Mallory froze as enchantments flared, third gate abnegation spells swirling through the room and wiping out her spells as well as Malachi’s.

As the judge floated down, Malachi walked over and sent the strange gourd he’d used into his personal pocket space, and then nodded to her.

“That’s a right pain of a technique to deal with,” Malachi said. “Congrats on the win.”

Mallory glanced over at him, shifting awkwardly. It would be so much easier to do her duty for the Darkwatch if he weren’t such a thrice-cursed friendly person.

That, combined with the fact he’d left his mentor… She was starting to have some doubts about this entire thing.

About the Darkwatch mission.

About him being a risk for becoming a sociopath.

About if kicking down his growth was a good idea.

“You’ll have five minutes to rest and recover, as well as talk to your witnesses,” the rumple suited proctor said, and Mallory nodded. As Malachi turned to my motley crew, his tiny spirit darting over to give him a tiny hug, she turned to her brother, Larius.

“What do you think?” she asked Larius.

“Hmm,” her brother said. “I think he realized the trick of Lupine Rage. You should use it again, but don’t rely on it. If you can get it to a strong enough state again, then you’ll win. But be prepared to drop it if you have to. How’s your mana looking? How are your injuries?”

“They’re fine. My mana’s about three quarters full, so…” as she spoke, she sketched Minor Recovery, cleansing her wounds without needing to use her healing potion. Her constitution as a werewolf would stop her from getting sick, so she didn’t waste the time or mana sketching Cleanse Wounds out.

“I got an okay sense for his mana,” Larius said, his hand dancing out in a seemingly random pattern.

She knew better. Larius, like her siblings and mother, was a human, but he was excellent with his creation mana, and had somehow gotten a knack for using it to spy on people. She wasn’t sure how exactly, but she’d take what she could get.

A bit of guilt did bloom in her stomach for spying on him during his between-rounds preparation, but she shook it off.

After all, Malachi could do the same with his vampiric senses spell, either he or his mentor could have made a sensory enhancement potion for his witnesses, or he could have picked up some sort of magical item to do it, or any of a thousand other ways.

And anyways, spying on your competition was a longstanding tradition in dueling.

“His second gate life, temporal, and death mana are all severely underdeveloped, but he’s definitely going to have Burn Future in his back pocket. He’s also restoring his mana now, and they’re discussing how his full-gate spell has improved his body.”

“How?” she asked.

“From what I can tell, it’s a generalist body. Decent at everything, not amazing at anything. They’re being a bit too vague for me to be sure, though,” Larius said. “But let’s focus on your strategy. He’s going to go in physically, probably.”

“That’s fine,” Mallory said. “I can match him there, even if he has a generalist spell. He’s using a staff, and I can enforce myself with my Nascent Truth. And once I get my spells up and running, he won’t be able to match me.”

“Just make sure you don’t get beat up too bad if you lose,” Larius said, his voice dead serious. “The last thing I want to do is explain why you’ve got a broken back to Mother and Father, after I’ve gone through all the effort to keep them from finding out. You owe me.”

“I know,” Mallory said. “For now, though…”

“Alright, time’s up,” the judge said after a few more moments of discussion. She used a spell that pulled her and Malachi both to a central position on the mat, then flew up into the air, pulling in the witnesses with her. As she formed the box of force around them again, she tensed.

“Fight,” the judge said, and this time both she and Malachi were ready.

But Malachi was apparently more ready than her.

Malachi immediately hit her with an overcharged, three-layer Fungal Lock. As she spun her mana, connecting it and preparing for her spells, he launched six shards of bone right at her, mixing in his whip-briars as well.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Malachi was going for her with everything he had, and she would take some serious damage if they all connected.

But she hadn’t been idle. Her mana exploded around her, flooding the growth item that was her suit. It dissolved into strips, revealing the combat bodysuit she wore underneath, and the strips flicked out to block the whips and bones, then swirled back around her. It took a lot of mana, but his trick had burnt through plenty of his own as well.

Malachi was charging in now, his fist pumping out in a decent punch.

But she’d been training in martial arts ever since her father had discovered that she’d been the only one to inherit the legacy of the Emsley clan.

She ducked to the side, and had to admit that if her brother hadn’t given her warning about Malachi’s enhanced strength, then it would have definitely caught her off guard.

She forged her claws and slashed at him, but he leaned into the slice and got in close, his fist going for her stomach.

Where her suit took the blow easily. She dropped to a crouch and swept her feet out, trying to knock Malachi off his feet.

Then her feet passed through an illusion, and he was gone. She shifted back up to standing, and saw him on the other side of the room, thrusting his staff into the air.

He was using his Temporal Basin spell already?

Probably trying to overwhelm her with raw power, then.

Temporal mana began to explode out of the staff like a waterfall… Gushing water?

That had sounded cooler in her head.

She leapt at him, but he was gone, leaving behind a flickering afterimage.

She spun and swiped at her side, where she’d caught him out of the corner of her eye, but he’d only been there for a moment, just long enough to drop an illusion and – Ack!

Her train of thought was cut off as spells slammed into her back – more of his bones and briars.

Her suit caught most of the damage, and she flooded it with extra mana to help it stay steady and deflect the attacks.

Then he was in her face again, that moss he’d conjured before growing out of his staff slashing out.

As she took the blow on her suit, he was gone again, slashing out with more moss from a different direction.

Mallory let out a growl as she flooded herself with Least Regeneration. The inefficient magic burned, but it was more efficient to use it on her own werewolf body than…

Werewolf body.

She tapped her legacy, and felt a chunk of her mana drain away as she twisted and reshaped, turning into a large, black furred wolf.

Malachi’s staff passed over her head, doing nothing, and she barreled at his legs, where she passed through another illusion.

She shut her eyes.

It wasn’t that her vision was worse in wolf form – quite the opposite, actually. It was just as good as when she was a human, better in a few ways, and worse in a few others. Red colorblindness got traded for better low-light vision and distinction of prey movements from the background.

No, the reason she shut her eyes was simpler. There were so many flickering images of Malachi around the room that it wasn’t worth the mental image to try and determine if the flickering instability was him appearing, disappearing, or just an illusion.

His scent ran through the entire room, so she empowered her Werewolf’s Senses spell, further heightening her already sharp senses, and…

The moment he appeared close enough, she threw herself into him, crashing into his legs as peppered her with more of his bone shards.

He tumbled backwards, and she leapt up, snapping her strong jaws at him, but his suit caught her teeth and he was rolling, those whips slapping her and draining more of her mana from her regeneration spell.

He grabbed her axillary, like she was a puppy he was lifting up, and shoved her off with more strength than he should have had.

Mallory didn’t know if it was panic-strength, his body, or both, but she didn’t have time to think about it. The moment she was off of him, he’d teleported away again.

She was getting really tired of that, and it didn’t even make sense. With how underdeveloped his second gate was supposed to be, she figured he’d only be able to squeeze in two or three teleports.

Instead, he was teleporting around like it was free.

She expelled her mana out in a cloud around her, and the moment he appeared near her again, she shoved it into him with her mana senses. It was a crude and ineffective way to check someone’s power, but in the middle of battle, it would do.

His mana roiled, fighting back at her power, and he got away in a chain of quick teleports, caught off guard by her investigation.

She was still processing, and he used the moment to catch her in his mushroom spell again and pelting her with the bones.

She felt the bones spin along her back, cutting long gashes and let out a howl of pain, burning more mana to try and stop them from being counted as an injury worth declaring her out for.

While she did, she worked through what she’d learned.

His temporal mana was still almost completely full, which made sense. He’d overflowed it a bunch early on in the fight.

But his spatial… When he’d teleported, it had drained both space and time. That was weird, but not absurd. Combining mana types for a technique was standard even in human magic.

But what was weirder was that when he’d teleported away, he’d reclaimed a bit of the power with each teleport.

For some reason, the only analogy she could come up with was a credit account. Spend mana, get points back to use on your purchases!

The bloodloss might be starting to wrack up.

She let out a howl again as bones rained down and struck her back, and she heard the judge call out, “End match!”

The force tether linked to her pulled her over to Larius, who frowned and removed two potions from his jacket, waiting for her to turn back before he handed them to her.

She took the neon-green one first, and felt the scabs that her weak regeneration spell had left fade away as the powerful potion flooded her.

It was only second gate, true. It couldn’t fix anything worse than scrapes, sprains, and maybe a very mild concussion.

But it was filled with so much second gate energy that it healed all of those quite effectively.

She tipped back the mana restoration potion next. Weaker, but it should create a more persistent regeneration effect to bring her back to full over the five minutes. She was running dangerously close to mana-toxin with the pair of powerful potions…

“It’s one to one now,” Larius said. “You need to win one more round. It’s time for your trump cards.”