A Tradition of Tragedy
Briony Thorburn was trying to craft an Overcharge.
She sat in the middle of the courtyard, glaring at the spellboard she’d spread across the iron table. Waiting for the next Relic to fall was excruciating, and trying to replenish her spellstone arsenal was her only real distraction. She’d brought almost no enchantments into the tournament, and although Finley and Carbry had both been kind enough to lend her some, she still needed more.
Good thing the Monastery had come with a fair amount of empty spellstones. Or at least it would’ve been a good thing if Briony was a gifted spellmaker. Casting had always been her strong suit—she’d suffered through her crafting lessons at school only because she’d known she would need to use them here.
“Okay, okay,” she grumbled, arranging the components for the spell on the points of a septogram. Some moss, some rocks, a burnt match, a dead midge, a screw, a vial of rainwater, a sliver of petrified wood. The instructions for the spell sat beside her, scrawled in a nearly illegible scribble. Briony had successfully crafted some class three and four spells, but she needed stronger offensive spellwork. The Overcharge at class seven would round out her arsenal nicely—it was a curse that would give its focal targets a nasty electric shock, leaving them incapacitated and perhaps a little singed. But the last three times she’d tried to make it had been miserable failures, as evidenced by the cracked spellstones scattered around the table. Her hand hurt from the blood she kept spilling from her palm to finish the curse.
She only had one more flask of raw magick. This needed to work.
Briony’s gaze strayed to the papers that cluttered the far side of the table. Carbry had left them behind and gone to grab some dinner. There was a map of Ilvernath with a bunch of notes scribbled on it, the edges held down by several thick, ancient-looking books. He and Elionor had been strategizing about how they could breach the Castle, since that was Gavin Grieve’s sanctum.
Thinking of Elionor reminded her that these spellmaking instructions for the Overcharge were hers, that she was very good at crafting. Briony had watched her spellwork over the last week and a half. It was almost on par with Isobel’s.
She frowned and glanced back at the septogram, the spellstone, and her remaining flask of magick. Then she swallowed her pride and went to go get help.
* * *
“Well, of course it’s not working.” Elionor took Briony’s seat and began fussing with the components of the spell. “You’re trying to craft a class seven Overcharge, right?”
“Right.” Briony hovered uncomfortably in front of Carbry’s mess, trying not to feel patronized.
“Your components are incorrect. You need pine needles instead of moss, and then you need to rearrange them like this.…” She swapped around ingredients on the spellboard, then nodded. “There.”
“Oh,” Briony said, feeling foolish. Elionor’s scrawl had been difficult to decipher. “Thanks.”
“You could’ve figured this out on your own if you’d just read the instructions more carefully. Instead, you wasted three flasks of raw magick.”
“I’m sorry.” Briony could feel her cheeks flushing. “But you don’t have to be so hard on me. Carbry makes mistakes all the time, and you don’t get mad at him—”
“Because he’s a child,” Elionor said fiercely. “I saw you in that fight with Gavin. You can cast almost anything, but you should understand how your equipment is made if you want to use it properly. There’s more to this than just flinging spells at your opponents.”
Briony was truly baffled by this outburst. “Are you complimenting me or insulting me?”
“Forget it. I’ll just do it myself.”
One by one, Elionor arranged the ingredients on the seven points of the septogram. Then she placed the empty spellstone in the exact center, nodding with satisfaction.
“Precision in all things,” Elionor murmured, her spellstones shining in her ears. Briony had the distinct sense that she was talking to herself. She hadn’t wanted Elionor to do this for her, but apparently she wasn’t getting a choice.
She sighed and looked back at Carbry’s papers. The map of Ilvernath flapped in the evening breeze; she smoothed it down.
And froze.
She’d seen maps of the Landmarks before, of course. All the champions had. But with the Champions Pillar in the center like that …
She looked at the spellboard, where Elionor was coaxing raw magick from the flask. The ingredients laid out in their neat little corners. And it came to Briony all at once, a sudden burst of understanding. She couldn’t believe she’d never seen it before.