Orrin sat under the wide tent awning set up against the inside of the outermost Wall and watched Brandt and Daniel practice their swordplay. After he and Madi debriefed her father on their side-quest rescue, Orrin asked the stern man the question weighing on his mind.

  “Why hasn’t the Horde attacked yet?”

  Silas’s answer was no comfort. “I don’t know.”

  The glass of lemonade in his hand chilled his fingers and Orrin swirled the cup to make the ice spin again. His thoughts raced each other as the sound of grunts and metal clinking echoed in the background.

  “I feel it too,” Madi confided from next to him. When he frowned in her direction, she hurried to continue. “The pressure of this all.” She waved a hand in the air vaguely.

  “We’re sitting here drinking your dad’s lemonade while watching our two beefhead friends practice fighting,” Orrin pointed out. “This is not pressure.”

  Madi sighed and put down her drink. “Maybe pressure isn’t the right word. Everybody is tense from waiting for the demons to attack, Orrin. There are a lot of people in charge of this. You, me, Brandt, and even Daniel don’t need to worry about the next move. We’ll get our orders and move to help where we can. This is not like last time. We’re a small piece of an army.”

  Orrin knew she was right but something still bothered him. The Horde rushed to the Pass only to stop and wait. It didn’t make sense. There was some kind of internal politics going on in the enemy camp but that shouldn’t stop them from putting forth a few probing attacks at the least.

  “You should at least practice a bit. It might help you get out of your mind,” Madi said as she stood and stretched. She reached down and pulled him up by the arm. “Teach Daniel a bit of humility. He’s been beating Brandt nine times out of ten lately.”

  Orrin allowed her to drag him toward their friends, resting after Daniel had disarmed Brandt again. “I’m not fighting them. It makes no sense to do it. I shouldn’t be fighting anyone. I can run through enemies and leave them either struggling to move or prone on the floor. If I’m fighting someone who can resist my debuffs, I’ll just keep running and avoiding them until one of you can land a real attack. If all else fails, I’ll [Teleport] away.”

  “What if you can’t escape or we’re not around?” Madi let her spear grow out. “Orrin, you’re clever and powerful. That doesn’t mean you should stop trying to improve. Fight me. I’ve got something I want to try.”

  Brandt and Daniel hurried to move out of the way. Orrin distinctly heard Daniel make a bet against him. He glared at his friend who shrugged.

  Orrin waited with his arms at his sides. If Madi wanted to spend the next few minutes on her back staring at the sky, she could have her wish. He didn’t summon his [Fire Sword]. His wards were already set for the day and their recent excursion hadn’t shaved any points off his shields. His stats were maxed out from [Utility Ward].

  Madi kept her spear pointed toward Orrin and began flashing different colors as she cast spells. Her new class was a direct upgrade from her old one. Orrin had used his Administrator powers to give her the [Superior Prism Conjurer] class that everyone thought was a fairy tale story. From what he’d seen so far, she had a bit more versatility in her spells with a few high mana big-burst spells. It didn’t matter against him. [Decrease Strength] would sap her ability to hold her spear or even stand upright.

  Brandt glanced back and forth waiting for their nods. The knight didn’t seem worried but Orrin counted that as trust that he wouldn’t go too far. When Brandt gave the signal, Orrin cast [Decrease Strength] at the lowest level on Madi, expecting the duel to be over before his ice melted. With his increased will, the level-one spell would knock ten points off her strength. It wouldn’t be enough to put her on the ground but it would slow her enough to make her surrender the match.

  Madi smiled as she charged at Orrin. He frowned and pointed again. A flash of light around her chest was the only hint he got before she was upon him.

  The confusion at the spell not working was enough to put Orrin on the backfoot but he’d been training for months. [Way of the Water] still gave him the dodging skills he needed to keep from being skewered.

  “I warned you,” Madi huffed as she stabbed at him in rapid-fire motions. “You never know when someone will have a trick up their sleeve and surprise you.”

  She ran at him holding the spear low. Orrin was forced to summon a [Fire Sword] and swerve to the side. As he moved, the spear and Madi’s arms seemed to blur. Instead of the connection he expected as he parried her spear to the side, the attack came from above.

  Madi rang Orrin’s bell with the haft of her spear.

  With his [Ward] active, the damage didn’t harm him but he still felt the pressure against his crown. “What the hell was that?”

  Madi skipped out of range and smiled. “See if you can figure it out before I beat you.”

  Orrin pulled an [Ice Sword] out of mid-air and fell into Formless, the catch-all stance from his fighting style. He tried another debuff, which triggered Madi’s attacks again.

  While Madi was quick from her own boosted stats, she couldn’t handle the backlash of a fully raised buff. As such, Orrin was faster without even using [Gust]. He sent his spell combinations through the swords, trying to freeze Madi or hit her with a burning gust of wind. Madi stepped out of each attack with a bigger smile and no wounds.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  One of the reasons their party could train so hard was Orrin’s healing. If one of them took damage, he watched close enough to hit a few [Heal Small Wounds]. With the amount of mana he was throwing out, Orrin was trying to minimize how much healing he would have to do after he won the fight. His movements became more frantic as he realized he might not win.

  Madi scored a hit along his leg. It wasn’t much, but coupled with the rung head from earlier, she was chipping away at his [Ward]. She kept from hitting him with magic, as his own mana pool dwarfed hers. If it came down to a slug match of who ran out of mana first, Orrin was confident he would win. Madi took a different approach, putting her years of weapon training into full effect as she dazzled him with bursts of light and made illusions that made her strike come from different directions.

  He couldn’t use [Lightstrikes] as each time he tried, the spell fizzled against her skin. Orrin even tried to use [Camouflage] but Madi’s eyes glowed like miniature suns as she kept her eyes on him.

  “It’s like you picked all the spells that would counter me,” Orrin cursed. “You have to be running low on mana, though.”

  Madi’s ferocious smile made Orrin’s stomach flip. She charged again.

  The fight was over when Orrin started running. Madi beat him with her spear a few times and then chuckled. She covered her mouth as her eyes danced, watching him stumble to a stop.

  “What was that?” Orrin asked as he dropped the swords. “I quit by the way, if that isn’t obvious. You completely kicked my ass.”

  “If you paid attention, you could have won,” Daniel said with a huge smile. Brandt was counting out silver coins and handing them over.

  “Brandt! You bet against me?” Madi said incredulously, shrinking her spear down and hanging it from her hip.

  “Daniel gave good odds and I thought Orrin would be quicker on the uptake.”

  “Will somebody tell me what just happened? My confidence is taking a hit.” Orrin scowled as his friends laughed. “I will [Teleport] back to Dey and let the Horde take you all, so help me—”

  “I can deflect some magic spells,” Madi explained, holding up her hands in surrender. “It’s not perfect and I have to time it right but I can even absorb some of the mana of an attack back into my own mana pool. You used mostly elemental magic against me, which I’m better at dealing with. If you kept hammering me with your debuffs, I’d have gone down with another few attacks. Those spells eat up my mana.”

  Orrin felt a little better about losing. “How did you move so fast? It’s like you teleported your arms into new directions. I defended against you a few times but sometimes when I thought I had you, the attack came from a different direction.”

  Madi was preening and Brandt proudly looked on before explaining. “She can create illusory attacks.”

  “That’s a simplification,” Madi gloated. “My spell makes you see where I would attack while blocking your attention from where my spear is attacking. It’s an illusion spell built into an attack. I can’t use it every attack yet but if I combine it with some feints I’ve been taught,” Madi nudged Brandt in the side, “then I can confuse the enemy… or friend in this case.”

  “Can I see the spell you used to stop my magic?” Orrin asked. “Cast it and let me hit you with something? I want to watch the mana.”

  “He wants to watch the mana,” Daniel mocked playfully. “Orrin, you got your ass kicked. You don’t have to turn it into a lesson. Take the hit and try again.”

  Orrin shook his head. “Madi won fair and square. I still want to see it, if you don’t mind.”

  Madi glared at him. “Are you just trying to find a way to win against me?”

  “You already told me how to do that. I keep hitting you with [Decrease Strength] until you run out of mana. I also told you that my strategy is to run. I could have used [Teleport].”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Because you told me you wanted to try something,” Orrin squinted at Madi in the mid-day sun. “How long have you been planning this.”

  Madi kept a perfectly straight face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Since she leveled up and unlocked the spell,” Brandt ratted her out, which earned a slap on the arm.

  Brandt gave a few pointers on the technical side of their fight. He and Daniel were rested enough to have another session. Madi guided Orrin to the Wall and held her arms out to her sides.

  “Go ahead and cast away. I can block another two or three attacks if you don’t go all out.”

  Orrin used the smallest [Lightstrike] spell and focused on the magic as it hit Madi’s body. The flash of light right before contact was the same as before but Orrin watched the way Madi’s spell worked. What appeared to be a translucent covering turned white when his spell hit, moving in ripples down her body. The majority of the mana from his attack was dispersed but some of that magic moved to her eyes where it disappeared into her body.

  “That is amazing,” Orrin said, explaining what he was seeing. “The shield turns the magic away and absorbs some mana into your eyes. I wonder if I cast it closer to your head if you would absorb more.”

  “You are not shooting spells at my head, Orrin.”

  “For science?”

  “No.”

  Orrin summoned an [Ice Sword] and raised it toward Madi. She backed a step away.

  “I’m not going to stab you. Try and activate it when I get close,” he said, moving the tip to Madi’s arm.

  “Nothing?”

  She pushed the sword away with the back of her hand. “I think it has to be a cast spell, not a summoned object.”

  Orrin used [Gust] through his sword and tapped Madi’s arm again. The sword burst apart and Madi’s arm should have been covered in icy frost. Instead, her spell activated and a sparkle of blue light fizzled down her body.

  “Was that necessary?” Madi asked, rubbing her arm. “It still hurts a bit to get attacked, you know?”

  “Sorry,” Orrin said distractedly. “Did the color change?”

  Madi nodded and counted on her fingers. “Red for fire, blue for ice, and white for light magic. Daniel tried some space spell on me and Brandt said it looked like a shadow filled with stars swallowed my body for a second. I could only redirect some of that damage and couldn’t absorb any of it. Light magic works best for me, obviously. Elemental magic, like fire, ice, water, and earth, is easier to deal with too. That’s not even the best part. I think the more I use the spell, the closer to –”

  “Movement toward the Wall.” A cry from above them rang out.

  Daniel and Brandt moved to their side quickly enough that anyone outside their party would think they had teleported. Orrin checked over his party, rebuffing wards where necessary. Madi and Daniel drank a mana potion to cover the lost points from their fights.

  “We shouldn’t have trained so hard. We might need the extra mana,” Daniel muttered.

  “Maybe it’s just a messenger saying they made a mistake and everyone is going home,” Orrin said with no hope in his voice.

  “And maybe a cute elf will fall out of the sky and ask me to marry her,” Daniel said, rolling his eyes and unhitching Gertrude, his gigantic sword, from his back. “Let’s go see who we’re fighting today.”

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