I can hear blasts of magic from outside as a couple of gladiators with elemental powers pit fire against ice, their attacks punctuated by the gasps and cheers of the crowd.I can feel my nerves rising with every explosion, every roar of approval to signal someone’s been hurt.All my practice and training has come to this, and I wonder whether it will be enough.
I try to imagine how my fight with Lorelei might go.It seems obvious she’ll try to overwhelm me with magic in the first seconds, try to throw down seeds and raise plants to tangle me and render me helpless.Do I have the power to stop her?Will I be able to cut through those and get to her before she can leave me at her mercy?
A final shriek of pain comes from somewhere out in the arena and there’s a reaction I don’t expect from the crowd, a kind of hushed silence as if they’re only just coming to terms with what the Grand Tournament means.
A trainer comes to the space where I’m warming up.“You’re up next.Come with me.”
I follow him through the preparation areas of the arena, heading for the gates to the arena floor.To my surprise, Selene is there, and it’s evenmoreof a shock that Rowan is next to her.
“Lyra, are you sure you want to do this?”Rowan asks me.“You could still withdraw from the tournament.”
“I’m going to fight, Rowan,” I say.
“In that case, since Selene has removed her own dampener, as the First Senator of Aetheria, I’m going to authorize that yours be removed.”
My surprise turns to outright shock.I had assumed that I’d be fighting in this tournament handicapped by my limited magic.Now, it seems I’m going to get every scrap of power I possess.
“Selene, I know you can do it,” Rowan says.
“Of course,” Selene says.She moves to me, touching her fingers to the dampener.She smiles, as though this is something she’d been hoping for all along.
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d want me to have my power,” I say.
“Oh, I would have done this anyway,” Selene whispers to me.“But this way, the First Senator has taken one last step to overrule the senate.It will be easy to remove him now, Lyra.As easy as removing… this.”
She pulls the dampener from my arm, stepping back and tossing it to one side.It occurs to me that I’m only a pace or two from her now.I could just throw myself at her, could attack her here.But I don’t.There are too many guards around to be sure I’ll succeed, and if I fail, Selene will be able to have me killed and go on with the tournament.Even if I slay her, that won’t undo the damage she’s done.I need to beseento beat her.
Instead, I nod my thanks to her and move to the gate that leads to the sands.
Marcus is announcing the contest from the senate box.“On this side of the sands, a visitor to Aetheria, a gladiator with power over plants: Lorelei!”A cheer comes from the crowd as she steps out onto the sands.“And on this side, a former champion of the colosseum, a beast whisperer unmatched by any other.I give you Lyra!”
I step out onto the sands to a mixture of cheers and boos.Lorelei is standing across from me, dark hair woven with vines and flowers now, her bark armor accompanied by a sickle and a long dagger.She salutes me with her weapons and I raise my spear in response.
“Begin!”Marcus calls out.
Almost immediately, Lorelei reaches into her belt, drawing out a handful of seeds that she flings in a scattering across the sand of the arena.Even as she does it, I reach out with my powers for the animals I can feel around me.
My magic comes to me in a tidal wave of power as I do it.I don’t know if it’s because I finally have my power back after so long, or because of the amplifying stones beneath the arena, or both, but it feels as though I have more power than ever before.I reach for the birds circling above the arena, looking through their eyes, ready for danger.
It means I see the plants shooting up under Lorelei’s command around me in plenty of time to throw myself aside from them, borrowing some of the birds’ speed and grace to keep dodging.Grasping vines and thorny brambles shoot up from the ground, grabbing for me and forcing me to dance aside.Lorelei rushes me as I do it, though, slicing at me with her sickle, forcing me to tangle it with my net to defend myself.
She wrenches the net from my grip, casting aside both weapons.It should leave me with the advantage, with my spear against just her dagger, but she grabs a branch from a tree that’s grown up beside her, snapping it off and reshaping it with her magic so it becomes a spear of her own.
We stalk one another around the colosseum, each looking for an advantage.Lorelei makes more plants grow everywhere I step, turning the formerly sandy floor of the arena into a verdant space, filled with life.I know I can’t just keep dodging forever, so I call down the birds I’m connected to, bringing hundreds of them at once, in a flock that darkens the sky while the crowd gasps.They plunge down among the plants, pecking and tearing at them, devouring them as fast as Lorelei can grow them.
I charge at her, now, thrusting and slashing with my spear, even as she does the same.She’s a formidable opponent, obviously skilled with her weapons, and with armor that seems to shift like a living thing to turn away my weapon.She scores a line of blood down my arm with hers, bringing stinging pain that makes me cry out.That cry is mirrored by a roar from the watching public.
I renew my attack, thrusting at her once more, but now she lets the blow through, even as her armor starts to weep sticky sap that means, when the point of the spear jams into the bark, it refuses to come free, Lorelei wrenches that weapon free of my grasp, too, then snaps it just below the head as the crowd gasps.
I draw my curved blade and head for her, dodging one way then another as she thrusts at me with her own spear.I dodge it and manage to grab it, so that for a moment we’re both fighting over the same weapon.Then Lorelei withers the branch it’s made from with her magic, destroying it as easily as she created it.That leaves me off balance for a moment, andinthat moment, she takes one of the vines from her hair and flings it at me.
It wraps around and around me, lengthening and growing, twisting and tangling so that in just seconds, my arms are pinned to my sides.Lorelei comes over to me and almost casually takes the knife from my grasp.
“Do you yield?”she asks, moving close to me.
Around us, a section of the crowd is chanting “Blood, blood, blood!”even as others are watching in horrified silence.
“Not yet,” I say.
