Chapter 13: Trouble sleeping

Alise sat on her bed, for the first time since she got involved in all this she was concerned. She had gone along with Dalvin to help convince Sarah to stay, but had not foreseen that what he would say to convince her brought out doubts in her own heart. She had always seen herself as a good guy and anyone who might come after the Eye as a villain, she would defeat them and laugh triumphantly. What she did not imagine was that entire worlds might send armies, tens of billions of soldiers. The mere thought of it was beyond her ability to reason, but when she imagined herself laying waste to people by the tens of thousands in single blows, she saw a bloodstained villain not a hero. The only answer she could come to was that they needed to avoid that outcome by any means necessary. Perhaps if they made a peaceful world that wouldn't happen, after all it wasn't until that other guy did some bad stuff that other planets got directly involved. But what if there was no choice, what if the hatred for anyone with the Eye was so great it was unavoidable. Would she be able to do it, or could they just keep running? She stretched out on her bed and let out a deep sigh, her brain hurt. There was no point in her thinking about this stuff, best to leave it to the pros. Yup that settled it, thinking just simply wasn't her job. I will be me, and I always just deal with it as it comes. If the universe put a bloody massacre on her plate, she would just deal with it then. She sat back up and decided to slip back into her training clothes. She really didn't feel like sleeping, that was happening more and more lately. Dalvin had said it was a side effect of the enhancement and not to worry, but to be honest she kind of missed sleeping. Guess that old saying that you don't know what you have until it is gone, was pretty true. She left the dormitory area and headed for the training grounds, everyone else lights were out, they were probably fast asleep by now. In the past few weeks after everyone decided to stay they had all been training very hard, and without the benefit of the body she had. Dalvin was fine tuning the argumentation runes so that it would result in a more standard enhancement. Plus there was a few special things he was working on for her and the others, but he was making steady progress. He had estimated about another week before the others could get an enhancement. As she thought about these things she had arrived at the training area, and Dalvin was there. He seemed to be working on runes for something and was deep in concentration. She walked over to him, "So what are you up to?", he glanced at her,"Just working on some of the augmentations you asked for, you can't sleep again?" She nodded,"Yea, so I was gonna mess around with some spells I have been thinking of." He set his tools down,"I have been so busy I haven't seen much of your progress, so have you got used to making air and water without a guidance device?" She laughed,"Of course silly, also earth and steel. The past few days I have been messing around with light." His eyes widened in shock,"So much already, why steel there are better metals, and what do you mean by light?" She slid on her training gloves with the stones in them,"Well steel responds best for me, mabey because its what I'm most familiar with. As far as light let me show you." She walked over to one of the practice areas and motioned for him to follow. Dalvin walked over and stood across from her. "Ok so none of these will hurt you so don't worry about having to protect yourself. Well I guess I should say I wont hurt you with any of them. As all of my spells are super deadly. Ok ready for the first one?" Dalvin nodded slowly as if unsure he should actually agree. Alise focused on the area around Dalvin's head, after being in the stealth barrier a few times she had come up with this attack. She stretched out her hand towards him,"Muddle!", his head vanished, at least it looked that way, but she had simply diverted all light and sound from it. So right now his head was in a stealth barrier, without the hole in it he would be effectively blind and deaf. She released the effect,"What do you think?", he rubbed his eyes,"That is a very clever use for cloaking. It would take me about ten seconds to undo it, a fatal amount of time. Have you practiced countering it?" She waved dismissively,"I had Eric use the device you gave him on me. I can break it before it forms, it is best used in a combo, the effect is too obvious by itself. Ok here is the next one." She formed an orb of water in front of her, then she began bending light again. The orb began multiplying as her mirrors of light began snapping into place,"Illusion Blast!" she sent the orb and all its mirrored copies flying at Dalvin in a zigzag pattern, he raised a hand instinctively to protect himself and began popping the illusions like bubbles, but by simply twisting the light she made the illusions multiply faster than he could dispel them. He was swarmed by them, but she let the real one land harmlessly off to the side and let the light go back to normal. The illusions vanished and Dalvin let out a sigh of relief," Wow, without a really keen source sense that could really waste an opponents defenses." She puffed out her chest in pride," And I haven't got it down yet but I have been working on putting some moisture in the air of the illusions to make it even harder to tell. Ok for this next one I need you to fight back, it will be hand-to-hand combat ok?" Dalvin looked a little worried but assumed a combat stance. Alise focused and began applying three effects at the same time, she had to do it all at once or the cast time would be to long. She was preparing a mirror over the whole practice ring, freeing herself from gravity. And preparing a movement spell. Her feet raised off the ground ,"Shadow clone!" dozens of Alises' sprung up in a ring around Dalvin and the air currents she made began spinning them and her in a circle around him. Now for the hard part, she closed in and all her mirror clones mimicked her actions. She sprung forward into a kick and as she did she stiffened the air around all the feet of her clones and had the swirling air currents propel the hardened air forward. Dalvin had figured out which one was her and blocked her kick but all the shadow kicks landed, and he winced. She backed off and kept spinning, then twisted the light again. Like blinking lights her and her clones began vanishing and reappearing. She was picking which mirrors to turn on and off randomly to try to confuse him on which one was her. Then she began flexing the mirrors making one single image sway towards him, she threw a punch so the image would mimic it and gave it the same air attack as before. Dalvin blocked it, but she began repeating the process in rapid succession. Several blows landed on Dalvin before he figured out her trick. He touched his stone and the mirrors broke, Alise dispelled the other effects as well. He was breathing hard,"It seems my prediction was right, your creativity is turning out to be a defining asset.Also, your control has improved by a vast amount. From what I saw as my time as a solider you are on par with a warrior.","Is that good?", he nodded,"Yea, that's someone with at least two years training. On my world combat source users are classified as warrior, knight then champion. The ten strongest champions are given titles and act as the generals for the whole army. Warriors as I said have two years of combat training, knights have served for at least twenty years. A champion title is given after a hundred years. So if you keep converting years into months you will exceed every possible expectation I had. Of course that is nearly impossible", he gave her a smile. She shook her head,"Just who do you think you're dealing with. I told you I'm a prodigy, I will become the greatest sorceress the universe has ever seen." She tilted back her head and let out a huge fake laugh,"Bwahahahahaha"