“Hey, this might sound a bit crazy, but I want to test something.” I say to my friends and family.

“Test what exactly?” Sam asks.

“The reduced energy drain of my spells…”

“And how will you go about that?” My sister tilts her head. “By just blasting some spells into the air to see how long it takes you to run out of juice?”

“.... That’s actually not such a bad idea.” Nikki scratches her chin. “It’s definitely the least dangerous one.”

“And as long as Ami’s spells have a limited range, it won’t hurt anything either… they do still have limited range, right?” Hilda asks.

I nod. “I think they do, yes.”

Hilda looks relieved. “Alright, that’s good. I don’t see why not. But do you still remember how much power your spells used beforehand? It seemed to me like you already had a pretty big font of power.”

“I suppose that’s true.” I reply. “I know that my revive spells costed me a lot of energy before. But as for my normal attack spells…”

My sister raises her hand. “I just want to say in advance that I am not volunteering to be the resurrection target dummy.”

“No shit, Élise.” Sam laughs. “I don’t think Ami would be comfortable with that either.”

“Yeah….” I look out over the ocean. “I suppose I could just test how long I can cast my attack spells in a row. “I think that should give me a pretty okay idea but it still won’t test me as much as my revives would.”

My sister sits down in the sand, relieved that she won’t have to die over and over again for the good cause. “Well, I’m ready for when you decide to start. I could use a pretty light show. Just a bit sad that we don’t have popcorn around.”

Nikki sits down next to her partner. “Snacks would be nice.”

“The two of you just ate, didn’t you?” Hilda asks, bewildered by what she’s hearing right now.

“I think Ami will also agree with the fact that snacks go in a different stomach than actual food food, Hilda.” Lise replies.

“This is true.” Nikki nods.

Hilda looks over to me while my girlfriend starts laughing. “I guess Ami would indeed agree with that.”

“Uh, hello, I’m standing right here.” I pout. But the things they had said… I couldn’t really deny any of it. Even if I were to be full, there’s always more space for snacks.

Sam comes to stand right next to me and gets her bow out.

“What are you going to do, Sam?” I ask.

“I want to compare how many of my skills I can use before I run out of oomph.” She gives me a wink. “It’ll be nothing compared to you, of course. But I’ve wanted to test it out for a while now, so I might as well.”

“What about your arrows?”

“Don’t worry about those, have a skill that can refill my quiver. So I won’t be wasting any.”

“Oh.”

Hilda stands on my other flank.

“Are you going to test your skills too, Hilda?”

“I don’t really have skills that use resources like that. I’m just here to watch from up close.” She replies with a smile.

I nod and make my sword appear in my hand. “Let’s get going?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Sam gives me a nod as well. “Yep, give me the sign and we’ll go at it.”

I raise my sword so it is pretty much level with the ocean. “You can consider this the sign, babe.” A blue light shoots out and explodes quite far away from me, after which I continuously keep casting the same spell.

Sam laughs and also starts shooting out arrows which leave trails in multiple colours. Our endurance test has well and truely begun. At least the sound of explosions isn’t too loud so we don’t disturb the wildlife too much. And as my explosions aren’t hitting the water either, I’m probably not harming too many fish as well.

We go at it for quite some time. Non-stop casting all the way. But it’s Sam, not really surprisingly, who has to tap out first. I look to my side at the expression she has on her face. She looks very tired.

“I can’t… I can’t go anymore… I’m spent.” She drops on her butt in the sand and looks up at me. Honestly, I’m not really feeling anything yet. My arm isn’t even tired from holding my sword constantly.

“Hey, you went on for half an hour, Sam. That’s really good.” Hilda walks up behind Sam and gives her a pat on the shoulder together with a flask of water.

“Wow, it’s already been half an hour?” I ask.

“Yep.” Hilda nods and looks at me.

“Not feeling anything yet?”

“No, not really.” I shake my head.

“That’s pretty disheartening isn’t it.” Sam chuckles after drinking a bit from the flask.

“She is a Goddess after all.” Hilda smiles and then walks away again to sit next to my sister and Nikki. Nikki, who has decided that basking in the sun is a good decision, and my sister who’s still looking at the explosions in the distance with a big grin.

“Hey sis, try to mix it up a little, will you?”

“I’ll try.” Although I’m not really sure how…

The first thing I try is to imagine the beam of blue light to take a curved path to the left, and to my surprise, my actual spell follows exactly what I had imagined. I can hear an applause coming from the background.

I try to bending it in different directions with the same result. It seems like due to my higher degree of control, I can pretty much bend my spells around corners which could be pretty useful.

I push myself to try to get the spell to bend as soon as possible with as sharp of a corner as I possibly can. What I found out is that if I pour more magic into my spell, it becomes a bit harder to control, in that it takes longer in my spell for it to change course. Whereas if I spend less energy, that degree of control goes up exponentially. I know it is deviating a bit from my stress test, but I decide to cast on the least amount of mana I can muster. It ends up as a little blue ball that flies out of my sword which I can pretty much control indefinitely. I can even use it to draw my sister’s name in the sky.

“Woohoo!” My sister calls out. “That’s really neat, Ami.”

Her cheering me on as if I’m at some kind of sports meeting does make giggle.

“Can you try having two balls at the same time, Ami?” Sam suggests, she’s also looking very interested at the ball in the air.

“Sure.” I try to cast a second ball, but the second I do, because I have to concentrate on casting my new spell, the other ball of light just goes poof. “Awh…”

“Hey, maybe you just need to practice.” Sam replies. “You can’t be a natural at everything, right?”

“It’s just like drummers.” My sister says.

“Drummers?” I ask, turning myself around.

“Yeah, you know how they can tap their one foot at a rhythm, then their other foot does something else and their arms are doing even more different things. That’s really hard, you know.”

“Oh. I suppose that’s true.” I try making a little blue ball again and then try to keep my concentration on it while I try to cast the second. This time, the first blue ball stays there for a second before it goes away.

“See, progress.”

“I want to keep trying.” At this point the entire thing about endurance casting just goes out of the window as I’ve found a new passion in life, trying to maintain two small energy balls at the same time!

I’m pretty sure I spend hours on end trying to get my concentration on point, by the time I’m starting to feel hungry, I can already keep two small balls going at the same time for almost fifteen seconds. It definitely has me hyped to continue practicing this at a later date.

“And just like that you’ve also proven your endurance.” Hilda says. “I honestly can’t imagine controlling magic that specifically doesn’t require lots of energy too.”

“It’s at least a bit tiring.” I agree. “Mentally first and foremost.” I bleep my sword away and concentrate on going back to my normal form. When I open my eyes again, I’m all back to normal. “Wow, I still can’t get over the fact that this is so easy now…”

“I’m just a bit sad that it doesn’t look like one of those anime magical girl transformations. That’d be so cute.” Sam comments.

My sister almost spits out the water she was drinking. “Somehow that picture just shot into my mind. Cannot unsee.” She laughs.

“Meanies.” I pout.

“Hey, at least you are a knight and not an actual magical girl. Otherwise I might have tried to force you to call out one of those cute ‘spells’ when you are changing.”

“Magical Ami cutieformation!” My sister drops flot on her back, rolling in the sand while laughing.

I puff my cheeks up even more. “If only I had a spell to turn you two into magical girls…”

-Now that… that I’d really want to see-