Peter vaulted over the railing to chase after the blond magician. “Young man,” one of the combatants began, getting to his feet and taking a step toward Peter. “You can’t be here. We-“ Peter shoved past him. Zech glanced over his shoulder as he reached the exit to the room. He grinned, waved, then slammed the door behind him. Peter heard the door bolt even as he reached it. It didn’t budge. He spun around to tell the guards that they needed to catch the rogue mage when he heard screaming from overhead.

  Before he could process it, he caught a flash of movement and hurled himself to the side. Sakir was looking at him, arm raised. He had a new bejeweled armband. This one had three crystals, all of which were glowing red.

  Peter drew his swords, just to have them ready if he managed to close the distance. He threw himself to the side again, the same as before, which still threw off Sakir’s aim, as the barrage of rock flew through the air to the side. The others in the room recovered. The servants fled the room, while other combatants and guards approached Sakir, raising their own defenses. Peter saw Jeremy leap over the railing on the stairs drawing his swords as well.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” demanded the combatant Peter had pushed past. He grabbed Sakir’s arm and gestured for the guards to go for Peter.

  Peter barely saw it. A man standing near Sakir with dark hair and sharp Ryukyuujin features stood and flicked out his hand. A red glow shone from the gemstone on the back of his glove. An icicle formed in the air, spiraling as it grew. One instant it was forming. The next it shot through the air, into the man who’d grabbed Sakir. He fell without another sound.

  The guards didn’t seem to realize what was going on. They paused, examining the fallen man. As they did, a young woman with blond hair– Peter guessed one of the other contestants – walked up behind him. Her necklace glowed yellow. As it did, rocks rolled up her side, encasing her arms. She had to reach up to place one hand on the shoulder of the guard closest to her. Then with the other, she struck him. There was a spray of blood, and the guard fell.

  Peter blinked, trying to work through the confusion. Sakir and Zech were here. Apparently with friends. He assumed these two mages were his friends, since they had interrupted the people trying to stop Sakir. But that didn’t explain why they were here, or why it sounded like everyone in the Arena up above had started screaming, which was ominous enough without the apparent alliance of mages working with Zech.

  He decided it was probably best to stop thinking about it. He raised his swords and bounded forward. Sakir’s spell was ready, but so was Peter. He feinted as if he was going to dodge the same direction again, but this time went low, sliding forward without dodging to the side. The feint worked, and Sakir’s eyes went wide as Peter closed the gap between them.

  The blond mage with the stone arms stepped between them and caught Peter’s blade on her magical armor. “Go after the others,” she hissed to Sakir and the ice mage. The two nodded and turned toward the stairs.

  “Guys, run!” Peter shouted up to them, before the young woman in front of him jabbed him in the gut.

  He was very glad Anna’s enchantments were still on his gear, because the attack only knocked the wind out of him. He doubled over, then, realizing the next blow would definitely be going at his exposed head, decided to simply fall forward. He felt the stone fist catch in his hair.

  He rolled to the side and was back on his feat in a moment, still wheezing from the hit, but with both swords out. Little miss stone hands did not give him much time. She ran at him, throwing punches which Peter guessed would pulverize anything they came into contact with. His swords rang off them wabbling whenever he used them to swat the attacks to the side. The mage girl grinned.

  “I could really use some Wispy help right about now,” he muttered, tightening his grip on the blade Liosfalda was in. There was not much of a response for a moment. Then suddenly, he felt a rush of attention from her. She seemed about as confused as he was. Excited, too. He guessed she could feel the other Wisps nearby. But she seemed to catch on that he was in rough shape and could use her help. He felt strength flow into him from the Wisp.

  With the added help, it wasn’t much of a fight. He didn’t know if stone hand’s spell could be used for more armor. But she wasn’t using it that way. And he had a lot more reach than she did. He backed off a little, then jabbed out with his left hand. The young woman gasped as a few centimeters of steel pierced her belly. The stone crumbled off her arms. She grit her teeth, her necklace becoming a brighter yellow, with little curls of glowing mist floating off of it.

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  That looked familiar. Also not good for him. With his other blade he reached up and chopped down on the chain of the necklace. The woman crumpled, the necklace spilling away from her. Peter picked it up, and immediately felt the restrained influence of Wisps coming from it. He nodded to himself. “Definitely friends of Zech.” He looked at the mage, gasping on the groundcas blood poured from her wounds. Then his attention was drawn by the rest of the room.

  Most of the combatants and servants had run away through the other side door, but Sakir had blocked off the stairs. He and his companion boxed in Jeremy, Hannah and the royals, while three guards and a few of the other mage combatants fought them off. Well, tried to. Even as he watched, two of the combatants and a guard fell with holes from Sakir’s or icicles sticking out from them.

  Peter didn’t think. He crossed the room in a few steps, and stabbed the ice mage in the back. The man’s breath caught, and he flung his hand back, an ice shard forming in front of Peter’s nose. The wounded guard he’d been fighting thrust out with his spear, taking the foreign mage in the neck, and the ice dissolved back into the air.

  Sakir saw his companion fall. He whirled to face them, scattering stones throughout the chamber. Peter stumbled back as one hit what he was sure was the bruise from Stone Hand’s punch. Once more, he thanked Anna for her enchantment. Sakir’s eyes were wild as he looked around the group that had surrounded him. The glow on his armband shifted from red to orange, and Peter doubted that would be good for any of them.

  “He can’t keep his Wisps!” Peter shouted. He saw Jeremy, on Sakir’s other side nod. The bandit mage seemed to crackle. The room shook as he held his arm down as if he were trying to pull up the whole floor with his mind.

  There was a snap as Jeremy leapt forward and swung. Sakir flinched, raising his arm probably by instinct. One sword scraped off the fancy new bracer. The other bit into Sakir’s arm above the elbow. The mage crumpled to the ground, clutching his arm over the new stump. He grit his teeth scrambled for his arm, or maybe it was just for the gemstones in the bracer.

  The wounded guard kicked it away. “What is going on here?” he burst, looking from the wounded bandit, to Peter and Jeremy, and then to Hannah and the two children hiding behind her.

  “I’m not really sure,” Jeremy said. He looked through the gate that led into the arena, where the screams were coming down. “We were just looking around.”

  “What about you?” asked a different guard, who was binding Sakir’s wounded arm.

  The Nuidian glared daggers at all of them. “We were hired to make a scene. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone I knew. At least not in here,” he added, his gaze falling on Peter. Peter ignored him. The thought of looting the dead, or in Sakir’s case, the part, was unnerving. But he hated the idea of leaving the Wisps there even more.

  “You know this man?” the wounded guard asked Peter.

  “Sort of,” Peter said. “My friends and I fought his bandit group outside Nuidia. They were using Wisps then, and I think that’s what’s causing the rest of the scene outside. Which we should really stop, if we can. Angry Wisps can be very nasty.”

  “Wait, this is the mage you fought in Nuidia?” Henry asked, looking back at Sakir with wide eyes. “That’s amazing!”

  “One of his companions mentioned something about targets,” Emily said. “Was that us?”

  Sakir grinned, but didn’t respond.

  “Why would he target two children?” asked the surviving combatant, a red haired Elf, like Sol. Then he frowned at them. “Half-Elf children… No, you can’t be!” he said, as realization dawned.

  “They are,” Jeremy said. “And I don’t think we have time for questions.”

  “He’s right. We need to get out of here,” Hannah said. Peter followed her gaze to the stairs. Well, what had been stairs. The banister had held the wooden steps to the wall. The entire middle section had been collapsed, leaving a gap too wide to jump and more than twice his height from the floor below. Peter guessed Sakir had done that while he was distracted by Stone Hands at the beginning of the fight.

  “Our priority should be getting His Majesty and Her Highness back to safety,” Jeremy said. He went to one of the side doors and opened it. Peter looked over his shoulder and saw two men in guard’s uniforms standing over several bodies. Both men seemed to glow red. They shouted over their shoulders that they’d found the targets. Jeremy slammed the door shut and braced himself against it. “Not this way,” Jeremy said. One of the guards helped him hold it shut while Peter and the other grabbed a bench to bar the door with as the men pounded on the door from the other side.

  “Then the only way out is through the arena,” said one of the guards.

  “That sounds like a bad idea,” Hannah said, looking up. Far from calming down, the sounds of panic overhead just seemed to get louder.

  “It may be our only option,” Peter said. When we’re out there, I should be able to call for Jarn, though. At worst, it’ll be too loud and I’ll need to get closer to him.”

  “That’s the opposite side of the arena,” Jeremy pointed out. “By the exit.”

  “Oh, then we’re headed that way anyway,” Peter said.

  “There is a way out of the arena without going into another of these rooms, right?” Hannah asked.

  The wounded guard nodded. “There are steps at the four corners,” he said, gesturing north, south, east, and west. He added another gesture at his waist and said, “They may have small gates.”

  “Small gates are easier to climb than that,” Peter said, pointing to the stairs.

  The Thornwoods exchanged a glance, then looked back at their young cousins. Henry was trying to put on a brave face, but he kept looking up at the sounds of fright from above. Then they nodded. “All of you, help us get them out of here,” Jeremy said.

  The surviving combatant and the guards nodded their assent. They opened the portcullis that led into the Arena.

  “Up the stairs and beeline for the exit, okay?” Jeremy told Henry and Emily. He glanced at Peter. “Look’s like we’ll get to fight in the arena after all.”