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I nodded, pleased at his question. “Hell, yeah. It will be hard, and you’ll have to push yourself. But we’ll do what we can to make sure you’re ready to take on the gods when the time comes.”
I thought I saw flickers of excitement gleaming in a few people’s eyes. It was dim, but it sure beat the pure fear that’d been there earlier. Sweeping my gaze over the crowd again, I added, “Please pass this message along to anyone you think will listen. Anyone who wasn’t here today. Bring your friends with you to train. If you can’t do it today, do it tomorrow. I don’t care if you’re bringing someone new to the last training before we walk through those portals, or even as we’re walking up to the portals. Better late than never. Okay?”
There were nods amongst the crowd.
The guys and I answered a few more questions before we led the delegation back toward the school. It was a small group, but it was a start. I just hoped that in the coming days until the Gods’ Challenge arrived, we could form ourselves into a somewhat cohesive group. We would need to work together if we were going to stand a chance.
As we stepped back through the double doors, our new recruits trailing behind us, grim determination filled me.
Slowly but surely, we’re coming for you, Omari.
Chapter Eleven
Have you ever tried to organize and train a ragtag army in just five days?
Well, let me tell you, it’s not fucking easy.
Classes went on as usual, but it hardly mattered. No one was really paying attention to the professors’ bullshit lessons anymore. The school had been divided into two factions, and all anyone could focus on was the upcoming challenge against the gods themselves.
Lach, Merrick, Trace, and I spent every waking minute working with the students who had agreed to fight alongside us. Eden helped too, and she was a surprisingly good leader. Her sweet, bubbly attitude hid a spine of steel, and she was so nice and approachable that people felt comfortable coming to her when they were struggling.
She would then pass that along to me, and the guys and I would help whip that person into shape.
It was actually a surprisingly effective system. We were like the good cop and bad cop of leadership.
But would it be enough?
I wasn’t sure we’d have a fighting chance against the gods if we trained for months, let alone a handful of days. Not that we had any choice.
The following Monday, a pall of tension hung over the school as we all trooped silently down the stairs and out the front doors. Very few people spoke as we made our way up to The Hill, where the portals always delivered the competitors to the godly realm for the challenge. Today, instead of gathering in the stands, all the students would step onto the pavilion, and all of us would walk through a portal into another realm.
Eden reached out and squeezed my hand as we neared the pavilion, and I gave her a squeeze back. I fucking hated that she’d been dragged into this, just like everyone else had. She had agreed to lead a team of her own in the challenge, and although I respected the hell out of her for it, I couldn’t help but worry about her.
I’d never had any siblings, but Eden felt a little like a younger sister to me, and unfamiliar protective instincts rose inside me at the thought of her getting hurt.
“Ye did what ye could, Ari,” Lach murmured to me as we joined the throng of people on the pavilion. There were a few hundred students at Magic Blessed, so the pavilion was crowded as fuck, all of us wedged together like sardines. “We all did. We’re as ready for this shite as we can be.”
“And a lot of the stronger magic users sided with us,” Trace noted. “They’re not weak, and they’re not followers, unlike half the people Wesley turned against us. We can do this.”
He sounded like he actually believed it, and I was grateful for his optimism.
We truly had no idea what we would face this time. The rules had remained the same. One of us had to retrieve the gem from the playing field in the godly realm, and if we managed to do that, we would win.
Except this time, we weren’t playing against deadly traps or monstrous beasts. We were playing against the gods themselves, and they wanted to slaughter every last one of us.
“Why don’t they just do it?” Merrick murmured. When I glanced at him, his amber eyes burned with anger. “Why don’t they just kill us outright if they want to end us so badly?”
We’d talked about this before, but it was a question I kept coming back to as well.
“They don’t want to risk upsetting the general magic population,” I said quietly. “It’s the only reason I can think of. If they’re seen slaughtering a bunch of innocent magic users, how long do you think people will keep building those shrines? They’ll lose their worshippers, their supporters. They don’t want to risk that. But if we all die in a challenge, in a game? Well, that’s easier to write off and brush aside.”
Merrick opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything, Dean Frost stepped onto an elevated platform that had been set up at one end of the pavilion. Normally, she would’ve stood in the center of the pavilion to address the crowds in the stand, but now that the crowd was all on one level, the admins had clearly had to improvise.
“This semester’s challenge will be the truest test of your mettle yet,” she intoned gravely, sweeping her gaze over the crowd. “The gods chose to have all of you participate in the challenge, which in itself would have raised the level of difficulty in what you will face. But since some of you”—her gaze somehow snapped straight to me, finding me in the sea of bodies as if I were glowing like a beacon—“saw fit to throw down a gauntlet to the gods t
hemselves, you will now face an even greater test of your abilities.”
Gods, this fucking bitch. She was a good damn liar, I would give her that. She made it sound like I had betrayed my fellow students, like I’d thrown them under the bus in a bid for more glory for myself.
