Showdown!
"Good morning, everyone!" said the wizard at the front of the class, Etherian global history teacher, Professor Fritzella Fredricka, enthusiastically. A few students mumbled good morning back to her. Rather than taking attendance, she just got right into things. Professor Fredericka never took attendance. She never had to, since no one would ever miss her class without a damn good reason.
"Today I thought we might go on a little excursion. We are going to visit the ruins of of an ancient dragon's lair. Has any of you ever heard of the "Gautlet of V'tar"?
Five out of the thirty-something students raised their hands.
"Mr. Aldrecht? Why don't you tell us what you know about the Gauntlet of V'tar?"
"The Gauntlet of V'tar was the name of at least several ancient dragon's lairs that were very easy to travel to. Some of them were popular tourist destinations during the Global Vtorrak Hunt five hundred years ago. many of them are now part of the GTN.
"Very good!" said Professr Fredericka. I turned to Fenris and smirked triumphantly. Fenris glared back at me.
"Now, at least several of the Gauntlets of V'tar in Westlock have had unfortunate cave ins within the past few months. One of these was recently excavated and restored, and all dangerous artifacts and creatures were removed and replaced with illusory replicas. This gives us the chance to go there and see what a real dragon's lair is like, and maybe we'll even get a chance to have our very own practice duels there, to reenact the famous battles of the Global Vtorrak Hunt! Won't that be fun?"
Almost half the class groaned while almost the entire other half cheered. The remaining few students who didn't do either, including myself, stayed silent, obviously.
I propped my chin up on my fist, thinking. This was my chance to get back at Fenris for our last duel. This time I would beat him in front of everyone, fighting in an actual arena. I smiled. If I could, I'd get the Channel in on this. The Channel was the name of our school newspaper, and one of its best reporters was in our class, a Siren named Alysse who I had previously dated for a short time and is now a good friend of mine.
As we all filed out of the classroom I pushed towards where she was waking at the back of the class and asked her, "Do you have your scryer on you? I think this will make for some interesting news for the next issue."
"I always do!" said Alysse, flashing her scrying device at me as she winked. Short-range scrying devices had become much more valuable and much less expensive ever since the Global Teleportation Network, (GTN) was built towards the end of the Global Vtorrak Hunt five hundred years ago.
The GTN was a vast network of V'torrak Gates and Teleport Traps that allowed people and goods to be transported across vast distances in the blink of an eye. Mages had to periodically reapply the traps and sometimes the gates as well. Because of this, GTN maintenance was a very lucrative job, especially for Sorcerors. You couldn't get everywhere by the GTN, since there simply weren't enough V'tar orbs or V'torraks in the world to install enough gates for that. However, you could get pretty damn far.
Of course, there were a few proposed treaties with the Celestians in the works. Help from Angelic portal magic could potentially revolutionize GTN maintenance and vastly extend its reach.
Speaking of the GTN, that's where we were going right now.
There was a V'torrak Gate in the school courtyard. The whole class walked through it, and we found ourselves in one of Westlock's Gauntlets of V'tar.
-----
It was fully intact. It didn't look like it was in ruins. How had it been rebuilt so quickly? Strange.
(The fight scene of this episode is postponed until the forcemaster is playable in Academy.)
The instant I won, a woman leapt out of the shadows and grabbed me and put me in a headlock. A lash of hellfire formed in her hands.
"If you want to live, you will do exactly what I tell you to."
"Fenris!" both Leafbite and Albert cried in alarm.
"All that v'tar you just collected. I want you to use it to find and activate the v'torrak. And then...make it destroy itself.
My eyes widened in fear. How could I get out of this situation?
Think! Dammit think!
"Do it now, or I'll firestorm you all to a crisp!"
i tried to cast a spell to help me escape. It fizzled. The warlock had jinxed me. She jinxed me again.
If you don't do as I say, I'll have to take the v'tar from your burnt corpse!"
"No!" shouted Albert. At the same time as Professor Fredericka jinxed the warlock, he yanked me away from her with a tug of telekinetic force.
I stumbled into Albert, who was knocked over from the power of his own spell. It was a bit advanced, but I'm guessing he didn't realize that the mere force push spell was that powerful. I got off of Albert and we both pushed ourselves to our feet, too shaken to be mortified at the awkward position we had landed in. Meanwhile, Professor Fredericka was fighting the warlock lady, and only barely holding her off. The global history and general research professor of Sistarra Academy clearly wasn't specialized in using magic for combat.
The Westlockian police force arrived just in time. They subdued the warlock and took her away, just as the illusion surrounding us faded. I blinked. The miraculously restored gauntlet of v'tar had gone, and in its place were the ruins of said gauntlet. Wow that was really obvious in hindsight.
As it turned out, that illusion had been meant as a trap for that warlock, Veronical Caven, who had been among a group of criminals who had been sabotaging the part of the GTN in Westlock for weeks. By the time they had found out that a field trip was scheduled there, it was too late to change the plan, and while there were supposed to be undercover cops around here to protect any visitors, they had to be temporarily called away to give backup somewhere else. They profusely apologized to all of us and offered to have some of them escort us back to school, just in case we ran into any other dangers in any of the GTN waypoints on the way back. Our class almost unanimously agreed.
