I drew on my fire for power, drawing just enough to make it so that Gerhard's movement speed wasn't blinding. It was still fast, faster than I could move with such a small trickle, but that was the point.

Gerhard was expecting to fight me as a dragon, with a few spellcasting tricks.

He wasn't expecting to fight a mage.

Even as he rushed at me, his dragonfear exploded out of him, and it crashed over a mental shield. I could have pushed it away with fire alone, but with the help of the rite of centered mind's mental defenses, I had no need to.

He was still stronger than I was by a good bit, and would break through the mental defenses in moments, but that was fine. I hadn't been idle in the time he was moving.

I slashed down with my wand and cast rubblewall. The loose sand was the perfect material for the kinesis of the spell, sweeping together and compacting into nearly a foot of sandstone, three feet high, mere inches away from Gerhard.

His hands slammed into the top of the wall and let him vault over, but it slowed him down long enough for me to reach into my Etherius locker and cast a simple levitation cantrip.

Papers exploded from my locker, nearly two hundred different sheets, each one marked with a brightly glowing rune. Some of them landed in my hand, but the rest fountained into the air, a rain of glowing papers.

Gerhard landed on the ground and fire started sparking in his palms as he prepared to unleash a dragonfire attack. It was a risky play, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew that the papers had to be a trap, and was betting that he could burn through them before I could extinguish his fire.

If the papers had been a spell that I had been casting, even with the aid of my wand, there was a good chance that he would have been right.

"Consanguineous!"

The word was a nonsense one, picked specifically so that nobody would say it around me before the duel, but as it triggered, nearly two hundred spells exploded out into the air.

With the power of spellglyph, I couldn't target Gerhard directly using my stored spells unless he was touching them. That was far too risky, so I'd chosen spells that didn't need to be aimed.

Curses hummed in the air, tuned not specifically to Gerhard, but any elder dragon who attacked a younger dragon within their area.

It was no coincidence, of course, that I'd defined the area to cover the entire arena. Professor Caeruleum had advised me to visit the arena itself, after all.

My magic crashed into Gerhard all at once, each one's magic lingering for roughly a minute, and each one of the glyphs and spells amplified through the use of my dragonfire.

Thirteen curses of misfortune in attacking that younger dragon.

Thirteen curses of misfortune in defending from the attacks of the younger.

Thirteen curses of suffering to worsen wounds the elder dragon took in the fight.

Thirteen curses of suffering to exacerbate the elder's loss of dragonfyre.

Thirteen curses of suffering each to further the harm dealt by lightning, sunvenom, and blunt force attacks.

And last, but not least, thirteen spells that combined elements of suffering and misfortune, designed to worsen the effects of any curses he was currently under.

That one had been tricky, but needed, since I could only store so much power in each glyph, even with the use of my fire, but I'd still needed a way to punch up. Layering on the same curse seemed to have diminishing returns, especially after the thirteenth.

The spells in my hand activated at the word, their spells layering over me.

The first formed an energy barrier tuned to protect from the attacks of dragonfire. It was unlikely that he would use them, but it had only been a single sheet of protection, and best to have it than to not.

All three of the vials of blood that professor Caeruleum had donated were burnt in an instant, layering three casts of holy healing over my body.

Six shields snapped into place around me, forming a nearly seamless dome.

Greater arcane armor formed over my limbs, and was joined by shielded vitality.

Every single one was fueled by dragonfire as well, and had been layered with the technique professor Silverbark had shown me, cramming as much power in as possible.

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Storms began to bloom overhead as I stuck together as many conjured storms that I could in such a small area, fusing together into a massive, powerful, dark cloud that crackled with lightning.

Then my summoned creatures began to pour forth and fill the air.

Lesser wind elementals, water elementals, metal, and earth elementals. No fire, for obvious reasons, nor plant for the same.

Gadhar hounds materialized, shimmering with the blue light of their guardian magic, and were joined by a horde of wadjetktt from Effervesce's realm.

Gerhard stumbled back, the sandstone wall cracking behind him as his eyes flickered around, and I used the opportunity to rise into the air, standing atop my broom, and flicked my wand. Thunder rang out as bolts of lightning smashed down onto Gerhard's form. His suit burnt away, revealing the tight black clothes he wore underneath, and he snarled, exploding with a surge of his own power.

My small army of close to a hundred different creatures released their barrage, but Gerhard was undeterred. After all, he had risen to fame by shredding an army of rebels apart with his bare hands.

He put that power on display now as his fire burnt brighter than I'd seen before. Smoke poured off his form, the effect of my spells, but he kept moving. The smoke twisted into claws that surrounded his fists, and every swipe of his hands caused a summoned creature to vanish.

Gadhar were barking, forming their defenses over my army. Elemental attacks were rushing out, and Gerhard turned to dodge, but missed just fractionally. Even as they struck, though, his body just burnt brighter, as he ripped through more members of my army. There were flashes of white light as the wadjetktt released their sunvenom, burning light that cut into his form, but he was swiping out with arcs of smoke that cut them in half.

For each he cut down, a dozen got their attacks in, and his form was growing battered. I was chanting, staff in hand, while whipping my wand down and bringing the lightning at him. Air elementals helped guide and empower the strikes, water elementals covered him in mist to diffuse it, and metal elementals shot spikes into his skin to form contact points.

The lightning coursed through him, leaving him burnt, but his body exploded with more smoke. The smoke itself formed into slashing blades, rushing out and cutting into my army, and the next thing I knew, Gerhard was manipulating a stumble into a full powered leap, coming even with me in the air.

His fist lashed out, covered in smokey claws, but I continued my chant undeterred, spinning my shields, layering them together to stop the attack.

Even through my dragonfire enhanced defenses, each swipe ripped through two layers of shielding, and I angled my broom, shooting backwards as he fell. He landed awkwardly, opening him up for the combined blasts of elemental attacks from my storms and summons, and smoke erupted off his form, cutting into more of the army, barely being turned aside by the protective power of my gadhar.

I was sweating as I channeled the full wrath of an empowered storm, conjured more shields – weaker this time – and chanted, but Gerhard's wounds were wracking up, my curses ensuring that no matter how strong he was, his strength faded much faster than he was used to.

I finished my spell even as he leapt into the air, and flooded it with dragonfire. A knot of water twisted into existence, then ripped forward, slamming into his chest. He was sent flying back as blood rippled from his body, and more smoke billowed.

Our breed of dragon wasn't the most suited to self-healing, so the amount of power he was expending had to be absolutely enormous.

I didn't stop, thrusting my wand out. Even as we unleashed lightning, sunfire, stone, metal, water, and air, I cast arcane missile and infused each of my four casts with dragonfire. Ballista sized bolts of force streaked toward him, pounding him into the sand.

A pillar of white-hot fire exploded into the sky, and I sucked in a breath of it to restore my own partially diminished reserves.

That turned out to be a mistake. I'd gotten overconfident, absorbing power from the bloodline magic professor, from the ember-roc, and from the results of Jackson's spells, and acted almost on instinct.

But there was a reason dragons didn't use fire against one another. Not only could we all consume fire, but a skilled flame manipulator could turn it against someone.

Pain rippled through my body as flames began to boil out of my nose, ears, and eyes. It would have been enough to kill an ordinary human in an instant, and even with my draconic nature, it would have been the kind of blow that might have turned the momentum of the battle in Gerhard's favor.

If not for the dampening effects of the energy barrier permeating the air around me in a sphere.

Even with the spell's magic, it was still painful, not something I would have wanted to experience, but it wasn't a debilitating blow.

The flames rushed back to Gerhard, who was standing, panting, and lashing out with flaming crescents of smoke and fire, blowing apart my army even as the air elementals worked to disperse the smoke blades, water to extinguish the fire, and the gadhar to turn them aside with blue protective magic.

As the fire made its way back into Gerhard, I reached within myself and felt that he'd stolen the lion's share of my own fire, more than half of my total reserve. I reached out to spike it in him, pulling it back into me, but even with his control slipshod due to the curses, he was able to crush the attempt with raw might.

That was fine. I drew on my familiar compact – not the one with Orla, who was already out with the other hounds, but with Seren. His fire flowed into me, concentrating and focusing to refuel my own.

Gerhard's eyes locked onto me as he barely turned aside a torrent of sunvenom, and he frowned, then slammed his feet into the sand and blasted into the air on a wave of fire, hands covered in smoke and extended for my throat.

I swept my wand down and cast aquatic torrent again, packing in the fire that Seren had donated to me. Using my wand, rather than my staff, the spell wasn't quite as powerful as the previous one, but it was still more than enough.

The water lanced out, moving faster than even an arcane missile. Gerhard twisted, trying to dodge, but my spell connected and threw him backwards. The moment he hit the ground, I unleashed another barrage of lightning, my summons releasing their own attacks. I tossed a handful of coins up, and they flew through the air, slamming into his form.

As the barrage ended, there was a cloud of sand and ash in the air.

I didn't wait for him to stand again. I brought down more lightning, and had my summons attack again.

Three more times, I released waves of power, until Gerhard's scent vanished from my nose. I let out a relieved sigh and lowered my wand.

I had done it. Despite the fact that he had far more fire than I had, despite the fact that his flame was denser than my already dense bloodline, and despite the fact that nearly two-thirds of my conjured army had been dispelled by his attacks.

I'd done it.

I had won.

Then a fist crashed through my shields.

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