Chapter Five

  The morning after the Merlins, Alexandria Duke shouldered her backpack as she left the Spire, heading to Gamemakers Hall in the twelfth district. As she strode from the towering building, she was once again overwhelmed by the sensory inputs of the busy streets.

  A tour group on flying carpets that cruised a few feet above the sidewalk whisked past as the guide spoke into a microphone and pointed at the surrounding buildings. Alex found herself following the man's hand as he indicated the Spire behind her. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she peered at the glass-covered building that rose twice as high as the nearest skyscrapers.

  It was hard to believe it was so tall. She wished she'd been able to look out a window during the Merlins, but the testing had kept her so busy that as soon as her head had hit the pillow she'd been asleep.

  Lord Falker had been right. Passing the Merlins had been a breeze, but she hoped that the rest of her time in the city of Invictus would be as easy. Because she'd never shown an aptitude for magic, she'd never worked on it. Her previous testings, which had indicated a low amount of faez—the raw stuff of magic—had convinced her she never had a shot. But maybe Gamemakers Hall was the best place for her, since they helped run the Merlins and other contests in the city. She wasn't going to be battling dragons anytime soon, but she certainly could help prepare the mages of tomorrow to do so.

  Alex found the Green Line train, which would take her to the outer wards, and found a seat in the nearest car. She tried not to stare at her fellow passengers, but there was a girl with bright pink hair in a tank top with a sleeve of tattoos manipulating a Rubik Cube using a magical field between her outstretched hands on the seat across from her. When the girl caught her staring, she winked, then went back to turning the levitating cube.

  The girl's manipulation was impressive, but her ability to solve the Rubik Cube was less than. It'd been years since Alex had played with the dexterous puzzle, but her fingers twitched with the memory of solving.

  "Think you can do better?" asked the pink-haired girl with an inviting smile.

  "I can't do the magic thing, but I can solve it," said Alex.

  After mixing it up, the pink-haired girl threw it to her. Alex had been watching the whole time, so she knew exactly where to start when it was in her hands. The internal pivot mechanism was sticky, keeping her from zipping through her paces, but Alex's fingers remembered the trick of the cube. Before a minute had passed, she threw the puzzle back to the girl.

  "What in the Abyss?" exclaimed the pink-haired girl, staring at the completed cube.

  "I used to be sub-twenty, but I'm out of practice," said Alex with a one-shoulder shrug.

  The train lurched to a stop and the pink-haired girl got up to leave.

  "Good luck at Gamemakers."

  Alex got confused until she remembered that she was wearing a Gamemakers pin, which looked like a pair of tumbling dice. After the brief examination, she looked up, catching her reflection in the window. She touched her dark hair, which almost touched her shoulders since she hadn't had it cut in a while, trying to save money for her mom. She liked it short, coming just past her jawline, which helped frame her chubby face. Alex adjusted her dark-rimmed glasses.

  After switching to the Blue Line, which served the outer city, she made it to the twelfth ward. Immediately, her nose wrinkled from the smell of rotting garbage. The run-down buildings were covered with graffiti. It looked like this part of the city had once been an industrial center, before business had moved on.

  Alex checked the directions again, finding that she was on the correct street. She squeezed her backpack to the side as she headed in the direction of the hall.

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  As she passed rusty chain-linked fences and old buildings with most of the windows knocked out, Alex kept checking over her shoulder.

  When she came around the corner, she didn't know what to make of what she saw. The only reason she knew it was Gamemakers Hall was because she was standing at the address, and it was the only place in the area that appeared livable.

  The building looked like a dozen other mismatched buildings had been smashed for parts and then jammed back together with cement. There was an old console game she remembered playing when she was a kid called Katamari that involved rolling a sticky ball that grew in size as it picked up anything it touched. This building looked like an architectural version of a Katamari ball. She saw a turret, a gothic church front, an elementary school library, and a dozen other building features within the conglomeration.

  Frozen by the strangeness of it, Alex almost didn't hear the footsteps until it was too late. She turned to see a couple of figures hidden by shadows moving in her direction, spurring her towards the gate before Gamemakers Hall.

  When she passed through the archway, it felt like she'd passed through a membrane. Her ears popped.

  She glanced back to see whatever had been following her had disappeared back into the industrial buildings. That the Gamemakers Hall had to set up shop in a run-down area didn't bode well for its standing in the university, but Alex decided she should give it a chance before having regrets.

  Inside the entryway, she expected to be greeted by a professor or older classman, but the wood-floored room was empty. She saw three different passages leading deeper into the building, including a spiral staircase that looked rescued from a circa 1920 mansion.

  "Hello?" she called, hoping that the greeting committee had stepped away for a bathroom break.

  When no one appeared, Alex took the middle passage, hoping it led to the correct place. Further down, she heard the familiar beeps and whistles of a stand-up arcade game. An open door revealed a dozen vintage arcade games packed side by side.

  A figure in a hoodie was standing in front of the Battle for Invictus! game, jamming the control stick in various directions and slapping the action buttons in a steady staccato. The person playing the game looked pretty focused, so she waited until they'd beaten the level before speaking.

  "Hello, can you help me? I just joined Gamemakers today," she said, wondering why the player's motions were awkward and stiff.

  A voice answered her, but not from the direction she was expecting.

  "Bully on you, kid. Pick an open room. Good luck."

  Sitting in the corner of the arcade on a folding chair was a guy with messy brown hair, looking like he'd just woken up. He was tapping on his smartphone while frowning.

  "Oh, hi, I didn't see you there. I'm Alex, short for Alexandria," she said.

  "Yep, the new kid," he said without looking up.

  As she stared at the figure playing the arcade game, she was struck by how wrong it looked. Cautiously, she stepped forward until she was parallel with the player, only to find that there was no "person" under the hoodie, but a mannequin from a department store.

  "That's Manny," said the guy in the chair. "I was bored last weekend so I enchanted him to play Battle. He can get through the first fifteen levels, but then he dies on the second boss."

  Watching the plastic man play an arcade game made her take a step back. "Whoa, that's really amazing."

  The guy snorted. "Not really. It's just an algorithm and a little magic. Any idiot who understands basic non-deterministic recursion and the finite-string method of arcane material control could do it."

  Alex was simultaneously excited and intimidated. "Can you tell me where I'm supposed to go? Who I'm supposed to report to for classes?"

  "Classes, ha. That's a good one. You came here to play games, right?" he asked.

  "Sure," she replied.

  "There you have it," he said while biting his lower lip and hammering on the smartphone screen as if he were trying to poke a hole through it. "Dammit." He dropped the phone in his lap and looked up at her with an exasperated sigh. "They get younger every year."

  "I'm standing right here," she replied, feeling less intimidated and more annoyed. She squinted at him. "What's your name?"

  "Bucket."

  "Nice to meet you, Bucket."

  He stared at her without saying a word for a good ten seconds. Without a scowl on his face, she thought he was cute, but then the frown returned and he went back to his smartphone.

  Alex sighed. "Where is Lord Falker?"

  He wrinkled his face. "Lord Falker?"

  "He's the one that recruited me," said Alex.

  "Ah, Professor Marzio. You'll find him in the turret," said Bucket.

  "The turret?"

  "You know," he said, "round thing, like a tower, but attached to a building. Looks more like a bloated cannon on our humble Hall, but nobody asked me."

  "What about Patron Adolphus Dimple?" she asked.

  He glanced up, deadly serious. "Just talk to Marzio."

  When Bucket started cursing under his breath at whatever he was doing on his phone, Alex took that as her cue to leave. Her stomach was starting to twist with the thought that she'd made a mistake coming to the Gamemakers Hall. She hoped that Professor Marzio would make a better impression.