Brand tucked his knees in and covered his head as he began crashing through every tree the forest had to offer. He hit the ground like a stone skipping on a lake’s surface, the mana shield surrounding his body doing little to protect him after shattering moments before.

When he slowed enough to get his bearings, he tried to root himself to the world in order to stop. Before he could, the armored woman slammed her shoulder into him, sending him flying through the forest once again.

He barreled through a few more trees, found a boulder to smack his head on, and passed over two monsters before slowing enough to sky-step into the air in hopes of finding safety.

Whoever was attacking him had speed unlike anything he'd faced before. He had little in the way of a plan so he opted to stay out of her range. He was now beginning to think that stealing from Tanya’s sister might have been a mistake.

“You think you're the only one that can fly!” shouted a voice from down below.

Brand tried to spot where the voice came from, but it echoed through the forest in every direction. A heartbeat later, a silver blur shot past him towards the sky. Wanting to hide rather than fight, he let himself fall only to be tackled to the ground from behind.

He would have cursed if he could breathe let alone find his footing. His mind swam with a rising headache and his chest burned as he gasped for breath that won’t come.

An armored figure slid to a stop, her plate-covered feet mere inches from Brand’s face. She began laughing and Brand could practically see her mocking face under her faceplate.

“I thought you’d be better than this. Seems kind of pointless to separate you from your group when you can’t lay a finger on me.” Brand raised his head to speak but could only cough prompting another round of laughter out of Alda. She thumped her armored chest like a smith pounding an anvil with a defining blow. “Just give up. I'm not some flimsy mage your tricks can work on. I'm a defender, tough enough to handle whatever you can throw at me and fast enough to dodge what I can’t.”

Brand silently throttled his mana making sure to give no visible signs of his rapidly increasing strength and speed. He pretended to try speaking again giving another coughing fit as if still unable to move. When Alda laughed again, letting her guard down, he quickly swung at her materializing a spear at the same time.

She backed off with the same speed she used previously to attack only this time, Alda backpedaled into a tree breaking it to splinters and continuing into the distance. Brand was left puzzled. It was as if she had no control over her movement. Sadly, there wasn’t enough time to analyze his discovery.

He heard the snapping of twigs and whistling of the wind as Alda came at him faster than he could react. She slammed into him again this time planting her elbow in his stomach sending Brand flying. When he came to a sudden stop thanks to an ancient tree, she came at him with her fist.

A rainstorm of punches hammered him deeper into the tree's trunk. The gauntlets of Alda's armor acted as brass knuckles that demanded pain and blood. They struck without aim, never dishing out crippling blows, which prolonged Brand’s suffering.

One, ten, 38, 52, 89. After the hundredth punch, Brand feared he would lose consciousness forfeiting not only the core he wanted to steal but the ones he earned until now, but he wouldn't lose.

A reprieve came when Alda screamed taking many steps back while looking at her hands. They were a bloody mess, the armor surrounding them shredded to pieces as if carved up by a blade. Blood oozed from the eight mangled fingers she had left while one was only holding on by thin scraps of flesh.

“What have you done to me?” Alda demanded, her voice as shaky as her knees.

“I doubt you've never heard of thorn damage,” Brand snickered through a bloody smile.

“That’s not possible! Only legendary enchanted armor has thorn magic!"

Alda couldn’t see it, but there were several inch-long mana blades along Brand’s skin. Each had the same enchantments as his weapons allowing them to cut through anything Hall students could produce. His thorns couldn’t help much in the way of defense, but in a bear-handed brawl, they’d punish anyone that got too close.

That is what thorn magic essentially was; a defense that caused damage as it protected. The best part was no one could tell when he was using it thanks to his focus. Brand also intentionally made everyone around him believe his runes glowed when activated. It was true in a way, they glowed because of the mana concentrated within them, but he could easily make them invisible with his focus.

“So, do you surrender?” Brand asked with more bravado than he felt.

“Not to a common thief like you,” Alda snarled.

She picked up a thick piece of wood about as long as her arm with the three intact fingers she had left on her right hand. Focusing on the log with his perception, Brand the enneagram Alda used as a structural reinforcement spell. The rotten piece of wood might as well be a bone-shattering war hammer.

Brand had to try very hard to keep a smile from his face. This fight was now his to win no matter what Alda did but giving that away might cost him.

He lifted his arms creating an ax so dulled it was more of a hammer and waited for Alda. She didn’t make him wait long.

“Blitz!” she shouted with her improvised weapon raised to strike.

Knowing he would only see a blur, Brand cast a spell and listened for his moment to strike. With a resounding boom that shook the leaves around them, she ran into the invisible mana shield he made right in front of himself.

The barrier was small, just large enough that if Alda could turn she would have missed it completely. It couldn't stop her, but upon shattering it did slow her enough for Brand to swing his dulled ax.

The ax connected with a crunch and the sound of shattering glass. For the instant before being sent flying Brand saw Alda's arm crumple along with her armor then she was crashing through the forest falling trees in her wake.

Following a trail of brittle metal plating, Brand found Alda on her back wearing only her armor’s underclothes. There was a monk kneeling by her side applying healing magic to her broken arm.

“What did you do to my armor?” Alda whispered with no fight left in her voice.

Brand sighed. His thorns had a spell within them that broke down metal in much the same way Rohaan broke down earth. If not for his focus, Alda would have seen it happening with mage sight and would have quickly purged the spell.

“What did you do to my armor?” she asked again, this time almost pleading.

Brand kneeled grasping a piece of broken armor that fell apart into sand between his fingers. “I fucked it up.”

****

With a gesture, two of Mildrith conjured blades hovered in front of her and Garland, just before Godric covered them in a storm of fire. With her vision blocked by the barely held back inferno, she immediately spread her perception not wanting to lose track of Tanya. To her, Godric and the Akram noble might as well not exist.

A pained realization hit Mildrith, one she'd always known but tried her best not to. Her father was right.

No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much magic she mastered, not being a summoner meant she would always lose to a true Bryer. Her focus of making mana constructs couldn’t hope to compete against someone that practically walked through the combat mysteries.

With a burst of mana, she jumped backward several yards seeing Garland do the same as he came to a stop right next to her.

“You got a plan?” he asked in hurried breaths.

Before Mildrith could answer, three condensed balls of fire shot forward spinning back-and-forth in what looked like random patterns, but all the while still heading in their direction.

“Those aren't normal fireballs!” Garland shouted while casting multi-layered shields around them both.

Water in the air coalesced to create a wall of ice. Ahead of the wall, a reddish fire shield appeared. Then around them both, Garland formed a brute force sphere of mana that shined with a blue light.

“Just so you know, I can't block that,” he said, his voice shrill, panicked, and rich with the anticipation of pain.

“Neither can I,” Mildrith admitted.

She raised a hand moving the blades around her with the motion. With the flick of a finger, they shot out heading for the fireball but missed by a hair's breadth as they darted out of the way. The blade changed direction with Mildrith's motion and Godric did the same both losing any sense of refinement as their private war went on.

Halfway into their travel, Mildrith managed to cut one of the fiery comets, destroying it and the blade in an explosion of superheated air. In moments, she was able to repeat her success leaving only one fireball that was too close and too fast to stop.

Just before Garland’s defenses were put to the test, she conjured too many blades to count in an extra circle of protection around them. When the fireball struck, her mana drained away but the blade held growing red hot as heat filled the space,

“Blizra,” Garland said over the growing flame outside. He turned to Mildrith. “Are you sure it was best to send Alda after the brutish one?”

Mildrith shook her head in the affirmative. “Yes, it was. She would have never been able to stop Tanya.”

Her eyes widened as she realized she'd lost sight of Tanya. Godric was so much more formidable than she expected, forcing her to focus on defending against him instead of keeping track of the true threat.

“We need to-.” Mildrith was interrupted by a massive paw swiping her blade shield away like a fortress made of hay. Looking up, she saw the colossal form of Leo with Tanya floating at its center.

Garland raised his baculous. “Flash!”

On reflex, Mildrith closed her eyes to avoid being blinded by the overpowered mage light erupting from the jewel in his staff. Leo stepped back from the display and Mildrith ran for the Midgard's tree line with Garland right behind her.

“There’s no hope of winning out in the open!” she shouted.

“What about the cores?” Garland shouted back.

Mildrith hesitated for a moment. Leaving the open field was the only way to win, but in doing so they would lose their prize. In a sense, all she was doing was running away like a weakling.

Every harsh word ever thrown at Mildrith flew through the whirlwind of her mind at that moment. Within an infinitely long second, the pitying look on her sibling’s face, the dismissiveness of her cousins, and her father's ridicule when he found out she was not a true Bryer swirled through her mind.

“No!” she screamed, turning around hell-bent on victory. She raised a hand, reading a volley of blades right before a fireball exploded against his face knocking her off her feet.

“Let me see, let me see damn it!” Garland said, trying to move her hands from her face.

Mildrith hadn't known she’d been covering her face. She didn't know much of anything other than feeling like she’d been punched in the face by an especially large pot of too hot water. Garland's nervous laughter wasn't helping and for some reason, there were three of him swaying from side to side.

“You got no eyebrows,” he said and turned to raise a mana shield as more small fireballs came their way.

“I’m not running,” Mildrith said while slurring her words. She hardly heard what Garland said until he poured a potion over her bringing focus back to her eyes.

“Why the hells are we fighting over a few beast cores?” Garland shouted over the explosions forming cracks in his shield.

Mildrith shot to her feet conjuring five massive blades above her head. “I’m not fighting over fucking beast cores, now fly!” she screamed, sending the weapons rocketing towards Godric.

Before reaching their target, Garland blasted the flying swords with mage bolts, knocking them off course. “Don’t use your blade on them unless you want to be expelled and thrown in prison!”

Mildrith looked over to where her blades landed. They made deep craters in the ground that would have killed Godric if their aim was true. Mildrith cursed under her breath. She was being held hostage by her own strength. If she wanted to win with no loss of life, she could not use her swords freely.

The wands holstered on her waist came free and combined in her hand creating a baculous.

“Fine then,” she said, pooling mana into it. “You concentrate on defense while I attack.”

“What about your sister?” Garland asked and pointed at Leo standing in place at a distance.

If Mildrith still had eyebrows, they would have surely risen with confusion. It made no sense for Tanya not to charge them. To get a better look, she enhanced her eyes with mana and saw the beast kin clearly standing on Leo’s head instead of within its body for protection with a smaller yet fully developed lion in the palm of her outstretched hand.

Centering her attention on Tanya’s, Mildrith saw her mouth a word. “Thundra.”

Instead of seeing a flash of branching light moving in random directions, it made an outline of a lion. It flashed for an instant followed by the boom of thunder that knocked Mildrith from her feet.

Sitting up as fast as possible, Mildrith looked over at Garland who was slump out on the ground motionless. She rushed over to him but was stopped when a monk teleported to his side. Before she could say a word, the monk and Garland were gone with a pop of displaced air.

“That was lightning,” Mildrith said to herself in disbelief and anger. “How the fuck did she learn how to direct lightning? I can’t even use it!”

Mildrith gripped the shaft of her staff tightly. She looked at Tanya that was walking towards her slowly. She looked to Godric who’s armor shone red as if it was still being worked by a smith. In the hopelessness of her situation, she found a calm that eluded her until now.

The feeling was strange. Her mind was tranquil as a calm windless sea while her body felt like it would burst from the overabundance of mana. Mildrith realized her second gate had been opened in the mitts of battle, but she felt no joy over it. The added mana was just another weapon to find a path to victory.

Tapping her baculous on the ground, a mound of earth rose above Mildrith’s head just in time to stop a lightning strike aimed at her. In the next second, she built a personal shield tuned to stop fire and electric current. Gearing up for an offensive barrage, Mildrith jumped from behind her cover and headed straight for Godric. Tanya’s lion started after her but would be too slow for what she had planned.

Mildrith conjured a sword, the biggest sword she had ever made. It was taller than the oldest trees in the forest and wider than most bridges in Vellia. With a weapon so massive not even a jötunn could hope to wield, she extended it over Godric dropping it on him before he could scurry away. She felt the ground trembling and smelled the ash in the air as a great wind kicked up around the king as it landed.

“That’s what you get for ignoring me,” Mildrith quipped with a smile as Tanya’s lightning bolt deflected off her personal shield.

Turning to face her, Mildrith cocked her staff back, holding it as if reading to strike a flying target. As she stood in place, a barrage of swords appeared around her and flew at the charging lion. Several of them hit Leo burying themselves into his sides as he staggered in pain.

Mildrith smirked. “Not used to anything piercing that steel hide of yours huh?”

The white stone in her baculous was now shining gold with streams of blue light surrounding it. Tanya meanwhile was making intricate hand gestures, each form runes within Leo. They spread out to his punctured skin, strengthening it. In no time the damage left by the flying swords was reduced to small cuts. Mildrith didn't care. She put all of her hope into this last spell. If it failed, then she lost but at least she lost on her feet.

Mildrith waited as the gargantuan lion came in for the kill with the night sky disappearing under the light of her baculous. The confidence that motivating threatened to burn away as Leo drew closer, but she held her ground. She waited until the very last moment then swung creating a golden sword that arced across the sky just as long as the one used to crush Godric but thin as a pocketknife.

The shining sword sliced into Leo without resistance bisecting the best with ease Mildrith didn’t expect. A heartbeat later, Tanya fell from her womb of protection hitting the burned ground face first and rolled to Mildrith’s feet. When she tried to leap at her, Mildrith placed the flat side of a sword in front of her which she smacked her head-on. She then placed more swords around Tanya creating a cage that would cut into her if she tried to escape.

Retracting the golden blade to about a foot from the hilt, Mildrith kneeled down to her sister to meet her face to face. “Have anything to say, you little bandit?”

Tanya closed her eyes tightly as tears fell from them. There was shame, anger, and hopelessness painting her face.

“I’ll beat you one day,” she whimpered with her cat ears trooping. “One day you won't push me around anymore.” She raised her head finding a bit more fire in her chest. “And then you’ll be the mutt.”

Mildrith paused, confused by her words. “When have I ever pushed you around?”

Tanya looked insulted by the question. “You call me mutt and go after my friends.”

“When have I ever done that?”

“What do you mean? You treated all the servants that knew me like trash and cost the first friend I made in the hall his hand!”

The passion started to leave Mildrith’s voice as she tried to find an answer. “I didn't, that was Ald-. The servants were just-”

Mildrith had no words to excuse the accusation. She was a nasty bitch to the servants when she lived with her father. And when Aldhelm crushed the Jabari’s hand, she'd done nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Mildrith said. “It’s just that-”

Someone charged out of the Midgard tree line heading for Mildrith. As he passed the fire, she could see it was Brand, beaten, bloody, and looking from a fight.

Mildrith turned to her sister talking sarcastically. “Don’t go anywhere. This won't take long.”