[B2] Chapter 22 — Evaluation Results

Ria felt a bit proud of herself as consciousness gradually returned. She had taken Tina’s lesson to heart. If you’re going to make a desperate final attack, do it with the intent to win! And if she had succeeded in completing her defensive spell, she might well have won. As it was, both her air-enchanted cloak and her earth-enchanted robe had given her some resistance to the lightning—even if in the end, all they did was prolong her suffering.

Wasting the devastator’s several days’ worth of energy just for reasons of pride and to impress her team members was painful in a different way though...

Ranger grumbled a complaint from the far side of the dueling area, and Ria sat up enough to look around.

After confirming the fate of her opponent and that Ranger was okay—if poofier than usual—her eyes sought out her other teammates. Tallien was assisting Orlisi. Katia gave her a thumbs-up. Aldri and Rialle were meditating to restore their energy, probably drained from maintaining the barrier against her final attack. Rialle’s imp was sitting on the red-robed girl's shoulder, whipping its leathery tail about and looking bored.

By the bleacher seats, Endresi and Ulren were arguing over something, and Welkin was rubbing his forehead for some reason, his vitality aura rapidly easing her fatigue and speeding everyone’s energy recovery. Iselyn was chatting with Malleron. Zell was staring with his mouth gaping, so Ria gave him a wink. And Hulle…

Hulle was holding his stomach and covering his mouth while shaking suspiciously, his eyes laughing behind his rainbow-sheened glasses. With a huff, she ignored him and found Researcher Shadwich scratching away in a journal while talking with Wendra.

She probably hadn’t been unconscious long. Whether she had impressed and secured her spot on the team wasn’t clear at all. And for blowing herself up to have amused Hulle to such an extent... was annoying, maybe? She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Ranger joined up with her with a complicated woof that expressed his frustration at not being able to land any attacks, and while she was reassuring him he did fine, he was called away by Shadwich, who probably wanted to do further testing after seeing Ranger in action.

“Owww,” Orlisi complained as she sat up, working her arms and doing some twisting to loosen muscles tightened by the lightning’s simulated effect. “That was terrible! Who drops a military-grade lightning mine in the middle of a training match?! I don’t know whether to feel upset or admire how determined you are to hide both your true bloodline affinity and your Seed. Still, it was sloppy on my part that I forgot about you being an enchanter...”

Seed? Ria raised an eyebrow as she reached over and stored her now-depleted devastator. “I didn’t think nature magic would be effective without grass or trees…?”

Orlisi stared at her as if she had said something strange. “No, that’s not what… Wait. You honestly don’t know, do you?”

Ria rolled to her feet and stretched to loosen her own tight muscles. Other than being mostly drained of energy, she felt fine. “Know what?”

“Thanks, Tallien. I’m fine now.” The elf girl waved off their third-year alchemist teammate before arching her back and flipping backward onto her feet with a casual cartwheel motion.

“Sure.” Tallien nodded, sealing a small jar and returning it to one of the many pouches on his bandolier.

“A Seed is a natural truth that gives power to your magic and combat strikes,” Orlisi told Ria as she approached and draped an arm around Ria’s shoulders to give her a bit of a companionable squeeze before leading her toward where Welkin and Hulle were standing.

“Is that Elven mysticism?” Ria asked, curious. If this was something she could use to improve her strength...

Orlisi laughed. “Natural truths are universal. It’s what makes them truths. If you’ve come this far without knowing even the basics, then you’ll be able to improve tremendously by continuing your study of the Ways.”

Ria liked that thought a lot. She would have to arrange time to train with Orlisi, if the elf girl was willing.

“Aldri, Tallien, you’re up next. Endresi and Ulren, take over for them on maintaining the barrier this round.” Welkin turned his attention to Ria when she and Orlisi approached, and he rebuked her, “That was dangerous. If you intend to use pre-prepared items with that level of strength, it’s important to have fourth-years powering the safety enchantment. Of course, if a certain someone hadn’t misled us about various things—such as your capabilities as a wild talent…”

The certain someone had recovered and disinterestedly received the accusation. “Whatever you are implying is no doubt a product of your own assumptions.”

Welkin rolled his eyes at Hulle. “Did you get to see enough to form your evaluation and training recommendations?”

The glasses-wearing third-year shrugged. “I would have liked to see more of her casting technique, but that’s something she’ll be expected to improve regardless. The larger problem is not seeing her techniques with her natural affinity.”

“Ria, is there a reason you are avoiding using your natural affinity?” Welkin asked, returning his attention to her.

“I didn’t even know I had an affinity until I had it tested at the library,” Ria admitted and added, “I still don’t know what it really is and haven’t a clue on its energy transformation…”

“Hmm, is it possible she has an incomplete bloodline that hasn’t fully been awakened yet?” Orlisi suggested.

There was a stunned silence as the four considered the ramifications of such a statement being true.

“Yes, that might indeed be so,” Hulle decided.

“You’re kidding,” Welkin breathed out. “If she’s this strong as a first-year with an incomplete awakening… What do you think, Hulle, Orlisi? Is it possible to expedite the process in time for the Summer Games?”

“Hard to say,” Orlisi considered. “A lot would depend on the origin of her bloodline. My family’s pillmakers can probably work up something if we can at least narrow down the type and some specifics. It won’t be cheap and would take some time, particularly if the needed ingredients are hard to source. Based on her ability with fire, earth, and shadow, I’m guessing she’s a metal type, right Hulle?”

Hulle nodded. “Something related to gold, if I had to guess. I do have some ideas about narrowing it down further. Ria, if you’re free tomorrow, there is a store in town that we should visit together.”

“I’d be happy to go!” Ria agreed immediately then, hiding the bit of warmth surely showing on her cheeks at how eagerly she accepted, added, “Thanks, Hulle.” She didn’t know much about awakening bloodlines, but if that meant improved affinities and deeper energy reserves, she was excited to attempt it.

“Oh-hoh! A shopping date with a Novidus! Don’t forget to wear your best!” Orlisi excitedly teased.

Hulle rolled his eyes.

From what Keira had said about Hulle’s situation, Ria doubted that he would be interested in her in that way. He likely needed a partner with high status to regain his place in high-society. Probably someone like Zena…

Though, the thought of Zena and Hulle laughing evil villain laughs together was actually kind of terrifying, and she quickly pushed aside any thoughts of matchmaking.

“Welkin, I know you’re excited about the new brats, but I’d like to be finished here sometime today,” Ulren interrupted from where he was standing at one of the safety barrier’s anchor points.

“Right. Prepare yourselves, Aldri and Tallien,” Welkin announced, turning his attention back to the dueling area. “Ria, I want you to carefully watch the matches so you can be aware of your teammates strengths and limits. And… Begin!”

Ria watched intently, making use of her new ability to see energy. Rather than starting into attacks, both sides began setting up their defenses. With Tallien filling a series of different colored stones with energy and tossing them into the air one at a time to hover and circle around him, she chose to focus more on Aldri’s use of a wand to work a complex construct full of unfamiliar glyphs that caused spatial magic to surround him.

The calm start to the match bore little resemblance to the fireworks that followed. Enchanted crystals tossed out by Tallien exploded, flashing light, noise, and heat that it seemed Aldri would have little chance of escaping, but just as Ria nervously cringed in worry, the explosions seemed to weirdly slow and peeter-out upon coming into contact with the spatial magic surrounding Aldri, never quite reaching him as he dove and rolled between them and out of their shortened range.

While Aldri was dodging, Tallien drank a potion and tossed out a flask that released an unfriendly green gas upon shattering. Ria missed Aldri’s response when Tallien’s skin started to glow blue-white, but something Aldri did caused a spatial rift to open, and strange black fish rushed out to clear away much of the gas and swarm Aldri’s suddenly glowing alchemist opponent.

Bolts of lightning unleashed from spell constructs in front of Tallien’s hands caused a number of the fish to weirdly implode to nothing, but the swarm scattered, limiting the damage, and with each black fish that managed to impact against the barrier formed by the hovering stones, one of the stones would dim and fall to the floor.

Panic began to show on Tallien’s face, and he quickly changed tactics, ignoring the flying fish and sending his lightning directly at his dangerous second-year opponent. Like with the explosions, the lightning appeared to slow when it passed through Aldri’s odd spatial magic, but even slowed, there was no way for Aldri to dodge something as fast as lightning. When the lightning clipped Aldri, he let out a gibbering sound and fell over twitching.

But rather than the expected continuation of the attack, what came was Tallien letting out the girliest of screams. The boy, two years older than her, held his arms protecting his face even though the fish were gone, not quite holding back small pained sobs. Tellingly, his protective stones were all lying on the floor.

Aldri finished the match by falling through a portal to tackle Tallien to the ground, followed by crawling over and stabbing the older boy with a suddenly appearing dagger.

Ria was too stunned to react, but the ending of the fight was too much for Orlisi, and the elf girl clung to Ria for support while doubling over with laughter. Of course, Tallien was fine thanks to the safety magic, but for a match with such an impressive start to end so terribly…

Ulren grumbled about how the pair could have such an embarrassing match, and that seemed to be the predominant sentiment.

Rialle and Katria’s match was entirely different. Explosions, fiery explosions, and whips made of fire! The older girls’ fight didn’t disappoint! Katria was able to maintain an advantage for much of the fight by using air pressure to keep the fire at bay and continually bombarding Rialle with air explosion after air explosion as they ran and dodged each other’s attacks, but the heat eventually got to Katria, and the red-haired girl lost focus just long enough to get lassoed and sandwiched between a pair of exploding fireballs.

For Endresi and Ulren’s match, Welkin sent Ria and Orlisi to replace the pair of fourth-years at the safety barrier’s anchor points. Maintaining the barrier was mostly a matter of supplying the anchor point with energy, but keeping her effort matched with the others required constant adjustments, and she was already finding advice from Abjuration Master Dolerin's lecture helpful.

The match between fourth-years was fascinating with both students demonstrating balanced offense and defence. Ulren looked like a knight in his conjured armor made of salt crystal while wielding his pink coral sword-wand to launch salt-crystal spears at Endresi who was countering with a water tentacle spell almost identical to Orlisi’s but the difference in skill and affinity was tremendous. Endresi’s tentacles hit with the force of falling tree trunks and moved with a speed that made dodging all but impossible.

Their fight was mostly a battle of attrition as the fourth-year water mage tried to dissolve away Ulren’s salt with whipping tentacle after whipping tentacle and deluge after deluge. Ulren had some tricks that must have been new because they caught Endresi by surprise—one of which was taking control of any conjured water that became saturated with sufficient quantities of dissolved salt.

When the bout between fourth-years came to its conclusion, Welkin clapped twice and motioned for everyone to gather. “Alright, that’s good enough for now. Good job, everyone. Let’s hear from Hulle on what each of you need to work on for the next meeting.”

Ria was a bit disappointed not to see what Welkin and Hulle could do, but the time was surely approaching evening. Or maybe it was an issue that the rest of them weren't strong enough to power the safety enchantment if a fifth-year fought?

When everyone was gathered, Hulle began his assessments.

“Zell, you need to work on abjuration to improve your resistances to mental attacks and toxins and learn an alteration spell that restrains your target.”

Zell groaned, and the others chuckled.

“Iselyn, you should work with Wendra to develop customized magic that will explore the synergy between your illusions and your familiar’s rot element.”

“Oh, that sounds fun!” Wendra agreed, and Iselyn nodded.

“Ria, you will refrain from using your ability to directly manipulate magic and practice improving your casting speed with equivalent structured magics.” At her eye-roll, Hulle held up a finger to forestall her complaint. “Learning how to quickly and properly construct and cast the spells you commonly use as a wild-talent isn’t just to hide your capability as a wild-talent, rather, because it’s simply more efficient to use structured spells when possible. You failed to win your match today because your use of energy was inefficient.”

Ria thought about it for a moment and nodded. She would have to do that for her Elemental Magic certification anyway.

“You should also continue to strengthen your shadow magic—in particular the ability to disrupt or absorb your opponent’s spell constructs,” Hulle added.

Aldri was told to work on adding energy absorption or annihilation to his spatial compression field.

Hulle advised Tallien to come up with a tool that would provide him with a replenishable light-based barrier for dealing with shadow and void attacks in order to prevent his barrier stones from being drained.

The sound of one of the double doors closing drew Ria’s and her teammates’ gazes to the golden-haired and golden-robed girl that had entered.

Keira took a deep breath. “I hope I’m not interrupting. I’m a friend of Ria’s…”

“You’re not interrupting anything,” Welkin assured her with a friendly smile. “I see you’re currently a member of Golden Dawn, but are you perhaps looking to join our Order?”

“Ah, no, honorable senior, I’m just visiting with a friend so we can go home together. My family is sponsoring her, so…” Keira tried, sounding a little flustered.

“I see, I see. No need to be so nervous.” Welkin waved her over and motioned to the bleachers. “Come. Have a seat. We’ll be done here in a moment. Continue, Hulle.”

Hulle resumed his recommendations. For Rialle he told her to research flames that consume other’s magic, and for Katria, he recommended that she work on sound-based attacks.

Endresi was told to make a more complex version of her water spell that would allow her to ride the spell’s water flow and use it for mobility. Ulren’s task was to work on a wind-based attack to use his salt-crystals for scouring and wearing down defensive magics.

Ria was already really impressed with all her teammates. If they actually managed to achieve Hulle’s ideas… their team would surely increase even further in strength. She doubted that any of those recommendations could be completed by the next meeting, but research on possible methods and feasibility probably could. Welkin seemed to be finishing up the current meeting so Ria returned her attention to what he was saying.

“...next meeting will be on Earthday. We will be assigning teams for improving your coordination with each other. Work hard, and be ready. Bring pre-filled focus tools to save time during practice,” Welkin said, dismissing them, and turned toward Shadwich. “Researcher Shadwich, there’s something I’d like to consult with you about in your lab, if you don’t mind?”

“I’d be happy to help, just give me a moment to leave some things with Ria first,” Shadwich said and motioned Ria closer, holding out a thin-ish book together with some folded sheets of paper. “Ria, Soulkeeper Renard authorized your soul-strengthening training. I’ve also included an approved spirit-magic-attuned abjuration that will improve the efficiency of the incenses that I’m recommending you purchase from the Temple of Ellnys.”

Ria was surprised and gratefully received the materials. She ran her hand across the faded surface and abraded edges of the leather-bound book—it was well-worn from use.

“Drop by in the morning and we can decide how to proceed toward Ranger’s Spirit Beast transformation,” he enthusiastically added before following Welkin out of the hall. As the others were dispersing, Ria looked for Iselyn and found her already in conversation with Wendra and they looked like they’d be at it for a while. With Iselyn busy, Ria turned to Keira who was approaching her now that the meeting was over.

“Keira, mind if we stop by the student lounge first? I’ve got an idea on what to do with the flowers Phaelys gave me.”