I found him before the countdown started.
Front row of the Mythos stand, third seat from the aisle, exactly where he'd said he'd be. He had his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, and when he saw me looking, he lifted two fingers.
That was all. Two fingers. I felt it all the way down to my boots.
'Good,' I thought. 'Watch.'
The arena had been rebuilt overnight into a whole country. In the middle there was a black volcanic field that steamed. Around it were forest, a long lake with reeds at the edge, a ridge of broken mountain, and a wide, flat stretch of grassland where the wind never stopped. Forty nodes glowed across all of it, each one a crystal the size of a lantern, humming on a stone plinth. Red for fire, blue for water, brown for earth, white for wind.
A hundred and twenty of us stood around the edge in a long, uneven ring, waiting.
Vice Headmaster Valerie's voice came from everywhere at once.
