Duel Decided

“Impressive, very impressive. But can you keep going?” Olivia asks, as she emerges from the light in her new form, her voice once more different, slightly garbled this time, almost as if she’s talking through a radio. Her new form has a stocky, rounded body, with short legs. Her walk is now a waddle. I’m not sure what the point of this form is until she dives forward and curls into a ball.

Rolling towards me rapidly, I think fast and dive out of the way, managing to dodge the attack by a hair. She unfolds herself, turning around quickly and contorts herself right back into a ball again, launching herself quickly at me once more. It appears she can’t change direction very easily while rolling. Maybe she can’t see and has to come out of it to look around?

Thinking quickly, I position myself in front of a tree while she can’t see me moving. She focuses on me immediately, and I wait until the very last moment before diving out of the way. Olivia hits the tree dead on, unfolding herself, seeming slightly stunned. The speed of her impact ensures that she’s stunned for me long enough to draw my axe.

As she turns around, I swing for a gap in between the rounded segments along her body. The axe embeds itself deep in her body, drawing more of that greenish liquid to the surface. She grunts in pain and swings a fist at me. I duck and retaliate with another mana bolt to her face. Stunned, she reels backwards, curling herself into a ball for protection.

My axe drops to the ground and I pick it up, as a green light envelopes her once more. I rush forward, bringing my axe up and swinging overhead towards her, unsure how it’s going to impact her, but knowing that my best chance to win the fight is to interrupt one of her transformations.

Olivia emerges from the flash, grabbing the axe by the handle and stopping it with both hands. She throws the axe aside and I stagger forward off balance. Her new form is some kind of crystalloid creature. Her entire body is now made up of crystal like formations, and when she speaks, her voice is distorted. “You are a powerful warrior. If you can prove yourself against this one, I will be truly impressed.” She asserts.

Her arm forms into a blade from the crystal like material, and recognising what’s about to happen, I drop my axe and dive forward. Olivia slashes through the air where I was just a second before. I stand up and whirl around, firing off waves of freezing blast in the process. My mana is still at half full and I know that I have to take full advantage of the spells I have,

Getting close to her in this form does not seem like it would be a good idea. Instead, I keep using my frost magic in an attempt to slow her down, backing away as she advances towards me. She sends a hail of crystal shards towards me and I let mana shield take the impact, reducing my mana by a hundred in the space of a second.

I send out an ice bolt, and it impacts dead on, adding to the freezing effect that is starting to show up visibly. Olivia breaks into a sprint towards me and even with the icicles starting to be visible on her form, she’s still fast enough to catch me. She slashes, and I sway to the side, but miss the follow up stab towards me.

Her crystalline blade smashes against mana shield and more mana vanishes from my bar. I’m starting to get a little low on mana. Using the tried and true strategy, I fire a mana bolt at her face, aiming to stun her for long enough to gain some distance. Her hand is too slow to block the spell at point blank range, but even so, it doesn’t do as much damage as it did previously.

She’s distracted for a second, and that’s all I need to slip away and distance myself from her once more, repeating my strategy of using my frost magic in a bid to stalemate. I can’t do enough damage to her to overcome the endurance she has, but I can slow her down enough that she can’t win either.

Her joints begin to crack as the ice build up starts to really take hold. I lay off the ice magic for the moment, not wanting to freeze her entirely, aiming only to keep her in the slowed state. Her reduced movement speed combined with my high agility stat mean that it’s trivial to avoid her melee attacks.

I refresh the slowing effect with one more wave of freezing blast as Olivia sends another wall of crystal shards towards me. I let mana shield take the impact. The lady of the beasts stops advancing towards me, and a flash of green light envelopes her. When the light clears, she is once again in her original human form.

“You have my respect, Gemma.” Olivia says, holding out her hand. The icicles have disappeared, although the freezing effect is still there to a lesser extent. I shake her hand, smiling at her. “Thank you.” I say. “Not many people are able to hold their own like that, not against four of the six forms I can take.” She continues.

I smile, shaking my head. “If I ran out of mana, I would have been screwed. You very nearly got me there.” I tell her. She smiles at me. “Ah but my mana is also finite, and you still lasted that long. That is no small feat. Most would have been overwhelmed. I will accept your offer to join your guild. You are not strong enough to make Sydney safe yet, but you have the potential to be.” She praises.

I bow my head in thanks, as my girlfriends rush towards me. Mia throws her arms around me, kissing me on the cheek happily. “Oh my Gaia babe, that was awesome! I’m so proud of you!” Mia says, and I feel my cheeks flushing red. “Well done.” Skylar says, and Paige just smiles at me. Through our mental connection, I can feel how proud Ivy is of me.

Ivy uses her healing magic on Olivia to restore her vitality. The effects of my frost magic seem to wear off much faster with Ivy’s help, which is an interesting thing to note. Ivy hugs me wordlessly after she’s done healing Olivia, and I hug her back.

We all sit down on the grass to talk for a bit, as Olivia and I rest after the duel we had. I want to recover my mana in preparation for the journey home and Olivia just wants to rest. We exchange numbers, and the lady of the beasts promises that she’ll be around tomorrow to train with us. She raises her eyebrow when we tell her to meet us at the Fateweaver barrier, but doesn’t say a word about it.

Eventually, once we feel that we’ve rested enough, I send the guild invite window to Olivia and she accepts, we exit the barrier, part ways with another handshake goodbye to Olivia, and start the journey back to our Kingdom. We’re just as careful on the way back, although a lot less apprehensive. Barrier hopping to the car, we get in and Skylar starts the engine.

The drive back passes quickly, as we excitedly recount moments of the duel. I for one am not only really glad to have achieved the goal of recruiting Olivia into our guild, but am also really proud of my performance against her in the fight and happy that I actually got to see her fight for the first time.

Her powers can be a really useful help to use, especially since she has so much versatility in them. Her different forms mean that she can take a couple of different roles in combat, and while each form in and of itself is powerful, the versatility and ability to switch between them to adapt to a given situation is what really makes her dangerous.

My decision to pursue a battlemage type path is the thing that really saved me here. I don’t have the sheer damage output to be able to properly win against her, but I also have the skillset and tools to stalemate her in each form, and I don’t have any substantial weaknesses that she can take advantage of. I put my pondering aside as we arrive back into the Fateweaver barrier.

We park Elsa’s car back in the parking spot we got it from, and send her a text to let her know that we’re back safely, and that her car is in the lot. We wait in the barrier for a few minutes and Elsa comes outside to grab her keys from us. We each give her a thankful hug, and promise that we’ll be in touch for her to come over soon.

Once we get back into the Kingdom barrier, we celebrate our success with recruiting Olivia with lots of playing with our pets, and a hearty lunch that Mia and Ivy prepare for us. We’re all extremely proud of the fact that we’ve been able to recruit her into the guild. She’ll be an incredible asset in our fight to make Sydney a safe place.