Radiance - The Alight Archives Book #1

60. Alliance

Rapidly spinning his arm as a windmill, Custas shot his wand forth with elastic speed, fleeing targets locked in his eyes. What beckoned loudly out of the smirk that split across his face was the name of his desired spell, "Wind Magic: Vente Entes!"

Essence drained out of the Core in his chest, flowed through the veins that composed him, and circulated everything that was his existence. What resulted from this internal reaction was the calcification of the elements Custas sought.

The branches of trees croaked and moaned around him as currents of winds slithered through the canopy ceiling like winding serpents hunting a hare in the grass and condensed into a sphere the size of a ball that could just barely fit inside a man's hand. A second later, the orb of wind launched away from him at speeds that exceeded that of any ordinary, blood-born creature.

Shockwaves Custas had grown accustomed to yet never failed to make him squinch whipped him in the face, rustling his messy dark hair, billowing the cape over his left shoulder. Some five years back, Custas could have very likely seen himself lose his footing and be sent to the ground right atop his behind, looking like some foolish sulmo with little control over himself, much less his own two feet.

But that was then; in the present, the winds were his to control. Five blinks and the orb of wind—which via momentum had now morphed into a shape more akin to an arrow, or perhaps, an oversized bullet of a runerifle—had cleared the fifteen meters or so separating them and, with a wooden crack slammed into the trunk of a nearby tree, scattering shards of bark and leaves in the gusts that spiraled like cycles of waves from an ocean he'd never seen.

Of course, he hadn't gotten any of them with that attack, nor was it ever his intention to do so. If this exam was four hours long, he needed to draw it out in some regard, and what better way to spend it than demonstrating his magical prowess by hunting down opponents who couldn't even fight back? Realistically, could he have ever hoped for a better outcome than this?

Oh, my dear, sweet Luck, Custas thought, smiling. How you favor me so.

Up ahead, through narrowed lenses, Custas spotted them: three of his classmates running with shaking tails between their legs through knee-high foliage and uneven terrain. They knew crossing paths with him wasn't a battle they could risk, and so fleeing like deers escaping a relentless hunter would be the smartest move by far. Twirling the wand in his hand, Custas ducked into a playful skip of a stride, continuing a pursuit that meant nothing.

Admittedly, he didn't know all his classmates off the top of his head, but he was pretty good at recognizing faces—a skill he'd cultivated as Serpent Fang's lap dog. The round-faced girl with shortly cut blonde hair and the distinctive, red-colored eyes of an Ekenthite was named Rayla. He didn't know what kind of magic she specialized in, but it obviously couldn't be that powerful, given that she was placed on the Sparrow Team.

The tall boy with light-colored hair and spindly arms like a needle was Malcolm; he sat at the desk in front of his during homeroom. He wasn't anything remarkable, and the fear warped upon his face translated that he lacked the ambition or resolve to stage a counter-offensive. In other words, he wouldn't be much of a threat regardless of what team he was in. His magic probably wasn't that strong either.

Now, the brown-haired kid that wasn't too tall yet wasn't too small, that wasn't as muscular as someone like, let's say, Mason, yet was by no means a scrawny weakling like Malcolm who ran alongside him. Well, Custas couldn't get a solid read of the guy; he couldn't even remember his name. Even during class, he never really said anything, and he always had that plain look about him, as if he held the answers that everybody else failed to acknowledge.