It was less impressive to watch than the rest of the tournaments, but no less valuable. Annette reminded herself of the fact as she waited. Arguably it was the most important part of the week, aside from whatever the master cultivators decided among themselves.

Instead of the mind-numbing thrill of watching paint dry, literally in some cases, the public had been spared a view of the crafting tournament. Entrants had been given a set budget and unlimited access to the Crafting Hall at the beginning of the week, and would now present their results. Not a fair system, since some projects simply took more than the allotted time, but no one claimed cultivation was fair.

She was very aware of the minutiae of devising such a contest, as Adam was enamored of the rules and had spent weeks lovingly crafting the parameters. Annette didn't really care. She wasn't a sports person, but she was someone who knew how to take advantage when the opportunity arose. What better way to advertise their newest ability as a sect if not in front of half the city?

Her hand caressed the soft leather of her latest spatial bag. The process was still in development, she could only do about one a week if she really focused, but it represented a leap forward. For her, and more to the point, for the sect. The unassuming satchel hanging off her shoulder could fit ten times its regular volume in a weightless, airless, perfect storage. It was also as pretty as she could make it. Most of the embroidery was purely ornamental, but she had to do something while she rested her mana channels, and using the skills Mama had taught her was relaxation and vindication all in one.

Annette took a moment to survey the competition. There was a wider array than she had originally expected. With the rest of the tournament's theme, she had been anticipating dozens of weapons, swords in particular, as they tried to catch the judges' eyes. One judge in particular who happened to go around using 'blade' as part of her name. While there were plenty of those, there were other entries she didn't recognize at all. Her interest in crafting was more for practicality than passion.

A potion glowing in a glass bottle, a few pieces of clothing, draped over arms or displayed on mannequins. Spikes of metal she thought might be a boundary alarm and many more she could never identify.

An impressive bunch. Annette wasn't sure how they would be able to compare in order to pick a winner, but that was a problem that had been solved long before her time.

The judges, Devon, Laurel, and Oro this time, circled the Arena floor. Each crafter had been assigned a spot and told to wait. They were also responsible for bringing anything they needed to demonstrate their success. The pile of bricks and iron bars next to Annette was nondescript compared to some of the others. She should have brought something fancier to store away. Something shiny that would catch the eyes of the bored spectators Next time.

Unlike the rest of the tournament, the competitors were able to listen to the announcing while it happened. Their work was over, there would be no advantage to be gained now.

"A blade enchanted for increased mana conductivity." Laurel was reading the descriptions of each item, as written by the crafter entrant. "Allows for better utilization while fighting."

Those crafters were not doing themselves any favor. Annette had looked up some of the more standard enchantments for magical weapons. They were fiendishly complicated. But the crowds were barely reacting to the achievements being displayed.

Most of the actual evaluation was being done by Devon. The other two could observe the effects of an item but the practical nature of crafting was not their strong suit. When Devon was finished they moved on.

"A piece of wood that uses mana to temporarily elongate. Can be paired with hammer-head or other attachments."

Really, she needed to have a word with Devon before he returned to his own sect. Or maybe one of his sect members. Marketing matters.

They reached Annette soon enough and she handed over her own card.

Laurel smirked and began reading. "Defy the laws of physics with a new life-changing innovation from the Eternal Archive. Unbelievable, impossible, but here now with the wonders of magic, a spatial bag, bigger on the inside! This model allows a user to defy physical limitations, storing up to ten times its apparent volume. Anything except live matter can be stored inside, weightlessly, and carted across the world before being removed again. The possibilities are endless but supplies are not. Orders will be taken on commission, by crafter discretion."

The end of her announcement trailed off into polite clapping from the audience and the keen eyes of every crafter in the Arena. Including Devon, who looked like he had just sucked on a lemon. Not thrilled with her blatant advertising strategy it would seem. She shrugged at the man. He wouldn't kick her out and winning today was immaterial.

The master enchanter took the bag and gave it a thorough examination. Everything in her pile disappeared inside before being removed by upending it in a heap. Not a flattering method of highlighting the problem with removal but she would take it. The Merchant Guild was canny enough to realize she would only get better with time.

After a few more minutes of testing and examination by Oro, and a wink from Laurel, the judges moved on.

She didn't place. Annette wasn't surprised, her mana aspect was doing most of the work, and all she really needed to do was force the mana into the bag. There was no innovation in it, as made clear by the fact she had gotten the technique from a memory tablet. It didn't matter. Victory here wasn't her goal. By the time she returned to the sect house that evening, to commiserations from the members that had watched, there was a pile of correspondence waiting for her. Two of the crests were from some of the more enterprising merchant houses in the City.

That was the real prize from the tournament.

***********

Leander had waited years for this moment. Every awkward visit, or intrusion onto his adventuring with his friends. Every smug look and stupid puffed-chest brag that had definitely never happened. On the other end of the Arena, Rex gave a little wave. Leander narrowed his eyes and nodded back as a respectful acknowledgement of a worthy opponent. Not friends.

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They were back to customized Arena terrain. This time, the floor was a rocky plain, full of cracks and crevices designed to slow them down or make them trip. Air was rushed like water through the miniature ravines, the whole thing whistling in an eerie melody that would form the backdrop of the fight.

Rex stood in his path, and Leander would go straight through him. He took one more moment to check his gear. Daggers in their sheaths. Shield strapped tightly to his arm. Today was his chance to finally prove that he was the better cultivator. Oro was officiating, and did so without any of Laurel's appreciation for the moment, factually describing both of them as they took their places.

Then he announced the beginning of the fight, and Leander had only one focus. Rex was going down.

Leander had watched every fight in the tournament so far, and he had studied how Rex had defeated his opponents. It came down to distance and time. Rex was very good at wearing down other fighters with attack after attack, mostly from small stones fired at high speed. They broke up concentration and distracted other fighters from the bigger techniques he would prepare to finish them off.

There was an obvious counterstrategy which he'd spent time developing with his sectmates. Don't get hit. And if he did get hit, don't let that stop him from moving. After all, rocks didn't want to move. But air did. He could send gust after gust long after any other initiate would have exhausted themselves.

The problem, he learned in the early moments of the fight, was that Rex had been watching him too. Leander dodged and leapt, knocking the rocks off their paths when they came near him, always closing the distance. Rex sent more rocks, retreating and attempting to force Leander to exhaust himself. It had been obvious to most that he hadn't yet learned enough distance effects. All his fights so far had been won up close.

Just like Leander had wanted everyone to think. He reached out with a twist of mana and blew sand into Rex's eyes from halfway across the Arena. All his contribution points for the last year had been spent on private lessons with Laurel. He could manipulate air across the Arena. Not with her power, but his options weren't as limited as his fights so far made it seem.

As he landed from his last jump, his foot slid too far. Stumbling, he was unable to avoid the next volley. Instead taking strikes on his head and chest, his shield came up in time to protect his face. Like a hailstorm, the thudding of rocks on the metal coating added percussion to the melody of the wind.

Rex had been holding back as well.

Spike of earth lanced at Leander which he dodged around. When he couldn't get out of the way in time he used one to launch him further forward, leaping and jumping at just the right time.

He attempted his scream attack again, pushing mana into the technique as he imagined a shrieking noise. It didn't phase Rex in the slightest. He kept launching rock after rock at Leander.

He couldn't dodge them all. First one slammed into his smallest finger, breaking it with a clean snap. Gritting his teeth, Leander pushed through. Then a jagged edge sliced open his calf, and another his arm.

No. With each drop of blood that dripped down his limbs, he felt his chance slipping away. That would be fine against anyone else. He could accept honorable defeat. But not when his moment of glory was ripped out of his hands by Rex Miton.

The conviction swelled from his soul and etched into his bones. Something inside shattered, and then Leander was rushing forward. The rocks kept coming but this time they sheared off to the side instead of slamming into his aching body.

The distance between them was gone in a flash. Rex was weak up close. He still put up a fight but Leander had him on the ground and conceding the fight after a few short moments.

He raised both arms in victory.

It was kind of weird that the ground was still moving. His eyes rolled up and he collapsed onto the ground.

************

"Stars above. Did that really just happen?" Martin was watching the proceedings from the judges box with the other faction leaders, taking his turn as Laurel dealt with some errands. Had to make sure the public saw them being stern and stately or else they might forget how important the sect was. Or something like that. It was shaping up to be a normal day until Leander put on his little show.

"Impressive." Jade sat to the side, sipping some sort of fruit juice she had brought north for the event. "Did you know he was close?"

"Yeah, but we expected him to take it a different way."

"Expected him to take it. Honestly, how you and Laurel are creating any half-decent cultivators with an attitude like that I don't know."

"Be nice."

"I am nice."

Jade cleared her throat and both Martin and Devon subsided instead of launching into the brewing argument. They would pick it up later when she was off meditating.

Master cultivators tended to be prickly, it came from living long enough to amass that kind of power, focusing on little else. That none of them had started a real fight just to relieve some of the tension was more impressive than any of the plans they had made. Some stress-relief insults were perfectly normal.

"Would someone care to explain to the rest of us?" One of the clan leaders had been present on each day of competition so far, and today it was Breva's turn. "Is the boy going to be okay?"

"He's fine," Martin waved his hand in a gesture that could have meant half a dozen things. "Evolved his mana aspect mid-fight. Shield, if I'm getting the flavor right. Not a usual way people take air, which is why we were surprised. Not even close, honestly."

Down on the Arena floor, Leander was staggering to his feet, while the other boy removed something from his ears. Martin nodded. A decent option to stop the shrieking attack Leander had improvised earlier in the tournament. He was not going to be the one that helped him train that.

"And evolving one's mana aspect…" Breva trailed off in a clear invitation to continue.

Luckily Jade was willing to take up the mantle of wise elder, lest he or Devon be released upon the clanswoman. "There are two branches on each cultivator's path. The mana aspect that allows us to influence the world in impossible ways, and the lens through which we view our cultivation, which shapes how we gain power. When the two are in harmony a cultivator can grow.

"Most start with a basic aspect, something found in nature, which might resonate with their motivation or might not. Some are satisfied and work to deepen their connection, others add more aspects to round out their style, and still others find that the aspect itself is not exactly right. Perhaps it was fine to start but they have changed as people, or perhaps it was the plan all along.

"Either way, focused meditation or additional cultivation resources can evolve one aspect into another. Our esteemed hostess is rather famously working to create a stormblade aspect, though the complexity of her goal has not yet been realized. This is the standard way of gaining more ethereal, or esoteric aspects, that are not so easily represented in the physical world. Dreams. Rage. Prophecy.

"The boy has created a defensive aspect out of air. Which is an unusual choice."

"Exactly. Why did you even let him choose air in the first place?" Devon interrupted from the side. The Arena was already reshaping into something new for the next fight, but their words were blocked from any eavesdroppers. Not that Devon would have refrained from asking the rude question even if someone was listening in.

"Control stunts growth." Martin declared.

"Moreover," Jade spoke over both of them, "he did so intuitively, in the midst of battle."

"Unbelievable." Devon muttered. "Stars-cursed prodigy shows up and stumbles into the most unguided sect that has ever maintained ascendancy, and then pulls off something like this. Without any help or instruction. You should bottle Laurel's luck. A few doses each and the Order will fold like paper."

**********

After his fight with Rex, the other boy led Leander to the healing chamber and deposited him on a couch. He wasn't sure why. He felt great! That wasn't a faint. It was just that he had been momentarily overwhelmed by how awesome the fight had gone.

The younger Miton brother ran inside, shouting for his brother, and all attention on Leander was forgotten. A fact he was glad for. He was left poking and prodding at his spirit alone.

It was like cracking a joint after feeling out of sorts for hours. Not painful, but something was finally in place he hadn't realized was out of alignment. Shield. A new aspect, somehow coming out of his desire to block the rocks that had been slicing him to ribbons.

On a hunch he attempted to form another air shield and nearly doubled over. His meridians did not like that after he stressed them so much this week already. Leander curled up on one of the chairs and closed his eyes, dropping into a doze with a smile on his face.

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