Chương 123: Book 3 Chapter 1 - Earning Her Keep

Zoey enjoyed the time she and Dustin spent shopping around Portish for a new estate. They finally found one outside the city walls, just north of the city. It was a large estate, over one hundred acres, with a fruit orchard, rolling hills, and a stream running through the property. Dustin had been adamant about the fresh fruit and water being part of the landscape after what had happened in Easton recently. Zoey admitted that it was a nice perk.

Dustin spent the next few days getting things sorted out for the estate: hiring staff, buying new carriages, things of that nature. He also helped the business owner who had been kidnapped get his shop fixed so he and his daughter could move back home. Zoey did take a quick trip out to see her family, while Dustin was busy with paperwork at the new estate, but for the most part she followed him around, taking her bodyguard duty very seriously.

While he organized things for House Yountal, she practiced her wind magic. She knew she was extremely close to developing a concept around wind magic, which would be her third and final concept before beginning the process to advance to tier 4. She finally got it on their third day in Portish. She and Dustin were in a large room inside the Portish estate, and she was practicing forming wind blades, a powerful, nearly invisible attack that could cut through any poorly constructed defenses.

She found that instead of trying to control the wind mana itself to form the shape she wanted, she could set limits on the shape the wind mana was allowed to take, without controlling the mana inside. Almost like forming a shell in the shape she wanted, then letting the wind mana inside the shell run as wild as it wanted. In fact, her wind blades became considerably more dangerous and effective if she stoked the wind magic inside the shell, egging it on to be furious and wild.

Once her wind blade made contact with her target, all of that pent-up energy was released, amplifying the damage. These new wind blades she was forming had all of the cutting power they had previously contained, but took way less concentration to form and maintain, increasing the speed at which she could launch them. They also quasi-detonated on impact, forcefully enough to shatter stone.

The effect was quite dramatic, and she spent the better part of an hour throwing wind blades at her own mana shields, which she erected a dozen feet from her body for target practice. The benefit of attacking her own mana shields was that she could easily tell how strong each wind blade was, while simultaneously practicing strengthening her mana shields against attacks of this type.

After an hour of practice, everything she had learned working with the wind blades combined with the months of effort she had put into understanding the concept of wind and wind magic. What was the wind? What did it want? How did it behave? All of these questions helped shape her understanding of wind magic, solidified by the months of practice and the intense learning session she had just put herself through. She felt the concept form in her soul, and her understanding of her own wind magic snapped into alignment.

Her intuitive knowledge of wind magic blossomed, and her wind blades instantly became many times more compact and dangerous than they had been moments before. With the same amount of mana, she could cause more damage, cast the spells at higher speeds, and maintain better control of the wind mana constructs that she formed. With all three pieces of her signature maelstrom spell she liked so much being backed by concepts now, she was excited to try it out at some point.

She didn't realize how quickly she would get the chance. Dustin was on the other side of the room, working through a mountain of paperwork. Zoey had erected a large bubble of mana shields around the area she was practicing in, to prevent the noise from bothering Dustin and to keep the estate from getting damaged. She also positioned herself between him and the door so no potential threats could get to him without her noticing.

After she had learned her wind magic concept, she took some time to meditate and recover her mana. About an hour after that, one of the new estate servants came in, announcing that they had a visitor named Ugor. A large man followed the servant in. He was extraordinarily tall, with a broad frame and thick limbs. He cut an imposing figure, and Zoey instantly reached out with her magic sense. The man was a tier 4.

Ugor sized up Zoey, Dustin, and the servant who had introduced him in a single glance, then smiled wickedly. His aura flared to life. He spit to the side, then snarled, "She embarrasses me in front of an entire city, and thinks she can get away with it? I'll burn this whole place to the ground." Zoey's eyes widened as soon as his aura flared to life, and she hastily erected mana shields between herself and Ugor.

The mana shields sprang to life just in time to intercept a barrage of sharp stone spikes the man had launched at her. He snarled when his attack was foiled, then lashed out at the servant who had brought him in, crushing his head in a single blow. It happened before Zoey could react, and she stared at the ghastly sight in shock for half a second before her brain kicked into full gear. This man was a legitimate threat, and was here to kill them all.

She had no idea who he was, or why he was here, but that didn't matter at this point. She jumped backwards, pulling her mana shields with her, getting closer to Dustin. A single spell or blow from Ugor would kill Dustin, and it was her job to protect him, with her life if needed. Ugor rushed to follow her, but hesitated momentarily when her eyes began to glow, first red, then turning to orange then yellow then white.

She raised her arms to her sides, and her hair whipped out behind her as the wind picked up around her. The air around her began to burn, much hotter than a campfire. The flames themselves followed the color change of her eyes, eventually turning white from the intense heat. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. The wind pulled the fire around her in a giant maelstrom, stoking the flames, and eviscerating everything within her range.

Everything except Dustin. Her control of the elemental mana was incredible, thanks to her years of practice and especially with her newly developed concepts. The wind and fire parted neatly around Dustin, keeping him in a protective bubble within the storm. Mana shields sprang to life around him, protecting him from the residual heat of the flames in the air. If the attacker wanted to get to Dustin, he would have to fight his way through Zoey's storm first.

Blue water whips formed in her hands, long and flexible, but completely within her control. The entire process took less than a second to fully form, during which time Ugor had stopped charging in so recklessly, and was hastily erecting defenses of his own. Zoey's maelstrom, once powered solely by simple wind magic, now included wind blades, her latest variation of them. The razor-sharp constructs whipped around lethally at blazing speeds, not just carried along by the wind storm, but helping to power it.

Ugor's mana shields were having a hard time dealing with the wind blades, much the same way Zoey's had an hour previously. Even now, her own mana shields couldn't take too many direct hits from her wind blades, and that was after hours of intense practice with repeated attempts at improving both spells. She lashed out with the water whip in her right hand, wrapping it around Ugor's right arm. She pulled hard, putting him off balance just as the whip in her left hand wrapped around his neck.

He crushed the whip around his arm with his other hand, breaking the mana construct, but she recycled the mana that remained in the construct, reforming the whip an instant later. The whip around his neck tightened like a snake, trying to crush the mana shields around his person. Her wind blades continued to pummel him from the side, cutting and blasting holes in his shielding. He was working full-time just trying to keep up and avoid getting sliced to bits.

His aura flared out for a moment, weakening all of her constructs, and the whip around his neck fell slack, pushed away by his aura. He roared in defiance, taking the momentary reprieve as an opportunity to launch his own attacks at her. Stone pillars erupted from the ground around the room, disrupting the continual flow of her maelstrom. Stone spikes formed over Ugor's shoulders, and launched at her with incredible speed, much larger and more compact than the first salvo he had fired off.

A stone spear formed in his hands, and he rushed in after he threw the spikes, trying to close the distance. Zoey's mana shields took the stone spikes head on, cracking and breaking much more quickly than she would like. Luckily, her practice with her own wind blade had helped strengthen her mana shields against sharp attacks, but the weight of the stone spikes was enough to push through. She formed many layers of shields, barely reacting in time to stop the spikes before they reached her.

She was still positioned in between Ugor and Dustin, so Dustin's last line of defense would be her own body. The stone pillars around the room were disrupting the maelstrom, but her new wind blades were slowly blasting them apart, and her storm was slowly regaining its speed. Before she made much progress in that area, however, Ugor arrived, charging in with his stone spear. He was fast, much faster than Zoey, and she wasn't a close-range fighter anyway.

Her specialty lay in maintaining her distance and attacking from afar. Unfortunately, she couldn't run away without putting Dustin in danger, so she held her ground. She formed new mana shields, some as walls between her and Ugor, others in layers surrounding her person. White-hot fire poured out of her mouth in Ugor's direction. She had initially learned how to breathe fire as a sort of joke, but had since practiced it enough for it to become fairly second nature.

Her throat and mouth helped with shaping and directing the flow of the fire, which freed up some of her attention span that otherwise would have been tied up. Ugor shielded his face from the fire with his left arm, his momentum slowing as he reached Zoey. He lashed out with the stone spear, but his strike was sloppy, unpracticed. Zoey immediately realized that he too was a long-range mage, and breathed a sigh of relief. The strike was still strong and fast though, his tier advantage showing through.

Her walls of mana shields were blown apart by the strike, and the spear struck her in the left shoulder. Some of the shields around her person held, protecting her from the piercing nature of the blow, but the impact still forced her back a few steps. She abandoned the water whips for streams of pure, cutting water, blasting out of her hands at Ugor. The streams of water were thin and sharp, and moved at incredible speeds.

They were already dangerous before she had learned her water magic concept, but now they could cut through a tree trunk. Ugor's spear disappeared as he threw up stone wall after stone wall, layering them with raw mana shields to intercept the water jets. Zoey brought some wind blades from the maelstrom around behind him, blasting him from both sides at once. The stone pillars around the room had mostly disintegrated by now, and her maelstrom was returning to its full force.

Her wind blades began making it through Ugor's shielding, leaving deep gashes on his left side. He threw more stone spikes at her, which her mana shields intercepted. He roared once more, charging in with stone encasing his fists. If he landed a hit or two, Zoey knew she would be finished. She formed one final wind blade in front of her, larger than the others had been. Inside the shell, she goaded the wind into an absolute frenzy, the wind speeds exceeding anything she had achieved yet.

The adrenaline of the situation fueled her intent, allowing her more complexity and control than she normally could get. She filled the shell with fire mana as well, packing everything in so tight that she could barely contain it. She unleashed a new stream of water jets at Ugor as he arrived, followed immediately by the fire-filled wind blade. The water jets tore apart his outer shields and weakened the ones closest to his body.

The wind blade smashed into his chest just as he reached Zoey, but before he could make his first swing. The wind blade punched through his remaining shields, then exploded on impact. It tore a large, vertical hole in his chest, followed by an intense explosion of wind and fire that exploded out of his back. The explosion rocked the entire room, completely destroying his torso. Zoey's shields held, but the shockwave threw her backwards onto the ground.

She slid a few feet after landing, ending up way too close to Dustin. A few more feet, and she would have collided with him, injuring or killing him. She didn't like how close he had come to harm. Her maelstrom immediately died down, and the wind and fire magic slowed then stopped. The room fell eerily silent.