Chapter 22:
PENUMBRA
Rhea, Year 817 of Avia, Day 227; 22:12
Icarum sat with Karine in a private lounge reserved for competitors, sharing a bag of chips. They stared off into opposite directions awkwardly.
Icarum sighed as he bit down on an especially crunchy potato chip. He hadn’t said a word to Karine since realizing who she was on the stadium ground, and it didn’t look like she was about to say anything to him.
I guess I have to be the one to break the silence.
“How di-”
“Why di-”
Icarum and Karine both started to speak simultaneously, interrupting each other’s sentences. After a second of confusion, they both laughed.
“You can go first,” Karine said.
“It’s fine, you can go.”
“No, you.”
“I’m fin-”
“No, you,” Karine insisted sternly.
Icarum nodded, not wanting to argue with an angry Karine.
“How did you end up joining the rebels?”
Karine took a potato chip out of the bag, careful not to let any salt fall on the floor.
“It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time.”
Karine stretched out her arms and legs before laying down on the couch. She hugged a pillow tightly and stared out a window as she spoke.
“Y’know how my dad has that disease, right?”
Icarum nodded.
“Soon after you left, it got much worse. He went blind and couldn’t move his arms and legs.”
Karine sipped a glass of water. “Since our village doctor couldn’t help, I placed him in a wagon and traveled to one of those nearby Sydurnian colonies, but they wouldn’t let any Rheans inside the town.”
“I was running out of options, so I snuck out one night and stole the medicine my dad needed.”
Although Karine was trying her best to hold herself together, Icarum noticed that her hand was shaking.
“B-but they caught me. After throwing me into a jail cell for a few weeks, t-they were going to ship me off to god knows where.”
Karine took a deep breath. “I got lucky. The moment our airship took off, a bunch of rebels hijacked it. Apparently one of their crewmates was a prisoner there. I was freed by chance.”
“They told me I could join them whenever I wanted by going to this secret recruiting station in the middle of the forest, but I declined at first.”
A tear fell down Karine’s face. “The first thing I wanted to do was run back to my dad and tell him I was okay. But when I got back to the wagon, he was already dead.”
“Even though I left him on one of the main roads near the colony, not a single Sydurnian was willing to help a dying old man.”
“Not a single one.”
Karine forced a smile. “I spent a week wandering around wallowing in anger,” she continued. “But I guess it was natural that I’d eventually come here.”
Icarum could do nothing but listen. He walked up and placed a hand on Karine’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry.”
Karine wiped the tears off her face. “Don’t apologize if it’s not your fault.”
“So,” she started, “my turn to ask a question.”
Icarum nodded. He was glad that she had taken the initiative to change the conversation topic.
“Why the hell did you leave like that? You could’ve, like, warned me.”
Icarum placed a hand on his neck and laughed nervously. “Well, I didn’t want to bother you or your father any longer.”
“You’re lying.”
“Huh?”
“I bet you were just scared of that soldier, weren’t you?”
It hurt that she was right. Icarum shrugged his shoulders, refusing to reply.
“Also, if you had joined the rebels, why didn’t you come watch the last Summer Games?”
“Oh, I was doing, uh, traini-”
“Do you know how worried I was? I joined the rebels thinking I’d find you there, and then I realize that there are tons of different rebel factions, and you probably joined a different one, and then I tried to fi-”
“Okay, okay. Sorry.”
“I’m not done yet. I tried to find you during the Summer Games two years ago, and I literally searched through every rebel faction, and I even looked through the entire catalog of people staying at the mountain, and-”
“Why didn’t you just ask around? My grandfather is literally the head of my rebel faction.”
Karine shook her head vehemently. “Do you know how embarrassing that would be? Asking dozens of people if they knew you would be like I was looking for my long lo- los- lost lo lov-”
“Lov?”
Karine’s face grew slightly red. “Anyways, you’re an idiot.”
“Oh right,” Icarum responded. “Thanks for earlier.”
“Earlier?”
“You could’ve tagged me with that power of yours, but you didn’t.”
“Oh.” Karine seemed surprised that Icarum was showing his appreciation.
“I missed you.”
Karine’s face grew redder. Icarum’s timing was terrible.
Icarum popped another chip into his mouth. “Tomorrow’s a team game, right?”
Karine pretended as if she had never heard Icarum’s embarrassing line at all. “Probably. There’s always one of those every year, and since tomorrow’s the last game before the one-on-ones, it’s highly likely.”
“Wanna team up?”
Karine narrowed her eyes. Although she didn’t want to hurt Icarum’s feelings, she also wanted to get as far as possible in the Games.
“I think that your power of switching places will work really well with mine,” Icarum explained.
“Come to think of it, I don’t think you used your power at all in that game earlier. What is it?”
Icarum took a glowing purple feather out of his sleeve and grasped it tightly. He threw it at the wall like a dart, creating a tiny dent in the concrete.
A barn owl with a bloodied head appeared out of the feather’s shadow and stood in place.
“If I stick my feathers into the heads of dead animals, they turn into shadows that I can summon and control.”
To demonstrate, Icarum telepathically commanded the owl: fly upwards, dive down, flap your wings twice. Karine stared forward in surprise.
“What other animals can you summon?”
Icarum smiled.
---------------------
Rhea, Year 817 of Avia, Day 228; 19:30
“We’re back at it again, folks, on the third day of the biannual Summer Games!”
The crowd applauded as the two hundred remaining competitors appeared out of the ground through stone elevators.
“Icarum, my man,” Khal joked. “You got yourself a girlfriend last night, didn’t you?”
“Really? Really? Who is it?”
“It’s that girl ove-”
Khal stopped, confused about who he was speaking to. Ilina landed on the ground next to him with a mischievous grin on her face.
“Icarum, let me meet her!”
Icarum rolled his eyes. “We haven’t talked to each other in a year, and this is the first thing you say?”
“Don’t be so cold. I’m your favorite teacher, remember? Also, you could’ve said hi.”
“I tried to, but a bunch of your second-year friends told me to stay away.”
“Friends?”
“I think his name was Roger or something.”
Ilina scrunched up her face as if she was thinking very hard about something. “Nope, doesn’t ring a bell. More importantly, let me meet her!”
“Before you get the wrong idea, she’s not my girlfr-”
“Icarum!” Karine ran over to greet him. She stopped in front of Ilina, who waved at her enthusiastically. Karine immediately recognized Ilina as the Swan from her intricate mask and elegant pure white wings
“Oh, am I interrupting anything?”
“Not at a-”
“Karine, right?” Ilina circled Karine, examining every part of her body.
“You know each other?” Icarum asked.
Feeling increasingly uncomfortable, Karine shook her head forcefully. “I’ve watched her fight in the last Games, but-”
“Lance has been talking about you recently! He pointed out who you were to me at the start of that bombing game yesterday.”
“Lance?”
Khal nudged Icarum’s shoulder. “The Eagle,” he mouthed.
“He’s one of the second-years in my rebel faction,” Karine answered.
“Anyway, I approve! You may date! ” Ilina announced.
Icarum coughed suddenly, and Karine felt blood rush to her face. She had never felt so glad that she was wearing a mask.
“Well then, I’ll leave you two to it.” Ilina left as abruptly as she came, leaping off the ground and flying off to a different part of the stadium.
Khal, Icarum, and Karine stood next to each other in silence.
Thankfully, Drakos was ready to explain the rules of the next game.
“As most of you have probably deduced, today’s game will be played in teams of two! If you haven’t already done so, please go find a partner!”
Icarum felt a twinge of jealousy as he saw Ilina approach a muscular, well-built man with a smile. He knew that he had already agreed to partner with Karine, but he had secretly hoped that Ilina would ask him to team up.
“Well, that’s a surprise,” Khal stated.
“What is?”
“Ilina’s teaming up with the Eagle.”
“That’s the Eagle?”
Khal nodded.
“Let’s avoid them as much as we can,” Karine whispered. “We’d stand no chance in a two on two fight.”
Icarum hated to admit it, but the obvious difference in skill and experience between him and the Eagle was apparent. There was a reason why the Eagle had made it to the finals of the Summer Games as a first-year.
Icarum turned to Khal. “Who are you teaming up with?”
“Carla, I think. I asked her this morning and she didn’t say no, so.”
“What about Noah?”
“He’s over there with Asterum.”
“Asterum?”
“I think he just doesn’t have many options. He was gonna team up with you, but, well, y’know.”
Icarum felt a little guilty for choosing Karine over someone who he had been close friends with for the past four years, but he had already made his decision. There wasn’t any point in regretting it now.
“I hope all of you have made your teams!” Drakos announced. “Today’s game is - wait for it - Butterflies!”
The audience clapped excitedly. Mia and Connor sat together in the front seats, watching their friends intently and praying for their success.
“Each team will be given a glass jar. In a few minutes, the stadium will be filled with thousands upon thousands of butterflies. Your goal is to capture as many of them alive in your jar as possible!”
“After thirty minutes, the sixteen teams with the most butterflies in their jars will move on to the one-on-one matches tomorrow! The rest of you will be eliminated.”
Drakos’ familiar sinister smile returned. “Destroying other team’s glass jars is also allowed. The moment your jar breaks, you will be eliminated. The game will stop early if only sixteen glass jars remain, even if no butterflies are inside them.”
Drakos handed a glass jar to each of the hundred teams before flying up into the air again.
To Icarum, it seemed as if there were two ways to play: either capture as many butterflies as possible early on and hide for the rest of the game, or try not to capture butterflies at all and focus on breaking other teams’ jars.
Given Karine’s power to switch places with other people, Icarum figured that the latter strategy would be much easier for them to execute.
All of the teams scattered around the stadium, preparing for the game to start. Drakos glanced down at his watch, waiting for one more minute to pass.
“And begin!” he shouted.
Butterflies of all sizes and colors appeared out of nowhere and began fluttering in the air.
“We’ll take turns attacking and defending,” Karine commanded. “That way, we can conserve our energy and use our magic as little as possible.”
Icarum nodded. Karine flew up into the air and returned a few minutes later with a dozen butterflies wrapped around her fingers. She gently placed her hand into the jar and waved it around a couple of times. The butterflies flapped their wings and knocked on the glass with their feet.
“Your turn.”
Icarum threw out a glowing purple feather, summoning the barn owl that he had shown Karine the night before. He issued a quick order: catch butterflies with your claws, but be careful not to crush them.
He returned to Karine with double the amount of butterflies that she had collected. He grinned.
Karine rolled her eyes. “We’re not competing with each other, you kn-”
Her words were stopped short by a girl with a colorful mask. She had been crawling on the floor, camouflaged, waiting for the perfect opportunity to jump up and destroy people’s jars. Before Icarum’s mind could even register what was happening, Karine instinctively threw the jar up into the air and kicked the girl back down into the ground.
She flew up and caught the jar mid-air, making sure that the fragile glass didn’t crack.
With one glance, Icarum and Karine returned to focus, refusing to let themselves be distracted again. While they loved to banter and joke around with each other, making it to the next round of the Games took precedence.
As they alternated on offense and defense, their jar gradually filled with butterflies. There were at least hundreds of them stuck inside the compact glass.
Confident that they were ahead of the competition, Icarum and Karine decided to scout out the other teams and gather information. They flew up high into the safety of the sky where no other teams were lurking.
It looked as if many of the nearby teams had trouble catching the butterflies; their reaction time wasn’t as fast as Karine’s, and none of them could summon predatory animals like Icarum. Most of the teams actually trying to capture butterflies only had a hundred in their jar.
“Look,” Karine whispered. She pointed at the other side of the stadium, where Ilina and Lance were wreaking havoc.
“The Swan and the Eagle, huh?” Icarum muttered.
Ilina and Lance had no intention of capturing a single butterfly. Their goal was to break as many team’s glass jars as they could before the time ran out.
Ilina danced through the air, summoning an orb of water that followed her wherever she went. She was fast and nimble, easily getting close to teams who had split their attention between the butterflies and protecting themselves from attackers.
She crept up silently, using her blue orb to swipe through dozens of jars, cracking them into thousands of shards of glass that sprinkled onto the floor. The aftermath of Ilina’s elegant attacks could easily be seen on the grass. The glass shards reflected the warm colors of the sunset, flickering and glowing as you passed it by.
Lance’s tactics were a little less graceful. He flapped his wings violently, creating a huge burst of wind that knocked teams away. Even if they hid their glass jars in their jumpsuits, the impact of the wind was enough to crack it open.
Lance didn’t even need to move far from his position. He flew in place, using long-range attacks of wind to take out his opponents.
“There’s still twenty minutes left, and they’ve already taken out more than a third of the teams,” Icarum pointed out.
“We should just focus on defense from here on out,” Karine added. “Wanna summon a different animal?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
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