"The tournament starts twelve hours after the ritual you showed up during, and there are seven competitors - the people who were at that ritual except the guy you replaced."

"They can all cooperate on a ritual to summon champions for all the people they plan to kill the following day but they can't just, like, roll a die?"

"Yeah. They can't get the Spring without the ritual so people are at least willing to cooperate on that, but not much else. Sometimes there are alliances but people tend to betray each other eventually."

"...obviously, if only one person can survive! Extra glad I didn't accept that one lady's hospitality, what the fuck."

"Yeah I am confused about her and am happy I do not have to be in her house."

"You could've said something when she offered."

"I would have but you changed your mind pretty fast."

"Fair enough." Here is their room. "Any chance they assassinate me before the tournament officially starts?" May inquires, starting to divest herself of surplus gear that she won't need if the answer is no.

"It would badly weaken their connection to their champion to do so - I've heard of fights going on immediately after the ritual but not of people hunting someone down and attacking before the tournament proper starts. The Spring would also need a new competitor if someone was killed that early, I think." 

"Does it not show up if there's not enough people fighting over it?"

"Yeah."

"How does it leave the possession of whoever won it last time?"

"Usually people let it go right after they use it. Some people keep it but they either die from using it soon after or get hunted down and killed to power one magic ritual or another."

"...are they especially good at powering magical rituals?"

"Yeah, since they have a reservoir of magical energy building up in them from the Spring."

"Is that the thing that burns them up or is it the active use of the Spring that does it?"

"Active use."

"So if they also know spells and nobody murders them they could just be an extra powerful wizard for a while? ...what sorts of things do spells do, I didn't see any obvious evidence of magic out walking around and don't know if that's rarity or impracticality."

"That would basically work, until it burns them up which can happen pretty quickly if you are using it a lot. Mages are pretty rare and usually only know a couple of spells - the thing that woman did with gestures that controlled Ivan's body were from her knowing a spell to do that sort of thing - you could also know a spell that lets you do something like manipulate fire or one that lets you manipulate your body to push yourself harder than normal."

"I mean using the magical energy on regular spells, not using the Spring itself, or are those the same thing?"

"They sort of are - with large enough quantities of magic you don't need specific spells, which is how the Spring is so flexible. Normally people don't get enough magic to do anything without a spell."

"I don't suppose you have any way to speculate on how this might interact with my esper powers and backlash."

"I don't know what those are?"

"Well, I can explain them, just, would this be useful or not - on my Earth there aren't mages, there's espers, have been for about sixty years now. One in fifty thousand people, late teens to early twenties, awakens as an esper. Everybody gets an individual power or set of powers and an equally individual backlash that hits them harder the more they use those powers. I am carrying some backlash right now, because I was in a dungeon rescuing people from it. Dungeons are also a thing on my Earth which started happening at the same time but less germane to the present situation. Normally what I would do about this is I would go meet up with my partner June. Her backlash is the opposite of mine and if we hang out near each other, especially touching - for most pairs it's only touching - then our backlashes kind of mutually annihilate each other. This process is called guiding for etymologically disputed reasons. But if I can't make it to, not even just June but to any remotely compatible esper, then instead the backlash I have right now will metabolize from its acute form into a 'chronic' form which will give me chronic pain and organ functioning problems and stuff like that. Which I'm not excited about but honestly it's probably better than never being able to read a book again, I can't concentrate on reading well enough when I'm backlashed. Mine makes me lonely."

"Oh that backlash sounds awful - I would guess the Spring could remove the backlash you have but I don't know how much that would cost."