Gale woke up early the day of the duel. As she turned to the side of the bed to get out of it, she looked at Sofia, who was also just waking up. She had a big smile on her face, but a excited look in her eyes. She got up from her bed too, and put her hand forward to shake Gale’s, wishing her that the best one would win. She really seemed to be into the idea of the duel, Gale thought with a complicated smile. She was not too keen on it herself: Sofia was clearly much better at magical control than she was, quite a long time her senior, but she was scared her magical attacks could just go crazy and cause some grievous injury or worse.
During breakfast, the boys were hyped with the duel, making bets subtly among themselves on who was going to win (but Gale noticed anyway). It ended up being a 2 to 2 betting on each of them, which Gale was actually grateful for. After breakfast, Professor Aberyth told the students that the duel would be in an hour in the courtyard, and that they could prepare whatever equipment they wanted, except actual weapons. They would be given a wooden sword each, which they were to treat as real for the purpose of the duel (that is, if it hit you in the head you “died” and so on).
Gale decided to spend this hour sitting in the classroom alone, trying to practice a few last times the wind aura spell (her only spell). As Professor Aberyth himself said when he announced the duel, she needed to practice the control of the spell. Additionally, these last few hours she had been making up a few ideas that she wanted to try in the duel. If her intuition was correct, they might prove quite useful.
When the time came, she took a deep breath and decided to go outside to the “arena” (Someone had made a large circumference of rocks in the courtyard, most likely using earth magic). Sofia was already there, talking to Saku who seemed to be really excited for the duel. Gale took a small detour before reaching the arena, picking up four thin branches that she kept using her waist belt. After that, she was ready to go towards the arena, positioning herself in front of Sofia.
Sofia and Gale got in front of each other, quite some distance away. Sofia hugged her hand close to her, where she was now wearing some kind of leather criss-crossing strap from the wrist into the hand, as if wishing it would give her luck. Professor Aberyth stepped forward, and told the rest of students to get outside the arena. A few seconds later, he started explaining the rules: “Good morning, today we have a special event, the long-awaited duel between our two girls, Gale and Sofia!”, he made a small pause while the other students cheered. “OK, OK, I’m going to explain the rules now. Both of you have a reason for this duel, so you should focus on that aspects for this. Of course, you may still do other things in the duel, but keep in mind what this is for. The winner will be the one that “kills” the opponent using the wooden sword, or makes them surrender, or incapacitates them. You will not lose if you get out of the circle, but please try to keep the fighting inside as much as possible. Finally, do not try to cause injury, and remember I may stop the duel whenever I consider it necessary.” With that, Professor Aberyth got out of the arena, and raised his arm. Then, he started a countdown. “3, 2, 1… NOW!”, he shouted dropping his arm.
Gale decided to seize the opportunity and try out one of her new ideas. Gathering magical energy on her feet, she created a magic spell and used it to leap forward to where Sofia was standing, a move she vaguely felt she remembered somehow… Or that was the plan. The spell had too much magical energy on it, and was not properly cast, so she flew forward past Sofia, past the arena, and crashed at high speed against the outer fence of the school, cracking some of the wooden boards.
“Gale!”, Sophia and Professor Aberyth shouted at the same time. Everyone ran to her, where she was laying with her back on the ground, her lower half leaning on the broken fence. “Are you hurt?”, Professor Aberith asked her, clearly mere moments before Sofia did the same, and offered her a hand to stand up. She was.. fine, just a bit hurting all over. Her right leg was a bit more damaged, but she felt she could continue the duel, and she said so to her teacher and her rival. Professor Aberyth scolded her, though, for literally doing the opposite of what she needed to do and completely lose control of her magical energy.
They positioned themselves once again in the starting setting of the arena, and Professor Aberyth repeated the countdown. This time, Gale decided to simply run forward towards Sofia. She started casting her own spells, without moving from her place. Holding her hand together, she created a water circle that shot small bullets of water towards Gale. She dodged the first few shots while running forward, but as she was halfway towards Sofia, her leg failed her and could not dodge in time, getting hit in her left knee and falling into the ground.
Gale had some experience in fighting already, so she used the momentum of the fall to roll on the ground and stand up again in a fluid motion. But in the time it too her to do that, Sofia had changed her spell to a different one: both her hands were together holding a water whip. Her first movement with the whip missed Gale for a few cm, showing that she was also getting used to her new abilities. The second one, though, graced Gale’s right leg and made her trip again. She could maintain her balance this time, though, and tried to continue forward. But something was not right, the water seemed to be attached to her leg, and started to expand! She decided to stop this immediately by casting her wind spell in her hand, and punch at the body of the whip as far as she could from her body. The ensuing explosion severed the connection, making the water whip collapse into the ground, and sending a small cloud of dust around her. It also sat her down on the floor, though.
The dust mostly covered her, so she had time to get up and jump forward to try and catch Sofia, who was now only a few meters away. But as she exited the dust, she saw that Sofia had a new whip ready to attack. Gale knew that she had to put her all into dodging it, so she took a jump to her side as it turned towards her leg again… But it changed direction in midair, and hit her hand!
Her hand was now being swallowed by the water, so Gale repeated the same process and went to use her air-reinforced punch against the whip. But this time, it did not connect. A wave rippled through the whip and made another part of the whip make contact with her forearm, fixing it in place and preventing the magic to hit. Then, they connected and swallowed both her hand, which were now being held together in front of her.
This is bad, Gale thought. Looking at Sofia, she could see how she had closed her eyes to better focus, and a few seconds later she was lifted from the ground, now hanging by her arms. “FUCK!”, shouted Gale, as the water continued expanding downwards. She tried kicking around to try and get some momentum, but Sofia clenched her eyes hard and was able to make a second, clearly more unstable whip, branching out from the original one. This one hit Gale’s left leg, and after a second, touched her right leg too.
Now both legs were also trapped by water, and were being held together, preventing Gale from squirming too much. She decided to use her punching spell again and free her hands, even if it had to explode right in front of her, but as she tried to create the circle, it fizzled out all the time and could not be properly created. Sofia must be interfering with her own will! She was clearly more experienced than her, it was no surprise…
Gale’s situation took a turn for the worse, as Sofia used the water to bend her legs in front of her, making contact with her stomach which started getting swallowed too, and bending her elbows to move her arms behind her back, also swallowing them. She was now completely helpless, and most of her body had been covered in the water. Finally, with just enough time for Gale to take a deep breath to hold, the water covered her head too. Sofia was clearly trying to incapacitate her by immobilizing her, and as things stood, she was about to lose!
She could still squirm a little, so she tried to reach for one of the small branches that she had hidden up her sleeve back in the cloud of dust, where no one could see her. She could barely grasp her with the other hand, and slowly pulled it out. Even though she was running out of breath, she needed to concentrate for this. She focused on sending as much magical energy as she could towards the branch and…
BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The branch violently exploded, breaking what was now looking like a water dome surrounding Gale and sending her flying a few meters forward. Professor Aberyth, who was standing a couple of meters away and about to end the duel, jumped back from the shock, never expecting something like that to happen. Since Gale knew that if one send too much aura to an item it can break down, she had decided to go full force on a small item, that could not handle much, to make it outright explode!
Gale was now really close to Sofia, so she ran with all her might. Sofia, on her part, looked quite dizzy from all the ficus her magical attack had taken, and probably would not take much to incapacitate her. Still, she tried once again to summon her whip, so Gale threw another branch forward, towards the ground beneath (but slightly in front of) Sofia, and sent all her river of magical energy towards it, making it once again explode and creating a huge cloud of dust.
“AAAAAH!”, Sofia shouted. A few seconds later, when the cloud started to dissipate, their fellow students could see the final scene: Sofia was laying on the ground, pinned by Gale’s body, as she was sitting on top of her. Gale’s sword was pointing at her neck, standing still.
“We have a winner!”, Professor Aberyth shouted. “The flurry of the wind, GAAAAAALEEEE!”, he finally announced, clearly having fun with it. The boys were shouting all around her as they got closer, but Gale could still see how some money was being exchanged between them.
Looking down, she could see that Sofia was looking at her, blushing quite a bit. She was probably embarrassed from losing like that, Gale thought, so she got up from her, blushing a bit herself from literally sitting on her crush, and put her hand forward, to help Sofia stand. Sofia sat down, and took Gale’s hand. But instead of using it to propel herself forward, she pulled to make Gale fall to her knees, and planted a strong kiss on her lips, with her arm around her neck. Gale’s mind blanked, and could only vaguely hear the boys shouting “UOOOOO” in the distance...
