Chapter 43: Stand against the wind
The whistle pierced the field. Second half.
Cuman’s team came out aggressive.
Verryn and Rhel rotated, swinging wide to draw Severa’s team apart, and Cuman drove center with a tight gust under his feet, the silkball gliding low and fast. All three of them zipped past at the same time, and nobody could stop their movement.
The ball bypassed Halma, threaded through a misread gust from Larna, and curled toward the net. The net was empty.
Fabrisse flinched, bracing for the point to land.
A burst of torqueed wind spiraled in from Severa’s side, hitting the ball with a sharp lateral bend just as it crossed the third quadrant.
It skidded away like it had tripped on an invisible thread and veered off course.
Cuman spat a curse under his breath.
The crowd gasped.
Severa stood still at centerfield, her robes fluttering with the last echo of her channel. Her left hand was still raised, two fingers curled in a perfect pivot seal.
Fabrisse hadn’t even seen her move.
“She’s unreal,” Larna muttered.
The game reset. Possession bounced back and forth, but it wasn’t stable.
Severa’s team couldn’t finish their breaks. Verryn had found his rhythm, skimming midfield like a raptor and cutting off every pass aimed at Larna. The moment she tried to break wide, he intercepted with looping drafts, catching the silkball and resetting the tempo. He wasn’t deft enough to catch it and launch it to the net, but he’d managed every block and sent the ball out of bounds so far.
Halma, for his part, tried twice to drive the ball past Rhel, but Rhel’s channeling had a grounded precision. He used a trebuchet-style spell array, coiling wind in dense arcs and then launching backbursts that staggered Halma’s forward motion.
Fabrisse stood at his flank post like he was tethered there. There was nothing left for him to do. So he thought.
He tracked the rhythm of play—the flow of movement, the crossing lines. And slowly, it began to make sense. Verryn was blanketing Larna, forcing her wide, and Rhel was matching Halma one-to-one with precision strikes. Severa could send them the ball ten more times and nothing would come of it.
That left only one weak link.
Cuman.
He was the only one defending their side. And he was reckless. He always overcommitted.
If she didn’t pass the ball forward—
If she kept it—
A forward run. Solo. She could get past Cuman to avoid interception, and shortening the distance meant there would be less time for the opposite keeper to react.
| [Intuition +1 | Current: 23] |