Generational Disappointment

  Professor van Valkenberg was a centuries old elven archwizard who had been Marci's main supervisor when she'd been writing her Mastery—before she'd fucked that up and dropped out. He could sometimes be a bit blunt, but had generally been very encouraging, and had done his darndest to get her to submit. He'd believed that she had the capacity to be a great wizard, despite her less than stelr undergraduate grades. It was actually one of Marci's major sources of shame that she had disappointed him.

  But the disappointment she had seen in his eyes when she'd been half cut in an inn that he'd come into was nothing compared to what she saw when she met her gaze from across the distant snow: fairy and elvish eyes good enough for them to read each other's expression.

  "Oh, Ms. du Valmont," came his voice, carried by a cantrip, Sending, on the wind, like a whisper in her ear. "A Shardkeeper? I never expected that you would fall this far."

  "I- I didn't mean to!" she sent back desperately. "This was all an accident! I'm not conspiring with demons! This was an accident!"

  "You always did stretch the truth," he sent thinly. "But I would have never expected this…"

  Her keener than human eyes picked up him shift his attention back downwards, and she looked back to see that the party of demons that she had hired had taken up positions at the entranceway, Saoirse and Maeve raising arcane defences as they prepared to hold.

  "This isn't what it looks like!" she sent desperately. "I'm not-"

  A trio of bzing golden spears nced up from her old mentor's staff, racing across the three hundred odd meters between them, and Marci barely managed to conjure a spherical shield to protect herself before they parted and then rammed into her from all sides.

  Julver's Golden Wrath was a fourth level spell. Dangerous and powerful and not something you cast at anyone you intended to take alive.

  Her old mentor, a man she looked up to, respected, liked, was trying to kill her.

  "Please Professor! Please!" she sent back, tears in her eyes. "I don't want to fight you! I didn't mean to become a Shardkeeper-"

  Another bzing trio of magic erupted from him and smashed into her shield again. Her ward took the brunt of it, but broke and cracked in several pces, letting a little bit of the destructive energy in, burning her face and shoulder and making her scream in pain.

  He wasn't listening, and, all around him, the soldiers were now rushing forward towards the Dreadfort's entranceway.

  She quickly checked on the kobolds. They were working as fast as they could but… actually, she had no idea of the significance of what they were doing. They might be moments away from fixing however the fortress flew, or they might be hours.

  She had to buy time; she had to fight her old mentor.

  Marci had sparred with instructors before. Against the less experienced ones, she'd even won reasonably often, her natural knack for magic and quick wits and, ter, experience as an adventurer giving her a sharp edge against them. Against an archwizard like the Professor, though? Never.

  She just had to hope that Shardkeepers got enough of a 'boost' to actually stand toe to toe with one of the greatest spellcasters of the Southnds.

  Well, she was going to be flying, not standing. Flight, and the absolutely massive advantage it gave her people, was the reason that no one had ever successfully invaded Edraine, and even a Shardfort had been repulsed when it had ventured into the west northwestern forests that her people called home. Humans required gryphons, rare and expensive creatures, to get onto Shardforts; fairies, on the other hand, could deploy their entire army for a boarding action at once.

  Marci opened with a fireball, aimed straight at him. It came out cherry red and rger than what she usually made, but she barely noticed the strain. It rocketed over the snow and smashed into the glowing silver shield he erected to catch it. The fmes sent up a great cloud of steam as they liquefied and then vaporised the snow around the archwizard.

  Marci repositioned, avoiding the wild counterpunch without the need to shield, and instead cast a subtler spell, another rank three, Disorientation.

  It was, despite its retive complexity, neither particurly dangerous nor fshy like a lot of higher ranked spells were. Instead, it caused a faint shimmer in the air that an observant person might sort of notice as it settled over not only the steaming gyre where the Archwizard was, but also a rge chunk of the advancing soldiers who began to struggle with the snow more than they had been, many stumbling, a few falling over as the spell pyed havoc with their inner ear. It was one of her favourite spells to cast at people, because either they had to stop to deal with it, or fight at a disadvantage for the rest of the battle.

  Casting the spell, however, gave away Marci's position, and the steam coalesced and shrank in on itself before erupting outward, straight at her in a dispy of magic she had never seen before. She shielded, but she'd been caught off guard, and quite a bit of the hot vapour made it through her poorly tuned defence, scalding her skin and making her swerve and tumble through the air, screaming as she fell.

  She hit the snow hard, somewhere in the no-man's nd between the fort and the advancing army, tumbled for several seconds, coughed and spat out some snow, and blearily looked up just in time to see another barrage of Julver's Golden Wrath arcing towards her.

  She shielded, her burnt hands trembling as the spell rammed into her. In the corners of her mind, she felt panic start to set in.

  The Professor was much better at magic than she was. He'd had centuries to hone his craft, and fought in several wars, so of fucking course her little disorientation hex hadn't worked. He probably dispelled it in less than a second. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  She wasn't fighting someone in her own league, who she could usually outfox and outmanoeuvre with her fir and prodigal ability with magic. She was fighting an archmage, someone infinitely more skilled, experienced, and powerful-

  Her train of thought ground to a halt.

  No. He wasn't more powerful than her. Not anymore. She had the Dreadfort backing her up. Even now it was devouring ley energy, the mana of the nd around it, and through her soul that was entwined with it, all of that power was hers to wield as she saw fit.

  No. No more tricks. No more 'clever charms.' If she was going to beat him, or at least hold him off until the Dreadfort could make it into the air, she was going to need to cheat her wings off and abuse the one advantage she had that wasn't flight.

  A pilr of fme burst from her hand as she cast something that was technically a modified fireball, and therefore a rank three spell. No one, however, actually cast the modification because it was insanely mana inefficient and would drain most spellcasters dry in a matter of moments.

  Marci, however, barely noticed the strain.

  The messy beam of fire smashed into a hastily conjured shield as the Professor reacted, and several of the nearby soldiers screamed and hurled themselves into the ground as more scalding steam washed over the battlefield.

  The Professor responded his 'steam-beam' thing again, but this time Marci was ready for it, and countered not by shielding but by overloading a second rank spell, 'Gust' which was usually only strong enough to make someone perhaps stumble, but which she used to split the beam down the middle.

  Marci shot up into the air, ignoring her aching, burnt wings and began reckless hurling the wildest and mana intensive spells she could easily cast down at her old professor. The amassed barrage put him onto the back foot, forced to spend most of his time shielding and far less attacking.

  The line of soldiers parted around the archmage, slipping and sliding through the increasingly slushy snow and continuing to try and advance. A few got into musket range, and bullets crashed into her shield, forcing Marci to fly higher. They, however, came into range of the demons at the entrance way, and great arcs of hellfire, courtesy of Maeve and Saoirse began to rain down on them, forcing them to a virtual standstill.

  It was working. It was-

  Then a trio fireballs arced up towards her from the back of the column, and Marci's heart fell as she conjured a shield to block the barrage.

  She wasn't just facing her old mentor. There were more spellcasters.