“You just sign here and the sum is yours”, the clerk said.

  She squinted at the blood contract.

  “I’m gonna read all of that”, Vic said, feeling suspicious enough.

  After a few minutes of fairly awkward silent reading, she finally let out a victorious “AHHA!”

  “Found it!” she victorious pointed, “Here! Why in any HELLS would I have to accept a three months long demonstration period to the Academy?!”

  The clerk blinked at her like she was overdoing it. She glared at him. She was not doing that. She was being smart and cautious and amazing.

  “The church would feed and house you, if that is the problem”, he informally said in his quiet voice.

  “That’s the problem.” she seethed. “Three months?? Really? That’s like, so long! Long enough for me to- to-”

  The clerk brought his eyes up to her face. There was just a sliver of slight shock over his facade of faceless bureaucracy.

  “Oh. You’re not an adult. That makes more sense… and very much less at the same time”, he neutrally said.

  “…To- to accept another skewed contract! I know what you’re all doing! I see what’s happening here!” Vic finished, hitting the desk with her closed fist.

  The clerk circumspectly blinked at her.

  “This is all standard procedure”, he monotonously replied, like he had said this line a thousand times and more. “If you have a problem with it, you can bring it to the inferior counsel of lower instanc-

  “Well your standard is screwy and scammy!” she exclaimed. “Why do I need to sign a blood contract to get prize money of all things? I won, fair and square, why are you making problems up?!”

  “It is a standard procedure for the winner to get the full prize. It is a big sum of money, the contracts are needed for our administration’s…” and blablabla bla bla! Just more nonsense!

  She tilted her face. She made her eyes glint with specs of magic that showed themselves to be rainbow-like, shimmering and iridescent. It felt like ants were crawling over her eyes but it always was a good scaring factor.

  “Give me. My. Money”, she seethed, eyes itching like she’d been stung by a mosquito in each of them. “You saw what I did to that muppet. You must have. Perhaps since the academy is so insistent on getting a demonstration I can give a live one on real subjects? Is this what you want?”

  The clerk paled. She saw his hand imperceptibly shake towards the little bell encrusted in the right wall. He stopped as soon as he saw her gaze on his hand, and very slowly lowered his hand back down, folded close upon the desk. It shook ever so slightly, in a barely perceptible way to the human eye.

  His throat shook a bit, he gulped down, then started again to talk in a monotonous, dead inside, “for difficult customers” voice.

  “The maximal amount I can give you without a blood contract is ten gold honours. Beyond that amount, His Eminence, in his ever present wisdom, requires a physical unmodifiable trace through blood contracts.”

  Vic heard glass breaking in her mind. What. What. What.

  “Hey”, she said, with a friendly, ‘I’m about to snap and this is my last string still holding on’ tone. “Then remove the ‘demonstration at the academy’ clause. Remove it. Now.”

  The clerk gulped down.

  “I am not high-ranked enough to have the right to modify this blood contract. This would require a Holy Scribe, as it it within their-” and bla bla bla. Shitty cult. Screwy cult. Shitty, screwy cult that tried to entrap her at every squeeze and turn.

  “Where can I find one of those holy scribes”, she said, all smiles.

  The clerk gulped down.

  “I do not think that you would be able-” he said, then gulped down, seeing her face, “to. to. To meet one. There are procedures to follow, and”, he stopped again, because Vic was making the wooden desk screech by gripping it, “and perhaps it’d be better for you to take the ten golden honours instead, if you really don’t want to sign the contract at all. That’s all I can do for you.”

  Vic was fuming.

  There was then a click of the tongue behind her, and Vic ever so slightly tilted her head to give back a death glare. She was in no mood to-

  “Are you causing a problem, Victorya?” the high priestess, two metres away from her, hands held together, fingers intertwined, said amicably.

  Vic squinted harder.

  “Am I?” she asked, not looking back at the clerk. She heard a gulp from him.

  The high priestess stared down at her.

  Oh, so it was that game.

  Vic stared back.

  Without blinking, without looking away, the high priestess raised her hand in a flowing motion, and her white staff came flying into her open hand, straight from beneath the desk she’d been sitting behind.

  The high priestess’s hand closed onto it and she tapped it twice on the ground.

  Then some weird emotion stroke through the high priestess’s face. It was… disbelief. No, it was something stronger.

  The staff tapped once more on the ground with a sound of finality.

  “It can’t be…” the high priestess said, more to herself than for Vic, and Vic frowned in turn. Well that was weird. “That… would be so foolish of you…”

  The high priestess blinked. Vic hadn’t yet. She’d been focusing really hard not to. She smirked, and raised her hand, and laughed at her face.

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  “HA! You blinked first! You lose!” Vic exclaimed. Normally, that would be her cue to running away to further her comedic relief, but there was still money to be rightfully collected so she spun around and let her grin turn into a grimace as she recalled why she hadn’t left this place and this hall and this city yet.

  …Right.

  The clerk was clinging to his bureaucratic beliefs like a merchant would with coins or a god with its believers.

  Hah, what a funny thought.

  She sighed. No way was she accepting just the ten golden honours. But speaking to a Holy Scribe or whatever its name was… was just a recipe for disaster. There would probably be plenty of other papers to be signed to just reach one. And she wouldn’t just crash the upper crusts of nobilities to grab one and force him to remove this pathetic cultish clause. The holy scribe was probably part of the cult in the first place. Cutting her losses and getting the ten golden honours… that was still plenty of money… even if giving up about 90% of her earnings did make a very earnest part of her that hated wasting things cringe to a high degree.

  “Alright”, she sighed to the clerk with a little smile, and tapped twice the desk with her closed fist. “Gimme the ten, let’s be done with this shithole-

  Vic ducked.

  She rolled on the ground twice, seeing the ground itself shoot out at where she’d been an instant before. She glanced at the high priestess, whose mana signature was steadily getting stronger.

  Her eyes flickered with that strong emotion.

  Holy shit that was a lot of magic!

  “Hey, what did I even do?!” Vic exclaimed back, then rolled on the ground again as literal chunks of the grounds burst out to form multiple shifting pillars that leapt at her.

  Vic rolled on the ground, and they phased through her when an impact should have been made. She glanced at the clerk’s desk, and sheets of metal had fallen down, closing it automatically from view. She began yelling and running at the same time, one of those pillars missing her from barely a few beats. Wait wait wait, was this the security system of the building itself? She hadn’t felt anything but- yes, the mana was coming- pulsing through the building. The doors had been automatically shut, and reinforced, along the windows, and people had begun yelling in a panic.

  The high priestess then send a blast of freezing ice that encased all that it came across. The glacier expanded so fast that it caught the trims of her frayed coat. She willed her ghost claws to come out and leapt several metres in an instant, tearing the edges of her cloak away.

  Darn it! Not her cloak! It was already tattered enough as it was!

  She caught herself on the ground and pushed on her hands, doing a little acrobacy and spinning through the air before landing on her feet this time.

  She raised a hand back and pulled out the jet of plasma, just in time to break the onslaught of the glacier which still spread on her sides as it split apart, trapping even other people in them.

  With a detonating, deafening roar and bursts of the fluid leaking out along its trail, the plasma beam utterly wrecked the ice in an instant, piercing each layer like it was fragile glass being broken by a jackhammer. The High Priestess was behind it, and Vic saw her panic as she invoked a condensed magic shield just in time to receive the beam of plasma.

  Vic laughed. Then she did not, as the priestess seemed to hold onto her magic shield and actually push back. What? An actual fight, here, of all places? Then Vic did even less, as she focused on the priestess and with a squelchy sound, a small arrow found its way to her aiming arm’s shoulder, piercing her cloak and going through the leather of her enchanted shoulder pad.

  Vic immediately screamed and raised her other arm to intensify the beam. Fuck shit fuck that hurt.

  How had her enchanted armour been so easily pierced?

  “AW, come on! That’s my favourite cloak! And… only cloak”, she ended with a sadder voice, that meant to be taunting. She smirked madly at the mercenary who’d dared do that, and who… damn it, was recharging his crossbow while keeping a steady breath. He was afraid, but he was doing this.

  People were still yelling in the background. Nobody laughed at her fantastic, measly joke. Daw. Tough audience.

  She couldn’t see because of the ice, but not many people had taken initiative in this fight. She should cut her losses and escape. But she had to do it now.

  She grit her teeth through the pain.

  She could feel her shoulder going numb as the pain irradiated through it, and her arm lowered on its own. A heavy dent had gone through her hps. That had been a rookie mistake. She’d grown too comfortable. She should have immediately invoked her shadow ghost armour. Fuck. Argh.

  She took a deep breath in, her little plasma beam still keeping the high priestess busy, and blew out through her gritted teeth a thick, dark smoke that she pushed through the air. The shadow ghost armour soon followed behind like an old practised motion done by a well trained muscle. Her healing potion was in her inventory, not in her satchel. She’d had to be quick to grab it anyway. Damn it, damn it, she’d been taken by surprise.

  Foolish. Of course. Nowhere was safe. Only safer.

  The heavy cloud of dark volcanic smog kept spreading around her, the plasma still shrieking out of her hands and signalling her position for all to see within the smog. She’d have to cut it in a few seconds or the masking choking smoke would be pointless.

  Quick, think, or something, Vic. Should she goad questions out of the high priestess or cut her losses and leave? Why had she been attacked? She’d done nothing wrong. She couldn’t wrap her head around this surprise attack. It had been too unprompted.

  She might have behaved like an utter annoyance but it didn’t warrant such a visceral reaction from the high priestess.

  Yep, she was never coming back again.

  Vic cut the plasma beam and flinched as the pain going through her shoulder intensified. She rolled on the ground, torturing her injured shoulder as another bolt raced through the air where she’d just been. Its trail whistled weirdly as it missed and hit the ground viciously.

  She hated crossbows. And this man was using an enchanted one.

  Ah crap her shoulder still hurt like a fucking pain in the ass. She hated getting hit. It was so- so- so annoying.

  “Abandon hope and desist!”, she heard the high priestess say from above, and an enormous surge of mana coursed through the air, blasting away the smoke but not quite dispersing it fully, wind blowing through the building and finding no place to escape it, “You cannot leave! The hall is on lockdown, foul sorceress of dark designs!”

  Vic wanted to stare back dejectedly as the mere assumption that she was so much as done in this fight. But she was done being funny. She was starting to get pissed.

  The high priestess met her gaze. She was being glared at by those two cold eyes, as her elegant white and pale blue robes flowed through the wind and she levitated in place. Sparks of mana were leaking out of the spell she was just about to release. This was a show of a threat. It was meant to be impressive. Clearly the picture of a powerful elf who meant to show it off.

  Vic licked her lips. The amount of mana in the air was hair-raising. Maybe she was using the building’s mana to amplify that effect. Of course this was a threat, and several people were understandably laying on the ground, staring at the fight with disbelief, having been thrown off by the shaking and the fighting. Vic could see other mages and priests now standing up, giving looks of utter comprehension at what had just happened.

  Heh, it felt nice not to be alone.

  But this was just a threat, and threats were words in the wind if one forgot that she could simply…

  She raised her unharmed arm without leaving the eyes of the high priestess. It was aimed at the hall’s closest wall. Vic smirked. Horrified comprehension coursed, no flooded through the high priestess’s facial expression. Yesssss, yessss, good.

  “I’mma just gonna blow up that wall if you lock the door, you silly goose”, Vic said. “It doesn’t matter how shiny your security system is.”

  Vic let the arrow bolt be shot at her, and focused very hard so it slowed down dramatically then was fully stopped by the shadow ghost armour. Holy shit, she’d done it, this usually failed pathetically. It clunk to the ground, and Vic tilted her head and smiled, without leaving the high priestess’s eyes.

  She didn’t even acknowledge that attack.

  She wanted to show off a little too. People would be less tempted to join in the fight if they thought they stood no chance in it. Animals tended to work this way a lot. Monsters too.

  She might be injured, but if she showed off how little that affected her, then people could get scared.

  The high priestess grimaced.

  “You will not avoid His Eminence’s justice, nor His Wrath”, she said, demanding capitulation.

  Vic squinted.

  She pulled even harder than usual as a beam twice as strong erupted from her hands, imploding the wall, pushing all into chaos as debris flew around.

  The High Priestess released her spell at that very moment.

  ___

  And in that moment, a young, scared priestess of Vic’s age whispered, getting up from her foetal position among the rubble:

  “Oh, I- what have I done- I-”, Karah said, dust clinging to her clothes, “I’ve brought a devil- no… I’ve helped a devil bring ruin to His City”.