Radiance - The Alight Archives Book #1

87. Young Wands

Elaine felt her heart pounding in her chest, the sweat draining down the sides of her face as she inhaled warmed, jagged breaths, pouring everything she had—may it be her focus or her magical energy—into maintaining her barrier's integrity, though, with each beating second, she could see the cracks beginning to form, running across its glimmering surface like the crooked threads of a spiderweb. With her commoner's wand glinting a flash of golden light, Elaine thrust it forward. She watched as a wave of energy washed over the barrier, reinforcing its design and durability.

She'd learned during class that advanced sorcerers needed only to cast the spell once, and the barrier would hold for as long as they needed it to. For a novice like her, if she hadn't constantly supplied it with her Essence, it would have shattered to pieces long ago. Defensive magic had never been her specialty, not when she practiced it during her Spellcasting lessons and not as she fought for her life against a horde of some of the most despicable rogue sorcerers in the country.

But none of that mattered now. If she couldn't hold her own, then all that awaited her was a fate orchestrated by these men, mages who were content with harming and capturing children all so they could sell them for profit. Monsters like them deserved the worst; if she wanted to see justice enacted as it should have, she hadn't a choice but to fight and win.

Golden shards of the barrier splintered off of it like glassy crystals, dispersing in Elaine's face along with the strong gusts of wind, causing her hair to stream behind her. Readjusting her bending stance, narrowing her fuzzy vision, Elaine spotted the rogue sorcerer in front of her, his arm held at shoulder height as blue-colored energy sparked from his wand's tip. Soaring from him at an intense speed were numerous compressed balls of air, each colliding into her barrier one after the other with enough force to down a fully-sized land dragon.

At first, Elaine's barrier appeared as a large dome that protected her on all sides; since then, it'd been reduced to a mere disc no wider or taller than the span of her arms, steadily hovering over the ground in front of her. Each time another wind bullet rammed into it, portions of the barrier would break apart and disintegrate into flickering light particles before disappearing into the air.

In spite of how she felt, Elaine needed to fight back, but she knew the second she deactivated the spell, her enemy would have the opportunity to inflict a fatal strike, and that would be the end of this duel if it could even be called one. Of all that she'd learned during Spellcasting Class, Professor Knight had never taught them how to fight or, rather, engage in a traditional duel. He would with time, no doubt, but as she was now, she knew just as much about dueling as she did before enrolling in Glyph Academy. That is to say, not a whole lot...

She certainly wasn't on the same level as Kliff, and she was grateful the fire mage was aiding them. Spending a fleeting glance over her shoulder, she spotted the sorcerer a few meters away, holding his own against the five men rushing at him all at once, each one brandishing a blade or a dagger. They were no match for him as the fireball he'd sent hurtling at them with a swift thrust of his arm had consumed all his enemies in a thick cloud of fiery smoke.

She'd known a long while that Kliff could handle his own during a fight, so they'd hinged their strategy on him serving as the offense, leaving her as the defense. Long-ranged attackers like this wind mage could easily best Kliff from a distance; Elaine needed to keep the boy covered long enough to finish off the rest of Vang's men before he ran out of steam and before he received a wind bullet to the neck while his guard was lowered.

"This is utter nonsense. You should have surrendered while you still can, girl, or maybe taken shelter in the forest. But choosing a confrontation? Could there have been a worse decision made, I wonder?" he said in a patient tone that belied his frustrated expression. The mage stood tall with a straightened back, breathing out his nostrils calmly before raising his arm again to aim. "Glyph has tricked you students into believing you're some of the best mages in the country, but there's a world of distance between a rookie such as yourself and a professional like me."