The Quantum Games(The Alchemists Academy)

Chapter 10





They got only the briefest of looks at the rules for the Quantum Games before they had to run to try to make Ender Paine’s class on time. In those few snatched seconds, Wirt did his best to make sense of everything that was written there. It seemed far more complex than a straight fight to the death. Instead, it looked like there were going to be multiple rounds, with only the highest scoring students going forward to face one another in the final.

In a way, that made Wirt feel a little better about the whole thing. It meant that the Games were there to test more than just who was best able to kill the others. There were actual tests of skill that he might be able to succeed in before the quantum ball even came out. And that meant… Wirt swallowed as he thought it. It meant that he might not have to face Spencer in the final. There wasn’t time to think about that right then, though, because by that point he had to grab Spencer and transport them both so that they could make it to the lesson on time.

The Slightly Cavernous Lecture Theater lived up to its name, and more. It was built like a stadium, except that there shouldn’t have been room for a stadium inside the tree. Once again, Wirt found himself having to try not to think too hard about the internal geography of the school, because doing so would only give him a headache, and he wanted to be fresh for whatever the headmaster had in mind.

That turned out to be row after row of targets. Ender Paine stood at the front.

“We will start by seeing what you can all do,” he said. “No doubt, it will be pathetic, but I must work with what I have. Select a target. Pretend that target is an enemy who intends you harm. No, better yet…”

He waved a hand, and several of the students there shrieked in fear as the hall filled with an assortment of enemies. Where the target in front of Wirt had been, there now stood a grinning ogre. Next to it was a large man in dark, spiked armor. Looking around revealed lizard folk and vicious looking creatures with fur, great cats and giant spiders. It was an impressive illusion.

Still, it was just a target underneath. Wirt reached down into himself, remembering his lessons on elemental magic with Ms. Burns, and summoned up fire. He threw it in a focused jet, which consumed the illusionary ogre in seconds. He turned to see other students dealing with their own foes in a hundred different ways. Roland conjured up a film of ice across his target, which constricted to crush it. Spencer seemed to spend a long time calculating something, and then his target cracked and toppled backwards as he hit it with a small blast of force. Priscilla turned her target into a frog, while Robert, obviously aware that he was being watched, somehow managed to set his own shoes on fire.

Alana was a surprise, because she went for the same kind of fire based approach Wirt had. Then again, so did half the students in the hall, with mixed success. After a minute or so of it, Ender Paine waved a hand, and all the magical effects vanished.


“Too many of you were far too slow,” he said. “Had these opponents been real, you would have been dead. We will try again, and this time you will all get it right.”

They tried again. And again. Apparently, Ender Paine believed in teaching by rote when it came to so many students. Once they’d attacked the targets a few more times. He demonstrated using shadows as a shield. Wirt had never seen that done before, though he’d shielded with air and water before. It was harder than it looked, trying to catch hold of something that wasn’t really there and use it as a solid object to stop oncoming force. Annoyingly, Roland seemed to know what to do with that almost immediately. Yet another thing he seemed to be able to do better than Wirt.

From the shields, the headmaster went on to describe a number of specialized offensive spells, all of such complete unpleasantness that some of the younger students looked ill. There was the one that took an enemy’s shadow and made it strangle him or her. There was the one that could apparently make someone’s blood boil in their veins. Then there was one that the headmaster promised would curse someone so that they started to melt from the ground up like a too hot waxwork. The only good point, as far as Wirt could see, was that by the time the headmaster had finished describing the effects of all his favorite offensive spells in great detail, there wasn’t any time left for actually learning them.

The headmaster seemed to realize that and came to a halt with a mildly annoyed expression just as he was about to demonstrate a spell on a student who had dared to whisper while he was talking. The headmaster shook his head as the school bell rang.

“How the time flies. Very well, you may all go to your next classes, and we will just have to hope that nothing tries to kill you all before tomorrow. I have work to do.”

He disappeared, and Wirt guessed that he would have gone back to his office. He went over to Spencer.

“We didn’t get much information from those rules the headmaster set out,” he said. “Do you want to go find out more?”

“I can’t,” Spencer said. “I have another class. You could tell me what you find out though.”

Wirt nodded, and headed for the transport tubes. He headed down into the cafeteria, only to find that the list of the rules wasn’t where the headmaster had left it. Had Roland taken it? Had someone else? It was just as likely that one of the dryad staff members had tidied it away, not liking anything that cluttered up “their” tree.

Which meant that Wirt needed to find another way to learn about the competition. Maybe if he asked the headmaster directly? Wirt stopped himself for a moment. That did not sound like a good idea, given the way Ender Paine tended to react to unwanted interruptions, yet what other options were there? He and Spencer needed to know how the competition would work to have the best chance of coming through it alive. If that meant a visit to the principal’s office, then so be it.

Wirt headed up there, to the weird hallway in front of it, where the impossibly ugly statues of the school’s otherworldly “governors” stood. He moved along the hallway quickly, but stopped at Ender Paine’s door as he heard voices within.

“Tell me everything that happened,” the headmaster said.

Wirt recognized the voice that answered him. It was that of James, the elite class student from earlier.

“The attack came out of nowhere,” James said.

“The same with me,” a female voice added. Wirt guessed that it was Tess. “If James hadn’t warned me…”

“But he did,” Ender Paine said. “Why did you do that, James? With your kingdoms on the brink of war, most people would have thought that an attack had something to do with the other one. They would not have warned their opposite number.”

“I didn’t think that Tess would have been part of an attack on Prince Alrin,” James said, “and in any case, this attack wasn’t like anything the Western Desert Kingdom could have sent.”

“But you did not think it was random, either,” the headmaster insisted, “or you would not have sent a warning.”

“I heard some of the rumors about attacks on other kingdoms, other advisors,” James said. “I thought that they were just rumors, but when it happened to us, I knew that things were serious. Just the way the attack happened tells me that it wasn’t random, because it came too close to succeeding.”

“Perhaps that is attributed to some weakness on your part,” Ender Paine said, without sympathy. That was so typically him.

“You know exactly how strong James is, Headmaster,” Tess pointed out. “He told me that he used his sandstorm spell. I’ve seen what that can do to raiders.”

“It reduces them to bleached skeletons,” the headmaster said, matter-of-factly, but there was a note behind it that sounded interested, to Wirt’s ears. “I am still waiting for the full details of what happened.”

So was Wirt. While he waited for James’ reply, he realized that he’d pressed close to the door to the headmaster’s study in order to hear more.

“I was preparing to go riding with the prince,” James said. “Just as we do most mornings. We were outside the palace, but still on the royal grounds.”

“So still theoretically protected by guards?”

“Yes, Headmaster.”

“Interesting. What then?”

James went on, and his voice sounded less certain, as though he didn’t like recalling what had happened. “The man, or creature, I’m not sure which, attacked and I tried to fight it off with magic. In seconds, it had the prince comatose. I was able to get it to attack me and draw it off, but nothing I did seemed to make any difference. It appeared to be, not just strong, but actually immune to my magic.”

“You’re sure?”

“Tess told you about the sandstorm spell. It shrugged it off like I hadn’t done anything. I tried lightning, water… nothing made any difference.”

Standing outside the door, even Wirt shuddered at that thought. What would it be like trying to fight something that couldn’t be hurt like that?

“So it wasn’t just an environmental invulnerability,” Ender Paine mused as though he had just been presented with an interesting academic problem rather than news of a nearly fatal attack. “How did you survive?”

“It… went away,” James said. “I don’t know why. I’m just glad that it did, because for the first time since I joined the elite class, I felt genuinely helpless. If it had gone back to the prince and killed him, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.”

“But you are alive now,” Ender Paine said in a surprisingly reassuring tone, “and that is what matters. Trust me when I tell you that I will get to the bottom of what has happened. I said as much in the cafeteria, and I meant it. For all that this school is filled with irritating children it is my school. No one harms the disgusting little brats here but me.”

“Yes, Headmaster.” Tess and James said it at almost the same time.

“Good, now say nothing about what happened, either of you. Tess, you are to continue preparing to help with the Quantum Games. James, you may assist her if you wish. Do not return to your prince. There is nothing you can do to help yet, and I believe… I believe that going back there might place him in further danger, now, you can leave.”


Wirt realized that they would be coming his way just in time, and transported himself down to his room in a blink. He thought about what he had just heard, and right then, he didn’t know which part was more important; what he had just learned about the Quantum Games, or what was going on in the surrounding kingdoms.