The gyroscopic shells that contained the arena shifted around and spun faster. The centrifugal gravity direction altered sharply. The hurdles suddenly appeared to be moving through the air, like solid clouds in a storm front. A couple of cohort bundles were swatted, flailing away chaotically. Tilliana and Ellici were both yelling instructions, redirecting the team. Dellian saw a hurdle approaching fast, and his cohort bundle shifted their dynamic slightly. Hit and bounce-kicked in roughly the right direction. Not that he’d ever been at sea, but Dellian thought the arena’s irregular shifts must be like being in a ship as it was tossed about by a hurricane.

Yirella had stayed on course. She grabbed the Ansaru flagball and shot through the axis. Her muncs clung to her hips, producing an X shape. They twisted gymnastically, flipping her as they went through the axis—and even Dellian was impressed by the smoothness of the maneuver. Yirella bounced off a hurdle to dive headfirst toward the floor, which now had an apparent tilt of forty-five degrees.

“Yi, incoming three o’clock Z,” Ellici called. “Now! Nownow!”

Dellian bit back his own comments; the girls always got overexcited in the games, he felt. They were supposed to be the calm, analytical ones. He saw the Ansaru defender (number eight shirt) at the center of a cohort star formation, pinwheeling toward Yirella.

“Got him,” he yelled. A hurdle on his right. His awareness and posture had two munc arms shooting out, slapping, which gave the whole bundle a fast roll—putting them on course for the next hurdle. Bounce—and he crashed into number eight’s bundle a couple of seconds before he took Yirella out. The impact was strong enough to break the bundles, and muncs and boys twirled apart like explosion debris riding a blast wave.

Yirella made one more bounce and landed hard on the angled floor, rolling gracefully to absorb the impact. She raced to the Immerle goal hoop and dropped the ball into it.

Dellian smacked painfully into a hurdle and flailed about, trying to stabilize himself. Two of his muncs scrambled over a hurdle and jumped toward him. Light strips started flashing violet.

“Oh, Saints,” he groaned as the arena shifted again. A hurdle came sweeping through the air at him. A munc caught his ankle. They spun end over end, and he just had time to crouch and bounce.

“Zero on Rello,” Tilliana commanded. “Quick quick!”

Dellian searched around frantically. He saw Rello cartwheeling next to their flashing flagball. Three Ansaru bundles were heading for him. Instinctively Dellian bounced another hurdle and flew, arms outstretched in summoning. In five seconds his cohort had coalesced around him again, and together they flashed across the arena to help Rello.

The Ansaru team managed to capture an Immerle flagball and dunk it into their goal hoop, then fifty seconds later Xante snatched the second Ansaru flagball. The arena stabilized, and both teams bounced gently down to the floor.