It was making a show, I understood, ensuring that everyone could see that it was meant to be the prize.

Then the rose sailed off toward the water, juddering to a stop a few feet above the middle of the lake. Under my hand, the Grimoire hummed; I looked down to see more words materialized below.

“Combatants!” I called out in my titaness’s voice. “Prepare to fly upon my mark!”

With my enhanced Arbiter’s vision, I could see Gareth to my left, his jaw squared and tense, lifting his stupid vambraces up in readiness. To my right, Rowan Thorn’s grip tightened on his ceremonial staff, his face setting into a mask of intent concentration.

And directly across the lake from me, a ferocious shieldmaiden’s grin split Talia’s face, and the Avramov garnet at the pulse of her throat began to glow like a bloody little star.

Then, as the Grimoire instructed me to do, I clapped my hands three times. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, each a deafening peal, like three rolls of thunder crashing across the lake. So loud that whoever heard this below in Thistle Grove would pause to consider the blueness of the sky, momentarily bewildered, wondering how and where lightning might be splitting such a perfect day.

Say what else you would about him, Gareth was fast. At my final clap, he streaked toward the water’s edge in a blur, his gold-trimmed robe swirling around his feet, long stride eating up ground. Just before his booted foot landed on the water, a chunk of ice came rising from the lake like the prow of some frozen shipwreck. He landed on it without missing a beat, barreling ahead at full force. With each stride the water yielded more and yet more filmy ice, huge milky swathes of it, so unmoving under his weight it was as though he was conjuring whole glaciers underfoot.

As more of it reared up into view, I could see that its shape resembled a clever suspension bridge, as if he were summoning up some Atlantean wreck from the lake’s invisible depths.

I couldn’t even fathom how much raw magic that must take.

To the right, Rowan tossed aside his staff and took a running dive into the lake, sliding gracefully under the surface without so much as a splash. I winced on his behalf, imagining how cold that water likely was already, though it would get a good deal more frigid closer to month’s end. Then his head breached the surface, which churned around him like some primordial cauldron, sluicing and twisting in wildly unexpected ways. It looked almost like it was torqueing around his body, propelling him forward like some sentient current tasked only with driving his momentum.

When I looked more closely, I could see that it wasn’t just water abetting his progress. Silvery bodies flashed around him, of all shapes and sizes, sunlight sparking off their scales. A massive school of fish, maybe the entirety of the aquatic life of the lake, busily swam him toward the center.