"Windshot!"
Leona was practicing hurling pebbles against a distant pillar of rock. While she was having a high rate of success, it still bothered her that she was doing nothing but practicing her casting speed and accuracy for the last hour.
'This doesn't feel satisfying.'
She thought. Despite making noticeable progress, she wasn't happy with how she was getting those results. Avalon was just sunk into the snow beside her as she picked pebbles from the exposed rocky ground.
"Tsk…" She hung her head low and sighed. Her shoulder slumped forward as she held Avalon and pulled it out of the snow. "I can't quite use windshot while holding you, this is frustrating."
"Why not try a different spell?"
Avalon's voice echoed in her mind. While she wanted to try something else, she didn't know long range spells like Robert. The best she could do was to adapt Windshot alongside a more destructive spell such as Fireball.
"I wish I could but none of them can reach that far out." She pointed Avalon at her target. "Flame Spear!"
Mana channeled from her body towards the tip of her staff. The dragon's tear started to glow bright until a mote of fire swirled in the air before forming a flaming lance. With a loud blast, she sent the javelin of fire through the air, but it could only make two thirds of the way before landing in the snow. The impact left the snow hissing while letting out a curtain of steam.
"Tsk. That was my best one so far."
"Is there any reason why he's making you train such a strange method for combat?"
"I can see the advantages of attacking an enemy beyond their perception range. It's not a skill I can ignore, but at the same time, it's unlikely that my arm will fare better than if I used you to cast the same spell." She raised Avalon high in the air. Sun rays hit the dragon's tear, which refracted the light into streaks of a myriad colors against the snow. "He refused to teach me light magic for whatever reason."
There was a brief pause before Avalon replied.
"Must be because of the Empress."
Leona raised an eyebrow as she brought Avalon closer to her again.
"Oh? Do you think so too?"
"I'm sure of it. She was adept at wielding both magic and blade, so it wouldn't be strange for him to assume things."
"That's… fair, I suppose. But surely one spell wouldn't make that much of a difference."
She closed her eyes and started to go through everything she had learned so far. From the grueling mountain hiking, to the equally brutal inner world training, she had acquired a large selection of skills that could be used in battle, but for this specific training drill, she was tasked with long range engagements. Something she wasn't used to.
"Then…" She started muttering to herself. "What if…"
She crouched down and picked a pebble between her thumb and index finger. She looked intently at the distant rock pillar before tossing the pebble upwards in front of herself. In a quick fluid motion, she pointed the staff forward and quickly channeled all mana she could before the pebble fell in front of her staff.
"Windshot!"
A powerful blast of wind sent snow flying backwards in a cone around her while the pebble was shot at a high velocity only to bury itself in the snow not too far from where she stood.
"Too inaccurate…" She sighed as her shoulder slumped forward. "There must be a way…"
"If I didn't take too much space, you'd be able to hold something else…"
There was a moment of silence after Leona heard Avalon's words. The cogs began to move as her sentence made more sense the deeper the tactician thought about it.
"That's it. Space."
"Huh?"
"If I can't hold something while holding you, then I just have to not hold it." A grin started to appear on her face. "I remember both Robert and Setsuna making use of dark magic in order to keep things in the air. Gravity magic, I think it was called…"
She closed her eyes once again. Reimagining the few moments where she witnessed either of them making use of dark magic. She could clearly recall it was something they used only for very brief moments.
"Maybe it requires a lot of mana to pull off…" She started mumbling while staring at the pebbles on the ground. "Avalon, do you know if the Empress ever used something like that while she wielded you?"
"Come to think of it, before I was passed down to Xenovia, she used to be able to hurl large objects with magic."
"Was it dark magic or wind magic? I can throw objects with wind magic but they don't tend to be accurate."
"I'm… unsure… this is the first time I ever had spells being cast through me."
Leona frowned her brows as she thought deeply about it.
"Well… with her swordsmanship I think it'd be unusual for her to use magic like I do." She looked up to the sky and took a deep breath. "Alright. Let's improvise." She clenched her fingers around Avalon. "I think I can get similar results with wind magic first."
After unearthing a healthy amount of pebbles from the snow, she pointed Avalon towards them and started with a simple wind magic application.
By fine tuning the amount of mana and flow of air around the pebble—she managed to lift one up albeit at the cost of scattering the rest of the pebbles. The mere act of lifting it to aim at the intended target was a monumental task of mental fortitude and concentration. Though not exactly straining on her mana reserves, it was still unwieldy and unreliable due to the lack of direct control over the object's orientation.
She clenched her teeth as a surge of mana accumulated around her wrist, into the staff and finally at the very tip of the dragon's tear.
"Windshot!"
Once again the powerful blast of wind sent the rock flying. This time it went far past the intended target while also vanishing behind the snowy hill, far away from where she was aiming at.
"Without direct contact it feels almost impossible to control the trajectory…" She muttered to herself as her eyes trailed to the rest of the stones. "Would gravity magic really help…?"
She pointed the staff at the pebbles and closed her eyes. Unlike wind spells, where she could easily visualize herself lifting the object, she knew nothing of the so fabled dark element magic which made things difficult.
"If I remember Robert's words correctly… dark magic comes from the absence of all elements. Then…"
The cold winds of the mountaintop stopped registering in her mind—it was as if time stopped for a brief moment. Mana started to pour out from her core as Avalon focused it all to the dragon's tear gem. Deep in the tactician's mind she started to picture each single elemental magic taking form through the amalgamation of mana.
The flames of destruction, the northern winds, the winds of time, the blessed earth, the fulgent lightning and the great power of the seas, all elements were at her fingertips and at that very moment she opened her eyes and the mana she accumulated became a pure orb of light attached at the end of her staff.
'This is… light elemental magic…'
It was mesmerizing—all elements combined became something so beautiful, untainted. But at that moment she realized something felt off. Despite accumulating all elements into that portion of mana, she could feel the spell taking another form. The orb of light started to swirl into itself and the former untainted mana became blackened like the abyss.
Her chest tightened as all air seemed to escape her lungs. Her own spell seemed to consume her mana at a much faster pace than she anticipated which resulted in the orb fizzling out in an air tearing crack as she fell with both knees on the snow.
"Gah…! Ha…!" She struggled to breathe. It was as if she had been suddenly submerged into freezing cold water with no prior warning. "This… hurts…!"
Her mana was mostly gone. If it wasn't for her previous training she would've gone into mana shock the moment her spell started to show imbalance. She expected dark magic to be difficult, but not to this extent. At that moment Avalon's panicked voice echoed in her mind.
'Leona! Are you alright?!'
Despite the ordeal, the tactician had never let go of her and instead, she smiled towards Avalon and chuckled. She stood up with trembling legs while also using it as a walking stick.
"I guess I'm not cut out for dark magic after all…"
"Because that wasn't dark magic."
She looked over her shoulders and saw Robert once again drinking tea. He had a wide grin on his face but that only made Leona more annoyed.
"What do you want now…?"
She forced herself to speak despite lacking the mood to do so thanks to the extremely low mana reserves.
"Oh, nothing. I was just amused to see you racking your brain for something that can easily be remedied."
"Hah?"
He raised his teacup and let go mid air, but it defied all logic as the cup remained locked in the air. He then reached down near her feet and picked up a pebble.
"You're trying to weaponize something that you already have." He tossed the rock twice in the air before crunching it down to dust and opening his hand. "You don't need to strictly use objects with windshot." As dust fell from his palm, he flicked his hand and an orb of azure fire appeared in his hand. "Watch."
He turned to where the rock pillar was and threw the fire orb. As opposed to normally casting Fireball. The orb went at a much higher velocity as it hit the target with the fire blasting in a narrow cone behind it, leaving nothing but steam coming off the rocky terrain.
She looked at him with widened eyes.
"How did you…?"
"You need to cast both spells closely together." He raised both hands parallel to one another. "Did you know that Windshot was designed to be a hunting tool? Much like a bow, you can use it to launch other spells as well, but the timing is a bit strict." He grabbed the teacup from the air and took a sip before frowning his brows. "Eh, it got cold."
Leona glanced at her own staff while trying to picture what the activation of two spells through the same mana gate would look like. Mana usually travels from the user's core towards the extremities of each limb and casting spells requires the caster to commit that mana to that spell specifically.
Leona glared at him as she asked.
"Sending more mana through the same gate may end up increasing the first spell's potency so how are you able to not overload your own–"
He stopped her by raising his index finger and shaking it in front of her.
"You don't have to. Don't you have your staff? Just make sure to cast one spell first, have Avalon 'store' that spell and then release it just before you cast the second."
"But that still doesn't explain how you are able to."
"Mana gate manipulation. It's not something you need to learn now. Look, you'll need to return to Arcadia in a few days, it's better to stick with what you know and not get sidetracked."
"Tsk…"
She clicked her tongue as she looked away from him. Robert on the other hand shifted his weight towards her and raised his cup while asking.
"Aside from all that. Have you been thinking how you will rule Arcadia once you're back?"
She turned back at him with a raised eyebrow as if she just heard something incredibly unusual.
"I don't have any specifics in mind, but why do you ask?"
"Well… I know you're a tactician, but you weren't trained in the arts of ruling, have you?" He had his usual smirk that ticked her off. "A tactician is just as good as the ongoing war, the true hardship is after the embers fade and the smoke begins to rise."
"I know that much. I have accompanied my father many times during his duties as a noble lord."
"Being a noble and a sovereign are two completely different things, you know." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "One oversees serfdom, the other, the entire kingdom. You must understand the sheer amount of power you hold once you sit on a throne."
Her furrowed brow softened once she heard those words. She knew exactly how big the responsibility was. Having to administrate an entire kingdom was nothing like leading soldiers to battle and deep down she knew she was willingly walking into unknown territory out of pride.
"I know." She looked down with bitterness clear in her curling lips. "But as opposed to sitting by and letting Alexander ruin the hard earned peace my parents brought—I decided to rise to the challenge."
"That's all well and good, but good rulers are those that get to power and remain in power." He put the teacup on the wooden rails of the porch and approached her again. "Ruleship is just as convoluted and pragmatic as the battles you fought up until now. You win through reason and conviction, not the heart."
Her eyes traced down as her brows furrowed slightly.
'I knew this much, but hearing it firsthand makes it even harder to swallow…'
She sighed. As the puff of steam cleared she looked up at Robert again and asked.
"And how do you believe one should rule?"