“As you wish.” I responded, masking my shock at Fukushi’s sudden turn in demeanor.
She nodded, stomping backwards on the guard of her nodachi, forcing the edge to move within my armored grasp. The sound it created was one of abject pain and anguish. A shearing screech as enchanted steel shore through magical, conceptual silver. In one smooth motion, Fukushi alighted on the ground and toed her blade upwards into her waiting hand.
I glanced between her and the bisected, fading fragments of Airgetlam, slightly taken aback by the show of force. Then I let slip a small chuckle, hiding my smile behind my hand as I giggled in delight.
“Did she lose it?” Someone nearby inserted an unwanted comment into the silence that formed when the gathered crowd had all covered their ears against the sound of splitting metal.
“I suppose I had no chance fighting like a swordswoman when it isn’t my forte,” I finally said. “Not that it’s a surprise to anyone, though.”
Fukushi returned a small shrug, head tilting cutely as she pierced me with those hungry eyes. “I heard what you wanted to say. Apology accepted, Eileen Singer. And you have my respect for the method in which the apology was delivered. Now, shall we?”
“I SHALL!” I shouted, letting a manic energy bubble through, noting mentally that someone laughed at the obscure reference. I dismissed Claiomh Solais, dropping to one knee and slamming a fist into the dirt. “Chain Spell: [Tempest, Roar]!”
A sound like a gong being struck by a giant reverberated from the impact, repelling Fukushi away as the first spell coalesced around me, forming a small vortex of wind and water in a whorl at arm’s length in a gapless spherical barrier.
My favorite defensive spell: [Tempest]; with [Roar] to create a shockwave that bought me the activation time. Fukushi was still in the air from being repelled when the defensive spell ramped up enough to start pulling the sand from the ground, causing the miniscule granules to dance through the air like tiny meteors. My opponent’s feet touched the ground when the rippling waters of the spell sank into the ground, turning the footing treacherous. By the time the swordswoman reversed her backwards momentum, lightning was dancing from one sand grain to the next.
The spell itself, just by existing, dared anyone to try to lay a finger on me.
Fukushi tried. She leveraged her speed to try to dodge between the sand grains that became focal points for an increasingly widespread layer of lightning, only to have to retreat as often as she made progress. The spell wasn’t as broad as attack magic liked to be, but it was flashy and effective at repelling close ranged attackers.
The solution to the spell was simple: wait for the caster to run out of energy for keeping the magic running. [Tempest] was meant to allow a caster to buy time for reinforcements. Fukushi simply chose not to wait around. She put herself to the test, even with her large weapon acting against her. At points, she sacrificed an injury to gain another step towards my bubble.
The problem became the growing potency of the gales, which sought to force her downward, trying to pin her to the ground where the lightning would assail her.
All the while, I stood waiting for her, when I normally would’ve launched attacks from within the eye of my personal storm. Not that any mortal mage likely would be capable of maintaining the defense alongside an offense.
Fukushi stopped. Her steady progress ended as she firmly planted her feet, taking one, stabilizing breath.
I sensed something going wrong. Something about reality, set into chaos and disorder around me, gained a sense of placid calm as the only warning of her retribution. Before I could react, Fukushi breathed out, and the storm was cleaved in half.
I hadn’t seen her move. One moment, the storm raged around me, and the next, it was bisected in a diagonal line, completely shattering the spell. It left me wishing I’d extended my senses into that strange fugue state I’d reached earlier. Maybe I would’ve sensed how she had managed the feat.
It was some wuxia garbage. Some feat of martial prowess that couldn’t be described in mortal terms. I could somewhat feel the connection to the spell diagram failing, like some link between syntaxes had been severed, leaving the whole form to simply fizzle out.
I felt the urge to pout at her, but she gave me no time to do so. She arrived in a blink, and I had to act. No time to think. Just react.
“[Shining Shield].”
A small hexagon of blinding light barely turned the blade aside, and my veins threatened to freeze at the utter ridiculousness. The barrier spell was meant to lens itself based on the force it was repelling. The barrier that appeared? It was maybe a centimeter across. Fukushi was so strong, the spell had to compress itself that much just to match the incoming strike.
I retreated a step, pulling raw wind and fire into haphazard darts to buy a moment of time. Her nodachi intercepted them and split each projectile in half. She had to know what I was doing, since it was basic mage combat tactics.
Spells—real ones, anything more complex than simply ripping out energy to fling at an opponent—required chants or ritual diagrams, and sometimes both. Any mage worth the title learned to multitask. To mix the raw elemental attacks with their true spells, using the faster method to cover for the real spellslinging.
I’d throw the damn textbook at Fukushi if I thought it might impress her.
It never would.
I needed to get creative. She didn’t blink at my displays of power. She enjoyed the finesse of my Celtic-inspired conceptual magic.
The solution, as with all things in life, was to use anime.
“[Jet Zanber]!”
My retreat was surrounded by a hailstorm of lighting blades, which I followed into the fray.
“[Sonic Form]!”
The blatant anime reference followed the namesake, releasing the heavy metal plates of my armor, sacrificing defense for speed. I met Fukushi with my own lightning coursing through my veins, causing pains to erupt across nerve clusters. I ignored them, and wreathed my body in golden lightning as I engaged directly.
The blade of the nodachi sliced forward as the woman before me dodged and wove around the storm of golden blades. Then my opponent’s eyes went wide when I punched the sword blade, sending arcs of virulent lightning conducting across the steel towards her hands.
I punched with my off hand, aiming to force her retreat, but she grounded the charge in her weapon at the same instant her own feet left the ground, slashing with her heels’ blades. One of her feet came to claim my head, and I was forced to abort my attack to block her absolutely divine calf with my forearm.
Her skin was so soft and smooth.
The second leg used the contact of the first to reposition, aiming to disembowel me.
I caught a glimpse of her eyes when I raised my left leg and she had that amused, enthusiastic twinkle back in her gold and silver irises again.
I captured her leg just as she tried to push off and rebalance herself, and I smiled as I caught her boot and slid it off her foot.
Her expression turned to horror as she retreated successfully, alighting on the ground with one foot not touching the soggy sand of the sparring arena. I smiled at her, enjoying the way she grimaced when she finally placed her toes on the ground.
Fukushi shook. Trembled from toe to head, really. The disgusting sensation of bare feet on damp, cold sand was a special kind of punishment.
I opened my off hand towards her, and beckoned her to come at me.
“Let’s see if I can get the other one.”
I dropped her boot and darted forward to meet her as she rushed at me, blade slicing in a rapid cross pattern.
“[Sonic Move]!”
I hadn’t really expected much from the spell when I’d copied it, but it was a dizzying thing. I partially merged with my own lighting, body turning slightly indistinct as I was dragged along, reappearing behind her in a flash.
Fukushi was already turning in time with the movement spell, somehow using her own gifted speed to match the pace of my own. When I arrived and tried to launch a flurry of punches, she had already committed to ramming the butt of her nodachi into my sternum.
I felt something rupture, and based on my breathing, it was a lung. I had a moment to regret losing the chestplate of the armor, but it wasn’t long enough to recover. Fukushi’s blade descended and I didn’t put any form into my block. Sure, lightning jumped into the steel, but the blade didn’t stop cutting down at me.
“[Jet Zanber]!”
It was too slow to activate. Fukushi would pin me with her blade at my throat if I couldn’t turn the tables.
That’s when I finally realized I didn’t want to lose. Fukushi didn’t seem to want me to, either. The look in her eyes was one of disappointment. I wanted to prove to her that I was capable of defeating her, even if she tried her best. She’d only look my way if I was that talented.
I let the wreathing lightning around my body fade from the arm that blocked her sword. The nodachi bit deep, hitting bone but not severing the arm entirely. My sacrifice allowed me to control her sword to an extent, and that little bit allowed me to force it to one side, turning the winning slash into a ‘mere’ deep injury. One I’d have to heal later.
Then my lightning blades formed, forcing Fukushi to abort the assault. But with my left arm bleeding profusely with the blade still lodged there, my right hand was still able to latch onto the grip of her weapon.
Her retreat turned into our contest for control over the weapon, and that was enough for lightning to hit her body as my spell incapacitated her.
“Aaaaagh!” Fukushi screamed as her muscles spasmed.
I managed to wrench the nodachi from her grip, and the weapon fell as I bear hugged the shorter woman, still cloaked in more lightning.
She was in no state to yield, and I could admit that my own body was past its own limits, so I released the spells and lifted Fukushi into a princess carry. For good measure, I made sure she lost her other boot along the way.
Then I carried her out of the sparring circle on unsteady feet.
I barely managed to walk long enough that we made it outside of the wet sand area, then finally let my knees collapse from under me, bringing me to a kneeling position. I looked down to find Fukushi staring up at me with those radiant gold and silver eyes. The markings of her blessings.
“You made that way harder than it needed to be,” I said with false bravado.
“Do you make a habit of exposing the feet of women you encounter?” The accusation was clear, though there was no real teeth to the pointed question.
The comment still brought me up short. “I have a lot of fetishes, and I’m open about them, but feet aren’t on the list.”
Frankly, that was some degenerate stuff. If her thing was feet, then I might’ve removed her from the list on the spot. Thankfully, she just snorted, shaking her head with a smile. There was no rebuke there.
By the time I realized the flirtation time was coming to an end, someone was already trying to get my attention. A tall person with long, dark hair covering their face.
“Hanada-san?” I asked, more taken aback that she’d been at the convention. Granted, she never missed many of them. I just hadn’t seen her, and she usually was one of the first fans to greet me.
The taller girl just nodded, fretting and fidgeting as she always did when so many people were around. “Problem, Lilin.”
I sighed, realizing there was no way I’d get more elaboration until we were alone. Mostly, I was just upset that I wouldn’t get to savor the victory longer. And maybe claim my reward.