It took Noah and Moxie a little while to figure out where Lee had taken the students. After their date – which consisted mostly of sitting and chatting on her bed while eating meat pies – had ended, they’d hurried off to the transport cannon.

There was nobody there. It was odd to see the area completely empty. Ropes had been put up around the base of the cannon to keep anyone from trying to ascend it. The cannon was their normal meetup location, but it obviously wasn’t much use if nobody could actually go anywhere with it.

The two professors had directed their attention to the nearest restaurants, but to their surprise, none had seen Lee or their small class. That had been quite the problem. Arbitage was a huge area and there were countless different locations that everyone could have gone.

Noah dug through his memories in search of where Lee might have taken the kids, stumbling into a thought nearly on accident. They changed courses and hurried over to the arena. It had been so long since Noah had been there that he’d nearly forgotten about its existence.

The last time he’d come had been just shortly after he’d first met Isabel and Todd and they were showing him their abilities. It wasn’t really a private training area, but it seemed like it might have fit the bill.

And, sure enough, as they stepped out onto the sand and scanned over the sparse groups scattered across it, Noah caught a flash of Emily’s telltale silver hair. Their entire group had taken over a small portion at the far side of the arena and were flopped out in every direction like drying leather.

“I think Lee might have decided that today was a stretching session,” Noah said as they walked over to join the others.

“When does she not?” Moxie asked with a shudder.

Todd pried his head up from the sand, relief shining in his eyes as he spotted Noah and Moxie approaching. He rolled over with a groan and pushed himself upright.

“We’re free, guys.”

“Free from what?” Lee asked. “Do you know how many muscles there are in the human body?”

“No,” Todd said.

“Neither do I, but I’ve been counting,” Lee said. “And I’m pretty sure you haven’t stretched all of them yet. You don’t want to be lopsided, do you?”

“Just a question. Do you think bones are muscles?” Isabel groaned from beside Todd. “Because they aren’t.”

“Anything is a muscle if you try hard enough.”

“I’m not so sure that’s how it works,” Noah said, tussling Lee’s hair. “Thanks for covering for us, though.”

“No problem. I can finish class today. We just have a few more things to stretch.”

The panic in everyone’s eyes was so intense that Noah couldn’t even bring himself to make a joke about it. “That’s kind of you to offer, but we’ve got some other stuff we need to cover before tonight.”

“Tonight? What’s tonight?” Alexandra asked.

“Another advanced track meeting,” Noah replied, sitting down in the sand and crossing his legs beneath him. “A real one, this time around. I imagine we want to make a good impression.”

He thought back to the first meeting. Lee had certainly made an impression with his body, all right. She’d eaten just about everything on the table, silverware included. He repressed a sigh.

“As good of an impression as we can still salvage.”

“Does our reputation matter? All that matters is outperforming them so we can get the resources,” Alexandra said.

“You’re not wrong, but this is an opportunity to do what we wanted to do the first time around,” Moxie said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “And that is to check out what the students of the other professors are capable of. Take their measure.”

“Invisible dick measuring contest,” Todd concluded.

Moxie rolled her eyes. “That’s one way to put it, sure. Whatever the reason. We want to see if these idiots are actually worth our time and what they’re capable of. Don’t forget we know very little about them. Just because the rest of Arbitage is a little bit pathetic on average doesn’t mean they will be.”

“Do you really think they’ve got anyone stronger than Alexandra?” James asked. “I mean, she’s a Rank 3. That’s the same as a few professors.”Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Now that I think about it, didn’t Revin claim to be a Rank 3? Hm. You know what? I’m not so sure I buy that. Now that I know more about Formations… well, I haven’t seen him since reaching Rank 4. I suppose I’ll find out if we run into each other and I can tell he’s got a domain.

“Don’t overestimate me,” Alexandra said. “I have Body Runes. Even if I win in certain circumstances, I’m at a severe disadvantage against anyone that can keep me at a range. I don’t have a way to attack anyone outside the reach of my sword.”

“You could throw it,” James offered.

“And then I would have no sword.”

“Tie a string to it?” Todd added in.

Alexandra took a page out of Moxie’s book and rolled her eyes. “Thank you, guys. I’ll strongly consider tying a string to the hilt of my sword so I can fling it at anyone who isn’t kind enough to come into its range.”

“You’re welcome,” James said without a hint of shame. He yawned, then pushed himself upright. “So what are we doing in class today? More patterns?”

Noah looked around the arena. It wasn’t exactly a discreet area. There were other students, some alone and some in groups, milling about. Practicing patterns or Formations here was going to be a little too exposed. Even if nobody was too close to them right now, it could end up drawing more attention than he wanted to get.

That was unless they changed what the others could see.

“I don’t want people looking at us while we practice anything even slightly unique,” Noah said. “Isabel, do you think you could…”

She picked up on Noah’s line of thinking before he finished the sentence and rolled to her feet. Isabel pressed her hands to the sand and a faint tremor ran beneath Noah’s feet. An eight-foot-high wall of stone jutted up behind him, curving overhead. Several more walls rose up in succession, making a barrier that blocked out anyone’s view of the section of the arena they were in.

It was the exact same strategy they’d used in the Windscorned Plateau to make sure they didn’t accidentally draw the scorn of too many Fluffants at the same time. Noah gave her an approving nod.

“Perfect. Thank you, Isabel.”

“Why didn’t we do that before?” Todd asked.

“Because nobody in their right mind is going to get near Lee when they see what she’s doing to us,” Isabel replied. “It was a more effective deterrent than anything I could ever do.”

“Another benefit of stretching,” Lee proclaimed proudly. “It is a multifaceted activity with an ever-growing range of positive aspects.”

Is she trying to pitch it to a company or something? Now that I think about it, Lee would make a great motivational speaker. One of those people that shows up to the schools and tells all the teachers that there’s one quick trick they can do to improve their days. It’s just that her trick is borderline shattering every bone in your body in a stretch that really shouldn’t even be possible.

Somehow I do always feel better after her stretching sessions, though. Just… not better enough to voluntarily do one.

“Well then,” Noah said, coughing into a fist and shaking his head to draw himself back to the matter at hand. “I should bring you all up to speed on some stuff that happened recently.”

Todd’s eyes flicked from Noah to Moxie. “You mean why you and Moxie were late? We kind of figured that out.”

“No, not that,” Noah said hurriedly. “Yesterday.”

“We really don’t need to know what–” Isabel started, a small grin pulling across her lips.

“Arbitage was attacked,” Noah said before Isabel could finish. “The transport cannon, specifically.”

That got everyone’s attention.

“What? I heard it just broke down,” Emily said. “It was sabotage?”

“Not sabotage. It was housing an artifact. The person that was controlling all those plant puppets was behind it. For anyone not aware, his name is Wizen. He’s probably a Rank 6 if not stronger, and it turns out that the thing he was after this whole time was the artifact powering the transport cannon.”

“This seems like major news. If it isn’t out already, it’s being suppressed,” Alexandra said with a frown. “Are you sure you should be telling us?”

“Yes. Understanding what you’re up against is very important. Wizen is powerful, but I don’t think he’ll have any more interest in us – but that’s not enough for me to make a bet on it. The item he took was a key to the Damned Plains.”

“A key? Why?” Isabel asked.

“We haven’t figured that bit out yet,” Noah replied. “But I want you to all be aware of it. Just make sure you’re more aware of any demonic activity of the malicious kind.”

He watched Lee’s expression as he spoke, but she didn’t seem any more interested or disinterested in the key than any of the others. She had a slight worried crease in her brow and nothing more.

“Any questions?” Moxie asked.

“What kind of questions are we even supposed to ask?” Emily replied. “Can we do anything about it?”

“Not really,” Noah said. “Not other than working on getting stronger, that is. The Enforcers are already looking into Wizen and what happened. Your job is to just make sure you’re as powerful as possible to make sure that you can protect yourself when the time comes. Oh – and don’t tell anyone else. I wasn’t supposed to share this, but I’ve never really cared much for rules.”

Nobody looked even the slightest bit surprised at that.

“So the rest of today is more sparring, I take it?” Alexandra asked.

“I’d say so, yes. Can’t ever have too much of that and it’ll also be good practice for the meeting with the advanced track tonight.”

“You think we’ll be fighting?” James asked.

“Who knows, but I tend to find myself fighting more often than not when meeting new people.”

“I think that speaks more to your personality than anything else,” Emily informed him.

“Thank you,” Noah said without missing a beat. “Now, Todd, I believe I promised you we’d have a match. Yesterday got a bit… hectic, so why don’t we start with you? I trust you’ve got your newly imbued stuff on you to show off?”

Todd grinned and held his hand up, letting the sleeve roll down to reveal a metal bracelet on his wrist. “Always.”

“Good. Let’s see what you’ve got, then.”