The Dragon Queen of Thelvadore

I had to give it to Cecily, she knew what she was doing, and boy, did she know it well. The moment we both were ready, she shot forward, delivering a decisive blow. Anyone at her rank would likely have found it difficult to block and deflect without opening themselves up for a follow up strike.

Of course, I could see the attack coming from miles away, and had more than ample time to think about how to respond. Almost instinctually, time seemed to slow down slightly as the rush of combat began, Vuthe’s old instincts and knowledge jumping into action like clockwork.

A rusty clockwork, one that hadn’t been properly oiled in quite a while, but one that was still fully functional, once the rust crusting the surface was removed.

Given that this was training, and I didn’t actually care about who won or lost, I deliberately kept my speed and strength at what I’d hoped to be human level. It was surprisingly hard to hold back under her barrage, but that was just another part of training.

Catching her blade with the flat of my own, the material bending slightly under the stress, I pushed it to the side, not trying to block the blow. As a human, that would be a bad idea, as the recoil of that maneuver would sting in the hand and down the arm, momentarily reducing my combat effectiveness.

With the sound of metal on metal her blade slid down my blade to my right, opening her up for a counter. I had kept my blade slightly forward, as my instincts had told me, using the momentum of the motion to quickly retaliate. Cecily followed my example. Of course, she hadn’t just mindlessly struck me, she had follow ups in mind, and the ease with which she moved, a slight step back and to the side to retain her momentum while also offering a smaller target, made that clear.

Her blade slid down my own, then finally got free, just as I was preparing my counter. When it did, she quickly jerked forward, surprising me, the faintest hint of magic rolling off her body. It wasn’t void magic, but something else, something far more mundane yet surprising. In our current positions I couldn’t bring back my weapon in time to properly guard, not if I wanted to refrain from drawing upon my draconic strength and speed.

Instead, I immediately did what my brain screamed at me to do, which was to try and make distance. That, however, turned out to be a mistake. Not a fatal one, but almost immediately upon me starting the motion, my instincts told me that this was the wrong way to go about things. If I just tried to run in the direction she was moving, I wouldn’t be able to make distance at all, as she already had a headstart in speed and momentum.

Only barely did I manage to adjust, escaping her follow up thrust by moving to the side. This put me out of immediate harm's way, but was also the most logical move, and therefore something she had prepared for. Thankfully, by this time I had given myself enough time to regain my footing and my stance, and for once I was in the advantageous position, since Cecily still had momentum going forward that she needed to deal with before she could attack me once again.

The adventurer adjusted the course of her thrust, trying to follow after me, but her momentum worked against her. In response, I brought my blade up from below, which was a bit suboptimal, but in my earlier moment of panic at my own mistake, I had not given it proper thought to where I should move my weapon. It really just hammered home that, while I knew all the motions, stances, and techniques, I was severely lacking in actual applied experience.

Due to my faux pas, my opponent had just enough time to draw her weapon back, interposing it between herself and the incoming strike. Then she did something I really hadn’t been prepared for.

Another spike of magic came from her form, this one yet again different from the magic she had used before. Before my eyes, her weapon softened, my blade edge catching in the material of her sword, before it suddenly hardened, melting the two together and preventing me from drawing back.

Then she yanked. Hard.

My instincts told me not to try and keep a grip, and I listened to them immediately. While being disarmed would usually be a death sentence for most, I was not your average fighter. I had a whole arsenal of weapons I could draw upon at will, and that wasn’t even including the fact that I had the body of a shapeshifting dragon. Sure, I still had to learn how to use shapeshiting during combat, but I didn’t need to turn my arm into a sword to block something with my dragon scales.

Very few things would have the punch needed to go through that.

Letting go of my sword, I tried to disengage, once again on the backfoot. But Cecily didn’t let me. The moment I had abandoned my weapon, her magic flared again, the material melted once more, and my blade was thrown across the open area, while she quickly turned the motion around and aimed to strike me again.

Her blade met metal, as I summoned up another blade, this one of far higher quality, and the two of us stopped.

“That was very impressive,” I said honestly, not even remotely winded. “I had absolutely not expected you to trap my weapon that way. Very neat trick. I guess you can use magic other than Void, huh?”

Cecily for her part was breathing a slight bit more heavily. Not panting, and not utterly exhausted, since this was just a few seconds of combat, but her body was obviously pumping adrenaline.

“Thank you.” Finally the two separated, putting three steps between us. “And yes, I am not just a Void mage, even though Void is one of my primary domains.”

“May I ask what your other domains are?” I did make a mental note of the word domain, as that wasn’t as widespread from what I knew. Nothing too out of the ordinary, mainly an interesting choice in expression, likely giving hints of where her family came from.

It wasn’t that it was highly abnormal for mages to learn more than one type of magic, but it wasn’t that widespread either. For most common folk, the sort that would always remain at the bottom of the guild, for example, they only had one affinity that they had either the time, motivation, or money to train with.

But even they could, theoretically, learn more, if they had sufficient resources to put into it. Affinity for a type of magic just meant that it would be easier for one to learn it, not that it was required for one to learn it. Most people who were a bit more serious about magic, be it scholars, adventurers, soldiers, or other such professions, would eventually learn how to use more than just their primary form of magic, if only to close some gaps in their skill sets or defences. But it was also relatively common that every mage had one primary form of magic that they focused on, which only made sense, given how much time it took to learn magic properly.

“My two main domains are Void and Metal. While I only ever Call on the Void, for Metal I am capable of both Calling and Shaping it. I have also learned to make use of two sub-domains, both of which I have focused on Shaping. The first is Motion, and the second is Protection. All in all, the latter I have the least experience with, but it is quite nice to have.”

I raised my eyebrows at her words. That was indeed impressive.

Curiously enough, the differentiation between Calling and Shaping was something I only knew from my memories as the creator of this world, not something Vuthe was familiar with. It made sense, given that this sort of differentiation wasn’t something very common around Fendalyr. It also gave me some insights into Cecily and where she came from, although I meant that more in regards to my own world building.

The original idea about the differentiation and behind domains came from one of the earliest fantasy books I’ve ever read, and one of my absolute favourites. It follows the adventures of a swordsman trained in the Metal Domain, during which he meets quite the diverse cast of characters. It was one of my favourite series both because of the idea of domains, and the world building at large, as well as the way it was written, since it didn’t have just one single protagonist, but instead had like half a dozen or so.

You’d think that would be confusing, but in reality it worked out very well and enabled the author to always keep the readers on their toes about where each of their loyalty truly lies.

Regardless, this piece of world building had once been a part of my worlds, but has long since been scrapped and adapted. These days it was mostly a different form of expressing oneself when it came to magic. That said, there was still a rather important distinction between Calling and Shaping, which only really mattered for a few specific professions, and a handful of very specific domains.

Void being the primary example.

Shaping referred to a technique that almost all mages across Fendalyr used. It’s a casting style by which one draws on the magic through their own body, which is not only easier to do, but also means that, over time and use, it strengthens one's body with that element. That was why even mages weren’t just glass cannons but also had at least some resilience in comparison to non-combatants.

The drawback of Shaping was that every spell cast would always contain a trace of the original caster, which made tracking the one who used the magic relatively easy.

On the flipside, Calling was casting without channeling the magic through one’s body. Instead, the magician more or less conjured the spell into reality without direct contact, which made it a far harder technique to learn and use, but also enabled more unique and unorthodox applications. The benefit was that the spell would be borderline untraceable, which is why it was a staple amongst assassins and thieves.

On the flip side, Calling meant that the caster didn’t enjoy the long term benefits of strengthening their body, and the overall spell power tended to be lower when directly compared to Shaping a spell.

Learning both for the same element was, on paper, the best and most effective way with the widest range of possible applications, but also incredibly hard to do and time consuming. To hear that Cecily had managed to pull that off with her Metal Domain was impressive to say the very least, especially since she had also learned how to Call on the Void Domain.

And it was that little detail that solidified my suspicion that she wasn’t just your average nobody. She had to be a character I had specifically designed in the past, even if I couldn’t think of any one in specific who would fit her profile. Not that there were many characters still using the old magic system that I could think of, which likely meant that she wasn’t a character I had used in my stories in recent times.

That basically left an old character I had forgotten about.

Well, hopefully I'll figure that out eventually.

Okay, enough mental mumbling. Time to get back to training.

“You’ve certainly put in the hours, huh. Quite impressive. Well, I guess I’ll have to prepare myself for a few more tricks.” I smiled and raised my weapon into a proper stance. Cecily followed suit, evidently recognising that the next round was about to begin.

Now that I had a short moment, I quickly studied the stance she had taken. It wasn’t one I was familiar with, which was kind of surprising, given that Vuthe’s knowledge of weapons and fighting styles was quite extensive. I had noticed earlier that the way she moved was different from what I had expected, if ever so slightly, so I guess that her style might be a relatively unique one from her homeland.

“Alright. Ready?” I cleared my head and stilled my thoughts.

“Yes,” came the steady reply.

“Then, let’s begin!” And with that, I charged forwards.

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