Azura was relieved to see his friends seemed to be taking the loss well, they really had done exceedingly well. They had used the best strategy they could with the information they had, and had even adapted really well to the counters his team took, honestly if they fought again he couldn’t guarantee a win, since the element of surprise Auros had with his water skills had been a major boon.
“When did you get the chance to open up that blink portal through my dome anyway?” He chuckled, that had been a bit of a trick, but the coolest part about enchantments is that for the most part once made they can be used by anyone.
“I didn’t, I created the enchantment for Auros to gather his storm clouds around. I just had to activate the spell at the right time.” Honestly he was really glad for this event, he had played Cyvran before obviously, but never at this level. The competition was forcing him to step up his game, and that made him realize that cards would be an excellent medium for his magic. They had 2 sides, and maximized surface area vs space taken up. On top of that they were completely disposable, so he had no need to make them with special materials. Simply cards formed from magic like cyvran would more than suffice.
Lily groaned. “What? That’s so unfair, you can create spells that other people can cast?! How are we supposed to counter everyone if they can do all of their skillset and all of yours.” It was definitely something easier said than done. At least on this team he was the fulcrum for which a good chunk of their strategy rested, but taking him out first had its own risks because the other team would be left open to the heavy hitters.
“You’re not supposed to counter it, that’s kind of the point.” He joked. Siara laughed while Katy and Lily just glared at him. He held his hands up in surrender. “Jokes aside, I’m not sure you could in this case. In a more even match the answer would obviously be to take out the support first, but you guys would have left yourselves open if you tried that, and we probably would have just won faster.” He wasn’t even able to think of a path that they could have taken that would have led to their victory. Unfortunately, sometimes you’re just outmatched.
Katy sighed. “I guess we couldn’t win this time, but I think I figured something out.” He glanced at her curiously, but she didn’t say anything after that. Well whatever she figured out he hoped it worked for her. The whole point of these events was to get stronger after all, and with only a few months left before his father came to try to end his contract he wanted them all as strong as they could get. It was not at all unlike his father to threaten his friends after all. He checked his bond with Alaya, and as usual since the ritual, he could feel the bond like another limb. It was part of him now, in a way he could hardly describe.
“Well feel free to challenge me any time, we can do 2v2s or 3v3s whenever you guys want to.” In this instance it was unfortunate, but usually the odd number was helpful since it meant someone was always able to play ref.
“I’ll take you up on that, but I won’t lose next time.” He smiled confidently in the face of Katy’s defiant expression. He was a bit relieved. Katy was really coming into her own, he had worried that she would be too dependent on him, but she had actually opened up to others much easier than he had expected, and having people she could rely on other than him had allowed her to really grow into her own person.
“Well I don’t plan to lose either, so you better step up your game then.” He played off his moment of sentimentality as if it hadn’t happened, and spent some time bantering with his friends, taking the time to formally introduce his teammates. Elismera they had already kind of met, but he didn’t think any of them had ever seen Auros. Or even remembered him from Azura’s story of the first event. Kaiser had admittedly overshadowed the water user for him too.
“Alright that makes time, for this next round you will be facing simulated opponents, and this time if you lose you’re out. Anyone who passes this round and has gotten at least 1 win in the normal rounds will be considered a winner today, however there will be a tournament with the remaining teams, with a special prize unrelated to winning the events.” That sounded promising. He was a little surprised he hadn’t had to fight Kaiser in the normal rounds, but he guessed the world decided their fight should be in the tournament.
A wave of light passed through the courtyard covering all the students before fading to reveal them in a new location. It was an odd place, though he’d admit he thought it was a little cool. They seemed to be in some kind of void. Swirling colors existed all around them, seeming to be primarily black red and a very dark purple. They stood on a giant circular platform, just big enough for them to take their positions for the game. The platform was primarily white with blue accents in a familiar shape. The dragon biting its own tail was surrounded by 7 golden locks.
Even though this place wasn’t real, he immediately had a bad feeling, and the shadowy opponents they were standing across from only made that feeling worse. For the first time that day Elismera wasn’t designated as the person to start off the fight. The shadow across from her started by unleashing a light attack spell, and he was unable to properly react in time. He grit his teeth in pain as the spell pierced his shoulder before he cast a light refracting enchantment around each of his team. “Careful the damage is real this time!” He shouted holding his shoulder in pain.
Despite the pain he was glad it was a piercing attack and not a force one, otherwise he would have been knocked off the platform, and he was sure he didn’t want to know what that would cause. Elismera, cast a spell creating a wall of vines between the teams. It was a good call, they didn’t know what the other 2 could do, and they needed to regroup, even if that meant taking their eyes off their opponents. Him and Elismera could still more or less know what they were up to anyway. “How injured are you?” He was impressed by how calm Elismera sounded, but his chance to respond was cut off by beams of light tearing through the vines like they weren’t even there. His enchantment managed to redirect them all, but he didn’t know how long that would hold under a continuous assault. The beams were actually moving at the speed of light, he didn’t even know that was possible for actual magic attacks. How was he supposed to react to that?”
He noticed shadows seeping from under the vine wall that had repaired itself as quickly as it had been damaged. Even if it didn’t stop the light beams it at least impeded the other 2, although the seeping shadows made it clear at least one of them was working around it. Focused on enhancing his refraction enchantment, if he could get it to behave like a mirror they should be safe, and even better the light attacks would be redirected at their enemy. “Not enough to impair my ability!” Thanks to his new body it would take quite a bit of punishment to actually stop him. Not that he had any doubt in his opponents ability to dish out said punishment.
“Good, I think this might be a match where you can use your anti-magic ability, I don’t care if it wouldn’t work in a real fight.” He’d love to, unfortunately there was one problem with that. The shadows forming into monsters after they had extended far enough from the vine wall was one of those problems, and the deluge of attacks the one across from him was sending at the regenerating wall was another.
“I’d love to, but if you take down that vine wall I’ll be obliterated far before I can cast it.” Auros was taking out the shadow monsters by making a water dragon to hunt them down. He was dealing with the light, and Elismera was stopping the other team from going all out on offense, so it made sense that Auros would handle the small fry so that they could focus on their tasks. The lull and Elismera’s calm tone had helped calm him from his initial panic.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“What about your defensive spell?” It was improvised, he thought it would do its job, but even assuming it did and didn’t fail at all there were still the other 2 enemies attacks.
“You think I had an enchantment prepared for dealing with actual light attacks? I’ve never seen light magic used offensively before, or at least not like this. It’s patchwork, we’re lucky it’s working at all, Relying on it isn’t a safe option.” It hurt his pride to admit it, but even he wasn’t competent enough to make an improvised enchantment that fast, and have it not have any exploitable weaknesses. He’d have to keep working on it. The fact he’d even been able to make the card that fast was a miracle in of itself.
“Well we need to think of something, because we’ll lose at this rate. All 3 of us are using a lot of mana just playing defense, but only 2 of them are doing anything, the light one is just storing mana to finish us off.” She was right, this wasn’t a good state of affairs for them. It would be a long time before they actually started running low like this, in fact with just the one enchantment in play he was still recovering mana faster than he could use it, but he didn’t fancy the odds of a 1 v 3, and he wasn’t confident the other 2 would be able to outlast the members of the other team.
“I know, but it’s easier said than done.” It was then he had an idea, not a safe one by any means. In fact it was just as likely to screw them over as it was the enemies, but if he could control it well enough it might be enough to seize victory on its own. There were a couple immediate weaknesses that came to mind when he thought of light. Its nature allowed it to be easily redirected if you were prepared for it either refracted through water or reflected by a mirror. However there was one other thing known to redirect light. A gravity so dense that even light couldn’t escape its pull. A blackhole.
They were known to exist out among the stars, although few mages who went near them for study lived to tell the tale, there was no small amount of mages who had risked it all to explore the world outside the planet. Well he was getting off track. A blackhole shouldn’t be something beyond him to create, if just a small one. The issue became balance though. He needed it strong enough to absorb all the enemy's attacks, but not so strong it dragged him and his teammates into it. “Well umm I’ve got an idea, but Elismera I’m going to need you to make vines to keep all 3 of us in place.” That would ease some of the risk, but it was certainly still a gamble.
Gravity magic was a skill of his, but far from his specialty. He’d be using it through an enchantment of course, but it was still something he had never really prepared. Elismera glanced at him warily, but made the vines securing all 3 of them in place without comment. It felt nice being trusted, despite his secretive nature he had found a lot of people willing to put their faith in him. He wouldn’t allow himself to fail that trust.
He put all of his focus in this next card. He’d just have to hope that if the light guy attacked his reflection enchantment would hold up. Sure enough a few seconds into his attempt a huge beam of light tore through the vine wall, and hit his enchantment causing it to split into hundreds of beams shooting off at every angle. He smirked, his first enchantment had worked, and bought him the time needed for the next one. He swiped on the floating card sending it flying to the quickly reforming hole in the vines that a bunch of none light attacks were slipping through.
A fireball hit the card right outside the hole and then was condensed down into a small black ball the size of his fist. It was still more than enough, all the attacks were relentlessly sucked in, and the vines holding them shook violently with the effort as they began to float towards it. The vine wall itself began crumbling and being absorbed, revealing their 3 opponents struggling to not be pulled in, one of them had vines of darkness latching him to the floor while the one throwing every kind of attack imaginable was frozen to the floor.
The most dangerous one though, was being dragged along the floor, apparently unable to conjure anything solid, out of his light. The one across from him made several tendrils of rock to hold the man down and attempt to drag him back to his spot, but even just being 5 ft closer to the black caused an exponential increase in its drawing power. “Are you insane?!” Auros screamed. Couldn’t say he blamed the older student. This was hardly a guaranteed win, and in a way it was still a fight of attrition, but they didn’t have to endure forever, just long enough for the black hole to gather enough mass to do the 2nd part of his enchantment. Unfortunately the shadow people had figured out pretty quickly that it was pointless to make any attacks, and they focused solely on not being sucked in.
However, that gave him time to make another enchantment, and not having to focus on the light enchantment meant this one came a lot faster. Still took even longer than the blackhole, but it was a lot more controlled so that made sense. All in all it took him about 13 seconds. Normally an eternity in a fight like this, but with everyone occupied it wasn’t a huge risk. He cast the enchantment and a purple dome appeared around each of them resetting the gravity in a small area to normal. His first thought was to simply make it an equal and opposite force to the blackhole, but then they might get torn in half, and increasing their gravity also was considered, but he deemed it would weaken them immensely. Luckily though he’d been working on spells that cancel other effects in an area similar to his anti-magic field. This one countered gravity effects. It wasn’t perfect, but it would serve its purpose for this.
“Why didn’t you make these first?!” Honestly because he wasn’t sure the blackhole was going to work, and he didn’t want to waste precious time on something that would end up being worthless, but he decided not to answer that question and let the water user come to his own most likely incorrect conclusions.
Once they were secure he began casting spells at the blackhole. The others seemed confused but followed his lead for the time being, which was really good, because he had vastly underestimated how much mana the blackhole would constantly take. He had assumed once it started it would maintain on its own, but apparently not. Luckily after 30 or so of their spells had disappeared into the void it began to glow with ominous purple light, before splitting into 8 separate spheres each glowing a different color. Blue, green, red, gold, silver, purple, orange, and yellow. The pull only intensified as the orbs began to spin rapidly around each other creating a wheel of colors swirling so fast even their enhanced perceptions couldn’t make out the individual orbs anymore.
The shadow team cast a bunch of spells to keep themselves in place, it was obvious they were hoping to outlast them, and they would probably succeed, that was if all his spell was doing was increasing the force of the pull. The wheel shifted from spinning horizontally to now spinning vertically revealing that the space between the wheel had begun glowing with nebulous light. While the wheel was darker colors due to the mini blackholes that lights were coming from, the pure energy radiating in its center was much brighter colors. “You guys are going to want to cover your ears and close your eyes for this!” He had to shout over the intense sounds the gravity well was making, but he quickly followed his own advice, and hoped they did too.
Even with his eyes closed the flash of light was so intense he could practically see it through his eyelids, and spots danced across his vision, although to his surprise it was actually surprisingly quiet, or at least he hadn’t heard anything through his hands, he had almost removed his hands when the sound was finally heard, an explosion beyond anything he had ever heard before, his ears bleed, even with his hands sealing them off as best he could, Thankfully his special bond with Alaya allowed him to temporarily remove his wolf ears, or this would have hurt even worse.
After a few seconds the roar that was louder than anything he had ever heard finally died down, and he was left to open his eyes, allowing his ears to reform on his head, to hear the silence that rang even above the ringing in his human ears. He stared in stunned silence at what remained. The enemy team was gone. No rather their whole side of the platform was gone, and there even seemed to be a hole in the subspace, because there was a patch of what he could only describe as nothingness. It wasn’t white, it wasn’t black, it was truly a void. A hesitant smile appeared on his face. “Well, maybe it’s just me, but that may be the coolest thing I have ever done and or seen.”