As much as she trusted Eva not to murder her unnecessarily, Juliana wasn’t sure she wanted those claws anywhere near her head. She’d seen what they could do to brick.
Yet Shalise just beamed up at Eva from her desk chair. Almost leaning into the petting.
Juliana just shook her head. “Do we need to refigure our cuts of the profits?”
“Shalise’s payment will be me teaching her a little about runes. Most of what she did for the packets was merely copying, but I’ll be teaching more in the future.”
That’s good. Juliana barely had any responsibilities in their little venture, but she wasn’t looking forward to getting a reduced income from it.
Not that she had much to spend the money on anyway. Still, mom always said to plan for the future.
“What is in these packets anyway? I noticed you added a whole extra sheet that normally isn’t in the things.”
“Additional protection, specifically against certain emotion altering magics.”
“Emotion altering magics? That sounds bad.”
“It is mostly just a test. I don’t plan to leave them in the packets permanently. Way too much work.”
“A test?”
“Of my skills,” Eva said with a shake of her head. She mouthed ‘later’ with a nod towards Shalise.
The brown-haired girl was entirely oblivious to the action.
“Anyway,” Eva said, “I need them fully delivered tonight. Just tell people that we’re having a special. If no one is home, leave them at the door. All of them have a brief note about the ‘special’ and why they’re free.”
“So soon?” Juliana said. That put a hamper on her plans. There were a lot of packets. And she’d have to go to the Gillet. She had never been beyond the lobby of the Rickenbacker’s mirror dorms. All their customers had arranged for pickup in the lobby.
This would take the rest of the night.
“Can I recruit help?”
“Doesn’t matter to me.”
“Good,” Juliana said. It wouldn’t save her plans, but maybe she’d have some spare time at least. She put on her best smile and her biggest puppy-dog eyes. “Shalise?”
The brown-haired girl shook her head. “My hand is killing me,” she said with a flick of her wrist. “I don’t have some tireless demon arm to write with.” All of her excitement quickly deflated into a look of pure horror. “And I haven’t finished the essay for Professor Carr.”
Juliana nodded, quite glad she had finished said essay a week ago. “Eva?”
“Even if you weren’t taking a huge cut to perform this one job, I’ve got plans. Still have more work to do.”
Juliana frowned, but nodded anyway. She turned to the last occupant of the room. “Arach–” Eight red eyes glared out from beneath the covers of Eva’s bed. Every one of them spoke of copious amounts of pain. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” She turned towards the door of their dorm. “Maybe Irene will help me, since none of my roommates are at all reliable.”
One of them threw a pillow at her. It struck her shoulder and almost made her drop the box. Juliana spun around to find all three of them looking intensely busy in their own tasks. Eva and Shalise at their desks, engrossed in papers, and Arachne under Eva’s covers, still glaring.
Arachne was the only one near pillows, but…
Juliana shook her head as she left the room. It couldn’t have been her.
Chapter 017
Rapid breaths echoed inside her helmet. Every breath in was warm, stuffy, and stale. Every breath out moistened the air further. Juliana blinked away the extra liquid on her eyes.
With a quick thought, she widened up the mouth holes in an attempt at sucking in more oxygen. A few slits for extra ventilation opened up around her cheeks.
Figuring out the exact balance between protection and breathability was more of guesswork than anything. Acquiring a book on medieval knight helmets might not be such a bad idea.
Acquiring one in the middle of a fight was, sadly, impossible.
Juliana dodged to one side, allowing a shard of rock to fly past her.
More of float than fly.
The rock lazily drifted through the air. Juliana actually hit it with her shoulder as she moved back to where she was before the dodge.
“You’ve got to work on that speed,” Juliana said. She ignored the small echo in her helmet. “An attack like that isn’t going to scare a cat let alone another mage.”
Jason Bradley grunted as he pointed his wand at the stack of premade rocks. One split into an arrow shape. With his wand trained on it, it lifted up in the air around chest height.
While she waited for her sparring partner to send another attack her way, Juliana hopped back and forth on her heels. She kept her heart pumping and her breath ragged. Armor was not light. Even with her muscles growing from carrying around several pounds of metal for several months, moving quickly still wore her down.
Professor Kines’ class had been enlightening in that, at the very least. They didn’t seem to be much good for anything else. She still wasn’t sure why half the students bothered to show up. Hardly anyone actually managed to put up any kind of fight, let alone a decent fight.
Jason was actually ahead of the curve. For a first-year earth mage, that is. Jordan might have him beat. Of course, Juliana herself was on par with at least third-year if not fourth-year students.
Out of the corner of her eye, Juliana saw Jordan send a rock shard flying at Shelby. His shard actually flew, though only just.
Shelby knocked it out of the air with a well placed gust of wind. Unlike Shalise, who seemed to focus entirely on lightning, Shelby embraced the air aspect of aerotheurgy.
A rush of wind hit Jordan square in the chest. Rustling of his clothes and a few locks of his brown hair–which he quickly smoothed back down–were the only indication. It didn’t hit him hard enough to cause even a stumble and it wasn’t sharp enough to damage his protective vest.
Most of the first year aerothurges were much the same way. All of them had more trouble forming their element into actual attacks.
The rock Jason tried to attack her with finally reached Juliana. She ducked out of the way and continued her quick hops from side to side.
Jason groaned as the rock shattered into the floor. “How can you have so much energy. You’re just toying with me.”
“Knocking you on your back in a second isn’t going to help either one of us.”
“You did it to that one kid on the first day.”
“Tony?” Juliana glanced off to one side where the third-year ice mage was engaged in a rather heated duel with his fourth-year brother. “He wasn’t taking this seriously. You’re at least putting an effort in.”
He scuffed his shoe against the ground. “Not a good enough effort.”
“Now, let’s not get whiny or I might knock you down. You’re better than most of the first-years.”
“Not better than you.”
“I was trained by my mother.”
“How did she teach you?”
Juliana paused their dialog as she racked her memories. Eventually she shrugged, though she wasn’t sure how much of the shrug was visible through her armor. “Don’t remember.”
“How can you not remember?”
“I was a little girl. Do you remember how you learned to walk or talk?”
He shrugged back at Juliana.
“You cast an invisibility spell on one of your pranks, right? That’s some high level magic. Use it on those rocks,” Juliana gestured towards the pile next to him. “It is much harder to defend against something you can’t see. Even if it doesn’t hit hard, at least it might hit.”
Jason took off his helmet and ran a hand through his red hair before replacing the protective gear. “My dad taught me that,” he said with a light blush. His small smile slipped off his face. “It won’t work on these. The enchantment disguises an object using its surroundings. It falls apart as the object is moved.”