He tried not to dwell on the matter as he faced off against Maiya under a partially cloudy sky. Fate seemed to conspire against him today—the shadows weren’t nearly strong enough to use the Dance, a fact Maiya was no doubt gloating about as she stared him down fifty paces away.
Their starting distance was also a compromise—distance favored Maiya, while Vir was far more lethal at close range. She wanted a hundred paces. He wanted ten. They met in the middle.
Riyan walked into the center and eyed each of the combatants. “The rules for this duel are simple. You will fight to surrender or when one of you is rendered incapable of continuing the fight. If you do not fight at your best, I will know. If I am unsatisfied, you will continue dueling until that changes. Pre-charged orbs are allowed. All Talents are allowed. Questions?”
They each shook their heads, keeping their eyes on each other. Maiya wore a mejai aiming bracer on her right arm, while her left was free, hovering over a medley of orbs holstered on her belt. Like himself, she wore no armor.
Vir finalized his battle plan. Riyan’s declaration meant he’d have to go all out, whether he liked it or not. Maiya would do the same. Foremost on his mind was which Talents to use—Leap, or Dance. Using one barred him from using the other, owing to the dearth of prana in this area.
Looking up at the sky, the cloud they were under would pass, and soon. Which meant Dance could be viable. On the other hand, the winds may shift and the cloud might sit on them.
Dance was a little unique. As he’d done in the training dome, he could make it look like Blink to Riyan and Tanya. Crucially, he could access the shadow realm while revealing nothing about the ability. That gave him an enormous edge.
He decided he’d hold off on Talents for now. If the clouds didn’t break, he could always use Leap. While potent, it’d take several invocations to close the distance. It put him at greater risk against her magic. Dance, however, would allow him to pop up right inside her shadow. There was little she could do against that.
And she was all too aware of that. Once she’d become proficient with magic, Vir had no reason to withhold the details of Dance from her, so he’d confided everything. He almost wished he hadn’t.
She’d no doubt seek to end things quickly. The tables had turned—stamina was no longer Vir’s weakness. Against a mejai, time was on his side. Range was his enemy now.
“Begin!” Riyan announced, Blinking away.
Vir sprinted forth to close the distance. He readied a chakram, but Maiya beat him to the punch.
She activated her pre-charged B Grade orb, casting Ice Barrier. Prana rushed out of her orb and coalesced in front of her, cracking as it froze into a solid block of magic ice large enough to shield her entire body.
“Tch.” Vir holstered his chakram around his neck. He knew from experience that the wall was all but impervious to his rusty iron disks.
Luckily, Vir knew everything about her magic. It took her an entire minute to charge a single B Grade orb, and that too, only if she devoted her full concentration to the task. In the middle of a battle? Impossible.
Which meant he’d be dealing primarily with C Grade magic. She could charge those in just a few seconds.
Vir intended to press his charge, but Maiya had other plans. A C Grade Ember arced through the air, bound for him.
He couldn’t suppress a laugh and risked a glance at Tanya on the sidelines, who had her head buried in her hands. He could almost hear the woman groaning about why Maiya insisted on using Fire Affinity magic.
How many weeks did she spend charging that thing?
Maiya had no affinity for fire magic. Which meant she must have spent a hundred hours or more, diligently charging the C Grade orb. All for this moment. Just so she could show off. No wonder she was looking forward to this.
The miniature fireball—while slow and cumbersome—had been aimed at Vir’s feet, forcing him to break off his charge. He’d been hit with magical fire before. He had no intention of experiencing that torture ever again.
The spell hit the sand and erupted into a blaze, creating a wall of fire that prevented Vir from charging through.
The effect only lasted a couple of seconds, but that was plenty of time for Maiya to unleash her next spell. And this one, Vir did have to worry about.
A Grade B Hail Burst shot out from behind the flames. No doubt an attempt on Maiya’s part to conceal her magic. Too bad for her, Prana Vision saw the attack coming. Vir had no doubt she'd have known he would.
Vir was already diving to the ground when the attack manifested, flattening himself against the earth.
There really was no good way to protect against Hail Burst other than armor. The attack sent dozens of tiny ice balls in a spray, hitting everything in the area. The best Vir could do was minimize his profile and hope Badrak’s luck was with him.
It wasn’t.
Five ice balls slammed into his back, freezing chunks of his flesh. Vir gritted his teeth against the pain. As he learned, fire and ice from magical spells were far more potent than their non-magical counterparts. A few balls of ice shouldn’t have hurt nearly this badly, and yet Vir was writhing on the ground, desperately trying not to scream.
Move! I need to move!
Through the pain, Vir rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding a C Grade Icicle.
Gods, she’s really going all out!
Vir took control of the blood near the injured areas on his back and manually accelerated his blood flow. It did little against the pain, but it’d help his body’s systems fight back, and hopefully prevent his flesh in those areas from dying.
Of course, Maiya knew he could do all of this, and that he’d be alright. It still irked him.
Pushing through his pain, he sought to close more distance while Maiya swapped out orbs in her mejai bracer. This was a weakness of all long-range magic—to be aimed, they needed the bracer. But replacing them with another orb took a few seconds, which left the mejai vulnerable.
Vir closed to forty paces. Thirty. Twenty-five. If he could spook Maiya into abandoning her position behind the Ice Barrier, he could take her out with his chakrams.
He sensed Wind Affinity prana flare the instant before Wind Blade ripped through the air like a razor blade. It was the same attack the soldiers had used on him in the Godshollow after fighting the Clutch Rachna.
Prana Vision, and her slight hesitation, gave him just enough forewarning to twist away, narrowly avoiding serious injury.
It was slight. Nothing more than a half-second pause, but it showed just how much she cared for Vir. He knew she wanted to win. Desperately. Despite this, she'd hesitated for fear of his safety.
Vir felt both elated for her concern and saddened that it might very well have cost her the fight.
What concerned him the most was that she hadn’t pre-charged the Wind orb. No doubt a ploy to get him to lower his guard against her Wind magic.
Which means she’s learned how to charge orbs of multiple affinities in parallel. She’d been holding out on him.
After that, she subjected Vir to a nearly unending barrage of icicles, popping out from behind her wall to fire Icicles and Wind Blades from both hands before ducking back under cover. Too quickly for Vir to threaten her with chakrams.