Every official duel in the Nexus was fought in the Proving Grounds.
It was a huge building of gray stone that stood behind the Great Market. From the outside, it looked like a mountain with a hundred doors. Inside, it held 60 arenas. Each arena was a wide circle of sand with rows of stone seats around it, and it was one of the few places in the Nexus where the Arbiter allowed Manifestations.
The first round of duels lasted five days, because there were more than 21,000 first-years and only 60 arenas. Quill’s class fought on the third morning, in Arena 14. Mav’s duel was the last one of the morning, so he sat with his class and watched the others first.
Tamsin fought early. Her opponent was a boy from Evergrove who was ranked 4,410th, and he had 15 large cats with thorns along their backs. Tamsin cast her Manifestation, and a piece of dark forest appeared on the sand. There were 21 huge white moths on its trees, and their wings shone with a pale blue light.
The cats ran at them. The moths used their skill, which was a very bright flash, and the cats stopped for a few seconds, because they couldn’t see. Tamsin looked at them, and then she raised her hand.
"I yield," she said.
It had lasted 30 seconds, and some people in the stands laughed. She came back to her seat with a white face, and she sat down next to Mav.
"My moths can blind a beast, but they can’t hurt it," she said quickly, before he could ask. "The flash only lasts a few seconds. After that, his cats would have killed my moths one by one, and a new moth needs three weeks to grow. So I stopped before I lost any."
"You made the right choice," Mav said. She had lost nothing, because the lower rank didn’t move on the Ladder when it lost a duel.
Ronald fought next, and his duel was very different.
His opponent was a girl from the school in the tower of ice, who was ranked 6,214th. She had 18 white foxes, and their skill froze the ground under their feet. Her side of the arena was soon covered with smooth ice. Her plan was easy to guess. Any beast that ran onto that ice would slip and fall, and her foxes would finish it on the ground.
Ronald cast his hillside, with its ditch and its ugly stone wall, and his 14 grown boars lined up behind the wall. Then he gave them one order, which was to run straight at the foxes.
The boars used their own skill, which was called Charge. For a few seconds, a boar that was running in a straight line couldn’t be pushed aside or knocked over. The ice didn’t help the foxes either. A stone boar weighed as much as a cart full of bricks, so its feet went through the ice and found the sand below. The foxes were too small to stop them. The boars ran over three foxes, and the girl yielded to save the others.
[Ronald Brown wins the duel.]
[Class Ladder: Ronald Brown, rank 6,214.]
The whole class shouted with joy. Ronald came back with a red face and a huge smile.
"I didn’t have a plan," he admitted. "I only told them to run. I didn’t know that the ice would break."
"It worked," Mav said. "That’s what matters."
By noon, 39 students of the class had fought. Ten of them had won, and 29 had lost. Quill said that it was a good year. Wildroot usually lost four duels out of five in the first round, because most of its students were commoners who had never been trained.
Then new letters appeared above the sand, and Mav felt a sharp, pleasant excitement.
[Next duel: Maverick Silkborn, Wildroot, against Edric Vane, Emberhall.]
-----
The stands had been half empty all morning, but they filled up before his duel.
About 300 people in dark red coats came in together and sat down in straight rows. They were students of Emberhall, the school of House Pyrecrest, and they had come to watch one of their own beat the traitor’s son. Four small glass balls floated down from the roof and stopped above the sand. They were the eyes of House Sunspire, and whatever they saw was shown on the screens of Earth. House Sunspire had chosen this duel because so many people on Earth had laughed at the boy who came last.
’My uncle asked me to stay quiet, and now thousands of people on Earth are going to watch me fight.’
He felt guilty about it. However, he was also excited, and his heart was beating fast.
"Your fish are too slow outside the water," Ronald said. He had seen them lose to Holloway’s wolves in Quill’s yard, and he looked worried. "So what are you going to do?"
"I brought Six this time. He’s a crab, and he’s as big as a small truck."
"You have a crab that big?" Ronald stared at him. "Then why did you leave him at home last week?"
"He was busy building a street," Mav said.
Ronald laughed, because he thought that it was a joke.
Mav’s class already knew that he had strange Subjects. They had seen his eel and his needlefish in Quill’s yard the week before, and they had talked about them for days. His species was seaweed, so nobody understood why fish were fighting for him. Most of them had decided that his seaweeds grew on the fish of his sea, and that the fish obeyed the seaweeds in some way. Then they had lost interest, because the fish had lost.
Mav had thought about this duel all night, and his plan had two rules.
The first rule was to fight close to his water. Seven’s flash could reach five meters past the wall of the dome. So if the enemy came to him, it would also come to her.
The second rule was to show only one of his skills, which was Discharge. His class had already seen it. But if people saw four skills, they would ask questions that he didn’t want to answer.
He picked up his harpoon, and he walked down to the sand.
-----
Edric Vane was already waiting there.
He was a tall, square boy with a shaved head, a dark red coat that was buttoned to the neck and a short sword at his belt. He stood very straight, with his hands behind his back. He didn’t laugh at Mav, and he didn’t insult him.
"Silkborn," Vane said, and he nodded politely. "I have nothing against you. But my instructors told me to win this in front of everyone, so that’s what I’m going to do."
"You can try," Mav said.
Letters appeared in the air between them.
[Official duel. Maverick Silkborn, Wildroot, rank 21,307.]
[Against Edric Vane, Emberhall, rank 10,950.]
[The duel ends when one fighter yields or can no longer fight.]
[If no blow is struck in the first five minutes, the higher rank wins.]
[Begin.]
Vane cast his Manifestation first. The sand on his side turned into a flat field of red stones and dry bushes, and 24 lizards walked out of the bushes.
Mav had never seen lizards like these. Each one was as long as a man and as low as a dog, with short strong legs and a heavy tail. Thick plates of bone covered their backs like armor. They formed two rows of 12 without a sound. Vane had brought only his fighters, like every student that morning. A second species was made of builders, who were small and slow, so nobody risked them in an arena.
’24 of them, and they obey him like soldiers. Good. I’d hate for this to be easy.’
He reached for his World and pushed. The dome of water rose from the sand on his side, 50 meters wide. Inside it, Seven turned slowly in the dark water, with Two and 10 other needlefish below her. Eighteen, Nineteen and Twenty lay along the bottom, where the dome met the sand, with their spines raised.
Some people in the red rows laughed, and one of them shouted that it was a fish tank. The joke from Quill’s yard had clearly traveled.
Then Six walked out of the dome, and the laughter became quieter.
He was as big as a cart, with a gray shell and two huge claws, and the sand shook a little under his legs. A thin green seaweed was wrapped around the back of his shell, and it glowed faintly.
Mav could hear people talking in the stands. "Look at the size of that thing." "It has a weed on it, like his fish." "How many kinds of beasts does he keep in there?"
Vane didn’t look afraid, but he looked annoyed.
"Nobody told me about a crab," he said. "My instructors paid one of your classmates for a list of your beasts. He told us about needlefish, a white eel, and a boy who throws lightning. He didn’t say anything about this."
Mav felt a small, cold anger. Someone in his own class had sold him for a few Essence.
’So he knows about Seven and about Discharge. But he doesn’t know about Moss, because nobody has ever seen her.’
While everyone was looking at Six, something else had left the dome on the other side, low against the ground. It moved a few steps across the sand, and then it stopped. Its spotted skin slowly turned pale, until it had the exact color of the sand around it.
Moss was a hunter who hid and waited, and she was weak in an open fight. So Mav had told her to stay hidden until an enemy came close to her. Nobody in the stands had noticed her, and neither had Vane.
-----
Vane gave one short whistle, and his two rows of lizards walked forward. They stopped 20 steps from the dome, and they didn’t come any closer.
"I’m not sending them near a tank with an eel in it," Vane called. "You have five minutes to strike a blow, Silkborn. If you don’t, I win. So come out."
Mav understood that his first rule was already useless. Vane didn’t need to come to the water. He only had to wait.
’He’s right. If I stay here, I lose without a fight.’
"Six, we’re going to them," he said quietly. "Stay close to me."
They walked out together, and the lizards let them come.
When they were five steps away, six lizards left the front row and ran at Six from the side. Mav reached for Seven’s cold river.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
Blue light jumped from his body, and four of the six lizards went stiff and fell. Six caught one of them in his claw before it could get up, and he crushed it.
The red rows went silent. They had been told about the lightning, but most of them hadn’t believed it.
"Eleven!" Vane shouted.
It was the dead lizard’s name. Vane gave his Subjects numbers, as Mav did. His calm face had changed, and he looked both angry and hurt. But he was well trained, and he didn’t lose his head.
"His lightning reaches five steps!" he shouted. "Front row, lock! Second row, turn the crab over and pull him away from the boy!"
The plates of the nearest lizards closed together with a loud click. Six struck one of them with all his strength, and his claw slid off as if he had hit a rock. It was their skill. For a few seconds, nothing could cut them or move them.
Meanwhile, the 12 lizards of the second row ran around Six. They pushed their heavy tails under the edge of his shell, all together, and they turned him onto his back. Then they took his legs in their jaws, and they dragged him across the sand. Two of his legs broke.
’He saw how far my lightning goes, and now he’s taking Six out of its reach. He only needed one look to understand it.’
Mav ran after them, but the front row had already formed a wall between him and Six. He struck at it with his harpoon, and a tail hit him in the side. He felt two of his ribs break, and he fell on one knee. Under his shirt, One was already at work, but broken bones needed hours.
His Discharge needed 100 seconds before he could use it again, and only 40 had passed.
Twenty meters away, Six lay on his back. He had turned his shell to stone, but that only lasted 10 seconds, and the lizards waited for it to end. Now four of them were on his soft belly, looking for the place where the plates met.
Mav felt Six’s point in his head, and it was shaking. Six wasn’t afraid for himself. He was ashamed, because he thought that he had failed.
The red rows were cheering. The four glass eyes of House Sunspire floated lower, so that Earth could see the kill better.
’I said that I would show them only one skill.’
He had made that rule because he was afraid of questions. But a question couldn’t kill him, and those lizards were about to kill Six.
’Enough hiding.’