The Tale of Aeryn Glaze (UNDER MAJOR REVISION)

Chapter 17: The tournament

"But your magic is still in the process of developing, that's why you have no mana inside you." Grim's voice echoes through my head as I drank my coffee for the morning. I lean over by the kitchen as I watched Amber getting out of the bedroom, right after she finishes taking a bath and preparing for what we're about to do today.

I checked the wall clock by the right side by the living room. 7:45. A few minutes by now, we're gonna have to leave this room and be with the other mages to play for the tournament.

"Coffee?" I ask Amber.

"Yes. Thank you." She walked to the kitchen and sat on the kitchen stool as I prepare her coffee. With one last stir of the coffee, I turned around and gave it to Amber. Then, I pull out a note from my pocket before sliding it to her.

'Keep an eye on Victoria Sage' I wrote on the note.

She lift her head and looked at me directly. She nodded and crumpled up the paper before putting it on the glass of water next to her.

Five minutes after that, a loud blaring of horn instrument was heard from every corner of the headquarters, probably waking up every people in this place. It was time for the tournament.

Amber and I stood up. I grabbed my coat and wore it, then pull out the ponytail and let my long wavy hair down. There was a silver bracelet on the table of the living room and we wore it on our wrists. The bracelet is the only way the staff would recognize which category in the tournament we belong to. As non-mage participants, we belong in the combat category, and, well, if we win, we get to upgrade our level and fight amongst the mages. Only if we win, of course.

We went out of the room together and we walked along with the others. There was a red light in every corner of the hallway, blinking, pointing, and guiding us to where we are supposed to go. The blinking led lights ends when we were finally outside the building. This time, a clerk was tasked to lead us all to go behind the science facility. It was the wide field that Amber and I went to yesterday.

I stared in awe, looking around the field and realizing that they have installed bleachers around the area for the audience. The field here is much bigger than the gymnasium we found inside the mage headquarters. With over 50 thousand mages, the field was filled to the brim. While some mages were unfortunate to not be able to join the tournament, apparently, because of their low magic ranks, a total of one thousand mages had the chance to meet the qualifications to join the said tournament.

"This the battlefield?" Amber wonder.

"Yeah, I think so," I said with a nod. "Have you seen her around?"

She looked at me. "No. Not yet."

The clerk instructed us to go inside the field and to our surprise, at least not all of us, the field became a covered area. Some sort of metal was covering the entire field, just behind the bleachers and then in every between bleachers, there's a waiting area for the participants of the tournament. Illusion? It might or might not be the case. But knowing the people here have magic, it would be possible that all we are seeing right now are just part of the illusions they create to make this tournament successful.

Our group was guided to the left bleachers, at the bottom side of the waiting area, after that. Grim and the others were inside when we arrived, also wearing a silver bracelet. When we were inside, I noticed most of the mages were looking our way, probably aware of the fact that we were members of the Thanatos Organization. I looked away and ignore all those stares.

There were already loud cheers from outside even though the tournament hasn't even properly begun yet. I heard the muffled voice of the emcee outside having a speech and then making the audience laugh. And then, he went to talk about the tournament, in which he explained that not all of the mages can't join.