Take Back Worlds (Diamond Universe: Sierra Walker #3)

Chapter 9

O nce I’m fed and rested and, uh, fed again, Nariel and I head to the dueling arena.

The grand magi didn’t need my help to figure out the spell around the repository, which, like. Of course they didn’t. But I’m still feeling a little useless. I’ve become too used to being the one source of ingenious spellcraft, so what do I even have to offer High Earth if not that?

“Power,” Nariel reminds me. “Low Earth’s, but also your own. You’re the only human bonded to an angel. A grand magus armed with an angelic weapon might be able to match an angel, but you should be able to take on more than one. So let’s make sure you can.”

He circles me on the raised stone floor, the empty tiers of bench seats around us making the whole area feel hushed.

There are other places where mages train for battle, but I don’t want to deal with other people. And those don’t have the same kind of built-in defenses as the actual tournament arena, which is, given the recent plague, not currently in use.

But every other time I’ve been here it’s been surrounded by screaming crowds, so being here alone with Nariel feels weirdly like there’s a spotlight on me because there’s no one here.

I didn’t instinctually figure out in battle how to make the best use of the power I can now draw on, which is too bad, because now I need to figure it out with my brain.

Tentatively, I test drawing on the magic and channeling it straight through my hand, zapping electricity toward the stands, because that’s where the strongest shield is, to prevent audience injury.

It bursts away with all the force of a bubble popping.

“Sierra.”

“I’m going to step it up, don’t get your panties in a twist.”

“Nothing under my pants but me,” Nariel says smoothly, and flashes a smile when I cut him a look. “Step it up steeply. A blast that weak is embarrassing, to you.”

Argh. Fine.

I carefully take another draw, substantially deeper.

“Why are you hesitating with only this amount?” Nariel asks.

“Because when I pull in a big rush, my senses kind of short-circuit,” I explain. “It’s like feeling like I’m about to pass out—my body feels weird, my vision goes weird, dizziness.”

“Ahh. Probably you’ll get used to holding this much magic over time, but—“

“But time isn’t on my side right now,” I finish. “So I’m trying to see how much I can draw without that happening.”

Nariel studies me thoughtfully, but I think he’s watching magic flow and not actually me. “You should probably pull faster then. A fast hit will feel different, won’t it?”

I should, yes. “Let me get comfortable this way first.”

Nariel shakes his head. “No, you shouldn’t get comfortable this way, because this is never how you’re going to fight.”

I follow my own plan anyway, drawing deeper even as Nariel frowns. “I’m building a new skill, Nariel, learning at slower speeds and then stepping it up makes sure I get the form right.”

“You have the form already.”

“In fact I don’t have the form of not killing you . I need to be able to draw smaller amounts of magic.”

“Smaller amounts won’t hurt an angel,” he tells me.

I let out a frustrated breath. “Do I tell you how to fight?”

“I don’t fight with spells, but you are now trying to fight with my magic.”

“Well changing my whole fighting style is going to be even more time-consuming, so if you can’t keep your feedback to yourself, go stand over there,” I say tartly, returning to what I was doing.

I’m getting the hang of pulling the amount of magic I want at smaller scales. Not perfectly, but the more I do this and adjust the more confident I am in my ability to have more precise control. That I maybe know how to not kill Nariel.

Then Nariel appears directly in front of me, and I shoot him on reflex, pulling way more than I needed.

“Damn it!”

“You’re training the wrong thing,” Nariel tells me. “This isn’t working.”

“Of course it isn’t working yet! I just started! Do you know what ‘training’ means?”

Nariel puts his hands on my shoulders, and I get the feeling he wants to shake me. “I know you , and I know that no amount of practicing making a weapon mattered until you needed a weapon.”

“That’s an impossible statement to prove. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to synthesize so quickly if I hadn’t worked through so much beforehand. And in fact, if you’ll recall, I did almost kill you when I tried to do this without practice!”

He throws up his hands. “Why are you holding that against yourself, but not blaming me for overwhelming you with magic?”

“Because one of those things is under conscious control, and the other isn’t!”

Nariel looks at me like I’m insane.

And then I feel the power rushing away from me.

I blink up at him, startled. “Oh.”

“Oh,” he echoes, deadpan.

I smack him on the chest, which is as satisfying as punching a rock, meaning now my hand hurts and he’s unmoved. “You seriously could have done that the whole time?!”

“Not while we were bonding,” Nariel says, “or the bond would never have formed strong enough for me to share all of my power.”

I make a strangled noise.

“Sierra, you may need all of my power, and you’re going to have it. And the fact that we did bond means that you can hold it all.”

“No! Because if I’m wielding all of your power, I’m killing you .”

“Perhaps,” Destien cuts in, “we might be of assistance?”

I turn around to see Destien approaching with the Lances.

“What are you helping with, exactly?” I ask. “Providing me a target-rich environment?”

Friendly Lance barks out a laugh.

Scowling Lance says, “Providing pressure. Destien says it’s how you learn best. We can simulate that for you without you actually being worried about dying.”

“Can you, now,” Nariel murmurs.

Because, yeah, the last time I saw the Lances, they were trying to kill me.

Scowling Lance meets my gaze steadily. “Our oaths are what they are. To pursue our level of magical combat, that’s the price, and it’s one you never had to pay.”

I look her in the eye and say, “I paid.”

She nods. “Yes, you did. I don’t know if Destien can back up what I think he’s doing and what that would mean for us. But I know what you did for us at the tower. And I know you fought two of those monsters while the five of us took out one. And if you can fight them like that without having to pay what we did, then no, right now you do not have to worry about dying.”

That hits me in the feelings.

Nariel aside, and he’s in love with me, no one has ever risked themself to try to help me become more powerful. I’ve always fought that fight on my own.

I swallow. “Okay. Let’s do that, then. What do you suggest?”

Nariel rolls his eyes, but the Lances are some of the only people alive who may know more about fighting as a battle mage than I do.

“Ditch the boy toy,” the Lance says, and then smiles. “Then we can play.”

My heart rate increases. I cut a look at Destien. “And you? Don’t you have important administrivia to be doing?”

Destien smiles. “Oh don’t worry, I’m just here to watch. Like a coach from the sidelines.”

I scowl. “You don’t have to make it worse. People already know I don’t like you.”

He laughs, the cocky laugh I remember from my childhood. “Oh no, this is for me. Go on. Entertain me.”

It isn’t for him, though. I know it because that laugh starts a spark in me that I feel down to my fingertips.

The spark to prove them wrong. Prove to the people who think they’re better than me that I am good, and more than that, I’m better .

Destien is here, now, because despite the literal interdimensional conspiracy to deal with and his own revolution, he thinks that right now the most important thing he can be doing is making sure I’m at peak form, and that is pressure.

I exchange a look with Nariel, and he flies over to where Destien is hanging out in the audience.

The Lances meanwhile take their places in the ring, arrayed around me.

I turn slowly, taking them all in.

Okay. Five opponents. Probably this calls for how I was working back when I had only limited magic, so I limit how much I use so that I have more for the rest—

Before I can finish that thought, three Lances launch at me at once.

I snap out a burst of lightning that strikes against their shields and halts their movement.

But the other two Lances are now flanking me.

No time for my hammer. I hold my hands out on either side of me and blast, blowing them away from me.

Damn it, that’s too much! Drawing this way doesn’t have built-in limiters the way a spell does.

Maybe that’s it—if I layer a limiter over me as the default , and then have to consciously remove it—

But I don’t have time for that, because the Lances are attacking again, and I have to defend myself.

And that’s why the limiter idea won’t work: at a time when I need more power without being able to warn Nariel, I won’t have time to go through an extra layer.

It’s the same reason he made all his power available to me by default: so that I don’t have to ask for it, because if I have to ask, it’ll be too late.

The Lances dance in and out, but it’s the same each time: if I hold back, they advance. If I don’t hold back, I go overboard. I’m not close to draining Nariel right now, but the fear of it makes me back away further every time I do a big draw, which gives the Lances more maneuverability until I have to do a bigger draw.

After a few minutes of this, Destien calls, “And break!”

The Lances immediately freeze, because they are well-trained.

Destien adds, “Sierra, you have two minutes to get a grip on yourself.”

I put my hands on my head, resisting the urge to tear out my own hair. That was an embarrassment.

Scowling Lance looks over at me. “That’s not gonna work, girl.”

“Yeah, thanks, I got that,” I mutter.

But she isn’t done. “You’re not trained for a warzone. The grand magus trained you to duel, didn’t he? You go out, you get your points, you finish, you collapse. Get a healing potion, top up, start over. So you can take a lot of punishment, you have the mental endurance to fight repeatedly , but not continually.

“You didn’t learn how to stay alive. You learned how to win.”

I stare at her.

She has me dead to rights.

What had I said to Nariel the other day? That I didn’t know how to not do all-or-nothing?

I don’t know how to not use all the power at my fingertips, not just because of Evram, but because I always wanted to use all the power at my fingertips. Yes, the amount of magic I’ve been handling recently has been kind of catastrophic, but it’s also a rush . Magic is my favorite thing, and the more of it, the better.

“So I need to learn how to commit without going all-in on any given strike,” I say slowly.

Nariel coalesces in front of me. “No. You can’t break the habit of a lifetime in minutes. You need to go harder, Sierra.”

“I could kill you, remember?“ I snap. “Even if that doesn’t matter to you—“

“Ahh,” Friendly Lance remarks. “So that’s why you were overthinking so much yesterday. It makes you slow.”

I pause, looking at him.

He grins. “Yes, I know, I’m a source with a biased agenda, since we’ve been ordered to kill you both before. But you know I’m not wrong.”

Yeah.

Shit.

How much time, and how many opportunities, did I lose? Angels have centuries of experience. I can’t match that, but I definitely won’t keep up if I don’t trust my own.

“If I were going to try to trap you, hypothetically speaking,” Friendly Lance continues casually, “all I’d need to do is divide your attention. And I’d have you.”

I stare at him, stunned, like he’s just walloped me in the head with a 2x4.

I turn to Nariel with wide eyes.

“Break’s over,” Destien calls. “Lances, form up.”

I throw up a shield almost unconsciously as the Lances’ first barrage hits me, because my eyes are still locked on Nariel.

The Lances batter at my shield, and I let them, as if Nariel and I are in our own little world. The calm in the middle of a storm.

It feels like we’re on the edge of a precipice.

I can’t protect him and save myself at the same time.

Nariel takes a step toward me. “Double down.”

I shake my head slowly.

But I also have to do both. I’m not willing to lose either of us.

Nariel reaches me, places his hands on my shoulders. “Sierra. You have to trust me to take care of myself.”

“You expect me to believe you’re not looking out for me?” I ask. “You caught me when I fell.”

Nariel shakes me. “I trusted you to take on one angel on your own as I took on one angel on my own. If you pull power that hard, I know it means you need it.” His gaze is fierce. “ So take it . Take all of me.”

Taking, taking, taking.

I turn away from Nariel as my shield falls.

It’s not enough to just take.

The Lances are coming at me from five directions, angelic weapons raised.

I could defend, but then I won’t win.

And I am good at winning. There are lots of reasons for that, but it’s not just trusting my experience.

I win fights as an underdog against people more powerful than me all the time, and it’s because I go further than anyone expects, or than anyone else can .

I draw on my power, and Nariel’s, all of it combined.

Five balls of electricity around me that I shoot out before the Lances reach me, catching each of them mid-strike.

The lightning clashes with their weapons, as they keep pushing, trying to force their way forward.

But I push back.

Nariel knows I can take all of him, and I do.

Because not only can I take, I also have to give.

As good as I’ve got.

In one deep draw, I pull enough power to overpower all the Lances simultaneously, blowing them back.

They crash into the shield surrounding the dueling ground, lightning fritzing against them.

I hold them there. I push, and push, until—

The shield—the shield designed to hold any amount of magic from the highest level of mage duels—breaks.

The Lances fly backward into the stands around us, crashing through.

And as the shield cracks, hairline fractures all along its now visible surface as it fluctuates, magic bursts all around us.

And Nariel wastes no time.

The flow of magic is no longer out of me but into me as Nariel absorbs the magic of the huge, broken spell, reclaiming as much magic as I spent.

Taking, and giving back.

That’s how we win.

As the sheen of magic in the air clears, I look toward Destien and see that he’s no longer the only person watching in the stands.

I haven’t even looked that way since I started against the Lances, but other mages apparently felt our battle and came to watch. There are political staff, from Sarenac and elsewhere. Normal people who just wandered in to see something exciting in a world that lately has been bleak.

And higher up, there’s Evram, standing in the center of the panels of each grand magus on the Council.

Seeing me alight, still armored in lightning next to Nariel’s blazing darkness.

Seeing me in a single blow defeat their most powerful battle mages and remain standing, untouched.

I reach my hand out to Nariel, and he takes it.

Let them see.

It’s like I told the grand magus before:

When you expect to be overpowered but have time to prepare the ground, you lay a trap.

And standing there in my power with Nariel at my side, I tell the Council of Grand Magi, “We’re not going to wait for the angels to come for us. We’re bringing them —to a place we choose.“ I gesture around us at the dueling ground, where mages near and far have fought countless times. “This is our ground.”

And mine most of all.