What I absolutely can’t afford is for them to drain my power spot. It’s worth the magic expenditure.
Sure enough, Destien’s orange bolt of magic cracks against the shield just ahead of where I’d been standing. An instant slower and I’d be down already.
By the size of the bolt, just unconscious though—which means Evram gave him instructions to avoid killing me, at least for now.
I can work with that.
“Destien, always a pleasure,” I say. “I see your manners are as refined as ever.”
“Cut the crap, Walker,” Destien growls. “What do you think you’re playing at? Stealing the grand magus’ wand? You never did know your place.”
He fires another bolt at me that I reflect back at him.
With one swipe of his wand, he deflects it away, along with the swirl of leaves I’d rustled to capture his ankles. Damn.
I am going to need more power before this is over, so with a big chunk of magic now sacrificed to the shield, I have a problem. I have to somehow beat Destien without expending much magic.
I’ve beaten him plenty of times before, but never with this handicap.
That doesn’t stop me from turning the leafy ground cover slippery under his feet. It’s a minor magic, but once he moves—and he’s showy; he’ll move—it’ll buy me time.
“What about your place?” I ask him. “How’s it feel, to only be the grand magus’ champion by default because I’m no longer around, not because you beat me?”
“I’ll beat you today,” Destien vows grimly. Unhampered by my magic limitations, he creates five glowing bolts in a star around me that all spear toward me at different angles.
No way to dodge, and a shield will cost me too much. A tweak, then—just in time, I transform the bolts into toothless charge; they sizzle against my skin harmlessly, their actual magical punch smoking into the air.
I can’t pull that one too often or I won’t be able to breathe. Maybe once more.
But for now I take hold of that smoke with the wand and start shaping.
“What a contest,” I drawl, “against an opponent that hasn’t had the opportunity to duel in a decade.”
Destien has clearly learned since I last saw him—he used to do that star, but the angles were always predictable and even—and he was never a dude you could afford to go less than full out on to begin with.
He shifts his stance, and then slips on my leaves. As steady as Destien is intrinsically, this takes him especially by surprise, and I don’t miss my moment. While he’s off-balance, I pull electrical charge from the air around us and shock him with it.
Then again, he hasn’t had me as a sparring partner for ten years, either, so who’s he had to challenge him?
Whereas I’ve had nothing but time to imagine all the ways I could perform magic here if only I had a wand.
Unfortunately, the amount of electricity I can pull here is too small. That would have worked better in the city.
Destien catches his footing, the gravitational force inexorably finding its center, firing back at me while I enclose him in the haze of smoke, disguising my next move.
And on and on we go, flitting among the trees.
I’m holding my own, despite my limited magical reserves, but the problem is it doesn’t matter.
Destien doesn’t have to beat me—he just has to keep me busy long enough to drain dry whatever High Earth reserves I have access to.
I can’t beat him and finish the spell I was working on at the same time.
An eternity of mere minutes passes when Evram yells a startled oath.
So, he’s seen the spell I’m writing, then. I haven’t had time to pay attention to him and Destien both.
I should have obscured what I was working on, but I didn’t have time—they’d already seen the trees, and an illusion that complex takes time. My alternative was to block their vision of the grove entirely, and that would have just made it a clear target.
