Paul

It was the hardest fight of his life. Not that he’d had a lot of fights or anything, but he really struggled with this one. The Bear never tired. It slammed a paw on the floor, creating an upheaval beneath Paul.

He backpedaled off the levitating boulder, and then the Bear swept a paw to fling it at him.

He stayed where he was, and the huge rock lifted Paul, tipped, fell, and crushed him flat.

He ran left into the open, and the Bear’s fur, tens of thousands of tiny slivers of quartz, stirred. These hairs quivered, pointed at Paul, and launched. They riddled Paul with thousands of high-speed rounds that ripped him to pieces.

He shot a hand laser at the Bear’s face, but the Elemental shielded its eyes with a paw. The Bear countered with a wide spray of lethal projectiles.

He grew a polished metal mirror on the ground ten feet away to redirect a laser. The creature of Stone found it first and tore it apart with quartz hair bullets.

He grew a mirror in his hand and threw the disk, but the Bear shot it like a clay pigeon.

He kept throwing mirrors, running out of ideas as fear crawled down his spine. These Actualizations cost energy; if he didn’t find a path forward, he’d hit a wall. Finally, a dozen iterations later, he threw his disk at an angle that made the Bear hesitate. Something had obscured the Bear’s line of sight, or it had to spend a half-second turning, or whatever, but Paul selected that future.

Paul’s Actualizations advanced an irreversible step. A chunk of his energy evaporated, and he fought a short dizzy spell.

He fired hand lasers at the reflective disk, consuming Actualizations until he landed a perfect shot into the Bear’s glowing ochre eye. The Elemental shook its head and rubbed its face. Paul finally escaped the Bear’s initial upheaval attack during its recovery.

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He ran right, and the Bear crumbled the ground beneath Paul’s feet to bury him alive.

He ran straight, and the Bear swung the boulder at him.

He ran left, and the Bear swung the boulder at him, but this time the angle was better, and the cover he wanted a bit closer.

An enormous clap of thunder shook the arena, costing Paul an Actualization when he stumbled. He didn’t miss a step on the second try. The Bear, however, tilted its head to see what caused the noise.

Paul shot cover fire, aiming with Actualizations to distract the Bear. This bought him the extra split seconds needed to dive behind a pillar of Ice before the rapid-fire quartz hair found him. The pillar cracked as Daniel and Verglas wrestled for control; he couldn’t rest here long.

He spent an Actualization looking around the pillar to scout without wasting time. Water mages had Lea and Kenta pinned with jet streams, the Stone mages were arguing about something, Wendi was fine, and Cassie swooped around streams of flame.

Paul started throwing metal mirrors again. Cassie had told him his primary role today was distracting the Bear, but he’d find his greatest strength in battlefield suppression. With his Actualization-guaranteed accuracy, he’d handicap the mages.

Bouncing a ray off the flying mirror, he shot at Praxithea. The Water witch hid in the cool depths of her cave while the beam’s heat wasted itself boiling the surface. He counted that a success, enabling Lea and Kenta to climb higher while Paul shot at the other two azure mages.

Next, he checked on Cassie. The bat girl flew too close to one of the scattered cobalt spark balls, forced in that direction by Vlam’s harassment. Rasant shot a bolt of Lightning at a nearby spark, charging it, which then discharged the bolt to another spark—on and on in a chaotic chain. The cobalt mage twitched a finger, and the bolt of Lightning leaped to the spark beside Cassie. She Heard the threat an instant too late, flapping away, but the bolt struck her squarely between the shoulders. She fell, wounded and unconscious.

Paul didn’t have time to align a shot with metal mirrors; he had a second’s span to Actualize something—anything—else.

His head ached from the strain of so many hand lasers and rejected futures in the past minute. That mental wall loomed near as he pushed himself to think of a solution. Paul’s gaze landed on the sparks, and he shot a miniature laser from his helmet’s middle visor slit. The beam struck the spark nearest Cassie, resulting in a small explosion the instant before the chain Lightning would’ve charged it. A bolt sailed through empty space, leaving Cassie safe.

The Ice pillar behind him shattered. Rasant, Vlam, and the Bear glared at Paul.

He ran for all he was worth.