She didn’t get a chance to finish it. A ball of fire flew out from inside of one of the few remaining walls of smoke.
Vanniv pointed and detonated the sphere in mid-air, but a second fireball flew out from another shadow wall and exploded behind Sera.
She stumbled forward a step, losing her focus on the incantation and hitting a yellow square. A beam of light shot upward, hitting her shield and breaking it.
Sera vanished.
Vanniv stared at the spot where she’d been a moment before, sighed, and then flew toward the infirmary.
The match was over.
I rushed to the infirmary.
I worried that Sera would be crying when I found her inside.
I was wrong in a couple ways.
First, they wouldn’t let me into the infirmary. I probably should have expected that.
Second, when Sera finally emerged, she looked smug.
Patrick came out a few moments later, and he looked pretty pleased, too.
“You two okay?”
Patrick was practically vibrating with energy. “We both passed! Sera had this great plan—”
She shot him a glower and he cut himself off, then leaned in closer to me to whisper. “—and it got us both good grades!”
His idea of whispering was still about as loud as a normal speaking voice, so Sera continued to glower for a moment, before dragging both of us out of the way. Teft emerged from the room a moment later, heading over to prepare the next pair of combatants.
“Discretion, Patrick. Use it,” Sera whispered.
“Right, right. I’ll, uh, tell him later?”
We went back to the stands, where Marissa waited with hugs for both Patrick and Sera. The four of us headed back to Derek’s house together after that, with Patrick explaining on the way.
“So, as soon as Sera got her voice back, she started asking people from Teft’s other classes about how his grading worked. Some first-years, some second-years. She made a big list of factors that he seemed to take into consideration, then made a checklist of things we’d need to do in our match to take advantage of that.”
“You weren’t really dueling against each other,” I concluded. “You were just trying to do everything you knew would get more points with Teft.” I rubbed my chin. “That’s…a great strategy, actually.”
I’d been so focused on winning in a traditional fashion that I hadn’t considered going at it from a higher level and focusing on what would earn a grade, as opposed to a victory. Sera had seen that the real goal was graduation, not winning the match, and planned her strategy around that.
To emphasize Patrick’s point, Sera reached into the pouch at her side and handed me a folded note.
Demonstrate that you have determined the pattern of the tile.
Use at least one tile to your advantage.
Use at least one tile to cause a disadvantage for your opponent.
Use at least one spell to interact with a tile, rather than directly targeting your opponent.
Deal at least some damage to your opponent’s shield.
Move to another tile at least once.
Last for more than five minutes.
The list went on after that. I handed it to Marissa to look over next. I’d seen what I needed to see.
Marissa skimmed it, then nudged Sera. “Could have shared this before the match, you know.”
Sera shook her head. “You didn’t need it. You and Corin did almost everything on the list without seeing it. Showing it to you would have just hurt your focus on fighting.”
She was probably right. I would have obsessed over a list like that, and it would have hurt me more than it helped. I was less sure about Marissa, but we’d done almost everything on the list without trying, so it was probably true.
“Besides,” Patrick added, “We wanted to see which one of you would win.”
I rolled my eyes at that. “You can see that on almost a daily basis.”
Marissa shook her head. “Nae, Patrick’s right. Wasn’t the same as when we’re sparring. That was the first time I’ve seen you really try to fight me.” She cracked her fingers. “It was nice. Wouldn’t mind another match sometime.”
“I wouldn’t have stood a chance if I hadn’t changed the tiles, though.”
She nodded. “Of course you wouldn’t have. That’s why we need to have a rematch. So I can beat you into the ground next time, and feel better about my bruised pride.”
I laughed. “I suppose I’d better start taking our practice a bit more seriously, then.”
“Ye’d better. Because next time, I’m aiming straight for your bag of toys.”
…That wasn’t a bad counter to my strategy, now that I thought about it. If she got my bag — which she could, she was stronger than me and faster most of the time — she’d be able to prevent almost all of my tricks.
I needed to rely on the bag a little less heavily in the future, but for the moment?
I felt great. We’d all passed the class. The hardest part of classes for the first half of the year was over.
We teased each other a bit more on the way home. It was an affectionate kind of teasing, though, and to be honest, it was pretty nice.
Chapter XII – Lessons Learned
I pulled Sera aside when we got back to Derek’s house, asking a question I’d been thinking about since the match. “…What was with the tiny Vanniv?”
She chortled. “Remember how I summoned a weaker version of Seiryu in the spire? Same principle. Summoners usually learn to summon stronger versions of their monsters. I’ve been practicing summoning weaker versions since I got my attunement, so I could eventually learn to summon a weaker version of Seiryu like that. I doubt I’ll ever be able to summon Seiryu at her full strength.”
She shrugged a shoulder, then continued. “Anyway, that was a depowered version of Vanniv. I still don’t have enough strength back to summon the real thing.”
That made sense to me, although I wouldn’t have expected a weaker version to be smaller, even though that was what had happened with Seiryu. Maybe that was just the particular way she’d learned to decrease the power of the monsters she was summoning.
“How functional is your attunement, then?”
Sera shook her head. “Barely at all. I figured out how to break my contracts using my hand, and cast some spells with it. I’ve been recovering a little since then, but not a lot. I can only cast the most basic spells, and even that takes a lot out of me.”
I nodded. “Glad you’re recovering at all.”
“Yeah. I feel more like myself again. I don’t like being useless.” She scratched at her back, where her mark was located. “My attunement feels different now. Not worse…just different.”
“But it still works?”
“Yeah. In fact, Vanniv told me he felt a stronger connection with me, and that maybe we could do something new with it. I’m going to experiment with that when I’ve recovered a bit more.” She coughed, lifting a hand to her throat. “Think I need to stop talking for a while. That match took a lot out of me.”
“Do you need to go to the hospital again?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not that bad. Just need to rest.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later.”
I headed back to my own room to isolate myself for a while after that, thinking about what she’d said. It was good to hear that she was recovering, I wasn’t confident she’d heal all the way on her own. And we still didn’t know what else had changed with her attunement, unless she’d figured out more than I had.