My teeth were chattering so hard I thought they might crack.
"Y-y-you c-can't be s-serious," I stammered, huddled under three thermal blankets in the locker room. Riya was blasting me with a heat gun to get my core temperature back to normal.
"I am dead serious," Vikram said. He was pacing back and forth, looking like a tiger in a cage. "Round 2 starts in three minutes. If you use Agni, she counters with steam and freezes you. If you use Vayu, you slip on the ice and she freezes you."
"S-so your p-plan is for me to... d-do nothing?"
Vikram stopped pacing. He grabbed my shoulders. His grip was hard.
"Not nothing," he hissed. "I want you to tank it."
"Tank it? She has an ice cannon, Vikram! I'm squishy!"
"You saw the imposter in the stands, didn't you?" Vikram asked, his voice dropping.
I froze. "You saw him too?"
"Riya confirmed it on the sensors. A Mimic was in Section D. But guess what? He's gone now." Vikram leaned in closer. "The Shapeshifter wants you to panic. He wants you running around looking for ghosts. The only way to beat him is to prove that you don't care. You plant your feet. You ignore the crowd. You ignore the ghost. You focus on the girl trying to turn you into a snowman."
He pulled me up. The blankets fell off. "You are not the Fire. You are not the Wind. Today, Aryan, you are the Wall."
Round 2
The walk back to the icy arena was lonely. The crowd was booing. They wanted the flashy fire guy, not the frozen loser.
Isha was waiting. She looked bored. "Back for more?" she called out. "I can make an ice sculpture of you in a different pose this time. Maybe begging?"
I didn't answer. I didn't look at the stands. I didn't look at the cameras. I walked to the center of the ice field. I spread my feet shoulder-width apart. I crossed my arms. I closed my eyes.
Gravity, I thought. Remember the gravity.Roots in the ground. Bones of granite.
"ROUND TWO! FIGHT!"
"Giving up already?" Isha sneered.
She raised her hand. The air around her shimmered. Huge spikes of ice, sharp as spears, formed in the air above her head. "Icicle Rain."
She snapped her fingers. WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH.
The spears flew at me. My instincts screamed: DODGE! USE VAYU!
No, I told my legs. Stay.
I took a deep breath. The first spear hit my shoulder. TEAR. It ripped through the expensive thermal suit and cut my skin. Blood sprayed. It hurt like hell.
The crowd gasped. "He's not moving!" Riya screamed over the comms. "Aryan, shield up!"
The second spear hit my thigh. The third grazed my cheek.
Pain is just information, I told myself. The Earth endures erosion. The Earth endures the storm.
Inside the Astra-Chakra, the brown light stopped flickering. It stabilized. It grew heavy. It felt like a landslide happening inside my veins.
Isha frowned. "Are you suicidal? Fine. If you won't move, I'll bury you."
She clapped her hands together. The mana in the arena surged. The ice on the ground cracked and rose up, forming a massive, swirling vortex of snow and jagged ice shards. A literal blizzard, focused into a single beam.
"BLIZZARD CANNON: ZERO KELVIN!"
She fired. A beam of pure white cold roared toward me. It was big enough to swallow a tank.
I opened my eyes. They weren't brown anymore. They were glowing gold.
"System," I whispered. My voice sounded like two rocks grinding together. "Prithvi."
I didn't slap the dial. The dial spun on its own.
< AVATAR: PRITHVI >< SYNCHRONIZATION: 100% >
BOOM.
The Blizzard Cannon hit me. The impact shook the entire stadium. A massive cloud of snow and ice debris exploded upward, hiding everything. The ground beneath me shattered.
The crowd went silent. "Direct hit," the announcer whispered. "That... that had to be fatal."
Isha lowered her hands, breathing heavily. "Fool."
The dust cloud began to settle. But there was a shadow standing in the middle of it. A large shadow.
"What?" Isha stepped back.
The wind blew the snow away.
Standing in the crater was not a boy. It was a Fortress.
I had grown a foot taller. My skin was gone, replaced by segmented plates of black obsidian rock that shone like armor. Molten gold veins pulsed through the cracks in the rock. My hair had hardened into jagged, crystalline spikes.
I looked down at my hands. They were massive, heavy stone gauntlets. I didn't feel the cold. I didn't feel the pain. I felt... solid.
I looked at Isha. "Is that it?"
My voice boomed. It wasn't amplified by a microphone; it was just loud.
Isha's eyes went wide. She panicked. "Ice Lance!"
She fired a massive spear of ice at my chest. CLINK. It hit my obsidian chest plate and shattered into a million pieces. I didn't even feel it. I didn't take a step back.
I started walking. THUD.THUD.
Every step cracked the ice beneath me. I wasn't walking on the ice; I was crushing it.
Isha backed up. "Stay back! Glacial Wall!"
She erected a thirty-foot wall of ice between us. I didn't stop. I didn't jump over it. I lowered my shoulder and walked through it.
CRASH.
The ice wall exploded like glass. I walked out the other side, brushing ice dust off my rocky shoulder.
Isha tripped and fell backward onto the snow. She looked up at me, terrified. Her arrogance was gone. I stood over her, casting a massive shadow.
I slowly raised one massive, rocky hand. Isha flinched, closing her eyes, expecting a crushing blow.
I reached out... and flicked her on the forehead.
Thwack.
It wasn't a hard hit, but with my strength, it was enough. Isha flew backward, sliding across the ice for twenty meters before hitting the arena wall. She slumped down, unconscious.
"WINNER... TEAM ASTRA!"
The crowd was silent for one second. Then they erupted. "WHAT WAS THAT? HE TURNED INTO A GOLEM!""DID YOU SEE HIM WALK THROUGH THE WALL?"
I stood there, the golden veins pulsing on my chest. I looked up at the VIP box where the Shapeshifter had been.
I'm not running anymore, I thought. Come and get me.
< WARNING: HEAVY MANA DRAIN. >< DISENGAGE PRITHVI? >
"Yeah," I grunted. "Disengage. I'm heavy."
The rocks fell away, turning into dust. I returned to my normal form, swaying slightly. Vikram ran onto the field, grinning like a maniac.
"The Wall!" Vikram shouted, slapping my back. "The absolute madman! You actually tanked a Zero Kelvin blast!"
"I think..." I mumbled, my legs shaking. "I think I need to sit down."
And then I fainted. But this time, I fainted with a smile.