Craterous, uneven and garish to look at, the once-manicured parkland surrounding Clive’s café was the scene of a pitched battle. Burst of amber light arrived too late to catch the azure blur they chased, punching more pockmarks into the dirt. There were lulls in the chaos which allowed the dust to settle upon the battlefield before being whipped into a flurry by the simple force of movement by the pair of fighters alone. There were still monsters in the area, but none who were foolish enough to approach the devastation being wrought upon the centre of the dungeon.
For a time, I had been optimistic that Naea would hold back, but if she was I shuddered to think what her true power was. It was a good humbling, certainly. I had wondered whether luck kept the other monsters away but I now expected she had a more overt hand in the quiet we had experienced while training. As for currently, what we were doing couldn’t be called training by anyone sane.
No, this was a deathmatch with an escape condition.
Get to the treeline. My objective was simple and I didn’t think for a moment Naea would forget her trial was set around that marker. I just had to get there. Except to do so, I essentially needed to dodge the wind. So fast was Naea’s attack that I had been able to notice her intentional deceleration in the moments of impact so she didn’t just tear through me. Just how high was her still-hidden level?
I intuited the incoming blow more than I experienced any sensation which told me to block. My hands came together and I pressed mana into them, the precursor step to creating a Mana Bolt. Instead of letting the energy become volatile outside of my body, I stayed in my hands and strengthened them. The process was similar to Sprint but as it wasn’t a skill, it was much less potent. Whereas using Sprint did something clever with the mana and turned it into pure speed, the energy in my palms wasn’t programmed for anything specific.
It was enough, though, for me to meet Naea’s tackle head-on for the first time. We had been slowly picking up intensity for fifteen minutes, and this was my first real block. I saw an expression of shock on her face before she disappeared behind her invisibility. I lashed out, though of course she had already moved. There was a moment of pure silence as I held my breath and the power in my hands tense.
Huffing out the air and gasping, I couldn’t help but laugh. This kind of combat was genuinely exhilarating. In a moment of clarity, I understood adrenaline junkies and pitied them at the same time. Their whole lives chasing a feeling which couldn’t be comparable to this one, pirouetting on the knife edge of danger like a world-famous ballet dancer. A girlish giggle echoed all around me, directionless.
“How’d you know?” Naea’s voice asked upon the wind.
“Neat trick.” I cast my vision around in vain for the invisible source of the words. “If I told you that you were starting to sweat and I could smell it, what would you say?” I threw myself straight down to the ground even before I finished talking, letting my knees bend and my back crash into the uneven floor. The faintest glitter on the air told me she was right above me, and I let myself slip into the crater on my left as Naea made a new one in the ground.
“I. Do. Not. Smell.” Each of Naea’s words were punctuated with another heavy slam into the ground as I did my best to roll out of the way. The final blow merely glanced my arm and I felt something break and my fingers go slack. I snarled, baring my teeth at the pain and anger I felt. Even with my Recovery, that was a serious injury.
“What happened to your promise?” I asked as I was tossed into the air by Naea’s furious assault. “Weren’t we not going to hurt each other?” A quick flash of my health and mana pools told a sad story. Less than twenty in each. I didn’t overthink it. I began to bound backwards away from the attack of the angry fairy, burning Sprint for as much speed as possible.
“This doesn’t count as hurting.”
The words stunned me, and the next attack landed unabated whatsoever. She couldn’t have known. Yet, Naea’s words were spoken with such a venom, her voice dropping an octave or two to sound just like-
I smashed into the hard floor and my thoughts were scattered from me like marbles from a split sack. Belying the force within, a tiny fist smashed into my side and sent me soaring into the air without control. Flipping end over end, all I could do was brace myself for the impact as I landed. I checked my health pointlessly. I had to be nearly empty.
Health
18/55
0.8 per minute
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Wait… what? I was so surprised to be in the double digits that I relaxed a little, and the collision with the impending ground only became more brutal. Yet, it was like the pain happened to someone else. The System Window said my health wasn’t going down, despite the damage I was taking. Was the System broken?
Naea laughed as she once again rocketed into my position, barely vacated before she landed. “All this because I made a joke?” I asked aloud while looking at my health and mana totals once more. Activating a full Heavy Blow, I watched Naea with one eye and the immobile counter with the other. Naea rose from her blast site, and my mana total didn’t drop at all.
Interesting.
As Naea shot towards me in another show of blistering pace, I threw caution to the wind. With abandon, I aimed a hopeful fist at the oncoming fairy but I wasn’t surprised when the attack landed. She wasn’t trying to dodge. Naea already knew the rules, after all. It was only me who needed to catch up. We were both blown away by the crash, and even as my arm ruptured into tatters at my side, the pain was distant and my health remained as it was. In fact, it even ticked up to nineteen.
“None of this is real, is it?” I was in disbelief at my realisation but it made sense. I was the only answer which did. Even as I tried to understand when the illusion had started, Naea didn’t stop. There was a maniacal persistence to her assault which didn’t make sense. I could see, now that I was trying to look, she had a look of cruel anger on his face which didn’t match the moment or her personality.
It did however match the other times in my life I had been bullied. Dark, uncertain times when I had been sure that I would remain powerless for the rest of my life, the trauma encouraged by my fraternal tormentors. Naea’s face was a strange replica of Luke, my eldest brother, and the sneer he maintained while being vicious. The unceasing anger, bordering on revulsion, which came from Liam. As more familiarity struck me, my own repugnance rose up.
Whatever the fairy was doing, it went too far.
Molten and raw, mana began to roil inside of me. The illusionary Naea attacked me but I expelled the steaming hot mana like a furnace and the waves of power were too much to punch through. Uncontrolled and unrefined, the mana belched from every pore as a pure repelling force. Once I realised I didn’t need to hold back at all, I found myself much more capable, unsurprisingly. No wonder Naea had been running rings around me. She wasn’t even real. This was a strange illusion, but now I had spotted its signs the mirage was obvious.
Still, though, there was hate and rage in her eyes. Anger which said “you’re not better than me because you can do maths quicker,” or “your hair is like that because you killed our mom on the way out.” While I could read the expression, it wasn’t supposed to be on her face. That was what broke the illusion. The irony of my self-loathing being my path to survival was not lost on me, but I began flexing against the bounds of the illusion all the same.
They were fuel. For nearly two decades until my eighteenth birthday, my family had been the fire which burned my feet if I stood still too long. From my first week of schooling when the teachers had suggested that I was smarter than the other children, it had been a challenge to connect. Immediately placed in fast-track programmes with pressure from above to do well and pressure from my siblings to fail, I became a being of drive and solitude. Quietly, I gathered knowledge and qualifications until the scholarship came which let me leave the family home for good. The good house Kaeron had never been much of a home to me.
Yet now, seeing that expression which had tormented me in youth, I felt ashamed. Not for being bullied and not because I forgave Liam and Luke for being bastards but because none of that mattered now. They would be out there, facing this horrific world and every second I wasn’t there I couldn’t help them. Every minute I was trapped in this dungeon was another where I was useless to anyone who needed me. The barrier in front of me was a strange one, but it was stopping me from going forward.
Not a moment more.
I turned the engine inside of myself into overdrive. In a glimpse, I saw the fake Naea smiling at me. I registered that the hate had gone from her face, and she seemed genuinely excited. I didn’t care. The furnace I had become melted under the heat and pressure I expelled and my flesh gave way to the magic. Without form, I was left with just the container which tried to hold me. Now it was my turn to rage.
With a million fists made of magical force I beat on the illusory cage. It buckled but I didn’t relent. I couldn’t see my System windows but I could feel my mana being truly devoured by the task I put it to. Naea’s illusion was solid, a vice grip on my mind which I couldn’t slip through. I didn’t stop fighting. The realisation that I would never stop fighting was its own fuel, gathering next to the desire for peace and the need to protect.
“I will never stop.”
The words reverberated inside the unyielding bubble and I felt them touch my core. A dragon’s growl, full of pride, rippled throughout the space and I could feel the illusion tear itself to shreds under that power. It wasn’t mine yet, but I had been granted a taste because we aligned. Dragons were meant to be greedy. That was just fine with me.
I was going to be greedy. I didn’t want to lose anything ever again. So I wouldn’t. I would chase strength, clutch the possibilities the System gave me and make my own if I had to. Any barrier in my way would crumble under the never-ending pressure of my desires. The tension inside the phantasmal cage built, encouraged by the ferocity of emotion I brought to bear against it and the mana I used to carry my intent.
With a gasp, I opened my eyes.
Skill Unlocked - Mental Fortress (Uncommon)
No being may have power over another when the latter controls their own mind.