The arena went silent in anticipation as I squared off against Brother Humdinger.

 

All right, think! I told myself. Taking out Sister Swoosh had cost me more energy than I liked, and the fight was only half over. Obviously I was never going to be able to outmuscle this enormous blockhead, which meant I was going to have to outsmart him.

 

I grinned. This was going to be like stealing candy from an Ethan.

 

The question was, what would be the best way to outsmart him? The overweight baboon’s moveset obviously began and ended with slamming himself face first into the wall. I quickly glanced around. He had already destroyed one of the pillars holding up the balcony above us. How many more would it take before the whole thing came crashing down on his…

 

Ethan and Jade are up there, I reminded myself, and discarded the idea. I needed to come up with something that involved less getting-my-friends-killed. Maybe I could—

 

“HUP!”

 

Brother Humdinger, apparently tired of waiting for me to come up with a brilliant strategy to beat him, bent his knees and rocketed up toward the ceiling. I couldn’t help but stare as the living boulder shot nearly forty feet into the air, did a surprisingly graceful flip, and…

 

Oh, garlic bread, I thought.

 

Charging my shoes, I blasted myself to the side. Half a second later, Brother Humdinger came crashing down again, butt-first. My eyes widened as the floor rippled around him, the stone rising and falling as if it were made of water. I tried to jump over it, but wasn’t able to charge my shoes again in time. I still almost made it—because I’m just that awesome—but the tip of my toes barely clipped the rocky shockwave, and I was sent corkscrewing out of control until I slammed face first onto the floor, my head spinning too hard for me to even tell which way was up.

 

“Henry, move!” I heard Ethan yell from above-below-behind-inside-yesterday.

 

“Yes, Grand Poohbah,” I muttered, and rolled to the side a moment before Brother Humdinger’s sledgehammer came crashing down where I had just been lying. A smaller shockwave rippled out from around it, launching me up into the air again. This time, it only sent me flying a few feet. I shook my head, forcing myself to focus, and twisted in midair to land on my feet again.

 

Ha! I thought. See? I can do cool flips too!

 

A shadow fell over me, and I spun around to see Brother Humdinger winding up to take another swing. Dropping to one knee, I charged my shoes again and blasted forward. The hem of his tie dyed robe smacked me in the face, the stench nearly making me choke, but I shot right between his legs and out the other side before his sledgehammer even touched the ground. The floor rumbled again, and I sprang back to my feet and spun to face him. Another shockwave spread out from where he’d just attacked, but to my surprise the five thousand pound dimwit’s body was enough to stop it in its tracks, leaving me safe since I was behind him.

 

Now was my chance! His back was to me, and he was still gathering his strength for his next attack. Drawing Splatsy behind my head, I charged her with magic and let her fly! She whizzed across the room toward Brother Humdinger, slamming into the back of his rock-hard head with another explosion of pure magic—and when I say rock-hard, I mean it, because she bounced right off of him with all the impact of one of those paper footballs people flick at each other during school.

 

“Well, floptarts,” I whispered as she fell uselessly to the floor thirty feet away.

 

“WHERE SHE GO?” Brother Humdinger asked, standing up straight and scratching the back of his head like he’d just felt a fly land there.

 

While he was still distracted, I sprinted after Splatsy. My footsteps echoed as I dashed across the arena. The floor had all but been reduced to gravel by his buttflop attack, and every step I took sent rock chips clattering against each other behind me.

 

“HUH?” the gargantuan gumbrain grunted, and finally turned around. “OH! THERE AM YOU!”

 

I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see Brother Humdinger take to the sky again. Splatsy was still ten feet away. I reached out toward her, as if I were some kind of space wizard and could make her float back to my hand, but she stubbornly sat there and waited to be picked up like the prissy little primadonna she was.

 

Down came Brother Humdinger, plummeting out of the sky like it was raining refrigerators, and I just managed to snatch Splatsy off the floor before he landed. Another tidal wave of marble erupted around his butt, and this time I turned to face it head on. Charging Splatsy, I swung her like a golf club, releasing the magic just as the shockwave reached us. I could feel the force behind his buttflop pushing against Splatsy’s power, and for a second I was terrified that she wouldn’t be up to the task.

 

Then, with a flash of blue, the shockwave parted, leaving me untouched.

 

“HEY!” Brother Humdinger howled indignantly, getting back to his thick, chunky legs. “NO FAIR!”

 

As he stood up, I noticed something. A series of thin blue lines were embedded in the floor right beneath his feet. It took me a second, but as soon as I realized what I was looking at, my brain kicked into high gear.

 

That was how I was going to beat him!

 

“Oh, sorry, was that against the rules?” I asked.

 

Brother Humdinger paused, looking at me with the most confused expression I had ever seen. After wracking his brain—or whatever he had inside his skull—for a few seconds, he nodded vigorously.

 

“Okay,” I told him. “Go ahead and try again. I’ll play fair this time!”

 

Brother Humdinger considered my offer. “YOU PROMISE?”

 

“Cross my fart and hope for pie!”

 

Brother Humdinger blinked. “PIE?”

 

“Yes, pie for everybo—”

 

“PIIIIEEEEEE!”

 

With his surprisingly strong legs, he leaped up into the air again, nearly hitting his head on the arena’s ceiling. As soon as his feet left the ground, I charged my shoes and blasted away from him, then immediately charged them again when he began to fall. A split second before he hit the ground, I shot up into the air as well.

 

CRUNCH! went his brobdingnagian buttocks (look it up, I’m not explaining it) as they collided with the floor at a thousand miles per hour, and the blue cracks spread even further out around him.

 

“HEY! YOU LIED!” Brother Humdinger whined, looking up at me with all the dignity of a toddler wearing XXXXXL-sized diapers.

 

“Sorry!” I shouted back down at him as I began to fall. I raised Splatsy over my head and charged her with power. “Let me make it up to you!”

 

I hit the ground and swung, smashing Splatsy down into the gravel as hard as I could. I channeled every ounce of her magic down into the floor, and there was a muted THUD as a flash of blue poomphed up like a cloud of dust all around us.

 

The floor rumbled, and Brother Humdinger looked up at me in confusion as more and more blue cracks began to spread out around him. Charging my shoes one last time, I blasted up and backwards, leaving Brother humdinger sitting in the middle of the mess he had made.

 

Slamming his sledgehammer down onto the floor, he hauled himself upright and roared, “ONLY BAD LADIES LIE ABOUT PIE!”

 

But before I could point out that I hadn’t lied about the pie—Or had I? This whole conversation left me just as confused as he was—he took one lumbering step toward me, and the floor finally gave way beneath his titanic flab. Blue may have been my color, but I couldn’t take credit for the blue cracks in the floor. Those were all him, even though he, himself, was a Green.

 

Confused? In all the excitement, you probably forgot that the Court of Dueling Wits was approximately seventy million miles above the ground. So high up that we could actually see the sky below us. And that’s exactly what those beautiful blue lines were, and why Brother Humdinger began to panic as the floor buckled under him.

 

The sky.

 

“NOOOOOO!” he howled as the ruined floor crumbled to pieces beneath his feet. He dropped his sledgehammer—the sheer weight of his weapon opened up another hole right beside him—and scrambled to pull himself back up to safety. But no matter how deep he dug his meaty fingers into the floor, he couldn’t stop himself from sliding to his doom. “WHAT ABOUT—”

 

His fingers slipped free, and he disappeared through the hole.

 

“—PIIIIEEEEEEEE?”

 

The crowd up in the balcony gasped in horror, but a few seconds later I saw the telltale sparkles rising back up through the hole, and Brother Humdinger appeared next to Opisthia just like Sister Swoosh had.

 

The four hundred gallon goon paused and looked around in confusion. “PIE?”

 

“Yes,” Opisthia said as the fat monk patted his stomach comfortingly, “we can all have some pie later.”

 

“MMMM,” the gluttonous gorilla rumbled. He sat down, shaking the entire balcony, apparently satisfied.

 

“THE RIDER OF HENRIES HAS PASSED THE FIRST TRIAL!” Opisthia declared, his voice echoing through the Court of Dueling Wits. “HER JOURNEY TOWARD INHERITING THE FIRST HUNTER'S HAMMER SHALL CONTINUE…”

 

My heart leaped inside my chest as the crowd erupted into cheers. I scanned the balcony until I spotted Ethan and Jade, and beamed at them. I had done it! There were still two Trials to go, but right then I felt like I could clobber a thousand Brother Humdingers and outrun a million Sister Swooshes. Nothing could stop—

 

“TOMORROW!”

 

I froze, looking up at Opisthia. “What? Tomorrow?”

 

“YES! TOMORROW!”

 

My heart fell into my stomach, splashing half-digested breakfast all over my insides. “But I'm ready to take the second Trial now!”

 

“ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?” Opisthia asked, like a parent whose three year old had just told them they were going to run for president. “YOU KNOW YOU ONLY GET ONE CHANCE TO COMPLETE EACH TRIAL, DON'T YOU? ARE YOU SURE YOU DON'T WANT TO REST, RECOVER, AND COME BACK TOMORROW FOR THE NEXT TEST?”

 

I paused just as the door to the Court of Dueling Wits swung open, and Ethan and Jade came rushing in.

 

“Are you okay?” Jade asked. “You're not hurt, are you?”

 

“Here.” Ethan pressed my inhaler into my hand. “You used up a lot of magic. Use it. Now!”

 

With my head spinning again, I did as he said and sprayed the inhaler into my mouth. Immediately, strength surged through my veins again, and my eyes widened in surprise. I had been so hyped up by my victory that I hadn't realized just how tired I was. Even after recharging, my arms still felt like noodles, and Splatsy felt like she weighed as much as Brother Humdinger.

 

“All right,” I said, looking back up at Opisthia. “Tomorrow.”