Theresa stepped out of the forest and into a clearing flanked by Alex and Brutus. Her deathstalker expression was now replaced by one of complete shock. Her boyfriend looked as stunned as she did, like someone had just randomly slapped him. His eyes were darting around, which was exactly what they did when he was trying to puzzle out something on the fly.

Her hands reached out: one fell on Brutus’ head—stroking it to comfort him—while the other slipped into Alex’s. She concentrated on his warm, supportive grip while trying to make sense of what had happened.

They’d lost, just like that.

Hard and fast.

They hadn’t even gotten a chance to participate before the hunt had abruptly ended.

And that stung.

She was trying to remain stoic and composed, but on the inside, she just wanted to scream her disappointment.

‘Third,’ she thought. ‘Bow hunting is what I do. I excel at it. But I come in third in archery. And now, we don’t even place in hunting.’

She shook her head, and looked toward the gathering crowd.

Officials swarmed the solo winner and the second and third-place teams. The silver and bronze medalists looked just about as bewildered as she felt.

At the centre of the crowd, a young man with a slight build was holding a rather calm looking rolok as the announcer ushered him and the silver and bronze medalists to the winners’ podium.

Theresa’s eyes quickly turned to the stands, searching for her family and friends. This was one of many times she silently thanked Professor Kabbot-Xin: a year ago she would’ve struggled to find them among the churning audience, even though she considered her eyesight to be really good back then. Now, her eyes honed in on Grimloch’s fin and Thundar’s horned head in an instant. Claygon was standing motionless by the stands. From where she was, she could see Selina’s facial expressions shifting as she talked with her mother.

It was stunning how much her eyesight had improved. Too bad she didn’t get a chance to use it in the hunt. Her jaw clenched as her grip tightened on Alex’s hand.

“What’re they saying?” he was asking while squinting at their family and friends. “I thiiink I see Claygon and Grimloch?”

She focused on her hearing: fragments of conversation from different voices came at her from within the crowd. She acknowledged each one and let it go, tuning out the noise, trying to pick out what her friends and family were saying.

…but they were too far away.

She could hear their voices faintly, but couldn’t make out their words.

“Can’t quite hear what they’re saying,” she said.

“Too bad. I bet they’re as shocked as we are.”

“…another failure,” she whispered.

“What was that?” Alex asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

He gave her a long look. “That didn’t sound like nothing.”

She shook her head. “Not worth repeating.”

Turning back to the podium, Theresa watched the young winner rise to the central platform, he gave the crowd an awkward smile and waved at them. She clamped down on the bite of jealousy rising in her, and just tried to watch and listen for his name.

“And the winneeeeer of the Great Land Hunt is Wolud Raaaaaniiiiiiier!” the announcer roared.

“Oh shit,” Alex and Theresa cursed at the same time.

The huntress remembered the name: During their Grand Battle training sessions Isolde had warned them more than once about certain people to look out for. Three names had come up over and over: Tyris Goldtooth, whose familiar had nearly crushed Claygon in the Duel by Proxy; Indrajit Hanuman, who had beaten Grimloch and everyone else by a mile in the foot race, and now-

“Wolud Ranier,” Alex muttered. “He’s an illusionist…how’d that translate to being this expert hunter? Then again, he’s done two years of the Art of the Wizard in Combat, according to Isolde.”

“Come on,” Theresa said, nodding toward the stands. “The crowd’s moving. Our friends were watching the hunt on those sky illusion things.” She pointed to the fading illusions above. “Let’s find out how he beat us so fast.”

As the spectators filed out of their seats, Theresa and Alex pushed their way through the mass of people until they reached their friends and family.

Her father was the first to reach the three of them, and he placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said sombrely. “I know how much you were looking forward to this.”

“It’s alright,” she lied.

She noticed Alex throw her a look, but kept talking.

“What happened?” she asked, looking around at everyone. “How did he catch it so fast?”

Isolde sighed. “Through clever application of spellcraft. There is a spell of fourth-tier called Wizard’s Eye. It essentially conjures a magical, invisible eye that floats through the air and sends whatever it sees directly back to the caster.”

“Hmmm, like a strong familiar link.” Khalik nodded. “Some experienced masters are able to see directly through the eyes of their familiar, even at a distance.”

“Some wizards cast spells that let them share the senses of the creatures they’ve summoned too,” Alex said. “So, are you saying he sent one of these magical eyes out to hunt the rolok?”

Thundar snorted. “Try five of them.”

“At the same time? That’s a lot of mana…” Alex said, shaking his head slowly. “And five at once…that’d get really confusing having five spells sending five visuals to your mind all at the same time.”

“He used illusions, like the ones up there.” Selina pointed up at the sky, where the illusions that displayed the contest had been.

“Yes,” Isolde said. “It appeared that he modified his Wizard’s Eyes to carry their sight to illusions floating in front of him. Instead of having five different views delivered into his mind all at once—which would be overwhelming for many—he simply had five different ‘illusionary windows’ to view, each showed him the view from a different eye. Far more manageable.”

“Clever,” Alex said. “That’s a trick I gotta learn when I get to fourth-tier spells.”

“Yeah, me too,” Thundar grunted. “So with five eyes scouting in different directions, he found the rolok real fast. Then he cast a spell of invisibility on himself and headed it off. Caught it when it hid in the hollow of a tree, and that was that. Game over. I gotta say, that guy had a lot of advantages going for him. Before he even cast the invisibility spell, you could tell he knew a lot about being all stealthy: he moved a lot like you, Theresa.”

“But I thought the announcer said that this rolok turned invisible when it stopped moving?” she said.

Thundar shrugged. “One thing you learn in illusions class is tricks for seeing through others’ illusions, like invisibility magic. He probably knows a bunch of those.”

Theresa shook her head. “No wonder he found the rolok so fast: he didn’t hunt it, he cornered it with his little army of magical scouts.”

Alex rubbed her back. “Well, that should make us feel better. I mean, we tried…but he wasn’t even playing the same game we were. And hey, we learned one of his big tricks. That’s going to help in the Grand Battle. You feel any better…knowing that, I mean?”

She sighed. “…and what are our chances of winning the Grand Battle?” She wasn’t feeling all that confident at the moment.

“…well, with the way we’ve been performing-”

“The way you, Grimloch and Khalik have been performing.”

“…uh,” he paused, scratching the back of his head and watching her closely. He had the same look that he got when he was intently reading a book. “Well, we have a chance, I’d say.”

“But a small one,” Isolde said. “There are many highly competent teams here, and having The Outcasts of the Divine Wind competing again does not bode well for any other team with hopes of claiming the Grand Battle’s gold medallion.”

“Then I don’t feel that much better at all,” Theresa said, looking at Thundar and Grimloch. “The Grand Melee’s this afternoon. The three of us have to be ready. I want us to win, and I don’t want to be the one dragging us down.”

Grimloch and Thundar looked at each other.

“C’mon, it’s you! You don’t drag any team you’re on down,” the minotaur said. “Besides, the Grand Melee’s got a lot more restrictions on spellcasting. Basic body enhancements, and weapon enhancements are okay: no illusions, no great balls of fire, no flying around, or teleporting, or anything like that, though. It’s just a straight rock ‘em sock ’em melee contest!”

“Right,” Theresa said. “Then I’ll have no excuse. I want to get to the top.” She looked at her parents. “I want you to see that.”

“Theresa,” her mother said. “You don’t have to push yourself so hard to win just for us.”

“Yeah, you’re really cool, whether you win or not,” Selina said.

“Thank you,” she looked at all of them. “But I want a win. I want you to see it, but it’s not for all of you.”

She gave Brutus a pat and the cerberus let out a grunt.

“…it’s for me.”

“Welcome one and welcome all to the Graaaaaand Melee!” the announcer cried as he floated high above the field.

Theresa watched him while trying to keep her gut calm. Their loss in The Great Land Hunt had been sitting…pretty poorly with her; she’d hardly tasted lunch and anxiety had been building in her belly as the melee got closer.

Now, it was grumbling like she’d eaten bad fish.

She’d tried every technique to calm down that Professor Kabbot-Xin had taught in attempts to clear her mind and bring her thoughts back to the present…but disappointment about the past, and worry for the future warred inside her.

Which made grounding herself elusive.

“Steady,” Grimloch rumbled as the announcer talked about the history of The Grand Melee in his opening remarks.

“We’ve got this,” Thundar said, stretching and rotating his arms in their joints. “You guys beat the hell out of a well-fed mana vampire. We cracked open a Dune Worm and beat monster after monster in Baelin’s class. We’ve got this…it’s too bad we can’t have Claygon with us, but we’re pretty damn tough.”

“True,” Theresa said, taking a deep breath and looking up toward the audience. At this distance, even her enhanced sight could barely make out Claygon’s hulking figure standing beside the stands. She couldn’t even see her parents, Alex, Selina, Brutus or any of her frie-

Wait.

No, there he was: she could make Brutus out a little, but couldn’t really see details of anyone else. She turned her attention back to the field.

“Great distance,” she said, looking over the battlefield surrounding them. “A lot of ground to cover. Which means a lot of opportunities for the competition to tire themselves out.”

The Grand Melee was taking place in a massive field deep in the countryside, not far from where the Great Land Hunt had taken place. Teams and solo entrants had been positioned at different spots on the field to await the start of the contest. Every starting point gave the participants ample space to manoeuvre and position themselves.

It would be a free-for-all and every single person on the field, aside from Grimloch and Thundar, was the enemy.

Her hand fell on the hilts of her weapons. There had been a nice selection of blunted weaponry on offer for the participants to choose from, and she’d picked a curved falchion and a shortsword. Both had heft to them—they were a little heavier than her normal weapons, but the difference was minor—and were of similar length to her hunting knife, and great-grandfather’s swords.

Not surprisingly, Thundar had chosen a flanged mace similar to the one he always carried. Grimloch had grabbed the biggest iron club available, drawing nervous eyes from competitors who’d been choosing weapons at the time.

“Hopefully this one won’t break when I hit something with it,” he’d said.

Whoosh. Whoosh.

It sounded like a wind storm as he gave it a couple of test swings.

“You bend it, you buy it,” Thundar joked, fingering the haft of his mace. “Speaking of buying things, I need you guys to buy me some time to cast my enhancement spells on myself.”

He looked over at the team closest to them—who were a good fifty feet away—and then down at the glowing spell-mark on his arm. “They’re looking pretty antsy over there, and I’m getting the feeling they’ll want first strike.”

The team was made up of seven tough looking dwarven warriors armed with long poleaxes and shields. They were eyeing Theresa and her teammates with calculating looks while talking amongst themselves, strategizing, no doubt. One yawned. One sneezed. One looked real grumpy.

Theresa remembered Baelin discussing a common tactic in battle: eliminating the greatest threat first. That usually meant taking out a wizard in a group of adventurers, dispensing with an army’s general or commander fast, or finding and getting rid of the champion of a monster horde before they knew what hit them. It looked like the dwarves saw them as one of the bigger threats in the melee, and for good reason. Her knees bent slightly, readying for action.

“We’ll keep everyone away from you, Thundar,” she said, eyeing other teams nearby. They were also looking at the three of them dangerously: a pair of twin swordsmen, a group of lizard folk, and some unarmed warriors in light clothing.

“We’ll take you all on,” Theresa said, her deathstalker face in full effect.

“-and without further delay,” the announcer roared above. “I declare this Grand Melee…to begin!”

Ding.

A bell rang.

“Feeding frenzy!” Grimloch roared.

Thundar began chanting a body enhancement spell.

“Let’s go,” Theresa said evenly.

She drew her blades.