Shalise stood beside Juliana with a small smile on her face, completely ignorant of their professor’s true nature. Excitement radiated off of the girl. Ever since they heard that there would be a proper combat class, she’d been nonstop practicing her air magic to try to get ready.
The eyeless glare Eva had been giving the professor since the moment they walked in had not subsided in the least. It was scary how she could do such a thing.
“You may call me Zagan.”
His golden eyes scanned over the entire room, left to right, as if daring someone to comment.
No one said a word.
“By show of hands, how many of you participated in the little dueling club that went on last semester?”
Apart from Juliana’s friends, only three students raised their hands.
“Disappointing,” he said. “You’re already woefully beneath where you could be,” he gestured again towards Juliana, “and yet hardly any of you have the drive to improve. Do you take your ability to do magic for granted?”
Irene was the one who raised her hand. She started speaking without being called upon. “Not all of us intend to pursue careers involving fighting.”
Zagan’s lips curled into a cruel sneer. “Whatever you intend to do with your life doesn’t matter to me, yeah? Do you think that excusing your lack of ability by saying that you don’t want to fight will absolve you of your inadequacies? Do you think that this girl’s,” he gestured again towards Juliana, “advanced abilities will be a detriment in any profession she chooses?”
His comment caused another few students to glare in Juliana’s direction. Part of her wondered if he had a specific distaste for Juliana. Even if he didn’t, the constant singling out grated on her nerves.
Irene put her arm down, though she kept up a defiant look at their professor.
“To start with, we’ll be drilling your basic attack–fireballs, ice spears, lightning, and earth shards–until you are able to cast with some degree of competency.”
“Not shields?” Drew asked from the back row. “That was the spell we were attempting to master in Professor Kines’ class.”
“Learn to attack before learning to defend, yeah? Even with the strongest shield, if all you do is sit and cower then your shield will eventually break. You must strike back in order to defend.” Zagan shook his head side to side with a sigh as if the question was something everyone should already know.
It honestly was something everyone should already know. If Drew had paid any attention in Zoe’s class, he would know.
“Besides, order magic is complex, tricky, and not suited towards combat. Until you’ve advanced your understanding and abilities with elemental magic, your shields won’t stop much of anything.
“Now, let’s get to work.”
Zagan had everyone form up in front of human sized targets. They were using the same dueling building that Professor Kines used the previous semester. As such, the ground was made from earth and there were troughs of water between the dueling rings.
There were even candles set out for the pyrokinetics to use despite fire being the easiest element to conjure. Most fire mages learned to conjure a flame before any other aspect of pyrokinetics.
At his command, the class began slinging their attacks at the dummies.
Five shards of stone split off the floor in front of Juliana. With a flick of her wand, a burst of magic launched all five straight at the target. All sunk a good few inches into the chest area.
More than a few students sent glares her way.
Juliana eased back and lazily flung a single shard or two every now and again.
After about ten minutes of slogging earth around in a way to try to avoid drawing unnecessary attention while Zagan went around lecturing individuals who weren’t her, Juliana decided to switch tactics.
She decided to start with water first–it was her mom’s secondary element, after all. Juliana had a small amount of training in wielding it. Not a fraction of what she had in earth, but enough to get started at least. They’d be choosing a secondary element sometime later in their elemental magic class anyway.
The troughs of water inset into the floors weren’t far away from Juliana. She waved her wand at the nearest grate and drew out a small stream of water.
Launching ice shouldn’t be too much of a problem. It was different enough from earth to make a difference, but not by much.
The real trick was forming the water into spike shapes and then freezing it before it reverted to its more natural globule shape.
Most of her attempts winded up being misshapen blobs of ice. She launched them at her target anyway. Most missed by a wide margin, but it was easier to launch the blobs and try again with fresh water than it was to unfreeze and reform the ice.
Unlike her earth shards, the water blobs missed. They didn’t fly though the air like earth did. Part of it was the aerodynamics, but part of it was also simply the idiosyncrasies of launching a foreign element. Still, she managed to propel them away from her far better than some of her hydroturge classmates.
