by Andrew Rowe
I couldn’t hope to match that degree of shroud control. Guardians were specialists, after all.
Instead, I reached into my bag and pulled out the first device I’d prepared.
Last time, I’d considered disabling my sigil monitor, but that had the risk of activating it by accident. That risk still existed, so I did something a little different. The monitor itself had inspired me.
I clipped a second device to my shield sigil.
It wouldn’t disable the monitor, but now, I had a second mana supply feeding into my shield. It would be a lot tougher to break.
Marissa hit the next square, then the next, and then a third.
Blue. A flash of shield recharging energy.
Green. A plume of smoke erupted from the ground, enveloping the square in an instant.
Yellow. A wave of frost shot upward, encompassing her legs. It was this match’s replacement for the vines, serving the function of slowing someone down.
With those tiles active, I knew the pattern. I knew how to proceed.
While Marissa ducked down to smash the ice, I pulled out another device. It was a bronze sphere etched with six runes, each one matching a color on the floor.
I put my thumb on the red one and concentrated, sending a flare of mana into it.
Then I sent another surge of mana into the runes that were carved into the bottoms of my boots.
Cautiously, I took a step back.
The square behind me, which had been green, turned to purple.
Perfect.
The dueling cane on my belt began to glow.
I stuck the now-active sphere back in my bag, drew my dueling cane, and opened fire.
Marissa noticed immediately, smashing the charged spheres out of the air without effort.
That was fine.
I took another step back.
Once again, the tile beneath me changed to purple.
Marissa must have noticed, but she didn’t comment.
Instead, she ducked, deflected one of my spheres, and swung her hand down.
It was charged with a cutting aura, and she’d been practicing. She sliced the red tile in front of her out of the floor in seconds.
Not good.
As she lifted it, I fired another blast from my cane, but she just moved the square out of the way.
The tile flickered with energy as she leveled it in my direction.
She’d used the same tactic last time, and I’d expected it, but that didn’t mean a blast of light was easy to dodge.
If I’d mastered Haste, maybe I would have chanced it. But I was far from even managing a beginner level of the spell.
Instead, I pulled a hand mirror out of my bag and held it out in front of me like a shield.
The blast lashed out, crashing right into me. Part of it hit the mirror, of course, but not much.
My barrier cracked, but only a little.
Marissa glanced at the mirror, looking worried.
I grinned.
“Won’t beat me with a tactic you’ve used before.” I waved the mirror at her. “I prepared.”
While I was talking, I shaped my mana, pouring it into recharging the shield sigil as quickly as I could. The backup sigil I’d attached to it was already helping, too.
Marissa tossed the square aside. “Guess I’ll need to use a few new tricks, then.”
She stepped into the empty space where the square had been and took out her own dueling cane. That was unusual, since she rarely used it, and frankly, it wasn’t her strength.
I put away the mirror, trying not to show my relief.
By now, my sphere was almost charged.
I fired a few more blasts from my cane, hoping to buy more time. Marissa parried them, as I’d expected, and returned fire.
I ignited the blade on my cane and smashed it into her attack, intending to deflect the sphere out of the way like I’d done a hundred times before.
The blast ripped the dueling cane right out of my hands.
I blinked.
She fired again, grinning.
What was that?
I threw myself to the side, avoiding the shot, but I was still stunned. She wasn’t on a purple square like I was — her cane shots should have been weaker than mine.
But the amount of force that she’d managed in a single shot had been colossal. If it had hit me directly, it would have cracked my shields badly, and probably thrown me back for good measure.
Her cane was an ordinary one, the same as mine, no special attachments.
But then I remembered —
I’d done something similar, once before.
Against her.
She’d stolen my technique.
She was overcharging her cane.
And she was better at it than I was.
I broke into a run, barely avoiding her shots. I rushed to grab my fallen dueling cane, but she blasted it before I got there, knocking it back further.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about the floor. Every single tile I touched was turning to purple as long as I stood on it, thanks to the runes on my boots. They would revert to the normal color a few seconds after I stepped away, preventing me from leaving a trail of safe tiles.
Marissa’s shots slowed down. That wasn’t a good thing; she was aiming ahead of me now, anticipating my movements.
I couldn’t keep this up. Eventually, she’d hit me, and I wasn’t doing anything to fight back.
As I ran, I charged transference mana in my right hand.
One second.
Another sphere burst right in front of me. I turned toward Marissa.
Two seconds.
I began to rush toward her, rather than away.
Three seconds.
Marissa took a step back out of reflex, but leveled her cane for another shot.
Four seconds.
I closed a bit of distance, but not enough.
Five seconds.
My hand was beginning to tremble. I had enough mana to strike, but I was still out of range.
Six seconds.
Marissa fired another blast at me.
Seven seconds.
I raised my hand, aimed, and fired.
The blast of mana ripped out of my hand and hit the sphere dead on.
Like deflects like, opposites nullify.
Teft had taught us that rule.
She’d charged her sphere with enhancement mana, the direct opposite of transference.
If they were equally strong, they’d cancel each other out.
But she’d only been charging her cane for a second at a time.
My blast ripped right through the center of Marissa’s sphere and smashed into her, knocking her back a dozen feet.
It was weaker after passing through the sphere — the enhancement mana inside had, in fact, nullified some of my attack — but not much.
I saw Marissa momentarily clutching her chest as she steadied herself. Her shield had been cracked, but I couldn’t tell how much.
My hand was throbbing. I’d charged it more than five seconds, which I knew was my safe limit.
But safety wasn’t a priority right now. Winning was.
Again.
One second.
Energy began to build in my fingers.
Marissa rushed toward me as a blur, faster than I’d thought possible. She was triggering squares with nearly every step, but she moved so fast that they didn’t have time to take effect.
Two seconds.
She’d almost closed the distance between us, and my attack was far from ready.
Three seconds.
She readied a swing.
I tilted my feet and activated the ring of jumping, blasting myself backward across the floor.
Four seconds.
Her swing met open air, but she kept moving, chasing me.
Five seconds.
She was nearly atop me again.
I swung my hand at her chest and released the blast.
She smashed my arm out
of the way with her own, sending the attack harmlessly off to the side.
That’s bad.
Her fist slammed into my face. A flare of agony surged through me, and I felt a swell of blood pour down my nose.
I coughed, and she hit me again, this time in the ribs. The barriers and shroud were both slowing her strikes, but not stopping them. Neither was very effective against pure kinetic force.
I’d been warned about that, but I hadn’t solved it.
I managed to get my arm up in time to stop the next hit, but the pain from her two hits was stopping me from doing much else.
Fortunately, I was wearing the ring of regeneration, and that was already working to get my body functional again.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t working as fast as she could punch me.
In a moment of instinct, I managed to activate my ring of jumping again, pushing myself backward to buy some distance. She pursued, but that moment was enough for me to spit out some of the blood that had trickled into my mouth and raise my hands into a guard stance.
When she swung, I side-stepped and punched her back with an instantaneous flare of transference mana. I connected with her shoulder, cracking her shield and making her flinch for just a moment.
I took another step back, moving to a sideways dueling stance.
I wasn’t a Guardian, but I certainly wasn’t untrained at hand-to-hand.
Just that moment of slowing her down meant that she was now standing still long enough for the square below her to kick in.
Unfortunately for me, it was blue. A mana recharging square.
I couldn’t let her stay there.
She seemed to realize the same, and she took a step back, to the edge of the square. She adjusted her footing, looking for openings to hit me again.
While it was tempting to back off and let my injuries heal, I had arrested her momentum, and any sign of weakness would encourage her to pursue. I couldn’t afford that.
Her next attack was a probing jab, which I dodged easily, followed by a sweep toward my feet.
I hopped over it, landed, and flooded my limbs with transference mana.
I’d used a rudimentary Haste spell, one I could barely control. I couldn’t use it to dodge attacks more effectively like I’d originally planned on.
But at this range, that wasn’t what I needed it for.
My fists lashed out like pistons, slamming into Marissa with twice my normal speed and force.
I landed five hits before she managed to grab one of my arms, pull me in, and slam an elbow into my chin.
As I staggered back, she kicked me in the chest, and I flew back another several feet.
I wiped the blood off my face.
Marissa cracked her neck. “Your barrier should be broken by now.”
I stretched my arms, then moved to circle her. “It must be in a good mood.”
She wasn’t wrong. My phoenix sigil had been depleted completely, and my normal sigil would have been empty, if not for my latest attachment.
I pushed a little more mana into recharging my sigil while I was thinking about it, but it wouldn’t amount to much. Even with my vastly increased mana control, it still would have taken me a couple minutes of complete concentration to recharge the sigil entirely.
I’d lost my Haste spell when she’d hit me, but that was fine. I was too dizzy even from the few seconds of using it to do much else with it.
In spite of my hits, Marissa was still in better shape than I was. I was dealing some damage, but her shroud had soaked up much of the strength of my blows.
I didn’t have much time to contemplate a strategy before she charged.
“Sorry.” I managed, pulling the sphere out of my bag.
I’d hoped not to have to resort to using the sphere. It was, after all, completely unfair.
But Marissa was right. I was in it to win, and the sphere was fully charged.
I threw it at the floor in front of her.
She dodged.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t aiming for her.
As soon as the sphere hit the tiles, it emitted a pulse of mana that stretched outward across the arena floor.
Every tile the shockwave touched changed to red.
And a moment later, they began to fire blasts of mana into the air.
I tapped my foot against the tile below me before it could activate, changing it back to purple.
Marissa had no such advantage.
Instead, she hopped backward, dodging as each tile triggered.
In truth, I’d thought that the gap in timing between blasts would be too small, too insignificant for anyone to dodge.
I was wrong.
As soon as Marissa jumped backward, she jumped forward, right onto the tile that had just activated.
Then, as the tile in front of her glowed and fired again, she moved again.
The arena was a blinding array of burning lights, but somehow, Marissa had already found a pattern.
I stared at her for a moment, briefly struck with awe.
She was closing in on me fast, and I was almost out of tricks.
Almost.
As she got close enough to swing, I activated the ring of jumping, and did something I didn’t usually bother with.
I jumped.
The jump carried me thirty feet up in the air, and I knew from experience that it would also slow my fall.
Marissa was below me, readying a swing for when I landed. She’d chosen to stand on my purple square, where it was safe.
But my square didn’t stay purple.
Within a moment of my departure, it had changed to red and activated.
The ensuing blast hit Marissa from directly below, cracking her shield critically.
It was almost enough, but not quite.
I began to fall.
I charged mana into one of the runes on my right boot and kicked it off as I fell.
Marissa swung at me as I descended, but I activated the ring of jumping again, blasting myself backward.
The motion cost me. I ran straight into a beam of light, which cut my remaining barrier down to almost nothing.
Fortunately, I’d accomplished my goal.
My empty boot landed on the square where Marissa was standing.
The color changed to green, enshrouding the square in smoke.
I landed hard, but my one booted foot changing the square below me to purple.
I was safe.
Marissa was, too — but she didn’t know it. She hadn’t had enough time to observe the functions of the squares, because she’d been charging right through them.
And so, she did exactly what I would have done with such limited information — she got out of the glowing green square as quickly as possible.
To my amazement, she managed to time it perfectly, stepping onto the next tile right after it fired a blast of energy. Given that she’d presumably been blind, I didn’t know how she managed it.
Unfortunately for her, that blindness meant she’d missed something important.
I’d landed right where she’d discarded the square she’d carved out of the floor.
The square flickered once as I poured mana into it, recharging the depleted supply — and then fired a blast that hit Marissa in the face.
Her shield cracked one last time, then shattered.
Marissa vanished.
I had won.
***
“I can’t believe you threw your boot at me.” Marissa laughed.
“I didn’t throw it at you. I threw it at the square.”
“That’s not much better.”
I shook my head. “It’s definitely better. You don’t have runes that I can change.” I considered that for a moment. “At least, not yet. Maybe I could...”
Marissa folded her arms. “Don’t be creepy, Corin.”
“I’m not! I’m just thinking about how Katashi made your attunement stronger. Maybe rather than just strengthening attunements, it might be possible to give them new
abilities.”
Marissa frowned. “Not sure it’s wise to be tampering with the work of the goddess.”
Teft finally made it into the recovery room where we were waiting, interjecting in the conversation as we approached. “Master Cadence is many things, Miss Callahan. Inventive, perhaps. Underhanded, certainly. But wise? That would not be a word I would even consider using in his case.”
I turned toward him, wiping my face again with the wet towel the Mender had given me. Marissa had probably torn some cartilage in my nose, but the nasal bone was intact, and the damage was already mostly healed by the time the Menders looked at it. “You’re just cranky because I broke your test.”
“Not at all, Master Cadence.” Teft shook his head. “In fact, I’m quite pleased you decided to reconnoiter before the battle. And preparing specific objects with the test in mind? That’s proper Enchanter behavior.”
I blinked. “Did you just compliment me? I mean, I know it was directly after an insult, but...”
“I am offering a bit of acknowledgement for the things you did right, Master Cadence. You should be prepared by now to know that it will be accompanied by a list of the many things you did wrong.”
“Ah, that’s more like it. You were starting to scare me.”
“The most obvious is that, in spite of having an item that gave you a mobility advantage, you chose to get into a fistfight with a Guardian. And the best fighter in our class, no less. I recognize that you have significant dueling practice, but you are clearly not at Miss Callahan’s level in unarmed combat. What should you have done differently?”
“If I had more time to prepare, I could have made another item for changing squares more selectively. I thought about the idea of making a cane that fired energy designed to activate a specific function on the tiles, but it turned out to be much harder than something that worked on contact. The sphere was the best I could manage.”
“And if you had a rod with that function, how would you have used it?”
“Probably would have made the squares in front of Marissa into the ice ones. Slowing her movement would have let me get enough distance to retrieve my cane, or to get to the square she’d dropped earlier.”
Teft nodded. “More preparation would have been wise, yes. How could you have handled it better with the resources you had on hand?”
“Hm. I’m honestly not sure. Maybe I could have used the ring to keep my distance more, but once she showed that she could hit just as hard as I could in ranged combat, I don’t know.”