Edmund and Peter weave through the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good,\u201d Peter says.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s using his ninja skills to balance three buckets of popcorn as they scramble to their seats.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good,\u201d Peter says. \u201cIt\u2019ll make a man of you, this place will.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI ate a death ray once,\u201d Edmund says.<\/p>\n
Peter shrugs eloquently.<\/p>\n
They sit.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, we\u2019re in the audience<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peter ducks forward as a throwing axe smashes into his seat. He smashes it through the back of his seat into the person behind him with his head.<\/p>\n
Edmund waves off a snake someone has thrown in his direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an audience participation thing,\u201d Peter says. He hands Edmund a bucket of popcorn.<\/p>\n
There are rings and rings of people fighting down below. There are at least four battles going at any given time. It\u2019s dark and the area is tented like a circus.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, man,\u201d Peter says. He points vaguely. \u201cThere\u2019s Sid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSid?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sid is squaring off against Max. They\u2019re in the summoners\u2019 circle. That\u2019s where the summoners fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cKnow your wimps!\u201d says Peter. He spits to the side. \u201cHe\u2019s the worst-ranked kid in your class. Cosmic whipping boy, that one is, but no, he\u2019s gotta think of himself as a winner.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looks like he\u2019s got potential,\u201d Edmund says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just his summon,\u201d Peter dismisses.<\/p>\n
Sid\u2019s scraped out a summoning circle in the dirt of the summoners\u2019 circle. This always sounds redundant when he\u2019s talking about it to people but it doesn\u2019t feel redundant at all when he is fighting for his life.<\/p>\n
Light glitters upwards from his circle.<\/p>\n
He cries out, INTIMATION!<\/small><\/p>\n
That\u2019s the best summon he can manage right now. It\u2019s an intimation that he might one day summon something better.<\/p>\n
The ninjutsu fight from a different ring storms out through the audience. Two of Peter\u2019s classmates are a stuttering, tumbling blur of weaponry, clashing, vanishing into ninja-space for a step or two and reappearing in a spinning bundle out over the audience\u2019s chairs. Emily starts up from her seat, then settles back into it; she\u2019s too far away to do anything \u2014<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a scream as one of the prophesy students takes a nunchaku to the eye.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Max stomps the ground with his summoning stick. It\u2019s like a regular stick, but at the bottom it has the reversed imprint of a summoning circle on it. It saves time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHAND<\/small> PUPPETS!<\/small>\u201d Max shouts, and tosses aside the stick.<\/p>\n
He summons two hand puppets. They resemble sea monsters. They fit neatly over his hands.<\/p>\n
Sid launches himself at Max, wreathed in the intimation that one day he might summon something that will totally show Max what for. Max stops him with one sea-monstered hand held firmly against his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, that\u2019s a good show,\u201d says Peter.<\/p>\n
He snatches a napkin \u2014 well, a headband \u2014 from the tumbling ninjas as they go past and he wipes his mouth. \u201cSee, you lose points if you touch your enemy directly, but Max\u2019s summon lets him put his hand on Sid\u2019s forehead fair and square.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sid continues to flail.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re sure it\u2019s not potential?\u201d Edmund says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s INTIMATION<\/small>,\u201d Peter says. \u201cGeez, you\u2019d be a sucker for CERTAIN<\/small> DOOM<\/small>.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mouth of the sea monster puppet in Max\u2019s other hand begins to gleam. It is building charge for a puppet beam.<\/p>\n
The light brightens.<\/p>\n
Sid ducks under Max\u2019s hand. He pounds the earth. He free-summons DIRT<\/small> SPEAR<\/small>. This fails because free-summoning is an extremely advanced topic and only three people in the world have ever managed it. Instead there is only the sudden, furious intimation<\/i> of a spear striking up from the Earth through Max\u2019s bowels.<\/p>\n
\u201cHa ha!\u201d says Max. \u201cI\u2019ll be regular tonight!\u201d<\/p>\n
His sea monster hand puppet\u2019s maw opens. He blasts Sid.<\/p>\n
Sid falls.<\/p>\n
\u201cOoh yeah,\u201d cries Max. \u201cWho\u2019s the champion?\u201d<\/p>\n
That is when Eugenie, whose summon is a gigantic four-armed ape, steps into the circle.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d says Max, embarrassed. \u201cRight. That would be you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Edmund and Peter weave through the audience. \u201cIt\u2019s good,\u201d Peter says. He\u2019s using his ninja skills to balance three buckets of popcorn as they scramble to their seats. \u201cIt\u2019s good,\u201d Peter says. \u201cIt\u2019ll make a man of you, this place will.\u201d \u201cI ate a death ray once,\u201d Edmund says. Peter shrugs eloquently. They sit. \u201cAlso, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-5002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-storm-that-saw-itself-chapter-2","series-the-storm-that-saw-itself"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Icon_Serpent.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6175,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5002\/revisions\/6175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5002"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}