Where in the world did these people get a hold of Aldric’s old experiments?

The remaining assassin dashed over to the now charred corpse of his less lucky comrade. Scooping up the mace with his free hand, he swung it towards and then through the earth pillar Zasia was still balanced on. The mace passed through as if the pillar was made of sand. She barely had time to use wind magic to help her land safely on the ground before she was already gliding backwards, dodging the assassin as he came in with his mace again.

He swung at her without technique or grace, but it would only take being grazed by the weapon for Zasia to be seriously injured. If she remembered correctly, this mace did something to mana that made it dangerous to mages, but she didn’t have time to dig through her memories.

That shield was going to be the actual issue. It absorbed spells and converted them back into raw mana, then dispersed it into the air. It had a fatal flaw, and Zasia was kicking herself for not remembering what that was. If Aldric didn’t go on long-winded tangents in his explanations, then maybe she would—

The mace whistling mere inches from her nose brought her back to the fight. She conjured an earth wall to gain space, but the assassin simply bashed through these just like they had the pillar, and trying to conjure the earth around the attacker didn’t seem to work. She tried buffeting them with wind, but that damned shield kept absorbing all of it. Setting fire to the ground resulted in the same thing, and creating a sheet of ice on the ground was only bashed to pieces by the mace.

Zasia was a conjurer, a long-range fighter by nature. Most of her spells kept attackers at bay long enough for her to incinerate them. Any normal fighter would have been dead long before they ever drew a weapon, much less attacked her with it. Enchanted weapons, however, were a sorcerer’s answer to a conjurer’s range.

No matter what she tried, the assassin was getting closer and closer with their attacks. Zasia briefly mused that wearing a pretty dress and professor’s robes was not conducive to combat. Her outfit was in tatters, and her hair hung loosely about her face as she dashed back and forth. She couldn’t keep this up forever.

Pulling deep on her mana well, she started throwing out any and every spell she could think of, trying to overwhelm her attacker with sheer force. While they were busy absorbing fire with their shield, a chunk of earth bigger than Zasia herself flew towards them like a bull. Even as the earth disintegrated into sand against the shield, the force was still enough to knock her attacker back several steps.