Zahira di Fior knows from the moment her opponent prepares his stance that their bout will be over before eight seconds have elapsed.

His feet, locked flat to the stone ground of the arena in parallel, suggest a defensive approach, but don’t match his shoulders, which in their uneven heights betray a sucker-punch counteroffensive, which will, she guesses, more than likely consist of a simple locking maneuver and jolt flare. As the officiate counts down, she nearly feels a sense of pity for the poor sod, as after all, he had already made it to the semifinal round of Rezmaiq’s mixed division examinations, no small feat in its own right, especially for a magnetricist specialized in modern arqala, and this was not a trick she had observed in his prior matches.

She knows her calculative capacity seems prodigious, in ways, but knows deeper that any discerning eye concerned enough with the fundamentals of arqala could derive the same conclusions, perhaps even faster. In many ways, Zahira knows her approach is rather formulaic.

She looks at him again, at his face. He’s nervous, she notices, and tries again to remember from which family he came. Was it Gilamé? Or perhaps Skali?

The officiate raises a robed hand. “Begin!”

Zahira takes an immediate step, feinting reckless aggression; her opponent, recognizing the bait, prepares a proper defensive stance, evening his shoulders a moment, and preparing loosely clenched fists. Six seconds left. Zahira lunges forward, channeling through her rift in slow increments, and feints again as though to make the trace of a jolt flare, crossing a hand across her body with ring, index, and thumb pinched together.

The boy flinches, expecting the flare immediately, and switches back to his initial stance. Weak fundamentals, suspects Zahira. The first rule of arqala, though easily understood in theory, required keen instinct to apply to the field of battle. Zahira recites its textbook definition to herself: The Law of Potency, or First Law, states that for any given work of spellcraft, there is an inverse relationship between magnitude and duration. Four seconds.

The boy fires an unconfident jolt flare out at Zahira; she ducks, and the bolt of electricity flies from his fingers and over her shoulder. Strong; ergo fast. He readies something to catch another quick movement, and Zahira fires off not a jolt flare from her crossed arm, but switching the position of her wrist at the last moment, sweeps at the ground beneath him, and the space behind his right leg collapses in on itself instantaneously, knocking him off balance. Fast; ergo strong. Two seconds.

He tries to reorient himself; Zahira creates a trap. She bends space around his arms lightly, sending one back to the ground as he tries to right himself—weak; ergo lasting—then steps forward, and with one hand grabs the boy’s outstretched wrist, and with the other threatens a blinding flare an inch from his eyes. Zero.

The officiate whistles three times. “di Fior wins by takedown!”

Zahira steps out onto the silver grass of Rezmaiq’s courtyard and crosses through to the primary examination tower. She hears, but does not take note of, the various mutterings of the other students filing out from the arena of the auxiliary tower.

The other match is still in-progress when she arrives. She finds in the well-filled crowd a single empty seat in the judges’ row.

In one corner she sees Jaqobo Sethuk, the runner-up only to Zahira herself in last week’s Graviturgy examinations, the son of General Sethuk of Hamzun’s coastal militia, and, among the students of Rezmaiq, a well-documented philanderer. Zahira recalls his less than convincing invitations to ‘practice together’ and finds herself very pleased to see that he’s losing.

In the other corner, Zahira sees a girl she doesn’t recognize — certainly a magnetricist, she thinks, and probably a student of classical arqala. She is slender, composed, and wields a blunted saber in her right hand, which strikes Zahira as incredibly odd, because although in technicality dulled weapons are allowed in the mixed division examinations, they are very rare to see; weapon use is generally recognized to be an archaic holdover from another age of Rezmaiq that required more close-quarters martial training, one before the school of modern arqala rendered iron and other strongly magnetic metals too dangerous for standard military use. Beyond me, Zahira wonders to herself, how Sethuk hasn’t already managed to disarm her.

Zahira finds out why mere moments after the thought. At the beginning of the next round of the bout, the girl’s hand — ring finger to thumb designates a spark flare, Zahira notes — rolls out from her rift to her shoulder, then gestures in a sweeping arc across the field, where columns of flame then erupt in seemingly random order. Jaqobo responds quickly, rift whirring in his chest, and bends an opening in the center of the array, but she’s disappeared into the smoke.

Interesting, Zahira thinks, leaning over in her seat. In order to catch her successfully, Sethuk has to choose between a potent flare that might leave him open, or swinging in the dark.

The girl dances between the dissipating smoke, taking swipes with her saber to bait Jaqobo’s attention, but never jumping in too close. She’s rather… artsy, but her intuition is strong. The Second Law, the Law of Risk, states that the more potent the spellcraft, the more precise the trace must be, and the greater the chance of complications in the event of miscasting.

As Jaqobo struggles to discern what to do, the girl increases the pressure; the columns of fire erupt closer and closer from his feet, and force him to make a move. Yes, just like that… If victory seems so distant, he’ll have to take riskier moves. He may not have the manual dexterity to perform the trace he needs; sloppy casting would lose him the judges’ favor, and that would be the least of his concerns. Spellcraft risking long-term self-harm, prolonged irradiation to oneself or one’s opponent, or the overexertion of one’s rift is grounds for immediate disqualification, in some cases suspension, and in all cases—especially for a braggart like Jaqobo—humiliating.

Jaqobo faces the approaching fire and takes a step back; his foot slips off the platform, and he hops off to stabilize himself.

“Penalty to Sethuk, out of bounds! Cevit wins by elimination!”

As the primary examination arena is being cleared and cleaned before matches, in the entrance hall to the primary examination tower, Zahira approaches Jaqobo.

“She was good. That was a tough position she put you in.”

Jaqobo raises a hand to his neck. “Yeah, yeah. You say that like she’s not gonna beat you, love.”

“Don’t call me love. And she won’t.”

“Sure, whatever you say. Hey Z—”

“We are not on a nickname basis, Sethuk. Or a first-name basis, for that matter.”

“—yeah, whatever—did you catch what family she was from? Didn’t recognize the name at all, crazy for that kind of girl—that kind of talent, I mean.”

“Cevit, I think the officiate said? Sounds like from Adalumeneli.”

“Adalumeneli, huh? Maybe daddy’s some colonial officer?” Jaqobo tries to hit Zahira playfully; she catches his hand and throws it aside.

“Could be.” Zahira turns as the doors to the tower open back up. “Maybe she studied Adalumen arqala before enrolling here.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m considering switching to the school of magnetrics, now—you figure that was classical class, too, right? Classical for sure, I’ll have to ask a buddy in the classical class about her…”

“Classical indeed,” though, thinks Zahira, quite unorthodox. “Brilliant deduction as always, Sethuk.”

As the Cevit girl steps out onto the arena, Zahira sees her eyes light up. She approaches, and Zahira gets a closer look; she’s got long, dark hair, woven in an impressive braid, but her combat uniform is wrinkled, its silver brocade reflecting the brilliant blue-white scars of the rift on her chest. Her saber hangs at her belt.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. di Fior. My name is Teofan Cevit.”

Zahira looks at her uniform again. She’s a year my junior.

“It’s nice to meet you too, Teofan. I watched your last match. It was very impressive.”

“Thank you.” She bows her head slightly. “I understand you’re a graviturge? I’m in classical and modern arqala, myself.”

Both? Certainly not both.

The officiate whistles and beckons them to the corners.

Teofan looks up at the officiate, then back at Zahira. “I would love to train some graviturgy with you next term. We should talk after the match is over!”

She seems chipper. I’ll have to make this quick.

The officiate raises his robe. Teofan readies her saber.

Zahira studies her stance, and is, for an instant, perplexed.

“Begin!”

The Third Law, or the Law of Rift Stability, states that internal interference with a rifted organism initiates the collapse of one’s own rift. The collapsing of a rift means near-certain death for the average arqalim; rifts cannot be blunted like a simple saber.

For the first eight seconds, neither Zahira nor Teofan take any steps. Their rifts whir and glow; Teofan changes her stance; but neither take any steps.

Zahira stifles her apprehension, and holds a hand back to ensure Teofan cannot read her movement. Hidden, she traces the flare of a simple but strong magnetic pull, and her rift pulses as she holds the gesture. She watches for Teofan to take a move.

Teofan smiles and mirrors her position. She switches her saber to her off hand, still leveled at Zahira’s chest, and holds the other in an unknown trace behind her back. Zahira feels a cloying sense of vulnerability; she is being toyed with.

Zahira swivels and releases the pull; Teofan matches with an identical flare, returning the saber to her main hand, and the momentum of the matching magic draws the two only a few feet away from each other.

Dust clouds in the wake of their movement. Zahira prepares to push the dust away and disengage, but Teofan lunges with her saber. Twisting her shoulder out of the way, Zahira continues her spin to kick the sword from Teofan’s hands, but as she positions her hand on the ground for support, she feels a striking white heat.

Scrambling to her feet, seething with pain, she prepares a trace to accompany another blow with the burnt hand, ready to eliminate the space between her and Teofan.

Zahira sees Teofan break the distance herself and realizes an embarrassment she has never yet known. Her opponent holds a trace of combustion, her knuckles coiled against Zahira’s rift; they are both defenseless, and both cannot move. With the release of a single finger, they would both die.

Teofan grins as though to invite Zahira to call her bluff.

Embarrassment gives way to undisturbed rage, and Zahira is about to cut away the rift-stable space of Teofan’s neck, when the whistle blows three times, and Teofan lowers her hand.

“Stalemate between Cevit and di Fior!”

The crowd erupts in indistinct noise, which Zahira doesn’t bother to make note of. She realizes her frustrated, pathetic anger has divulged itself to Teofan, who looks at her almost with pity.

“That was a good match.” Teofan tries to speak over the crowd. “Are you okay?”

Zahira di Fior swears to herself in something beyond words to never again allow herself such pathetic vulnerability.