I didn’t know. When she put the comparison like that, I felt foolish for being afraid of him.
“It’s the spellwork,” she said authoritatively. “All the magic you felt swirling around last night wasn’t part of a larger spell. It was the spell. All that spellwork enables the arena to act as a collection dish, capturing and amplifying the screams of the pumped-up crowds. During fights, the power churns around to build up strength, feeding back on itself to push the crazed fans even further. Then during the off-hours when the arena is closed, it acts as a storage vessel, keeping the magic from drifting away and rejoining the city as ambient power.”
“So it’s a giant battery?”
“More like a generator that’s also a gas tank,” Dr. Kowalski said. “The spellwork allows the Gameskeeper not just to catch and hold the crowd’s magic, but also to build it up way bigger than it should be. That’s why people go so nuts.”
I’d known all that spinning magic had to be for something. At the time, I’d assumed it was the spin-up for some monstrous spell that hadn’t gone off yet, but now I realized I’d been over-complicating things. All that magic wasn’t swirling around because it was being moved into position for some greater purpose. The spinning was the purpose! I’d been sitting inside a god’s magical reserve tank while it was being filled. That also explained why the magic had still been there today despite the arena being closed and why the spellwork had finished its spiral under the Gameskeeper’s chair. It had been sending all that magic straight to him.
The setup was pretty brilliant in hindsight. Brilliant and necessary, because unlike dragons and humans and manticores and every other magical creature, spirits had no physical body. They were sentient magic, and the more they got, the bigger they grew. But while I was certain Dr. Kowalski was right on the money with this, I still didn’t see how it was a problem for us.
“What does that matter, though?” I asked. “So he’s got a magical engine feeding him power, so what? It won’t save him when we turn his great fight into a giant flop.”
“Maybe not,” Dr. Kowalski said. “But it will make executing the plan infinitely more difficult. If we wait until the last moment to free White Snake, excitement for the fight will be at its peak, which means the Gameskeeper will be at the height of his power. With so much magic at his fingertips, he’ll be functionally omnipotent within his domain, which would make stealing his star dragon out from under his nose practically impossible.”
“Fair point,” I said. “So what can we do about that? Break the spellwork?”
“You can’t break that much spellwork,” Dr. Kowalski scoffed. “We don’t know how many spellworked tunnels there are, but for the arena to work as a circle, there has to be at least one ring of spellwork going all the way around. Given the size of the arena and the density of the functions you saw, I bet there are miles of spellwork down there, and all of it carved into cement. It’d be easier to collapse the entire arena, which our god has already declared she will not do. But just because we can’t physically smash the spellwork doesn’t mean we can’t destroy it.”
She gave me a knowing look, but I wasn’t following.
“Remember when you first came to this place,” she coaxed. “How you couldn’t even use spellwork without blowing it up?” I nodded, and my teacher smiled. “Well, I think the most effective way of eliminating the Gameskeeper’s advantage is for you to go back to your old bad habits, but on a much bigger scale.”
My eyes widened in horror as I realized what she meant. “You want me to blow out the entire arena?”
Dr. Kowalski nodded, and the blood drained from my face. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it. Before I started training here, I’d overloaded pretty much every circle I’d touched. I was confident I could do the same to Kauffman’s giant ring. I just didn’t see how I was going to do it without blowing myself—and the rest of Rentfree—to smithereens in the process.
“We’ve already thought of that,” Dr. Kowalski assured me, guessing my worries before I could put them into words. “I know this is a hard thing to ask. Blowing out spells is what drove you here to begin with. I can understand why the thought of going back to that pain is terrifying, but we’re not asking you to die for this, and the DFZ definitely doesn’t want you blowing up one of her neighborhoods. You’re a much better mage now, and you’ve got us.”
“No offense,” I said shakily, “but how are you going to keep me from blowing myself up?”
Because with me in here, you won’t be able to, the DFZ answered in my mind. So long as you’re my priestess, your soul is my domain, and I’m much, much bigger than you are. When the backlash comes, you won’t have to bear it alone. All you’ll have to do is pass the power to me. It’s the exact same thing you’ve been doing for your father all week, except I’m even bigger. I’ve got a city’s worth of space to fill! Pass it to me, and you won’t even feel a twinge.
“You’ll also need the DFZ’s help to initiate,” Dr. Kowalski added in a practical voice. “You have the strongest draw I’ve ever seen, but even you can’t grab enough magic to overload a circle built to handle the blood-frenzied energy of thousands. If you want to smash things built on a divine scale, you need another god. Fortunately, you’ve got one. All you have to do is get her inside, and she’ll do the rest.”
Once the Gameskeeper’s circle is smashed, everything else should be easy, the DFZ assured me. Depending on how distracted he is
