Helianna’s instructor had told her the night beforehand to meet by the elevator. She couldn’t leave without him as he was required to let her out of the academy. Apparently, the sparring they were doing today would be at full strength. Having an indoor sparring room for ithrax at full strength was completely impractical so they were going to a training ground outside the city. Her instructor led Helianna outside the castle where they saw several carts ready for them.
Piled onto the carts were a few staff as well as a large number of ithrax that looked to be in training. Looking at her instructor, she quickly realized she was going to be riding with the other ithrax and she hopped on. The cart started moving and one of the other students immediately jeered at Helianna.
“So you’re the one we were waiting for. Enjoying the special treatment?” She couldn’t get a good look at who had spoken as he was on the same side of the cart that she was with multiple people were between them.
“Oh come off it Lyan,” retorted another student. “I didn’t recognize the staff she was with so clearly it was something important.” Lyan leaned forward so he could see Helianna and grinned.
“I’d say so. Important enough for me to get involved, I’d say. Maybe the old man can get an education from me on how to teach her some lessons.” There was an audible slap as Lyan’s neighbor slapped the back of his head, quietly muttering “Not now” as she did so.
Lyan scowled but sat back in his seat for the rest of the ride, which remained awkwardly silent. It didn’t take long for them to reach the sparring field, which was within visual range of the city. They disembarked and a staff member she didn’t recognize stood on top of the other cart to address them
“Alright everyone, listen up!” he announced. “As mentioned yesterday, we will be doing unique sparring practice today. Today, you will be fighting a null!” The students immediately murmured to each other, clearly not having been told beforehand. “Silence!”
The students quieted in an instant, almost as if sound itself had been turned off. Helianna felt her own sovereign magic roiling within her in reaction to his, but she barely managed to keep it from lashing out against his magic.
“We are out here today because you will have license to fight at your full strength. You will be fighting as if you aim to kill each other. Instructor Solia and I will be here to ensure no permanent deaths occur, but I doubt it will come to that. This will provide practical experience dealing with a rogue null should you need to fight one. Now. If our null could step up, that would be helpful.”
Hearing her obvious cue, Helianna stepped up to the instructor and turned towards the students. The looks she received in return were a surprise. Many of them were angry for some reason, but she could easily detect wariness and even fear in several of them. Only a few seemed laid back, with Lyan being the clear leader in that regard.
“Bertol! Lyan! Sasha! You three will be her first combatants. If everyone else could stand up against the carts, that would be most helpful. The three students whose names were called stepped forward, while the others shifted back, giving her a clear view of her adversaries. Lyan clearly had a combination of dwarven and elvish ancestry, making him look rather comical to Helianna. He only came up to her chest, but lacked the stockiness of dwarven ancestry. The reason was clear to see in his elvish ears. This ancestry resulted in a thinner frame, making him simply look like a shrunken man. His hair was a beautiful golden,and he clearly spent time taking care of it. Combined with his light and ice blue eyes, he felt like he was trying to be a model, but had been half-sized.
Both his teammates were davraki, easily making up for the height he lacked. Sasha stood slightly taller than the other and combined with her bright red skin, she drew much more attention. Her near pitch black eyes added to her scare factor and made her appear much more threatening. Bertol was a bit more normal, with pale blue skin and bright green eyes that seemed to be analyzing Helianna down to the bone.
She saw Lyan make a fanciful gesture and the dirt billowed around him, providing him a dramatic backdrop. Meanwhile, Helianna was doing her best to analyze her opponents and this gave her an obvious sign that he was a gravity mage. Sasha was smart enough to not show her powers before the spar started, but Bertol suddenly started glowing. She had no clue what he was trying to do, but he was clearly a light mage. A small smile graced her face before she heard the instructor shout out.
“Begin!”
Expecting Sasha to be the frontliner due to the other’s affinities, Helianna immediately made a beeline towards the tall davraki. She was instantly proven correct when Sasha thrust her arms forward and a wave of ice flew towards her. Helianna smiled a feral smile as she barreled through it, not slowing in the slightest. It was immediately apparent that Helianna knew more about Sasha’s powers than she did herself.
The common misconception that Sasha had fallen into was thinking that ice magic created real ice. But in reality, ice magic wasn’t actually solid. It was purely a false manifestation that used mana to sustain itself. As a result, the false ice would appear to affect the world around it as if it were real ice, but the effects were purely magical. Once mana was no longer fed into the ice, it would collapse into unattuned mana that would flood into the environment. Of course, that meant that as a null, magic ice had no effect on her, be it the temperature or its solidity.
Helianna burst through the wave, her bestial smile making Sasha instinctively take a step backwards. A staff of ice appeared in Sasha’s hands and she whirled it around just in time to deflect a dagger that Helianna had jabbed at her torso. This time, it was Helianna’s turn to be shocked. She had expected her nullification to extend to her daggers which would have made her daggers split the ice and stab Sasha. Instead, she was stopped in her tracks, not having expected the change in her momentum.
Sasha whirled her staff once more and attempted to deliver a powerful blow to Helianna’s temple. This time however, Helianna’s nullification came into effect and the portion of the staff that came into contact with her disappeared. A small piece of ice flew behind her and Sashsa looked down at her noticeably shortened weapon in shock.
Helianna took the opening that Sasha’s misstep granted, sinking a dagger deep into her shoulder and locking up the joint. She left the dagger there, instead pulling out a smaller one that she turned and threw at Bertol. Unfortunately, she was a moment too late as the grass beneath her burst into true flames. Unbeknownst to Helianna, Bertol had been spending the fight focusing his light as tightly as possible on the ground below Helianna in an attempt to burst into flame, which was now successful.
Due to his concentration, he was completely unaware of the dagger flying towards him. A moment before it reached him, however, the dagger suddenly stopped as if all horizontal velocity had disappeared, making it fall to the ground.
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“You’re dead, Bertol! Hit the ground!” commanded a voice from the sidelines, and he quickly complied as the sovereign magic commanded.
His actions were not without consequence as Helianna’s pants now caught aflame due to the now very real fire coating the ground. Without hesitating for a moment, she dodged back and ripped her pants off, which cost her precious time. She heard a whooshing sound behind her right as she threw them off and immediately hit the ground in response. Something heavy clipped the back of her head and shoulder as she did, causing her drop to the ground to become a bit more painful and much less graceful. She looked up to see Sasha almost on top of her and a massive tree flying above them both.
Having realized the futility of using her staff, Sasha instead threw a kick at Helianna’s face. Despite the minor concussion she likely received from the tree, Helianna barely managed to jerk back in time. Using her momentum, she swung her legs around to sweep Sasha’s legs, bringing the large woman to the ground.
Helianna grabbed the knife she had dropped when she was glanced by the tree, which allowed Sasha a moment to turn and grapple Helianna from behind. Fortunately for Helianna, Sasha had not been trained to grapple and failed to use her significantly larger weight to her advantage. Instead, Helianna twisted and stabbed her dagger into Sasha’s side. The stabbing elicited a gasp from Sasha and the shock of the pain caused her grasp to loosen. Helianna quickly weaseled out of Sasha’s grasp and they both stood up.
Sasha grinned and pulled the knife out of her side with her good arm. “Now I’m the only one with a knife. And I’m a lot bigger than you are.”
Barely taking a moment to think, Helianna immediately started sprinting away, taking the opportunity to see what Lyan had done with his flying tree. The tree was floating above him and he had his arms reached out as if he was holding it with his own hands. She couldn’t tell quite what he was doing, but he was clearly straining and she knew she had to finish the fight with Sasha. She could hear Sasha running up behind her, Sasha’s longer legs clearly allowing her to catch up to Helianna. Fortunately, she wasn’t fast enough and Helianna reached the fallen throwing knife from when she had ‘killed’ Bertol. She spun around and threw the knife at Sasha’s face in a single smooth motion.
Unfortunately, Sasha had realized where Helianna had been running and easily dodged the throw with minimal effort. She closed the distance and stabbed Helianna in the shoulder in retaliation. At the same time, they both heard a loud thud, but neither of them let it become a distraction. To Sasha’s surprise, Helianna had not attempted to dodge or block her thrust, opting to receive the hit. In return, Sasha felt a prick on her throat. It was immediately clear to her that Helianna had hidden another knife which was now pressed against her neck.
“You’re dead,” Helianna calmly stated. Sasha took a step back and they both whipped around to Lyan, expecting the tree to have come flying in by now. Instead, they saw the Lyan collapsed on the ground with the tree in the dirt nearby.
“Dumbass,” Sasha quietly muttered. “You never learn.”
“Victory for the null!” announced the instructor. “Sasha, get Instructor Coslen to patch you up. Null?”
“Sir?”
“You up for another fight?” Helianna took a moment to roll her shoulder and shake everything around before frowning. Her balance felt slightly off and her shoulder screamed for mercy. She was pretty sure she had gotten lucky with the knife wound as she was able to move her shoulder around still. It must have missed the meat of her muscle. Apparently, Sasha had not anticipated her to deliberately take the hit, which had made her partially miss.
“I won’t be at full capacity, but I can put up a fight,” she responded after several moments. “Remember, I can’t receive the same level of healing as everyone else either.”
“Understood.” He turned to the ithrax and pursed his lips. “Isela! Sylas! You’re up!”
Immediately upon seeing them, Helianna had her doubts on the combat potential of this team but tried to suppress her assumptions. There were only two members, which was the smallest amount possible for a team of ithrax and quite rare. The worst part was that neither of them looked particularly combat capable compared to the last team. They were still ithrax so of course they had powerful magic, but against her it barely mattered.
One was a tijatan, which Helianna assumed to be Isela. Her fur was a beautiful pure white that made her dark eyes stand out. Her eyes weren’t pure black, but it was close enough that from a distance, the color was indistinguishable. She stood tall, but like all members of her species, she looked emaciated. Despite looking so frail, Helianna didn’t have to remind herself of the wicked claws that hung from Isela’s four arms. They could be very deadly with very little force required.
Sylas didn’t exactly cut an imposing figure either. He was shorter than normal for a kinuze and when standing next to Isela, he looked positively tiny. The glowing eyes that were often intimidating in kinuze looking almost comforting from him as they glowed a soft white. Unfortunately for Helianna, neither of them showcased their affinities before the fight started, leaving her in the dark. They both got in position, with the sandy-skinned Sylas much closer, clearly their closer range fighter as he also had a sword.
“Begin!” yelled out one of the instructors.
Isela jumped and… didn’t come down. In only a moment, she was easily over a hundred feet in the air and she spread out her arms, letting her membrane catch the air.
Helianna was surprised and distracted as Sylas remained where he was and threw a punch. Despite being far away, his fist flew towards her, stopping barely an inch from face due to her magic nullification. Despite knowing that Helianna’s nullification would stop his space magic, Sylas threw a large number of punches towards her face in quick succession. Not knowing if it would work, Helianna tried to catch one of his arms, but the nullification still applied and his arm seemed to teleport before she could latch on.
Helianna rushed forward, but struggled to see due to the barrage of punches flying inches from her face. She put her arms up to stop them, which helped slightly, but now she was blocking much of her own vision. At the same time as he threw the constant punches, Sylas continuously backpedaled in an attempt to keep his distance from her.
Fortunately, she was faster than him and when she reached him, she swung her dagger. As she did so, Sylas threw another jab, blinding a large portion of her vision and making her miss. As he pulled his hand back in a way that seemed to break the laws of physics, she immediately became aware of a sword swinging down at her from Sylas’ other hand.
Knowing she didn’t have time to block it, she closed in, making his attack deliver less power. Regardless of her attempt, it still cut down to the bone of her arm, nearly eliciting a scream from her as she dropped her dagger. She crashed into him, and they slammed down to the floor, causing him to drop his sword as well.
As they hit the ground, they both rolled and Helianna scrambled to grab her dropped knife. As she did so, he clawed at her wound, this time forcing the scream out of her mouth. Gritting her teeth, she bore through the pain to grab her knife, which she managed to turn and stab into his gut.
“I will keep stabbing until you die or you can make sure you get healed,” she growled out. “Either way, this fight is over for you.” He narrowed his eyes before releasing his hold and collapsing on the ground to the side of her. Helianna clumsily and painfully stood up, trying to find Isela. When she did, her eyes widened in shock and terror. Isela was rocketing toward her at a speed beyond Helianna’s comprehension, clearly attempting some crazy and suicidal plan.
Helianna tried to dodge out of the way, but didn’t have time. The last thing she saw before the tijatan crashed into her was the girl’s crazy eyes as she cackled in joy. The force of the impact instantly rendered Helianna unconscious.
Almost an hour later, Helianna woke up with a pounding headache. It took her some time to remember where she was, the unfamiliar view of the cart interior confusing her. She heard a battle going on and when she slowly sat up and looked, she saw that her instructor had taken her place. She collapsed back on the cart and remained there for the rest of the day, trying to recover.
Later in the afternoon, she learned the outcome of her second fight. Alongside Helianna, the tijatan who took her down had been knocked unconscious and severely injured. The girl had actually been injured so badly that the decision had been to simply kill her so she could respawn instead of healing her, due to a faster recovery. The fight was declared a double loss because ‘there’s no such thing as a victory if everybody is dead.’
Eventually they returned back to The Academy where she spent the next few weeks recovering. If she hadn’t been a null, it would have taken a fraction of the time due to magical healing, but she had to recover without it. Afterwards, she returned to her normal training, which lasted for about a year before something finally changed. She received her first mission.