Ten minutes later, the first Pair had positioned themselves at opposite ends of the field. It formed a square of about fifty meters by fifty meters, ringed with various resources: Troughs of water, braziers of fire, abrasive sand, slick oil, and dozens upon dozens of other materials that could be felt with the very edge of the mind, and pulled, replicated, sampled and remixed into spells and effects by some of the most primordial magics the students of the Order of Saint Michael could muster, were arrayed around it. The ground itself was pockmarked, comprised of dirt, clay, sand, mud and grass, a thin strip of asphalt, adding yet more to the magical toolbox at hand. To one side, a line of trees formed a border, cutting off the view of any other classes who might be doing the same thing at this very moment. Another was a green, wooden plank wall, accented with white plaques arrayed to denote the upcoming matches between students, outlining the tourney – if you wanted to call it that – in physical form. To the right were those pseudo-aluminum bleachers, upon which the Guardians sat, gossiped, and watched, and on the fourth side were the students, Alex included. Some were doing stretches, others were casually chatting, and some were quiet in their nervousness. Alex was part of the last group.
“Yura, are you ready?” Leor called out, standing in front of the bleachers.
Alex was vaguely familiar with Yura, though he'd never really talked with her before. She looked uncertain, but took a battle-ready stance anyway. Her blonde hair shone in the afternoon sunlight, blowing out behind her as she crouched slightly, keeping her knees and elbows bent. Good posture, Alex thought, though really, everything depended on context, on intention, and he knew none of it.
Yura pulled her cap a bit tighter, a smart white beret, and nodded.
Leor turned to the other side of the field. “Lucas, how about you?”
Lucas, on the other hand, Alex knew fairly well. He couldn't say he was close friends with him, but Alex could immediately think of a half-dozen cases where Lucas's flights of fancy had gotten him, or the entire classroom, into trouble.
“Yep, Instructor!” he replied, with more confidence than Alex thought was merited.
“There you have it,” Leor said, smiling. “On my count. Five.”
The previously chittering students and chattering Guardians fell silent.
“Four.”
Yura closed her eyes, and took in a deep breath.
“Three.”
Lucas looked relaxed, and if he had a plan, Alex couldn't see it in his posture.
“Two.”
Yura held her arms wide, feeling the air around her.
“One.”
That strange, ethereal pressure of the soul filled the air, making everything more heavy, more real, dense with intention.
“Go!”
…
It took a few moments to be certain of it, but with each passing second, it grew more and more clear.
Nothing was happening.
Lucas and Yura both stood stock-still.
At first, Alex thought even their eyes were locked, but without even thinking, he started amplifying his own senses. As the magic poured into his eyes – or was it into his brain? The distinction was hard to make – He saw that Lucas's eyes were darting back and forth between Yura and the resources arrayed before them. Thanks to the battlefield being on a 45 degree angle to Alex, he could see Yura, too, was following Lucas's eyes. Or he was following hers – There was no rightful way to tell.
Alex knew these sorts of looks. Fear, faced with fear, would always expand exponentially, until it exploded into action. If Alex were to speculate, it'd be one of them taking aggressive action, or the other realizing that aggressive action wasn't being taken-
And Yura began channeling Ice. It only took an instant, but the moisture drained out of the air around her, forming a sheen of frost around her outstretched fingers. Lucas's eyes went wide as he tried to understand just what she was doing. She leapt on that curiosity.
Yura took the sense of frost on her fingertips, amplified it, and mirrored it nearly fifty meters away, at Lucas's feet. Moisture bled out of the air, out of the ground, and condensed instantaneously into a prison of ice encasing Lucas's feet, running deep into the earth beneath him.
A murmur went up among the students, thinking that Lucas had already lost.
But Alex tried to think of what he would do, and had a sliver of hope for Lucas.
Yura coalesced more ice out of the air, and secured Lucas's hands, binding them to the ice that was slowly creeping up his thighs.
When Yura took her first step towards him, Lucas made his move.
In a flash of energy, he threw his mind into melting the ice, while simultaneously enhancing his strength, to break himself free, and for a moment, he did, leaping through the air at Yura.
Yura, however, had already begun uttering spells. Codified, Irinaen magic would always outpace intuitive magic when fairly matched, and her words manipulated the ice still clinging to Lucas's limbs, drawing yet more moisture from around him, making the ice heavier, slamming him to the ground through the tenuous grip it held on his uniform. Any element, any thing could, in theory, be made by the mind through magic, but practically, matter, properties, and sensations were easier coaxed from their natural locations, convinced to follow one's will, rather than made from whole cloth. And so, rather than summoning water into being from nothing, manipulating the very fabric of reality and abusing quantum mechanics, Yura took what she could find in the environment and twisted it to her purposes.
The ground dried and cracked around Lucas. Around him, grass withered and shrunk, lacking enough of a will to protect themselves from the unbridled power of the human soul. And with that will, with the words on her lips, Yura slammed Lucas into the ground, tendrils of water-becoming-ice pinning him down. Despite being brought to his knees, he levered himself up with an elbow, and fought off the encroaching frost enough to keep his torso upright.
As she spoke, Yura walked calmly towards him, chanting in endless loops, reinforcing the effects.
She paused, for only a second, to take a breath.
Lucas made his move.
An utterance – lightning flashed, and thunder clapped. In the dry air, the perfect environment for electrical discharge, the differences in potentiality he had been building equalized, shooting a branching stream of electricity at Yura.
Her hand shot up, and the air in front of her compressed, redirecting the blast into the ground. The attention required, however, gave Lucas the freedom he needed to pry one of his legs free, and get onto just one knee. Her chanting, less certain now, resumed, as she kept walking towards him.
Another bolt of lightning ripped through the air, and this, too, was deflected.
The next wasn't nearly as impressive-looking, but it came quicker, followed by another three, arcing from different angles. As Yura pushed herself further, she was manipulating the environment more and more in Lucas's favor. Though, he still hadn't quite managed to climb entirely to his feet.
The fight was like a pile of stopwatches, and when the right ones ticked down in the right order, there would be a clear victor. Alex strained to speculate, and judging by the contemplative “hmm”s to either side of him, so were the other students. Even the Guardians were craning their necks to get a better look, as the alternating flashes of condensing frost and blue-white electrical discharge grew more and more rapid. With each one, Yura became more cautious. Her steps slowed, expecting an attack from Lucas, and it was in this thought that speculation in Alex's mind turned into certainty.
Mathematically, this was Lucas's game.
Her resources were counting down, his were counting up, and she was slowing down. She may have had the raw power advantage on him, but unless she leveraged that-
“Lord, calm our hearts and FREEZE THINE ENEMIES!” she screamed, breaking her hitherto-held composure. The incantation, earnestly invoked, attempted to pull everything there was out of the world around her, dampening molecular motion, lowering the temperature, and pairing that with a coalsecence of moisture. But despite the powerful incantation, the heartfelt prayer, it would take a lot more than that to totally transcend the material conditions of the world around them.
Alex could feel the shock of cold ripple through the air, and felt his skin dry as even at the furthest extent of Yura's range, she sucked moisture from the air.
But it wasn't enough.
Lucas let out a much simpler incantation: “Equalize!” The subject, linguistically as much as magically, was implied. The separated and inequal electrical charges he had been building up, around him and Yura, broke free of their bonds, shooting a massive shock towards her. At the same time, he channeled strength into his legs, and broke free of his weakened bonds. Dust and dirt from the dried ground kicked up around them, obscuring Alex's view, but he knew what he'd see when it settled.
And when it did, Lucas was standing over Yura, her red armband untied and in his hand, his own still wrapped around his wrist. She threw back her head, and sighed loudly in frustration. Lucas, for his part, offered her his hand. She looked back up at him, smiled, and took it. Lucas pulled Yura gently to her feet.
“That wasn't half bad,” Francesca said, behind Alex. “I was expecting a lot less out of her.”
Alex ignored the comment, but Maxwell took it as a jumping-off point. “That was a really good effort from Lucas, though! I'd never have thought to play her strengths against her like that!”
That, as far as Alex was concerned, was a lie. He thought of Max as at least clever enough to have made that strategy work.
Instructor Leor jogged onto the field of battle, and said a few words to the two combatants.
“Lucas wins, ladies and gentlemen! An excellent effort from the both of you!” He turned to the Guardian-filled bleachers. “You sure know how to pick them, Malakim Mallory!”
Mallory looked surprised at the assertion, flinching a little at being named. But quickly, she burst into a smile, and stood up, clapping for her charges. “Good job, you two!” she said, enthusiastically.
Alex didn't know either of the two particularly well, but he took note of Lucas's persistence, and of Yura's display of power. He'd have to watch out for both of them, but considering the tournament format, Lucas's adaptability was more important. He could either overwhelm him with pure force, or alternate avenues of attack fast enough that Lucas would be more focused on strategizing than deflecting attacks. In either case, Alex felt assured in his victory, and smiled.
Behind him, he heard one of the girls hiss through her teeth. “Yura had that!”
Back on the battlefield, Leor looked the two students over for injuries, and satisfied with the results of his inspection, shoo'd them back to where the rest of the students were waiting. “Next, we've got-” he paused, thinking, before looking dramatically to the wall-board behind him with the tournament pairings – “Gwendolyn and Jacob!”