Jean-Claude Castallane

Jean was nervous. Besides class, he hadn’t seen much of Gio at all for three weeks, the silver-haired boy having had flimsy excuses for why he couldn’t make their weekly sparring sessions.

Jean didn’t begrudge Gio the space, as he understood that Roddy had said some really hurtful things, and Jean hadn’t had much of a chance to defend him before Celeste jumped in.

So when Gio, manic and excited, challenged Jean to a duel, he was nervous.

I hope… this isn’t some way of him trying to prove himself or- you know what? I don’t want to put words in his mouth. Let him process things his way. If I get the chance, I’ll clear the air.

Jean spent a lot of time in the House of Torches and had noted Gio using the mirror room frequently over the past three weeks. He wished that he was on speaking terms with Chandrika or Celeste so he could ask someone if Gio was okay, but every time they saw him, they glared at him and walked off.

I can’t help but feel like this whole thing would be resolved if someone would just talk to me! Why do I always get dragged into these unfavorable narratives… you know what? I am definitely having words with Gio after the spar.

Jean took his place at one side of the arena. There was a small crowd of onlookers hanging out in the stands, or waiting for refreshments. Jean focused himself as he felt the familiar hum of the safety enchantments wash over him. He looked over at Gio, some of the mania of the last time Jean had seen him still present on his face, but the boy looked mostly… excited.

I’m not going easy on him. He deserves better than that.

“Ready… Start!” Proclaimed the referee.

Jean flew up into the air on wings of sparkling starlight, activating [Astral Deva Form] to a crowd of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’.

The Castallane family's signature magic had become part of Jean, already this far into his first semester. He looked to Gio, who looked to be under the effects of some sort of novel enchantment. The silver-haired boy’s eyes were glowing with some sort of swirling silver and violet halo.

Gio is more of a defensive mage. If I give him a chance to establish his defenses, this might become a battle of attrition.

“[Starlight Spear]” Jean said, summoning a blazing shaft of light mana. His family’s companion magic to [Astral Deva Form] had some powerful synergies with the embodiment magic. Lining himself up, he shot forth his spear, readying himself for the inevitable reflection.

The light spear whizzed through the air, creating a screeching noise as it sped toward Gio.

Gio braced himself, summoning the magic he had become known for. Once the spear impacted, Gio shouted, and a wave of grey sparks flew out of the mirror.

“[Shattered Reflections]!” Gio shouted.

Jean gaped and braced himself as easily twenty-something copies of his spear were shot back, no less fast than the original copy. A field of shouts erupted from the audience.

Unable to dodge all of them, Jean was forced to take a few hits, parrying several others, while the bulk of the shots went wide.

What is going on?! That’s got to be a new spell or something!

Adapting quickly, Jean surveyed his opponent, and it became clear that Gio’s new power didn’t come for free. Already, the boy was breathing hard but was otherwise unharmed. Jean, on the other hand, was bleeding in several places. But, the match had just started. Jean prepared to switch his strategy.

“[Angelfire]” Jean spoke, Summoning a helix of white and yellow flames from above.

Gio received the attack, shocking Jean when he summoned multiple split panes of reflection, splitting the returned fire into a shower of flames.

Jean had to dive low to avoid being roasted by his own flames, taking damage from the dive through the flames anyway.

It works with continuous attacks too? What even is this magic?!

Jean prepared himself to cast a spell he had been trying to train recently, inspired by the intensity of the battle. He centered himself, drawing upon the astral flames acting as his mantle. Inhaling deep, he imagined the tapestries of Castallane manor and the images of those who came before him.

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“[Astral Drift]!” Jean yelled, drawing upon the reserves of his magic. He felt the force of the spell drawing him into a slipstream of astral mana, as he sped into a charge at ramming speed. Jean sped forth, turning into a human comet.

Jean dove straight into Gio’s mirror, shattering it, and tackling him into the ground.

“Winner- Jean-Claude Castallane!” shouted the referee, to a chorus of cheers from the stands, which had flooded with people since the start of the match.

_____

Gio

Gio sat across from Jean at a refreshment stand in the House of Torches, grinning from ear to ear. Marie served them refreshing drinks, allegedly some sort of sports beverage that tasted like cherries and… salt. It was surprisingly not bad. Both boys had received the full complement of healing magic but were very tired nonetheless.

“Gio… I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for not defending you-”

“Jean, I don’t blame you for your friend. He’s a dick, but I’m not clueless. I get it. Fish out of water and all that. It did bruise my ego to be called a charity case, so I resolved to work on myself for a bit until I felt like I could put up a fight against you. I’m sorry for shutting you out for a bit… but I am proud of what I’ve accomplished.” Gio said, smile drooping slightly.

Jean shifted uncomfortably in his seat, deliberating on what to say.

“Well… I can’t say that I call Roddy my friend after what he pulled. Obviously, I don’t agree with anything he said. That being said, you definitely did put up a hell of a fight- frankly speaking, fighting against you has become a real challenge.” Jean offered.

“Thanks! I take that as a compliment coming from the highest-ranked freshman in the House of Torches!” Gio beamed.

“So what was that? That had to have been some kind of ultra-rare spell or something, right? How did you duplicate my projectiles? And what was that buff?” Jean asked.

Gio used [Scrivener’s Charm] to plot out a copy of the status message he had received last week after hundreds of hours trying to learn the technique from his reflection in the mirror room.

By breaking apart the reflection using [Hairline Fracture] upon the exact moment that it enters the mirror realm, duplicate anything reflected by [Reflect]. Duplicates will be marginally less powerful than the initial reflection and must be supplied mana from the caster. Aiming duplicates can be done by steering the shattered plane using mirror-aspected mana.>

“I want to stress that it is very, very hard to aspect any amount of mirror mana to try and steer the reflections. A large portion of last week was purely just me and Rio working out how to-”

“Who is Rio?” Jean interrupted. “Please tell me that you haven’t named your reflection.”

“Uuh… Rio is… okay yes mirror me is Reflection Gio. In my defense, he totally has a personality, and I was very tired when I named him.”

Gio also shared his most recent spellform, [Eyes of the Abjurist]. “The new spell allows me to track projectiles a bit better. After a couple hundred hours of trying to see what my reflection was doing, I decided that I needed to be able to see better. It’s a common spell, but it was pretty tricky to make. “ Gio shared.

“A rare synergy? That’s pretty incredible.” Jean said, eyes wide. “Well, you better be ready for a bit more attention there, Mister mirror master. Our duel caught some viewers after you flung twenty spears back at me.”

They laughed and discussed the fight for some time. After they had made arrangements to resume their weekly sparring sessions, Jean grew pensive for a moment.

“Hey, Gio… I was wondering if you could ask Rika if she’d be willing to talk with me. I want to clear up some stuff. I don’t know if she’s told you… but we used to be closer a couple of years back.” Jean said, in a slightly measured tone.

“Yes… she has mentioned that she’s not fond of Prince Donovan and that you tend to spend a lot of time with him… but I should stop talking, as that’s Chandrika’s story to tell. I’ll see what she thinks about meeting you.” Gio stated.

_____

“Absolutely not,” Chandrika stated. "I’ve been getting headaches every time I see him in class. It’s torture.”

“Rika, it’s not my place to tell you what to do at all. But I think he’s a great guy and maybe you might find that he-”

“No, Gio… I mean that I’ve been getting actual headaches. At first, yes, I thought that it might have something to do with my distaste for Jean. but I am currently of the opinion that he’s got some sort of fate nonsense going on that is bothering my [Sage].” Chandrika said.

“Oh. well, that’s weird. Have you seen the nurses about it?” Gio asked.

“Yep. The only thing that they recommend is talking to the other sages. I don’t have any way of contacting them unless I get the school involved and I’d like to not do that. The school might get all jumpy if ‘one of the greatest diviners’ or whatever complains about needing to call home over a headache.” She concluded.

_____

The week progressed smoothly after the duel, with Gio prioritizing his plot. He had been doing the bare minimum in between visits to the mirror room and homework, and it had shown in the amount of [Garuda’s Fern] that had escaped containment.

Gio now had so much of the Fern that he had been burning it to produce a low-quality ink base, and then subsequently distilling that base to make a higher-quality ink by process of re-concentration. The process was very inefficient, but with the amount of raw material that he had, Gio wasn’t worried about waste. He had enough ink to start working on a different type of spellform: glyph patterns.