By the time their sparring was done there was no clear winner, and both had thoroughly dampened spirits. And clothes. Not as damp as you might expect however, since they'd actually spent the last half hour of the spar drying out. That was when the platforms had stopped disappearing altogether. Kyle had a sneaking suspicion that last half hour had been about making sure their control wasn't about to waver again.

“Well done girls, well done!” the the wizard duck said as they carefully stepped back onto solid ground. “Alright boys, you ready to go?”

“Guess so,” Kyle said.

“I suppose we are,” Trevor said, frowning at the pond.

“What's the matter kid?” Dr. Myrden said, glaring over his bill. “Don't like my training methods? Think you know better?”

“It's not that,” Trevor shook his head. “I was thinking about the arena. It's just that the arena's pretty bad from me. I'm trained mostly in Judo and Jiu Jitsu. That's a lot of submission and grappling and rolling around on the floor. Oh, but I completely get that I'll need to learn to fight on all kinds of different terrain, so...”

“No,” Dr. Myrden said. “I mean yes, yes you will. But this training is about magic control. Let me make a few adjustments.”

The wizard-duck focused, and the platforms disappeared. A moment later a flat oval of stone rose from the water to form a fighting arena.

“Hey!” Jenny said. “What about having to balance and focus while they fight? Wasn't that the point of the whole thing?”

“I understand that was a distraction from our control of our magical power,” Ammeline said. “But this does some somewhat unfair. And we had consequences for losing control of our magic! What happens to them?”

“I mean the whole platform could sink,” Jenny said. “That's basically what happened to us...”

“Regardless!” Ammeline waved Jenny's reasonable argument away with her hand and continue with her usual dramatics. “This appears heavily unbalanced!”

“Why is everyone questioning my teaching methods today!?” Dr. Myrden complained. “This guy wanted the arena changed, people are stealing my best summoned beasts, Evan is thinking with his dick and his dick can't make up it's mind, even my own granddaughter is being difficult!”

“Wait,” Kyle said. “Are you aware of what the other duck versions of you are doing?”

“Of course!” Dr. Myrden snapped. “We're still all the same person!”

“But that would mean...” Kyle rubbed his temples. “Wouldn't that make this the most powerful spell ever?”

“HAH!” Dr. Myrden's laugh was, unsurprisingly in this form, more of a quack. “HAH! There, I just laughed in your face twice. No. Not it wouldn't. This spell is covered in limitations. And besides, just wait until you see what magic can really do. When that happens you'll think of this as a trick best meant for children's parties. Now come on, get on the platform. And you!”

He whirled on Ammeline and Jenny, pointing a cane at them with an accusing wing.

“Think I'm going easy on the boys, do you? Think I'd sacrifice my training by the littlest tiny bit?”

“Not really,” Jenny said.

“Jenny made a good point before, actually, about...”

“Well you're wrong!” Dr. Myrden snapped. “And I'll prove it to you!”

Sparks of light shot out from his cane and encased Jenny and Ammeline each in their own glittering bubble of magical force.

“Hey!” Kyle said, but Dr. Myrden held up a wing.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“They're not in prison, these are viewing globes.”

“If I can't break the walls then it counts as a prison!” Ammeline said angrily, jabbing at the sphere of energy with her fencing sword.

“They're so that the girls can watch what happens in safety.”

“Wait,” Trevor said. “Safety?”

“Uhm, Doctor,” Jenny said. “I feel it's maybe just a little possible you're really angry at our friends, not us, and you're taking out your frustration at whatever they're doing in their own training on Kyle and Trevor, which isn't really fair...”

“Going down!” Dr. Myrden said. “Dive dive dive!”

The platform began to lower under the water. Kyle and Trevor braced themselves to get splashed, but the water never touched them. Instead it crept up the side of some kind of invisible dome guarding the platform, until they stood in a bubble of air deep, deep beneath the surface of the pond.

Very deep beneath the surface of the pond.

“Was this pond always this deep?” Trevor asked, squinting at the surface high above.

“I guess it's magic,” Kyle shrugged.

“Yeah I guess so,” Trevor sighed. “We are getting way to used to just shrugging things off when we say that.”

“My girlfriend is a mystical genie and I had to fight a crazed demon who had fused with my childhood bully a few days ago,” Kyle pointed out. “Is a pond deeper than it should be all that weird in comparison?”

“No of course not,” Trevor sighed. “That doesn't make me happier about things.”

A few moments later, just outside their bubble of air, another bubble appeared. This one was about the size of a minivan, and standing in it were Jenny, Ammeline, and down by their ankles the feathered form of Dr. Myrden as a mystical duck.

Just another one of those things they would shrug off.

“Imbalance your magic and the bubble disappears,” Dr. Myrden said. “Balance again and it reappears. Oh, and it empties itself too.”

“Oh,” Ammeline said. “Yes, this is much fairer.”

“How is this fairer?” Kyle demanded. “He could have just made the platform beneath us disappear! And what the hell is that!?”

An enormous blue and yellow eye had made itself visible outside the bubble, on the far side from where the girls and Dr. Myrden sat in audience.

“Oh don't mind that,” Dr. Myrden said. “That's the Kraken.”

“There's a kraken down here!?” Trevor gasped.

“He's a good boy! His name is Sherwin. He's a little hungry right now though so he might be dangerous. But he's no harm to anyone in a force bubble. Like you won't be if you don't balance your magic!”

“Wait a minute!” Trevor said. “The girls didn't have to deal with a kraken. I feel like that's going a little far.”

“Well I could give you a whole speech about how the girls have a lot less combat experience than you so you need increased danger, but I'm not going to let you stall for any more time to get your magic balanced before we start. GO!”

There was a moment of hushed tension and...nothing happened.

Well not quite. Trevor and Kyle both winced as if someone had just thrown a heavy sandbag to them and they'd had to catch it. But other than that, nothing.

“Oh good!” Dr. Myrden said. “Good good! You're off to a good start.”

“This is crazy!” Trevor said, through clenched teeth. “I'm keeping up, but it's taking so much out of me! You've got so much magical power I can't believe it!”

“Yeah but yours is like concrete!” Kyle said. “It's so heavy and hard! Can my magic bruise, squeezing up against yours like this? Is that a thing?”

“And here we're looking at the difference between a higher quality node and a lot of lower quality nodes. Not that your nodes aren't high quality. You've got magnificent nodes.”

“I am eternally grateful Evan isn't here,” Ammeline groaned.

“But you've got a lot of nodes that are lower quality than Trevor's single node. So you can produce a lot more magic, Kyle, but his magic is a lot harder to resist. Something to keep in mind. It's why someone with a hundred tiny nodes isn't automatically stronger than someone with three large nodes.”

“Now I'm just afraid of what Evan would say,” Ammeline said. “I should never have allowed my mind down this cursed path.”

“But enough of that boys you're here to fight. So fight! And keep your magic balance!”

And they did.

Their fighting movements were stiff, at first, but they got more and more fluid as time went on. And as they fought and sparred, there wasn't a single tremor from the done.

“I'm starting to get upset,” Ammeline said.

“Why?” Jenny asked.

“How come they're having such an easy time controlling their magic?”

“Well part of it is because they both have greater reserves than you do,” Dr. Myrden explained. “Well, not really in your case Jenny but your situation is more complicated. It does help, if you can both just ramp your magic up another level. Another reason is because they saw you go first, so they were already thinking about how to handle this exercise.”

“Oh I suppose that makes sense,” Jenny cocked her head. “Still, I suppose I wanted to see Kyle in wet clothes. I mean it would be fair.”

“Oh that's easy!” Dr. Myrden said. “Just say the word nipples.”

“I should say what?” Jenny blinked.

“Just say the word nipples,” Dr. Myrden replied.

“How would saying the word “nipples” do anything...”

“What?” Kyle said, turning his head in Jenny's direction. Trevor caught him across the face with a right hook, and the magical balance was shattered. Water came in like a hammer, and they found themselves flailing in the water and a sudden forest of angry tentacles.

“I'll be honest,” Dr. Myrden said. “I only told you to do that because I'm having a bad day and I wanted to see them fight a kraken.”