The air grew thick, charged with a tension that had nothing to do with mana and everything to do with memory. The previous matches had been sport. This was something else. When Instructor Garrick's voice boomed, "Team Darain, versus Team Cain," a dead silence fell, heavy and expectant.
Team Darain took their positions with polished synergy. Darain stood front and center, his cryomancer's blade already weeping a cold mist. To his right, Jax's practice bat looked no less deadly, his skin hardening to rough stone. Ryan planted his feet, the earth itself seeming to brace for his terrakinetic blows, while Andrew's gauntlets whined with building plasma. Their new member, Chris, stood slightly apart, his hands glowing with the brilliant, untapped potential of pure mana, a blank page waiting to be written with violence.
They were a wall of power.
Then, Cain's team entered the circle.
They moved not as a unit, but as a pack of solitary predators forced into the same hunting ground. Rowan seemed to dissolve into the background, his form blurring at the edges. Gordon stood with his hands open at his sides, the earth at his feet already stirring. Caspian hefted his greatsword, pure strength radiating from him. Brain stood at the rear, a sleek, enchanted crossbow loaded with a blunt but forceful bolt-round in his hands.
But Cain was the focal point. He held the wooden practice chakram as if it were the real, lethal steel. His gaze, a blizzard of cold fury, was locked on Darain, ignoring everyone else. The air around him seemed to warp, a heat haze of pure animosity.
Garrick's hand dropped. "Begin!"
The eruption was instantaneous.
Jax bellowed, a human avalanche of hardened flesh and spiked wood, charging straight for Cain. Ryan followed, heaving his sledgehammer down. The earth ruptured, a wave of force and shattered stone shooting towards Cain's team.
Cain moved swiftly, slamming his foot down onto the ground. A concussive blast of compressed air met the terrakinetic wave, the two forces colliding mid-field with a thunderous BOOM that sprayed dirt and pebbles like shrapnel. Through the debris, Cain shot forward, not towards Jax, but on a diagonal intercept course for Andrew.
Darain saw the move. "Chris, pin him!" he shouted, thrusting his own sword and sending a jagged spear of ice to cut off Cain's path.
Chris's hands flared. Mana solidified into a net of shimmering light, flying to ensnare Cain.
It was a perfect pincer. Ice from the front, a mana-net from the side, and Jax closing from the rear.
Cain didn't break stride.
"Rowan,"he said, the word a quiet command.
From the periphery, Rowan exhaled. A dense, grey fog exploded into being, not as a blanket, but as a precise wall that swallowed the mana-net and Darain's ice spear, neutralizing them completely. The fog then condensed around Andrew, blinding him. From within the mist came a series of sharp, precise thuds and a grunt of pain. Andrew stumbled out, clutching his side, one gauntlet sparking erratically. Rowan emerged behind him, silent as a phantom, his practice daggers held low.
Jax, his charge suddenly devoid of its target, skidded to a halt. He turned, confused, and found himself facing not Caspian, but a hulking, humanoid form of packed earth and stone—one of Gordon's lesser golems. The golem moved with surprising speed, its rocky fist slamming into Jax's hardened chest. The stone-on-stone impact was sickening. Jax's own reinforcement cracked audibly, and he was thrown backward, crashing into Ryan and sending them both sprawling.
"His leg! The hammer-user's left leg is unstable!" Brain's voice, calm and analytical, rang out from the back, his crossbow trained on the struggling Ryan.
Chris, seeing his team disintegrating, changed tactics. The mana in his hands swirled and formed into a glowing, translucent shield just as Brain's crossbow fired. The bolt-round slammed into the shield with tremendous force, causing Chris to stagger back, the mana construct flickering.
But Cain was already moving again. He ignored Chris, ignored the golem. He was a specter cutting through the chaos, his eyes never leaving Darain.
Darain stood isolated, his team decimated around him. He backed away, his mind racing, his cryomancer's blade held defensively. "Chris, a weapon! Now!" he yelled, his voice cracking.
Chris, under pressure from Brain's suppressing fire, frantically shaped his mana. A brilliant sword of light formed in his hands, but his focus was split. It was a desperate, reactive move.
Cain didn't care. He was finally within striking distance of Darain. He came to a stop, his chest rising and falling steadily. The distortion in the air around him intensified, coalescing around the wooden chakram until it hummed with a low, deadly frequency. The blunted edges of the practice weapon seemed to sharpen in the eyes of everyone watching.
He took a step forward. Then another. His boot crunched on a piece of shattered earth.
He raised the humming chakram. The air screamed around it, vibrating with compressed power waiting to be unleashed.
Darain swallowed, his knuckles white on his frost-coated sword, the newly formed mana-blade in Chris's hands seeming feeble against the raw, personal hatred aimed at him.
Instructor Garrick watched, his hand half-raised, but he did not call the match.