Chris moved before the words were done echoing through the training room. She drew no rune in the air, cast no spellforms. Only stepped forward in efficient pacing. Her opponent didn’t seem fazed by this. He didn’t cast a new rune or perform any actions of magical inclination. Like Chris, he moved with the dexterity of a fighter not trained in the art of magic.

Zed watched the split moment decision, quick and unencumbered by doubt. It told him one thing and one thing only: Chris had combat training. He had seen it in the few times he had hunted with her, when they had ventured into the forest in search of the surge, he was seeing it now. She carried herself as a ballerina would at a performance. All grace and confidence. If this was the theatre, she was the ballerina who would one day become prima.

When Chris and her Olympian opponent met in was in the brief exchange of blows. Lenny, as Zed had now learned his name was, moved quickly. He tested Chris with a few thrown punches. She evaded them easily, her posture calm, unbothered. It was as though she knew it was nothing but a test. She was yet to use magic so he matched her in the same way. Whether it was pride from being of a higher category or a fighter’s courtesy towards another who hadn’t chosen magic, was anyone’s guess.

Zed watched the both of them dance around each other in a test of combat. Clearly they gauged each other, watching, testing. It was like a dance where each fighter took turns leading. When Chris struck, it was with open hands. Her strikes were precise, calculated. Stuns were her choice of attack, fatal blows backdrops to the symphony of combat. She did not wish to seek victory now, more than happy to test herself. She was like a veteran loosening up old bones.

Zed didn’t like it. A mage as mean as she was had no reason to be so good at combat. He had no idea when he’d leaned forward, elbows rested on his knees.

When the magic began, it was triggered squarely by Chris. She weaved past one of Lenny’s attacks, a low kick to the thigh that would’ve shaken the foundation of her form. Her lips moved in a quick spellform. It wasn’t loud enough that it echoed through out the training room, spilling over to the spectators. But it was loud enough that anyone present could pick out the tone of it. Oliver and Ash had once said she excelled at improvised spellforms. She was versed in quick spells even if not strong ones.

Zed watched with the dissatisfaction of a child who’d learned his bully wasn’t some dumb jock as was usually the case in the movies as Chris proved them right.

Chris’ spellform came out short and quick. She released it in two words. An explosion of water and fire boomed in the training room. It filled the spot where Chris met Lenny in mist, like a smoke bomb dropped by a failing assassin. But she was not failing, Zed knew this with as much certainty as the Berserker knew his violence. He grit his teeth as he watched her prove she was significantly more than just a mean girl.

Both mages darted out of the cloud of mist. They created a distance between themselves. Their brief exchange had barely lasted minutes yet it had been tense. If not for them, then at least for their spectators.

“Was she always this good?” Zed heard Ash mutter. There was worry in her voice, worry and a touch of shame.

Oliver was seated beside her now, coddling his bruised ego with the beautiful care of silence. He said nothing at first, offered her a quiet nod. Obviously thinking better of it, he added a response.

“You should’ve seen her when she was teaching me,” he said quietly. “She can still move faster.”

Zed didn’t want to believe it, but he did. What he had seen had been mediocre, at least for her. She had moved faster during the expedition in the forest.

Kid had clearly heard Oliver’s statement, perhaps he had taken an affront to it because he said, “Lenny, too.”

Zed pressed his lips in a thin line. He had much to learn. So much more to learn.

Chris and Lenny resumed in a flurry of magic. They had tested each other in old combat as far as Zed was concerned. Each of them had seen what the other was capable of without magic and found each other sufficient.

Lenny drew a rune in the air. It wavered in a red haze and he stepped into it. In one moment he was a moving man, in the next he was a blur of actions. He cut through the thinning mist Chris had summoned in a single dash. Zed’s eyes kept track of his movement even if he was unsure of how he did. The man’s speed seemed almost impossible.

Chris didn’t seem bothered by it. Her casting resumed, short and quick. She spoke like a stammerer who’d found her stride and was in a hurry to finish her words lest she stammer and spoil her flow. The words tumbled out of her lips in quick succession, powered in half sentences, broken words and discarded syllables. Faster than Lenny had birthed his runes, she birthed a flurry of lightning and ice.

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“Could she always do that?” Ash asked Oliver.

Enamored by the battle in front of him, Oliver had no words for her.

Lenny found himself at the heart of a lightning strike, assuaged on all sides in a ring of frozen stalactites. At the center, smirking in their encounter, Chris stood unbothered, more than ready to meet him in combat.

Lenny was an attribute mage and Zed found himself on his toes, eager to see what the man would do; how he would escape. The Olympian did not escape. Instead, he tightened his body like a boxer. His back spread out behind him, widening until it seemed akin to a turtle’s shell. When the lightning came down and the stalactites of ice converged on them, Chris’ smirk took a quick vacation.

She cast another spell, quick as a peregrine in flight. Her lips moved so quickly that anyone who hadn’t been paying attention would’ve mistaken it as a single word. But it was not. Zed was more than certain she had used more than three. Her speed was enviable.

She cast her arm in a wide arc behind her as a new spellform came to life. As dome of water encircled her and she pulled her hand back. The dome tightened and lightning and water met both combatants.

There was a quick flash of yellow and blue, lightning and ice shattering in a chaotic meeting. Lenny ignored them and threw a powerful punch forward. It was clearly designed to end a fight. It moved with a power none of his attacks on Oliver had carried. His fist met Chris’ dome of water as it congealed into a thin layer of ice and her lightning struck him square and true just as the ice met them.

Most of the stalactites shattered against Chris’ dome. It held without contest, the superior of both spellforms. Lenny’s fist struck the dome’s shield and it blasted away from him, taking Chris with it. As for her attacks of stalactites, her spears of ice, what was left of them buttressed the lightning strike and crashed in on the Olympian.

Zed heard Ash gasp in front of him. If Oliver reacted to it, Zed neither heard nor saw it.

Lenny didn’t change his stance. Save his outstretched arm he had used to send Chris flying in her protection, the rest of his body remained tucked in on itself, back widened behind him as his torso hunched in on itself, one hand raised in protection of one side of his face.

The spell of ice met him and shattered against his skin. Everything happened in a space of time quick enough for a coin to fall from a dropped height. Zed could practically see the auras and mana of the used spells. The air around the Olympian was filled with the cold blue of ice aura and the crackling yellow of lightning.

Lenny’s face remained held in place. His eyes looked forward as if he hadn’t just taken two spells head on. His shirt was a rumpled mess. Chris had gone entirely for his torso but there was also a tear or two in his pants. Regardless, he stood as still as a statue, his stance held. Beneath his mess of a shirt and a tear or two, his skin was unblemished.

He had taken the brunt of Chris’ two spells and came out unscathed.

On the other side of the training room where Chris had been discarded into, she was standing with a frown. The dome she had cast about herself at the last second was missing one side of it. There was a gaping hole in the ice where Lenny had struck it, shattered like a roof that had been forced to bear the brunt of an explosion, an entire section of it missing.

“She’s good,” Kid muttered beside Zed, a hand rubbing his jaw in contemplation.

“Maybe too good,” Jennifer added, unsure.

The response to her words came from an unlikely source.

Daniel turned to Festus and asked, “Where did you find her?”

“I didn’t.” Unlike everyone else, Festus didn’t seem particularly impressed or bothered. If anything, he seemed bored, like a man who would rather be elsewhere doing other things.

If Zed was to hazard a guess, he would say Festus had a mind full of runes. It was the only explanation. He stared at the momentary pause both fighters within the training room were left in. Unsure of if they waited to catch their breath or if there was something else involved in the pause, he watched.

Then Lenny stood to his full height, combat stance discarded for something more casual. He turned to the glass that separated the spectators from the combatants, residue of mana from the spellform he’d been struck with evaporating from him in the form of steam. It cast him in a cinematic visage, an overpowered main character in an interesting movie. Chris was veritably ignored to the background as all side characters designed only to emphasize the overwhelming capability of the over powered one.

“I think she’s good,” Lenny said, clearly addressing Daniel.

Daniel’s response was a simple one.

“I agree,” he said.

With a casual nod, Lenny turned and started for the door leading out of the training room. On the other side, Chris’ jaw dropped.

“One punch and you call it quits?” she asked, flabbergasted. “We were just getting to the good part.”

Lenny paused, turning to look at her.

“This is a test,” he said. “Not a battle. As tempting as it is to see how far your capabilities are, I get the feeling you don’t want to find out in the presence of a crowd.”

For some reason, his words silenced her. She opened her mouth, her lips parting in response, then closed it. She was a fish out of water. When she settled on silence, it felt more as if it was designed to be a shield she wrapped around herself. With a slight frown, she let her still crumbling dome with ever-growing spider web cracks crumble around her. They hit the ground in pieces, shards of broken ice. With her will no longer present to bind it to physical form, they dissipated into the air in wisps of mana.

Zed stared with only one question in mind. Could he take her in a fight?

He wasn’t entirely sure about himself, but there was one fact existent in his mind: the Berserker wanted to know.

In front of him, at the glass, standing beside Festus, Daniel turned around and looked at them.

“Who’s next?”