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Chapter 28: The Divided Mind
The twenty four hours prior to their first match were a nightmare of a pressure-cooker. The Academy offered a special training field to the competing competitors, a cavernous hall next to the main Proving Grounds which were now vibrating with the high energy of dozens of students training their skills. The air was full of released magic, and the humming of various spells formed a disharmonic deafening symphony. The mood in Leo’s team was filled with enormous pressure, a desperate attempt to overcome the gap that existed between the position of the lowest seed and the death threat of the arena. Each unsuccessful magic, each lapse of a misunderstanding, was a step nearer to the essence-dissipation which was to fall on the vanquished.Kael, as usual the rebellious light amid the darkness, made the best of it he could with their sombre schemes. When they saw a group of Pyreheart Adepts perfectly unify their fire magic into a roaring, synchronized inferno that burned the air thirty feet of
Chapter 27: The Gilded Arena
The delicate, frightened silence, which had succeeded the trance of Aria, was broken by a chime which rang not alone in the atmosphere, but in the very bones of all students alike. It was the clank of pomp and ceremony, of coming spectacle. All initiates and pupils were called to Grand Athenaeum at once.The air was electric, a strong contrast to the gloomy tension that had haunted them. “The Duality Games” were playfully sneezed into the ears of the crowd like gunpowder. It was a once in a lifetime occurrence to the majority. The air was high in excitement and fierce rivalry. This was the best of all the traditions in the Academy, a ferocious, magnificent contest which displayed the finest efforts of its pupils.The Headmaster occupied the centre dais, and was bathed in a golden light. He smiled beatifically and held out his arms in an embrace of welcome.“Students of the Arcane Veil!” his voice shrilly shouted with pride. “The Duality Games have been our crucible, through centuries.
Chapter 26: The Echo in her blood
The finding in the Archives had reduced them all to a new and deeper silence. Their struggle was no longer a theoretical horror to be horrified by, but a physical burden that was not going to go away, but pressing them down until they could hardly breathe without consciously and laboriously doing it. To Leo the phantom image of his own ancient and radiant face was ever in his periphery, like a taunting reference to the fact that all his moments of resistance, all his moments of gain, had been perhaps no more than a careful backtracking of a trail blazed by many thousands before him. The implications of the case are much nearer to the bone in the case of Aria. And had the sinister cycle of history not been really an inevitable circle, the curse of her family was not a rare and melancholy accident, but a repetition, a compulsory episode, in some grand drama, whose scenes had no end. Her fight was predestined, her defeat was unavoidable.They sat together as usual and in their quiet secr
Chapter 25: The Cyclical sorrow
The stolen key was as hot as a live coal in the Leo’s pocket, and the dull violet beat of it throbbed at his thigh. Kael and Leo had told neither Aria nor Mira anything of it, and burdened themselves with their new secret silently on top of a load they were already bearing. It did not take too long before the other shoe dropped.And the very next day it fell, in the shape of Professor Riven. Then, as they were off to a lecture on convergences of elements, he came in their path and turned a thundercloud of cold fury. The stormy eyes, ordinarily so critical, were narrowed with an anger which was strictly, personal.“There was an inquisitive happening in the Bazaar yesterday,” he began, and his voice was dangerously low, cutting off the morning gossip of the passage. He was not looking at Kael, but right at Leo, as though he were the only guilty party. “One small piece of something or other of a certain... professional interest was lost out of a stall of an old snoop of the Chorus of Equ
Chapter 24: The Glimmering Key
The weight of Advanced Essence Theory, the ghost of the Warden’s memories, and the constant, low-grade terror of their secret rebellion had forged Leo’s mind into a hard, sharp thing, but had weakened his soul. He was like a shade that wandered around the halls of the Academy through the maze of thoughts that were as metaphysical dilemmas and calculation of tactics. The world was brought down to a sequence of threats and variables. He had lost the memory of how it was to simply ‘be’.It was Kael who, with the friend's infallibility in perceiving a crack beginning to open, resolved to play the game of intervention. He caught Leo after a session of mental partitioning which was especially grueling, with a companionable arm swinging around his shoulders that was nearly a tackle.“Right, that’s enough,” said Kael, with a smile that was a lifeboat of sanity in the ocean of pessimism that Leo was in. “You’ve got that look again. The one that states that you are attempting to resolve all the
Chapter 23: The Architect's Intent
This atmosphere in Riven’s sanctum of Riven was forever altered. The dust motes were still capering their dainty ballet in the dim light of the stolen will-o’-the-wisps, the jars of biological and occult curiosities still hung along the hewn stone walls, but the basic movement of the room had been moved tectonically. The statement made by Leo, ‘I will re-write the lesson’ did not consist of sand, but of bedrock, as far as their reality together was concerned. Riven had not merely crossed it, he had brought his own tools to strengthen the position. The penitent scholar, the conscience-stricken teacher had vanished, in his place a ferociously determined, more or less bestial strategist. The atmosphere was now filled with a fresh, malevolent intendment.Their new task was not to be started with the flash and fury of the combat spells, to the brutal and soul-scouring excitement of the Echoing Well, but in the silent and dense thicket of the theory. Riven had given it the name ‘Advanced Es
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