The tournament

900: Sea

We've slowly ridden for hours, shifting turns to steer the paddle until the sun came up.

I am laying on my back with my two trusted mates padding the canoe.

Even enclosed in this somewhat leather suit, I can feel the soft breeze blowing around the radiated atmosphere, wriggling the canoe side to side, it's like a lullaby without a song, it slays me gently, I feel like falling asleep.

I keep my eyes up anchored to the sky, witnessing the sun rising behind the slight gray clouds forming up in the sky. I find the sun above me comparative to prospects.

Two days ago If you tell me the world offers nothing more than radiant yellow and dimming gray occurring with time pace. I wouldn't have agreed but it is, we live in an immense space where we close our eyes to pitch black and open it to the sun pouring its grace upon us.

"You see that?" Cuthbert motion towards somewhat of a moving object far behind our canoe, snapping me out of my trance.

With inspective eyes around the area, I ask. "Is that a canoe?"

"Seems like some lucky participants are on the move." Cuthbert smirk when my gaze meets his.

"You think they would attack?" I cautiously question, bringing back my eyes to the probable participants' canoe behind us.

"We should keep eyes for that," Harper speaks this time, she appears consent with the fact that we might conceivably have some enemies setting to attack from behind.

I glance at her; she has a soft smile that says it's okay. Somehow it provided relief in my body, knowing she's a veil which; maybe we're existing undetected right now or maybe she's certain we're conserved from any harm.

And then she brought me out of my reverie with her words when she says. "Maybe I can help you guys get to the next stage."

Harper sounds casual like she's not a contestant as we all are, she sounded like only delivering Cuthbert and Me is her foremost duty.

"We will help each other." And so I corrected.

She sighs softly, she seems to be observing the stunning sea sparkling from the sun's rays. "One among us has to make it, two among us must die, have to. That's how it's played if there must be a winner in this tournament."

I shook my head and incline along slump shoulder, my eyes drop to the wooden surface of the canoe.

There's this usual feeling surging through every pore in my body, the kind that reminds me how difficult life is, I'm used to it having no parent around, only residing in a bunker garbage compartment.

"Maybe there will be another way." I want to believe that, I want to believe we all will make it.

I may just meet Harper and Cuthbert but growing up alone, I became the kind of person who easily gets emotionally committed and attached, and with these two paddling the canoe, I already feel too intimate and inseparable, I can't imagine losing them by my sides.

"There's no other way, Daphne. Is there Cuthbert?" She confidently asks, more like accuse. Her eyes holding something I've never seen in her when she shifts them to the unease boy padding the canoe.

Cuthbert delayed and hold a challenging gaze at Harper he seems to be contemplating her through the while, but eventually, he exhales and muttered: "I don't know."

I still don't think hating on each other is necessary, given the condition we're in.

Regardless the circumstance has proven hating on each other is the fuel of this game.

"You should." She retorted before letting out a deep breath and bringing her hand behind her enclosed neck, appearing stressed all of a sudden.

"I used to be an ordinary kid like every child until one late Archiefield evening as the clock read when I was eight, I had this very bad nightmare, that even when the clock chimes signaling waking up time I didn't open my eyes, I couldn't perform with the fear of the darkness I've seen that night enveloping me too tight I couldn't fight. I remember my dad making my favorite for breakfast and put me in a warm tub to loosen up. I didn't have to tell him what I saw in my sleep because he was powerful to had a vision of the same event that went through my slumber. That was when I knew I've inherited my family's legacy but sadly it was of no use to me because I've seen a concept of my future, I know I wouldn't pass this test. So my whole life I grew up waiting for this exact moment because it's my terminal, my final moment, I've feared for it to come, but as the wise men will say; time wait for no one, and so now I'm of legal age and I'm serving it." Harper quietly says, her distant eyes fixated on nothing specific, her breathing hard and heavy.

"Every single second that passes, I assume it's my last and so when I am lucky to get through each second of the ticking clock, I keep thanking God for the blessing." She concluded, her thumbs fiddling around her laced fingers.

Gape and having less to say after Harper dropped the heavy bomb, I confidently suggest: "You can change that, maybe we can change all of this." I tilt my head sideways at the two quiet people around me.

Like I said earlier, I didn't believe in superstitious stuff and so it confuses me how Harper is so tight up to it.

There's no way mental beliefs or some human being assumptions can ratify such a forgery rewrite of one's destiny.

"It is marked in the covenant book, nothing can change that." She believes, her voice was small, barely audible.

"What's a covenant book?" I pressed, needing more information on how to prove her wrong about the presumption.

Harper's eyes come to me, they were simply blazing integrity: “It's a fate book, only proficient witches can summons it and read through. That's my gift, the knowledge, I can trace the inks, I can memorize it but all I see is darkness... my future is blank."

Even though my heart skips a beat from a sudden chill of fear that crosses my body, I scoff and look away from those eyes trying to make me understand something that's hard to digest: "This is insane. There should be another way."

"There isn't." She retorted practically loud and irritated, cause to call back my attention before she continues: "Is only sad that I'm the first among my family to participate in the annual tournament, yet I am not lucky enough to pass through, ironic how the chairman spares my kin but gave me no chance, maybe I'm not that important for the bunker as my parent is."

You see when legal-age kids are been sent out of Archiefield to play the annual game, there are some valuable families that are spared and are granted full active years.

They are asserted to skip the game because they are important for Archiefield habitants, that's what the court has said; only right now I'm learning those families must have given something in exchange, those families are either sorcerers or scientist, providing something an average person like me can not.

"I think the only thing holding you back is hypotheses and assumptions on certain things that you are powerful enough to battle on your own. You don't want to let beliefs conclude their task, people always get reluctant and wait until what they're aware of, comes to repel them. You shouldn't be that person."

Harper's painful gaze changes to quizzical and she asked: "What are you suggesting?"

"Make an endeavor to fight that belief, don't let it prove it truest. Deny it and fight to survive."