SWNOVELS Chapter Magical Football
It was getting toward the end of the first term, and I was chilling out in my room with Kat talking about the simple things in life and wondering how much harder things were going to get during the next set of classes. We were getting good at the basic spells we had learned so far, and most of us were getting faster with being able to access our powers and bring it out. It’s not as easy as point and shoot, or say a few words like hocus pocus and things do what you want them to do. In fact, speaking really isn’t a necessity at all. Instead it was a different kind of magic.
You had to concentrate on the world around you, focus on the task at hand, and if using elemental magic, find a source of it. Of course, there is always the possibility that you can create the element out of thin air, but that is a lot harder to do, and we weren’t to that point in our education yet. For us wind users, though, finding our element around us would never be a problem, except perhaps, if we were out in space where no atmosphere exists. But what is the likelihood of that happening, I mean really.
The focus was important to, because without it, using magic would be a lot harder. A powerful spell-weaver could make magic happen without one, but the magic would never be as powerful as if they were using an object to focus the magic. Also, the spell can go awry and the energy stored can do horrible damage to the things around you and even to yourself. We learned about this one guy who was horribly disfigured because he lost control of his inferno while not using his Focus. The images that they showed us of the after effects were burned into our brains, and we were reminded that we should only use magic without a Focus as a last resort.
All this and more, we learned in those first few months, and it was apparent from the first few days that I was going to be something special in the magical world. Even at the best school, I stood out like a sore thumb. Teachers were always praising my work and looking to me to lead the class in all subjects, especially once they learned what I had accomplished with Kat. I never told them about the mental communication, but there was still the help I gave her.
It wasn’t all easy. When it came to non-elemental magic, I was average when it came to the other students. I could still do the magic, it just didn’t come as fast to me, nor was it as powerful as my wind or light magic. It confused my teachers, but not me, I was built for combat, not for some desk job. My path was a tough one, but not one of peace. I was a warrior, my job was to learn spells to help me defeat my enemies. Not that I didn’t find some of the other spells useful as well. But I digress.
We had been talking for almost an hour when there came a knock on the door. I got off my bed and opened the door to find an older girl standing on the other side.
“Hi, are you Angela?” She asked.
“Yeah, that’s me, what do you want?”
“Professor Spencer asked me to tell you to meet him by the football stadium in 10 minutes. He wants to talk to you.”
I had never met Professor Spencer, since he taught earth magic, and I had no idea what he would want from me. With some confusion, I thanked the girl and headed to the football field where a middle aged man with graying hair and glasses stood waiting with several other students my age. Apparently I was not the only one that was requested which made me feel a lot better about things.
Exactly 10 minutes after I was asked to come down here, the professor started speaking, “Thank you all for coming. I bet you are all wondering why I asked all of you here. From what I understand, you are the best of the new students in each of your fields of study. I gathered several of you from each class for a reason. I want to test your abilities for myself. You see each year, we try to get students with promise to join our football team. Each of you has shown some promise, so we would like to see this for ourselves.”
He paused as a bunch of older students came up, and several other teachers as well. “This is why we take new students in the winter. We take the winter to guage skills, and then we use the spring term to train our new recruits. That way, by the time we get to the fall season, you are all prepared to face the challenges that lie ahead. Now, I won’t lie to you. It won’t be easy, and not all of you will make the team, but those who do will have the honor of being called a Dragon.”
The dragon was our mascot, in case you were wondering. Most people were thrilled by the prospect of being on the team, but I wasn’t really that interested as I figured that it would take me away from my important studies.
I was about to turn around and head back to the dorms when I heard the professor speak again. “Now any of you can leave now if you are not interested in playing, but know this, if you are selected to play on the team, you will learn spells that you would not learn anywhere else. Most are pretty related to the game, but having different spells in your arsenal could be a good thing. That’s why we have a coaches here from each branch of magic, so that each of you can learn spells for your element. The only exceptions are light magic and dark magic. Dark magic for obvious reasons, and light because light spells are not allowed in the game.”
I was intrigued now. If they were going to teach us different spells, it might be worth my time after all. Having a surprise or two up my sleeve could give me a big advantage over my enemies and may just get me the victories I needed. With determination, I made up my mind to make the football team so I could learn those extra spells. I didn’t care about the honor or the glory of the game, it was all about the end result.
They split us up into our elemental groups and led us into the stadium. It was the first time I had seen the inside, and man was it huge. The field itself looked to be several times the size of a real football field, and the stadium was domed for some reason. After giving us a moment to let the sight sink in, they had us each take a football and take an empty space on the field. Then they had us work on some spells to test our abilities.
The first spell involved getting the football to float up off the ground, however, we were not allowed to use a levitation spell, we had to use the wind to carry it up. Now this was tricky, normally a football could not be picked up by the wind. So we had to be creative to do this. I thought about it for several minutes before finally thinking up a plan. I used a spell to create a strong updraft around the ball to lift it up, and kept it going to keep the ball aloft. Only one other person in our group was able to do it, the others moved the football, but not upwards, and one guy tried levitating, but was easily found out.
“Very good you two. The rest of you, sorry, but you do not make the cut. Please leave the field.” With several groans, the other three left the field leaving the other boy and me alone with the coach. Now I want you to move the ball around, I want to see speed and accuracy.”
He gave us several targets to aim for and we tried hitting them. When we finished, he spoke again. “Alright, that’s enough. I like what I see, you still have room for improvement, but you both will make great players for our football team. Please place your footballs back where you got them, and then go wait at midfield.”
We sat down and waited as the other groups finished their tests of skill as well. I watched the earth magic users move mounds of earth and try to ensnare the other candidates in the earth. Kind of interesting. The water elementals had a similar trial where they had to surround another in a bubble of water to hamper their movement, but to not prevent the person from being able to breathe. There were more successes in those two groups than in ours, but again not everyone made it.
I looked to the final group, the fire group curious on what their tests would be like. It’s not like they could burn the ball or the other players. Instead, other players from the team were creating earth and water barriers, and the fire magic users were trying to destroy, or at least make them less successful. The fire users all had a source of flame on them, and had varying degrees of success. One guy was trying to melt the earth, but was doing it too slowly to really be effective, another was trying to evaporate the water, but wasn’t making enough headway. By the time the testing was done, only one of the students had made enough of an effect to be deemed worthy of joining the team.
All in all, only a dozen of us made the team, which was less than half of the number that actually was invited to try out. When we had all gathered together at midfield, and those who didn’t make the team all left, the head coach came forward again to speak.
“Congratulations to the twelve of you for making the team. Now, how much you play, and how good you become is up to you. You all have a chance of being the greatest magical football players around. All you have to do is practice, learn the spells we will teach you, and above all be determined to excel at what you do. If you do all these things, then I have no doubt that each of you will be a good addition to the team.”
“Now, you might be asking yourselves how is this game different than regular football, and I’ll tell you. As you can see the field is larger than a normal football field. In fact is three times as big both in width and length. Since magic is involved, it is easier to get 100 yards than if you weren’t using it. For example, Jeff, please demonstrate your speed for our friends here.” The guy took off down the field and was at the end zone in just a matter of seconds. “As you can see, it would be easy to get 10 yards or even a hundred with magic so the field needed to be longer to accommodate that. There is also a dome above the field to block stray magic that might get loose. We don’t want spectator’s getting hurt you know.”
“Now you have the offense and the defense. The offense is made up of mostly fire and wind users. The wind users will normally carry the football since their speed makes it easier to get around. Also since stronger wind users can fly, it gives them quite an advantage. Unfortunately, we haven’t had players that could fly in a long time, so newbies do try not to disappoint. The fire users are there to block the attempts of the water and earth users who will be using their magic to stop the forward progress of the ball. They have to devise ways to break down the defense before they can stop the wind users.”
“The sport is still pretty physical, but there isn’t much physical contact between the players, it is mostly between the wind users and the other elements. Fire cannot be used to harm the ball holder, nor can light spells be used to blind the other team. Other than that as long as you don’t put someone’s life in jeopardy, just about anything goes. A play stops in one of two ways. The first is if the ball touches the ground. If this happens, the play immediately ends. There is no such thing as a fumble in this game. Secondly, if the player with the ball is unable to move it forward for at least 5 seconds than the play is dead. This counts whether or not the ball is actually in his hands.”
“Points are scored as usual, and there are no out of bounds lines since the dome encases the playing field. Imagination and ingenuity are critical to the game. If you come up with new spells or ways of improving the team, please bring them up with the team. Now are there any questions from the rest of you out there.”
There were several questions, mostly about how the game works and rules. If you know football, then you know the answers, so I won’t bore you with any of the details. I only half listened during this portion of the meeting anyways so I wouldn’t be able to tell you about all of it anyways.
Once all the answers were given, the head coach spoke up again. “Okay everyone, that is it for today. Starting next term, you will each have a class that is actually for football. In it we will teach you spells, and give you hands-on training in the game. That way come fall, you will all be ready to start playing on the team against other teams. Now if there is nothing else, you are dismissed.”
I trudged up to my dorm lost in thought about how everything had gone. I had never been on a sports team before, and now here I was about to join a football team. I didn’t know what to think about that. When I got to the dorm, I flopped on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a little while.
It took me a moment to realize that Kat was talking to me, trying to get my attention. Finally I turned my head to listen. “Geez, it can be like talking to the wall with you sometimes. I asked you where you went.”
“Sorry, I got lost in my thoughts there for a while. Not literally of course, but I did do that once. I went to football tryouts, that’s what they called me for, football tryouts. I made the team, although I almost turned away before it even began. I wasn’t all that interested until they said we would be learning different spells that others would not. I figured I needed to add a little spice to my life.”
She paused after that. “Isn’t football dangerous though? You could get hurt out there.”
“From what I understand, it is a lot safer than regular football, and a lot more fun. I don’t think it will be too hard to stay safe out on the field. Although as a wind user most of the attacks will come at me and others like me. But don’t worry I can handle myself.”
She had more concerns, and we talked about them well into the night as she tried to convince me to quit the team. I wasn’t going to do that though as it may give me something that would be helpful in my fight against evil, and I would need every advantage I could get. I wasn’t going to tell her that though, I didn’t want her getting involved in my secret life as a superhero. At least that is how I thought of it. Eventually, I tuned her out and let my thoughts wander in another direction altogether.