I leave thursday.

As for fight scenes, "arranging properly" is probably overthinking it. Things tend to happen all at once, so writing in a slightly less organized, stream of consciousness style would fit the scene anyway.

Hehe... thanks for the advice... I think I can have it ready before then... Tomorrow if I can keep myself from being distracted.

[asdjgfsdjfgj Agas is really so much more fun to write as a cat jdghajsdhgajdg]

YAY! update! OMG that was sooo awkward in a way when Rhen went to meet Talia! XD so yeah Awesome update!

I admit to feeling somewhat sad...I'm going to miss Blurble so much! This is one of the best stories, and there a lot of good stories out here.

(sigh.)

...blurble, you're going to come back, right?!

I don't know yet.

What? You may not return? As in not return to the forums? Just where will you be going?

Sad!!!!
Wailing!!!!

Wait a minute!!! I thought you know you were going to return in like a few weeks or a month or so... but I didn't know it was gonna be like this!

I don't know yet, please stop panicking, it will probably not be a big deal, etc.

It depends on what happens during the several-weeks-thing and so I really do not know now, at all.

...alright, i really have no idea whats going on, im just going to hope that everythings ok and that you'll come back soon...

Yeah I thought so. I mean you never said you were leaving-leaving. So yeah *hopes you'll come back soon*

What ever is going on, I wish you good fortune and a swift return to us!

that was a great update =3

nnooooo! (you don't WANT to leave us do you?)

She’d bought a down blanket, sold in a stall with a pink and brown canopy that had smelled like lavender.

It was unbelievably comfortable.

It was sort of like sinking into warm, smushy, comfortable goodness. Actually, it was like sinking into warm, smushy, comfortable goodness.

And it had been on sale!

It just made getting out of bed rather difficult.

She supposed anything good had to come with a downside…

Vaguely she realized that she had apparently drifted off, yet again.

Mmmm.

“RHEN!”

…whuuu?

“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU???”

…now that wasn’t nice at all. Someone was pounding at the door. And being incredibly rude about it, too-

She sat bolt upright in her bed.

The competition! The competition!

She was off running as soon as her feet hit the ground, grabbing clothes, food, anything-

“Are you out of your mind?” Lars hissed, as she opened the door, panting. “How could you possibly sleep in late today?”

“It’s important to get a good night’s rest,” she said, a little sulkily.

“Night being the operative word. Night. The sun’s been up for ages.”

“Anyway, I’m here now.”

“Right. Yes. Let’s go!” He grabbed her hand as they dashed down the hallway and into the street.

Once outside they slowed down a little.

“It’s fine,” Lars said, in the tone of someone convincing himself. “The opening ceremonies don’t start for an hour. We have plenty of time to get there. Let’s just hurry.”

It was rather frustrating, getting from the school to the palace square. The vast rearrangement of the streets in Veldarah- the closing of some, the opening of others- had made an already circuitous route into a labyrinth. They dashed in a southerly direction as best they could manage, then of course had to navigate their way in what ended up being roughly a concentric circle before they managed to head northwards again.

When at last they arrived at the central plaza, they were both sorely out of breath. They pushed their way past the gathering crows and made it to the entrance, where a guard stopped them.

“The audience has yet to be admitted,” he said.

“We’re not audience, we’re participants,” Lars said, flashing their badges.

The guard gave their badges a fleeting glance before waving them towards a corridor on the side.

“Opening Ceremony’s starting in ten minutes,” he said, in a tone of utter boredom. “Hey! You! No sneaking in!”

They headed down the hall and into a room filled with bright lamps, where a lady with with-blond hair handed them both ceremonial robes before rushing off to attend to someone else. The entire room was a flurry of frantic activity.

“We have to wear these?” Rhen asked. The hems of the robe had been weighted, so that it was rather hefty to hold- or wear.

“It’s traditional,” Lars said. “But you can just put it over your regular clothes.”

She did so, fumbling a bit. This whole thing felt surreal.

“Are they going to be explaining to us what we’re supposed to be doing?” She said, as she pulled her arm through the other sleeve. This was the sort of robe that did not merely lie on you- it draped.

“As far as I can remember, it’s also traditional that candidates have not the slightest clue what is going on.”

“Oh. Just great.”

“Look at it this way- you’re going to have to go with the flow anyway, you might as well enjoy it.”

“Right. Can you help tie this—um-- sash-thingy?”

“Sure,” he said, and wounds it around here and pulled it tight-

“Ow-“

“Sorry, I’ve only ever done this once, I can’t really remember- Alright, I think I got it. Pray it doesn’t come undone in the middle of the ceremony.”

“Wow. Lars. You truly inspire confidence.”

“I know, I’m pretty amazing at that.”

They laughed quietly, nervously together, and then an attendant came and directed them towards a door and Rhen felt her heart begin to beat staccato in her chest, even as she told herself to be calm, even as she willed herself to be calm, still she could feel her breath catch in her throat.

This was ridiculous. After all, the worst that could happen was simply that she’d humiliate herself in front of an enormous crowd of people.

But the tension refused to ease, even as she breathed deeply she could feel herself trembling from sheer nerves.

Lars put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

“You’ll be fine,” he said.

“You’re looking kind of queasy yourself,” she said.

“I am?” He said, and then- no, she had no idea how he was able to do that- he wiped his face clear, closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again his usual cocksure smirk was plastered across his face.

“You look like a smug, arrogant bastard,” she said, amused.

“Excellent. Exactly the look I was going for,” he said. “Try it yourself.”

“Er,” she said.

“Or at least swagger a little,” he offered, as a compromise. “We need to walk out there looking confident.”

“Confident. Right.”

She took yet another deep breath and managed to walk steadily, at least, while Lars strutted in front of her so ridiculously she nearly laughed-

Except then they were out the door and a wall of sound hit her and-

She’d known there would be a lot of people.

She just.

She just hadn’t quite realized how very lot a lot was.

Involuntarily she put a hand to her mouth in shock.

The stadium was enormous. Gargantuan. And it was crammed with people, row upon row of seats rising towards the ceiling, and the roar of the crowd…

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” boomed a voice- now how did they manage to do that?- “may I present the finest Swordsingers and Sorcerors of Veldaraaaah.”

“Bow,” Lars hissed, and they bowed, in a whoosh of cloth, some eighty-odd people bowing together-

“Are we the youngest ones here?” She hissed, in a panic.

“Shhhhh,” he whispered back. “Among the youngest, almost definitely yes”

They rose from the bow. A hush fell over the crowd.

“And to welcome them here today, may we present- an exhibition from the students of our own illustrious Academy for sorcery and swordsinging!”

An endless line of students emerged from some door somewhere and marched into formation in front of them.

Consider this to be an advance warning- for all that these upcoming chapters should by all rights be a climax and conclusion to the story, I am thus far loathing them to bits, especially because my writer's block is so rotten and I cannot seem to express anything properly.

I'd normally take a break and come back to this later, but we'll have to see what happens if I slog through.

great, the competition started! cant wait to see the ending, although i'll really miss this story once it's done...

I agree with Sandstorm (Teary-eyed.)

You are doing great.

YAY! Competition!! I've been waiting for this for a long time!

She thought that she was far too tense to stand there patiently in front of the crowd while a bunch of students performed.

But then she saw Gaden, and Kylie, and Hio.

“Oh,” she said. “This is what they were preparing for.”

Lars raised his eyebrows at her. “What did you think?”

“No, nothing. I just- forgot.”

Well, she’d be able to bear watching this after all, then.

The freshman classes went one by one, performing synchronized little dances with flares of matching, nothing particularly fancy or impressive.

But when the sophomores went, they staged a mass battle, and so Rhen watched Kylie and Hio dancing around each other, before Hio lunged and Kylie melodramatically collapsed- not without first dispatching a flare of (useless display) magic that sent Hio reeling. Rhen cheered as they went out, and Kylie flashed her a thumbs-up.

The juniors spread out across the field and created, with massive flares of magic, all sorts of composite images- the empress, the palace, the Veldaran rose… And then they broke apart and reformed, in a pyramid formation, and way at the top…

Gaden flourished a sword and magic came flaring out-

Rhen felt her breath take, along with every other magic-sensitive person in the room-

Sorcery and swordmagic intertwined together, for one brief, impossible second, and then Gaden- pale, shaking, and grinning from ear to ear- was lowered by his cheering classmates.

For a moment the room had descended in a hushed awe. Now they cheered, not understanding what they had seen, probably thinking it was a clever trick-

And Rhen cheered hardest of all, waved furiously to Gaden, who flushed and waved back.

“You were amazing!” She mouthed, as he and his classmates were hustled out, and then the seniors came and gave their presentation, something breathtaking that she barely paid attention to-

“Very impressive,” Lars said quietly.

She nodded fervent agreement, although she wasn’t thinking of the seniors.

---

What next?

The crowd had fallen silent, as the students tapered away.

The same announcer was back.

“As you may know, it is traditional that contestants are not informed in advance anything more than the general details of the competition. What the actual format will be is kept a closely guarded secret, decided by the Empress herself.”

There was a murmur among the crowd as the Empress rose, in a small, gilded platform at the height of the stadium.

Rhen was expecting her to give an introduction in which she explained the importance, the significance of the event, the pride they must all feel, watching such a marvelous display…

But apparently the Empress judged that they were capable of filling in such a speech themselves, because she simply waved her hand gently, gesturing so that a table was wheeled in, covered in locked boxes.

“Swordsinging and Sorcery both require natural talent, as well as the practice required to hone that talent into skill. But truly outstanding performance in either requires the careful, thought-out application of that skill. To that end, we present these boxes. Each box has been spelled shut, and it is up to the contestant to figure out how best to open it. Inside the box is information regarding the next stage of the competition, so those who finish first will have the advantage of extra time to plan their approach for the next stage. However, points will not necessarily be awarded based on speed of solution alone- points will also be awarded for signs of clear, clever thinking or particularly creative approaches to the problem. With that said, we will now distribute the boxes- red for swordsingers, blue for sorcerors. Contestants, please descend from the platform to the central arena.”

As they began to move, carefully, down the wooden stairs leading off the platform, the Empress added, “One final note. In this particular stage of the competition, it is forbidden to interfere with the other contestants. Any sign of this will lead to immediate disqualification. To facilitate this, we ask that the contestants maintain a clear distance from each other at all times.”

Okay.

She took a deep breath- exchanged a final glance with Lars- and went forward to take a box from an attendant.

The box was surprisingly light.

And… squishy.

What?

But there was no doubting that it gave, slightly, when she pressed it.

It had a big lock made of what looked like burnished copper, and no real seams or hinges that she could see.

The crowd started cheering, and she looked up and realized that someone- a middle-aged man with a dark beard- had already opened his box.

How was that possible?

She fought to keep her panic under control. Most of the other contestants looked puzzled or lost or intrigued, but not particularly close to solving the mystery.

She squinted at the box, trying to see the magic surrounding it. She had never been particularly good at this.

All it did was give her a headache.

She knew there was some other way she could handle this, it was ridiculous-

But she had never been good at sensing magic! The classes in the topic had bored her, because she never really needed to sense magic to do swordsinging, she’d always been able to simply pick up a sword and intuitively sense what it wanted to accomplish. She’d realized in her time at the Academy that this wasn’t particularly normal, but…

Well, why couldn’t she try that again?

That was silly. Only swords could talk the way-

And that, she thought, was a lie. Like not being able to do swordsinging and sorcery together was also a lie. Once upon a time she’d held a stick and pulled the magic out of it. It was possible.

That didn’t make it easy, though- Already she could see that another two contestants had been shooed to the sidelines with their open boxes. And it was clear that everyone around her was concentrating intently-

And of course she was wasting time, worrying about everyone else. She breathed out and picked the box up…

This wasn’t working.

Back when she’d held that stick the rage and indignation had swelled in her like a tide, so that the magic couldn’t help but respond, pulled towards her-

Here all she had was a dull, dry-mouthed fear. The box slipped away from her even as she tried to capture it, pin it down and understand it-

But she had no one to be angry at, right now.

She tried anyway, tried to coax it out- She could do this, she knew that she could do this, but the tiny little steel inside of her was slipping further out of reach.

When she’d called out the magic in the stick it was because she’d needed magic right then, needed it to wipe the stupid smirk off Lars’s face. Not that she’d realized the magic would come- She’d picked up that stick and attacked because she had to, even though she was a helpless slave, even though she knew that the consequences could only be dire- a whipping wouldn’t cover it.

She’d been helpless as a slave and the magic had saved her.

She’d been helpless as a slave.

She’d been…

She stared down at the box in her hands and felt the conviction well up from deep within her- it wasn’t fury, it was simply, once again, the knowledge that she would have to do this no matter the odds, that she had no choice.

Because Veldarah still had slaves.

Because they had no magic to save them.

They only had her.

And so she pulled with some part of herself she’d forgotten existed, and the magic sang into her hands, so she could sense, somehow, that she needed to pull...

And the box, like that, was just a box, with an ordinary hinge.

She blinked, surprised by how easy that had been.

...Okay.

She flipped open the lid.

“Using display magic, express the theme: Something from nothing,” said the paper inside.