Maiya gulped. She hadn’t even pre-charged the orb. That meant the woman could charge C Grade spells faster than Maiya thought was even possible.
The spell blasted forth silently, skewering the straw dummy with a cone-shaped icicle two handspans long. Straight into the poor dummy’s heart, lodging itself inside.
“Icicle is fast for an Ice Affinity spell, though it can’t hold a candle to Lightning Affinity spells in that department,” she explained, calmly dispatching another straw man. And another, all within a few seconds. “But what it lacks in speed, it makes up for with physical mass. Icicle does well against most gambesons, but cannot penetrate plate armor or chainmail. Even so, it can effectively stall armored enemies. As for unarmored ones?”
She pointed a thumb at the dozen straw dummies, all with icicles buried within their chests. “They don’t stand a chance.”
Maiya’s heart pumped faster and faster. “This is the power of a mejai?” she whispered. With this kind of ability, Tanya could launch icicles at dozens of opponents with impunity. The knight who had attacked them hadn’t worn a full helmet—if Maiya had Icicle, she could’ve easily dispatched that knight in the Godshollow. And this was a C Grade spell!
“Oh no, little girl. This is the power of a mere Pranik. I am a Mejai of Ash. A full two levels above. This,” she said, retrieving an oversized orb from her satchel, “this is my power.”
Maiya realized she’d been charging the spell while she spoke, but the orb wasn’t nearly full yet. Maiya waited… and waited. A full minute later, the translucent sphere glowed with a brightness she’d never seen from an orb before. The orb was an entire handspan across, many times larger than the C Grade Icicle.
“Did you know, little girl? All powerful mejai have special names. Titles of recognition, given by other mejai.” The woman grinned at Maiya. “They call me Whiteout. And this is why.”
The orb activated, sending a small shockwave rippling out. The light winked out from the orb… and nothing happened. At first. Maiya felt a slight breeze. An oddity here in the desert. Then the sky overhead grew dark, as if an enormous shadow had overcome them. She looked up.
“Clouds?” When did those appear?
The wind picked up. The sky grew darker and darker. At some point, hard pieces of ice had begun to fall from the sky, bruising her face. The gentle breeze had morphed into a gale, and Maiya had to crouch low to avoid losing her balance. Tanya’s Ash’va neighed in panic, and Maiya shielded her face from the sand being blown in all directions.
But most of all, she grew cold. Maiya never knew the weather could turn this cold. This was beyond the worst morning chill she’d ever experienced in all of her years of life. She shouted to Tanya, but her voice was lost in the wind. She couldn’t even see Tanya anymore, who stood just a few paces away.
Just as her panic set in, the phenomenon abated. The wind stopped. Sunlight returned, and the air grew warm again. The storm had passed as quickly as it had arrived.
But what it left behind was an alien landscape that made Maiya’s breath catch.
For there was no longer an oasis in a desert. For a dozen paces in every direction, fresh snow covered the ground—a bizarre oddity in the middle of a desert. But what’s more, the pond had frozen solid, encasing every single straw dummy in the area in a prison of ice.
Maiya fell to her knees, her pants crunching against the snow. She looked up at her instructor, who stood like a goddess of ice, her silver hair echoing the chill that ran through Maiya’s veins.
Tanya spoke just three words. Three words that would forever change Maiya’s life. “A Grade. Blizzard.”
Maybe ice magic isn’t so bad, after all, Maiya thought, admiring the woman in front of her for the very first time.
But no one was more shocked than the third pair of eyes that observed the spectacle. The pair of eyes that belonged to the one who’d tailed them, all the way from Riyan’s abode.
What in the three realms was that! Vir thought, half-frozen from his vantage from the other side of the iced-over pond.
He shivered uncontrollably. Not from the cold—that he could deal with. But from the realization that all of his efforts until now had been for naught. Leap? High Jump? What did those Talents matter in the face of such overwhelming power? How could he even hope to rival mejai with that?
It was so unfair he wanted to laugh. He’d thought that he’d finally made a breakthrough. That he’d finally overcome his abysmal stamina. But now? Now what?
Maybe the Lost Art Talents could compete with Tanya’s ice magic… but what were the chances he’d ever stumble upon those?
No. The truth was painfully clear. He needed Talents. There was no doubt about that. Yet Talents like Leap weren’t enough. It was time to take off the gloves. Until now, he’d skirted around the secrets of his prana, poking at it from safety. After his failure on Bakura’s ship, he’d surmised as much. If he wanted true power, he would have to plunge in, risks and all.
He might very well die in the process… But if he didn’t try, he’d be a nobody forever.
Vir turned his back on the lake, his face set with newfound determination. He needed power. Real power.
44THE PRANA WITHIN
Vir flipped the hourglass, setting it onto the obstacle course’s first platform. Then he launched into action, sprinting over the first balancing beam, jumping onto the next beam in seconds with his katar in hand. The third beam came and went, and he was at the rotating metal sword posts. Riyan had replaced the wooden ones with their iron counterpart, making the course truly deadly.
Yet after he’d mastered the timing, these posed little challenge. The obstacle blurred as he moved through it, each step perfectly placed and perfectly timed to avoid the hazards he could avoid, deflecting the ones he couldn’t with his katar. That said, no matter how proficient he became, there was an upper limit to how quickly he could clear this course, dictated by blade timing.
Vir lunged for the wooden wall on the far side and bounded his way up onto the next platform.
The swinging axes that came next were slightly more interesting. He’d long ago committed the blade timing to memory, but there were more optimal ways through this course. Initially, he’d stopped in between blades wherever the gap was large enough. This allowed him to rest and recover his stamina, ultimately wasting time.
Not today. Vir sheathed his blade and dove into the axes headlong, seamlessly transitioning into a somersault as the massive iron blades whooshed by just inches away.
From the somersault, he kicked off into another dive, and cleared the course. The entire obstacle hadn’t even taken fifteen seconds. When he’d started, it took him fifteen minutes.
Next up were the monkey bars. Nothing dangerous here, apart from the fall to the sand, now a good ten paces below. Riyan’s dome of horrors comprised of multiple levels, usually with three different obstacles occupying a single level, with stairs or a ladder up to the next higher level. The higher he went, the harder they got, and the danger of falls multiplied.
Vir didn’t bother to grasp each monkey bar—too slow. Instead, he threw himself through the air, catching every other bar with preternatural grace.
The monkey bars led to a challenge that had stymied him for the longest time. All until the past day or two. He lunged from the final monkey bar onto another horizontal bar. This course was brutal, but not in the same way as the previous courses—it required strength. Explosive strength. And stamina. All things Vir was terrible at. Or at least, had been terrible at.