Flinging Rocks at Bureaucrats in a Magical Academy

The whistle blared. Play resumed.

Verryn lunged forward first this time, chest low and arms out, cradling the silkball between two finely balanced gusts. He had good footwork, better than most, and an uncanny ability to dribble the ball like it was tethered to his stride. For a moment, it looked like Cuman’s team would finally break through Severa’s midfield control.

But as Verryn spun left to launch a pass across quadrant lines, Larna darted in like a comet of cobalt-blue sparks.

With a skimming current that slid in under Verryn’s channel, she disrupted the airflow just enough to make the ball tip off course, and then caught it with a reversal draft.

“Nope.” She whipped around as the silkball hovered inches from her shoulder. “Severa!” She hurled the ball on a jetstream back toward center.

Severa had already had one foot forward, palm up. A swift, low spiral of wind gathered at her side and tightened into a compressed helix. The moment the silkball entered her zone, she channeled.

Fabrisse swore the ball travelled even faster than last time she hurled it. It screamed across the field, headed straight for the top corner of the net.

Cuman slammed his palms together.

The shockwave of air that exploded from his position was like thunder with form. A gigantic wall of pressurized gust tore through the center pitch and crashed against the incoming silkball.

The ball jerked and spun out of line, veering off its path like it had struck a barrier. It shot over the boundary line and skidded to a stop in the grass beyond the goalposts.

“Out of bounds!” Aval shouted.

Half the class stared.

Severa lowered her arm slowly, brow furrowing.

Cuman rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles. “Don’t speak until it’s over. You’re not the only one who’s been practicing long shots.”

Severa didn’t answer.

The game continued.

Back and forth the silkball flew, never holding to one side for long. Cuman’s team was all aggression, storming down the flanks with powerful bursts and sharp aerial arcs. Severa’s team held only because of her. She was everywhere, looping deflections from one side, calling mid-air handoffs without even looking, and carving control out of the sky like it was hers by decree.

Fabrisse tried to keep up.

His brain was running contingency branches instead of strategy. Where to stand, what to watch, how much wind to buffer for—every variable felt like it needed pre-processing. But the moment he picked one, three more changed.

He stuck to the flank, eyes darting, hands ready. The Stillbrace glyph hovered at the edge of his nerves, ready to be cast if he could just read any moment correctly.

But the ball never came his way. The few times it spun wide, Severa redirected it early, or Halma stepped up to punch it back with a dense wave. Even Larna started avoiding his zone, curving her passes away from where he stood like he was a dead wind patch.

It wasn’t sabotage. They weren’t even doing it on purpose. They were just adapting. The game was self-correcting around his presence like water curling around a stone.

Then it got worse.

Cuman faked a full-circle loop, launched the ball back to Rhel, and then sprinted straight down Fabrisse’s lane.

He tried to move, but Cuman was already blowing past. And he’d moved into the center. In Severa’s way.

Oh no.

“Out of the way!” Severa slammed into him from behind as she lunged for the interception, one hand slicing the air, the other guiding a sheer gust like a slingshot draw.

Fabrisse stumbled and hit the dirt. The silkball flew just inches above his face, caught by a corkscrew burst Severa barely salvaged.

The whistle didn’t blow.

“Not a foul,” Aval said calmly from the sideline. “If you’re in your teammate’s way, that’s your problem.”

How can I know I’m in my teammates’ way . . . I didn’t even see her there.

Cuman rushed again. This time with something clever.

He looped the silkball around to Verryn, then feinted a misfire and dropped his wind channel.

He’s doing it deliberately, Fabrisse thought, but he didn’t yell it out. It’s all happening too fast. I might make a mistake.

It looked like a botched cast. However, the moment Larna pounced on the ‘mistake,’ he reversed his stance and cut a sharp lateral burst toward the open zone behind her.

So it was bait. He should have said something.

It almost worked.

But Severa had read it before the pass even curved.

She stepped in without fanfare, twisted her wrist into a fine-point spiral, and threaded the silkball back across the quadrant like a needle pulling through cloth. It zipped low, a clean diagonal slice through wind and pressure—straight to Halma, who had already begun his run.

“Halma!” she called.

Halma caught it with an upward pulse and followed with a blast of forward gust, throwing all his weight behind the charge.

Terrero blocked it with his finger blasts again.

The silkball flattened against the blast the way fabric typically flattens. It tumbled to the side, bouncing twice before skidding into the outzone.

The whistle blew.

“Half mark!” Aval called. “One minute break.”

The teams broke formation. Fabrisse got to his feet, lowered his arms, breath uneven even though he hadn’t done anything. But he had been paying attention.

Terrero is too tall. He’ll have trouble getting to low balls.

They circled up near the chalkline.

Halma wiped his brow. “We’re close. That one almost went in.”

“Not close enough,” Severa said. Her eyes scanned the field like she was already re-running every possession.

Fabrisse stepped forward. “Actually, I think I noticed something—”

But Severa spoke over him. “Terrero’s coverage is good, but he’s too tall. His reach makes him late on low dives.”

Fabrisse’s mouth froze open.

“That last deflection was top-heavy,” she went on. “We don’t aim for altitude anymore. We bring the shot low, with lateral torque and ground-skipping current. One tap ahead of the keeper’s drop line.”

He slowly closed his mouth.

There’s no need for me to say anything.

“And Halma,” Severa added, turning. “You’ll fake wide next time and rotate back center. Larna, prep for a short vertical cross. I’ll handle the re-arc.”

Larna nodded. “Got it.”

Halma grinned. “Sounds fun.”

Fabrisse glanced down at his fingers, flexing them over the chalk-smeared glyphplate at his belt.

Then Severa addressed Fabrisse for the first time, “You won’t get better if you use a glyphplate. It feeds the correct emotion into an existing rune-array. You won’t cast a spell correctly otherwise.”

Fabrisse bit the inside of his cheek. The glyphplate was calibrated to his resonance. It wasn’t cheating, but a necessary constraint. But she wouldn’t understand that kind of boundary logic.

Larna snorted. Fabrisse only managed a weak nod.