The Quantum Games(The Alchemists Academy)

Chapter 6



Slowly, the other students started to disperse to go to their classes. The younger ones went off in large groups, or simply disappeared in the case of one table full of them. Wirt smiled as he remembered what things had been like in his first alchemy class, where the classroom had appeared out of nowhere.

The older students went off in ones and twos. Robert apparently had a tutorial on heraldry, which Wirt didn’t have to attend, while Alana sought out Priscilla and took her off to a class on using predictive magic when ruling.

“I don’t see why,” Priscilla said. “It’s mostly just a case of not going around trying to kill people who your magic mirrors say are a threat, thus making them angry with you and making them a threat, so that… well, anyway, it always gives me a headache.”

“Tough,” Alana replied. “And talking of not listening to mirrors, on the way, we’ll stop by our room and you can change into something that actually suits you.”


It seemed that for all the time Alana was spending around Spencer, some things didn’t change. And thinking of Spencer, Wirt found himself increasingly aware that as all the other students went off to their classes, he and Spencer were the only ones being left behind. It was inevitable though, wasn’t it? Everyone else had classes. The younger kids had the classes they’d taken in previous years. The ones already through to the elite class had ones designed to prepare them for that work. Only Wirt, Spencer and Roland would be without classes now, until it was decided which of them would go through to the elite class.

Until it was decided? That made it sound like they would be sitting down in front of some kind of selection panel, not battling one another to the death. Wirt stood up, intending to leave, but Spencer chose that moment to do the same thing. They stood there staring at one another for several seconds.

“Hey,” Wirt said at last, because it was the only thing he could think of.

Spencer nodded. “Hey.”

It was awkward, especially given the way Spencer had ignored him the first time they’d seen one another after they’d gotten back. Somehow though, the strange kind of limbo they were both in meant that Spencer was the only one likely to understand exactly what Wirt was going through right then.

“I don’t know why they couldn’t have just had us start when the Quantum Games were due to begin, instead of at the same time as everyone else,” Wirt said. “It’s like they want to torture us with thoughts of it.”

“If the headmaster is behind it, he probably does,” Spencer pointed out. They shared a grim smile then over the thought of the Alchemists Academy’s persistently unpleasant head. “I guess it might also be so that we could prepare. You know, get into the right kind of mindset for it, that kind of thing.”

Wirt nodded, thinking back to Ms. Burns’ test with the deer. That had been about trying to get him to understand what was involved too, hadn’t it? At least as much as it had been about the skills of hunting and controlling the quantum ball.

“Have you been preparing much?” Wirt asked.

Spencer shrugged. “As much as I can do.” He didn’t sound entirely happy about it. “Honestly though, ever since I told my father about Alana, I’ve been spending so much time with her that… well, there hasn’t been much time for anything else.”

Wirt nodded. “I noticed.”

“When I’m around her, I just don’t want to do anything else,” Spencer said. “I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that way about anyone, but it’s… it’s so intense. I mean, I’ve known Alana most of my life, and I’ve had a crush on her for years, but this break it’s like something totally different. I don’t even care about staying here too much now, except that she’s here, and I have to if I want to be able to stay with her. I can’t just let that go.”

“So you’re going through with the Quantum Games to stay here with her?” Wirt asked.

Spencer nodded. “I stood up to my father, but part of that was telling him that what I feel about Alana won’t interfere with finishing my education here. If I don’t make it through into the elite class, he’ll find a way to stop us seeing one another.”

“He could do that?” Wirt asked.

“He probably wouldn’t even have to try that hard.” Spencer moved over to one of the cafeteria’s windows. “After all, Alana would be off advising Priscilla, and I wouldn’t even be at the school.”

Wirt thought he understood, but it didn’t make things any easier. Spencer went on.

“You’ve been my closest friend here, Wirt,” he said. “I don’t want to have to disintegrate you. I don’t want to have to disintegrate anyone, but I don’t think I have a choice right now, and you… I know you don’t have much of a choice either.”

Wirt nodded. He needed to get into that class. In fact, judging by the way several of the teachers had worked so hard to maneuver him into it, he wasn’t even sure he’d be able to pull out now if he wanted to.

“If there were any other way to get into the elite class, I’d take it,” Spencer said.

Wirt nodded. “Me too, and maybe there should be.”

“What do you mean?”

Wirt shrugged. “I just can’t believe that a place like this would allow something like these Games. It’s brutal, and it’s barbaric.”

Spencer nodded. “I agree. If it weren’t for the Quantum Games, a lot of people would still be alive, including the girl my father and Roland’s loved.”

Wirt could still remember being called into the headmaster’s office. He could remember seeing the images of the past, because there were some things that were hard to forget. Spencer’s father and Roland’s had both loved a girl named Elise. The two of them had been opponents in the Quantum Games, and Elise had jumped in the way of the quantum ball to stop it hitting Roland’s father. Wirt could still remember every detail of the moment when the girl had disintegrated, right before his eyes. One moment she had been there, the next…

And now it felt far too much like history was repeating itself.

“All those deaths,” Wirt said, “so surely there has to be someone willing to stop this?”

“Who?” Spencer asked.

“I don’t know. Your father? The headmaster? Ms. Lake? There has to be someone.”

Spencer shook his head. “Not as far as I can see. My father… well, he thinks that it will make a man of me. He did it, and he wants me to do it, especially when Roland is one of my opponents. After all, Roland’s father tried to murder mine.”

After the death of the girl, Elise, the young Henry Black had tried to kill Mr. Bentley with magic. Wirt should have known better than to suggest that Spencer’s father would let him back down.

“What about…”

“There isn’t anyone,” Spencer said, cutting him off. “You heard the headmaster. He isn’t about to stop it, and he isn’t going to listen to someone like Ms. Lake over it. The school governors want this too badly for that.”

The school governors. What other kind of school had governors with more tentacles than legs, and more eyeballs than both? It seemed strange that the school should owe so much to such utterly alien and inhuman creatures, but that was probably just a side effect of having access to so many different dimensions. Spencer was right though. With those creatures backing the Quantum Games, stopping them would be difficult to do.

Which meant that he would almost certainly end up hunting and fighting his friend, using the quantum ball as a weapon. What would that be like? Would there be the same sense of total awareness that there had been with the deer? And if he couldn’t even bring himself to kill a defenseless animal, how would he be able to throw a quantum ball at Spencer, knowing what it could do? What would it be like if Spencer threw one at him? Would Spencer throw one at him? They were close friends, but he’d already as good as said that he’d do whatever he had to in order to stay with Alana.

Wirt was willing to bet Roland didn’t have this kind of problem.

“What do you think Roland is up to?” Wirt asked.

“Up to? Is this the box again?”

Wirt had explained about Roland and the voices coming from his box last term, but Spencer hadn’t had any more idea of what was going on than Wirt. Wirt shook his head.


“I don’t mean that. I mean the way he was acting. I would have expected him to be cut up about losing Alana to you, but he was perfectly normal. Well… as normal as he ever is. He was talking to a group of girls like nothing had happened.”

“Maybe he’s just the kind of guy who moves on easily,” Spencer said, in a tense tone of voice that made it clear he didn’t really believe that. “Or maybe he’s just confident about the Quantum Games.”

“You think he should be confident?” Wirt asked. He had to. Spencer had grown up knowing about the Quantum Games. He would know far better than Wirt how well someone like Roland was likely to do in them.

“Look outside,” Spencer said by way of an answer, pointing out through the window to the meadow in front of the giant tree that housed the school. Wirt looked down, following the line of the pointing finger.

He saw a tiny figure down there, and a moment or two of concentration revealed that it was Roland. He was standing at the center of some kind of circle, with a series of devices arranged around the edge. There were at least half a dozen of them, and each one looked like a cross between a miniature cannon and the kind of thing a baseball player might use to practice batting against. Their purpose became clear when the first couple of them started to fire brightly colored balls at Roland, who dodged to one side before moving back into position.

They fired again, and Roland dodged again, just in time for another one to shoot. That ball stopped a little wall from him, blocked by an invisible wall of air. That was just the start though. More and more of the machines started to fire, until Roland was dodging balls from all sides, seeming to move with almost impossible speed to avoid some of them. He wove and ducked, leapt and threw himself flat, blocking any balls he absolutely couldn’t avoid, with his magic.

Even from up where Wirt was standing, it looked spectacular. Roland dodged balls with the grace of a dancer, like he’d been practicing to do it all his life. Maybe he had. Wirt swallowed. He’d thought he was getting somewhere with his lessons with Ms. Burns. He’d thought that he might actually have a chance of succeeding in the Quantum Games, yet compared with the kind of thing that Roland was doing down in front of the school, it was like he barely even knew how to hold the ball.