I strode onto the field to the cheers of thousands of mages who did not know me, and a few who knew me a little. The one who knew me best was right in front of me. Behind me lumbered a construct of magic and metal, with Liberty safely ensconced inside. We took our places in front of the goal that was ours to defend, between Gulidang's speedy Blue Lightning to our left and Daramoolen's efficient and solemn History Makers to our right. Yiwarra's skeletal Dead Drop were directly opposite us, between Tjukurrpa's disturbingly still Dreaming Eye and the barely contained destructive energy of Ganayanda's Demonstration Domination, also to our respective left and right.
"I'm sorry I dragged yall into this," Skids whispered via ventril.
"It's an honour," Swipe murmured back. "Never doubt that. And get ready for a left-right break and swap."
We all waved our assent.
"Watch where Lozen is pointing sa's gun," Scaff said, referring to the History Makers' rather tall caster, with an almost equally tall weapon. "That's the ankle clamp launcher."
"Why don't we—" Punnt started to ask, but Swipe cut sa off.
"Not now. Focus on keeping control of our ball."
The balls dropped, and Punnt caught ours.
In some directions, chaos broke out immediately. In others, players began moving in deceptively measured and orderly fashions. Broth and I hung back in front of our goal, ready to defend against attacks. Scaff was a few paces forward, ready to catch and pass the ball between sides and to break up aggressive formations. Skids, Swipe and Punnt formed our own aggressive formation. The trio separated and rapidly passed the ball back and forth, then converged whenever a foe got too close. Of the three, Skids was more focused on driving forward, while Swipe put extra attention on getting in the way of enemy passes.
Though I was standing still, I was as busy as anyone on the field. While I was watching for threats to our goal, I was also glancing at the views from Liberty's giant raidsuit, as I'd named it. Images were fed to my scryer from magical eyes facing three different directions. These images were small, low quality and jittery, but the eyes' height let me see a little more of what was going on across the field. It wasn't as good as the view I'd previously been afforded by Liberty hanging from the peak of the dome, but it was enough to matter.
Another fraction of my attention went to keeping track of the raidsuit's position and worrying whether the hex guiding its movements was acting correctly and helpfully. For the first few minutes of the game its role was to lumber around and get in the way occasionally while we gauged the effectiveness of our opponents' mascots.
The History Makers had put thall's ball in thall's red bounder's pouch. The massive rust-coloured creature then bounded forward, scattering opposition with powerful kicks. I found its large size confusing, as only female non-demon bounders possessed pouches and they were considerably smaller than the males. But whoever or whatever had given the mascot a pouch probably didn't care about that. It was a trivial objection in the face of everything else going on. For all the bounder's size and speed, it was bad at cornering and had to be righted by the nearest HM player when it toppled over. The second time that happened, Dreaming Eye's Slabe Dro made off with the ball, drawing a lot of attention and shifting many teams' plays.
While many players were occupied with Slabe, Demonstration Domination's Bunch Sa bypassed Scaff and a couple of Blue Lightning players and sprinted for my side of our goal. Sa tried blinding me with a light weapon — a choice I found personally ironic — but I was ready for that and my helmet's visor protected my eye successfully. Sa reached behind Sa's back and lobbed a ball at me, but I knew it was a fake and was ready to leap into the path of the second ball. Despite the magically enhanced kick force, I was able to deflect the ball just enough to hit the side of the goal without denting my armour too badly. Broth snatched up the ball and tossed it forward to Scaff.
"Sorry that one got through," Scaff said as ju caught Broth's throw.
"Hush, and do an L-draw" said Swipe, who was trying to interfere with Dreaming Eye's caster and hexmage. I wasn't sure what the latter was doing so far forward, but it couldn't be good.
Scaff waited tensely for some opponents to start to move in jur's direction, then exploded into action to dodge several nasty projectiles. Before anyone could get close enough to interfere, jur lobbed the ball to the left, where Skids had dashed to be ready for the catch. Skids used sa's aetherrailer to fire the ball at the opposite side of the dome wall so it rebounded well clear of any team's goal at terrifying speed. It would take a while before anyone regained control of it, which would keep a few players out of our way.
Skids quickly fled the left side of the field before Blue Lightning's reptilian mascot, Bolt, could attack with its signature aetheric discharge from the frill around its neck. That was a creature to watch out for, and one that it was best to keep Liberty and the raidsuit away from. Scaff had done jur's best to insulate the inner workings of the raidsuit from external aetheric flows, but I didn't want to take that risk so early in the match. Dreaming Eye's ultradangerope — Ultra for short — was another reptile to keep well away from. Its long coiling body was both strong and agile, and its mouth could emit clouds of a gas that caused mild drowsiness. The gas was enough to be a significant nuisance, but weak enough to not count as a poison. Use of all poisons was expressly forbidden by the rules of chroma, and always had been. It was presently keeping two Blue Lightning players and a History Maker occupied.
Demonstration Domination's mascot was in the form of a massive cow with a huge bullseye on each flank. It was much faster than it looked like it should be, and had already proved very stable and sturdy. It was valuable both offensively and defensively, had been used for some strategic ricochets, and I had no doubt it was filled with all manner of nasty surprises. It would be gamechanging to subvert the 'target cow' but I had a feeling the attempt would be thwarted in a very detrimental manner.
The dropbeast hadn't had any direct impact yet. That was because all players were staying well clear of it. Therefore its mere presence on the field was indirectly altering the flow of play. That made it critical to controlling the game. Its claws looked wickedly sharp and tough and the sheer power of its arms made me very unwilling to put Liberty and the raidsuit in its path. "I think the dropbeast is critical, but I need to come at it from behind," I ventril-whispered to Swipe. "I'm passing my scryer over to Liberty in a moment, so I'll lose mage-eyes."
"Understood. Everyone, hold general positions." While Punnt and Dreaming Eye's Biris She dealt with a breakaway attempt by Blue Lightning's Ocean Sa, Swipe watched and made judgement. "Next distraction, I'll signal a colour crew to draw the dropbeast so Liberty can make a rear approach. Codename backstab. On my mark. Acknowledge?"
"Acknowledged," we all replied in turn.
About a minute later, the History Makers' Saldy Dro slipped through an opening in Blue Lightning's formation for the first point in the match. DemDom's Armon She swooped in for the ball on the rebound and the red bounder crashed in to retrieve it. BL didn't take kindly to that and Bolt was soon in direct mascot to mascot confrontation with the red bounder.
"Prepare backstab by red-green-blue with a clockwise turn," Swipe ordered. "Mark."
Skids, Scaff and Swipe all changed course in order to draw the dropbeast's attention. I set a course for the raidsuit so it would come up behind the dropbeast as it turned to follow the bait as thall fled. Most other players became embroiled in other fights for territory and ball control, and Punnt currently held out ball, so no one else got in the way. The dropbeast tried to turn around at the last moment, but the raidsuit was close enough to lunge forward and grab hold of it. That kept it safe from the peril posed by the dropbeast's claws, but the hulking demon mascot was too strong to be held in position.
I waited for Liberty to make connections between my scryer and the dropbeast's hardbrain diagnostic connection points. Even though I was standing still, my heartrate spiked upward with my anticipation. The moment of truth would come soon.
Bolt unexpectedly left the brawl and a crackle of the aetheric flow that gave Blue Lightning its name shot out from its frill, catching Scaff in the legs. Scaff went down in a heavily-armoured heap. Bolt turned away and darted elsewhere, but Scaff was left flailing in the dropbeast's path.
The moment of truth had better come soon. Scaff's arms were working but jur's armoured legs were locked, preventing sheem from standing. She tried to roll away but the dropbeast was faster, even weighed down by the raidsuit.
My helmet beeped. The beep was a tone of disappointment, not a tone of success. My subversion attempt had failed. "No! How?" I didn't intend to shout out loud, but I had.
Scaff didn't have long. I wove my fingers in an intricate pattern, querying the status of the subversion hex from my scryer. The response was a series of beeps from my scryer. I mentally evaluated their meaning and the implications as quickly as I could, all the while raging against the rules that forbade me from using a second scryer in the game. On a hunch I wove the command at a second subversion attempt. This one also failed, but this time it gave me the additional status beeps immediately, saving precious seconds. The results didn't make sense, and the dropbeast was standing directly over Scaff.
"Drift? Get back on the goal!" Swipe shouted in my ear. I realised I'd been moving closer to the dropbeast without noticing.
A pair of clawed hands sliced down at Scaff. One missed as Scaff rolled out of the way. The other was stopped on the way down by Swipe. A cloud of multicoloured confetti burst out of the point of impact. The blow had been taken by Swipe's chaff gun. That was meant to be a distraction but it worked well enough as a shield.
Swiped yelled at me again. I hadn't stopped. I was sprinting for the back of the dropbeast.
The dropbeast flung Swipe and the broken weapon away and took another swing down at Scaff. One hand hit, but I couldn't see whether or not it pierced Scaff's armour. I couldn't think about that. I was trying to figure out what was going on with my subversion attempt without any information other than a few beeps. From what little I knew, my attempts ought to be working in principle. It was mostly working, but mostly wasn't good enough.
I leapt upward and grabbed onto the back of the raidsuit, making the dropbeast wobble slightly. It didn't seem to notice, and was stepping forward for another go at Swipe. I finally got a look at my scryer and understood the full scope of the problem. My attempt at intruding in the inner workings of the dropbeast's hardbrain segments was being blocked. Someone — presumably Hexen He — had found a way to defeat my latest subversion hex. That was surprising even though I knew it was technically possible. Hexen must be a prodigy if he'd found a way to block my hex I'd used against the octoling and had created a working counter-hex in the weeks available. To update it to also block my very latest improvements was an even bigger achievement. Even though Hexen was a far more experienced hexmage than me, it seemed unlikely that anyone could predict the latest features I'd added the week before. I knew those could be overcome too, because I'd created a way to do that as my assignment for Ginnn, but there was no way...
No way.
All those thoughts passed through my mind in mere moments, leaving me with a sense of betrayal. Ginnn had assigned me to defeat my own hex, and had encouraged me to complete it before the match. I had created my own undoing. But all was not lost. If there was one person who knew exactly how to defeat my own method of defeat, that person was me. I'd already thought about how I might do that, because I couldn't help but look for holes in my work. I knew what had to be done. And I was the one person with the capability of fabricating a hex in mere moments.
I had never moved my fingers more quickly or more precisely than in the next few seconds.
The dropbeast's claws hit Scaff again. I heard the scream of metal on metal, and a yell of pain from my teammate. It was better than hearing a scream from Scaff. Or hearing nothing from Scaff.
The monstrous arms rose.
"Done!" I set the new hex in motion. The arms began to fall.
My helmet beeped. It was a happy beep. The arms froze. I was in.
A ball smashed into the side of my helmet and I went tumbling.