Hex-shaped walls surrounded Shaya and her group, raised from the ground as large columns, cutting off their line of sight to whatever Avaim was summoning. The six of them stood in the center of the room, now armed for battle with bronze equipment. Ralus was up again, none the worse for wear, a new bronze-capped staff in hand. Bri had grabbed a greatsword from one of the weapon racks and stood apart from the circle, tension and anger playing through her. Cyren tucked a number of throwing darts into pockets on the inside of his robes and grabbed a pair of slender daggers. Oraeus picked a slender sword, Shaya flinching as he went through a dueling form to practice with the weapon.

Samorn worried her more though, simply taking out a violin and standing in the middle of their group.

“We don’t have much time,” Shaya said, setting aside her other concerns for the moment, “we need to figure out a strategy and commit to it.”

“Command us, then,” Oraeus said, surprising Shaya. Until she realized it was another part of his test.

“Ren - can you manipulate plants? Make them entangle people?”

“Mhmm.”

“Okay,” Shaya pointed at the wall in front of them, with space for monsters to flow around it on either side, “I’ll ward myself against Ruby magic, then Bri and I can take one flank. You choke up the other side, then you and Ral can go to work on whatever monsters get bogged down.”

“What about us?” Samorn asked, adjusting her violin.

“I’m not familiar with your abilities, to be honest,” Shaya admitted, “support us from the backline and respond to threats that the flanks can’t see. Oraeus, guard Samorn, since she’s effectively unarmed.”

Samorn smiled at her words and the rest of them nodded.

“Textbook,” Ralus nodded with a smile.

“You’re in Tactics? I really want to borrow your notes, I wish I made it in.”

“Of course, any time, Shaya.”

They smiled and parted ways, each group taking their positions.

Espers were invoked and invocations uttered.

“Ready?” Shaya asked, smiling at Bri.

“Yeah,” her friend replied, not turning to look at her.

Spit, I need to have a long chat with her after this.

“He’s finished his summons,” Samorn called from the back.

“Damn,” Shaya shook her head, “I wish my Vision was that good.”

“Yeah, they’re really impressive, aren’t they?”

“Hey, don’t worry about th-” Shaya’s reassurance was interrupted as dog-sized spiders poured around the corner towards them.

Hair bristled along their long limbs and dagger-sized mandibles rubbed together hungrily as they advanced on them. Then they leapt into the air, each one closing several feet of distance in the blink of an eye.

Shaya lunged to meet them, axe easily cleaving through chitin and exoskeleton. Her shield slammed into others, crippling them. She regretted her weapon choice; the axe was overkill and too slow to recover from its swings. Spiders quickly surrounded her, clinging to her legs and trying to stab their mandibles through her gambeson.

“They’re inside your ward!” Bri growled, “I can’t burn them off you!”

Spit, she’s right.

Redoubling her efforts, Shaya lashed out at the spiders weighing her down, shattering exoskeletons with her shield and cleaving others in half. She felt weight slough off her, and leapt backwards out of the immediate pile of enemies.

Fire sprayed from Bri’s outstretched hand, a sustained stream of it causing the spiders to burst as the smell of burnt hair and boiling guts filled the air. Sorathis stood behind her, wreathed in flames as the esper’s hand was also stretched out like her mage’s. Shaya kicked a spider into the flames, her ward glowing from where Bri’s magical fire touched it.

Within seconds, Bri had destroyed the dozens of spiders threatening their flank.

“Bri,” Shaya grinned, “that was awesome!”

That earned Shaya a smile from her friend, embers floating off her hand as fire glowed in her eyes. Sorathis stood behind her, the esper’s faceless helm conveying nothing but scorn for the dead.

Their other flank was settled as well. Thorny vines crushed whatever spiders remained while Ralus splattered others with their staff. A dozen or so had made it through and were crumpled on the ground with darts sticking out of their eyes or their limbs shattered.

In the center, Oraeus and Samorn looked to have dealt with a dozen spiders that crawled over the wall. A number of them looked to have torn each other apart, with the other half felled by precise sword strokes. Neither looked injured, though Oraeus shot Shaya an annoyed glare as ectoplasmic blood evaporated off his blade.

“See? Not so bad,” Shaya said, thankful the bodies around them were evaporating. The stench of burned hair and gore still filled the air, however.

“Again.” Oraeus stated.

+++++

“They’re burrowing!” Shaya shouted, feeling the rumble of multiple enemies going under the wall and heading for their backline.

Cyren felt it too, already sprinting back towards Samorn. Shaya joined him, shouting, “Phaedra! Gird my ally against harm!”

She made it to Samorn, laying a hand on her arm. Motes weaved a simple armour of hard light around her, just in time to deflect a bladed horn from a giant beetle as it burst through the ground beneath them. Another one of the beetle’s horns managed to penetrate Shaya’s padded armour at the leg, opening a gash that missed her hamstring by a mere inch.

Rage flared up within her at the pain, but she quashed it in less than a second.

With enemies in their midst, Bri, Ralus and Cyren couldn’t use any of the area of effect spells that had proven so effective previously and the battle devolved into a brutal melee against the hundred-pound beetles crawling out from the ground. Cyren’s daggers and Oraeus’ light blade couldn’t penetrate the thick carapaces before them, so they were forced to act as bait so Bri, Ralus or Shaya could smash the giant beetles to death.

Samorn danced away from the initial beetles, playing a lively tune on her violin in phantom concert with Melody’s harp, and Shaya felt her heart soar with courage. With a roar, she chopped through a beetle with renewed fervour, seeing the same vigor course through her companions.

“That’s the best armour spell you have?” Oraeus chided, frowning at the golden light surrounding Samorn.

“It’s a modified version of the spell,” Shaya explained with a glare, “one that I can execute quickly, in case of ambush.” She gestured to the dead rhino beetles around them, their bodies evaporating into ectoplasm.

“You can modify spells already?” Ralus asked, impressed.

“Barely,” Oraeus answered for her, “again.”

+++++

The group took a break after an hour of simulated battles.

Samorn and Ralus kneeled and began meditating, claiming it sped up recovery of their aether. Shaya tried meditating like them, but didn’t like being alone with her thoughts at the time and instead joined Bri in stretching and massaging sore muscles from their fights. Oraeus simply sat cross-legged on the floor.

Cyren, shifted into a great white wolf, lie panting on his side, tongue lolling out. He had wisely started conserving his aether, relying on more efficient spells to get him through each encounter with Avaim’s summoned creatures. Shaya thought full body polymorphing was more advanced than a first-year spell, but guessed she was mistaken.

She was learning a lot about the abilities of most of her comrades.

“How far into the future does your foresight spell let you see?” Shaya asked, leaning back against one of the hex columns after she finished stretching.

Oraeus hesitated before responding, “Ten seconds, currently.”

“That’s great,” she managed a wane smile, “Could you maybe try using that to call out advice during battle?”

“I thought you wanted to command,” he retorted.

“Then consider it an order,” Shaya sighed, “the rest of us can’t keep up this pace forever.”

“Growing tired already?” A thin white eyebrow quirked at her.

"Yes,” Shaya admitted, to the man’s surprise, “Most of us have been burning through aether far more readily to swing battles in our favour.”

“You could even say,” Bri cut in, glaring at Oraeus, “That you are failing our test.”

No one disagreed with her statement, each of them nursing their freshly healed wounds.

Shaya wanted to say something unifying, like her mother would have, but she couldn’t find the energy to do so. They were making good progress though, and at least camraderie was growing amongst most of her lance.

+++++

Oraeus snapped orders as capably as Shaya expected, leveraging his brief foresight to respond to threats before they emerged. It wasn’t long before he was giving orders people couldn’t fulfill, however. Shaya was drained of aether by the second hour despite a longer break to help them regenerate and using her magic more sparingly. Bri followed soon after, blood vessels in her eyes burst from pushing herself past her safe limits.

Shaya could almost sympathize with him – coordinating a battle was difficult when you didn’t know what tools you had at your disposal. Perhaps even worse when you thought you had particular tools, that proved less functional than you desired. But then she realized how much more efficient it would have been for him to leverage his foresight before they were burning out and found herself savouring his frustration more than she wanted to admit.

The two giant women fell back to being melee combatants, Shaya switching to a lucerne hammer to help counter Avaim’s preference for heavily armoured summons. By the third hour, Cyren couldn’t maintain his polymorph spell and had to rely on his knife-work. Ralus was next to run out of aether not an hour later, trading their staff for a spear to continue the fight. They made it work, with the help of Samorn’s musical inspiration and Oraeus offering a fraction of his foresight abilities and enhancing their speed.

Oraeus and Samorn never ran out of aether during their four hours of training, manipulating enemies and buffing allies the entire time.

+++++

“I’m impressed,” Avaim said, “I don’t think I’ve seen a first-year lance able to train for the full four hours. Most lack the will to push their bodies this far. Your martial skills are particularly noteworthy, most mages come here without real combat training.”

“Thanks, Avaim,” Shaya said, smiling. She was drenched with sweat, but walked with such elation no onlooker would be able to tell just how exhausted she felt, “I’m really proud of what we were able to accomplish today.”

Gods, it was so good to cut loose and just smash things for hours.

“Agreed,” Oraeus said, causing everyone listening to reel, “you have exceeded my expectations.”

“Did you make him say that?” Shaya asked, turning to Samorn.

Samorn chuckled, still looking prim and proper despite hours of violence, “No, my enchantments weren’t involved.”

“I don’t believe it,” Bri glared at him, “I’m waiting for some limiter like, ‘for thin blooded nephilim, you’ve proven vaguely acceptable.’”

“Or,” Cyren picked up where Bri left off, “’I expected you all to die horribly, yet here you are shambling away with a modicum of decency.’”

Oraeus snorted, “No caveats. I have sufficient proof of your abilities now; it would be irrational to deny them or further harp on weaknesses each of you already seem aware of.”

“Typical Sapphire mage,” Shaya laughed. “I’ll take it. As long as you keep up the, uh, positive attitude you’re showing right now.”

He’s right about knowing my weaknesses – I have to grow a lot stronger than I am.

But I’m not as far behind as I thought – or others said I would be.

I didn’t last as long as Oraeus or Samorn, but I cast way more spells than they did during our fights.

Shaya’s eyes glowed as they walked home, watching the sun set over the western horizon. Where her home was. Where her friends and family waited for her to return.

Nothing was going to stop her from returning home a full-fledged Warmage.

Nothing.