Blaize and the Maven: The Energetics Book 1 (3 page)

I hope I can manage all three at once.
 

She spooled power inside her. She built a defensive wall around her and snapped shields she’d spent years working with into place.
 

She extended her energy out a little into the temple.
 

She felt Fai’s energy—fire and water—hot but almost fluid. Serafina—fire and air—was warm and light. And then there was Huo, the most mysterious of all, whose fire and mind powers were sharp, laser-like.
Will my powers ever feel like that?
Blaize wanted to learn about her Ajna powers, her mind element, but she could wait. She loved the energy of fire too much to want to focus on anything else right now.

Without warning, the attacks began. Huo slashed fire across her face. Blaize drew in a breath—and her throat burned. As she sent energy to repair the weakness in her shields that Huo’s Warrior fire had created, another slash came. And another. She spooled energy, and her breathing increased. She was keeping up so far, but each slash caused her pain and depleted her energies. Her whole body shook with the effort of defending herself.

Fai added to the attack with a fluid fire that flooded the area around Blaize’s legs as if she stood in hot water. Though the fire didn’t come close to penetrating her defences like Huo’s, she knew that if she didn’t pay attention to it, Fai’s Warrior fire would erode her defences, scraping them away until she was cooked.

Blaize threw a wash of defensive fire along her body and reinforced her shields. Which was lucky, because at that moment, a blast of heat hit her and she staggered from Serafina’s attack.

None of the three moved from their solid stances. Blaize was closer to the stone wall behind the circle now, and she used this as another tool, a shield at her back. She parried attacks rather than absorb them, with no time to intellectualise and analyse, just respond.
 

Attack. Parry. Slash. Parry. Strike. Parry.

She drew more and more energy from the ether, and her body expended huge amounts of energy to keep her shields up. Sweat ran down her body. The drops tracked through the dust that Serafina's wind in the first trial had thrown at her body.

One of Huo’s attacks whipped through her defences and created a thin red burn across her shoulder. She shook off the pain and turned up her defences once more.
 

Blaize was hit by another wave of heat from Serafina, followed in quick succession by several slashes from Huo. Blaize lost her balance and fell to one knee. Burning sand penetrated the thin material that covered her legs. She strengthened her shields. The attacks continued, fast now, so fast she didn’t have time to get up. She parried, defended and deflected, and burned through energy at a precocious rate.
How long can I keep this up?

Huo’s insidious whisper crept into her mind once more. <
You can call time on this Blaize. Just say stop.>
 

Source knew Blaize was tempted.

Huo's barbs kept coming, and his voice inside her head was louder now. <
Your defenses are weakening. You're going to let your Maven down
.>
 

Blaize stiffened, and her body shot to attention, giving her the energy to push up on her foot, teetering as she stood.
He's wrong. He has to be wrong. I will not fail this test.
 

<
You're weak Blaize.
>

A wave of heat flushed through her body that was nothing to do with her energies.
How dare he?

 
<
You're going to fail. You're going to end up just like your parents.
>

At this taunt, Blaize's vision misted, her nails dug into her palms and she stepped towards Huo. But as she did her shields wavered, and she staggered and fell back to her knees, pain smashing through her kneecaps as they hit the rough sand.
 

Huo sent a flurry of strikes and slashes through the weakness in her defences that had opened when she'd been about to attack him. Each hit left a raised red welt. Blaize's vision cleared and she caught Fai raise her eyebrow very slightly.

Blaize drew her defences around her, keeping them in tight to her body as she knelt on the sand.
What the hell was I thinking?
If she used offensive fire, she would fail. It had only been the shock of Huo punching through her shields that had stopped her from lashing out at him. Her stomach gave a lurch and she swallowed, her mouth dry.

I need to focus.
How can I keep him out of my mind?
Can he read mine?
She tried to use the same kind of shields of fire energy she used on her body to protect her mind. The energies twisted and pain shot through her head.
Ouch
.
Okay, so not exactly the same principle.
But the voice stopped. For now.

Her thoughts were slow, but her movements and instincts remained fast. She’d been hit a number of times now, and there were new burns on her shoulder and hip. Her cotton trousers and white cotton T-shirt were torn and covered in dirt and sweat.
At least burns don’t bleed
.
 

She winced as another of Huo’s attacks snuck through her defences. She felt lightheaded; the extensive energy use had taken a toll on her body.
 

She. Would. Not. Call. Stop.

The stone wall behind her gave off heat as it reflected Fai and Serafina’s Warrior fire. Blaize protected her body, back and front, with defensive fire. She drew a deep breath in and centred herself even as she pulled a massive amount of energy. The defence she created was almost impenetrable. The attacks no longer reached her skin, and she put all her energy into maintaining the shield and nothing else.
 

Time stopped. There was nothing but her defences.
 

 
She didn’t have much left in her. She needed to rest.
How long will this go on?

She maintained the shield from the floor. She knelt and attempted to ground herself. Managing her physical body as well as her energies was almost beyond her.

And then, nothing.

The attacks stopped.

“It is done,” said Huo.
 

Serafina and Fai echoed his words and the Three stepped back to their stone chairs.
 

“Rest again. The final trial will begin in one hour.” Serafina’s words soothed Blaize. She really needed that rest.

Blaize wanted to cry, her body limp and her arms hanging heavy by her sides. There was still one more trial to go.
Did I pass the first two?
It felt like it, but judges were capricious, and they had the last say on her performance.
 

She got to her feet, feeling like a newborn fawn. She needed a drink. She gestured to the door, and Serafina nodded.

Blaize walked out of the circle and down the stairs that led to a dark, familiar storage room away from the Three. She grabbed a bottle from the fridge in a hidden cupboard. She drank the cool water down, the liquid a balm for her throat, which was rough from breathing in the heated air of the trial. She drank another and washed her face in the sink. She leaned on the edges of the basin and stared into the mirror. She looked dreadful. Her hair hung in wet curls around her face, and her normally bright green eyes were shadowed.
 

The water helped. She rubbed her hands over her face and sat on the hard wooden chair that sat in the corner of the room. She closed her eyes, relaxed her body, and sank into meditation. She would repair as much of her energies as she could within the hour’s rest period.

Blaize had fasted for the last twenty-four hours. She’d taken a ritual bath, and had spent time in meditation, focusing on the fire in her mind, in her body. When she’d come to the temple that morning before sunrise, she was as clean, as purified, as she could be, physically, emotionally, and mentally.

She tried to get back to that state as she meditated. The hour passed quickly -
too quickly
- and soon it was time to head back upstairs. She walked back into the circle with her game face on.
 

Serafina stood. Her eyes were grave as she held out a solid goblet, as smooth and worn as the stone seats in the temple. “The next trial tests your finesse. You must drink the poisonous liquid held in this goblet. Use your energy to burn every trace from your system. If you do not, it is probable that you will die. The poison is fast-acting. You will have about five minutes from drinking the poison before you feel the effects.”

Serafina offered the goblet to Blaize.

She had tried this exercise successfully many times, but never with a substance that could kill her. The worst had been the liquids that made her sick, which Fai believed acted as a definite incentive to learning.
 

Blaize clung to the conviction that she had enough experience to get her through this trial, and tried to stop her stomach from jumping into her parched mouth and throat.
 

She cupped her hands around the heavy goblet and looked down at the green liquid inside. Serafina had sunk into the third stone chair without a sound, her face immobile. All of the Three were now still as statues. Blaize met each of their eyes in turn, Fai last.
 

I can do this. I will do this.

Then she tipped up the base of the goblet and the liquid flowed into her mouth and throat. The taste was bitter and somehow floral, and she gagged, her throat convulsing as she battled to keep it down.

Gah!
That was disgusting.
 

Her throat burned, and her heartbeat sped up, her pulse a physical drumbeat in her body. She fought to keep the panic from overwhelming her as the poison flooded her system and began to do its work. She felt cramps in her abdomen and wherever the poison had passed.

Adrenalin surged through her body as she realised she’d made a major error by not spooling more energy before she drank.
Stupid
. She hastily drew energy from the ether, sending the energy inside her body rather than outwards as she had with her shield in the previous trial. She opened her consciousness up as deeply as possible to her own body, and the stone temple faded to the background of her mind. Her energy raced around her form like wildfire, in corkscrews and spirals. Wherever it encountered a molecule of the poison, it incinerated it before any more damage could be done.

The task was a difficult one. Finding every trace of poison as it coursed through her system was no easy matter. To burn the poison from her throat and stomach was straightforward enough, but the few seconds’ head start the poison had was enough to give her some cramps. Her muscles were tight, and she gulped convulsively as she sent more and more tendrils of energy through her system to attack the poison molecule by molecule.
 

Perhaps the cramps she felt were psychosomatic.
Serafina said I had at least five minutes…

Blaize tried to ensure her inner turmoil wasn’t visible to the inscrutable eyes of the Three. But after a minute or two, sweat beaded at her temples, and her breath had quickened.

She found fewer molecules of poison.
Is there enough left to kill me? Perhaps if there's only a small amount left, it won’t kill me even if I miss the five-minute deadline. Hmm.
Not really a chance she wanted to take.

Her stomach cramped again, tighter, and she was grateful it was empty as the spasms turned into a retch. Her right arm throbbed.

The poison saturated her system, a spider-web of pain throughout her body. She could no longer manage the multiple streams of energy around her body.
I’m not going to make it through this in one piece.
 

The pain in her stomach, one of the areas where the poison had been at work the longest, was agonising. She made a split-second decision to focus on her vital organs and pushed her energy as hard as her strength would allow into her viscera and away from her arm.

A cramp like multiple stab wounds gripped her organs, and she couldn’t breathe. She could think of nothing but her stomach, and she dropped once more to her knees.
 

The pain worsened.

She was going to run out of time.