Alex charged through the forest with his team at his back.

He heard Claygon’s thundering steps, Grimloch’s crushing rush through the trees, the clinking of Svenia and Hogarth’s armour, and the heavy panting of Brutus’ three heads. Isolde, Khalik and Thundar quietly chanted spells just behind him: force armour, body enhancement and armour of earth.

He couldn’t hear Theresa’s movements, but that meant nothing: she moved so quietly that even when running through a forest at full speed with her boots connecting with the rough path, she barely made a sound.

What he could hear was the sound of their opponents up ahead.

“Right, gang!” a confident voice said. “We should secure the clearing and-”

“Wait, Fred!” a hoarse voice cried. “What’s that noise?”

‘Charge the fire-beams,’ Alex thought.

Whoooom!

He heard their power building.

“We’re being attacked!” a woman cried.

“Is it monsters?” another shocked female asked. “Already?”

“It doesn’t matter!” the man with the confident voice said. “Form a defensive-”

“Too late,” Alex whispered as his team burst from the trees. A team of ten stood—frozen—as Alex’s squad of companions surged out of the woods.

Twang! Twang! Twang! Twang! Twang!

Svenia, Hogarth and Theresa loosed arrows at the same time Grimloch and Thundar fired crossbow bolts into the clearing. Some slammed into the enemy team: three opponents vanished in an instant.

“Dammit, we have to-” a blonde man began shouting.

“Fire,” Alex said.

Whooooosh!

Fire-beams blasted into the clearing, strafing their opponents. Flame exploded through the air, and Alex could feel the blast of heat at the tree-line.

But while heat and smoke disoriented the enemy, his team was used to battling alongside Claygon. They rushed their foes and leapt on them without hesitating.

The enemy leader began shouting an incantation as he stumbled away from the flames, right into Brutus. One head grabbed his arm. The cerberus’ jaws snapped shut, and the young man vanished before the sound of snapping bone could be heard. Thundar lowered his head and charged another combatant, headbutting him, throwing him high into the air. He flipped once before crashing to the ground. Groaning, the dazed man tried to stand-

“Hello, friend!” said Khalik cheerily.

He thrust downward with his shortsword, and the young man vanished with a gasp.

“Goodbye, friend!”

Theresa, Svenia and Hogarth jumped the remaining few enemy team members then finished them off with a slash of their weapons.

In heartbeats, the clearing was empty except for some sputtering flames flickering on the moist earth.

Well, almost empty.

“There’s a good start!” Thundar cried as he yanked the enemy’s flag from their flagbearer and handed it to their own. “Yeeeeeah! That’s like…two points per person plus double for defeating an entire team…forty points right out the gate! Oh, and the flag! Forty-five!”

“Well done, everyone,” Theresa said.

“Hmmm, but now the real trials begin,” Isolde said. “We will not have so easy a victory again, I would guess.”

“Yeah, and that’s too bad,” Thundar said. “So, let’s get our long-lasting spells up in case another team tries to ambush us.”

One by one, they layered their defensive and enhancement spells on everyone. Alex cast his too.

Force Armour.

Orb of Air.

Forceshield.

Protective crooked rectangle.

Wizard’s Hands.

Forceball.

He was about to cast another spell—one he’d learned recently and hadn’t had the chance to use—but held off.

It’d be better to wait to cast that one when he knew there was a target to use it on.

He conjured three Wizard’s Hands—something he couldn’t do when he’d first learned the spell—and tossed a booby-trapped potion into each one: flight, sensory enhancement and a mana soothing potion.

He then drank a sensory enhancement potion, and tossed some to his teammates.

“Alright, if everyone’s ready,” he said. “Let’s go hunting.”

Isolde looked up at the tree canopy. “Remember, we must spread out somewhat. We’ll be amongst the trees so we cannot scatter as much as we might wish, so we must take care that we are not taken down by a fireball thrown into our midst.”

“Yes auntie Isolde,” Thundar said.

“I am not dignifying that with a response.”

“You just did.”

A sound like an enraged wolf emerged from Isolde’s throat as they melted into the trees.

Boom! Boom!

Explosions rang out in the distance.

“Looks like it’s started, so, which way do we go?” Alex asked as he ducked under a branch and looked up at the mountain ahead. “The central point is probably where we’ll find the Ursa-Lupines: everyone’s going to be trying to get there and take it.”

“We’ll probably meet every other team on our way there,” Theresa said.

“Perhaps,” Khalik said. “But some teams will doubtless try to first hunt the summoned monsters on the island. I bet they are a safer source of points than engaging fully equipped teams of battle wizards and warriors.”

“Yes, but the Ursa-Lupine Brotherhood seeks to stand out, not to merely safely earn points,” Isolde said, looking up at the canopy again where Najyah was flying above the trees.

“Then to meet our enemies, that is where we will have to go.” Khalik pointed through the canopy and up at the mountaintop rising in the distance. “We shall eliminate all those who stand before us on the way there.”

“Shock and awe,” Alex said.

“Shock and awe,” Khalik agreed.

The distant explosions grew louder.

The battle had begun in earnest.

“…uh…Amir, you said your friend, uh…Alex, was it?” Donovan stared up at the illusions. “You said he was a first year? As are his friends?”

“Uh…yes, most of them are,” Amir said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t blame you.”

Above the audience, illusions displayed different areas of the battlefield. A large, central illusion showed an overhead view of the island with tiny illusionary flags indicating the position of each team.

Teams clashed, battling each other with weapons and spells.

In one illusion, the Hydra Companions flew from behind a ridge, then ambushed another team. They launched a flurry of fireballs as soon as the other team was in sight, then several of them tried teleporting down among their foes’ forces.

Explosions rocked their enemy, taking out some of their members, while others managed to scatter. The Hydras’ teleportation failed when an opponent shouted a spell launching a flurry of lightning bolts at the Brotherhood. They scattered, but continued blasting the other team.

In another illusion, the Outcasts of the Divine Wind stealthily moved through a plain, attacking a team with hit-and-run tactics. The centaur archers peppered their adversaries with arrows from all sides. Their opponents raised shields—both material and forceshields—trying to block the attacks, but each arrow found a gap in their defences, like they had a will of their own.

As the enemy formation broke, the elemental knights quickly charged bearing blades shedding fire, lightning, ice and shimmering, diamond-like stone, breaking through their defences to banish them from The Grand Battle.

In another image, a grinning, redheaded woman shot lava from her hands as a monstrous volcano tortoise trampled everything in its path while spraying fire and lava. Some teams hunted monsters, while others were in full-flight, soaring above the action, determined to reach the mountaintop first.

Then there was Alex Roth’s team.

They were moving less like competitors looking to win a contest, and more like professional skirmishers slipping through the wilderness to ambush an enemy army. The young men and women didn’t wield legendary magics or shining swords that cut trees in half, but they moved with far more skill than their young ages would indicate.

In the first seconds of the competition, they had ambushed another team and wiped them out before they could even put up a fight. Then they melted into the trees like combat veterans and moved quickly, ambushing monsters and competitors on their way to the central mountain.

“I’ve seen third year battlemages that moved with less skill than them,” Ursula said.

“Indeed.” Leopold tapped his chin. “What they lack in raw magical power, they make up for in devastating skill. Good for them. It will be a jolly good show, I think. Roal would be proud to see such warriors carrying her legacy.”

“Yes,” Amir said, watching a bunch of water elementals get blasted apart by a lightning bolt from Isolde von Anmut.

His eyes lingered on the summoned creatures.

Professor Ram watched the competition from above Oreca’s Fall, observing teams struggling against each other below. His heart swelled with pride: he noticed a few of his favourite students were doing very well in The Grand Battle so far.

…and one of his not so favoured students was doing surprisingly well.

“So, you were one of Baelin’s monsters,” he said quietly, watching a certain chestnut haired young man ambush a pair of summoned creatures—humanoid in shape and with two heads each—and use a WIzard’s Hand spell to crush something.

Gas blasted out, enveloping the howling creatures. Their roars of anger died away, replaced by cries of alarm as they suddenly shot up, zig-zagging through the air in a manic, uncontrolled flight that saw them hit, then ricochet off the surrounding trees.

After some dull impacts, they vanished back to their home plane.

Alex Roth nodded at his handiwork then waved to some of his team: a dangerous-looking group that included a gigantic shark man, a massive golem, and a cerberus making their way toward the edge of the forest. A young, dark-haired woman and the cerberus slipped out of the trees first, scanned the flat plain ahead, then waved the rest of the team forward.

The others slipped from the tree line—well, the golem didn’t so much ‘slip’ as he did ‘thunder’—to begin quickly moving through the tall grass. A large eagle soared above to an altitude of one hundred and thirteen feet, by Ram’s calculations.

“If by monsters you mean a threat, then truly they have become monsters, have they not?” a deep, rumbling voice said from above the force professor. Chancellor Baelin floated down until he was eye-level with the force wizard. “It fills this ancient heart with pride.”

Ram glanced at the goat man. “Some wouldn’t take that as a compliment,” he pointed out.

“But I shall,” the ancient wizard said, sweeping the landscape with those goat-like eyes. “The purpose of my class is to forge students into monsters…or at least into wizards that their enemies would call ‘monsters’. There is no higher praise than to have your enemies completely lose their faculties from fear as you advance upon them and declare that you are the monster who they should have left be!”

Ram shook his head. “You’re turning them into more wizards like you: beasts that lived far too long after their time should have passed.”

“Then I have done well.” Baelin smiled. “I shall be most curious to see how this new crop fares against some of my previous students in this competition: Wolud will likely give them a good run…hmmmm perhaps I could guide them toward each other.”

“That would be cheating, chancellor.”

“Indeed, so it would!” Baelin laughed. “Ah pfeh, sometimes I am convinced rules only exist to smother all the fun out of life. Ah well-oh! Speaking of cheating!”

He looked toward the east. “Did you feel that? No doubt that was a fifth-level spell.”

Ram frowned, concentrating on his ability to sense and manipulate mana. He wasn’t anywhere near as skilled at it as the chancellor, but he did catch the faint hints of a powerful spell having been cast.

“Well, someone’s being naughty,” Ram said. “You want to ruin their day, or shall I?”

“Oh, be my guest,” Baelin said. “I know you enjoy that type of thing a fair bit.”

Ram gave a long laugh and flexed the black force construct that served as his arm. “Yes, I do. It’s good giving rule-breakers something to fear.”

“Hah, and you call my students monsters,” Baelin said. “Oh by the by—speaking of those that raise monsters—have you seen Holden? I thought he was to aid in refereeing today?”

“Something came up in the botanical gardens and he needed to stay behind.”

“Ah, pity.”

Kybas casually walked toward the botanical gardens, barely resisting the urge to stick his hands in his pockets and whistle. His large eyes constantly scanned his surroundings and his large ears twitched, listening for patrols or anyone who might be following him.

Nothing. Harmless was the only one around, quietly padding at Kybas’ side. A little bit of nostalgia rose up in the goblin: it was good that his familiar was growing so quickly, but he missed the days when he could just pick him up and easily carry his little friend.

As for the rest of campus, it had become a ghost town while The Grand Battle was going on. He’d seen a few patrols pass overhead, but most were focused on the crowd at the stadium.

He slipped into the botanical gardens and checked the area. Nothing. Maybe someone moving around in the distance, but far away.

Far enough for him and Harmless to feel safe.

Quietly, he and the croc melted into the foliage and found one of the hidden entrances to their tunnel. With one more glance around, they slipped into the passage.

Kybas cocked his head toward the tunnel’s ceiling.

After Alex had found his burrow, he had carved holes in the ceilings using a couple of spells. They weren’t big enough for anything besides bugs to get through, but if anything was above, or too near the entrances to his tunnels, he could better hear them coming.

“Okay Harmless,” Kybas said quietly. “Let’s go quiiiick and quiet as a mouse. And no one will know.”

Together, the goblin and the crocodile silently padded down the tunnel.