If someone had told me a year ago that I would be taking part in magical duels in an arena, I would have called them mad — or accused them of reading too many fantasy books until they could not tell fiction from reality. And yet here I was: a convinced skeptic who did not believe in fairy tales, miracles, or magic, awaiting the herald’s signal with Elesya to begin the fight against Thanida’s team.

  If I thought about it, I was the anomaly — a non-mage trapped in a magical world, unable to belong.

  “In the name of the king, fight!” the herald cried, tossing a small strip of white cloth into the arena. It was the sign that marked the start of the magical duel.

  No sooner had he spoken than a globe of fire hurtled toward me. Normally, battles did not begin the instant the signal was given — mages took a few moments to prepare. Not Thanida: she surprised me with an immediate attack.

  I snapped off the first defensive spell that came to mind — Spell No. 23 — but it proved a poor choice. The spell I had chosen was only a deflection charm, a weak ward rarely used by mages. In the open, it might have sufficed, but in the arena the situation was entirely different.

  The fireball Thanida hurled reached a few meters from me, then suddenly altered course and ricocheted into the stands. A gigantic explosion of flame followed, scorching the surrounding air and prompting screams. A statue of the goddess Hera shattered into pieces. The magical shields protecting the spectators did their work, but they could not fully stop the heat. No one died, but several people suffered minor burns.

  “A warning to both of you!” thundered the referee. “Do not use spells that endanger the audience! You risk disqualification!”

  I reviewed my options. I could have launched powerful fire spells of my own, but that would have burned through my energy fast. If the attack were too weak, Thanida would not falter; if it were too strong, I risked grievously wounding or even killing her.

  I quickly abandoned the idea of attacking and decided to test my defenses first. While I activated Protection Spell No. 46, I raised a small tornado directly between Thanida and myself. Sand began to whirl through the entire arena like a dense haze. Neither I nor my opponents could see anything.

  “Attention!” the referee shouted at me. “You are fined five hundred sesterces for reducing visibility for the spectators in the arena. Cease such spells or you will be disqualified!”

  He had a point. If the spectators could not see the fights, they would not be entertained — and without entertainment there was no money. Money, even in a magical world, was what moved suns and stars.

  Thanida and her teammate, Garibelle, launched their main attack: a Combined Fire spell. After a few paces their flames converged into a single jet of fire aimed straight at me. Fortunately, my magic shield did its duty, protecting me from incineration. True, it sucked energy from my crystals like a furnace, and I feared I could not sustain it until the end.

  To my right, Elesya did not stand idle. She moved constantly to avoid becoming a target and peppered the two girls with quick, powerful fire spells.

  Despite this, Thanida and Garibelle ignored her attacks and concentrated their fire on me alone. Their strategy was simple: by combining their efforts they sought to remove me from the fight as quickly as possible. In their view, the principal mage was the most dangerous opponent and the main obstacle to victory. Once they defeated me, Elesya would be easy prey for the two of them—should she choose to continue fighting.

  I replied with a conventional, low-intensity fire attack, mostly to avoid breaking the rules. But the fear of wasting my precious energy on ineffective strikes made me abandon that tactic immediately and focus solely on defense.

  What followed were ten terrifying minutes. Thanida and Garibelle had pushed their attack to maximum intensity. I was surrounded by a true storm of fire, not spread thinly across the arena but concentrated on me alone. The arena and the spectators vanished into a sea of flame; all I could see were tongues of fire. The only thing shielding me from annihilation was the transparent bubble formed by Spell No. 46. My magic shield had held the assault so far, but it was draining my crystals at an alarming rate. I feared it would not last much longer.

  Though I could no longer see the stands, I could still hear the spectators: a deafening roar, like that of a football stadium during a World Cup final. All the students shouted in delirium, convinced that Thanida was finally ridding them of the man who had caused them so much trouble.

  “Very well, Thanida! Burn him! Burn the mad mage!” I could make out among the thousands of shouts.

  I thanked Vabazon in my head for that wonderful protection spell that had saved me so far. Still, I knew I could not win by merely defending. My opponents could keep me under fire indefinitely. I had to find a way out of the deadlock.

  I touched the crystals in my pockets and was alarmed. They were as hot as stones left baking in a summer sun. At any moment one might explode, leaving me defenseless and at the mercy of the flames surrounding me.

  Thanida made a sudden gesture and an invisible force burst from her palms, lifting me as if I were a balloon. I felt my feet leave the sand, but in a fraction of a second I uttered a short phrase from Vabazon’s book. My body became suddenly as heavy as lead. Her spell released me and I crashed down onto the sand with a dull thud, unharmed.

  Surprisingly, Thanida and her teammate kept their fire focused on me, ignoring Elesya. They probably deemed her too weak to be worth their attention for the moment.

  I wanted to call something to Elesya, but the noise in the stadium was far too great for us to hear each other. The students in the stands screamed their support for Thanida at the top of their lungs, repeating her name without end.

  I remembered the Connection Spell — a charm Elesya had cast at my request when we first began working together. I concentrated for a few moments on Elesya and spoke in my mind:

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I hear you,” came her prompt reply directly in my head. “What do you want to tell me?”

  “Can you do something to make Thanida and the other girl ease up the pressure on me?”

  “I’m not sure, Sam, but I’ll try,” she answered.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Through the flames that surrounded me I saw Elesya prepare. She took a few small steps, then broke into a full-speed run along the edge of the arena. After she passed mid-field she sprang into the air. Flying low to avoid notice, she traced a curved path through the air to reach behind our opponents.

  Unwittingly, the two girls had made a huge mistake. Their entire defense was concentrated at the front, leaving them vulnerable to attacks from other directions.

  Before they realized what was happening, Elesya struck them from behind with two well-aimed air spells, knocking them to the ground. Caught off guard, Thanida and Garibelle bit the dust — though in this case, it was the arena’s sand they ended up chewing. Their magical assault on me ceased immediately.

  The crowd in the stands reacted at once with a murmur of deep disappointment. Seeing the idol you adore fall in the dust is indeed a bitter disillusionment.

  An optimistic thought crossed my mind: in a way, my opponents had misplayed their strategy. Had they known I was a mere non-mage, they would never have focused all their force on me from the start. At the same time they had underestimated Elesya, who was far more capable than she had appeared. Thanida had no inkling that the “frail young lady” was in fact the only true mage on my team; otherwise she would have long since changed her priorities.

  Thanida rose slowly from the sand and threw me a look full of hatred. She suspected I had been the one to mastermind that treacherous strike, even though Elesya had executed it. At the same time I could see her growing more cautious. The fact that I had held against her Combined Fire attack until now made her rethink her tactics.

  I allowed myself a defiant grin at Thanida and made a mocking gesture. The crowd noticed and began to shout. Thanida said nothing, but it was clear she was preparing a new attack, more terrible than the last. I raised again the protective shield created by Spell No. 46 and waited.

  Suddenly I had the impression that the sun above had grown smaller and far hotter. Before I knew what was happening, a fierce heat struck me and my clothes heated almost to the point of igniting. It was as if I had been thrown into an oven.

  Instinctively I launched myself in a lateral leap to put distance between me and the source of the heat. I landed about twenty paces away, hoping I had escaped the attack for the moment. But after a few breaths the invisible source of heat found me again, far hotter than before.

  To my surprise, my protective shield failed to stop the blaze. I had to keep moving constantly, yet the heat source located me again and again.

  “What is happening?” I asked Elesya in my mind. “Do you know what kind of spell Thanida has come up with now?”

  After a few moments, Elesya answered:

  “It’s an air-distortion spell. Thanida has made the air into a kind of giant lens and is focusing the sun’s rays on you. You must do something to block them.”

  “Any idea?” I replied.

  “Raise a film of sand around you,” she advised.

  Without thinking further, I slapped the sand beneath me and muttered a quick spell. A thin layer of sand rose about me, scattering the light and heat in all directions. The sunbeams no longer affected me. Thanida’s elaborate spell had, at last, failed.

  Thanida changed tactics again. A new fireball formed in her hands and shot toward me. But instead of striking my shield, the sphere slammed into the ground three paces in front of me and exploded.

  A wave of hot sand surged at me, blinding me. I fell to my knees immediately, covering my burned face with my hands. My eyes stung horribly and I could barely see. For the moment, I was out of the fight.

  “Elesya, please, do something to draw their attention!” I cried.

  Elesya was eager to be asked and acted with astonishing promptness, just like a diligent pupil keen to prove to her teacher that she had mastered the lesson. An almost wicked smile bloomed on her face as she uttered a short spell. To my surprise, I immediately smelled a strong scent of peppermint spreading around me.

  At first I didn’t realize what she intended, but when I saw Thanida begin to cough, I understood. Mint smells pleasant in small doses, but when it’s too concentrated it is worse than tear gas. Ever inventive, Elesya had turned an innocent cosmetic charm into a terrible weapon.

  Garibelle, Thanida’s teammate, stumbled away coughing toward the edge.

  “I can’t stand it!” she cried. “I give up!”

  Elesya had made sure the mint scent reached unbearable levels on the far side of the arena while keeping it within tolerable limits around us.

  I noticed that not only our opponents were affected—the spectators were too. Cursing in several voices, rows of students began to retreat from the seats closest to the arena, either to climb higher or to leave the stadium altogether. Their ungrateful behavior puzzled me a little—didn’t they come to be entertained?

  But Thanida did not give up so easily. Coughing and with tears in her eyes, she tore a strip from her black cloak to cover her nose and mouth. Then she surrounded herself with a ring of fire, hoping to ward off the smell.

  Protected by flames, Thanida began a long incantation, an unintelligible summons. The air above her started to shimmer as it does in summer above a sun-baked road. A vague, almost transparent shape rose and began to float above the arena.

  A fire demon. I had heard such things existed, but I had never seen one before. It had no definite form—more like a rippling cloth that moved constantly through the air.

  Without much hesitation, the demon began to spit fire in our direction. I had to cast Spell No. 46 again to protect myself, but it was clear I had little energy left to keep going.

  I raised my hand and sent a rope of flame toward the hovering demon about thirty paces ahead. The flame passed through it as if through air, without affecting it.

  I tried again with a water spell. A frozen torrent shot from my palms and passed through the demon’s body. It seemed slightly disturbed and shifted position, but apart from a sizzle and a few wisps of steam, nothing happened.

  “Do you know any effective spell against a demon?” I asked.

  “No,” Elesya replied. “Only war-mages use demons, and their spells are kept secret.”

  “Thanida is already a war-mage?” I asked, surprised—she was still a student.

  “Not yet, but members of her family are, and she has already begun learning the secrets her parents keep. The best way to stop the demon is to defeat the mage who controls it,” she added.

  I had to make a firm decision. Thanida’s demon did not attack us with great intensity, but it could keep us under fire for hours—far longer than we could endure in the arena. This was a war of attrition we could not win. My crystal energy was nearly spent. So either I found a way to win in the next five minutes, or I would lose the fight.

  I racked my brain for a suitable spell. Vabazon’s book offered me nothing now. I would have to be extremely inventive to find the right solution.

  By summoning the demon, Thanida had played her last trump to win the battle. It was time for me to use, in turn, a spell for extreme cases.

  “Prepare yourself, Elesya,” I said as I began the spell. “We’ll have to fly.”

  The waters were called up.

  I felt the arena tremble beneath our feet as underground waters forced their way to the surface. The sand grew progressively more saturated and fluid as it soaked up the water. In minutes the entire arena had become a field of quicksand.

  I signaled Elesya and we began to fly low so we would not themselves be swallowed by the treacherous sand we had just raised. Thanida, however, did not know the magic of flight and had already begun to sink. Her ankles were trapped in the sand and she could move her legs only with great effort.

  I discovered with surprise that the quicksand we had created was far more dangerous than natural quicksands. In an ordinary bog a person would not sink so far or so fast; here the ground had become so fluid that any body would be engulfed within a quarter of an hour.

  The spectators began to jeer. Almost no one used water spells in the arena. A ground spell would be considered a disgrace.

  Nearly ten minutes passed and Thanida continued to sink slowly but surely. She had stopped struggling; only her shoulders and head remained above the surface.

  “Surrender, Thanida, or the sands will swallow you!”

  Thanida refused to answer even when the quicksand reached her chin. Her wounded warrior pride made her prefer death to a shameful surrender.

  After half a minute nothing of Thanida remained on the surface. I began to worry she might drown in the sand. Despite our conflict, I did not want her to die.

  I was about to stop the water spell and start digging for Thanida’s body when a hand shot out of the sand, flailing frantically. I grabbed it with force and hauled her up. Thanida’s head and shoulders emerged from the mire:

  “I surrender,” she whispered.