“Then we’d better make sure he’s hamstrung before then,” I said, but I still wasn’t feeling great about this. Not about the plan, I understood the logic there perfectly. I just didn’t know if I could do it.
You’ll do great, the DFZ said with divine certainty. You’re a genetic super mage, remember? You also shouldn’t need to push hard. If the hype for this is as big as we think, then the Gameskeeper’s circle should already be close to capacity by the time you arrive. With so much power under pressure, all you’ll need to do is give it a shove, and the whole thing should pop.
It sounded so easy when she said it, but I still didn’t see how I was going to survive a stadium-sized backlash. That said, I’d survived a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have, and I had a god on my side this time. It also helped that I wanted to wreck the Gameskeeper harder than anyone. This was the guy who’d abused Nik as a child and tried to fight my baby cockatrices, who’d taunted me to my face and tried to force me to sell my dad. I wanted him gone for good. Forever. Wrecking his fight of the century was a killer start, but if we took out the spellwork that kept him supplied with magic at the same time, we’d deliver a one-two punch he’d never get up from. It would also let us escape the arena alive, a combination of long- and short-term benefits that, even with my fear, definitely seemed worth the risk.
“Okay,” I said with a shaky breath. “Let’s do it.”
“Are you sure?” my father asked.
“Why hit them once when you can hit them twice?” I said, trying not to sound as panicked as I felt. “If we’re going to do this, we might as well get everything we can out of it.”
“Spoken like a true citizen of the DFZ,” Dr. Kowalski said proudly, slapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. “I can’t guarantee it’ll be safe—big magic never is—but I believe you can do it. When you first came here, you couldn’t fill a potato without cooking it. Now you’re throwing around magic like you’ve been a Shaman all your life. You even figured out how to make dragon fire!” She slapped her hand down again, making me grunt. “You’ve made better progress than any student I’ve ever had. It’s still going to take practice—we’re going to be dealing with magic on a divine scale, which is a lot more than the handfuls you’ve been passing your dad—but if anyone can make it work, it’s you.”
As always, her praise went through me like wildfire. I didn’t know if having a teacher who thought I wasn’t garbage was ever going to lose its shine, but if I hadn’t been on board before, hearing Dr. Kowalski say she had faith in me would have had me jumping the ropes to get in.
“When do we start?”
“Right now,” Dr. Kowalski said, yanking me toward the house. “DFZ, Yong, you’re coming too. If we’re going to practice transferring magic, we need a donor and a receiver.”
“Delighted to oblige,” my father said with a hungry smile.
The spirit inside me seemed nonplussed at his enthusiasm, but she didn’t protest. When Dr. Kowalski looked at me, though, I put up my hands.
“Can I have a moment first? There’s someone I need to call before I vanish again.”
My father lifted a suspicious eyebrow, but Dr. Kowalski just smiled. “Take all the time you need,” she said, ushering my dad toward the kitchen. “Just make sure ‘all the time you need’ is no more than five minutes. We’ve got a lot to do.”
I gave her a salute, and my teacher led my dad away, leaving me alone in the dark garden to dial up the one person who was even more involved in this mess than we were.
***
Shocker, Nik was not happy to discover he was going to be fighting White Snake.
“Are you shitting me?” he asked, his incredulous voice weak and raspy from his ordeals. “That’s their super-secret guest star? A dragon?”
“It gets worse,” I warned. “The Gameskeeper’s not a man. He’s a spirit.”
I paused to let that bomb explode, but Nik just sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
“Wait, you know? How?”
“Well, I didn’t know he was a spirit specifically,” Nik said. “But I knew he had to be something. I’ve known the man since I was eight, and he’s never aged a day. He also never leaves his office, which doesn’t have a bathroom, by the way. I just sort of put two and two together.”
I closed my eyes in frustration. “You could have warned me.”
“I did warn you,” Nik said angrily. “I told you countless times that the Gameskeeper was dangerous and murderous and powerful and you should never go near him. How much more warning did you need?”
I sighed.
“Besides, don’t you work for the DFZ? She should know all about other spirits in her territory.”
“You’d think that,” I muttered, rubbing my face. “But it doesn’t matter. We know what he is now, and Dad and I have a plan.”
“The fact that your dad’s involved makes me more worried,” Nik said. “But go ahead.”
I smiled and flicked my finger over my screen, pulling up the arena calendar Sibyl had been forethoughtful enough to download for me. “There hasn’t been an official announcement yet, but unless the Gameskeeper changes his mind, you’re fighting White
