Heroes and Wizards in the Hallway

Pandemonium fills the auditorium.

A few girls run to the key rack hoping to get out of the auditorium as quick as they can. You spot Olivia among them, she tosses another key to Victoria while shooting you an apologetic look.

You pull up the hood of your robe and run forward. Unfortunately magical combat was never your best class back home. You're fit, and if you had time to set up the spells you could be superhuman, but you're nothing impressive right now and from near the back of the auditorium you can only manage to watch as keys are grabbed by the crowd in front of you. Still you're not exactly short and skinny, you'd be the tallest person in the room if not for two, and you manage to push your way forward to the middle of the crowd and grab a pair of keys.

There's not much time to consider your options.

You grab a key for someone who looks like a normal enough human who isn't holding something you don't recognize or wearing armor. She's blonde and that's the most you can see before picking the key. You follow her out of one of the auditoriums many exits.

You walk behind her. Doing your best to keep it casual. She's wearing a white T-shirt, dark baggy pants, and is a good deal shorter then you.

"Hey!" You call out to her. "Wait up."

Your plan is simple. You'll talk to her on the way back to the room and try to establish a friendship. Mental Magic is most effective when it has some basis to work with, although it's not entirely necessary.

She turns and looks you in the eye. Hers are startlingly pretty and deep blue. For a moment you're simply lost in pure admiration.

It's not a powerful punch that hits you. Not physically at least. It's delivered by a girl about a foot shorter then you, with poor form, and a far less bulky. An odd light forms around her fist as she swings. The Mages Armor in your life flares to life as it would for a combat spell or a cannon round as her fist drives into your abdomen. It's like being hit by a swinging anvil.

You stumble backwards stunned and gasping for air. She doesn't relent. Another punch swings towards you, again with a strange light around it, and utterly misses as the girl pulls herself off balance with the wild hit. The wall craters in front of her fist, splintering wood crashing against an invisible barrier before it can reach her. Your back hits the wall.

There's no time to think. No time to chant a spell or come up with some clever plan. So instead you do the first thing that comes to mind and kick the girl in the face. It's nothing special, a simple sidekick that any hobbyist or graduate of a mages school could easily pull off. You pivot your weight into your foot as it connects. You feel the **** traveling from your foot on the ground, snapping through your leg like a whip, and smashing into her head.

Light flashes again.

With the adrenaline pumping through your body you kicked the girl hard enough to pick her up with the hit and bounce her head off the wall. It should have been more then enough to put her down. Should have been. It's like she didn't even feel the hit. The prismatic light she had struck you with defended her in turn. It's her turn again.

The girls feet lift off the ground as she snarls at you. Light courses across her body in a nimbus as she floats in midair. Your head is pounding just looking at her as anger and fear radiate from her in waves. But she's made a mistake. She's given a wizard time in a fight. Meaningless words leave your mouth as you rouse your mana.

She comes at you, literally flying forward like a missile, straight and predictable but so fast that it barely matters. There's no time to dodge so you meet it head on, unfurling your shield. The bullet of prismatic light meets the wall of your power and crashes against it. The violet light of your shield ring fills your vision as you pump a steady supply of power to oppose the onslaught behind it.

It's a strangely quiet duel. One of blinding light and tightly controlled energies rather then sound and vibration. Two gigantic energies clash and press against each other without a sound.

It all comes down to this. Your lips move as you form an image in your mind and raise your other hand. You feel the pressure on the other side of the barrier cease and in the same instance let it fall. When you complete the spell held in your other hand you'll win. In that moment you make a catastrophic mistake.

"Burn." Glowing red eyes bore into your own like lasers.

Your mind burns under the strange power held in her gaze. It's a vicious pounding burn in time with your own heartbeat, pulsing higher each time fresh blood reaches your brain. You forget how to to look away from those eyes first. Other things follow. How to raise your shield. How to throw a kick. How to keep from falling to your knees as she floats towards you. You forget how to move your neck as her hands reach out towards your head.

The only thing you can remember is...

"Somnus."

The dull vibration of a distant river pouring over rock; the touch of moonlight against your skin; the scent of smoke in still air; the aftertaste of cheap wine; watching her eyes close. The sensations flash through your mind as the spell is completed and you remember then recreate the magic. A splash of blue liquid leaps from your hand and towards her head. She tries to block it but the spell simply seeps into her arms instead.

Her red eyes droop as she lands on the floor clutching her head and once more surrounded by that nimbus of light. For a panicked moment you think the spell hasn't worked. That she's resisting it as well somehow. Then slowly, the light fades. Her arms slump to her sides inches from your head. Her feet touch the ground. Her glowing red eyes fading to a deep blue as she falls asleep slumped against you.

The battle lasted perhaps fifteen seconds. It was more exhausting then running a marathon. It's like someone took all your bones and turned them into jelly. You want to grab something to eat, take a bath, and sleep for the next week. The adrenaline which flooded your body recedes and you feel the stinging pain in your chest from the first punch and sheer terror as your mind catches up to your instincts.

You very nearly lost this battle.

If her second swing had connected you probably wouldn't have been able to stay standing. If your own kick hadn't knocked her back she might have just kept coming in for those quick jabs leaving you with no room to cast. Your shield barely held out against her charge, an heirloom artifact and trained mage should be able to stop a cannon round with ease. You had nearly burned out against one attack from her. And if that strange attack with her eyes had cut away your memories of how to cast spells... it doesn't bear thinking about what she could have done with enough time.

Calm. Think. Plan. Execute.

You pick yourself up off your knees, gingerly, making sure you remember how to stand. Dragging an **** girl across however much of the campus you would need to cover to get back to the dorms is probably beyond you at the moment. It's almost sure to get you reported as well. Fortunately MCU is littered with unused rooms and spaces. It won't be that hard to find somewhere that you can hunker down and start casting in peace. The odds of someone walking in on you randomly seem pretty low. Best to be quick though.

You hoist the girl up with a grunt of effort. It's the first time you've really gotten a good look at her. Her face straddles the line between cute and beautiful; her long golden hair is pulled back into a ponytail; her boobs are impressively big but not quite huge; and her skin is almost eerily smooth. She definitely doesn't look like someone who would throw you through a wall for looking at her wrong. You glance at the hole her fist left in the wall. She had gone through the wood like it wasn't even there, only stopping against a metal interior wall.

You don't think, and really hope, that she doesn't have any resistance to magic. Mind magic is your fetish and irrational obsession not something you've had a lot of opportunities to use extensively. If she's able to resist then you're not sure you'll be able to stop her again. It's a risk you'll just have to take. She'll wake up eventually one way or another.

It doesn't take long to find a little room to duck into. It looks like some kind of meeting room, a round table surrounded by chairs with pictures and paintings hanging from the walls. A small window faces into the hallway to let in light but with the door closed and the curtains drawn no one can tell the two of you are inside.

You get to work.

===

She was tired as she woke up.

Incredibly tired. She could remember... it didn't matter what she could remember. She was to tired to remember. She lay there, halfway between dreaming and waking, with her eyes closed.

Someone was touching her head. Cradling it in their hands. Whispering to her in a voice she couldn't understand. It was a nice voice so she listened anyway. For a very long time there was only the darkness and the voice. Eventually the voice asked a question.

She felt her mouth move. Speaking her name.

"Kara..."

Another question. Another answer.

"Tactile telekinesis, tactile telepathy, psychic aura, telepathic gaze..."

Another question. Another answer.

"Saw into your mind... What you wanted... Had to stop you... Have to stop you."

Something flickered in the darkness like an ember. A memory she knew she had to grasp but couldn't quite reach. Tired as she was she still tried again. Tried to grasp what she needed to remember. The voice washed through her mind like water. Drowning out the ember as it soaked into every corner of her mind and returned her to blissful darkness.

No more questions. Only statements and affirmations.

"I love."
"I obey."
"I am your ****."

The mantra echoed through her mind. The voice had said it. She repeated it until it was engraved deep within herself. Her conscious mind stirred.

Kara woke up slowly, yawning and stretching. She was splayed across a table in dark room she didn't recognize facing a man she had tried to burn the brain out of. She wanted to leap off it and kiss him. To thank him for making her realize the truth.

To thank him for being her master.