Lord Elal smirked. “Have you?” he retorted. “They’re not terribly useful magics, after all.”

“Useful enough for my purposes,” Gabriel replied, mentally assembling his own arsenal. “Not that I’d expect an outsider like you to understand.”

Lord Elal laughed heartily at that. Gesturing widely to the dome, he took on a condescending tone. “Young wizard, you are the outsider. And you have no idea what you have—or should I say, had—here. A tool like this is wasted on an uneducated buffoon. In a way, I’m doing you a favor by taking it over and tuning it to my own magic. If you’d attempted anything more than your trifling games, you could have released uncontrolled magics that would leave a bottomless pit where this lake and manse once sat. You, my dear boy, are like a monkey that discovered a magic sword: you’re more likely to kill yourself with it than make any use of it.”

“Is that so?” Gabriel followed Elal’s slight turning, keeping him squarely before him, edging slightly closer. “I think I’ll take my chances. You will leave, immediately.”

“Or what?” Lord Elal looked terribly amused. “I don’t take orders from low-level rogue wizards who wouldn’t qualify to be an apprentice anywhere in the Convocation.” He pretended to glance at the nearest window, turning ever so slightly with the movement, and Gabriel followed.

“I promised your daughter I wouldn’t kill you,” Gabriel replied easily, “but not that I wouldn’t make you suffer. Leave now, and you’ll escape with your limbs intact.”

Lord Elal produced a serene smile. “Oh, you really are a naïve fool. Pitiful, really. If you’d been identified as a lad, brought to the Convocation for training, we might’ve made a wizard of you. As it is, you’re the magical equivalent of a babbling idiot, blundering about and making fatal errors.”

“Final warning,” Gabriel said. “Leave, or I start carving pieces off you.”

Elal chuckled, folding his hands together. “Such a commoner that you think we’ll fight with blades.” He sobered abruptly, which was all the warning Gabriel got. A spirit manifested inside Gabriel’s reach, a suddenly physical blade slicing down his chest. With a snarl, Gabriel flung a hail of silver at Elal, breaking his concentration so the spirit vanished. Blood ran hot down his skin.

“An entertaining start,” Lord Elal declared, unbothered, the air around him whirling with tiny spirits deflecting the silver. “Too bad the ending will come so soon.”

A whirlwind of spirits surrounded him, slashing with blades that appeared and vanished with the speed of thought. Others sought to blind him, to thrust into his mouth and nose and smother him. But he’d faced fighters wilier than these, puppeted as they were, and didn’t fall for the trick of trying to fight them one by one. Instead he focused on the source, pulling water from outside the dome and surrounding Elal in a bubble of it.

The spirits disappeared as suddenly as they’d attacked, leaving Lord Elal flailing in the bubble of water. A swarm of water elementals arrived, piercing the surface tension of Gabriel’s watery creation, popping it so water abruptly gushed over the floor. Elal slipped a little as his feet hit the floor, but his wizard-black eyes held fury. His magic snapped out, and fire elementals leapt at Gabriel, air elementals spinning like tiny dervishes, fanning the flames that set fire to his hair and clothing.