There was a sense of beauty running through my heart as I gazed into the sky. Three stone spires rose towards a mass of flames. Amanda’s shield took up one fifth of the room, but the amount of earth I could create would fill the arena without hassle. I just needed time. She moved to the back of the arena as the stones stabbed at her.

Then, I encountered my first problem.

The first spire stopped the moment it hit the maximum range of my earth creation ability. Then the second, and the third.

My skill wouldn’t activate past the threshold.

I wasn’t allowed to use earth manipulation for this exercise because Tago had designed this exercise to train my earth creation skill. I was adding layer upon layer of stone like stacking upside-down cones on top of each other to force the spires upwards. There was no momentum behind them, or structure. I was only making more where there hadn’t been any before.

I stamped my foot on the ground and there was a burst of earth around me as a block appeared under my foot. More grew around me into a set of stairs that I climbed up.

If I couldn’t reach Amanda, then I would have to go higher.

Amanda wasn’t immobile as I moved. She saw what I was doing and worked her way around the room. She was quickly out of the range of my spires. I had created them to hit her, but they weren’t movable without the use of earth manipulation.

Instead, I made a new one as I stepped towards her. I was high enough that my creations would reach the ceiling. I stopped creating stone steps and focused on the new spire.

It was wider, and faster growing than the other three. I could only create so much stone at the same time as I tried to focus on Amanda, but now I only had one structure to maintain. My creation rose beside me, and I made sure that its foundation was solid enough to support its growth.

It shot through the air faster than the three before it. I saw Amanda’s eyes widen in surprise and she jerked out of the way of the attack.

The shield moved out of reach, but Amanda spiralled through the air. Her body moved across the arena and her body turned to the side. I saw her hands reach out into the empty space beside her, trying to find a handle as her wings flapped to regain control of her flight path.

The shield collided against the wall, and she bounced towards the ground. I reached out with my hand towards her. Dirt appeared underneath my opponent, grabbing towards her.

It wasn’t an attack aimed at the shield, instead, it was wide and the moment it came near Amanda, I manipulated it to cover the shield and stabilize it. After a few moments Amanda let go of the shielding regent, and the orange glow disappeared.

She fell, but I caught her gently in the dirt and lowered her to the ground.

“Okay.” I made my way towards my friend. “Let’s rest and decide if we want to keep going today.”

She had taken a bad tumble in the air, but when I reached her, I could see the determination in her eyes.

Her wings wrapped onto the back of her clothes, glowing brightly.

“I want to keep going.” She said without hesitation. “Just- just give me a minute.”

“Let’s give ourselves a few minutes.” I patted her on the shoulder. “I don’t want to jump back in without discussing what went wrong or right.”

She didn’t disagree, and I conjured a chair and sat beside her. She shook her head when I offered one.

I could see Gold looking at us curiously from the side. He flapped his wings and moved towards the entrance, deeming it safer than his current position in the corner of the room.

“How do we do this?” I asked. “Am I supposed to evaluate myself, or you?”

Amanda raised an eyebrow at me and smiled. “For now, I’ll give you some tips, and you give me some. But…”

She gestured towards the stone spires I had created, and the steps. I had managed to fill a good portion of the room before the round was over.

I hadn’t caved in the arena in a traditional sense, but when there was such a big target it would’ve been hard for Amanda to manoeuvre if I had created a few more structures. She would have been cornered in minutes.

“That’s not earth manipulation, is it?”

“No.” I admitted. “It’s earth creation.”

Amanda whistled.

“That’s a big one.” She leaned back. “This is what Tago wanted you to use? I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to keep this hidden a bit longer.”

“I’m not hiding it. The school knows, but the students probably won’t know unless they talk to me personally.” I shrugged. “Besides, it’ll get out eventually.”

“Not out of my mouth.” Amanda pursed your lips. “I had a lot to say, but now that I know the skill, I’m not sure it’s relevant.”

“Go for it.”

I knew that I could improve, and I had ideas, but hearing her perspective would help me solidify what I’d done right or wrong.

Amanda took her time, gazing at the stones around her. Her hair lay around her, fire stretched across dirt.

“You were too slow. And your structures were too straight.” She spoke. “If I was in the open air then you wouldn’t have a chance. I thought that you were manipulating the earth at first, but if you were creating it then it makes sense.”

“Also, I don’t think you’re meant to win by filling the room. That’s cheap.” Amanda smiled. “You’ll probably gain more experience by increasing the creation speed and depths of your structures.”

I looked over my spires. “Yeah, I didn’t make the most sophisticated object in the world. As for straightness… I’ll have to ask Tago.”

If I was creating stone and then manipulating it, there would be no problem. The problem came when it was only earth creation that I was using.

That severely cut down on my power and speed, and it also meant that any stones created in mid-air would fall due to gravity.

Maybe I could try creating thinner stone plates? I had experimented with trying to create earth in different shapes and directions, but it was difficult.

I mostly resorted to cubes and blocks that I could manipulate into action and It had become a habit at this point.

I made a system note of the advice Amanda had given, and my thoughts on it. She waited patiently as I typed, and I saw from her expression that she was mulling over something.

“So, do you want my advice?” I looked up at her.

“Does it focus on the tumble I had?” She asked.

“Almost exclusively.”

I couldn’t give her any advice because I didn’t know what she had done. I didn’t know if her flight was done through her wings, or if they were aesthetic and she was manipulating her movements with her mind.

I didn’t even know why she had gone out of control. My last spire had been faster than the first ones, but not fast enough to reach her before she flew out of the way.

She sat back in silence, and I waited patiently.

“My skill works in a complicated way.” She broke the silence. “I don’t lose control of my body, but I do share it, and that causes issues.”

“Share it?” I asked.

Her wings unfolded and I got a full view of the feathers that composed it.

“Agni is here.” She knocked on her head. “Chirping away like no tomorrow. When I transform, we both gain control of my body, and that’s not all.”

“I can understand her perfectly. It feels like I have two sets of thoughts running through my head at the same time.” Amanda brushed a fiery strand of hair behind her ear. “The moment one of us panics, we both feel it, and we get overwhelmed. My body seizes when our instincts both try to control it.”

That explained her reaction. The unexpected speed of my last attack caused her to panic, which led to a chain reaction. She hadn’t fallen on purpose; she had lost control of her body.

“It’s supposed to be manageable, but I haven’t been able to sync up with Agni at all.” Amanda raised her hand and I saw her fingers transform into flames. “Not that I’m giving up. I’ll get there, then I’ll be kicking your butt every round.”

“Actually, now that I know what you can do I think I’ll be beating you anyway.” She smirked.

“Tago said it was a three-round game.” I gazed at her. “Want to put those words to the test?”

She stood up and cracked her knuckles, gesturing for me to get up as well.

“Bring it.”

I manipulated the stone from the first round into my inventory, so that the arena was ready for us.

The next two rounds showed me what we needed to improve on. Amanda won the second round by dodging me for five minutes straight. I’d tried to aim for accuracy instead of filling the arena up with stone, and my performance suffered as a result.

When she didn’t lose control Amanda was quick, but I was starting to predict her movements.

She was unwilling to take risks by doing turns or moving her head and eyes into different positions. I knew now it was because unexpected stimuli could cause a chain reaction of surprise and fear.

I noted my observations to tell her afterwards.

She lost the third round when she’d lost control for a split second and crashed into the walls. I took the advantage and cornered her. She found herself unable to move as spires loomed towards her from both sides.

“Okay.” She laid back onto the dirt of the arena floor. “Now I know why each round is only five minutes.”

I sat across from her and huffed. My shirt was soaked through, and I’d given up my blazer during the first round. Jumping from stone to stone for five-minute rounds as I tried to catch up with her was tough.

Doing it while fire mana heated up the room was torture for my throat. I wasn’t used to this kind of exercise.

I wanted a solution that involved me moving less, and a spell that kept me cool in any temperature.

The divine spell of eternal water that the Marked one in my book had used would have been a blessing for me right now.

Amanda was dripping with sweat. Her flames had died down and I could see her wings retracting, waves of golden flames billowing across her body and then gathering in front of her.

When the fire calmed down, Agni was sitting in its place.

There was a flapping of wings and Gold joined us from the entrance. He eyed the surroundings warily, heat still clinging onto us.

“I haven’t done that much flying in years.” Amanda pulled a metal bottle out of her inventory. “Do you want one?”

I took the water bottle with a grateful smile. I’d packed food, but there were taps in the academy. I hadn’t expected to be doing so much exercise.

“Not to mention keeping that regent active is tougher than I thought.” She had left the shield pole next to her. “This thing almost drained me dry.”

The sound of rain touched my ears and I looked beside me to see Gold walking across the dirt floor towards the regent.

He poked out at it with his long leg and pecked it curiously. Amanda held the regent away from him, worried that he would damage it.

“Don’t mind him, he’s an expert in these things.”

Amanda looked from Gold to me with a doubtful expression. Then she let go of the regent and Gold nodded at her.

He tapped it with his claws carefully, and I saw him inspecting the activation symbol. The shield shimmered into existence and Amanda almost fell over as it pressed against her. Gold was in the middle, bobbing his head up and down as he followed the glowing symbols and examined the active array.

“He’s going to lose sleep tonight thinking about that.” I chuckled. Then I smiled at Amanda. “We still have some time.”

I gestured and a nearby orb of lava floated into my hands.

“Let’s give dodgeball a try.”