It turned out that Azura himself was in fact not ready for round 2. After his statement Elismera had charged him, and while he held his own at first while she was surprised about his enhanced speed, it didn’t take long for her to gradually start speeding up herself. Apparently she had been holding back on him quite a bit, which in hindsight made a lot of sense. It making sense however did not help him while he desperately traded blows with his opponent. Still the speed difference at least wasn’t as vast as it had been before, and with his shield he was at least capable of surviving in melee.
A quick blink took him a good 30 feet away, saving him from the thorny vines that had erupted out from where he had been standing. They shot at him, and released enough ice magic to freeze them to their roots. He didn’t have long to celebrate though as he once more found Elismara right on top of him, barely managing to parry her overhead slash. It would seem Elismera had figured him out, because she was applying too much pressure for him to make his copies.
She was relentlessly chasing him across the stadium at breakneck speeds he could barely even perceive. It was only thanks to clairvoyance that he hadn’t been overwhelmed yet. Well not completely overwhelmed anyway. Worse news, was that his ability to at least somewhat compete in melee meant she was more willing to use spells to deal with him, and he was quickly finding out that Siara had a long way to go with nature magic, because Elismera was quickly demolishing his thoughts about how niche nature magic was.
As if she could hear his thoughts and wanting to prove his point, she threw several seeds in the air, which all grew into grand trees in an instant. Each tree began violently shaking, shooting leaves at him at incredible speeds. His hastily formed ice wall was torn to shreds in an instant, and his blink towards the ceiling showed that the trees were just as good at tracking his location as Elismera herself was. He grunted as he used the ceiling to leap towards the elf princess, and thankfully the trees stopped shooting their leaves at him, but he was now once again trapped in a brutal melee with her.
He desperately considered his options. He wouldn’t last long in melee, and those trees were no joke. He had to wipe the board, but the trees were huge, doing that would take just about all the mana he had, and would probably shatter his fire shards. He had 2 backups for each vambrace, but he wouldn’t be able to slot them in without getting taken out by his opponent. He sighed, the fight wasn’t worth wasting anymore of his stored mana, he had found his measure. He wasn’t going to be able to beat her like this no matter how much he wasted. Well if he was going down, might as well at least go down swinging.
The runes on his gauntlets ignited, the sheer amount of mana going through the shards causing flames before he even cast the spell. He jumped back and faced his pals together, the shards ejected from the vambrace, and a powerful wildfire exploded from them. He manifested his scales while he was engulfed in flame to prevent as much damage as he could.
***
Siara was watching this whole fight in amazement. She had never seen the heights her magic could be taken too, and she was honestly really grateful Elismera was showing her just how strong she could be. That wasn’t even including the elf princess’s incredible close combat skills. On top of that, even against Azura who was probably the most tricky opponent she had ever seen, Elismera not only countered him, but maintained complete control of the fight the whole time.
Azura was constantly on the back foot, and she had honestly thought the fight was over several times, but as was his nature Azura managed to hang on by the skin of his teeth. Still it was obvious to all of them that Azura couldn’t keep this up. His second wind hadn’t been too surprising to them; they had all after all seen his self enchantments before even if they looked a little different now. She however had not expected the explosion of fire that engulfed the entire arena, but stopped when it hit the barrier that separated the seats from the arena, creating a dome of blindingly bright flames.
Azura must have out done himself, because it took almost a full minute for the smoke and flames to disperse enough that they were able to see the state of the arena. The first thing she saw was the small cocoon of vines, surrounded by ash. She had no doubt that the cocoon had been much bigger when the spell had been cast. Azura however was on all 4’s panting with exertion. His clothes were burnt and frayed, and she bet it was only the enchantments that allowed them to still be in one piece. Even Azura himself had not come out unscathed with several severe looking burns around his body. Even if oddly his head seemed almost completely intact, the rest of his body looked like he had taken a bath in a furnace.
The cocoon began to unravel with a still almost completely unharmed Elismera stepping out of it. She walked over to Azura, and said something to him, but she was too far away to hear whatever words were exchanged. Whatever was said, seemed to signal the end of the fight as Azura laid back and waved his hand before the assigned ref called the match in Elismera’s favor. As much as she wanted to run up to the elf princess and ask for tips, she had to make sure their friend was ok first, and she jumped into the arena with the rest of her friends to check on Azura.
“Wow you really got your ass handed to you huh.” She put her hand to her mouth to hide the giggle that Lily’s joke threatened to bring out. Azura just groaned, and didn’t comment. That was uncharacteristic of him, he must really be wiped if he didn’t even have anything smartass to say, maybe they should put him up against people of that caliber more. It hadn’t even looked like he had talked much in the fight, and that was a pretty good sign that he was completely outclassed.
“Give him a break. It’s not like any of us would have done any better.” She wasn’t so sure about that. Azura was fairly good at all kinds of magic, but Roran and Lily were heads and shoulders above him in terms of fire magic. She didn’t think either of them would have won, but it might have been a little less one sided at least.
Roran opened his mouth excitedly, but as she was getting used to today no sound came out. He sighed and tried again at a normal volume. “I hate to say it, but Cynthia’s right. Me and Lily would have had a chance in a magic battle, but with Elismera’s speed we would have been taken out the second she got in close.” That was true, she had barely been able to even follow the elve’s movement, and that was before she had picked up the pace to deal with Azura’s enchantments.
“No way! I totally could have taken her. She wouldn’t even be able to get close if I was serious.” She shuddered, Lily’s purple flames had been awful enough that she believed it, even despite the vast difference in their strengths.
“Didn’t Azura just beat you in a spar a bit ago?” Katy's calm response was delivered through a smirk that made it clear she enjoyed knocking Lily down a peg. She tuned them out as they began to squabble. She watched as Cynthia’s hands began to glow with a gentle light as she worked on Azura’s wounds. She wondered why he had let himself get burnt like that. If he had those new scales of his up the whole time he would have done a lot better. That was how he’d beaten Lily after all. She was confident he still would have lost, since all that would improve was his defense, but he at least wouldn’t have such severe injuries for Cynthia to treat.
Stolen novel; please report.
“Can you 2 argue quietly? My head is still spinning. Thank you very much.” Head spinning? That was a weird symptom. He hadn’t been hit in the head at all. She hadn’t ever heard of burns causing light headedness though, save for maybe being in smoke for a while. She was no health expert though, it was probably just exhaustion. Azura did have a habit of taking fights further than he probably should after all.
Katy and Lily promptly started arguing louder, causing Azura to groan, and her to roll her eyes. “Why didn’t you use your scales anyway? You didn’t seem to have a problem using almost every other trick in your arsenal?” She said it quietly enough that none of the other students would hear it, even the ones with spirit contracts granting enhanced hearing. Even Azura who was right next to her could probably barely hear it.
“It wouldn’t be worth the fallout. With all these people watching it was unlikely that none of them would be able to figure out what I was doing.” It was a vague answer, but she didn’t doubt he’d elaborate once they were in a more private setting.
She wisely decided to change the subject. “What did she say to you there at the end anyway?” He groaned and began stretching his quickly healing arms. Either Cynthia had gotten way better at healing magic or Azura’s new nature made healing much easier, because she had never seen such severe burns healing at a rate so rapid you could see them scarring and then fading away.
“Nothing too exciting, just that I deserved to be here after all, and asking what Kaiser had said to me earlier.” She had forgotten about that honestly, Kaiser had been speaking to him before the fight hadn’t he. A quick look around revealed the 4th year student to have already vacated the room. Most of the onlookers in the process of following his lead.
“What did he say?” Azura really did have a bad habit of attracting a lot of attention he didn’t want. Well attention he said he didn’t want anyway, his actions didn’t exactly scream low profile.
“That if I didn’t at least leave her with an injury he was going to challenge me himself, and that he wouldn’t be as nice next time. Thankfully that tiny little burn on her arm seemed to appease him, because he left after that.” She was awed, even in a fight as insane as that, he had the wherewithal to keep tabs on a singular member of the audience. She couldn’t do that, that's for sure. She could sense life energy, but if she was focusing too much on something else she could definitely lose track of her senses.
“You really don’t do things by halves do you?” She held out her hand to pull him up from the ground. He took it, and she lifted him to his feet. He wobbled a little, but Cynthia put her hand out to stabilize him. His burns were completely healed now, but he still looked exhausted.
“Why would I? Getting something half done is the same as not doing anything at all.” She chuckled, he really did have brutal self standards. Honestly she didn’t know how he could walk sometimes, all that pressure he put on himself had to weigh him down. “Speaking of getting things done I got what I needed to check into something, so do you guys mind if I meet back up with you later?” That was a little concerning. He was recovering quickly, but still it seemed odd he’d want to go do something already.
“Why don’t we just come with you?” Katy had an edge to her voice. She didn’t really blame her, she always was the most hung up on Azura’s secrets. Her friend would probably become insufferable if Azura started being all secretive again after he finally cleared the air.
“I mean you can if you want, but you’re all just going to be bored out of your mind for however long this ends up taking.” She hadn’t expected him to agree, he made it sound important, but maybe it was just some of his normal research type stuff that none of them except Roran could stand.
Just the fact he didn’t mind them coming along seemed to be enough to ease Katy’s mood. “I don’t mind being a little bored, if it gets too dull I’ll just leave.” Azura shrugged and walked off. Despite his claim that it would be boring she was curious so she followed along. It was Azura, how boring could it really be?
***
Katy was bored out of her mind. Azura had walked them all the way up one of the towers, cast a spell that made his eyes glow, and stood there moving his hands over nothing for almost 10 minutes. When he finally seemed to find whatever it was he was looking for he walked back the way they’d come, eyes still glowing brightly. He had told them he’d need to focus, and that they couldn’t make much noise, but even Roran was starting to get bored. The only entertaining part was trying to guess where they were going as Azura seemed to make turns seemingly at random.
“Maybe we should leave him be?” Surprisingly the first to give in was Cynthia who was usually really patient. She couldn’t say she blamed the girl, Azura had promised boring, and he was definitely delivering. She was about to agree with Cynthia when Azura suddenly stopped. She couldn’t figure out why. They were in the middle of a hallway in what she was pretty sure was the east wing of the school. Then Azura went to the painting on the wall. It was a painting of a forest. Nothing fancy, but it was impressively realistic looking. Azura tapped on 6 different trees across the painting, and to her surprise the wall slid aside, revealing a tunnel with stairs going down into the darkness.
Well that wasn’t boring. “Or maybe we should keep following.” She nodded along. She loved secret passages. She knew the school must have some, but hadn’t really had time to go looking. If Azura found one, she’d have to make sure to change that. She and the others followed Azura into the passage which closed itself as soon as all of them entered. Luna cast a small floating light spell, and she once more remembered that most people couldn’t see in the dark. Spirit contracts were cool like that.
Azura walked off into the passage, and they quickly followed. She wished she had asked more about what exactly they were doing, but it was too late now. Or at least until he finished whatever spell he needed his complete focus for. She imagined it had something to do with the glowing eyes, but couldn’t pretend to have any understanding of the magic going on in the background. Even Roran had seemed stumped on what their leader was doing.
All the questions she had in her mind disappeared when they reached the end of the passage. A huge room, bigger than any space in the school save maybe the grand hall. The sealing seemed to be made of stained glass that was primarily light shades of green and blue, but that wasn’t what drew her attention. It wasn’t even the soft light that filtered in from the glass ceiling, that gave an odd energizing feeling. No what drew her attention was the giant tree in the middle of the space.
It was bigger than any living thing she had ever seen, its tip only a dozen or so feet short of the ceiling which was easily over 100 ft above them. The was over 15 ft wide, and the branches spread out over most of the room, The room itself being well larger in both length and width than it was in height. Soft lights gathered on the trees leaves like fruits, and some fell gently to the ground, gathering together to form odd pods made of green light. The tree emitted so much life energy that even she was overwhelmed, she imagined Siara would be nearly catatonic at this point. The tree sat in the very center of the room that seemed to be formed mostly of stone working. The tree rested in an indent in the center of the room, only a few feet from where the tree's roots sunk into the ground 3 small stone steps led up to their current level.
“What is this?” She asked in breathless awe, not expecting an answer. She got one anyway.
“It’s what Elismera wanted to hide.” Azura’s grimm response caught her off guard. His eyes were no longer glowing, but while they all had looks of aww, his expression was dread. No dread wasn’t quite right, resignation? That seemed right, but why?
“Why would she want to hide this? It’s beautiful.” She couldn’t help but agree with Luna, but she had a feeling the positive feelings the tree inspired in her wouldn't last long. Resignation wasn’t an emotion that Azura tended to linger on, if he didn’t like something he raged against it, resigned acceptance was not in his nature, so to see him displaying just that, well it left her more than a little uncomfortable.
“Because if anyone saw this, it would be as good as a declaration of war on all humanity.”