Somehow, Alice and I made this magical target practice into some kind of a contest as we took turns trying to hit the witch’s conjured ethereal vase. Neither of us could stay in the lead for very long; when Alice got serious, she had pretty incredible aim, even after she stored her inscribed wand so we would both be on equal footing by manually casting Mana Bolt.

Once we had both smashed it a few more times, Vexina decided it would be amusing to have the vase spin around in a circle in the air. The two of us took on this moving target challenge undeterred, opting to not count score as it then turned into a game of us versus the witch.

At some point, Vexina had apparently conjured a magical rocking chair for herself and sipped from a bottle of alcohol as she spectated, occasionally increasing the speed of the vase or making it spin the other way around whenever the sadistic hag felt like it. Alice and I worked together to coordinate our casting to make sure one of our Mana Bolts always connected with our target no matter what the witch tried. Well, at least until Vexina grew frustrated with our success and made the vase move even faster at the last possible second or phase out of existence right as we were about to land a hit. Eventually we both decided to cast Mana Bolt at the tree stump and ignore the vase altogether, much to the witch’s ever-increasing irritation.

“Stop. That will be enough for today,” the witch finally grumbled.

Wow, what a sore loser!

“So what’s next?” I tried.

“What’s next is you handing over payment for your second round of training!” Vexina cackled. “Ten gold, no less.”

“What! You know we don’t have anything close to that much; you can’t just jack up the price like that after teaching us only one spell, if you can even call that ‘teaching!’”

“You don’t even know how much those wands would be worth!” she snapped. “My price is not up for debate. But I never said you had to pay in coins, did I? You may have something else of equal value that will suffice for payment.”

The witch made another disturbing face as she looked my dress up and down. My dress…?

“Oh, hell no!” I shouted.

Alice clasped her hands together and looked at me with giant, pleading eyes.

“Beryl, pleee—”

“No! No, that’s not happening! Not this time.”

She clicked her tongue. Don’t look so disappointed, damn it!

“Isn’t that just terrible,” Vexina mocked. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you girls to leave now.”

Ugh… I was hoping for something more than only a basic projectile spell like this. But knowing her, this result shouldn’t have been so surprising, given the circumstances. Maybe I could get just a little more information out of the witch…

“Lady Vexina, how much do you know about the Recall spell?” I asked with as much poise as I could muster.

“That spell? How could you possibly… Bah, no matter. Buttering me up won’t work, but I can tell you whatever you want to know—for that dress!”

Was this really her plan all along?! What kind of… no, that didn’t matter right now. I just couldn’t believe how that selfish witch would have been practically jumping at the chance to show off by sharing her knowledge in any other situation! Actually, that just gave me an idea…

“You know, it really is a terrible limitation that mages can only have one Recall point at a time,” I said.

“Nonsense,” the witch snorted. “Who would bother using a pathetic spell like that? There is no such limit.”

I had been looking around the woods here long enough to have a good mental picture of the area. I held those sights in my mind while I quickly cast the spell to set a Recall point. A moment later, I felt a familiar stronger image of this place in my mind and a tingling sensation below as a circle of light appeared around my feet before quickly fading away. And even then, I could still bring to mind my mental connection to that other Recall point I’d made back in the city.

“Hey, you’re right! Thanks for the tip, Vexina.”

Her wrinkled face contorted with rage as she realized what just happened. “You conniving…! Hand over the dress, now!” she snarled.

The witch’s staff lit up as she slammed it into the ground, and the earth began to violently churn and quake around her.

Yep, definitely a sore loser. Time to go!

I grabbed Alice’s hand and took off running into the woods. “Come on, I’ll get us out of here.”

“Beryl wait!” she cried. “What’s happening?!”

“Don’t worry; I have a plan!”

I only needed to get some distance between us and Vexina, and then I would have all the time I needed to make sure I cast Recall the right way and safely teleport us out. That short witch would never be able to catch up to us on… foot…

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me…!”

While the tremors we felt with each step were already suspicious enough, one look behind me confirmed the unthinkable. Somehow that witch was flying right over the ground toward us—no, she was still sitting in her conjured chair, but the rumbling earth beneath her propelled the witch forward at a ludicrous speed.

And she was gaining on us.

“I will have that bloody dress!” Vexina screamed. “Raglius, stop her!”

The gargoyle leapt from its perch atop her chair, gnashed its teeth and let loose a gravely roar. Christ, when it really tried that thing could make a face like something out of a goddamn nightmare! With a flex of its sharp, stony claws and a few flaps of its wings, the flying demon charged straight at me. I ducked at the last possible second, nearly falling over but managing to regain my footing with Alice’s grip.

“Beryl, this is crazy! W-We should really stop!”

In hindsight, that probably wasn’t very good etiquette casting that spell right next to her house. But still, I wasn’t about to let that wicked witch have her way with some insane request like that!

“Alice, you trust me, right?”

“Um…”

“Please just say yes!”

“Y-Yes!”

“Good. I need you to keep that thing off me for a minute. I know you can do this, okay?”

“…Okay!”

The gargoyle reoriented itself in the air ahead of us, roaring again as it prepared for another dive bomb tackle. Alice pulled out her wand, channeled her mana into it, and took aim.

“I’m sorry!”

The creature tried to swerve out of the way of the incoming Mana Bolt, but it was too late. Its stony body was already moving too fast to fully dodge the projectile, and the ball of energy exploded upon its flank. The attack inflicted no obvious damage, yet the force of the impact was enough to send the gargoyle veering off course, just barely missing me to soar past us at full speed and faceplant into a tree.

“Nice shot!” I said.

Now it was up to me to get us out of here, and I would have to do this while running for dear life. I focused my mind on the image of that fateful mansion in the city’s Upper District. As long as we didn’t run into the mansion’s creepy inhabitants… no, one problem at a time!

I started tracing the symbol of Recall with my free hand. Crap, how did that shape look exactly? The pressure was making it hard to focus. Come on, think! There were a series of squiggly lines and semicircles that went like—

Suddenly, the trembling ground at our feet gave way to a tangle of snaking roots that made the two of us lose our footing, sending us tumbling to the forest floor.

“You’ve already wasted too much mana!” Vexina yelled. “You don’t have enough left to make it back to the city in one piece!”

“I’m not falling for that!” I yelled back, forcing myself back up and helping Alice do the same.

Running between trees in a zigzag pattern did little to keep the witch from closing the gap between us. Her magic kept the dirt beneath us a churning, tremoring mess, slowing our pace and making any attempt to concentrate a hopeless impossibility. I should have known that stupid symbol by heart at this point, and yet…!

A wall of stone and soil spontaneously shot up out of the earth in front of us, stopping Alice and me dead in our tracks. I turned to go around it when another wall sprang up, then another, and another, the four of them sealing off any feasible escape. One last quake heralded a rising pillar of earth that bore a wickedly grinning witch, apparently quite pleased at how she had boxed us in.

“You put up a good fight,” Vexina mocked as she looked down at us trapped in that earthen cage, “but not good enough. I will still continue your training, mind you, but you will do it as naked as the day you were born! Now... Off with your dress!”

“Y-You mean just her, right?” Alice asked fearfully while pointing at me.

“Of course, my dear,” the witch cooed.

“Hey, what the hell was that?!” I shouted.

Alice blushed. “I-It’s okay Beryl, I won’t look! Well, maybe just a little…”

Now’s not the time to be a weirdo!

Since it had come to this, it was definitely do-or-die now. I gripped Alice’s shaking hand tighter as I focused my thoughts with everything I had. How did that symbol for Recall go again? Think, one step at a time. First came the spell I had cast earlier, and then the spell to return there which should look like… Of course, the symbol was just an inverted version of its other part! I should have gone with that memory trick from the start instead of trying to remember it from scratch.

“I’ll still get you out of here,” I grumbled to Alice who looked damn near ready to faint. “Hold on!”

“Stop!” the witch screamed.

I channeled my mana with a finger into the symbol to get us the hell out of this damn forest. The witch’s staff lit up brighter than ever, and the earth crumbled away beneath Alice and me like it was trying to swallow the two of us whole.

The last thing I felt was the sensation of my feet leaving the ground as we plummeted into the earth, even before I finally finished casting the spell.