“You can’t seriously hold that against me,” Damien protested.

Sylph just cocked an eyebrow. After a moment, Damien threw his hands up in a half sigh, half laugh.

“Fine, you win.”

“Don’t look so put out,” Sylph said, flicking him in the shoulder. “We’ll spar again shortly. But what was that new spell you learned? Did you Warp Step me instead of yourself?”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Damien replied, rubbing his chin with a small frown. “It really makes it feel a lot less impressive than I feel like it should be. Warp Step is much easier than this, but they function in a similar manner.”

“How far can you send someone?”

“I haven’t really tested its full capabilities yet, but it’s a little better than Warp Step because it isn’t just folding the space between two areas. There are several extra rune circles just to make sure you don’t get pulled apart while teleporting.”

“If you got rid of those, wouldn’t it be a really powerful weapon?” Sylph asked, cocking her head. “That sounds like you could just touch someone and basically tear them apart.”

“Eh, not really,” Damien said, shrugging one shoulder. “It might hurt a bit, but it would basically just do nothing. I’d have an equal chance of losing one of my own limbs to a misplaced portal that led nowhere. All five of the circles have to be properly formed or the spell just wouldn’t work.”

“Noted,” Sylph said. “Still though… that’s quite the tool. Do you need to be touching someone to use it?”

“I can extend its range with my mental energy, but it isn’t easy. It should make us a lot more dangerous when we’re fighting together, though. The only drawback is that your defenses have to be down for me to teleport you from range, which you probably aren’t going to want while we’re fighting anyone of much consequence.”

“That is a problem,” Sylph agreed. “But in close range it works normally?”

Damien nodded. “We can get the jump on people at the minimum.”

“What about teleporting someone into an object?” Sylph asked, tapping the ground with her foot. “Would it cut them in half?”

“Just wouldn’t work,” Damien replied, hopping down into the pool of healing water to smooth his injuries from the fight. “One of the rune circles ensures you can’t come out inside something else. The spell just won’t go off. To summarize, the spell works by forming a very tiny portal and warping the space around you to shunt you inside it. I can’t form the portals if something is in the way, they just won’t appear.”

“Interesting,” Sylph said. “We’ll have to train with it. Maybe we could convince Mark and Nolan to fight us at the same time.”

“That could work,” Damien agreed. “But what about you? You didn’t show me your new spell - unless it was that speed you were moving at?”

“Nah, that was just training and figuring out the exact limits of what my body can do,” Sylph replied with a wicked grin. It faded quickly as she recalled something. “Delph is a very effective teacher. You still haven’t seen the new ability I learned with Henry, though.”

“…well?”

“You didn’t win.”

“Bah. I got scammed.”

“Then scam harder next time,” Sylph said with a wink. Damien muttered a few complaints as she splashed water over herself, and the two of them headed back toward campus.

They made it all the way to the front of the cafeteria before Henry gave Damien a mental prod, drawing his attention to an alleyway just off to their right. Suppressing a sigh but already knowing who he’d find, Damien glanced down it, squinting through the darkness.

Delph stepped out from the shadows, his nose scrunched in annoyance. He spat the toothpick in his mouth out and it vanished before it hit the ground.

“You saw me.”

“Smelled you,” Damien corrected, his lips quirking up in a grin.

“Oh, you take one little trip to the Void and suddenly you start smack talking your teacher?” Delph asked, but his words had no edge to them.

“I’m in my rebellious phase,” Damien said. “Please don’t tell me that Derrod or Whisp have done something else to make our lives problematic.”

“Not yet,” Delph said, falling in step with him and Sylph. “I’m just checkin in on the two of you. Havel said he noticed some concerning things when you arrived at the arena.”

“He picked that up?”

“He picks a lot up. But he doesn’t know just how bad it is. Are you still in full control of yourself?”

“Would I answer no if I wasn’t?”

“Fair enough,” Delph admitted. “But you haven’t answered the question either.”

“Things could be better,” Damien said after a moment. “I’ve got some new stuff to work with, and it comes with some pretty hefty drawbacks. I’ll say that the concern isn’t my companion, but I don’t think we should have this conversation in public.”

“Thought as much,” Delph said. The reached the doors of the dining hall and headed inside. A fair number of students sat around the tables, chatting and eating. Their conversation paused as they walked up to the large woman at the counter.

“What’ll you have?” She asked, not glancing up from her book.

“Pickles,” Delph said. “Big jar.”

Damien and Sylph glanced at each other, then shrugged.

“Pancakes,” Damien said.

“Waffles,” Sylph finished.

The woman nodded, taking their money and waving them off. Delph led the students to an empty table and sat down, leaning his chin in a palm.

“Pickles?” Damien asked.

“You don’t get many good pickles on the frontlines. They’re tasty.”

“Right,” Damien said slowly. “Well, I guess I can’t judge. I assume there’s something else you want?”

“Of course there is,” Delph replied. “I need to see how far you’ve progressed. Both you and Sylph, that is. We’ll also need to have a private chat to determine just how much changed this last month, but unless you feel like something is urgent, that can wait until later today.”

“Sylph beat me in a sparring match,” Damien provided. “And nothing so urgent that a few hours won’t change it.”

Delph grunted. The rune on the table before him lit green and he tapped it. A huge jar of large pickles materialized before him. He flicked his finger and the top slid off, bisected. Delph grabbed a pickle and popped it into his mouth. “Damn, these are good.”

Damien and Sylph’s food both arrived as well. They almost forgot to eat it as Delph devoured the pickle jar, mowing through them like carrots.

He finished his meal by the time the two of them had only gotten a little over halfway done with theirs.

“What’s taking you so long?” Delph asked. “Don’t tell me you need training on how to put the fork into your mouth.”

“Just distracted,” Damien said, shaking his head in befuddlement. “But what did you train Sylph over this last month? She’s so much stronger than she used to be.”

“Just a little cardio.”

Damien and Sylph gave Delph a flat stare.

“What?” Delph asked. “It’s true.”

“Only in the barest sense of the word,” Sylph muttered.

“Well, it worked.” Delph crossed his arms. “Fear is a very effective motivator.”

“He had Dredd teleport me to a forest and then he chased me around for days on end, trying to kill me,” Sylph said. “He didn’t hold back at all.”

“Yes I did,” Delph said. “If I hadn’t held back, you’d be dead. And look at what you found! You weren’t using nearly as much of your strength as you could have been. The best way to find out your limits is incredible trauma, after all.”

“I am suddenly happy to have been lost in the Void,” Damien said dryly.

“Why?” Delph asked, cocking his head to the side. “It only delayed things.”

Damien’s blood ran cold. “Delayed?”

“Oh yes. Don’t think I was letting you out of school,” Delph said with a wicked grin. “I’ve just been letting you recover a little. You’ve still got a little time before we get started.”

“How much time?”

Delph’s smile grew wider. Sylph slid back in her chair and rose to her feet.

“How long, Delph?” Damien asked.

“Did you know that there’s a no-fighting rule inside the cafeteria?” Delph asked idly. “And, coincidentally, did you know it doesn’t apply to teachers?”

Alarm bells rang in Damien’s head. He flicked Sylph in the shoulder, teleporting her to the doorway. He Warp Stepped right after her, narrowly avoiding a gray snake of energy that sliced through the air where he’d been standing.

“Start running!” Delph laughed, standing up as his cloak whipped around him. “We’re playing a game of tag. I trust you know the rules.”

Damien threw himself out the doors, teleporting before he could hit the ground and dropping into a dead run, nearly bowling into a distracted girl in the process.

“Sorry!” Damien yelled over his shoulder. Sylph bounded past him, wind whipping off her back and parting before her in a personal slipstream. “Hey, that’s not fair!”

He teleported again, putting himself just a few paces in front of her.

“Like teleportation is,” Sylph replied with a huff. The two of them shot down an alley and turned, peering into the small crowd of baffled students to try to find Delph.

“Where’d he go?” Damien asked, catching his breath.

“Behind you,” Delph said with a cackle, his hand emerging from a gray portal. Damien teleported instinctively, reforming on top of a building. Sylph threw herself into a roll to dodge Delph as he grabbed for her, then scrambled up the side to join Damien.

“How is this training?” Damien called down to Delph.

“It isn’t,” Delph called back. Something looked off about him. His armor sparkled slightly in the little sunlight that entered the alley. “I’m just bored. Run faster.”

His cloak was nowhere to be seen.

“Havel,” Damien breathed. “Run!”

A blur of gray cloth erupted around Damien from the roof beneath his feet, but he was just a second faster. He vanished in a puff, appearing beside Sylph.

“Sorry, he’s making me,” Havel said, lunging at Damien. Henry shot into his mage armor, batting Havel away with a tendril as it formed.

Delph’s companion shifted around the cloth, racing up it and reaching for Damien’s neck. Sylph grabbed Havel and ripped him free, throwing him back down at Delph.

“Seriously?” Damien asked. “That was cheap.”

“No,” Delph replied, taking the toothpick out of his mouth and flicking it at Damien, “this is.”

The toothpick detonated mid air in a ball of fire, obscuring their vision of the alley and blasting them with a wave of heat. Damien raised his hands, blocking his face not a second too soon. Delph’s fist slammed into his forearms, launching him over the side of the building.

Before Damien could recover, Delph was behind him. The professor brought his foot down on his shoulder, launching him down at the ground.

Damien barely managed to bring forth the Ether to cast Warp Step in time and vanished just before he hit the ground, reappearing in the air above Delph. He started to cast Gravity Sphere, then froze. If he missed Delph…

“That’s right,” Delph said with a chuckle. He was still floating in the air where he’d appeared, and he turned to look up at him.. “No slinging that Space magic around, Damien. You’ll damage school property.”

With a curse, Damien teleported again, landing on another rooftop. “What do you think would have happened if I hit the ground?”

“Your body, your problem,” Delph said. “Back to running. Havel is already after Sylph, so you get to deal with me. I can’t have you two teaming up on me right now, after all. This is a chase, not a fight.”

Damien cursed and leapt over the rooftop, landing on the street and sprinting away. He still had a fair amount of Ether, but something told him that Delph was planning on making him use every last mote of it.

True to the professor’s word, Damien couldn’t see Sylph anywhere as he dashed through the crowds. Whenever he started to lose Delph, a circle of gray energy formed behind him and Delph stepped out, resuming the chase once more.

It wasn’t long before Damien was completely out of breath. He started relying on Warp Step more to keep ahead of Delph, desperately trying to buy himself enough time to rest for a few moments.

That was evidently exactly what Delph wanted. As soon as Damien started to slow, the professor hounded him even faster, appearing from bursts of gray energy so quickly that Damien could sometimes still the remnants from the previous portal fading when the new one formed.

“What’s the point of this?” Damien wheezed, throwing himself into a roll to avoid a bolt of purple light that whizzed over his head and vanished as soon as it missed.

“If you can still talk, you haven’t found it,” Delph replied, kicking Damien hard in the butt. Damien cursed, teleporting again with Henry’s laughter echoing in his head.

Do something instead of laughing!

“No, I don’t think I will,” Henry replied. “I think this is genuinely useful, and you know my policy on interfering when learning is involved.”

You suck.

Damien teleported again, staggering as he reformed at the edge of the forest. Sweat poured down his brow and soaked into his shirt. Even with his huge well of Ether, Delph had been chasing him around for nearly thirty minutes. Nonstop casting had completely depleted it, and the Ether stubbornly danced at the tips of his fingers instead of entering his core.

A gray portal snapped open behind Damien and he ducked behind a tree. With a loud crack, its trunk exploded and the tree crashed to the ground. Delph flicked some dust off his knuckles and waved his hand in a shoo-ing motion.

“Keep going.”

Damien didn’t have the air to spare responding to the man. He turned and darted into the forest, moving as fast as his burning legs would let him. Delph hounded after him, intent on not giving him a single second of reprieve.

He staggered past trees, finally bursting out of the foliage into the clearing beside the lake a few minutes later. Breathing in ragged gasps, Damien ignored the pain piercing his side as he jogged to the center of the grassy circle and turned to face Delph.

The professor arrived in the center of the clearing and glanced around before giving Damien a nod.

“You’re ready, then?”

“No, I’m really not.”

“Good. That’s how it should be,” Delph said, his grizzled face breaking out into a sadistic grin. “Here I come.”

Gray light enveloped his hand and Delph tugged, yanking Damien toward him with invisible energy. Damien threw himself into a roll, ducking under an punch, and dove at Delph’s feet.

The professor hopped over him and delivered another kick to his backside. Damien fell face first into the grass, skidding a foot before rolling to the side and spitting the dirt from his mouth.

He rolled to the side and Delph’s foot slammed into the ground where he’d been a moment ago. Damien spun himself around, driving his body into Delph’s leg. It was like striking a rod of iron.

The leg sweep failed, Damien redirected his motion to instead push off Delph’s leg. He shot back a foot and rolled over his shoulder, hopping back to his feet. Raising his hands defensively, Damien connected the rune circle in his mind to the Ether around them.

“Freeze.”

The air sharpened in his lungs and Damien gagged, doubling over as the clearing ground to a halt. Delph slammed down to one knee. Then, slowly, he raised his head. Delph’s lips stretched into a more genuine grin and he snapped his fingers.

The gravity around Delph snapped back to its normal strength and he stood, rolling his neck. “That’s much better. Now that you’ve got nothing left to use but direct casting, let’s see what you’ve got.”