A knock at the door.

Camilla's consciousness filtered up out of her trance.

The door opened. "Ms D'Angelo? It's time to go."

Camilla took one last, smooth breath, then unfolded herself from her cross-legged pose.

The grey-haired tournament aide stood near the door in their uniform.

Camilla nodded to her and followed her out into the undercroft and up to the arena's entry tunnel. She hadn't asked for a Pre-Match Advisor this time, instead opting to meditate, package up all her worries, emotions, bothers, her sense of self, into a little ball in the very back corner of her mind. Her father, the Necromancy, stealing from Professor Muesli, the killer, the Ritual Magic, midterms, Jacob and Tanaka, the failed Divination, Grace, the gala, becoming a Ranger, surpassing her father, cleaning up her dorm room in case Jacob dropped by again. Stripping them away one by one until it was just her and her immediate surroundings. All things that could be dealt with later.

Right now was Ishaan and nothing else.

Her footsteps echoed down the long, empty corridors as she followed the aide. From above came the thud and grumble of the crowd. They reached the daylight portal that was the tunnel into the arena. A faint breeze trickled down and across Camilla's face.

She had a flicker-thought of gratitude to her father, remembering the times he had sat down with her when she had been in elementary school and had taught her that meditative technique. The countless times after that they had meditated together. Through that keyhole thought she could sense him, his presence, her surging need to be better than him like a tidal wave behind a makeshift dam and-

She crushed it, and focused on the pattern of concrete in the wall next to her.

"...From Vancouver, Canada. She's got firepower like you've never seen. Ladies and gentlemen, Camilla D'Angelo!"

Camilla strode out into the arena. The cheering and the sight of the crowd in her periphery washed over her like rain on rocks.

"From right here in Chicago, Illinois, coming off an electric upset last weekend. It's the hometown hero, Ishaan Stone!"

Ishaan Stone walked out into the arena. Physically, he was unassuming. A slight build and average height. But his eyes bored into Camilla from across the arena with an intensity beyond his years.

"Contestants, get ready."

Ishaan shifted his stance ever so slightly.

"Start!"

Camilla engaged perception, then strength.

Ishaan did the same.

The crowd's cheering slowed to a muted roar. The faint breeze cruising through the arena to a gentle tickle across Camilla's skin.

They stood there facing each other, frozen in anticipation, daring each other to make the first move. To the crowd, the standoff lasted a few seconds. To Camilla, a dozen slow heartbeats. The fingers of Ishaan's right hand flexed, a hair slower than normal. His augmentation spells weren't as strong as hers, but were near enough to make the difference only an advantage up close.

Camilla lanced a standard forceward at Ishaan. Nothing special, but strong enough to force a reaction and open up a simple flowchart of options: If he blocked with magic, she'd cast again. If he dodged, she'd close the gap.

Ishaan leapt horizontally to his right. Smart. The forceward cruised past and destroyed itself against the powerful ward-wall surrounding the arena, sending a ripple along its surface.

Camilla took off towards the centre of the arena. She angled at Ishaan so that if he cast with his dominant right hand he'd have to cast across his body or stop and turn to face her square on. She closed on him, moving in widdershins.

Ishaan skidded to a halt, threw both hands out, and cast two spells at once. From his left hand a translucent ward materialized. Its surface was darker, struts running through it. A reinforced ward. But it wasn't a bulky rectangle or quarter-dome like most of the wards students had cast so far. It rose to just above Ishaan's head and one side curved around Ishaan's outer left side like the edge of a shield. The other side stretched in front of the rest of his body, except for a square, hand-sized hole that Ishaan immediately stuck his right hand through.

He fired a forceward at Camilla.

Camilla leapt to one side, dodging the forceward and firing back with one of her own. It shattered against Ishaan's shield-ward harmlessly. A classic Spear-Shield technique. She'd read about this years ago and had seen Millicent practice it several times at the Vancouver Sanctuary. Tricky and technical to create the small hole in the ward surface, but a difficult combination to overcome at middle distances, allowing the caster to simultaneously attack and defend from distance without having to repeatedly recast defensive spells. She should have expected something like this from him.

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Ishaan shuffled deftly to the side, keeping himself face on with Camilla. Forcewards rifled out of his right hand as if shot from a machine gun. Camilla threw up her own reinforced ward. They shattered against it one after another.

Ishaan stopped shooting, instead opting to back away slowly, increasing the distance between them. But his hand still stuck through that little hole, ready to fire if Camilla dropped her ward.

While Ishaan's technique still let him move fairly well, Camilla knew its weakness was multidirectional defences, which she had a spell for. She'd been hoping to keep this hidden, but apart from pounding away at Ishaan with raw strength—which might get her DQ'd for lethal force—it was the only path to victory she could see.

She threw a boomerang shaped forceward out to each side. Isabella Schwarz had used them against Archie last round, and while at the time she'd said they weren't that impressive to Jacob, she'd copied and practiced the spell this week. The difference was, Camilla's were the size of a long desk, not a boomerang.

She threw another pair to each side after the first, on slightly different trajectories. They'd curl around and swoop in from the sides. Ishaan could dodge them, of course, but he'd have to move. Her throws weren't perfect, she'd only managed to get a rough accuracy down even with augmented perception, but Ishaan wouldn't know that.

Camilla dropped her ward and broke out towards Ishaan at a dead sprint. The boy ground his teeth, eyes flashing. The boomerangs curved out to the edges of the arena. One of them grazed the ward-wall and careened off course, crashing into the clay near the white boundary line. The other three reached the apex of their swooping arcs, then started their curl back in towards Ishaan.

Camilla's legs ate up the ground between them. She had a ward ready, her eyes locked to Ishaan's dominant hand poking through his ward-shield.

Ishaan dropped both spells.

Camilla blinked.

Ishaan thrust his hand out, a fervent glint in his eyes. A spell built up in him, surging through echelons of power faster than anything before.

Camilla had half a microsecond to react. She released the ward she had ready in impulse, pouring as much power as she could into it.

A jagged beam of raw energy roared out from Ishaan's outstretched hand and smashed into her ward. It left a streak of blindspots in her vision. The surface of her ward cracked like ice, the force of the impact driving her to one knee.

It held, barely

One of Camilla's boomerangs clipped Ishaan in the shoulder. He staggered to the side, the spell fizzing out like a shorted lightbulb. The other two boomerangs crashed to the clay harmlessly.

Camilla reacted instantly. She leapt up and pounded a forceward at Ishaan. It smacked him square on and sent him sprawling out of bounds.

As Camilla straightened, Vice-President Leslie landed in the arena near to Ishaan.

Camilla froze. Why had the VP leapt down?

"Ishaan!" VP Leslie's voice was harsher than usual. A concerned scowl deepened the frown lines already gouged in her face. "That was lethal force! What were you thinking?"

Ishaan pushed himself to a sitting position. He blinked at VP Leslie, then Camilla. "Oh. I think it was because I knew she was going to get me and I had only one chance to get her first. I must have lost control in my haste. I am sorry. I did not mean for that to happen."

VP Leslie looked between them. "Well, you're DQ'd even if you weren't defeated. Ms. D'Angelo, you win," she turned and gestured to the stands.

"Stone is out of bounds! D'Angelo wins!"

Camilla barely heard it. That fervent glitter in Ishaan's eyes. Was that what it looked like to lose control? It had only been for a second, but against another student it might have...

Had that really been lethal force? The spell hadn't broken her ward.

But how much power had she put into that ward? She felt around her stores for a moment.

A lot.

Camilla shivered. An image she'd never forget bubbled up to the surface of her mind: the rogue mage lancing that pillar of fire at Ola, burning her to a husk. His augmented fist ripping through Deputy Yang's abdomen, blood spurting everywhere. It was easy to forget those deadly displays of power after watching weeks of soft blasts and struggles to push people out of bounds.

Camilla looked down at her hand. The red paint on her nails was scuffed from the fight. If she punched someone when she was augmented and they weren't, she'd tear through them just like the rogue mage had torn through Deputy Yang. She could picture it in her head and it made her a little woozy. She'd known there was no threshold to lethal force, no line of power above which you could kill and below which you couldn't. Of course she had.

And yet to see it this close, this intimately, to have it happen to her, made her shudder. Ishaan had only lost control for an instant, a single spell casting, and yet if she'd been a second slower with that ward she might be a bloody corpse on the clay.

"Are you alright, Camilla?" VP Leslie was right beside her.

Camilla blinked. "Hmm?" She forced the fear, shock, confusion, whatever it was, at her sudden brush with death down and smiled innocently. "Just a little rattled from the fight."

VP Leslie narrowed her eyes, but nodded and gestured towards the tunnel. "Alright, off you go, then."

Camilla walked out of the arena and into the dark undercroft. All this time she'd been harping on Grace and the others for not taking this seriously, for treating it like a game. But she'd been just as bad. She, more than anyone else, should have known better.

This wasn't a game.

They were playing with fire, and she'd almost got burnt. She'd almost ended up like Ola and Jimmy.

Suddenly, she was terrified. She picked up her pace, running up to the stadium seating area. The undercroft was dark, cool, and lonely. She wanted to tell her father but he wasn't here and she wouldn't be able to call him for another week.

She almost burst out into the stadium seating area and ran over to where Jacob and Grace and Blake were sitting, not sure why she was running to them, just feeling that she needed to be near her friends.

She stopped herself halfway out of the tunnel. She sniffed and wiped her eyes and straightened her back and took deep breaths. Push it down. Push it all the way down. All those people were going to be watching her walk up to where the others were sitting. She couldn't show them weakness. Not like this. The daughter of Antonio D'Angelo couldn't cry, not after a tournament fight, no matter what had happened.