You strike.

…

(Laura! howls Walden soundlessly, as the night erupts in a gout of flame.)

In the neutrally decorated halls of Universal House, under beloved posters and favourite blankets brought from home, occasionally with surreptitious contraband (technology, vape pens) hidden under the mattress, the children of Chetwood School are asleep. But not for long; at least, not if their dorm windows face the back of the building, because the curtains are cheap fabric, and not always well lined.

You forgot; Walden forgot. Laura is no lifetime scholar, no master-magician. But she is good. She is very, very good.

The pale multilayered Marshal shield glows clearer and brighter than it did last time you saw it, in October. Laura stands beneath it unharmed by your dreadful blast of fire. She has been working hard on academic magic. Few Marshals take the discipline seriously as something they could use. But Laura saw an unstoppable higher demon fall to a single magician’s mastery and thought: What can I get out of this? What can I learn?

She had to fight tooth and nail to have her evening short course counted as prof dev. Like many children you have known, she finds the theoretical underpinnings of magic dull. But an adult who sets out to learn something has a power that children usually lack: the power to see past boredom. Laura also finds the gym pretty dull. She doesn’t let that stop her. When you put the work in, you get the rewards.

So here are the rewards of daily study, daily practice, and twice-weekly lab sessions under the aging but expert eye of a sharp critic:

Laura was already a reasonably powerful practitioner. That power has grown.

She was fast. Now she is faster.

She was sloppy. Not by Marshal standards—in fact, by Marshal standards she was unusually careful—but Walden certainly noticed. If you use more power than you need, you never need to think twice about the result. Laura did not enjoy being forced to slow down in those lab sessions, but she did it. Then she began to see why she was doing it. After that, she retaught herself basic Marshal combat spells, going slower than she did even as a new recruit, watching a mirror, filming herself and watching the videos. After the first month she could see the errors in magical form. By the second month she was starting to correct them. Six months in, she has grown precise; and as precision grew, the speed came back.

She is still not quite as crisp as you are. Six months of practice does not achieve the same effortless unconscious competence as two decades of obsession. But you were expecting to overwhelm her, to take advantage of the holes and the carelessness and the rapid overexpenditure of power you can see in Walden’s memories. Instead you will have to work for this. Laura Kenning is not a match for you—you are already sure of that. But she is a substantial challenge.