Page 11 of Elemental Hall: Nautica
“For what? You’re the one who saved us.”
“But I guess you didn’t know that I could. You risked your life, Sera.”
I shrug that off. “We were hardly going to win this if I had to carry you back with a broken leg.”
“Of course,” Orion says, although his smile suggests that he doesn’t believe my reason any more than I do.
I stand there for a moment with my hands on my hips. “Let’s get one thing clear, Orion. I’m not interested in you.”
He looks puzzled. “I never suggested…”
“You might not, but everyone else seems to assume it,” I say. “I can see the jealous looks Sybil gives me. And I bet a young nobleman like you is used to having women just throw themselves at his feet.”
Orion laughs. “Is that what you think happens in noble circles?”
“And here… I can see the way half the girls here look at you. And I bet you enjoy that, but I’m here because I want to be an elementalist, not to throw myself at the first handsome noble I meet.”
“So, you think I’m handsome?” Orion quips.
I roll my eyes. “As if you didn’t already know that. Look—”
“Sera, I understand,” he says. “And if anything, it’s a relief. You’re just about the first person here who doesn’t seem towantanything from me. Everyone around me looks at me like they’re calculating whether they can get me into bed, whether my parents might be able to do their family a favor, whether I’ll eventually be their commander and they should suck up to me now.”
“And you don’t sound full of yourselfat all?” I say, but I smile as I say it.
“All I’m saying is that it would be nice to have a friend who isn’t trying to push me for something else all the time.”
I hadn’t expected this talk to be so easy. I’d thought that an entitled young nobleman like Orion might try to push me onthe subject. Instead, it seems he’s determined to be the perfect gentleman.
It’s almost a little disappointing. Almost.
We need to keep moving. We set off up the track again, and now it leads to a bare hilltop on which there is a single raised dais with five points, one for each of the elements. A plinth stands atop it, and on that plinth is the sphere. Only it isn’t as simple as just walking up to it and taking it. There are bands of power wrapped around it, composed of all of the elements. Reaching out to touch it… well, that would be a quick way to lose a hand.
“It looks impossible,” Orion says, staring at it. “Five elements, but there are only two of us. What are we meant to do? Wait for the others and then try to persuade three more of them to help us?”
Is that the point of this exercise? To teach us that even in our competition, we need to learn to work together? It’s possible, but I’m not sure that I entirely believe it. Looking at the web of elements around the orb, I wonder if there might be another solution.
“Back in the village, we would weave fishing nets,” I say. “They would look tough, but if the wrong knot came apart in the wrong place, they would unravel completely.” I stare more at the web of elements. “Here and here,” I say, pointing to a band of stone and a band of water.
Ignoring the sounds of other teams approaching, I focus on the water, and I see Orion doing the same with the stone. I will the water to shift and change, to move aside, to dissipate into vapor. Even as it does so, the stone crumbles, dust falling onto the plinth.
The other bands fall away a moment later, leaving the orb still hanging there above the plinth.
I reach out for it and Orion does so at the same moment. We touch it together, and it seems to expand, bursting like a soap bubble, a bright flash of light flickering out across the island to leave my fingers entangled with Orion’s.
“We did it!” he exclaims. “We won!”
Chapter SIX
I barely weave out of the way as a sword comes toward my head. The clash of weapons is all around me, along with grunts of pain and the impact of those weapons against flesh.
I bring my own weapon up, trying a cut at my opponent’s flank. She parries it easily, grinning as she does so.
“Too slow, Sera,” Aria says, continuing to move around me smoothly, jabbing with her weapon.
It’s obvious that if this had been a real fight, I would have been dead a dozen times over. As it is, the wooden weapon is merely uncomfortable every time it jabs at my flesh, leaving reddening patches that will no doubt bruise soon enough.
“Do not stop!” our trainer shouts out. His name is Master Glebe, and he has so many scars, it seems to me that he must have fought in a hundred skirmishes. “The way of water is constant flow, finding the gaps in your foes’ defenses!”
