“Alright everyone, today we’re going to be working on another crucial aspect of using magic,” Warren began as he stepped into the room. “I’m sure it’s something you all experienced during your practice test.” Ascelmo tried to avoid eye contact with Warren, feeling some slight guilt at the fact he didn’t use his magic at all during the practice test. “It’s something called magic fatigue. This is what happens when the magical essence inside of you gets worn out, for example, when you have a shield put up you’ll experience magical fatigue the more hits your shield takes, you’ll also experience fatigue when you go on the offensive. The more energy you spend on attacks, the more fatigued you’ll get.” He paused for a moment, waiting for everyone taking notes to finish. “Now the only way to build up your tolerance to fatigue is practice, which coincidentally ties into what we’re doing today. Now another thing I’m sure you noticed during the test is the lack of magical opponents. This is because we can’t simulate magic. However, you still need to be prepared to fight other Magi, the Obsidian Coalition has just as many as we do. So in order to prepare you for that, you’re going to be sparring with each other.”
Ascelmo stood a few feet away from Elenaire in a circular arena in the simulation room. Warren stood on top of the wall. “Begin.”
Elenaire struck first, sending a ball of fire at Ascelmo within seconds. He rotated his upper body to the side and the projectile flew past him. By the time he rotated back another ball of fire was already barreling towards him. Ascelmo put up a small shield in his hands, only barely blocking the whole ball, making it disperse into the air. Ascelmo shifted his shield to only his left hand and started conjuring a ball of aether in his right, firing it forward. He dispersed his shield and brought up another ball of aether, sending two more towards Elenaire. She rolled forward, the projectiles flying right over her. She started sprinting towards Ascelmo, bringing up a shield in each of her hands. Ascelmo hastily made a shield in both hands, but couldn’t bring it up in time to block Elenaire from punching him in the face with her shield. He fell to the metallic floor with a loud thud. As he made an attempt to get up he saw Elenaire’s hand in his face, with a ball of fire pulsing in her palm, ready to be shot forward at any second.
Warren started clapping. “Excellently done Elenaire, you’re actually one step ahead of me. One of my lessons is about using your shield in hand to hand combat so well done. Ascelmo, you need to work on your reaction time, you would have been able to defend yourself from most if not all of those attacks if you had reacted quicker, other than that, nice work. I hope you both noticed how quick that was, even between two fully trained Magi, a battle is usually about that quick. Let that be a lesson that it could just take one second, and it would all be over.” The two cadets nodded silently and Warren smiled. “Good, now go get some rest.”
Ascelmo sat in his bunk, trying his best to ignore the awkward silence. Bradford opened the door and stepped inside. “Good evening cadets, I’m borrowing Ascelmo for a while, he’ll be back later.” Ascelmo hesitantly slid off of his bunk and went to join the commander. As he followed Bradford out of the barracks he saw that Warren was standing outside waiting for them. He nodded to Bradford and the three of them started moving down the hallways.
“So what’s this about?” Ascelmo asked, his gaze shifting between the two men.
Warren sighed. “Listen Ascelmo, we’ve been watching you and your squad very carefully and we must admit, we’re disappointed in the lack of progress, not just as a squad, but with you individually.”
Ascelmo looked down at the floor, avoiding eye contact with them.
“Look, you’re a rather unconventional case, plain and simple,” Bradford began. “So because of that, we’re going to have to use some rather unconventional training methods.” They stopped and Bradford opened a small door revealing an ascending staircase. “Go into the simulation room, your gear is there, put it on and wait there.” Before he could ask any questions they started climbing the staircase and the door quickly sealed shut behind them.
Ascelmo glanced around at the simulation room as he entered. Similar to during the test, small walls jutted up from the floor as cover and several towers. The floor made a gradual dip at the middle, forming a kind of bowl. Just like Bradford said, the standard armor and weapons were waiting for him. He put the armor on and grabbed the weapons.
“Go stand in the middle of the room,” Bradford said over the intercom.
Ascelmo did as he was instructed and stood in the middle, cover walls surrounded the whole area, except in the corners of the dip.
Stolen story; please report.
A computerized voice came over the intercom. “Beginning Eclipse Protocol, maximum difficulty.”
The lights in the room started fading until the whole room was pitch black. The light in Ascelmo’s helmet automatically lit up, he switched to night vision, allowing him to see. Training bots rose from the floor and opened fire on him instantly. He dove behind cover, shooting in a circle at all the bots that could see him. He peeked up from behind the wall shooting at the other bots, but he quickly felt a pulsing pain in his back and he fell forward landing face first on the metal floor falling unconscious.
When he regained consciousness, he stood up and looked around, the bots were all gone and the room was lit back up.
“What was that?” He yelled at the room, hoping someone besides his own echo would give him a reply.
“That was the hardest pre-programmed scenario ever designed, it’s impossible to complete,” Bradford answered over the intercom. “We’re doing this until you start to show some progress.”
“What? Are you crazy?” Ascelmo asked. But the only reply he got was the voice telling him that the simulation was about to start again.
Once more, the lights faded to black and Ascelmo readied himself. The bots rose from the floor and Ascelmo opened fire just as soon as they did. He tried putting up a shield behind himself which worked for a small time until one of the bots got wise to it and aimed around his shield, once again knocking him to the floor.
This went on for several hours, every part of Ascelmo’s body felt like it was about to crack. He kept hearing the sounds of gunfire in his head, and Bradford’s solemn ‘again’ every time he was knocked down. They finally agreed to stop once Ascelmo had lasted for a good three minutes. He opened the door to his barracks, the lights were out and everyone was asleep. He practically fell into his bed, not even putting the sheets over himself before he fell asleep almost instantly.
“Dragon 1 to command, we’re about halfway through our patrol. How copy? Over.” Ascelmo said in the seat of his cockpit.
“Solid copy Dragon 1, report back when you’re done. Out.” Bradford’s voice replied.
Ascelmo warily kept his finger on the trigger of his controls. “Stay alert everyone, it’s been pretty quiet so far so I expect that we-” He was cut off by a loud boom as the sleek, black design of a Coalition Frigate emerged from warp speed. “Command this is Dragon 1, a Coalition Frigate just entered the area! Requesting backup. Over,” He said. He banked right and the other five followed.
“Roger that Dragon 1, we’re dispatching reinforcements, just hang in there until they arrive,” Bradford replied.
“Alright guys listen up, this is how it’ll go.” Ascelmo began. “Orokas, Elenaire, and Talen-Ra, I want you three to move on the Frigate and take out as many of those surface cannons as you can. Cydum, you and- wait a minute.” He looked around and checked his rear camera. “Where’s Aranail. Aranail, come in. Over.” He looked over to see the Frigate firing on Aranail’s fighter, which was quickly darting around, avoiding getting hit.
“That idiot! Here we go again, I’ll make sure he doesn’t die.” Talen-Ra groaned. Pulsing forward in the direction of the Frigate. Orokas and Elenaire went after him.
Fighters were starting to emerge from the Coalition Frigate and made their way to the three pilots.
“Come on Cydum, we gotta intercept those fighters.” Ascelmo said, thrusting his engines forward.
“This isn’t gonna end well, I can tell already,” Cydum mumbled.
“Well, there’s not much we can do about it now except to just roll with it and try to stay alive,” Ascelmo replied.
He started locking onto two fighters and fired a plasma missile at each of them. One hit but the second fighter deployed countermeasures to throw the missile off. Ascelmo pulled a hard left, weaving in and out through the formations of Coalition fighters, firing off shots and narrowly avoiding getting hit. He checked behind himself to see how Cydum was holding up. He was fairing about the same as Ascelmo was, but when he turned back around he saw that he was about to collide with a Coalition fighter. He yanked his joystick to the right as hard as he could, but the left wing of his fighter got torn off, causing his ship to spin uncontrollably. He tried to regain control but the ship kept spinning, and eventually crashed right into the side of the Frigate. The screen of the cockpit went black, and then red text saying ‘Crashed’ flashed before Ascelmo swung the cockpit glass up and hopped out of the simulator.
After a few more minutes, the rest of the squad crashed and they all emerged from their simulators. The six cadets stood in a line at attention. Bradford approached them, headset still on. His gaze went over each cadet before it rested on Ascelmo. He simply sighed. “I’m disappointed with all of you, I really am. Your final test is in three days and you haven’t advanced nearly enough to the point where you’d be able to pass.” Ascelmo looked down at the ground to avoid Bradford’s stare. “Dismissed.” They spun around and started walking back to their barracks.
Warren opened the door to Bradford’s office. He looked up at his colleague from his desk and shook his head. “It was the same mess as before, they just don’t work together as a unit.”
Warren sighed. “Well their final test is in three days and the Empress is already on her way. I don’t know what we can do.”
Bradford smirked. “I think I might have an idea.”