Chapter 65: Theodore Vaust: Culmination Arc [26]
The rotating sphere left Theodore’s hand and crossed the platform fast and flat.
Calver raised a wall. Then, in the half-second he had, stacked a second one directly behind the first.
The sphere hit both.
The first wall cracked on impact and the second absorbed what was left — but the force pushed through both, not enough to shatter, enough to shove. Calver’s feet scraped backward across the stone and he stopped himself after two steps with blood at the corner of his mouth. He pressed his lips together and the blood disappeared.
His expression had changed. The easy posture was gone.
Theodore didn’t wait. He started the rotation again, hands moving in opposing circles, and this time the air didn’t just gather at his palms. It expanded outward, circling his whole body in a loose orbit, a field of compressed and moving air that rippled his uniform at the edges and made the platform stone around his feet dust off in a slow spiral.
"He’s using it correctly now," Roz said from Arthur’s shoulder. "Commanding air around the body to form a barrier within the aetheric field. Attack and defense from the same motion."
Calver looked at Theodore across the platform with something that might have been respect and might have been calculation.
"I commend you for this." He raised his hand. A rock lifted from the floor in front of him and rotated, white and rough and familiar. "You identified the weakness between our magic types." He looked at the rock. "But what separates us is technique."
The rock changed color.
Slowly at first. White to grey to a dark matte black that seemed to pull light into it rather than reflect it. The rotation changed too, tighter, faster, like something had been wound into the stone itself. The air around it distorted slightly.
Theodore’s eyes opened.
The black stone launched.
His air field hit it and slowed it. And then the stone kept moving through the field anyway, pushing through the resistance like it was passing through water instead of stopping, until the edge of it scraped past his left forearm and left a cut that opened clean and immediate.
"THEODORE SHOWED TREMENDOUS TENACITY BUT FOLKS, CALVER HAS JUST PERFORMED IMBUEMENT! A TECHNIQUE RESERVED FOR SENIOR MAGES!"
"He’s infusing his own aetheric blood directly into the object," Roz said, voice flat. "The stone isn’t just a projectile anymore. It carries his force inside it. The impact compounds."
Arthur’s fist tightened.
Calver extended both arms. Two more came simultaneously.
Theodore pushed his barrier outward and caught both. They slowed. One stopped fully. The other didn’t, pushing through at reduced speed, and it clipped the side of his face above the cheekbone. The impact split the skin and blood came immediately, running warm down the line of his jaw.
"FIRST BLOOD TO CLASS A!"
Calver moved both arms to opposite sides, palms facing out, and the platform beside Theodore on his left and right fractured vertically, two sections of stone lifting off the floor and rising to full height on either side of him. Not spikes. Walls. One on each side, close.
Theodore looked left. Looked right.
Calver clapped both hands together.
Both walls ground inward.
Theodore’s air barrier went outward against both surfaces simultaneously, holding the stone back, and Calver fired three imbuement shards into the faces of his own walls and the force transferred through the stone and through the barrier and Theodore’s nose started bleeding from the sustained pressure alone. The air was burning through his reserve faster than he could replace it.
More came.
I can’t.
He couldn’t think in full sentences. Just fragments.
I can’t—
His right arm was shaking.
I’m still just a—
Then he saw them.
Across the platform, at the participant bench, two silhouettes. He couldn’t read faces from here. Just shapes. One already standing, arms crossed, watching. The other with a fist at her side.
He knew their postures.
No.
Theodore screamed.
He pushed every remaining thread of aetheric blood outward in a single burst and both walls blew apart, stone fragments scattering across the platform in a wide spray. The three embedded shards followed them, ripping free and spinning off in separate directions.
The dust hadn’t cleared when Calver moved. A stone spear formed in the air beside him, long and narrow and dark, and it launched for Theodore’s chest.
Theodore’s left hand shot up and caught it with his field. The spear shuddered and stopped, hanging four feet from him.
"Fool," Calver said.
Two boulders materialized above Theodore’s head.
He went left. The left boulder missed. The right one didn’t.
It hit his right shoulder directly and the force drove him down onto his right knee and the arm hung wrong after. He couldn’t lift it. He tried. It didn’t respond.
He breathed through his teeth.
"ANOTHER CLEAN HIT FROM CALVER! HOW MUCH IS LEFT IN VAUST?"
The crowd answered that with its own sound.
"Who is this kid? I don’t even know this kid."
"Just quit already. We came to see Almonth, not this."
"Someone stop this already.. the kid is clearly done."
Calver walked forward two steps. Clicked his tongue. "Just stop. You’re done. You’re bleeding from three places and you can’t lift your arm." He looked at Theodore with something closer to irritation than cruelty. "You’re making me look bad. Winning over someone in this condition."
Theodore lifted his head.
"No." The word came out flat and certain.
His feet were shaking. His posture was off. Blood from his cheek had reached his collar.
"I— i can’t give up." A breath. "I already did."
Calver blinked.
"The result is the same," he said. "You’ll only injure yourself further."
Theodore was running his own numbers.
He’d stopped none of Calver’s attacks. He’d only redirected them. Every single thing he’d done this fight was defensive. He’d turned projectiles, absorbed forces, deflected trajectories. He hadn’t once aimed at Calver directly.
He’d been so afraid of the hits that he’d never thrown one.
Another imbuement stone came in, black and dense. He raised his left arm and tried to redirect it and only partially managed. It glanced off the deflection and hit his left thigh and he made a sound he hadn’t planned on making. Blood soaked into his trousers at the entry point.
Theodore’s bellus, on the participant bench, made a sound too.
A different one. Wet.
Calver raised both arms and two full imbuement boulders lifted, one on each side, black and rotating.
"Enough." His voice had gone tight. "I said enough. You’re done. Just. Give. Up."
Theodore put one foot forward.
The crowd went quiet.
"This isn’t—" He breathed. "Im aware that i have no chance on beating you."
Arthur didn’t move. Kreasial didn’t speak.
"Then why do you persist?" Calver raised his other hand.
"I know I’m weak." Theodore’s one working eye was steady on Calver. "I know that better than anyone in this academy!." He raised his left hand. The air responded. Circled his palm, tighter this time, the rotation faster, the heat visible as a faint shimmer. His palm blistered where the air compressed hardest. "I know I’ll lose."
Calver stared at him.
"BUT YOU DONT GET TO TELL ME TO GIVE UP!" Theodore screamed.
He planted his feet.
"IT’S NOT ABOUT WINNING OR LOSING!" His voice cracked up and through the coliseum. "IT’S ABOUT ME. NOT GIVING UP— LIKE THE LAST TIME."
Calver’s jaw hardened. He snapped both arms forward.
Both boulders launched.
Theodore pushed his aetheric blood down. All of it. From his chest into his abdomen, his hips, his thighs, his calves, the soles of his feet. The air gathered under him and around him in one instant and he pushed.
The air launched him forward like something released from a string.
Calver stepped back. "What—"
Both boulders passed through where Theodore had been standing.
He crossed the platform in less than a second, left arm extended, the compressed sphere on his palm spinning so fast it had gone past red into something almost white at the center. His palm was already ruined. He couldn’t feel it.
Calver’s wall came up.
Theodore was already through the gap before it fully formed.
His left hand connected to Calver’s stomach and the sphere detonated.
The sound hit the whole coliseum at once.
Both of them went in opposite directions. Theodore hit the platform floor and skidded. Calver hit the invisible spectator barrier at the far end and came down it slowly, his uniform burned open at the abdomen, the skin beneath already blistering red. He hit the floor and didn’t move.
His eyes were white.
Theodore lay on his back and stared at the coliseum sky and breathed.
"WHAT. DID. I. JUST WITNESS." The announcer’s voice was completely gone. "THEODORE VAUST JUST TURNED THIS DUEL ON ITS HEAD! CALVER VESCH IS UNCONSCIOUS AND CANNOT CONTINUE!"
The crowd didn’t know what to do with itself for exactly two seconds.
Kreasial’s grin was so wide it looked like it hurt.
Arthur’s arm snapped down in a yank, fist closed.
"LET’S FUCKING GO!"
"THEODORE VAUST OF THE MISFITS WINS THE FIRST DUEL
