Andrew Rowe - Sufficiently Advanced Magic

I didn’t have much more time to assess the competition. Teft stepped out of the lines, knelt down, and muttered a few words. The lines behind us marking a rectangular field began to glow, illuminating the barrier he’d activated. There were no barriers between the lanes themselves, though.

The lanes implied that we were expected to start out by firing at the person directly across from us, but that wasn’t necessarily the best strategy. Most people would probably fixate on their direct “opponent” on the opposite side of the lane. Maybe I could get Marissa out early by taking her by surprise…

But I didn’t want to risk it. There were better gambles to make than trying to attack the strongest opponent immediately.

“Begin.”

The word was too soft to be an appropriate signal for the insanity that followed.

I didn’t bother trying to make a first strike. Instead, I shifted my feet into a dueling stance, presenting a smaller profile for my target. As he raised his cane and fired, I flicked the upper rune on my cane. The sharp pain that accompanied the activation indicated that it was taking more mana than my normal cane did, but that was to be expected.

I didn’t expect how quickly the glowing sphere would be coming at me, though.

It was slower than a dueling cane’s blast, certainly, but it wasn’t slow . I raised the cane to try to parry, but my reaction was stunted by the pain.

The sphere impacted harmlessly against the wall on my right, hopelessly off-target.

I was so relieved that I entirely missed the other sphere, coming from a completely different opponent. It was inches from hitting me when a blast from my right knocked it clear out of the way and into one of the sides of the arena.

I turned to my right, giving Patrick an incredulous look. He was already back to facing forward, in a dueling position of his own.

“Focus up, Corin. You can thank me later.”

I gritted my teeth, nodded, and slipped back into my dueling stance. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Patrick look so serious about anything — and if even he was taking this seriously, I had to do the same.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment, and then exhaled.

Mana glowed around me, almost blindingly bright — but with my attunement active, everything felt clearer, easier to take in. As the energies surged around me, I felt aware of the spheres that were coming my way, even if I couldn’t see them. With a simple flick of my wrist, I sent an incoming sphere out of my way… and directly into a team member on my left.

“Minus one point from Corin Cadence for friendly fire,” a student intoned behind me.

Resh.

The student that I’d hit rubbed at his arm, giving me a nasty look. Fortunately, it wasn’t someone I knew.

“Sorry!” I shouted. I meant it, too. I might have even blushed.

Okay, taking this seriously, step two. No more hitting my team.

My direct opponent fired another projectile at me, this time much more accurately. I stepped to the side, firing a sphere at the floor inches in front of him. Just as I suspected, the floor was charged with mana to prevent it from being damaged. The sphere bounced off of that mana and right into my opponent’s chest.

He had a look of utter shock as it slammed into him, staggering back a step at the impact.

Before he’d recovered, I’d fired three more orbs. Taking turns? Please.

There were no turns in war.

Of my three newly-fired spheres, only one connected with him. I deflected another two from other opponents in the meantime, sending them as close to my opponent as I could, but failing to get them quite at the right angle.

I saw a projectile headed for Patrick, and it looked like it had slipped past his notice. Spinning on my heels, I fired a blast at the orb… and missed entirely.

My attack did manage to get very near to hitting Roland. On the positive side, Roland was on the opposite team.

On the negative side, he was looking at me now, and he was looking unamused .

On the considerably more negative side, he was carrying two canes — one in either hand.

I wish I’d thought of that.

The hail of spheres that came my way in the following moments was nothing short of terrifying.

I managed to dodge or deflect six, then seven, and then eight of them before one finally slipped through. It hit me in the shoulder with enough force to send a surge of numbness down my arm. I very nearly dropped my cane.

Fortunately, Roland seemed satisfied by that, turning away from me to continue his onslaught on the next opponent who was unlucky enough to draw his ire.

I ducked, nursing my numb arm, trying to assess my situation.

My direct opponent was gone. I was momentarily confused before I remembered that anyone else could have hit him while I wasn’t looking.

A further assessment told me that nearly half of the field had been eliminated. I felt a little less bad after that, but I still hadn’t made up for hitting that ally of mine. I glanced toward him, considering trying to help him to repay the debt, but he was already out of the ring.

It was hard to tell at a glance, but I was pretty sure our team was losing. Unsurprising, given the juggernauts on the other team. Goddess, even Sera was over there, standing a couple lanes away from Roland.

The lane to my left was empty now. I had room to move if I wanted to, but having Patrick next to me felt like an advantage.

How could I use that?

I stepped out of my lane without thinking to dodge an incoming sphere, only afterward realizing that I wasn’t sure if I could step back into my original position without breaking the rules.

Probably?

I glanced back at a judge, deflecting an errant projectile that was approaching at the corner of my vision. “Hey, can I walk freely between my old lane and this one now that this guy is out?”

“Yep, sure can.” The judge nodded.

I glanced at Patrick, then back to the judge. “The other guy adjacent to him is gone. Does that mean he can move around, including into my old lane?”

The older student frowned, scratching his chin. “Yeah, sure, I guess he use your old lane if he wants to.”

Good enough for me.

I stepped back into my original lane. “Patrick, we’re doubling up.”

He glanced to the empty lane on his right, and then back to me, his expression still focused. “Got it.”

He stepped into the same lane I was standing in, and we shifted our stances, facing outward at diagonals. We were limiting each other’s mobility, but we had complete coverage for deflecting enemy projectiles this way.

I made use of that almost immediately, deflecting the first projectile that approached us and scoring an unlikely hit on someone on the opposite side.

After that, I saw a couple of people staring at us, but fewer seemed to want to attack.

Good.

My right hand was getting sore from the mana I’d been putting into attacking, and I could tell that the other students were suffering similarly, slowing down their attacks and picking them more tactically. I swapped the cane to my left hand, taking a shot at a lone student on the far left of the opposite line.

It missed, but the student dodged directly into Patrick’s orb, fired only a moment later.

“Nice,” I called.

Another orb flashed into my perception nearby and bounced off the floor right in front of me.

I jumped right over it, growling at someone stealing my earlier trick, and looked at where it had come from.

Sera, obviously. Standing in the same lane as Roland. They had a different formation, though. He had his arms out to the left and right, cane in either hand, while she stood directly in front of him with her cane blocking the center.