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.”