Lumity's Beating Heart

The Fight

Luz was a little confused and rattled not paying attention to the competition's first round. She tried to prep spells in her notebook but her hand was shaking and she couldn't concentrate to draw them properly. She was nervous, not only does she compete in the second round she competes against Amity, who's likely been preparing for the competition for months. She knew what she should be doing, either writing more spells or watching the first round to get a feel for the competition. But really what she was doing was fantasizing about winning. She knew she could never of course, but to see the face on Amity when she loses, to finally maybe earn some respect from her long time rival. Oh, it filled her heart with joy and hope. She was excited certainly but scared, Amity outclassed Luz in nearly every way. Amity had more experience, higher level skills and more confidence. Luz had a notebook, a pen and a few dozen prepared spells, after that she was done for.

Suddenly her head snapped to attention when her name came on the magical equivalent to a loudspeaker, the first round was over. There were five minutes left until the competition. Luz got up, steeled her nerves and hyped herself up. 'I've got this' she told herself. 'Amity is too confident surely I could use that to my advantage'. While she couldn't think of a specific way to use Amity's confidence against her she nonetheless labored under the delusion that this was a glaring weakness of Amity's. On her way to the stage floor she did develop an opening tactic. She's going to cast a couple of light balls (her specialty) to freak Amity out, while she's distracted she'll attempt to blind her with another more powerful light spell. Then while she's disoriented Luz was going to use one of her recent earth spells to quickly knock Amity down. Luz's best chance to win was a quick fight so she didn't run out of spells. Luz was playing to win. Before entering the arena she had convinced herself she had a good chance of putting on a show, even winning. She stepped into the arena her head held high and her gaze steeled on Amity.

Luz barely even heard the thunderous applause that had erupted when Amity entered the arena moments before she did. In fact apart from a wave toward eda, willow, King, and Gus she didn't interact with the audience at all. Luz put on a smile, and wished Amity good luck. Amity however was busy soaking up the audience's laudes to notice. Luz was somewhat irked by this.

"INHABITANTS OF THE BOILING ISLES ROUND TWO BEGINS IN 3" the booming voice from before announces. Amity focuses her attention on Luz. 'finally ' Luz thought. Amity's mouth changed gradually into a smile and Luz's Heart fluttered. From nerves or something else she couldn't say.

"2" the announcer's voice rang out. Amity lowered herself and angled herself slightly to reduce her profile. 'Smart' thought Luz and though it countered her plan she decided to lurch left and enact it anyways. Luz mirrored Amity's stance. Luz's eyes glanced once at Amity's abomination pot, Luz was mostly untrained in that area of magic so she couldn't make heads or tails of what that could mean.

"1" immediately Luz lurched left per her plan but as she was throwing out her light ball spells Amity jumped lifting the cap off of her abomination pot, smiled, then closed her eyes and spoke. "Abomination: Merge". She commanded. Luz, not quite realizing that Amity had closed her eyes in anticipation cast her blinding spell anyways, which while not catching her opponent did temporarily stun a large section of the audience and the announcer. Amity's abomination rose and a person shaped hole appeared in the back of it directly in front of Amity's jumping trajectory. After landing inside the abomination, the hole closed and the Amity abomination combination walked forward. It looked like this was going to be a quick fight.

Luz was scared, but kept her head on. She had planned on a more casting based match but it made sense that Amity would stick to her strengths. Luz's next plan had involved disrupting the casting of spells using some earth magic to disrupt the hand motions of her opponent, a trick she had learned sparring with Eda. but if Amity wasn't going to be casting this wasn't effective and didn't counter the abomination currently heading toward her. An idea popped into her head and she whipped out a fresh page in her notepad. She scrambled together a rune which she had learned from taping Willow, one that would summon a large wall of shrubs to slow an enemy. She sketched the necessary rune, a complicated one using hexagons primarily expertly and casted competently. A short hedge the height of Luz' knees grew before the abomination. Luz let out a sigh, not as impressive as when WIllow does it but hey it was something. The ami-nation however didn't really even notice, the flesh of the abomination molding around the shrubbery. Amity wasn't even slowed down. Time was running out and Luz couldn't really think of anything else to do. She figured she could play the cat and mouse game until she devised some plan. 'If only I had learned more spells' Luz thought, light and earth magic don't do much against abominations at all.

Running around the small stage was exhausting and Luz was beginning to run out of breath. Apart from a few simple terrain elevation spells Luz had used nothing else since her strategy switched to evasion. Amity however, grew impatient. Taking off her abominations arm a new smaller abomination joined Amity's in the cat and mouse game. Only Luz could hear her muffled voice "abomination pursue".

Now with two abominations in this magical pac-man reenactment Luz couldn't keep up. She knew her time in the arena was limited now. She at least wanted to make a good showing but really she hadn't even done that. Very few people outside of Amity and the front row even noticed her terrain shifts which had her opponent had to run around like Luz had been doing all game would likely have worn them out. Instead she had worn herself out, embarrassed herself for Amity and burned up a ton of prepared spells from her notebook.

Knowing the round would be over soon and wanting a good show for her audience, Amity began to prepare her finishing move, something she had envisioned implementing in a final round but not having the patience to wait she began to move her arms around. Her abomination moved with her, around her. A golden circle appeared where her abominations stub moved through the air. "Abomination: cast" came Amity's muffled voice through her abomination.

Luz was amazed and terrified, or at least she was until getting hit with a cannon of purple abomination flesh that sent her flying and had her seeing stars. Willow and Eda immediately rose to their feet along with the rest of the audience. But while the crowds were jeering, Luz's friends attempted to rush to her side. Amity separated herself from her abomination gracefully and stood upon its pot as she bowed before the crowd. Earning their admiration and enjoying her victory.

Luz sat up groggily, her head was ringing. In a daze she looked for a familiar face, Amity's was closest. Luz tried to focus and ground herself on that point. Amity's face, glowing happy. Despite of herself Luz smiled she may have gotten beat but even she had to admit that was pretty cool. Luz promptly passed out concussed.