The blue-haired young man waved uncertainly and stepped into his spot on the no longer burning floor as Sterling's unconscious body was deposited beside Whippoorwill's.

  "Name's Ronan," he said, waving. "[Spellsword]." The swords at his hips were odd, one longer than the other, both faintly curved. He sketched an airy salute. "Glory in battle!"

  It was a Topper salute. Dalliance could recognize that much. He returned it awkwardly, even though he constitutionally had very little in common with Toppers and thought their approach reckless at best, being suspicious of the idea that "glory" was what you should be looking for in a battle.

  Ronan clearly bought into that stuff.

  Just before the shield closed, Ronan held up a hand. "Instructor, may I ask a question?"

  "Yes, Master Ronan?"

  He pointed across to Dalliance. "Do you know how to use that?" He gestured to the sword at Dalliance's hip.

  "Not well," Dalliance had to admit. "Not really."

  "Very well. With precocious types, one never can be sure." Ronan took off his sword belt with its two scabbards, placed the longer one on the bench, and re-tied his belt in a different configuration with just the one sword. "We are here to learn spells, not swordplay."

  Professor Tempest looked on tolerantly, and the shield flickered up when he was done.

  "If that is all?" she said. "Mark."

  "[Locomotion]!" Dalliance cast. There was no way he wanted a [Spellsword] to close to close range.

  His opponent lofted toward the curved surface of the arena wall at twenty-five feet per second, though Dalliance canceled the spell at the last second so it wouldn't slow him up short.

  It worked, sort of: The blue-haired man rebounded off the magic field with his hands and feet pressed to the barrier, which flickered at the impact, completed a full flip and roll to bleed off momentum, and rolled up, once again on his feet. "Fantastic!" he said happily.

  Dalliance had kept that one in his back pocket, so proud of the discovery, but this man was clearly a poor matchup for him. It was no huge surprise. Dalliance had realized the other day that he had no spells for actually hurting someone, save perhaps for throwing them off of things. Spells for moving people, spells for communicating, spells for blowing people with air, or he could also make a fog or obtain a creepy topographical understanding of everything within the same room as him.

  But in terms of damage, his options were sword and bow. And given the lethality of a bow, Dalliance had chosen not to bring it to class. Nobody else had, for one thing, and also it just wasn't really magic if you shot people with arrows. And then there was that, if he hit them, they might die, no matter how much faith he had in the ward, while if he didn't quite they'd be able to fight past the discomfort of a half-strength, misplaced shot. A bow was very much either deadly, or useless. So he'd forgone it in favor of the sword, where it was at least obvious that a blow or stab would have killed you, for the purposes of winning a duel. That, and the ether jar had given him the ability to incapacitate with magic. It had lasted all of five minutes.

  And it was now banned besides.

  His opponent's fingers blurred into a cast, enchanting at high speed. Can't have that.

  "[Redirect]," Dalliance cast.

  The growing magic grounded itself, spreading frost across a quarter of the arena.

  Frost spells. Dalliance had a paucity of experience with those, thanks to lacking the knack of working with Water mana. He felt a faint stab of jealousy.

  Ronan looked at the ice encrusting the floor. "Counterspells? Well alright." And rushed in.

  Dalliance drew his sword before he'd taken more than a couple of steps. Ronan looked to be about twenty—he'd plausibly hit his D-Tier already, even. It was obvious by the way he moved that he was much faster, much lighter on his feet, and stronger than Dalliance. When Dalliance stood still, his predictions for Ronan aimed for his face with punches, kicks, or the flat of his blade. When Dalliance moved, his opponent would throw himself sideways and deliver a strange-looking kick that seemed to rotate his entire body to generate. Either way, if he got close without steel between them, his sheer breadth of options was going to overwhelm Dalliance.

  Every time Dalliance tried to predict more than a few seconds ahead, the futures branched into chaos. A kick might come from three angles, a feint stay a feint or transform into a lunge—his precognition was working overtime just to keep him from getting hit. And Ronan would be casting the whole time.

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  Maybe if he couldn't see? Dalliance had time to cast [Breath of Fog], a hurried exhalation that left a dense leaden vapor suspended in the center of the arena, and then the [Spellsword] closed the distance in reality, chanting his own spells, a nauseating bobbing light shining through the fog, casting odd shadows and making the floor beneath Dalliance's feet look unreal.

  He ducked a swing he'd seen coming two seconds ago, turned odd by the orb of light affixed to the point of the swordsman's blade. Twisted away from a kick he'd known would come as a followup, which trailed a line of fog behind it and made the fabric of the man's trousers snap crisply in the breeze.

  [Locomotion], Dalliance cast, again, this time targetting the hand making increasingly complex gestures even as the sword warded off physical interdiction. He twisted the other man's arm around his body upward and back, the opposite of how the joint wanted to move. The spell fizzled out, and Dalliance's darting thrust came within a hair's breadth of landing before being deflected at the last second by the rising blade of a whirling swordsman who hadn't even been looking in his direction.

  [Parry] would be a [Spellsword]'s sort of skill.

  "You fight like a Goblin," Ronan grunted.

  Dalliance tried for another spell interrupt, but Ronan anticipated it this time, pulling his hand back and completing the cast with a flourish. Ice crystallized in the air between them.

  [Redirect]. It grounded itself harmlessly into the floor.

  Ronan's grin widened, then he started casting again, and this time, when Dalliance went to interrupt, Ronan's blade was there to parry his sword away, the angle nearly twisting it out of Dalliance's fingers. The spell completed—another light orb, this one brighter, more disorienting, attached to Ronan's leg. The two orb-lights in the fog were dizzying.

  Dalliance was breathing hard. Ronan wasn't even winded.

  "You're very good at not getting hit," Ronan observed. "But you need to hit me at some point!"

  Slash, slash. Ronan's shortish sword was blindingly quick, for all that its reach was limited.

  But--if he was using something like [Parry], didn't that mean he had to be able to reach Dalliance's sword? And that meant his arms had to be holding it in a normal way, too. It was a constraint on where Ronan could be.

  Ronan began casting again. When Dalliance tried to poke at his hand with a sword, he was deflected, almost preternaturally. It occurred to him that a spellsword having an ability like [Parry] made perfect sense, and he should be recognizing this.

  By attacking, knowing that Ronan had [Parry], Dalliance could control where he was going to be, a little.

  Dalliance's free hand worked at his belt buckle, fingers fumbling.

  He did a deep lunge and tried to stab the man's toe. The parry, with a shorter sword, required his opponent to bend at the waist. So Dalliance, who had worked his belt off, slapped Ronan's hand with it.

  This time, the interruption being predictable, Dalliance targeted the parry with [Redirection], aiming downward. The tip of Ronan's sword went through the looped leather belt. Dalliance pulled on it to one side, swatted with the other end toward his opponent's knee, and was most irritated that his opponent did a full front flip over Dalliance's head instead of allowing himself to be hit.

  Upon landing, Dalliance's belt was cut in half, and Ronan was twenty feet away again. This time, Dalliance turned, but there was no way he was going to be fast enough.

  Dalliance hopped sideways, engaging [Locomotion] to cross the arena entirely, scanning the futures--but it was no use. He was going to get hit by the spell. There was no dodging it, not with Ronan's speed.

  But he didn't need to dodge it.

  As the spell formed, Dalliance once again cast [Redirect]: but this time Dalliance's spell failed.

  A glittering circle of ice, yards across, formed around Dalliance as quick as a blink. Frost raced inward, then up his legs, across his body, and over his head.

  Typical ice mage spell, he thought. Suffocate them after the breathing air is gone. In another ten or fifteen seconds, he would be helpless. She would call the match.

  But he knew a way to exist that didn't require breathing. Feeling slightly smug with himself, he cast [Werewind].

  And everything went wrong at once.

  For a second, Dalliance was as he started to be: the wind. His body began to transform, to expand—but the ice held. He felt the pressure building, felt himself compressing, still changing but trapped in a teenager-shaped volume. The ice creaked. A crack spider-webbed from his outstretched sword arm, where the shell was thinnest, where it extended furthest from his core.

  Then it failed.

  The weak point blew out like a cannon. Compressed air screamed through the breach, a directed blast shooting toward the arena wall at a forty-five degree angle from where Ronan stood. The shockwave hit the wards with a sound like thunder, like a bell being struck by a hammer. The remaining ice shattered. The explosion's edge caught Ronan, throwing him against the wards, to flop bonelessly off them on the rebound and roll like a ragdoll across the arena floor. Frost raced across the floor. The temperature dropped ten degrees in an instant, and Dalliance's consciousness expanded.

  Suddenly he was everywhere—feeling the walls, the floor, every person in the room, their breaths, the curling heat from the radiator. He could sense Ronan slumped against the wall, blood trickling from his ears. Could feel Professor Tempest's sharp intake of breath. Could feel twenty students frozen in shock.

  It was less than he'd felt before, but expanding so much, between one instant and another, was its own form of disorienting.

  The ringing in the walls faded. Magic died except for his own dispersed existence.

  "Enough," Professor Tempest said, her voice cutting through the shocked silence.

  Dalliance condensed himself near the sink by the potions cabinet, where Miss Tempest had sternly told them to wash their hands if they got any potion on them. He washed his mouth and took a long drink from the sink to settle his nerves, ears still ringing, his self still disoriented. Ronan, pulling himself to his feet, looked much the same.

  "We learned a lot, today," Miss Tempest said. "Needless to say, this interaction should not be used in my class again, even during the midterms, as there is no possible counter available at this Tier. Do I make myself clear?"

  Dalliance nodded.

  "That being said, Master Rather," Missus Tempest sounded warmer, now, "I can't wait to see you surprise some goblins on the Wall with that one."