“It’s one to one, now,” Ed said.

“Hold on,” I said. “I think that she’s listening to us somehow. Maybe using her Werewolf Senses? She was prepared for the strategy of blitz attacking her and going in physically, and wasn’t thrown off by my enhanced body.”

“Why don’t you find out how, and I’ll take care of it?” Meadow suggested. I closed my eyes and sent my mana senses spiraling outward.

It took me precious time, but I eventually noticed the small orb of mana floating over our heads. When I pointed it out to Meadow, she removed a small seed from her pocket and used it to pop the sensor.

The sensor was strange – it seemed to be made of creation mana, but it had a network of knowledge mana running through it. Not like a blended spell, but rather like rebar being used to reinforce concrete.

I’d already had to spend valuable time tracking down the sensor, though, so I didn’t want to waste more of it.

“Well, she’s probably going to open with her ice spells,” I said. “That’s the thing she hasn’t been using much. Her Binding Ice spell in particular will be tricky. She can use that to ice over a large area, trapping anything that touches the ground other than her. I think that’s the lure I should use, then escape by teleporting out of the area. She’ll have it calibrated for the standard teleport range.”

While they took in what I said, I took out my second gate healing potion and drank it. I wasn’t too hurt, actually, but there was no reason to not heal up the bruises and scrapes I had. Besides, the excess power was broken down and used to refuel the Magister’s Body, which would help. I wouldn’t make any real improvements from this one short fight, sure, but I could at least restore my energy before going in.

Besides, using so many Foxsteps was essentially the same as quickly walking to each of those places. I hadn’t gone an absurd distance, but it had still winded me a little.

Dusk let out a complex whistle, pointing out that it was a fine counter, but it wasn’t going to win me the fight either.

“Right,” Liz said. “She may also try the black aura trick again. You didn’t give her the time to get it up and running last round, but you can’t guarantee that’s going to happen again. Especially withou–”

“Time’s up!” the proctor said, snapping her fingers. I was pulled back into position to face Mallory, and they all floated back up to the box again.

Mallory’s brother glanced at Meadow and raised an eyebrow, and she just smiled at him. Ed was leaning forwards, watching, and Liz was tapping her foot anxiously.

I let my senses run through my mana-garden, connecting to the spells I needed, and to my staff.

“Begin!” the proctor said, and we both exploded into action. Mallory swept her hands up and ice rushed over the area around us.

I wasn’t some perfect mathematician, but my spatial sense had given me a better feel for distances than I’d once had, and it felt like she’d built the ice rink to be exactly thirty feet away from me.

Ice began to crawl up my legs, slowly encasing me, and I tapped into Foxstep and teleported all the way to the far side of the gymnasium-like space. It was harder than a normal Foxstep was, since I had to overcome the binding ice around my legs.

Mallory paused for a second, thrown off by me teleporting out of her range, before she dropped the frost spell and started layering her wolf spells once again.

Bones of the Wolf, Wolfen Aspect, and that black rage aura all flowed around her. Instead of claws, though, she began to call on ice.

I wasn’t exactly idle in that time, though.

I set bones spinning around me in a hexagon, then joined Briarthreads to them. As soon as her black aura appeared, I hit her with several fungal locks, less concerned with inhibiting her movement than I was with draining energy from her.

All the while, I sketched with my spare right hand.

When Mallory thrust her hands out to release her Ice Dagger at me, I simply locked onto its location with Pinpoint Boneshard and struck, then waited with baited breath.

I should have the upper hand.

As a good rule of thumb, conjured spells were weaker than their equivilent spell that used real matter. There were exceptions, of course, but a standard Ice Dagger spell shouldn’t be one.

I also had ingrained my Pinpoint Boneshard spell for much longer than Mallory had ingrained her Ice Dagger, if she had at all.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

But Mallory had more raw mana to pack into the spell than I did.

On top of that, the ingrained effect of Ice Dagger made offensive ice spells stronger. She hadn’t had it ingrained when I’d last seen her garden, but she’d had two weeks and more money than I did to improve.

Conversely, the ingrained effect of Pinpoint Boneshard was utility – storing bone in my spirit.

The clash came, and as the spells wrestled for dominance, I completed my sketching, but didn’t cast, instead beginning to sketch another spell.

Then Mallory’s spell broke, losing out just barely.

The bone shard zipped back to my hand, then spun into orbit around me.

Mallory peppered me with more ice as she tried to cross the distance, and I met them with bone each time, teleporting away when she got too close, or when she froze over the area around her, and taking potshots whenever the opportunity presented itself. She, in return, froze me with her binding spell and forced me to teleport out.

Mallory dropped her black aura and her enhancement spells pretty quickly – I hadn’t injured her enough for the aura to be worth the tax of keeping it up, and I wasn’t letting her get into melee with me to use her physical enhancements.

She was running an endurance game now, and it was a perfect representation of the gap and style between us.

Spell for spell, bone shard for ice shard, I was better.

But she had more mana in the tank. She could keep firing her spells for far longer than I could.

On top of that, the fact that I wasn’t able to get the standard second gate death harvesting spell to increase my death mana’s regeneration, while she had Harvest Cold purring along, providing her mana?

I was squarely outmatched in an endurance match.

Up until that moment, the fact that my rush to master and ingrain spells had left my mana-garden’s walls undersized had been something I knew, but in a distant way, like hearing a relative you had only met a few times was sick.

Now, it was hammering me in the face.

Luckily, I had something I could do to flip the script. I’d sketched out Material Echo three times, and now…

I leapt into action, teleporting right into Mallory’s space and unleashing Briarthreads on her, then holding a copy of them with Material Echo as they moved.

I drained my Life and Temporal mana near dry as I encased her in layers of ripping, slashing vines, attempting to overwhelm her defenses. She was engaging her black aura and healing spell on overdrive, trying to turn the injury into power, and I was pressing for everything I had, trying to overwhelm her before my power ran out.

I brought my bone shards crashing down in her space, threw a Fungal Lock to drain her, and overcharged Briarthreads again.

There was a moment of silence and stillness, and I felt the physical mana anchor attached to me swirl ever so slightly. For a second, I thought that I’d won.

And then a shadowy claw punched through the weave of Material Echoes, and Mallory exploded through the briars.

She was a glowing spiral of power, and she must have either somehow sketched a higher gate healing spell in the chaos, or else rived it in that moment, because her wounds were healing far faster than the first gate spell alone could have managed.

I barely managed to eek out a Foxstep in time to avoid a swing of her claws, and then she was charging across the room at me.

I fired more bone shards at her, trying to move and keep the distance, but my mana was running low. Mallory wasn’t doing amazing herself – her black aura was slowly restoring her, but healing and stopping my attacks had done a number on her.

As I set my bones and briars defensively, I pulled out my next and final trick.

I sketched Burn Future.

I was getting overly reliant on the skill, and I was cognitively aware of that. But in this moment, I needed the power.

Mallory was on me, right as my spell completed. Mana surged into me, and I stopped her strike with an overpowered Briarthreads and application of Fungal Lock.

Mana and physical power surged through my veins, and I stopped Mallory’s strike with one hand, then shoved her back.

Her eyes widened in shock and she stumbled for a moment, and I pressed that advantage, empowering my Pinpoint Boneshard to rain down on her.

For a moment, the world went still. Her suit blocked most of the shards, but one bounced back up, and I sent it firing back at her.

Mallory leapt to the side, turning into a wolf for speed and to throw off the aim of my spell, then returned herself to human form in the next instant. Her black aura pulsed and mana filled the air as she released an absurd storm of Ice Daggers.

I met them with Briarthreads and Pinpoint Boneshard.

Mallory wove through the battlefield with alacrity, her claws slashing apart anything that got too close as she met power with power.

I moved too, meeting her claws with extra briars, teleporting out of the way, and leaving illusions to hide my true spells and location.

Even with her fearsome black aura, though, this barrage took a lot out of her. Her power was slowly but surely dropping, and I’d win.

I didn’t know how long we stayed like that. I was only broken out of it because Dusk sent an urgent call in my mind, begging me to shut off Burn Future, and my mind snapped back into place.

I’d win, but I was overdrawing. I wasn’t at the point of collapse yet, but I was absolutely going to burden my mana more than I should. Especially since I was supposed to let it rest after the fight.

I took the last dregs of power I could from Burn Future, then shut it off.

I teleported to the far side of the room, just to buy myself a second to breathe and think.

I had a bit of temporal mana, and a bit of life mana left – maybe a few good spells, but Mallory wasn’t looking so great herself. Even under the influence of her absurd aura, the damage was wracking up, and her suit was shredded. It wouldn’t be of more help to her.

I quickly sketched out a Material Echo, while Mallory pulsed her healing spell with some of her remaining mana, and then we both dove together again.

Briarthreads met werewolf enhanced flesh as we danced a final step, and the world seemed to slow down again.

My spell had knocked her claws askew, and opened her guard. If I echoed them to keep her hands out of the way, I could strike with the last power of Briarthreads.

The small problem with that plan was that her claws had been kocked to my eye level. Even copying the briars, all she would need to do to take out my eye – and possibly worse – was to lean forwards.

If I went for the attack now, I’d be relying on Mallory to do the right thing. To not take the most brutal path.

Or… I could use the second I’d bought to step back out of danger. My mana was almost out. So was hers. It would be a risk, but I might still win…