“What are they doing?” Kid asked. He was standing next to Daniel now, watching the spar that was less a spar and more a fight unfold before them. On his left, Ronda watched with a strong frown.

“I’m not sure,” Daniel said. “Zed is doing something. I cannot say what.”

“He’s fixing himself,” Festus said, unconcerned.

Kid squinted through narrowed lids, as if he could somehow tell what Festus was talking about. He saw nothing, noticed nothing.

“Yeah, no,” he said flatly. “You getting anything, Ronny?”

Ronda said nothing. Her frown never left her lips. She was still enough to make a statue jealous. Despite the frown, Kid got the feeling that she wasn’t angry. Not really.

He bumped her with his shoulder. “You good?”

“I can’t see it,” she said, her frown deepening. “None of it.”

“See what?”

Ronda looked at him and he could finally place her frown. Worry and confusion. Her next words told him why.

“Clairvoyance isn’t working on him.”

Kid wasn’t the only one to return her frown. Daniel turned to her in barely subdued shock. His face was a set mask. The twitch of his lip, slight and inpreceptible was like a subtle crack running along its lower jaw line, a hairline almost thinner that the web of a spider.

“What did you just say?” he asked, voice calm.

“I can’t predict him,” Ronda repeated.

Festus chuckled slightly, eyes never leaving the fight.

Eitri chose that moment to join them in front of the glass. He stroked his jaw like some sage witnessing something heaven sent, stared at the now stagnant battle. He seemed to ponder on what he saw, what he felt. He took his time. His arrival had drawn everyone’s attention to him, his posturing birthed expectations. Then he turned to look at Ronda.

“You can predict people?”

Oliver let out a clipped chortle from the back where he’d been sitting quietly since his loss. He covered his mouth quickly but not fast enough to prevent the sound from spilling out.

“Is something funny, kid?” Eitri asked, turning to look back at him.

Oliver shook his head.

Daniel, however, was not inclined to such levels of politeness.

“Considering everything,” he said. “I believe we all expected your words to be helpful.”

“Alright,” he said, testy. “How about this. A Beta mage shouldn’t be able to cast runes as fast as the boy does.” He turned to look up at Festus pointedly. “What the hell did you teach that kid?”

Festus had a proud smile. “Nothing he couldn’t have taught hims—”

A blast of aura filled the room. It exploded out of the training room and blasted them like a wave from a tsunami.

Ronda’s knees buckled under her and she caught herself on the glass, kept herself from falling. It was full and heavy. Dense. It was Beta rank but far too much. Too heavy. Too strong. Beside her Kid held his head and Daniel frowned quite visibly.

Behind them Ash paled.

The aura was gone as quickly as it had come.

“What the hell was that?” Kid groaned.

His answer came from the least expected place. Ash walked up to the glass, joined them. She held her upper arms in her hands, hugged herself reassuringly, hands running up and down her arms in gentle strokes. She remained pale, ashen. Like someone destined for the guillotine for a crime she thought she had successfully escaped.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She stopped when she got to the glass, stared at the combatants on the other side. Her next words were quiet with an undertone of subtle hysteria.

“He’s doing it again,” she muttered silently. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

........................................

Chris watched Zed, curious. He was doing that thing again, staring at nothing. Even though he watched her with wary eyes, she knew she only had a half of his attention. The remaining half was lost in the bland nonexistence of the nothingness that held his attention.

Mixed with the cautious look and the barely concealed hate he had recently started showing her were calculative eyes. At least he’s not all roses and buttercups, she thought with a smirk, happy to have finally broken that clownish façade he’d always displayed. How much she’d hated it. No one was that happy.

Now his true emotions were beginning to shine through.

She was still reveling in her success when something happened. Zed’s aura shifted. It went from the hollow incompleteness it had possessed since his evolution—something that had led her to believe something had gone wrong in the evolution—to something grave.

His aura flared out like a sharp prickly blanket, as though someone had filled it with pins. Chris reacted on instinct, she wrapped herself in her own aura, shielded herself. Zed’s aura battered against hers in one move. Her aura survived under the weight of his, withstood its attack as she knew it would.

Zed’s aura pressed down harder on her until, to her surprise, it felt as though hers would break under the very weight of it. Then it was gone. Disappeared.

The smirk she’d been sporting for a while turned into a frown.

Zed’s aura was much, heavy for a mage of his rank and category. But that was not what brought her discomfort. No. What angered her was the simple fact that it was not the aura he had displayed in his fight against Abed.

Did he think her unworthy of using it or was it only something he could do when he was rabid? Whatever the answer, she couldn’t shake the annoyance of how insulting it felt.

The aura gone as if it had never been, she was greeted with a smile from Zed. He stood where he was, unmoving. But there was something to the expression of his face, like a cat that had done something no one knew anything about.

“Are you done?” she asked, her voice carrying over the distance between them.

Zed’s response was simple. “Thank you for your patience.”

Then he disappeared.

Chris started. She spun almost immediately, a spellform molding from her lips. She called fire to herself, gathered it like a shaman from old stories. It answered her call, hot and sharp, as large as a full grown man. When Zed appeared, it wasn’t like it happens in stories or comics. He did not suddenly appear behind her with a fist cocked back or a fancy spell in his hands. No. He appeared right in front of her, moved with a speed unbecoming of a Beta mage. Chris had heard of mages who somehow possessed greater physical abilities than their peers, for instance, Abed was clearly stronger than those of his rank but he had certainly sacrificed speed for that strength. It was obvious.

Zed had not.

Chris brought her spellform to conclusion, drew up fire and heat in a single spell. She let it blast into Zed when he appeared in front of her.

Zed reacted immediately, his hand came up and a rune flashed in front of him. Chris knew enough of his rune abilities to know they were limited. In such a limited space, he could only go for the shield variation of his rune. Chris knew enough to know such a shield wouldn’t block out the heat of the flame.

Zed didn’t even flinch as the flames came to life. The rune flared and a blast of purple ring blasted into her spell. It pierced a hole in the flames, turned it in on itself. Chris moved immediately, anticipating an explosion.

What had been a simple body of flame popped in an explosion. She had already stepped away but Zed had moved forward, discarding any worry for the explosion. Some of the flame licked his shoulder, caught on his shirt. A burn mark marred one side of his face. Zed winced only slightly, pushed forward as if it was incapable of stopping him, which seemed very true in this moment.

Chris watched Zed’s approach, hesitant. Casting spellforms were delaying her casting speed. What she had in versatility against Zed’s limited arsenal, Zed made up for in casting speed. And now he was somehow faster. Quicker.

She didn’t like it. Not because she didn’t like him being faster, but because he got faster too quick. As if he had been hiding his speed, though she knew that was wrong. Whatever he’d done to his aura was clearly the reason for this.

Her mind picked on a new spell, hands twitched with the unveiled urge to cast. Zed did nothing to halt his approach, a tongue of fire perched atop one shoulder like a pirate’s parrot, eating into his shirt. Chris grit her teeth, hesitation stalling her fingers. For a moment she had almost used her specialization, almost killed Zed.

She banished the spell from her mind and charged Zed.

She chanted a quick spellform. Its design would bring the wind to her, compress it into something pressurized and give it a real oomf. When she met Zed, it was with a thrown punch. The power of the wind pooled to her fist, pressurized. Zed’s hand appeared between them, glowing a subtle purple.

Chris fist struck it with a loud pop. The force of exploding pressurized air threw both their hands apart. There was a stronger glow of purple that filled the air between them before Zed’s arm was tossed back.

Force shield, Chris surmised. It was Zed’s only defensive rune. It would take him a moment of a second before he could recast it. And his basic force rune was avoidable. She turned with the rebound of her blow, tossed herself into a spinning kick. Her kick went square for Zed’s jaw. Zed didn’t flinch from it, didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, Chris felt a rising heat before her attack connected, followed by a bright orange glow. It was the herald to an explosive force of fire that rocked her. It displaced her attack and threw her across the room.

Pain seared through her chest, heat filled her nostrils and scorched her lungs. Her back struck the hard wall she had been nowhere close to and she hit the ground with an audible thud.