Chapter 31
Null vs Silver
Friday arrived.
The duel hall was a separate space from the practice hall -- formal, with observation tiers on three sides and a floor that had mana-containment enchantments built in to prevent spell damage to the structure. Standard duels attracted small audiences. The word had gotten out about this one and the observation tiers were at capacity.
A null result provisional against a Silver-rank second-year. The audience was there to see what happened to the null result, and most of them had already decided.
Cyan stood on his side of the floor and kept his right hand uncovered for the first time in six weeks.
He'd thought about it carefully. The Mark was going to be visible regardless once the duel started -- he couldn't both use it and keep it hidden. Better to have it visible from the start, on his terms, than to have it appear midway through in a way that looked like he was hiding it.
There was a murmur in the observation tier when people noticed it. He let them notice.
Orris walked in with the particular ease of someone who had done this many times and found it agreeable. He looked at Cyan, looked at the Mark, and his expression did something small and quick that he covered fast. Not quite reconsideration. More like a slight adjustment in approach.
The faculty witness explained the rules. Standard duel: first to incapacitation or forfeit. No killing spells -- the containment enchantments would absorb lethal-force outputs but the rule existed regardless. Begin on the signal.
Orris didn't wait to see what Cyan would do. He opened with a Silver-level Pyros burst -- not his maximum output, a probing shot, the kind you used to establish range and see how a new opponent moved.
Cyan didn't move.
The Pyros burst crossed the floor, hit his absorption radius, and stopped.
The silence in the observation tier was immediate.
Orris looked at the space where his spell had been. His expression shifted from controlled to calculating.
He tried Aeros next -- a pressure wave, the kind designed to knock an opponent off balance rather than deal direct damage. It hit Cyan's radius and fragmented, the kinetic mana dissolving into his palm in pieces.
Cyan stood on his side of the floor and felt the Silver-rank mana feeding into him and did the specific mental work of holding it rather than releasing it, building pressure rather than spending it, because the pressure was the point.
Orris switched tactics. He came forward -- if the ranged spells weren't working, close range was the logical response, where a Silver-rank mage with combat training had overwhelming physical and mana advantages over an untrained provisional.
He got within three meters before Cyan pushed.
Not a spell. Not a shaped cast. Just a raw push of the accumulated absorbed mana -- Orris's own spells, weeks of practice hall residue, the ambient mana of the duel hall itself -- directed outward from his palm in an unfocused burst.
The burst hit Orris like a wall.
It wasn't elegant. Vael would have had notes. But it was approximately two weeks of compressed Silver-rank mana output released in one second, and it hit Orris center mass and took his legs out completely.
He went down.
The faculty witness waited the standard five seconds for him to rise. He didn't rise.
'Match concluded,' the faculty witness said. His voice was entirely professional. His expression was not.
The observation tier was completely silent.
Cyan walked to the edge of the floor and picked up his glove and pulled it on. He didn't look at the observation tier. He didn't look at Orris on the floor. He walked to the exit.
In the corridor outside, Dain was leaning against the wall because he hadn't been able to get a seat in the observation tier and had watched through the doorway.
'That,' Dain said, 'was either very smart or very stupid and I genuinely can't tell which yet.'
'Both, probably,' Cyan said.
He kept walking.