By nine in the morning, the fourteen other prestigious schools of Artemesa arrived at Luminine and stood gathered in the courtyard. Chatter traveled all the way across the school grounds as they waited.
Then the castle-like doors opened to the school, and six figures walked out and onto the stage raised in front of the students.
"We thank you for the honor of hosting the Interschool Tournament," Rosaria said loudly, silence falling over the courtyard.
"We are the Cadre of Luminine, comprising the Disciplinary Team and Student Council," said Tim.
"During this Tournament, all students from all schools are required to follow Luminine's school rules," told Amelia.
"Or those who break them will be punished accordingly," warned Ethelyn.
"We will also be participating as Luminine's main roster," Blyke said.
"And we will offer no mercy to our opponents," agreed Daniel.
Just then, something crashed to the stage, when the dust cleared a pair of upraised black wings blocking out the sun for a split second before extending to either side, around the other six.
"I am the Queen of Luminine," she said in a commanding and regal voice. "I will be your strongest opponent, and your worst nightmare. If you dare harm Luminine, then I will personally make sure you never see the walls of your school again. You may call me Queen, or All Moon. If you wish to die, then challenge me for the right as the Queen of the Fifteen Diamonds of Artemesa!"
Asha flapped once, rising twenty feet in the air, before swinging an arm to the closed doors of the school. A great rushing wind passed over the heads of the students, stirring hair and hats, before slamming into the heavy wood doors, pushing them open.
Asha bowed in the air. "Welcome to Luminine, Diamonds of Artemesa." She snapped her fingers, sending wind into the sky and making it swirl and crash, creating a fabulous display in the air. It grew even more fantastic as fire and ice and water and electricity joined the show.
"That's so like Luminine! Such a brilliant display!"
"I hear these seven are God-tiers!"
"I can't wait until the tournament starts!"
Asha watched the students file into the school, a small smile on her lips.
"You didn't get any sleep," Blyke said as she landed back on the stage. He raised a hand to touch her face, but Asha just knocked it away.
Asha's eye twitched as she watched Blyke morph into the sad puppy that no one could resist. She relented with a sigh, taking his hand and bringing it up to her cheek.
Blyke smiled kindly before tracing his thumb under her eye. Softly, twice. Then he dropped his hand back to his side. "I think you're starting to trust us," he said.
Asha snorted. Fat chance. "Let's get in there. We're in charge of explaining the first challenge."She and the cadre moved inside, Amelia, Blyke, and Asha running around the school, posting papers all over the halls with the rules of the first part of the tournament. They were quick, moving through crowds like ghosts, posting the papers before anyone could see them.
The first part of the tournament was chess. Two teams against each other, and the strongest of the school commanded the pieces, as well as acting as a piece of their choosing. However, the powers of the Amora were used, as well. Only if you are knocked completely off the board or if you are knocked unconscious is your piece considered "destroyed". If you get hit, but stay on your square, you keep playing.
However, certain pieces had different rules about the power they could use. A Bishop could use nearly all powers, but they couldn't fight physically. Knights could shift into their Amorai's Second Form to attack. Rooks were only allowed to deal long-range damage, and pawns could so pretty much anything as long as the opponent was in a square diagonal from them. The Queen could use any kind of attack except Transcendentals, and the King could only use Transcendentals, but only within two tiles.
While all Amora have seven forms, transcendental moves were a kind of ultra-move. Any Amora can use transcendentals but they increased in strength with their rank. High-tier and up, there are some Amora who have exclusive transcendentals.
The challenge was that evening, before dinner. Good luck.
.
"Welcome, Fifteen Elite Schools of Artemesa! Today, we are the three impartial judges in charge of raking with your Headmasters and Headmistresses. Now that our introductions are over, let us please introduce the main and reserve rosters for the schools! Maelstrom!"
"Here!" two sets of ten people shouted.
"Finish!"
"Here!"
"Darkmoon!"
"Here!"
"Solariya!"
"Here!"
Asha picked at her fingernails as the rosters answered their school name. There was no use holding this contest; Luminine had won the year before, and the year before that one. Asha was the strongest out of all the fools at those schools.
"Luminine!"
"Here," the cadre said, standing up.
"Y-you only have seven people for your roster, and you don't have a reserve, either?" the judge asked.
"So cocky."
"Who do they think they are?"
"But that monster of a Queen won for the past two years..."
Asha just smiled. It was a shadowed smile, hiding something far more frightening beneath it.
"Very well. Now, Luminine gets the empty seed for the second round because of their win the last tournament."
Asha walked away from the arena, passing a black-cloaked boy. But she felt something familiar, and when she turned around, hew as gone. She frowned before exiting the arena to sit in the stands until the first game was over. Maybe Solariya would be more of a challenge than last year. It seems they picked up a God Amorai user.
The first steam to be knocked out was Serviatee, and Luminine stood to meet the winner.
"You get to pick people out of your audience to serve as your remaining pieces," the judge said.
Asha looked up into the stands, at the waving hands and shouting faces. "Keren Willows," she said. "Zane Kellar. Marina Baek."
The crowd burst into a ruckus as Asha called them by name, a few more that she just pointed at joining the team on the field.
"Daniel, you can handle the king position?" Asha asked.
"Of course. I take it you have the Queen one."
"Definitely. This will be over in ten seconds," Asha said, loud enough for it to carry to the stands. She grinned as Luminine started cheering and the others started booing. "Childish," she hissed to herself. She took up her square.
"Ready, and Darkmoon goes first!"
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
"Knight three squares up and one left!"
"Luminine's turn!"
Asha snapped the chains holding her power back, hair swirling around her as wind whipped over the arena, sending people from other boards flying. "Quetzico!" she shouted. The wind worked itself into a frenzy, a wild tornado. And Asha was in absolute control of it. "Full power, release!"
The other cadre members raised shields on Luminine's side of the field, keeping the wind from blowing them away, but when the white blades of wind calmed, the other side was empty and everyone was off the board.
Asha moved faster than the wind in the tornado, appearing before the King of Darkmoon like a ghost, Quetzalcoatl wrapped around his neck, teeth poised to strike his throat. Asha smiled above him. "Would you like to forfeit?"
"Y-yes."
"Luminine wins!"
"She took them all out with one move!"
"That only took eight seconds!"
"Luminine raises monsters!"
Asha retracted Quetzico. "Second form!" Those green wings unfurled from her back and she took off into the air, flying away, only a streak of shadow in the sky.
∽
He tracked her every movement, movements that were new, and some of the bumbling steps he knew. She was so close, and he knew she felt something. But he couldn't do anything yet. Not yet... or it would ruin all of his careful planning for this chess game. There were pieces still cloaked in shadow, hidden, and some that hadn't arrived yet, but the first move had been made.
He smiled. He was looking forward to seeing the Queen's reaction.
∽
Luminine won every match with a stunning ease, trading turns taking out the opponents. Asha didn't even show up for any of the other matches.
Given that, Blyke was pissed. He was fuming in a dark corner of the library, trying to get his head back in the game. Dinner would be in two hours, giving the students time to wash up and interact before the meal.
Blyke rubbed his temples. Asha was eccentric, vanishing without a trace, exploding at random times. And now she'd left Luminine during the Interschool Tournament.
He was about to leave the library when his eyes snagged on a book that looked like it didn't belong. Instead of the rest of the cheesy romance-dramas, it was a thick, dark-spined tome. Blyke pulled it down, curiosity biting at him as he looked at the cover. "Royal Families," he read. He frowned. That was a bit suspicious. Why would this book, which would typically be under lock and key by the vulture-like, old book-collecting librarian, be here where anyone could take it.
Blyke tucked himself in an alcove booth used by the students for quiet and individual studying before opening the book to the table of contents. He ran his finger down the line, passing his own Hagani family before his finger stopped at a name so disfigured by ink he couldn't make it out. Confused, he found the page.
Blyke's eyes widened as they took in the family title. Phantomhive. Almost ripping the page in his haste, he flipped through the pages until he found their family tree. Something had always stuck in his head. Phantomhive was one of the most renown Royal Families in Artemesa, yet nobody seemed to know who the first six generation were.
But the writing on the pages made even less sense. Pen, the same pen that had crossed out the name, was all over his page, adding names, crossing some out, and even writing small notations on the border. His eyes flowed down the paper, until he reached the current generation. No matter how many notes and added names there were, this was by far the most surprising. Under the names of Neseryn and Fillip Phantomhive, Isabella, Asha's sister, was the only child listed.
"Are you doing a bit of light reading?"
Blyke jumped, slamming the book shut in surprise. But the book was gone, in someone else's hands, sharing the booth with him in the shadows.
Asha.
Her hand opened the book, at the page where Blyke had been reading. Her knuckles turned white as she read the page. "Tezcatlipoca," she said. She just watched with hard eyes as the book started to shrink, change, until only a small sapling in a small amount of dirt remain.
Blyke flinched. Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl's twin form, was a ruler of time. She'd reversed time on the book until it was barely a seeding.
Asha stood, taking a small ring from her pocket. "Catch."
She threw the ring at him and Blyke slipped it on his middle finger without a second thought. "What... was the book saying?" he asked.
Asha just gave a vague smile before tossing the plant at him. "Take care of that for me."
The ring absorbed the sapling before it splattered across the table, and Blyke just shook his head. She'd given him a dimensional storage ring to store a plant? But... almost everything Asha did had a purpose down the line.
Blyke twisted the ring about his finger. That book... was it Asha who'd written the notes on there? If it was, she was also trying to hide something. But... what and why? Blyke looked up as a high pitched bell tinkled. His eyes widened. Blyke sprang to his feet, running out of the library even with the librarian cussing at him, just in time to see a figure in black wearing a veil tuck a bell away.
"You!" he shouted.
Those grey-silver eyes met his. The figure turned away from Blyke, somehow walking faster than Blyke's running, but her fluid motions were still as smooth as if she was strolling.
"Wait!"
The figure just hunched, pausing, giving Blyke enough time to nearly reach her, hand only an inch from her shoulder, before huge skeletal wings burst from the black clothing, knocking him backwards.
Blyke just gaped as she rose into the sky on wings that logically should never have been able to work, let along carry that girl into the sky. He stabbed himself as he moved to get up, and he winced, taking a look at his bleeding hand. Buried in his palm was a nearly clear silver-black needle. He looked back up where the girl had vanished. No wonder those wings worked, he though. They were made of those clear, deadly needles.
∽
Asha was the only member of the cadre that didn't eat dinner that night. In fact, she was the only student that didn't eat. Even Cress had come down from his belfry and sat with some of the students from Solariya.
Asha was patrolling the tables, giving out small punishments to misbehaving students. She winced as a joke someone told sent thirty people into laughter. She hated the noise.
"Come sit with us Asha!" Cress shouted, waving to her, drawing attention from everyone who could hear him.
Asha just shook her head, giving a fake apologetic smile before turning away. She avoided Blyke's side of the room all together, not wanted him to see her and start asking questions. Questions that she did not want to answer, Questions with answers she would rather forget.
"Asha."
Asha walked up to the long teacher's table, bowing before the Headmaster. "You called me, Headmaster Randolph?"
He smiled. "Yes. I just wanted to thank you for this amazing dinner. Balancing it on top of your guarding and paroling duties is amazing."
"Your Queen made all this food?" the Headmistress of Solariya asked.
"Indeed, Miss," Asha said. "But I was only doing what is expected of the hosting school. We must offer the others our best hospitality."
"Such a humble student for being so powerful."
"You flatter me."
"Are you on patrol tonight?" Randolph asked.
Asha nodded. "As I am every night."
"Really?" a Headmaster asked.
"Yes. I am the Queen of Luminine. My job is to protect the students and staff. If that means I get a bit tired, then it's only me that's effected." Asha's ears picked up something from the forest in the back of the school. She bit her lip, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice as she said, "Please excuse me, Headmaster."
"Of course. Anyone who threatens Luminine, crush them under your heel," the Headmaster said, understanding.
Asha bowed once again and walked down the steps back to the lower area where the student's long tables were. Her muscles tensed.
"Asha?" Amelia asked, not far away, drawing the attention of those around her and the cadre, along with the people around them.
"Stay here," Asha snarled, the tile beneath her feet cracking under the pressure as she planted herself. Only a second. She was there, crouched and ready to spring, before the tile beneath her feet shattered, spiderweb cracks branching over the other tile, and the doors were flung open. Only a second, and then Asha was gone.
She was very fast. Most of that being because she was very, very used to running away from the monsters in the darkness...