The Academy's Genius Mage

Shadowfang tore through the water spears clean, splitting them apart mid-flight before they could do anything useful, the fragments scattering across the arena floor in harmless splashes.

Lucas reset his stance without slowing down.

Nova, across the field, had the expression of someone who has just been told no and is in the process of deciding how to respond to that. The grin came back first.

"Alright then," he said, rolling one shoulder. "Let’s see what you do about this."

Water spiraled up his arm and then did something unexpected, they twisted, pulling moisture from the air around them, heat and water compressing together into something that was neither and both simultaneously. It grew fast.

Five meters tall, spinning, the edges of it dragging loose debris and water from the arena floor into its core like the whole thing was hungry. The pressure inside it was visible in the way everything around it bent slightly inward.

Then he sent it forward.

The vortex crossed the arena like it had somewhere to be and Lucas was in the way of where it was going.

Then Lucas was just gone.

"What—" Nova’s expression collapsed from confidence to something considerably more stressed in about half a second.

"Lucas!" Gideon had stepped forward from the edge of the field, eyes tracking the spinning mass with the focused concern.

Celia had already made her decision about which category it fell into.

"YOU IDIOT." She turned on Nova with the full force of her attention, which was not a comfortable thing to have turned on you. "Was that necessary? Was any of that necessary?"

"I didn’t think it would get that big—"

"IT’S FIVE TIMES OF A HUMAN, NOVA."

"THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING, I DON’T KNOW HOW—"

Wind gathered tight around Celia’s arm, razor-thin and precise, a compressed spiral that shimmered at its edge. She raised her hand, already calculating the angle to cut the vortex apart without harming Lucas.

"Let’s halt the duel." Nova’s hand twitched too, hovering, about to cancel the spell himself—

Something moved inside the vortex.

A flash of green.

Then a single vertical slash tore through the spinning mass from the very top to the very bottom, clean and decisive, and the vortex did what things do when you cut them perfectly in half — it simply stopped being a vortex. The rotation broke. The pressure collapsed. The two halves separated and unraveled, falling apart from the inside out.

From the narrow split right down the middle, a blade emerged first. Steady. Unhurried.

Then Lucas’s face above it, expression completely neutral, not a single scratch on him, looking like a person who had just stepped through a door rather than bisected a five-meter spinning column of compressed water and heat.

Celia let out a breath, her hands coming together in front of her chest. "Thank goodness."

Gideon exhaled beside her. "He’s fine," he said, with the quiet relief of someone who had genuinely not been certain of that thirty seconds ago.

Nova’s shoulders dropped with relief, the stress leaving him all at once, a grin spreading across his face as he started walking forward. "HA! That was insane! Now THAT’S what I’m talking about, way to go Luca—"

The vortex, having lost all structural integrity, finished collapsing.

All of that water, all of it, every drop that had been compressed and spinning for a few seconds then came down at once.

Directly onto Lucas.

Nova stopped walking.

The arena was quiet for a moment except for the dripping.

Lucas stood in the center of a spreading puddle, soaked from the top of his head to the bottom of his boots, his white hair plastered flat against his face, water running off his chin, his clothes completely saturated and weighing approximately twice what they were supposed to weigh. He didn’t move for a second.

Then one eye slowly appeared through the wet hair.

It found Nova.

"..." Lucas said.

"So—" Nova started.

Lucas flicked his dagger forward.

The green arc crossed the distance between them in a blink and Nova dropped into a crouch so fast his knees hit the arena floor, the slash passing directly over his head with about two centimeters of clearance.

Something floated down in front of Nova’s face.

He went cross-eyed looking at it.

A few strands of his own hair, drifting gently to the ground.

Then slowly stood up, his face twisting in disbelief and outrage. "You bastard! Were you actually trying to kill me just now!?"

"You dropped a lake on me," Lucas said, wringing water out of the front of his shirt with one hand. "I think that’s fair."

"THAT WAS AN ACCIDENT AND YOU ALMOST TOOK MY HAIR—"

"Just two," Lucas agreed, completely calm.

"THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT OKAY—"

"Nova." Lucas tilted his head. "You have water as your element."

"Yes—"

"And you just lost control of water."

"How was I supposed to control that!?"

"Your own element."

"I SAID In that situation—"

"That’s like me losing control of my hands. You understand what I’m saying? You’re bad at the thing that is specifically yours."

Nova’s eye was doing something involuntary. "I will end you. I will actually end you right now. I have water, I can make more, I will drown you where you stand—"

"Try it." Lucas flicked water off his dagger casually. "See what happens to your hairs."

"THAT’S IT—"

Nova lunged forward. Lucas too.

"ENOUGH."

Celia materialized between them.

Not dramatically. She just stepped into the gap with one hand flat on each of their chests and the specific energy of a person who has decided this is over. Both of them leaned back instinctively.

She looked at Nova first. Her eyes were doing something that suggested a temperature below zero.

"Your spell went out of control," she said. "That’s on you."

Nova opened his mouth.

She turned to Lucas before the sound came out.

"The duel was already called off," she said. "You still threw a blade at his head."

"But—" Lucas started.

"Yeah, but—" Nova tried at the same time.

"No arguments."

Her hands came together in front of her and she took one slow breath, which somehow made the air around her feel heavier in a way that had nothing to do with her wind magic.

For a moment, it almost felt like something dark flickered behind her, like an invisible pressure pressing down on the two of them.

Lucas and Nova both went completely still.

Side by side, neither of them said anything.

The internal monologue ran in perfect parallel.

’She’s scary,’ Lucas thought.

’She is terrifying,’ Nova thought.