31 – Bliss

In the instant before the maid charged her with her enormous battle axe, Vivi incanted two spells.

“[Perfect Form]. [Titanic Might].”

An agility and strength boost respectively. Seeing how this woman was Titled, and her stats were bolstered by defending the Academy, even Vivi might not match her in speed and strength. She was a mage, after all. One that dwarfed most Titled in levels, but still a mage.

Vivi wasn’t excited because this meant she could show off. The opposite. She wanted to see what the maid was capable of. Thus, she would fight with only enough power to push her opponent to her limits. To see what Winston’s pupil could do.

What kind of talent, she wondered, had he fostered in the century she’d been gone?

Nicole watched as, for the first time since its founding, the Academy for the Domestic Arts and Establishment of Excellent Service played host to an uninvited party.

Seated on a second-floor balcony, she—along with three of her classmates—had a premier view of the drama developing down below. Even Etiquette Instructor Annabelle, a paragon of dignity and decorum even among the White Gloves, had turned in her seat to watch.

Though Nicole doubted that constituted a breach of composure so much as common sense. That Deputy Headmistress Constance, a White Glove of the First Class, a Titled, might lose in a duel while defending the Academy was ludicrous to even suggest, but that said, neither had anyone ever bypassed the enchantments the Sorceress herself had laid onto her former place of residence. So caution was well-warranted.

“It seems I’ll need to pause our lesson, dears,” Instructor Annabelle mused, daintily sipping from her teacup. “My, I haven’t seen Constance evict an unruly guest in years. What a treat.” Straight-backed and tone mildly amused, their etiquette instructor remained a picture of grace despite the bizarre development. Nicole didn’t think anything in the world could surprise her. “Pay close attention. Insight gleaned from fights like these can guide your progress for years to come. Assuming that our guest doesn’t disappoint, of course.”

Down below, the Deputy Headmistress’s conversation with the demon woman came to a close, and she pointed her enormous battle axe, Patience, toward her soon-to-be enemy.

Patience. The Deputy Headmistress had named her weapon Patience. When Nicole had learned that, she had nearly gone comatose. The Deputy Headmistress had a sense of humor?

All White Gloves had their strengths and weaknesses, as any individual would, and Constance most decidedly lacked in her weapon’s eponymous virtue. Indeed, she displayed that deficiency now: It had taken all of a few sentences to decide attacking the invader was her best course of action.

Even if violence might be deserved, Nicole thought that surely the Deputy Headmistress was being rash. The demonic girl hadn’t seemed hostile so far…though she supposed that mattered little. An invasion was an invasion, and should be met appropriately.

Nicole neared graduation, and had thus passed the line for what adventurers called ‘mithril rank’—level six hundred—months ago. Her key skill, the one she shared with her peers and which defined their classes, had activated thanks to the imminent threat upon the Academy.

[In Active Service].

So, in that moment, she possessed the speed, strength, and perception of someone two-hundred levels higher. Orichalcum-rank, if merely the low end.

Despite that, she barely saw the Deputy Headmistress move.

She all but materialized in front of the demon, no intervening movement. The silver of her enormous battleaxe glinted in the sunlight for one long, suspended moment before it fell like an executioner’s blade.

The demon turned. The axe missed by millimeters, her robes and hair billowing as the blow carved a huge chunk from the paved path—and far beyond, cleaving dozens of feet forward and ripping up pavement and yard alike.

Constance twisted, her axe cutting toward the woman’s new position without so much as a heartbeat to bridge the blows. The demon ducked, and the blade sailed overhead. She straightened and retreated two unworried steps as the Deputy Headmistress reset her posture.

Constance had taken the fight seriously from moment one. ‘Never underestimate an opponent.’ Nicole was pleased that her instructors practiced what they preached.

But those dodges! That the demon avoided Constance’s attacks at all was nothing short of astounding, but to do so with such economy of motion? She had thought Constance’s opponent a mage from the robes and staff, but clearly she’d been wrong. The demon moved far too fast. Twelve hundreds at least, no? Maybe thirteen. And some sort of physically-oriented class…or maybe a hybrid.

Nicole wasn’t the only one to stir in surprise at the exchange; her peers did as well.

“Your evaluation continues, dears,” Instructor Annabelle commented, sipping her tea. “By definition, composure is only composure if it survives the unordinary. I expect more from sixth-years.”

Nicole took the harsh rebuke for what it was. She forced her spine to straighten and smoothed the outrageously uncontrolled expression on her face. Her eyebrows had actually lifted, as if she were a first-year! The mortification nearly had her flushing.

She tucked her hands in her lap, calmed herself, and watched the fight as if it were a simple opera play—and not a particularly good one—rather than what would surely be one of the most incredible displays of power she would ever witness.

After several long seconds of the two women appraising each other, Constance said, “You’re fast.”

The demon looked bored. “Don’t hold back on my account. Surely that wasn’t your limit.”

Despite Nicole’s resolution to control herself, she twitched in horror. The Deputy Headmistress was, at least by the standards of the White Gloves, famously hot-headed.

And the demon was goading her?

Indeed, Constance’s grip tightened on her axe, and Nicole read fury in how her posture shifted. A subtle movement, a bare pulling-back of her shoulders, but for a White Glove, even the rashest of them, the action all but radiated anger.

“Insolent,” was all Constance gave in response.

Apparently, she had been going easy on her opponent, because the following attacks were nothing like the previous. Maybe she hadn’t been trying to kill the invader outright, however justified she would have been. Now, she came for the demon with bloodlust.

Nicole could only catch glimpses. A flash of sunlight across a silver blade—there, then twenty feet away, then across the entire forecourt. Great cleaves of brown appeared as the manicured yard was torn up by residual kinetic impacts, the mere shunted-away energy from her errant attacks ripping up huge gashes. To Nicole’s dismay, she watched the resulting gusts of wind shake fruit and snap branches all around the grounds. She liked those apple trees! They reminded her of home!

The demon, it turned out, was a mage. Orbs of black flame burst out of her staff and rocketed toward Constance, who twisted out of the way just in time. Where those churning balls of void-fire exploded, the ground simply…vanished. Blinked out of existence for feet in every direction. Physical matter erased.

Nicole started sweating.

What spell was that? What element? She’d never seen anything like it, and the Academy’s curriculum most definitely included lessons on how to fight mages and deal with their magic.

A pit started to form in her stomach, though she couldn’t place why. This was the Deputy Headmistress. She wouldn’t lose. Nicole couldn’t even conceive of such a thing.

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Constance blurred forward again, and her axe slashed in two parts, so fast they seemed like one: a low sweep aimed for the demon’s legs, followed by a diagonal slash for the torso. The demon sidestepped the first and deflected the second with her staff; wood met enchanted steel with a shockwave that had trees keeling over a dozen yards away.

The demon jumped backward, the movement halting mid-air as she cast some flight spell, and a dozen spheres of white-purple fire blinked into existence in a semi-circle around her. Without delay, they shot toward the Deputy Headmistress in a barrage. Constance didn’t retreat. Her axe glowed white as she activated a skill, and, spinning, she sliced through the spheres of magic, splitting them in half. They rained down around her, pieces flying off to explode with huge, booming impacts that rattled the china set in front of Nicole.

Before the last explosion faded, Constance had charged through the dust and smoke. Yet despite her shocking speed, she didn’t reach her opponent in time. Leveling her staff, the demon cast a spell, and something—she didn’t know what—hit Constance. A deafening crack echoed across the grounds, and the Deputy Headmistress went flying backward, tearing clean through a tree in an explosion of wood splinters.

Nicole watched, attention raptly locked on the duel. Much of it, to be honest, she was filling in with her imagination based on what few glimpses she could catch, the flashes of Patience, or those bored red eyes and that slightly downturned mouth.

It didn’t make sense. How could a mage move so fast? Cast so fast? Trade weapon blows with a Titled Glove?

The idea struck her like a hammer.

A mage this powerful. A demonic mage. One who had somehow bypassed the Sorceress’s wards.

Could it be—?

No. Surely not.

Yet, despite how many statues depicted the Party of Heroes, she knew better: the stature of history’s greatest spellcaster was far more diminutive than most commoners assumed. The Headmaster was quite vocal about his distaste of that misrepresentation.

The woman’s small, petite build fit. Her class fit. The sheer power on display, most of all, fit. This woman was easily upper-Titled rank. Thirteen hundreds. Fourteen?

Or perhaps much higher, and she wasn’t fighting seriously.

Was this…?