Saturday, February 21st, N.E. 807, 02:18

Bender Street, 7th Circle, Royal Capital Arvas, Fredirin Kingdom.

Lillian Quarry Fredirin.

I could not hear my cousin Olivia’s thoughts. Her mind was silent, blessedly silent. Because I could not hear her, she should have been the person I understood the least.

But, my cousin was my Destined One, and I strove to understand her as best as I could.

Because hearing the thoughts of everyone else was not something I ever wanted, I never tried to really listen to them, to grasp what they meant, to really understand the person who was thinking.

I could not hear Olivia. But those around my cousin, I could hear them.

She had changed when her Bloodline had awoken, a girl much like I was, and still am, had transformed into something else. I never knew that girl, I do not know if I could have heard her thoughts or not, but she was not my Destined One, the Olivia in front of me, she is.

Olivia is strong.

The people around her were not sure of this, they did not know how strong she was, but they knew she held power, power greater than she should have had. But her limits, her full capacity, they did not know.

I knew she was strong, not only because I could hear what others thought of her, but because of a feeling I could not describe.

My mother tried hard to make use of me, even as she started wearing a magic item to block her mind from my senses, I could tell through her actions.

She wanted me to be a spy at first, but while I could hear the thoughts of others, I lacked the ability to deceive another, to guide them to reveal things they did not want to reveal. Because deception was a foreign concept to me, I was helplessly naive, even while I could read other’s thoughts with my bloodline, my own thoughts were read by others just as easily.

If not a spy, then a warrior. Perhaps I could read the thoughts of my opponents and react accordingly. But again, I failed. Most warriors act on instinct, their thoughts came too quick and were too simple for me to read. Even when I did pick up on their intentions, my small body left me too weak to do anything with that knowledge.

Giving up on becoming a warrior, the next attempt was as a mage, but again, I was unsuccessful. The sad truth was that I was simply not smart enough to be a mage. I could read the thoughts of a mage, but I could not make any sense of them. Even if I were able to, what then? I was too weak to fight with a weapon, too dumb to fight with magic, even if I understood what the enemy mage was doing, I still could do nothing myself.

I did, however, learn some things from these failed attempts. I might not be a warrior or a mage myself, I might never be able to become one, but I had more than a superficial knowledge of fighting, of using a weapon, of combat magic.

My cousin Olivia was strong. Very strong, shockingly so.

The knight shaped Elemental was strong, stronger than my cousin. It’s spear gouged out the ground, it shattered buildings, it ripped apart stone and brick. The shield demolished the houses and stores, its bulky body smashed through wood and mortar with ease. When it and my cousin clashed, Olivia’s smaller body would be sent flying.

My trainer once said that strength was simply how much might you had behind your blows, anyone could be strong. To be powerful, strength was not enough, you must also have skill. With skill, you could become powerful, with skill and strength, you could become absurdly powerful.

Olivia was strong, but the Elemental was stronger.

Olivia however, was skilled.

True, when they clashed directly, she was blown back, but, that rarely happened. My cousin was violence incarnate, a god of fighting. The Elementals spear would come at her, but it would hit nothing. The shield would be swung, but besides a gust of wind, nothing would touch my cousin. The Elemental’s entire bulky body would try to crush her, but it never even came close.

My cousin’s thin blade scored hit after hit on the icy armor, leaving scratch after scratch. When she could, her knee, her elbow, her palm, her foot, her fist, she would rain blows upon the Elemental. Cracks and craters, scratches and scuffs adorned the body of ice.

The fight brought the two into the surrounding buildings, buildings that soon became rubble. My cousin nimbly navigated the wreckage, she bounced off of walls, she slipped through openings in the roofs, through doors, through windows. She struck while horizontal to the ground, while upside down, while falling, while leaping, while skidding, she barely touched solid objects, she seemed to fly.

And yet, she was not strong enough to finish the Elemental. She landed hundreds of hits, but she could not kill her enemy.

She would need help.

“Farlier, Faulen,” I spoke to my two knights who were watching the fight in awe, “Help her.”

Saturday, February 21st, N.E. 807, 02:21

Bender Street, 7th Circle, Royal Capital Arvas, Fredirin Kingdom.

Olivia Pine Fredirin.

My elbow crashed down onto the Elemental’s left thigh, doing little damage, but knocking my much taller opponent just slightly off balance. Slightly enough that the downward swing with its lance missed by a hair’s breadth. The already ruined roadway was further ripped apart, pebbles and frozen mud lightly pelted my back, but I paid it no mind.

I leapt into the Elemental’s chest, my knee smashing into where its sternum would have been had it actually had a skeleton. With the Elemental still following through with its swing, and with the momentum from my jump, the impact between the two of us was great enough that a small shockwave blew around us, scattering snow as the armored figure reeled backward.

Using the rebound, I bounced back, and then using my mana to control my own blood that soaked my body, I twisted in mid-air to deliver a heel kick to the knight’s upper arm, but this time, it hardly shifted, and its retaliatory shield swipe came towards the area I would have fallen into.

But by using the Elemental’s arm as a springboard, I was able to spin in the air long enough to dodge the shield. My hand caught the top of it as it returned, and I pulled myself back into the Elemental’s chest where I delivered a crisp slash with Ula’s sword to its blank face.

I slid over its shoulder, narrowly avoid the horns on the helmet and the spikes on the pauldrons, and then I directed two more slashes towards its neck before bouncing off of its back and putting some distance between us.

This Elemental, this Greater Elemental, was a curious being.

I had had my doubts when Commander Tale had described the Elementals. Mindless, he had called them.

Elementals were not mindless. Stubborn and single-minded? Yes, but mindless? No. It was true, that they had limited personalities, and while that developed as they grew stronger, even the Elemental Lords were still somewhat lacking. But they were not mindless. In fact, it could be said that their single-mindedness was a form of purity of thought, that when it came to the few things that they really cared about, that Elementals could show deep and intelligent thoughts.

So I had assumed that calling them mindless had only meant that they were relentless with a narrow focus.

But that was wrong, the nearly one hundred Elementals I had destroyed in the past hour were in fact, mindless. Driven by instinct that allowed them to function, they existed only to advance and kill. They were similar to the lowest undead in that sense. Whatever had corrupted them to my senses was obviously responsible for their regressed mentality, but how or why, I did not know.

As for the Greater Elemental, it too was largely mindless, it ran off of instinct as it relentlessly tried to kill me. But at the same time, the instincts it had were more developed, while it was incapable of planning or altering its approach in any meaningful way, it was capable of observing me.

It was much stronger than the other Elementals, but despite its strength and improved instincts, it would still pose no threat to me at all.

I ducked under the suddenly extended lance that was swung horizontally at me as the Elemental spun to face my direction, some debris from the houses it crushed to reach this far bounced off of my body, but it did no damage.

If I had come to a rest a bit closer, it would have lumbered towards me before engaging me at close range immediately, if I had gone further, it would have done its trick where it slid across the ground while charging at me. But at this range, it would always swing or thrust with its lance, depending on its own stance.

Its attack missed, and now its footing was currently secure, the distance between the two of us was the same, and my own stance was stable, so as I expected, the lance shrunk back to its normal length and the Elemental stomped towards me, both lance and shield were ready to respond to my movements.

And move I did, rushing forward while low to the ground as if I was going to try and slide under its legs. The Elemental brought the shield forward, using it to cover most of its body as it crouched slightly and prepared to face my charge. When I was only steps away the Elemental lunged forward, trying to tackle me with the shield, but I had already shifted and shot towards the lance held in its right arm.

The pommel of Ula’s sword met the tip of the lance, sending it off of its trajectory, and allowing me to slide right into the area under its arm. My first target was the armpit, a quick slash landed cleanly before I fell into a backflip, the toe of my right boot lending on the inside of the knight’s elbow. Then, even while upside down, I sent another slash at the Elemental’s ankle. I pushed off of the ground with my remaining hand, dodging the stomp that was sent my way, and then while flying through the air, sent another slash that landed on the being’s wrist.

Even as I landed, I could see that my attacks from the last two exchanges had done very little. There was a web of hair-thin cracks running across on its chest, scruffs adorned where my kicks and elbows landed, and light scratches were visible on a few more surfaces of the knight’s icy body, but the damage did not even qualify to be called superficial.

The fact was, I was at my limits.

I could continue this fight for quite some time still, but I could not win at this rate, and if I refused to retreat, I would eventually lose.

An Ice Elementals was similar to a Stone Elemental, the body was extremely durable. Ula’s sword was too dull and too fragile to do any damage without breaking. My own body was in the same situation, I could possibly strike with enough force to damage it, but my flesh and blood body would be wrecked in the process, I could harm it, but my limbs would end up destroyed, my bones shattered and my flesh torn. Even if I was willing to sacrifice my arms and legs, I simply did not have enough limbs to allow such a strategy to work. Normally, I would use Mana to reinforce and protect my limbs, but the more damage I wanted to prevent, the more Mana I would need to use, and the level of mana that would be needed to prevent my limbs being ruptured would require an amount of mana that would instead shred my meridians and leave me unable to control my mana within the affected area. Even if I were to do both, shred my meridians first, and then destroy my limbs, I would still most likely not be able to finish my enemy off.

And I would be left completely helpless in that case. If my body was damaged, I could make do with my Mana, repairing the damage to a degree and forcibly moving my body despite the damage. If my meridians were damaged, I could simply rely on my physical body to move. If both were two happen…

I was actually using small amounts of mana to protect myself just enough to avoid heavy damage, but even this was taxing my meridians, and the imperfect protection was allowing damage to get through. Under my armor, I was already covered in bruises.

If it was only that, I might have been able to deal with it. But, each time I struck the Elemental’s icy body, the cold was leaching into my own limbs. I could stave that off with my mana, but it was taking its toll as it even further limited my mana and sapped my stamina.

Still, I could carry on for several hours at this rate, but, I would not be able to win.

The Elemental began circling me. It did this occasionally, something about the environment was causing it to hesitate, but once it found a position it liked, it would attack again. Sometimes I let it do so unhindered so I could try to discover what it was trying to accomplish, but this time I preempted it and went first.

I shot to the side, leaping into the air and landing on one of the still standing walls nearby. Running across the wall, I approached in a wide arc, until the wall ended and I jumped again, this time into the air straight towards the Elemental.

The lance came straight at me, its extended form trying to run me through while I was in the air and unable to dodge. But, another mass of blood formed in front of me, catching the lance of ice and slowing it enough for me to grab on with my hands.

As the blood was drawn back to my body I slid down the lengthened shaft of the lance while the Elemental tried to retract it. Sadly for it, its efforts only increased my speed and force. When my foot smashed into its face, the entire head was blown back, even one of the horns were snapped off as the Elemental tumbled backward.

Still, it recovered faster than I did. My kick had come in harder than even I had expected, and the damage done to the Elemental was paid for in the form of several of the bones in my foot shattering.

The Elemental spun, its lance digging a crescent-shaped trench in the ground as it tried to smash me, but before the lance came near me, and before I had a chance to dodge after having used my blood to hold my foot together, a ball of gray energy impacted into the side of the Elemental’s head, blowing the remaining horn away.

The lance missed by a wide margin without me needing to move, and in that opening one of my cousin’s knights charged into the off-balance Elemental. Steel shield met icy armor with a loud crack and the Elemental tumbled even more. It moved its legs to try and gain leverage against the human that was pushing against it, but once it did, the other Guardian Knight rushed in from behind, his entire body put into a single thrust of his sword that slammed down into the back of the Elemental’s knee.

The sword screeched, sparks of metal and ice crystals exploded as the Elemental was brought to its knees for the first time in the fight.

I did not hesitate.

Ula’s sword was swiftly covered with a layer of my blood as I rushed in. Even while falling, the Elemental had wedged it’s shield in front of the first knight and forced him away, but that left an opening for me to exploit. Reaching the area within its chest, I pivoted my entire body and used all of the force I could muster, and drove the sword into the Elemental’s chest. My blood held the sword together and honed the edge, so the blade pierced into its breastplate with ease.

There was a loud crack, and the Elemental's chest splintered. Nearly half of its chest snapped off, including the arm that held the shield. If its body was human, not only would its heart be exposed, but so would most of its spine.

Another gray ball of energy smacked into its shoulder even as the lance descended and I was forced to jump back to avoid being crushed.

Ula’s sword, which I had left within the Elemental’s chest, slowly crumbled into shards of metal as my blood left it. Considering the damage I just dealt, the loss of the sword seemed a fair trade.

“You two, do either of you have a spare weapon?” I asked my cousin’s two knights who were both surrounding the Elemental as it slowly got back on its feet.

“Just a dagger,” Answered the one who had driven his sword into the enemy's knee.

“Same,” responded the other one.

“Well, that is fine then. We shall do this the hard way.” I said as I pulled out my own dagger.

Saturday, February 21st, N.E. 807, 02:26

The Royal Palace, Northern Grounds, Royal Capital Arvas, Fredirin Kingdom.

Pamela Pine Fredirin.

My charcoal pencil lightly scraped across the small canvas I had brought with me. The form of a carriage moving forlornly through the snow was slowly, and if I was being honest, haphazardly, beginning to form.

Already, the picture was ruined, the perspective was off, the rear of the carriage was seen from directly behind, as if it were heading away from the viewer, the but the sides were visible, as if it were at a slight angle. The background was too small, the foreground too faded, even the proportions of the carriage were wrong, the wheels were sized wrong, and the front and rear wheels were not comparable.

A complete failure of a sketch.

I knew this, but I still carried on.

“Pamela… Will Olivia… be okay?” my brother, Timothy, asked.

“Why wouldn’t she be?” I responded, my hand continuing to move back and forth on the canvas, adding some depth to the shadow under the carriage.

“Pamela… You…” Timothy sighed, annoyance clear in his voice.

“What answer do you want, Timothy? You have asked me this four times now.” I said, exasperated.

“Well, that is…” He sighed again, this time in dejection, “We... You, should not have let her leave.”

“Brother,” I spoke slowly, as I finally raised my head from my canvas. “Olivia wants to change things. I have thought about this, and I think she is right. We should not let things stay the same.”

“I have thought about it too,” He spoke heatedly, “Maybe she is right, but we should not disobey Mother’s directions.”

I returned to my canvas without responding to my brother. He was right, in a way. Children should listen to their parents, although the two of us, being thirteen and fourteen, were hardly children any longer. Still, even now, my eye would occasionally throb with pain. Even now, I could still vividly recall that day. Even now, the sketch in front of me, while a failed work regardless, only showed the left half of the picture.

Maybe Timothy and our parents were right, but, I do not think I can accept such a course of action any longer. Olivia finally opened my eyes, so to say.

I would not turn back.

“Pamela, I… I am sorry, I know how you feel about that topic, I will not bring it up again tonight,” My brother’s apology suddenly came.

“No, it is fine. I too, understand what you are saying. It is just…”

A silence descended between us then, the only sound the scraping of my charcoal pencil on the paper.

“Still,” Timothy broke the silence, “I worry for Olivia. She is too young to be doing… what is it that she is doing?”

“I do not know,” I responded as I continued working on the shadow.

“You do not know?” He asked suspiciously.

“Olivia has told me nothing,” I replied plainly, “And I have not asked.”

“You have not asked?” He sounded incredulous, “Why?”

“Hmm, two reasons I suppose,” I said as I stopped drawing and rubbed my chin, but then realized I had inadvertently smeared charcoal onto my face and quickly stopped.

“And they are?” He prompted, even as he produced a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me.

“For one,” I began as I wiped the soot from my cheeks, “I trust our sister. If she needs my help, or yours, she will confide in us herself. She knows I am willing to listen, but she still says nothing, so she either does not need our help, or she is keeping the information of her activities to herself for a reason.”

“And the other?” My brother said sourly.

“As for the second,” I paused for a moment, handing Timothy back his handkerchief and then turning back to my canvas, “What help can I provide even if I knew? I am knowledgeable in magic, but my knowledge is hardly unique, the books in our library contain more information than I know. And if she needed more detailed information, she would be better off seeing someone who can actually cast the spell in question, something I can not do. Then, besides my knowledge, what else do I have?”

“...” Timothy looked as if he wanted to say something, but he held his tongue.

“Do not look at me like that, Brother,” I said without looking at him, “I am not wallowing in self-pity. I am just being objective. I am a mage who cannot cast spells and an artist who can not finish a work. Neither of those things will help our sister out.”

“...”

“Still, I too, worry about her.”

“...Then, why do you not stop her?”

“I wonder?”

“Pamela!” Timothy said angrily, “Answer the question.”

“I worry for Olivia, but I worry about you too, and for Brother Benjamin and little Vincent. But the worry is mine, my problem to deal with. I will just do everything to support you, Olivia, and our two brothers. I will do whatever I can to help, and I will keep my worry inside.”

“... What if she gets hurt? Or… worse?”

“That… I do not know,” I said while shaking my head, “but let me ask you this, what did we do when Olivia’s carriage fell into the water? What was done when my eye was… Well, you know what I mean to ask.”

“...” Timothy said nothing.

“But, I do not believe anything will happen to Olivia.”

“... And why is that?”

“Hmm…” I thought to myself, trying to come up with a concrete reason for my confidence.

“... Well?” Timothy prompted.

“...Women’s intuition.”

Saturday, February 21st, N.E. 807, 02:29

Bender Street, 7th Circle, Royal Capital Arvas, Fredirin Kingdom.

Olivia Pine Fredirin.

The Elemental’s lance shot towards the first of Lillian’s two guards, the man only managing to dodge by a hair’s breadth as he practically threw himself flat onto the ground. While cutting it close, he still managed to avoid harm, and the Elemental's attack left it open for a counter attack.

A bolt of gray energy exploded upon its shoulder, a ray of light shot out and hit it in the lower stomach, and the remaining Guardian Knight slammed his sword into the Elemental’s knee, leaving behind a gash half an inch deep.

I would have normally followed up with my own attack, but I was instead wrenching the head off of an Elemental with the form of a six-legged cat.

Lillian and her two knights gave me the opening I needed to severely damage the Elemental, and the fight was all but concluded at that point. The Greater Elemental was only stronger than the other Elementals, it was able to adjust to the loss of the limb and the changes in balance that the loss caused, but it was unable to alter its strategy and tactics in any meaningful way. It did not try to use its missing limb, it was aware enough and smart enough to use only the remaining arm with the lance, but its behavior was still the same.

Even without the two knights, and the magical attacks being launched from the wands held by Lillian and Ula, I could still finish this fight myself. However, their help was appreciated, since, for the last few minutes, regular Elementals had been stumbling into the fight.

“Ula! Are there any more?” I yelled my question to the Spectre who was weaving about on the rooftops.

“Three more, heading our way from the north,” She responded even as she leapt from one building to another, the alleyway between the two doing little to slow her down, “they will be here in fifteen seconds.”

The Greater Elemental recovered from the last chain of attacks, its lance drew an arc through the air as it smashed apart one of the buildings that my cousin had been using for cover as she shot at it with her wand, but she had long since vacated the structure.

“You,” I said as I looked toward the knight who was the farthest north, his name I hadn’t learned, “There are three more coming from the north, take care of them.”

Without waiting for a response, I lunged towards the back of the Greater Elemental.

I would win this fight given time myself, but it seemed I was lacking time. Wherever this Greater Elemental had been before, whatever it had been doing, had destroyed whatever semblance of an organized defense that had remained after the wall had been overrun. At this point, the entire western section of the 7th Circle was likely lost. And that, unfortunately, meant that the Lesser Elementals who were formerly fighting the defenders were now able to focus on the five of us.

The ray of light from Ula’s borrowed wand cut into the Elemental’s chest, but it did little to prevent it from swinging the lance towards the remaining Guardian Knight. Confident that he would dodge, I sent my own attack, a kick directed towards the back of the icy being’s knee which caused it to buckle as it followed through with its own attack.

The Guardian Knight not only dodged, but was able to dash into the chest of the larger opponent, there he sent a flurry of slashes into the hips and legs before he scurried away to avoid the Elemental’s shoulder tackle.

“Keep it occupied!” I ordered as I backed away from the fight.

I jumped over a pile of rubble before kicking through the side of a partially collapsed wall. The room behind, probably a small house of some sort, was in disarray. The far wall had been torn away, the interior was wrecked, and two frozen bodies, a man, and a woman, were sprawled out on the floor surrounded by icy blood.

The state of the room was irrelevant, what wasn’t, was the fact that my cousin was within it, drinking a vial of an orange liquid.

“Oh… Olivia…” She looked surprised to see me, “This potion restores stamina, do you want some?”

“Do you have any other wands with magic attacks?” I asked while ignoring her offer.

“Um, no. Only the one I gave to your Spectre, and this one,” She replied while showing of the wand she held in her hand, “do you want to use it?”

“Yes, I need it to finish the Elemental off.”

Lillian said nothing else, she simply finished the potion and then handed me the wand.

“Thank you, now stay here where it is safe.”

I turned and left while ignoring my cousin’s words.

With Michael’s soul still within my heart, I couldn’t use that much magic without destabilizing the crystal that housed him. While it would certainly destroy him, it would also severely injure me if I did that, so throughout the entire fight, I had limited my magic to only the most basic blood manipulation and some basic physical reinforcement.

In that way, it would take too long to kill the Greater Elemental, but there was another option I had overlooked somewhat. Using a magic item, I could draw a larger amount of my own mana out without putting Michael’s soul into jeopardy.

Magic wands, in their most basic sense, contained everything necessary to cast a spell, besides the mana needed to power it. For the simpler, elemental wands that launched globs of fire and the like, they were little more than a crystal that converted raw mana from one direction, and spat out fire in the other. For the more elaborate ones, they often had spell formula engraved within the crystal and the wand itself that altered the base spell. I did not get a chance to look at it up close, but the wand Ula was using was probably not using a simple light elemental crystal, and was using something with engravings built in. Lillian’s wand, however, was clearly a construct of arcane magic, since it was using magical force, which was not a base element. The two of them were also using mana crystals as batteries, since neither of them had enough mana to reliably use the wands more than once.

Ironically, the batteries were the crystallized mana made from using a soul extractor on some form of beast, the same that I used to extract Michael’s soul.

Since the wands would process the spell for me, all I had to do was provide the raw Mana, and that would save me a large amount of Mana. More importantly, it would allow me to utilize the Mana only on increasing power, when normally about a third of a spell’s cost was used to actually form the spell and make it function.

Still, I would need to make the process even more efficient.

Using the dagger I had taken from one of my cousin’s guards, my own having already shattered during the fight, I sliced into the palm of my left hand. Peeling back the skin, I cut through some of the muscles, pushed aside the veins, and then using the blade, dug my way into my wrist. I jabbed the dagger between the smaller bones that made up the wrist and then wedged them apart, tearing the ligaments that held them together in the process. With a sufficient opening made, I pulled out the dagger, and then firmly gripped the wand which had a diameter of about a quarter inch, and then shoved it into the gap between the bones.

The wand was just under six inches long, and my forearm was just a bit less, however, by jamming it a bit into my elbow joint, and by leaving a small part of the tip still within the wrist bones, I was able to seal up my palm without trouble. The wand hidden within would make moving my arm somewhat difficult, but it was now securely fitted inside.

As I exited the building, the scene in front of me was much the same as when I left. Ula was darting about on the roofs, occasionally either using magic to scan the surroundings or taking a shot at the Greater Elemental with her wand. The Guardian Knight who had left to intercept the group of Lesser Elementals had returned, and he along with the others were moving around our enemy, mostly dodging, but occasionally moving into whittle it down whenever Ula’s attacks made an opening.

“Ula! How is the surrounding area?”

“Uh, good.” She responded as she dropped down from a partially collapsed building and then ran through a wrecked courtyard. “There is a lone Elemental to our east, twenty-five seconds away. And a group of two to the southwest, about a minute away.”

“Good,” I responded to my spectre before raising my volume so that the rest could hear me, “I’ll get its attention, the rest of you need to make me an opening and I will finish it.”

The two knights shot me a glance but said nothing, which I took to be an agreement on their part.

Without needing anything else, I kicked off of the cobblestone and charged towards the Elemental even as the two of them suddenly backed off, leaving myself as the only target. The Greater Elemental’s lance came crashing down from above, the impact as it smashed into the street created a shockwave which I used to boost my own jump, sending me flying parallel to the ground as I circled to the left.

When my feet hit the ground, the Elemental had already retracted the lance and was sending a lengthened thrust my way. Like I had many times throughout this fight, I jumped over it, a ball of blood forming in its path, and giving me a foothold to land upon it even as the Elemental started retracting it. Like before, I rode the lance back, but unlike the last time when I had shattered my foot against its icy face, this time I leapt off and over its head. Using the Icy spikes I stopped my jump, and then slid down its back. As I landed, the Elemental twisted and tried to stomp down on me with its foot, but I shot forward, between its legs, and slammed the blood coated dagger into the inside of its knee. The ice cracked, and the Elemental shook even as the dagger splintered into pieces.

Still, the Elemental’s attention was all on me.

A beam of light sliced into its face, a solid hit that even it couldn’t ignore as it reeled backward. Before it could refocus back to me, the first of my cousin’s knights charged in recklessly. He had discarded his shield and was wielding his sword over his head with both hands as he charged straight in.

The Elemental’s instincts pinpointed him as the greater threat, and the lance was thrust his way, directly towards his chest. But, this was exactly what he had been waiting for, his slash was not aimed towards the Elemental, but towards its lance. Mana burst from the edge of the blade as it crashed into the tip of the lance.

The lance cracked, the blade was knocked from the Guardian Knight’s hand, even as the man in who was holding it was blown backward by the shockwave. The Elemental’s stance, having never been stabilized after I attacked its knee, was knocked further off balance by Ula’s attack, and from that position, had sent a fully powered thrust from an awkward angle, only to have its attack deflected with brute force.

In other words, its footing and stance was in complete disarray.

It could do nothing as the other Guardian Knight charged in, took a crouching stance with his sword hidden across his chest near his armpit, and then sent a raising backhanded slash towards its elbow. The tip of the blade released sparks as it scrapped across the street before it smashed into the joint, cutting deep into it and knocking the Elemental’s arm up into the air.

That was all the opening I needed.

I poured my mana into the wand I had hidden within my arm, the wand itself growing hot as it was overcharged with the raw mana flooding into it. I used my mana for two things, to increase the power, and to clamp down on the wand, forcibly keeping the spell from firing. It took the time from when the first Guardian Knight’s attack hit the lance until the second knocked the arm away for me to pump enough mana into it, enough mana that my arm was burning from the inside out, my blood was boiling, creating a haze of red.

When the Elemental’s arm was knocked away, I jumped. As it reeled backward, trying to regain its footing, I reached the ideal height, and slammed my palm into the icy knight’s stomach.

There was a grey flash and a loud pop, as if a large bag was inflated and then punctured, and then only a cloud of icy mist remained.

Within that mist, I landed from my jump, my vision blurred not only from the mist, and then I crumpled to the ground.