Matt didn’t need General Tronan to tell him shit. The moment the idiot decided to attack Sara, Matt immediately put a barrier up and prayed they’d all survive—but that wasn’t in the cards. With ghostly speed, Sara turned around, lifted her hand, and dropped it. Then, as if Riley, Alexis, and Greg were teleported, they suddenly disappeared. If it weren’t for their bright barriers exploding on the jagged rocks below them, he wouldn’t have even noticed them die. But he did notice, and when he saw five people smashed on the rocky terrain like splattered tomatoes, he felt horror he couldn’t even imagine.

[Just like that,] Matt thought. [Just like that….] He believed that Sara would at least have some hesitation, but she killed three of them like she was swatting them like flies.

2

General Tronan had heard stories of gravity magic. It wasn’t a myth, yet it wasn’t accessible, either. A family monopolized it in the Far South, passing it down by word of mouth, and no amount of torture could make them speak. Yet Lady Reece had used it to take out three of them. There was no report of her using it prior. There was no warning. “Spread out!” he yelled, feeling foolish for clumping together—even more so for not telling the summonees not to be idiots! “Sky Pincer!”

3

Sara had finally shown her trump card for aerial warfare—gravity magic. The problem with wind spells was that they destabilized the user’s silver glider, but with gravity, it was clean. Now that her witnesses—Andy, Darius, and Helen—wouldn’t break down and claim that she didn’t do her due diligence on wartime etiquette, it was time to let loose.

Suddenly, an elite sent a gale-force wind attack from the south—a savage one. Sara cast a one-line incantation, and the two wind gusts slammed into each other with incredible force. The elite flew off her silver glider, and Sara and the heroes flew in opposite directions. Helen managed to retain control, but she slid off her silver glider, holding on with reins alone, dangling from the sky.

“Helen!” Andy screamed.

“Eyes ahead, idiot!” Sara screamed. In a brutal display, Sara flew above Helen’s glider, grabbed the woman’s brunette hair, and yanked her up like she was picking a carrot. Naturally, Helen screamed, but when she realized that she was back on her silver glider, she stopped screaming.

That interaction cost them precious time. Sara barely put up a barrier before more wind slammed into them, and they were all sent hurdling to the ground. The spherical barrier hit the ground like a pinball. It didn’t save them from impacting the ground at high velocity (their face hit the barrier at sixty miles an hour), but it saved them from being impaled by jagged rocks.

[This is why you bring numbers,] Sara thought as they tumbled down a mountain like a tire rolling down a hill. Her mind had greater acuity from mana and training, so she could see in slow motion between rolls that the gliders had already grouped and were coming after them. They were truly elites with aerial advantage—which was why she didn’t want to fight them! After the barrier bounced a third time (when Helen was unconscious and the men were groaning), the barrier crashed into a final rock before bouncing backward and breaking. All them hit the ground with a thud, and Helen woke up—whatever good that did them.

Sara stumbled to her feet and assessed the situation. The heroes were okay, but all three silver gliders had broken wings from crashing into the barrier at high speed, and they were crying out on the ground in pain. “I’ll heal you soon,” she whispered. Then she reached into her spatial ring and pulled out a white bow. It looked like it was made of ivory and had beautiful arrays carved into it.

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“Give up!” General Tronan yelled. “Our forces are too organized for you to hit us. Don’t….”

Sara pulled back the bowstring, and a bolt of neon purple mana drew from the string.

“Move!” General Tronan yelled in a panic. The eight split up, leaving Matt and the other dissidents as bait. Yet she didn’t take it. She turned and released the arrow at General Tronan. He dodged, but the arrow [curved]—hitting a female elite near him in the face. The woman’s head exploded in a geyser of blood, and then Sara pulled back the bow again, releasing another bolt. It curved like a homing missile, decapitating another elite.

“Meteors!” General Tronan yelled in a panic—yet his orders fell on deaf ears after an eruption of wind crashed into the sky.

Sara turned and found Darius on his feet, summoning a cyclone on his own. It hit four of the elites and all of the dissidents, sending them hurdling to the ground. Then, she smirked when Helen created a barrier and helped Andy to his feet. Sara was proud of her team, and watching them filled her with pride.

Sara pulled back another string and aimed it at General Tronan.

“Watch!” an elite yelled, flying her silver glider in front of him with a barrier.

“Don’t, you idiot!” he yelled.

Sara released her arrow, and it shattered the elite’s barrier and hit him in the breastplate, launching him twenty feet backward like a slingshot. Sara then turned to the silver glider and released the weakest gravity spell she had. The silver glider hit the ground, and Sara rushed it, jumping on its back and grabbing the reins.

4

General Tronan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Lady Reece was throwing around basic spells with the ferocity of four-layered incantations and using high-level guided spells for arrows. Her team had created a barrier that General Tronan would need a six-layer spell to break through, and another one was commanding intense winds with an unrefined spell, and it had sent his forces flying in random directions. There was no way he could compete with this group. If it were with a sword, absolutely. If he were at a distance and had time to chant—he could fight back. But up close, they were just too powerful. Their cast time was minimal, and their strength was beyond mention. He needed to get back to King Lemings and report what he learned, but if he turned, Lady Reece would impale him with a bolt. He couldn’t even go up because he had to stop looking at Lady Reece, so he was spiraling around her, going up in a circular ladder.

He felt helpless.

But then something remarkable happened. It was so tragic it was comical: Lady Reece had the audacity to steal one of his troops’ silver gliders—and she didn’t let go when it rocketed in the sky, bucking around and doing rolls in the air as it flew higher and higher. For a moment, General Tronan just watched in awe, wondering how Lady Reece had managed to stay on the glider as it did acrobatics in the air, diving, swooping, and rolling toward the heavens, creating a beautiful dance of death and wind. Then, he snapped out of it and realized how helpless she was in the air.

“Move!” General Tronan slapped his reins against his silver glider and rocketed into the sky after her, climbing higher and higher. [Sto vráchos tis apóphasis,] he thought, lifting his hand and developing a massive fireball in front of him, [ekselíssontas tis synaísthisis!] He shot it across the sky—aimed right at her. For a moment, he thought it would hit her, but the silver glider she was on suddenly shot downward as if it were teleporting. In retrospect, that should’ve been the alarm that told him to run—to cut his losses and save his soldiers while she was busy. But he didn’t. Instead, he summoned another fireball in one hand and a wind spell in the other, preparing to create an undodgeable inferno as he rushed closer. Fifty feet away. Thirty, and he would release it. Then, as he could see her thighs squeezed around the silver glider and could hear the glider’s screeches as it turned left and right, he knew the blast was impossible to dodge. Yet something truly unbelievable happened at that moment. As if it were effortless, Lady Reece grabbed a section of the silver glider’s wing and broke it. The glider screeched in pain, righting itself so that it could take advantage of gliding. And then, in a display no sane human would ever consider an option, Lady Reece kicked the balls of her feet onto the silver glider like a jockey, turned to General Tronan, and jumped.

General Tronan panicked, aimed his hands of wind and fire at her, and released his attack.