The Trial of Power

Solmere's open tournament. Sixty-four competitors, six rounds, single elimination, no bracketing by year, and every ability, weapon, and Alchemy permitted.

Partly drafted. Ch. 307 and ch. 308 are read back and cited below. The round-by-round account further down still comes from the author's planning document rather than from chapters read back.

The terms, as announced

Ch. 308, by Headmistress Wysteria at an assembly called for the seventh bell on a Tuesday, two weeks in advance.

WYS: The Trial is a single elimination tournament. One competitor against one competitor, until only one remains. It is open to every student in this academy regardless of year, discipline, or specialization. A first-year may face a third-year. A weapon specialist may face an Alchemist. There is no bracketing by experience and no accommodation made for disadvantage.

WYS: Soul abilities are permitted. Alchemy is permitted. Weapons are permitted. The Trial exists specifically to answer a question the Sports Festival, with its various restricted formats, cannot: not who is fastest, or most precise, or most knowledgeable, but simply who, using everything available to them, prevails.

And the warning, which she delivers before registration opens rather than after:

WYS: The Trial is not a festival event. It is not a celebration. Students are injured in the Trial of Power most years, sometimes seriously. Faculty supervise every match and will intervene where necessary, but intervention is not prevention, and I would be doing you all a considerable disservice if I permitted you to believe otherwise.

WYS: Participation is entirely voluntary. There is no shame whatsoever in declining, and I would encourage every one of you to consider the decision carefully rather than emotionally.

Registration opens the next morning and closes in three days.

Who enters, and who does not

Ch. 308, at the table, and this is where the chapters and the plan diverge.

Then both of them change their minds. Ch. 309, an hour before registration closes, has Finn and Mira arrive at the ledger separately and find each other already there. Neither tells Arthur why.

Why Finn and Mira changed their minds

Ch. 309. Both of them are there because of one sentence Arthur said at dinner without meaning anything by it.

I stopped hesitating about this sort of thing somewhere around eight years old.

Mira's reasoning:

MRA: I've been telling myself I don't need to prove anything. Which is true. [...] I've reviewed it repeatedly. It holds up completely. FNN: So why are you standing here? MRA: Because reviewing it repeatedly is itself suspicious behavior, and I've begun to suspect that I've been dressing up an ordinary fear as a considered decision, and I find that considerably more embarrassing than losing a match would be.

MRA: I'd rather lose in the first round than spend the rest of the year knowing I decided not to find out.

Finn's:

FNN: I've been in four festival events and enjoyed every one of them, and I picked all four specifically because none of them could genuinely hurt me, and I hadn't noticed I was doing that until Arthur said what he said. MRA: You'd been choosing safe things. FNN: I'd been choosing safe things and calling it enthusiasm.

And why it landed:

FNN: He wasn't trying to make a point. He wasn't giving advice. [...] it's been sitting in my chest for two days because it wasn't aimed at anyone. MRA: The ones that aren't aimed always land hardest. FNN: Why is that? MRA: Because you can't argue with them. Nobody's asking you to change. There's nothing to push back against.

They agree not to tell him.

MRA: He'd be embarrassed. He'd apologize for it, probably, or insist he hadn't meant anything by it, which would be true and would ruin it entirely.

Arthur finds their names on the posted roster two days later and stares at it "for a genuinely long time before saying anything at all".

Arthur signs third

His answer arrives with no deliberation whatsoever, which the table notices.

BRR: You're certain? Abilities are permitted, Arthur. Fully permitted. ART: I know. BRR: You'd be facing people using every advantage available to them, and you'd be- ART: Using everything available to me. Which is what the Headmistress said the Trial was for.

YSE: You didn't hesitate at all. [...] Not even briefly? ART: I stopped hesitating about this sort of thing somewhere around eight years old.

The table laughs. Only Elsie, who was in that schoolyard, understands what he has just said. See ch. 245 and ch. 246.

He signs "third name on an otherwise empty sheet", and the upperclassman running the ledger visibly decides not to say something.

UPP: You understand abilities are permitted. ART: I do.

UPP: Right. Good luck, then.

And where it leaves him:

two weeks ahead of him and absolutely no idea whatsoever how he intended to survive a single match. He found he did not particularly mind.

The rumour underneath it

Ch. 307, the week before, is the first sign that something larger is happening. See below and ../characters/dane-whitlock.md.

The format, as run

Ch. 310. Sixty-four names, four combat grounds ringed by warding stones, running simultaneously, and the faculty seated as "considerably less like an audience than a supervisory board".

Instructor Sutton's address:

SUT: Matches end when a competitor yields, is rendered unable to continue, or is removed from the marked ground. Faculty will intervene where continuing would cause lasting harm. Intervention ends the match immediately and the intervening competitor is disqualified regardless of the match's state.

SUT: I have supervised this Trial for nineteen years. In that time, four students have been seriously injured and none have died. I intend to preserve both of those numbers. Yield when you should. Nobody in this arena will think less of you, and I will personally think considerably less of anyone who doesn't.

Round one, as written

Mira's verdict on her own ninety seconds:

MRA: I was outmatched, comprehensively, by someone with four more years of practical experience, which was the expected outcome and remains, on reflection, entirely unembarrassing.

MRA: I'm glad I entered.

Finn wins by refusing to be where anyone expects and by narrating his opponent's tells at him until the man overcommits:

FNN: You're telegraphing the left one! OPP: Stop TALKING. FNN: I'm being HELPFUL. That's twice now, the shoulder drops before you commit, I'd fix it if I were you- OPP: SHUT UP.

FNN: I predicted I would win zero. I want that formally acknowledged.

Round three, as written

Ch. 311. Two grounds instead of four, so everybody watches every match.

Corin's match is unexplained. His opponent throws one projected force, stops, stands there with an expression Arthur cannot read, and yields.

BRR: He didn't even look injured. ART: No. He didn't.

Dane's ability is finally visible and still unnamed. A fourth-year fires accelerated projectiles at him, three times.

the projectiles crossed the marked ground toward Dane and then, somewhere in the space between them, stopped mattering. [...] They did not stop. They did not deflect or shatter or dissipate. They simply arrived slower than they had left, and then slower still, and by the time they reached where Dane was standing they had lost whatever it was that made a projectile a projectile at all.

He walks over at an ordinary pace and pushes the man out of bounds by the shoulder.

The arena's applause was polite, and considerably quieter than it had been for Finn. Arthur [...] found the quiet more unsettling than any amount of noise would have been.

Finn is not winning by accident. Arthur works out the method:

he had correctly identified [...] that he could not beat anybody in this tournament through force, and had therefore stopped trying entirely. [...] and he talked, and talked, and talked, and his opponents made mistakes because a person cannot fight properly while being irritated into distraction.

It was, Arthur thought, genuinely one of the least respectable strategies he had ever witnessed. It was also, undeniably, working.

Arthur against Finn

The quarterfinal draw pairs them, and neither of them pretends to want it.

FNN: I want you to know that I'm going to talk an enormous amount. ART: I assumed. FNN: A truly unreasonable amount, Arthur. [...] I'm not going to enjoy this. ART: Neither am I.

Ch. 312. Finn opens by leaving rather than attacking, and narrates it:

FNN: You're going to hate this! [...] you're a very direct person and I'm about to be extremely indirect at you for as long as I can manage!

Briar's live analysis from the ground's edge:

BRR: He's not trying to win. He's trying to make Arthur lose patience, and Arthur is a considerably more patient person than his previous opponents [...] Finn's got nine minutes of stamina in that approach and Arthur's got about four minutes of patience, historically.

At six minutes Arthur simply stops chasing and stands in the centre.

FNN: That's cheating. ART: You're not being attacked. How is that cheating. FNN: It's cheating SPIRITUALLY, Arthur.

BRR: He's making the marked ground do the work. [...] at some point he has to actually engage, and Arthur's decided he'd rather have that conversation standing still.

Finn comes in and it goes badly in two seconds. Arthur drives him to a hand's width of the line and then pulls the strike, at cost to his own balance, rather than eliminate a friend from behind.

BRR: Why did he stop? ELS: Because it's Finn. BRR: That's going to cost him. ELS: I know.

Then Finn stops talking, which is the tell.

the ordinary noise that constituted roughly ninety percent of Finn Jota simply stopped.

FNN: Sorry, Arthur. [...] You're the first person all day who's actually looked at me like I could beat them.

And he clapped.

Arthur wins the quarterfinal

Ch. 313. Four of Finn's rolls, in ninety seconds, and the fourth one paralyses him.

Arthur wins by standing still in the dark and listening, because he spent six years training in the hour before dawn "when the western yard was dark enough that seeing properly was optional. He had never thought of it as an advantage."

He pushes Finn out of bounds "with as much care as the situation permitted", and offers him a hand up afterwards.

Elsie against Yseult

Yseult opens with a plain earth wall, which insults Elsie precisely because it is unimaginative:

She was being handled. Yseult had spent an entire year demonstrating that she opened with whatever was most interesting, and she had opened here with a wall.

ELS: Don't. YSE: Don't what? ELS: You know what.

Elsie gets inside the guard in nine seconds, which nobody has done all tournament, by punching a compressed pellet clean through hardened air.

it did not shatter the construct so much as perforate it [...] and the whole structure came apart around the wound like wet paper.

BRR: I've watched Yseult fight four times this tournament and nobody has been inside that guard.

Then Yseult stops handling her, and the fight becomes genuinely dangerous. Elsie's survival move is involuntary: "Her hands did it before she had decided anything."

The last exchange costs Elsie her entire fourteen seconds and sets her sleeve on fire, and she lands a strike into Yseult's ribs that puts her on one knee.

YSE: That was very good. [...] I mean it. That was genuinely the best thing anyone has done to me all year.

And then Yseult puts her own palms flat against her own sternum.

The color came back into her face. Her breathing steadied. [...] Whatever the strike into her ribs had taken out of her simply stopped being gone.

YSE: Sorry. ELS: For what? YSE: For this part.

Yseult wins the semifinal

Ch. 315. Elsie keeps going with nothing left, and Yseult stops letting her.

Yseult caught her. Not blocked. Caught. [...] Elsie, who had been operating for eleven minutes on the understanding that she was faster, discovered that this had stopped being true while she wasn't looking.

Then Yseult shows her what a year in a workshop bought. See ../characters/yseult-marchant.md.

Elsie is dropped by lightning conducted through a slick of mud and water fired at her feet, and yields from the ground rather than let the proctors call it.

Arthur against Dane, from the infirmary

Ch. 316 covers the semifinal without showing it, from Julian's infirmary, and that is the point.

Mira has walked out of the arena because she cannot describe what she is watching.

MRA: Arthur is losing. I want to say that first [...] He is losing, comprehensively, and he has been losing since the first fifteen seconds. ELS: How? MRA: I don't know. [...] I have paid closer attention than anyone in that arena, and I cannot describe what he does.

MRA: Arthur closes distance and arrives slower than he left. Not blocked. Not deflected. He simply arrives with less of himself than he started with, and it gets worse the nearer he gets. His strikes land like someone reaching underwater. Whitlock doesn't dodge. He doesn't guard. He stands there and lets Arthur come and by the time Arthur arrives there's nothing behind the arm anymore. ELS: That's not possible. MRA: I agree. I watched it happen eleven times.

The crowd noise, heard through two walls, is the tell:

It was not the noise of a crowd enjoying itself. [...] several hundred people who could not agree on what they were watching.

And the reason it has not been called:

ELS: Then why haven't they called it? [...] MRA: Because he keeps getting up. ELS: That's not a reason. MRA: No. It isn't.

MRA: He should have been finished at four minutes. He was finished at four minutes. He simply hasn't stopped.

Julian's closing line, which is the chapter's:

JUL: the match will be decided solely by the matter of Arthurs' ability to get up once more.

The semifinal, from inside

Ch. 317. See ../characters/dane-whitlock.md for what the field does and ../characters/arthur-lyerm.md for what Arthur does inside it.

Result: match to Whitlock, called by Sutton after Dane punches a boy who cannot move.

The other semifinal

Ch. 318, reported afterwards by Yseult, who lost it in three minutes and has spent an hour trying to describe how.

YSE: I'd used my soul ability twice and was about to do it a third time. ART: And? YSE: And then I couldn't.

YSE: I reached for it and it wasn't there. Not depleted. Not blocked. I want to be precise about the difference [...] It was not that I had nothing left. It was that the place I reach into was no longer connected to me.

YSE: I stood in the middle of the marked ground and reached for my own essence and found that I could not find myself.

YSE: It lasted perhaps four seconds. It was the worst four seconds I have ever experienced, and I have had a genuinely varied life.

Corin walked the whole distance while she panicked and put a blade at her throat. She yielded.

BRR: Nobody knew what happened. The whole arena thought you'd simply stopped. YSE: I had simply stopped. That's precisely what it looked like, because that's precisely what it was.

That is the same thing that ended his ninety-second round-three match in ch. 311. Ch. 319 is titled "Severance".

What Corin says before the final

Ch. 318, in the infirmary doorway, with dust still on his cape.

COR: I watched the last nine. I want you to understand that I have never in my life seen anything like it and I do not expect to again. ART: I lost. COR: You did. [...] You lost, comprehensively, and it does not matter at all. I have spent an hour listening to fourth-years attempt to explain what they watched and not one of them has managed it. That is not what losing sounds like.

To Yseult:

COR: It wasn't a fight. It was four seconds of theft and a walk. YSE: I'm aware of what it was. I'm also aware that you could have done it in the first ten seconds and chose not to, and I've decided not to examine why too closely, because I suspect the answer is embarrassing for both of us.

And then, at the door, with his back to the room:

COR: I am not going out there to win.

COR: He stood over a boy who could not move and threw a punch at his face. In front of the entire academy. Because he was frightened, and because he has spent four years being told he is the strongest thing in this building, and because nobody has ever once made him feel small.

COR: I am going to make him feel small.

He walks out without waiting.

FNN: So that's terrifying. BRR: Deeply. FNN: I've never wanted to watch anything more in my entire life.

The final

Ch. 319. Corin Ashby wins the Trial of Power without drawing his sword, and the arena does not cheer.

See his entry for what Severance is and what he says to Dane in front of the whole academy.

The last image is Dane's:

he shook them off, and stood alone in the middle of the ground for a long moment with blood on his mouth and his hands open at his sides, reaching for something that had come back to him four seconds too late to matter.

Afterwards

Ch. 320. Three days pass and nobody mentions any of it.

Not once, across three days. Not the twenty-four minutes, or the four rolls, or the girl in the mud, or the boy face-down on the packed earth [...]

It was not avoidance, exactly. [...] It was more that the whole thing had been very loud, and that everyone had been standing extremely close to it, and that none of them had yet worked out where to put it. So they had put it down for a while.

The posted results come down on Tuesday and nobody comments on that either.

What happened

• Rounds 1 and 2. Mira and Talon eliminated. Finn survives his first round by talking his opponent out of bounds.
• Round 3. Arthur, Elsie, Yseult, Corin, Dane, and Finn advance. Dane keeps winning and nobody can describe how, which reads as eerie rather than impressive.
• Quarterfinals. Arthur beats Finn, who is forced into four Fair Game rolls and does not know Arthur is the reason he entered. Yseult beats Elsie.
• Semifinals. Dane beats Arthur. Corin beats Yseult in three minutes.
• Final. Corin beats Dane and wins the Trial.

What it revealed

Two abilities came out here, both hidden until now.

Stillness, Dane Whitlock's. Within a radius around him motion decays toward zero. Sutton had called it one of the three most dangerous abilities in the academy, faculty included (ch. 292).

Severance, Corin Ashby's. He cuts a connection within line of sight, including a person's link to their own essence.

The final is built so the two answer each other exactly: Stillness beats speed, and Corin's whole style is speed, so he takes the punishment and closes the distance the slow way until he has line of sight, then severs Dane's connection to his own essence. The field collapses and it ends in seconds.

What it changed

Arthur lost, and the loss is the point. Stillness destroys movement, and movement is everything he has, because he has no ability to nullify. He spent twenty-four minutes unable to reach Dane, froze mid-motion, and moved anyway.

Dane won decisively and was visibly disturbed. It should have taken ninety seconds.

That is the third seeding of Arthur's real power, after the endurance course and Yseult's remark. See ../characters/arthur-lyerm.md.

Corin then explained Stillness aloud to the entire arena to humiliate Dane, and had to be stopped by Sutton. Nobody cheered. A tournament the rival wins and the crowd refuses to celebrate is doing something other than crowning him.

Open questions

• How far Finn ultimately went. The author left round two deliberately off-page.
• Whether Corin's behaviour in the final is ever answered for.