Bounding down the busy streets of Junnhaven, the girl who had spent the better part of two days hardly able to get out of bed could barely contain her excitement as she made her way past the town square and towards the grandiose arches of the guild hall. She slowed her pace to a brisk walk as she spotted the kitsune waiting for her next to the arches and approached him. “Good morning, Nik!”

  Nikolas had been waiting near the guild hall’s entrance, leaning on one of the stone arches to stay out of the way of the usual crowd. “Morning, Clarisse. Let’s get this party officialized, hmm?” He asked, walking into the guild hall alongside her.

  “Absolutely!” Clarisse exclaimed, pumping her fist into the air. She led the way through the crowded hall and towards the main desk where Rika was addressing inquiries and assigning quests. They situated themselves at the back of the short line forming in front of the desk.

  The receptionist noticed the fox’s tall ears poking through the crowd well before they made it to the front of the line, but was in for a loop when the bright-eyed redhead was the first to approach. “Oh? Nice to see you again, kiddo. Feeling better today?” she asked, eyeing Nikolas with a sly smile as he stepped ahead to stand next to her.

  “Yes ma’am!” Clarisse replied enthusiastically “We’re here to register as a party today. What’s the process for that?” she asked, placing both her hands on the edge of the desk.

  “A party already?” Rika smirked in jest as she opened one of the drawers under her desk and started sifting through them. “I never took you for a team-worker Nik. I do have great hopes for both of you, though.” She eyed the masked adventurer before pulling out a few documents and stacking them in order.

  Nikolas shrugged, tilting his head slightly as his mismatched eyes met the receptionist. “People can change, y’know-” he commented, glancing at his apprentice who was focused more on the documents in front of them.

  “I have most of the information I need for this already, but I’ll need some inputs,” Rika clarified, leafing through the documents and beginning to fill in some basic details using a quill from her desktop. “One Bronze and one copper…” she muttered under her breath, and her fingers darted across the document swiftly, accounting for what she already knew, before pausing at a set of prompts. “Your full names and ages?” she asked, glancing up at the pair.

  “Clarisse Lenue, 19!” Clarisse swiftly replied, before turning towards Nikolas. This was another opportunity to learn something new about her painfully vague mentor.

  “Nikolas… 23.” Nikolas added, pausing for a moment before mentioning his age. His tone had the slightest shake to it, as if he wasn’t quite sure himself.

  Rika looked up for a split second, almost making eye contact with Nikolas before filling the prompt for his surname with an unquestioning slash. “Right, and it’s just the two of you?”

  “Y-yes.” Clarisse replied, though her focus was on the slashed out prompt from before. She glanced at Nikolas again with upturned brows, but his gaze was focused elsewhere. Though she had an inkling of what it meant, she decided to save it for later.

  “Alright, give me a moment to find your addresses on file. I forgot about that…” Rika sighed and rolled her eyes, opening a large drawer from her desk and riffling through the documents to pick out Clarisse’s file. “Okay… do you have any party names in mind?” Rika pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose before copying over the redhead’s address.

  “Huh?” Clarisse was caught off guard, she hadn’t thought of anything so far since she was preoccupied by the second instance of Nikolas’s missing details, and so she simply looked at him for suggestions. “I’m good with anything, do you have a preference?”

  “Just leave it empty,” Nikolas shrugged. “I’m not really one for names and titles.”

  “Right, I suppose that’s apparent with you,” Rika made a snide comment as she turned the paper over. The following pages were mostly just ticking boxes and details about Junnhaven’s guild, which Rika left empty to fill in herself later. “Alright, that’s all I needed. Congratulations, you two are a registered party now!” She beamed at them with a radiant smile.

  “Thanks for the help. We’ll be around.” Nikolas gestured to Clarisse for them to head out before breaking away from the line behind them.

  Clarisse bowed quickly to Rika, waving goodbye to her before hastily following after Nikolas.

  “Stay safe, you two!” Rika called after them, sporting a self-conceited smile at her own matchmaking intuition, before the next person in line caught her attention. She quickly reverted to a professional facade, searching through documents yet again…

  Clarisse opened her mouth to try and bring up her recent doubts as they headed out of the guild, but realized that she didn’t have a polite way to phrase it yet. “What’s the plan for the rest of today?” she instead asked, recalling that Nikolas had some other business at the guild as well.

  “How are you feeling about your magic?” Nikolas shot back, his tone betraying that he was plotting something underneath the innocent question.

  “Well, I can’t seem to maintain it for as long as when we were training… maybe it has something to do with the sun?” she thought aloud, recounting that every time they trained it was in the sunny plains outside the city, while she had been stuck in the damp wastes in the sewers the other night. “I want to be more consistent with it.” she decided.

  “Let’s head to the arcana training grounds.” Nikolas declared with confidence contrasting her uncertainty. “We could do our usual style of training, but inspiration can lead to breakthroughs as well.”

  “Have I gotten that good already?” Clarisse beamed at him with a smile and wide eyes, enthusiasm gripping her demeanor all at once. Regardless of whether she felt her progress warranted such an initiative, she was quite eager to tell herself that it did. If she had been any more excited, her body might have been prone to rise afloat.

  “Well, you’re supposed to be resting today,” Nikolas reminded her, “We can stay near the sidelines and watch other people train… Maybe figure out a new move or two for you.”

  “R-right…” Clarisse stuttered, looking down to hide her embarrassment. Of course he meant for her to sit and watch, she was still a beginner at all this. “Let’s go, then…”

  Situated around one of the city’s largest establishments, the arcana training grounds spanned a band of circular space, most of which consisted of either soft grass or dusty flats, lined with the occasional marble paths connecting the various training facilities together. Being the public-facing aspect of the Arcane Academy of Junnhaven, they stood as one of the most frequented spaces for the magically inclined populace of the city.

  While entry to the fields was open to everyone, it quickly became clear from the number of instructors and observers around the facilities that only students of the academy were encouraged to use the facilities present. Arrays of makeshift structures lay spread over the field, ranging from outdoor classes with students sitting in the grass, rows of battered mannequin lined up for target practice, and even dueling rings for mages to duke it out with each other.

  Among the lively nature of activities at the training grounds, it was the latter of the available attractions that attracted Clarisse’s attention. Spotting a pair of mages squaring up for a duel about to start, she excitedly tugged on Nik’s sleeve and picked up her pace. “Let’s check them out!”

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  “Find a seat, I’ll be there in a moment!” Nikolas called out to her as she ran towards the event. He took his sweet time slowly walking towards the dueling ring, focused on noting the multitude of arcana-rich presences around him.

  Nikolas closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. The darkness of his eyelids was then enlightened by images of each soul which would have been in his view had he been watching. All around him, he could sense the cacophony of mana being thrown around. Each spell, every incantation – even the magical runes embedded into target dummies and buried in the middle of each dueling ring – he could feel them all flowing freely around him, as if he was afloat in the middle of a slow river.

  Unlike the synchronous ebb and flow of everyone around him, Nikolas had barely any presence, at least any that he could call his own. Mana coagulated around him in chaotic fashion, suddenly spiking outwards before returning to sit on him like a burden. It swirled around the blade of his broken sword and bathed his attire in a translucent light, more akin to a shell around him than something which grew from within.

  Once he had gauged the nearby mages, Nikolas opened his eyes again, finding himself much closer to the dueling grounds than when he had begun surveillance. He let out a sigh of relief at finding no one of concern nearby, and joined Clarisse in the seating area.

  “It’s Mossberg Patton against Telian H’vrah,” Clarisse smiled as she pointed towards the human and dwarven mage in sequence. Both combatants were standing on opposite ends of a large circular area cordoned off by a circumference of marbled rocks and overgrown, unkempt grass.

  The human sported a patchwork of leather all over his attire, beginning from a sturdy, wide-brimmed hat down to a buttoned shirt under a leather vest and trousers, finishing with a pair of spats adorning his boots. There was a lasso hanging from his belt and about a dozen condensed bolts of lightning revolving around his leatherbound greaves, ready to be launched in the blink of an eye.

  On the other side of the arena stood a stout, short yet well-built dwarf. There was a rather sagely air to him attributed by his beard despite his energetic demeanor. He was clad in simple clothing, more reminiscent of a farmer who had wandered his way into the ring, yet the way rock and earth levitated around him projected anything but that.

  “First to down the other or throw the other out of the ring wins. Mossberg, Telian, begin!” The judge called out, looking first at the lightning mage and then his earthbound opponent before stepping out of the ring himself. The two combatants moved the moment they heard the command to begin, not even waiting for the judge to exit before the first spell was slung.

  Mossberg launched the first volley, flicking his wrist to shoot quick bursts of electricity at his opponent. The tasers were met by a broken array of rocks from Telian, who clapped his hands together to create a large mound of earth before him. The bolts glanced off his shield, leaving only blackened spots in their place as they dissipated into the air around them. The dwarf wound himself back, making various sweeping motions with his arms before pushing his arms ahead to form and throw a cragged sphere towards Mossberg.

  The quickshooter rolled to one side while maintaining his aim, strafing past the loose remains of the great ball while shooting bolts at the dwarf in quick succession. Telian was demonstrably a multitasker, performing unsynchronized motions with either hand to raise clumps of earth to act as staggered shields while controlling the giant ball to fly back towards Mossberg. The small clumps barely served as a sufficient defense, scattering into clouds of dust.

  Clarisse hastily rubbed sand out of her eyes, trying not to miss a moment of their combative exchange. She was already getting ideas for how she could adapt her flames to use at range, but the fight was getting progressively harder to make out due to the change in environment sending dirt and dust flying.

  Nikolas leaned towards her slightly, unencumbered by the dust by virtue of his mask. “Watch their fighting styles. Telian hasn’t strayed from his starting position. Mossberg is all offense, no defense. Neither are wrong, but they have pros and cons.”

  A paragon of agility, Mossberg dodged and maneuvered through the chaotic assault of rocks all around him. When the massive earthen sphere returned on its course towards him, he was ready with a concentrated bolt formed by combining all his remaining shots into one. The electric bullet pierced through the sphere quite easily, decimating a massive segment from the back hemisphere and leaving only feeble rubble to assail him. He remained standing through the widespread hit, but was visibly hurt.

  Telian’s resources were spread but still present. He took a wide stance before bringing his arms together, moving the collective cobble around Mossberg’s feet and forming an earthbound trap. Mossberg wasted no time in jumping back, firing miniscule blasts at the rubble coiling around him like writhing pythons and riddling them with holes. The moment he found solid footing, he unlatched his lasso and swung, reducing the rubble into fine dirt with electrified lashes.

  The fight reached what seemed to be a stalemate for the moment, with both mages slowing down to gather their wits and analyze the other. Neither of them was making any real progress despite tiring each other out, and yet the occasional was thrown to keep momentum. Telian collected hardened earth around him like in a revolving pattern, and Mossberg charged up another power shot around his greaves while brandishing the lasso – both were waiting for the other to make a move first.

  “Who do you think is going to win?” Clarisse muttered to her companion while keeping her eyes trained on the pair of combatants intently. She didn’t want to miss a single second of the encounter.

  “It’s anyone’s guess,” Nikolas lied as naturally as he didn’t breathe, for the eye on the side opposite to her was closed, watching the world in terms of mana. He could see every speck of mana flowing through their bodies, being manipulated into currents as they cast spells. Mossberg’s mana flow was like a dynamo around his arms, charging up an especially powerful bolt of lightning while keeping the lasso alight. Telian maintained his passive approach in contrast, keeping his mana in an orbital current around him, flowing evenly through the orbit around him.

  Clarisse nodded, never once taking her eyes off the fighters to acknowledge the way Nikolas seemed, to any observer, to be half-falling asleep. She had her own thoughts on their battle, the way each of them moved, the mana they expended while casting, or even their core magics – she found something to learn from their creative use of seemingly commonplace skills.

  Mossberg kept an eye all around himself at the various rocks coming at him, blasting and whipping at them away every time one of them strayed too close for his comfort. Still, it seemed clear that Telian was in control of the ring, standing freely on his side of the arena as he kept reducing the space available for his dextrous opponent.

  Running out of space against the constant pelting of rocks from all sides, Mossberg stopped dodging and retaliated by releasing a shock all around him. It only served to break the smaller rocks, but even that was enough to give him some breathing room. Winding his arm back, he threw the looped end of his lasso at Telian.

  Adamant to maintain his stance, the dwarf raised both hands to erect a large pillar from the ground right in front of himself to catch the lasso. The electrified loop landed in it, sending cracks up its length as it tried to conduct the exceedingly powerful currents passing through it.

  Telian leaned forward to place a hand on the pillar, before squatting down and pushing ahead with both hands to uproot the earthen spire and launch it at Moss. Had this been an actual fight, it most certainly would have possessed a sharp spike to impale the quickshot. Mossberg barely had the time and space to dodge the pillar, limited by the lasso’s leeway. The pillar struck his side as it pushed past, bruising his arm and nearly knocking him over the edge of the arena.

  Right as it looked like Mossberg’s last tool had been exhausted and he was pushed to a corner, a flash of light erupted from high in the sky, followed by something crashing down at Telian’s location and raising a cloud of dust.

  Telian was blinded momentarily by the flash and immediately tried to collect debris into a wall to shield himself. He let out a painful grunt when the source of the flash penetrated through the hastily put shield, hitting him squarely across his body and making his body involuntarily spasm on the ground.

  Mossberg smirked at the success of his plan, letting out a jeer at his opponent before receiving a stone to the stomach and falling back over the edge of the arena. The rocks all around him also descended with similar haphazardness, landing all over the arena once Telian lost control of them.

  “End of duel! The winner is Mossberg!” The judge called out, stepping into the ring after delivering a hasty conclusion to the duel.

  “Wait, what happened? How did Mossberg manage to hit Telian through all that?” Clarisse shook Nikolas’s shoulder, surprised by the sudden end to the duel.

  “He took a risk,” Nikolas explained, privy to their exchange through his mana-sensitive eyes. “Deciding to take hits while he built up a single powerful bolt. The shockwave around him was just the afterwind of launching it into the sky.”

  “Whoa…” Clarisse tried to recall if she had caught any of that when the flash had blinded her, but could only conclude that the move had been effective precisely because even she couldn’t spot it. “I guess there is a lot I can learn from watching these…”

  “That was a rat move, Patton!” Telian grumbled at his opponent as he was helped up by the judge. “I almost had you that time…”

  “Yeah, but you still went down first!” Mossberg retorted with a snort, holding his bruised stomach as he got up. “Damn, you roughed me up pretty bad even after all that…” he coughed out, heading to the sidelines.

  Thank you for reading!

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