by Andrew Rowe
Someone had made the mistake of standing to indicate she had a question. It took me a moment to realize it was Marissa, who probably should have known better. Then again, she was also the most likely to survive if Teft didn’t like what she had to say.
“What happens if two spells collide that aren’t the same or opposites? Fire and lightning, for example.”
Teft groaned. “Not important for the current lesson, but if you must know, they generally explode. The interactions between non-opposing mana types are more complex. There are charts. But you shouldn’t be worrying about that, because you shouldn’t be using those types of mana to counter each other. Like deflects like, opposites nullify. There are precious few scenarios where you will need to know anything else.”
I could think of several.
I had only a very limited number of types of mana at my disposal, so knowing which ones I could use to counter enemy spells without detonating myself would be useful. Teft’s lessons, as usual, were more applicable to Shapers and Elementalists — both of whom had immediate access to more combat-focused magic than I did.
“Now, if we’re done with asking—”
Sera stood up.
“Ah, a Cadence has decided to disrupt the class again. Yes?”
I smirked. At least we were making ourselves stand out.
Sera matched my expression, apparently unbothered. “What’s the opposite of gray mana?”
Teft folded his arms. “Doesn’t exist. Now, questions are over. Onto the box.”
There’s no opposite to gray mana?
That sounded... wrong. I mean, if gray was some kind of combination of all the types of mana, maybe it was true. Still, it felt like everything should have an opposite. I’d have to look into that later.
The teacher stood, reaching down to a lock on the side of the box and flicking it. The lock came free, and he opened the top. “Line up. You’re each getting a new cane for today’s lesson.”
We formed a line, and then approached one at a time. Teft handed each of us a long cane, similar in style to his own. It had two runes on the handle, similar to a standard dueling cane, but no evidence of a blade within.
As he handed each of us a cane, he also paused to check the status of our shield sigils and refill them. He must have an absurd amount of mana if he can refill the sigils for an entire class without any sign of effort — at least a couple hundred? I’m going to have to research what the upper limits on human mana look like, that seems pretty high.
Once we each had a cane, he gave us a brief warning not to do anything with them yet, and then waved for us to follow him.
He led us to an unfamiliar single-story building of solid stone. Within was a large arena. It was probably about a hundred feet across, maybe thirty feet wide.
There were white lines painted on the floor, dividing the room into thin, rectangular sections like the lanes in a swimming pool. Or, more like a race track, given how thin they were. I didn’t think we’d be having a footrace in class but, given Teft’s unpredictability, I could never be sure.
On the far side of the room, I saw about a half a dozen people sitting behind a table. They looked a little older than us, but not old enough to be teachers. Either recent graduates or second year students, then. Judges, maybe?
I hadn’t had to do any dueling with a judge yet — not unless that first spar with Teft counted. It was a bad time for me to jump into a duel. Most students were going to have picked up a few tricks with their attunements by now, but I didn’t have any useful enchanted equipment yet. I was basically in the same situation that I would have been on day one, aside from maybe having a bit more mana from daily practice.
“Split up into two even groups and face each other. Team one is going to stand here.” He pointed to a line near one wall. “Team two should be opposite them. Each of you should be standing within a lane.”
As we followed his instructions, the people on the other side of the room stood from their chairs and started heading our way.
There was nothing saying I couldn’t be strategic, so I tried to position myself opposite from a student I thought I could handle. Unfortunately, virtually all the students I knew personally had an advantage against me. I paid more attention to students that I knew would be a major threat. I hadn’t bothered to examine the others as extensively.
I used that to narrow the field, setting myself opposite from an Elementalist who I hadn’t seen do anything impressive yet. Elementalists had a lot more firepower than I did, but ultimately they were among the most predictable duelists. I had to hope I could anticipate his actions sufficiently to compensate for my lack of flexibility.
Teft moved to the center of the room to speak. “In your hands is a practice version of a war cane. The lower rune is used to project a slow-moving orb of gray mana with about three times the power of a standard blast from a dueling cane. The upper rune charges the top portion of the war cane with gray mana, similar to the blade on a dueling cane, but not suitable for direct attacks. It has a different purpose. If you haven’t figured it out by now, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Deflection.
He’s setting us up to play a ball game with real weapons.
As dangerous as that sounded, it actually made me more confident. If the whole idea was to project and deflect things from the cane, that meant we probably wouldn’t be using our attunements, which would significantly improve my odds.
“The rules are simple. Once we begin, you will commence firing at the team opposite you. You can attempt to deflect your opponents’ orbs with your own, or by activating your cane and physically knocking them out of the way. No offensive spells, this is cane practice. Your only weapons are the canes from the box. You can, however, use any defensive abilities at your disposal.”
He turned around, looking at the other side of the room. “You’re disqualified once you’re hit by three orbs. When that happens, step to the safety of the ring. The judges,” he pointed at the older students, “will remind you if you’ve taken three hits. I will be activating a barrier that will prevent any stray projectiles from exiting the battlefield and hitting bystanders.”
Teft began walking out of the field. “You’ll be scored both based on hits you land, deflections, and how long you last. Survival is the most important of the three.”
Lord Teft pointed to the boundary of a lane. “One last thing. You must remain in your lane until someone adjacent to you has been disqualified, at which point you may move if you chose. Oh, and if I didn’t make this clear enough before — you’re all starting at once.”
I stared blankly for a second after that line, picturing what was going to happen as soon as two lines of twenty students opened fire and began deflecting projectiles.
Utter. Chaos.
I should have guessed that Teft’s idea of dueling practice couldn’t possibly be as simple as a duel.
From the murmuring around me, I could tell that others shared my opinion. The student on my left was clinging to his cane like it was the last piece of driftwood in the ocean.
Oh, Patrick was on my right. That was good.
He nodded in acknowledgement when I noticed him, looking grim.
I was displeased when I realized that Marissa was on the opposite end of the field.
With defensive skills allowed, attunements like hers had an advantage. She could potentially deflect projectiles with a bare hand without needing to rely on a cane or her barrier. I didn’t know her personal capabilities, but some Guardians could cover their entire bodies in mana. If she could do that, she’d be practically invincible in this test.
I didn’t have much more time to assess the competition. Teft stepped out of the lines, knelt down, and muttered a few words. The lines behind us marking a rectangular field began to glow, illuminating the barrier he’d activated. There were no barriers between the lanes themselves, though.
The lanes implied that we were expected to start out by firing at the person directly
across from us, but that wasn’t necessarily the best strategy. Most people would probably fixate on their direct “opponent” on the opposite side of the lane. Maybe I could get Marissa out early by taking her by surprise...
But I didn’t want to risk it. There were better gambles to make than trying to attack the strongest opponent immediately.
“Begin.”
The word was too soft to be an appropriate signal for the insanity that followed.
I didn’t bother trying to make a first strike. Instead, I shifted my feet into a dueling stance, presenting a smaller profile for my target. As he raised his cane and fired, I flicked the upper rune on my cane. The sharp pain that accompanied the activation indicated that it was taking more mana than my normal cane did, but that was to be expected.
I didn’t expect how quickly the glowing sphere would be coming at me, though.
It was slower than a dueling cane’s blast, certainly, but it wasn’t slow. I raised the cane to try to parry, but my reaction was stunted by the pain.
The sphere impacted harmlessly against the wall on my right, hopelessly off-target.
I was so relieved that I entirely missed the other sphere, coming from a completely different opponent. It was inches from hitting me when a blast from my right knocked it clear out of the way and into one of the sides of the arena.
I turned to my right, giving Patrick an incredulous look. He was already back to facing forward, in a dueling position of his own.
“Focus up, Corin. You can thank me later.”
I gritted my teeth, nodded, and slipped back into my dueling stance. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Patrick look so serious about anything — and if even he was taking this seriously, I had to do the same.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment, and then exhaled.
Mana glowed around me, almost blindingly bright — but with my attunement active, everything felt clearer, easier to take in. As the energies surged around me, I felt aware of the spheres that were coming my way, even if I couldn’t see them. With a simple flick of my wrist, I sent an incoming sphere out of my way... and directly into a team member on my left.
“Minus one point from Corin Cadence for friendly fire,” a student intoned behind me.
Resh.
The student that I’d hit rubbed at his arm, giving me a nasty look. Fortunately, it wasn’t someone I knew.
“Sorry!” I shouted. I meant it, too. I might have even blushed.
Okay, taking this seriously, step two. No more hitting my team.
My direct opponent fired another projectile at me, this time much more accurately. I stepped to the side, firing a sphere at the floor inches in front of him. Just as I suspected, the floor was charged with mana to prevent it from being damaged. The sphere bounced off of that mana and right into my opponent’s chest.
He had a look of utter shock as it slammed into him, staggering back a step at the impact.
Before he’d recovered, I’d fired three more orbs. Taking turns? Please.
There were no turns in war.
Of my three newly-fired spheres, only one connected with him. I deflected another two from other opponents in the meantime, sending them as close to my opponent as I could, but failing to get them quite at the right angle.
I saw a projectile headed for Patrick, and it looked like it had slipped past his notice. Spinning on my heels, I fired a blast at the orb... and missed entirely.
My attack did manage to get very near to hitting Roland. On the positive side, Roland was on the opposite team.
On the negative side, he was looking at me now, and he was looking unamused.
On the considerably more negative side, he was carrying two canes — one in either hand.
I wish I’d thought of that.
The hail of spheres that came my way in the following moments was nothing short of terrifying.
I managed to dodge or deflect six, then seven, and then eight of them before one finally slipped through. It hit me in the shoulder with enough force to send a surge of numbness down my arm. I very nearly dropped my cane.
Fortunately, Roland seemed satisfied by that, turning away from me to continue his onslaught on the next opponent who was unlucky enough to draw his ire.
I ducked, nursing my numb arm, trying to assess my situation.
My direct opponent was gone. I was momentarily confused before I remembered that anyone else could have hit him while I wasn’t looking.
A further assessment told me that nearly half of the field had been eliminated. I felt a little less bad after that, but I still hadn’t made up for hitting that ally of mine. I glanced toward him, considering trying to help him to repay the debt, but he was already out of the ring.
It was hard to tell at a glance, but I was pretty sure our team was losing. Unsurprising, given the juggernauts on the other team. Goddess, even Sera was over there, standing a couple lanes away from Roland.
The lane to my left was empty now. I had room to move if I wanted to, but having Patrick next to me felt like an advantage.
How could I use that?
I stepped out of my lane without thinking to dodge an incoming sphere, only afterward realizing that I wasn’t sure if I could step back into my original position without breaking the rules.
Probably?
I glanced back at a judge, deflecting an errant projectile that was approaching at the corner of my vision. “Hey, can I walk freely between my old lane and this one now that this guy is out?”
“Yep, sure can.” The judge nodded.
I glanced at Patrick, then back to the judge. “The other guy adjacent to him is gone. Does that mean he can move around, including into my old lane?”
The older student frowned, scratching his chin. “Yeah, sure, I guess he use your old lane if he wants to.”
Good enough for me.
I stepped back into my original lane. “Patrick, we’re doubling up.”
He glanced to the empty lane on his right, and then back to me, his expression still focused. “Got it.”
He stepped into the same lane I was standing in, and we shifted our stances, facing outward at diagonals. We were limiting each other’s mobility, but we had complete coverage for deflecting enemy projectiles this way.
I made use of that almost immediately, deflecting the first projectile that approached us and scoring an unlikely hit on someone on the opposite side.
After that, I saw a couple of people staring at us, but fewer seemed to want to attack.
Good.
My right hand was getting sore from the mana I’d been putting into attacking, and I could tell that the other students were suffering similarly, slowing down their attacks and picking them more tactically. I swapped the cane to my left hand, taking a shot at a lone student on the far left of the opposite line.
It missed, but the student dodged directly into Patrick’s orb, fired only a moment later.
“Nice,” I called.
Another orb flashed into my perception nearby and bounced off the floor right in front of me.
I jumped right over it, growling at someone stealing my earlier trick, and looked at where it had come from.
Sera, obviously. Standing in the same lane as Roland. They had a different formation, though. He had his arms out to the left and right, cane in either hand, while she stood directly in front of him with her cane blocking the center.
She winked at me.
Oh, you want to play?
I was so distracted leveling my cane at Sera that I completely missed the orb coming in from my left. It smashed into my side, knocking me into Patrick. We straightened ourselves after a moment, and I noted that Marissa was the one who had launched the shot.
“One more point against Corin,” a judge announced.
“Focus,” Patrick reminded me.
I grumbled, falling back into my defensive stance as more blasts flashed around us.
It was less than another minute before we were practically the onl
y members of our team left standing. The other team still had seven people, including Marissa, Sera, and Roland. Patrick and I had two other students with us, but they were far away and looked exhausted.
We needed to even the odds somehow. Even in a defensive position, we were far too vulnerable to concentrated fire.
In retrospect, it was shocking I hadn’t tried this earlier. “The lanes go all the way to the other side.”
I didn’t need to say anything else; Patrick had always been adept at picking up my lines of thought. Far better than my family, at least.
“On three?” Patrick asked.
“Resh that, on one. Go.”
We bolted.
A few orbs flew lazily through the air past us. I had to deflect one that actually came close to landing, but we crossed the room in a handful of seconds. We switched to back-to-back positions, facing the opposition.
Marissa and two others on my side. Roland, Sera, and two others on his.
Still bad odds, but now every projectile that didn’t hit us had a high chance of passing us and hitting members of their own team.
Our own remaining team members used that window to open fire on the people near Marissa, taking one of them out of the fight. I joined the assault, firing at Marissa’s unguarded side.
Without looking, she punched the orb out of the air, sending it across the arena to fade into nothing.
Okay, new tactic. Never fight her ever.
Patrick staggered into me, apparently having taken a hit. All four opponents on his side were looking at us. They took shots one at a time, conserving their mana while keeping us under pressure.
Sera yawned when I looked at her.
I fired a blast at the floor in front of her, much like she had with me. As she moved to deflect it, I shot another blast at the side of the same sphere, bouncing it right into Roland.
He fell to the side, colliding with Sera. Patrick took the opening to fire at the pair, but one of their teammates managed to fire a blast that knocked his projectile aside.
Teamwork, my greatest asset, my greatest weakness.
I looked at our remaining ally on the other side of the ring. I probably should have invited her to come join us, but she was far enough away that I didn’t know if she’d reach us in time.