The standoff between Professor Davar and Professor Farran’ir didn’t last more than a couple of minutes. Blanca Ferron nibbled her lower lip nervously, caught herself, and nearly coloured with such a public display of emotion. Her ears were still stiffly straight, though they twitched with every movement of the two in the middle of the arena floor.

“She matched Eddie blow for blow,” she muttered in disbelief.

Eddie’s Force Orb Bombardment created dozens to hundreds of compressed orbs propelled by his Elemental Truths. Radiant energy was truly a Primordial element. It devoured the bonds holding the spells together and consumed the momentum of each orb. A little bit of envy and avarice and not a little bit of lust washed over her. The latter was the most surprising, really, but she had been oddly obsessed with Yuriko over the past weeks. Their shared dinners and afternoon tea had only been enough to whet her appetite, though she did glean quite a bit of information. Well, gossip mostly.

For one thing, she was quite sure Yuriko was rather indiscriminate with her passions. Blanca was unsure if she was sleeping with more than one person, but the passion between her and her companion, Gwendith Sharine, was thick enough to cut with a knife. She was also sure something was going on between Yuriko and Heron Muryh, except that man’s scent on Yuriko wasn’t quite as heavy as Gwendith’s.

While Blanca wasn’t a prude, she wasn’t that adventurous either. But somehow, the fact that there was something going on between the two women filled her with a voyeuristic thrill, and the desire to insert herself into the situation grew stronger every day. She would have thought, with both Gwendith and Heron gone from the academy, she would have her chance, but she hadn't quite mustered the courage to make a move yet. It’s not as if she was inexperienced with love and lust, either. She was already in her fifth decade, and her youth had not been filled with just studies.

Blanca was an Advanced Magus and she could cast or maintain three spells at the same time. That meant that she had long been able to divide her mind and focus on many things. One part of her was agonising over her circumstances and her infatuation, while the other two parts of her were focused on the spar. One of those parts focused on her physical senses while the other part activated Arcana Senses. It was an advanced spell that allowed her to perceive Elemental energies that she didn't have a strong Affinity for, and was not limited to Sight.

Elemental energies had a signature rhythm, too, and her Khuni ears were finely tuned to detect them. Eddie was using compressed air but he didn’t have a Wind Affinity. He specialised in Telekinetic methods, which were often called Force spells by the laymen and lower-year students. She couldn’t really blame them, since a basic Force Bolt seemed to exert its kinetic attack out of nowhere. The common medium was air, but Force Bolt could easily be applied to a pebble or a block of ice too. If she understood it correctly, the Elemental Truth Force touched upon had something to do with movement or momentum. She was not a practitioner of it, and her view was muddled, but she knew enough to know what was really going on.

The invisible orbs were only like that because it was air. If one’s senses were sharp enough, one could see the distortions of their passage and use those to avoid or defend. Eddie’s methods were well known to the faculty, too, so there were few mysteries there. And the man had not advanced much further than the last time he participated in a public spar.

No, what was most fascinating was Yuriko Davar’s methods. Even Eddie’s incredible feat of casting somatic components using his ears and toes was nothing to how Yuriko was seemingly able to cast simply by willing runescript patterns to appear in thin air. Blanca could just see the edges of it, hidden underneath her palm, or her clothes, but Arcana Sense and Blanca’s honed hearing and sight were able to catch a glimpse of it. Added to her skill in converting vocal and somatic components into runescript…

Evidently, the two of them decided that slinging spells while standing still was over. Eddie whooshed to the left, moving twenty-five paces in the blink of an eye. Most people would have lost him owing to the fact that he moved too fast for the eye to follow. Not from that close anyway. Yuriko didn’t seem to have trouble even if she didn’t bother to turn around. Instead, Radiant energy bolts shot from her fingertips straight towards the man.

Eddie continued moving, his telekinetic leap precise to the inch. He didn’t move his maximum distance every time to avoid being predictable, but nevertheless, Yuriko’s Radiant Bolts were always aimed precisely where he appeared, though he was too quick to get hit. He always blinked away by the skin of his teeth, avoiding the burning bolts.

Perhaps Yuriko was using a variant Echolocation spell? How else could she know where he was precisely? However, she could not predict where he would appear, so her bolts always missed. That seemed to annoy her, so she started moving too. Her feet rose above the sands, and she hovered a couple of paces above. The sand underneath her burst into a plume as she kicked off. She appeared within a dozen paces of Eddie, who blinked away as soon as he saw her.

Then came the chase. Eddie escaped while Yuriko followed. Her flight was fast, and if not for Eddie’s abrupt direction changes, she would have caught him by now. When she altered her direction, sand underneath blew up as though she had stomped down on it, even if her feet and legs never moved. Another mystery. What kind of flight spell was she using? A variant of Eddie’s Telekinetic Push? From the rebound on the sand, she was using that instead of pushing against the air, or using Wind Elemental energy to float.

Eddie apparently thought that going higher would slow her down as he jumped up several times over the next ten seconds, reaching a quarter of a longstride in height. Yuriko followed, her skirt billowing with the wind. Her explosive directional changes weakened, but she wasn’t slowed by much either. Eventually, after several minutes of flying, Yuriko figured out Eddie’s pattern and she almost touched his back. He blinked downwards until they returned to the sands.

“One last thing,” Eddie said as he drew his sword from his waist. “Battle Magi must be able to fight up close.”

Even from this distance, Blanca saw Yuriko’s blinding smile. Her reply was muffled, but her long ears were able to pick what the woman said. “Are you sure you wish to test your blade with me?”

Eddie simply moved his sword in front of him, while his spellstaff was held on his other hand. Yuriko was unarmed.

The golden-haired woman extended her hand, palm facing down. There was a flash of light, and the sand underneath her hand burst up. A moment later, a sword made out of molten glass hovered an inch beneath her fingers, which then shifted to grasp it. Blanca gasped, as did everyone else in the stands. The glass was still molted red!

When the hand held the blade, the red faded to black, and what Yuriko held was a sword nearly identical to what Eddie wielded, but one made out of obsidian. Somehow, the thing formed a proper edge that gleamed in the noonday sun, and ominous black that Blanca felt could cut through anything.

“Come, show me your sword,” Yuriko said haughtily, and Eddie obliged.

He blinked forward and to his left, aiming to cut Yuriko before she could react. Her waist twisted out of the way and avoided the edge by a hair. The obsidian sword stabbed towards Eddie’s leg, slammed into his Force armour, and skittered away, causing a high-pitched screech that had Blanca folding her ears down as she winced in pain.

Eddie counterattacked with both sword and staff. Runescript patterns flashed on both weapons, speeding them up and causing the business end to curve towards the woman. Yuriko either lazily dodged the blows or used her obsidian blade to gently guide the weapons away. She never met Eddie’s attacks edge to edge, contrary to what Blanca would have expected. She did not use swords, however, so her expectations were low. Still, it was imminently clear who had the upper hand.

The melee bout lasted the shortest time, and in less than a minute, the obsidian edge was pressed against Eddie’s neck. The Force armour rippled with the pressure Yuriko applied, and it was close to breaking.

A moment later, she retracted her sword, and asked, “Are we done?” Her tone was flat and bored.

Eddie smiled. “Yes. You are more than qualified.”

“I didn’t realise this was a test.”

“Did I not write it down?”

Her cheeks turned pink and her muttered reply was too soft for Blanca to hear. Nevertheless, it looked like the sport was over. She glanced over at the audience. Most of the students had sparkles in their eyes. Professor Farran’ir was one of the more popular teachers, while Yuriko was novel and new.

It was the outsiders who had the varied expressions. Most were talking amongst themselves, while a few held recording plates to capture images. Ah! She forgot to use the one she brought!

Vice-Dean Biera conducted the closing ceremony and both professors left, heading towards the same gate. Blanca sighed, and let her mind wander and ponder upon her obsessions and her future.

_________

Olivia Biera, Vice-Dean of Niria Academy of Elemental Mastery, returned to her office after the rather public duel. She didn’t know why she continued to indulge Eduardo Farran’ir’s idiosyncrasies, except for the fact that he always kept the quality of the Battle Magus department above average. The duel did reveal more than a few of Professor Davar’s capabilities, but then again, neither of the two was being serious. Just enough so that Eddie was satisfied with her competency. It would not do to reveal the campus’ battle power to the rest of the world.

Her desk was once again filled with paperwork. Reports on the students, the teachers, the adventurers, the Chaos Founts…

Too many reports, most of them generated by her use of the scrying mirror too. The near-simultaneous eruption of Fount overflow stank of Raptura cultist work, and it was looking like another purge was needed. The last time those crazies had been active had been a couple of decades ago. Clearly, a new generation of Chaos mad magi were itching to try changing the status quo.

It didn’t help that one of the three Grand Magi of the nation wasn’t at his post. The Dean was still busy being a political animal, but really, he should stick to his guardian duties. There was more than enough to spice up life here. Aside from the borderlands, the Ishodir Empire, which had ten times the territory of the republic, was overdue for one of its expansionist phases. They were pressed up against Bresia’s northern and eastern border already, and they forcefully occupied the hostile neutral buffer zone. Well, it was their soldiers who paid the price for that, so she didn’t really care.

On the contrary, the Xotha Matriarchy seemed rather withdrawn now. Then again, their desert territory was hostile enough to occupy anyone’s attention. If not for the fact that Bresia was bordered against the Shattered Realm, those fanatics would have annexed more land westward.

She was just about to scry the northern border when she received a Sending spell. She scrunched her eyebrows when she realised who the caster was.

“What does that old goat want now?” she growled but accepted the spell anyway. And when she heard what was said, she clenched her fist in anger. Who would dare abduct an alumni right off the academy’s doorsteps?

“Let’s write a shortlist, shall we?” she muttered as she returned the spell. “Why are things so interesting lately?”