He kept his focus mainly on Alara, however. The stern noble had been similarly lifted into the air, but she'd been hoisted up with one of the floating islands, not on a smaller column as he was.

The blonde's brows furrowed in on themselves; this wasn't the battlefield configuration he'd hoped for. He would not—could not—win at range.

He knew his limitations intimately.

Alara did too, to a lesser degree, but her knowledge was more than enough for it to be an issue for him.

The raven-haired beauty was already raising her amber-colored staff. Fire licked out of the ruby that crowned the stave, swirling and forming itself into an infernal vortex.

The stave acted as an amplifier for signs. Luke also had no doubts that the interior of the staff had been worked and enchanted heavily, turning it into an arcane matrix. The staff would channel Alara's mana into specific, predetermined spells, eliminating the need for her to utilize magic circles in many cases.

Luke backed up to the edge of the small column of earth.

Alara unleashed her blast of flame. It was gorgeous and deadly—a triumvirate mixture of cold cobalt, searing carmine, and hungry vermillion—and it truly ruled the sky for the brief moment that it would exist.

The runes covering Luke's armor crackled with sharp bits of static, and the control sigils carved beneath the steel and gambeson encasing him seared to life against his flesh. His body burned, his muscles twitched. The familiar smell of cindered ozone entered his nostrils. Luke broke into a run and leapt into the open air.

The enchantress's opponent had nowhere to go but forward and into the flames. Her inferno of beautiful flames moved fast. Either he met it head on or he jumped backwards off of the column and gave her more distance; in any case, she gained the advantage—and she was the sort of person to press it ruthlessly.

Luke's perceptions sped up, and his perceived environment slowed. He raised his glaive above his head, his muscles jerking and twitching so fast that only his long hours of training allowed him to avoid tearing tendons from their bones.

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My eyes widened as Alara unleashed the gout of fire. She didn't use any sigils, but then I doubted her staff was for nothing. It had to have something to do with letting her avoid casting visual spell circles, unless she was somehow like me.

"He's fast," Kara commented.

Garron hummed in agreement. "And she does not use a spellbook. Neither of them do."

"Vanity; many noble mages like to show that they can cast their sigils themselves just as quickly as a spellbook could," Kara said.

Garron didn't immediately reply. “Perhaps that holds true for her, but is it true for him? I think not."

"Or maybe she really just can," Kara added. "Could be the staff, I guess."

I shifted my eyes to where Luke had been only a second before, but he was gone. I trailed my gaze back to the pillar of fire that blasted toward where he'd been. Then I saw him.

The lithe, armor-bound mage was airborne now. Although he wasn't flying, gravity still held him in an arc. However, he had seemingly jumped with such force that this was only marginally true; he didn't appear strong enough to jump as he did. He had to be using either a skill or spell, but which was it?

Luke's glaive and body flickered and flared. A massive rune glowed to life brightly on his chest, prompting multiple runes to illuminate in turn down his arms. The same sort of runes flashed along his glaive as he swiped it down towards the blast of flame that threatened to consume his entire body.

Where the glaive fell, a distortion in reality formed.

"That's abjuration magic in those sigils, but they're strange-looking," Kara said. "Saints. His entire armor is sigil-worked."

Alara's flames met a nearly translucent shield of raw mana and splintered off into nothingness as Luke launched through them.

"Not sigil-worked. Rune-worked, enchanted," Garron said and leaned forward, "but I do not see any power source for the runes anywhere on him."

Garron shifting in interest made me realize that I already had as well. Whatever spell Luke had just used, I wanted it.

"Runes?" Alara asked with growing interest. "Like the dwarves use?"

"It doesn't appear to be like the dwarves use them," Garron said, his eyes intently focused on Luke's armor. "I do not see even one leycrystal on him."

"What's a leycrystal?" I asked.

"A valuable stone that absorbs mana from the earth and air," Garron said. "The dwarves do not have large mana reserves; they use leycrystals to power their enchantments instead."

"But he doesn't have any?" I said.

Garron paused. "I have never seen a rune-worked item not have them inlaid in the runes themselves. I am also fairly certain he is adjusting how the runes work as he uses them; I have never seen that either."

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Luke pushed a little bit more of his internal mana into the control sigil burned between his pectorals, signaling the corresponding sigil on the backside of his chestplate to activate. Both sigils fed more of the power they'd collected from him and the ambient energy in the air over the past few days to the rune on the outward face of his chestplate.

Meanwhile, the sewn runes, which had lit up along the gambeson undersides of his arms when he had jumped, flared again, releasing more electric energy into his muscles to lock them into place. He bit his teeth, hearing a waxy grinding in his ears. His arms shook, and he struggled to keep his glaive and opaque ward in place against the force of the incoming fire blast.

He felt the heat from Alara's spell for a scant few seconds, while his body and shield cut through it rapidly.

The older apprentice immediately cut the power to the control sigil on his chest the moment he exited the pillar of flame, his body descending down and out of its middle. The abjuration runes on his chest and arms died out immediately.

He had burned through far too much stored mana already.

He landed on an island much closer to Alara, but he wasn't anywhere near striking distance with her yet. She wouldn't allow him to change that easily.

Alara was already swinging her darker stave up in an arc that intersected her body. Where the staff touched the air, large spears of ice emerged and shot at Luke in a barrage.

Luke grunted and regained his footing into another dash. Lightning crackled over his legs, then his arms. He sidestepped and slashed through one, then another, and then another of the ice spikes. The projectiles he didn't outright dodge shattered with loud, thunder-like cracking as they exploded against the electric sparks of his polearm's curved edge.

His arms and glaive lit up with electricity only at the moment of striking the ice shards, as if turning on and off at carefully controlled moments.

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Alara kept her face calm and calculating, but she was growing more concerned. By every right, she should be able to defeat the man who was charging toward her.

Luke was an outcast. Disinherited from his birthright, lacking her own family's prodigious reserves of mana, and not even having a tenth of her own raw destructive power or capability for magical output. She did not care that he was cursed with elf-blood as many others did, and she could have tolerated his existence if he had merely struggled along with hopeless effort alone.

But he hadn't; he had broken a taboo in a way that could not be tolerated. He had stolen from her, from her family itself, poorly copied something precious and made a mockery of it all the same, all to extend his tenure at the Towers when talentless mages such as him had no inherent right to stand among the true acolytes in the first place. He should've counted his blessings to even be able to walk through the mythril gates at all, but he'd reached for more than he was allowed.

She frowned. Two twin sigils lit up around her wrists, rotating and spinning in complex patterns as she raised her two staves. She felt the overwhelming power flowing into her as the sigils drained the air itself of its ambient mana; her own reserves had not begun to be tapped yet. She could've cast even a dozen more of the spells she already had, without calling upon her family's sigil techniques, but what she'd already done already hadn't worked.

For all that Luke was not, he was skilled in close combat. She believed his speed, his proficiency with a glaive, and his sheer efficiency with every movement were signs of his weakness in magic, but they were nonetheless deadly. He could not be allowed to close the distance with her.

Her eyes glowed as her entire body filled with more mana than it could feasibly tolerate. It didn't matter. She had practiced to push her limits right to the edge of reasonability; her father had ensured that.

One of the sigils on her wrists died out. Two more sigils flashed before her staves, but these did not persist like the one still encircling her wrist.

Where before shapeless flames had spilled from her orange staff, albeit impressively, now the flames that erupted from her stave had life, purpose, and intent. Fangs, jaws, wings, and fury were formed from her outstretched armament, birthing a wyvern born from elemental fury itself and shining with skin of fire.

The wyvern launched itself forward toward its target, trailing streaks of embers behind it.

Alara allowed her fire staff to reposition behind herself and slammed her other stave into the ground. Permafrost extended from where the wood touched the earth and stretched into two spots three feet away from her. Ice built itself upwards from the ground from these two patches of ice, growing on itself and taking a frigid face. A hulking beast was shaped from the ice, a sculpture of a terrible monster of the Blue Peaks with too-broad arms and ugly features. The frozen caricature of the frost troll broke its feet free from the ground and lumbered forward to guard Alara.

Sigils of control formed in the glowing pupils of Alara's eyes. These were not summoned creatures, but elemental constructs. Their every action was controlled by her will, for they lacked their own—but she'd practiced letting them borrow hers. She was a mage of the third circle and proficient in two disparate elements; if there was one thing she had, it was control.

She increased the absorption rate of the lone sigil still spinning around her wrist. Three spells, two to control the constructs and one to feed her the mana to do so. It was her limit. Each of the spell rings, the concentrated stores of mana around her soulcore, were tasked at high capacity.

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Luke saw the elemental wyvern shooting towards him and far too rapidly at that. The thing was supercharged with the mana from Alara's family technique.

He frowned; he could feel the absorption arrays built into his own control sigils begin to draw in less ambient mana as she sucked the very air of it. She may have accused him of stealing her family technique, but it was hardly true. They were closely related, but he had begun developing his methods for stabilizing his control sigils with ambient mana absorption long before he'd even seen her trump card. The sigil techniques also worked in very different ways; her technique was much more potent, for one, and much more dangerous to use. And yet she accused him of theft, all because he wouldn't reveal how his technique worked to prove otherwise. The hypocrisy of it did not ring hollow with him.

The wyvern was at least as big as him. It was superheated mana made manifest and forced into near-corporeal form. He could use mana to touch the creature, but he had another energy to tap into: skills.

The winged snake reared its head back as it rushed towards him and released a blast of pure flames from its glowing scarlet maw.

Luke let out a breath of focused air. Life-forced poured from his body as he activated [glaive dance]. His muscles filled with life-forced, strengthening and overlocking their agility. Runes lit up along his gambeson, further filling his body with speed. Electricity flowed into his muscles. Naturally frail-body aside, he felt truly strong now.

The wyvern's breath of fire was easy to dodge, with a roll that had him springing off of his free hand. As he handspringed through the air, he cut into the earth and sent a shard of earth flying towards Alara with his glaive.

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The wyvern faltered in its movements for a moment as its controller was forced to focus on the projectile. But she didn't falter for nearly as long as Luke had hoped.

Luke reached into a small pouch on his belt and retrieved three stones. He channeled the mana running through the control sigils in his hands into them and launched them each of the runestones towards the wyvern in turn.

The ice troll guarding Alara stepped forward, reared its arm back, and shattered the rock Luke had flung towards its master.

It was too late; the thunderstones were already flaring. The wyvern tried to twist away from them, but they glowed brightly as they flew past it. Lightning magic shot from one stone to the next, halting them each in their flight, and cutting through the wyvern's magical body.

Fire magic burned over time and could slow physical regeneration. Frost magic could slow movements and mana restoration. Lightning magic, however, could disrupt mana. An elemental construct stood no chance trapped in a makeshift net of it.

The wyvern flickered and fell, hitting the ground and twitching as Alara's commands to it failed to properly be carried out.

"You!" Alara shouted, taken aback by his tactics.

Luke was not going to waste time. As long as Alara had three spells running at once, she could not cast anymore.

The warrior channeled electricity back into his muscles and, keeping [glaive dance] running, he bolted towards the edge of the island he was on.

His enemy raised her fire stave. Luke glanced to the trapped wyvern, watching as it dissipated and was released from existence.

A sigil flashed in front of Alara's staff and disapeared. A sigil then appeared next to him as he ran, directly to the right of his head. Luke wasted no time in charging his glaive with lightning mana and using his enhanced speed to turn mid-run and slash through the sigil, disrupting it before it could unleash its magic upon him.

He frowned. Another sigil appeared to his left. He cut through it as well. Then another.

He was close enough to Alara that she could project sigils at range now, something most mages of her level couldn't even do at all—he knew he couldn't; it required both more mana than he could spare and a high magic-control attribute, only one of which he had.

[Glaive dance] had no hard limit, but it did require him to keep striking targets at regular intervals. The sigils counted as targets, and good thing, because Alara was forming them at such incredibly speed that using [lightning charge] on his muscles alone would not have given him the speed needed to deal with them.

Still, he was pinned down, unless he wanted to take a blast from one of her spells.

Alara noticed it too. The troll construct she'd summoned shook its head and broke into an ugly, lumbering run towards her island's edge.

Luke cut through another sigil, and, in the half-second before another formed, he slammed his foot into the ground and used a rune carved into the bottom of his boot to lay his own spell sigil into the ground. It used more mana that he wanted to, but he continued to lay his own sigils onto the earth as he pirouetted, turned, and slashed through those appearing around him.

The troll bridged the gap between his and Alara's island and landed on his with a loud thumping. It was clumsy but controlled enough as it charged towards him.

Luke felt himself sweating, his muscles growing hot from the sheer life force and mana flowing through them. If not for his born trait [mana conduit] the act of running so much mana through his body, having pre-collected it in his control sigils only to release it back into himself with his runes, would've already burnt him out. He was much more resistant to mana overload than the average person, despite his own paltry mana reserves, but everything had its limits.

The troll came within striking range of him. He rolled under its swinging arm. The creature stepped forward and also met his chest with its ugly foot. He was too fast for it, and he threw himself to the side with an outstretched foot.

A sigil flared behind his back, however.

Heat, raw force, pain. The flame bolt from Alara's ranged sigil scorched against his armor and sent him rolling across the ground. One of his runes had been damaged. He could feel it through the control sigils running up and down his back. He'd lost his ability to supercharge his trapezius muscles with [lightning charge], not unless he was willing to use his own internal mana reserves to do so. It would severely slow his glaive attacks.

He reached for his glaive, which had fallen from him in the roll, but the troll stomped violently at his head.

Luke threw himself to the side with his arms and rolled to his feet, only to have to dodge out of the way of an ice spike shooting violently from a sigil behind him.

His eyes shot to his glaive, now firmly behind the troll construct. Not good.

The troll opened its hands, and ice began to grow in between them. Huge crystalline clubs grew in each of its hands.

The monster stepped forward and swung at him. The movements were sloppy, unrefined, and devoid of skill. Alara didn't know how to wield a weapon, and it showed through her control of the construct, but Luke still couldn't afford to be hit by the clubs.

He dodged sigil and clubswing alike. Carefully, he led the troll back a few steps until—

One of the sigils he'd laid earlier on the ground erupted. A crash of lightning shot upwards and blew the icy thing's leg apart. The construct fell backwards, and another sigil flared on the ground. The pseudo-monster's chest was blown in half.

Luke practically threw himself towards his glaive and retrieved it, but not before narrowly noticing another spell sigil. A fire bolt burnt the edges of his leg, but only peripherally. He lost another [thunder charge] rune as the gambeson covering his right leg was singed. It wasn't his only rune on the leg, but controlling his movements without the full network of carefully laid runes would be difficult.

He didn't have much time. This battle had gone on far too long. His control sigils didn't have much charge left in them. Without the pre-charged control sigils, he couldn't activate the runes on his armor or glaive. His own mana would burn out in under a minute if he was forced to rely on it in a fight like this.

And Alara? She'd already released the ice troll.

Luke's eyes locked on her as he pushed as much precious mana from his control-sigils into his remaining runes. The head-apprentice was pale, sweating, nearing her limit. She had a will of iron and enough magic-control to withstand the mad amounts of ambient mana she was harnessing, but she'd burn out soon.

They were both reaching their limits for completely opposite reasons.

Unfortunately, if she wasn't controlling the troll...

Ice sigils appeared in front of Luke, along with fire sigils, now two instead of one at a time.

Luke cut through them as best he could, but multiple fire bolts and ice spears just narrowly collided with him.

As he charged, a fire sigil appeared in front of his face. It was too close for him to slash it apart with his lightning-charged glaive. He flared his straining mana, and a small shield of abjuration magic appeared around his rune-glowing gauntlet. With a heavy exhale, he punched the fire sigil apart with his shield-covered fist.

He reached his island's edge. He just had to jump and reach Alara, and then he'd finally have a chance.

An ice spear slammed into his arm. His left pauldron and rerebrace shattered off of him, along with a number of his control sigils being sheered to uselessness as his flesh was cut asunder.

He felt the frost magic of the bolt seep into his wound and slow his already limited pool of mana. Saints, he really hated frost magic of all things.

With his run slumping momentarily, and with a shout of pain, Luke launched his right glove forward towards Alara. A rune flared to life on the palm of his brown glove.

He locked eyes with Alara as she slammed her ice staff on the ground.

A bolt of raw lightning shattered into the huge circlet of ice that near-instantly formed in front of the enchantress. The young woman was sent hurtling backwards as chunks of her own hastily-conjured shield slammed into her.

Luke just barely righted himself and felt his muscles spasm as he used his damaged rune network as best he could to continue to enhance his strength and speed. Alara couldn't move or recover herself in physical space nearly as fast as he could; by the time she was regaining herself, he was already airborne.

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Alara panted on her hands and knees; her face trickled blood from the splintered shards of her ice shield. Her brown stave had fallen multiple feet away. One of her braids was singed and half-undone from just the peripheral fury of Luke's lightning bolt.

She grabbed weakly for her fire stave, which was still close enough to her hand.

Luke was already closing the gap between them. She'd miscalculated by using the elemental constructs. Generally, they gave her flexibility and allowed her to essentially simulate casting multiple spells at once through them, but Luke had been too prepared to counter them. She'd been foolish and arrogant—of course he'd been prepared; all that man ever did was prepare just so he could hang onto his time at the Towers like a parasite.

Her mana-circuits were all but burned out, widened, and stretched by being filled with more energy than they could naturally handle. She wouldn't be able to cast magic with her own internal reserves now; her circuits wouldn't be able to function with what she could produce alone. Mana flowed like blood through a mage's circuits; if the circuits were too stretched and the mana was not able to fill them, then the flow of it became incoherent and sluggish.

Luke would reach her in moments. She didn't have time to grab her ice stave.

The absorption sigils flared to life around her wrists. Power flowed into her, but not nearly as much as before; there was only so much ambient mana in any one place. It was enough, though. It had to be enough.

Alara lifted her staff. A single sigil flared to life on it.

Her enemy had to close the distance between them to work in his element. It limited his avenues of approach and made them predictable. She also knew that he couldn't have much mana left—it was his greatest weakness.

Her magic flowed up her staff and into the sigil before it. The magical switches built into the magical circle split the power she was flinging into it. Multiple fireballs erupted from the sigil and swarmed violently. The fireballs split off and came at Luke from conflicting angles.

Alara pushed herself to her feet. Her body was shaking from the hum of overtaxed mana circuits. She had no idea how Luke kept himself constantly charged with mana; once she had thought his endurance attribute had be truly impressive, but not anymore. The blonde mage's body was frail and easily damaged, leading him to favor agility and evasion, and yet he seemed supremely talented when it came to conducting mana within himself. However he did it, that at least was not stolen from her.

Luke evaded three of the four of her fireballs; the fourth one exploded next to his foot and ripped his chestplate from his body.

She was panting. She didn't know if she could cast another spell. She'd drained nearly all of the ambient mana from the surrounding air, and as the last of it flickered in her mana circuits, she felt her body growing sluggish.

Luke stood up. His chest and legs were bare and bloody now, with only his pants and bits and pieces of his armor covering his body in a patchwork.

Her eyes grew wide as he approached. Scars and blackened veins covered every inch of him—no, not veins, but scarred mana circuits. She could now see the sigils he'd refused to let her study to prove he hadn't stolen from her; she'd only ever sensed them drawing in mana, slowly and inefficiently from the air around him, but never truly seen them. They were burned into his flesh with what looked like the touch of incredibly precise lightning magic. Her mind reeled; the sigils weren't derived from her family's at all. He'd told her the truth.

"You... you weren't lying," she said to him, her voice a proud whimper.

Luke limped towards her. She couldn't raise her staff any higher. Her arm twitched with the stave only half raised.

"I didn't," Luke said with pain in his voice, his body both burnt and covered in permafrost patches. "I don't."

"You didn't steal my family's technique or copy it?" Alara asked, but it was really more of a statement.

"No, but now you've given it to me," Luke said.

Alara felt anger rise up in her chest. Anger at herself, anger at the stubborn man in front of her. The anger helped her to raise her staff a bit more.

"Yield. I retract my request for you to leave the Towers if you do," she said.

Luke readied his glaive and appeared mournful. "If you had this chance, would you?"

She frowned. No. No, she wouldn't.

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"These two are monsters," Kara said. "Apprentices should not be able to fight like that, right?"

"No," Garron said.

"But they're not fighting like that; only she is," I said. "He's just playing her weaknesses and his strengths."

Luke reminded me of what my mother had always taught me. You didn't have to be stronger than an enemy; you just had to fight them in a way that kept them from using their strength.

Kara looked at me questioningly. "Yeah, I guess he is."

"He's amazing," I said. "The way he has so much magic in his armor. The way he moves, always stays calm."

"I would love to know how his armor functions," Garron said. "I have never seen anything like it sold on the open market."

"Are they talking?" Kara asked as Luke approached Alara. "I wonder what they're saying. They both look like they can barely stand, even from here."

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"Ready yourself," Luke said to Alara, not being able to bring himself to charge her without warning.

"Just yield," she said and raised her stave at his chest. "Yield, Luke. You don't need my family's sigil-craft. You have your own. I was wrong."

"They work differently, Alara," Luke said. "I never would have stolen it from you, but you called for this duel. I tried to refuse, but you had your family pressure the faculty."

He saw Alara wince. "You... you didn't have a place here if you were a thief."

Luke took a step forward. "Your magic destroys things. You have more mana than I probably ever will. But I create things, Alara. Because I have to. I make do. I always have."

Alara narrowed her eyes. "I don't want to…” her voice cracked, and her pride wouldn’t let her say what she actually feared, “yield, Luke. You don't want my family as enemies; you think they will just let you have our secret?"

Luke saw the fear in her eyes. They were both undefeated in the arena. Neither had ever had to make use of the resurrection arrays. This would be her first death.

"You wouldn't risk losing face by going back on your word," Luke said. "And you've already been against me. Yield, Alara.” He took a step forward and gripped his glaive almost regretfully. “I will give you the chance to yield."

Alara's body shook. "I can't. They would punish me."

Luke frowned. "Then ready yourself," he said again.

He charged forward. A final sigil flashed in front of Alara's stave. A hurricane of fire erupted around her body. Luke entered the blaze.

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"Saints. I didn't think she had that much power left in her," Kara said. "That fire is intense. Her sigils are designed for pure, raw potency. That's harder to do than people think, there’s a lot of balancing beyond just having the mana to fuel it.”

"It may burn him through," Garron said.

"Who wins if it does?" I ask. "Her, right?"

"There is no point system here," Garron replied. "It is to the death."

"Brutal," Kara said, with a shiver in her voice.

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Alara saw Luke's shadow in the flames. By all rights, the raw power of her flame wall should have eaten him alive.

It didn't. His skin and hair were burned when he broke through, but not nearly as much as they should've been. As she felt the pain and Luke's glaive rip through her, she saw why. A now-exposed necklace with a single glowing and rune-carved stone shone with abjuration magic around her opponent's neck.

Her own flames dissipated around her as Luke and she fell through them. Her robes and hair were singed, her skin blistered by her own spell—but not nearly as bad as even Luke was, despite his shield necklace.

Luke pinned her body to the ground with his glaive. His entire face and upper body were blackened and burned, where his flesh should've been completely melted off. He leaned heavily against his glaive, his muscles spasming oddly and his form slumping.

Alara coughed in agony, feeling the blood fill her airway. Her mind panicked, and her body twitched. She was warm and cold at the same time. Confused tears filled her eyes.

Her hand reached out for Luke.

Luke fell to one knee beside her.

He took her hand. She saw the emotions on his destroyed, once handsome face. Pity, regret, and some fear of his own.

The tears covered her only slightly singed cheeks. The saltwater burned her face. Dying hurt.

She'd done this to so many other apprentices, claimed their lives as just another victory. She'd never even held their hands.

But Luke was holding hers.

Her eyes blurred, and his face faded from her awareness. She soon saw nothing at all.

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Luke watched as Alara passed. He tried to stand to remove the glaive from her body, but he couldn't get off of his knees.

Everything hurt. Everything was hot. His bones were hot. He couldn't move.

So, that's how it is, he thought to himself with some melancholy humor.

Luke slumped to the ground only moments after Alara, still holding her hand as he died with her.

The resurrection arrays flared to life around the arena.