this competition and wrecked it all like a sudden, unwanted and unprompted storm.

  Thalis, five metres away from her, glanced at her. Their gazes crossed, if only for a second.

  Vic leapt on the occasion, pointed at her and began cackling.

  “AHAHAHA, I won! I WON!” Vic manically and joyfully exclaimed. “THAT MEANS YOU LOST!”

  Vic continued cackling and began crouching while keeping on pointing at Thalis.

  “Where’s your prideful confidence now, HUH? Who’s a sore looser? Who’s a sore looser? You ARE! HAHAHAHA!” Vic chirped. And cackled, laughing at the sky madly, or rather at the roof. She raised her hands towards it. “ALL THAT MONEY’s MINE!” She started dancing while hopping from feet to feet in what had to be the least elegant dance ever invented by mankind.

  The young elf’s face had turned entirely red. She was now shaking. She barely managed to keep on walking with an intact composure. Even people started giving hostile stares at Vic. Vic was half-tempted to just smirk at them to make it worse.

  “Ahem”, the high priestess interrupted with barely hidden aggravated anger. “If you may respect the lowest standards of decorum.”

  “I may not”, Vic replied, still chuckling and having trouble to even consider quietening it. The High Priestess glared at her with the start of murderous intent. Vic’s smirk simply widened.

  Ah, the joys of disturbing authority.

  That high priestess was now visibly grounding her teeth at her lack of appropriate reaction. Huhuhu.

  The priestess extended a hand to Thalis who reached her side, and giving a last glare at Vic, took her aside, whispering quietly to her while leading her to another room.

  The ranking announcer scratched her throat. She seemed apprehensive to simply consider uttering the name of the winner of this little tournament. Vic felt very smug about it.

  Oh, now, they wouldn’t just mess with the rankings to mess with her, huh? That would just be petty.

  “And in…” the announcer hesitated, gulping audibly through her sound amplifying spell, barely able to look at Vic, “first place…”

  “Vic, please”, Karah pleaded, only now getting the courage to speak up and stand at her side, and that was a bit unfair because Vic wasn’t that embarrassing to be around, “You’re making everyone… uncomfortable…”

  Vic squinted, reducing her shit-eating grin to a simple, controlled line. She was the very image of calmness and peacefulness. Eh, if that made Karah happy, sure. She could do it…

  “…Victorya, the stranger”, the announcer finished.

  “YISSS!” Vic hissed, pumping her fists in the air energetically. She perceived Karah looking extremely uncomfortable and stepping a bit away through the corners of her eyes.

  Aw come on she could celebrate her victory, even if… there hadn’t been much of a fight to begin with, now had there be? Vic smirked.

  “Oh it’s a great day to be me today”, Vic wiggled her eyebrows to herself. Yes, yes it was.

  “Sweet rewards, oh yeah that’s going to be so sweet”, she whispered to herself, hyping herself up for them. She barely could control the little dance of victory that her body moved on its own to do. She twirled around. “I can already see it. I can already feel it. I can already taste it.”

  “…If you may meet with the remaining judges before collecting your hundred golden honours”, the announcer repeated for what was more than a second time.

  Huh. Oh. Okay, now she’d genuinely not heard it the first- or second- or third time. But by the way she was being scowled at, it seemed that the cultists in charge of the event weren’t even considering that little mistakes could be made. How unforgiving and unfair, tsk. Even she could make little mistakes from time to time.

  …Though that rarely happened, obviously, or she wouldn’t be alive. She smirked to herself for that funny, amusing thought, and received back a lot of annoyed, envious dirty looks if not for the few fearful people that backed away from her poised walking pace.

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  She reached the two judges and stopped before their table.

  “What’s up”, she asked. “Besides the sky”, she added, smirking again at her joke. Oh, she was feeling very funny today.

  The priest who laughed a lot barked a snicker. Then quickly got his grip back on his perfectly controlled posture when he saw a glare from the high priestess, who’d apparently finished talking to the “local city celebrity”.

  “You would definitely make things interesting if you were to enter the Order”, the priest chortled.

  The high priestess scowled at him while she sat down.

  “Certainly not if I can help it”, she haughtily said. “She would have to learn the very concept of respect, and that would require the humbling experience of being an acolyte cleaning latrines for the good of the people for a year, at least.”

  Vic stared at her like she’d bitten a lemon. What was that elf on? She definitely wanted to know, that stuff could sell great in most places.

  The mage at the table seemed also offended at the concept.

  “Absolutely not, High Priestess Lilyn, that would be an utter waste”, he said, and the priest barked a quiet laugh at that. Vic stared back at the funny priest. Okay, he had a sense of humour she could get behind. Maybe she’d spare that one if she ever were to want to nuke this city.

  The mage rolled his eyes.

  “Early years are the ones where the mind is at its most malleable and capable of change. With this sort of potential- it would be a crime not to genuinely let that talent flourish with proper guidance.”

  Vic squinted. That was nice and all, but why were they talking like she wasn’t in the same room as them? Hadn’t they had the time to do that before asking her to come talk with them?

  They weren’t just being rude. They were trying… to make her feel like she wanted this.

  She grimaced. Ewwwk.

  She looked away, trying to distract herself and maybe see if the star student was still around, because she did want to rub a little more salt in the wound for the sake of it. Heheheh, how the mighty could fall.

  Turning her head back, that high priestess was still glaring at her like she’d murdered her puppy (which she would never do, clearly, murdering puppies was were Vic drew the line), and that kind of made her want to act out to annoy her even more.

  Honestly, she could just switch of targets. From city celebrity to high priestess, that was just a little step up.

  She interrupted the talk between the funny priest and the mage, who’d seemed so deep in their conversation on whether she should enter their local church or their local magic school that she’d kind of spaced it out. The glaring high priestess had been far too funny not to stare back at while pretending to be too stupid to understand what a “glare” was supposed to mean. She really had hated Vic’s lazy smiles, which she would note in case she ever were to meet her again.

  “Hey”, she finally yawned. “I’m right there”, she said, while motioning at the mage. “Stop talking like I’m not there or I’ll just leave.”

  She could nearly hear the high priestess screech out “the disrespect-!” by the way she was slowly breathing in and out. She shook her head, and brought a hand to her ear, seemingly… now ignoring her. Huh, it was weird. She squinted. Magic did seem to be pulsing from that earring. Hm. Suspicious.

  Then the mage abruptly took her hand that she’d been moving around to be dramatic and shook on it. Vic froze.

  “It is nice to meet you, yes, apologies for our enthusiasm”, he said, looking earnest.

  Oh crap. That had been her hand where the booger had been kept in.

  Vic tightly smiled.

  “Y-eeeeah”, Vic said, doing her very best impression of not looking down at her hand while staring straight into the pale blue eyes of the mage. Then at his mouth. Oh. His off-colour jaw wasn’t his. On his chin, those were six tiny beady eyes of a demon who was seemingly half-eating the lower part of his face and that were staring at her, blinking at her. Hm, no. Rather than eating his face, it was serving as a prosthetic.

  She hadn’t noticed until now. How had she done not to notice that for so long?? Had she gotten that used to the whims and horrors of this world to be completely unaware of something out of the ordinary? She needed to focus better on the situation, quick. Time to get serious again.

  “I am Arcmage and Grand Sorcerer Lunbumster, principal of the school you may attend to if that choice is the one you make”, he lightly said. Vic kept her face as straight as possible.

  “Huh”, she added.

  The smile turned nervous.

  “And you… are?” he asked. Oh. Had she been supposed to answer?

  “I uh thought you already knew that. I’m Vic. From the wastes. Or somewhere close to that”, she added, because those sure were some new interesting facts to know about her. And that’s all they needed to know about her.

  “I…” he said, trying to steer the conversation to somewhere less awkward. “…was most curious to know about the source of your power. We couldn’t detect it by simple inspection. So, are you a mage, or sorceress? You look too young to have specialised yourself in those two venues if I may assume so.”

  Vic stared awkwardly at him.

  “No idea”, she answered. “It’s probably none or both of them at the same time. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  There was an audible gulp from a person she hadn’t noticed standing next to the trio of judges.

  “She’s…. saying the truth”, that elf from before who had attempted to register her information in front of everyone said.

  Vic squinted at her. She’d never met before someone who could spell out truth from lies…

  “Well duh”, Vic replied, shrugging, not noticing the shocked looks that were exchanged. “Also I’m a blue platypus that’s good at illusion magic and eats children for dinner.”

  There was an awkward exchange of stares between the judges, and the priest seemed very lightly giddy when he turned towards the truth wrangler.

  “That… was a lie”, she replied. The priest chortled too much, and the mage let out ever so slightly a breath of awkward relief. His smile was definitely awkward. The high priestess just kept squinting at her.

  Oh dang it. That could have been fun. Maybe she needed to work out in what ways truth could be played around her. After all, her registered name “Victorya”, had apparently been seen… as her “true name”. Ever so curious. It couldn’t just be a type of magic that detected what the person thought was true… She frowned. That was so weird. Victorya definitely wasn’t her real name. She roleplayed with it, sure, but that was it. So weird.

  The mage then released her held hand, having seemingly forgotten that they’d been handshaking each other for a few good minutes.

  She let out a sigh of relief.

  Once released, she discreetly looked down at her hand.

  But the booger was gone. Oh no.

  The mage had now brought his hands together and held them over the desk, smiling pleasantly at her. He was completely unaware. Oh that poor guy. Oh that poor soul, as they’d say.

  “A sponsorship to the academy could be negotiated”, he said. Vic focused with all her might on the conversation. She really didn’t need to look or think about anything else, huh-huh. “It is not often that we propose the prestigious ones, but considering your age, precocity and talent-”

  Vic shook her head off. She needed to stay focused.

  “Nope”, Vic replied. “I’m not staying here.”

  The high priestess was now frowning at Vic, but for a new reason that she figured she could now feel offended about. “What a waste of potential that would be”, she said. “The wastes are dangerous, you could die, and for such a… talent to die without having grown in the right city in the first place…”

  “Nope”, Vic replied. “I’m not staying.”

  Perhaps if she repeated it three times it would get through their thick skulls.

  The mage sighed. He began writing down on a piece of paper.

  “If you ever change your mind…”

  “Nope!” Vic replied with the same exact tonality as before. “I’m not staying.”

  She stared at the priest, daring him to ever think about speaking up now.

  Each judge tilted their heads at her in a questioning way. Finally. They all looked annoyed. Her job was done there. What an achievement!

  The mage who had started talking finished his sentence.

  “…Bring this to the eastern Observatory’s tower and ask for Ariel’s courses”, he said, imprinting a seal on the paper. “You’ll be welcomed, fed and sheltered.”

  Vic smiled and pocketed the paper without looking at it.

  “Where can I get my prize money?” she beamed.

  The jury sighed and motioned to a clerk sitting behind a heavy desk incorporated into a stone wall. Behind him, a wide magical looking coffer stood.

  She briskly walked towards there, ignoring pointedly the high priestess. She was now being stared very… oddly by her. Vic turned her back on it. No need to pay more attention on that now. That hag probably thrived in attention. Better deprive her of that.

  She could nearly hear the “kids these days” “no respect for their elders” “she reminds me of… someone” if she squinted her eyes enough. She didn’t care. She was rubbing her hands like a robber about to commit a heist. She was gonna be rich. A new coat. Shiny armour adjusted properly to her size. Proper materials for a potential staff. So much food. No, so much nice food. It was a bright day ahead of her.

  She victoriously walked towards the clerk’s desk, happy to claim her treasure, uncaring about the many watchful eyes that followed her there. That was all that eyes did anyway, watching, and enacting nothing. She didn't care.

  And behind her, pale, blue ones lingered on her more than others.