just under a hundred yards before they began to fizzle. That meant the light-darts might give him a significant advantage in a long-distance battle, if he could hit the target. He had soon discovered that hitting a man-sized object at two hundred yards wasn’t easy.
To practice his marksmanship, he went to a special range that had only recently been set up. Will’s early efforts, even with the less destructive light-darts, had been too much for the landscaping, so he had approached several of the instructors about the possibility of setting up a range where students could practice. In years past, the idea would have been unthinkable, but since the vampire incidents, the school’s policies regarding the teaching of battle magics had loosened up. Quite a few students were now interested in practicing their skills using a variety of ranged elemental attacks.
The range itself had been set up at the northern edge of the campus, where the school’s wall merged with the larger city wall. The wall served as the ultimate backstop, but a broad earthen mound had been raised in front of it to prevent missed shots from damaging the stonework. Wooden targets of various shapes and sizes stoon in front of the berm, and replaced often, as repeated shots inevitably destroyed them. There was no shortage of scrap wood in Cerria these days, not since Ethelgren’s interrupted ritual had destroyed a small portion of the city.
Today the range was deserted, so Will began putting holes in targets at a variety of ranges. The light-darts spell took him roughly two seconds to prepare each time, but it was simple enough that he figured he could get the time down to a second, at least until he reached the point where he could reflex cast it.
There were several spells he would love to be able to reflex cast: the iron-body transformation, the light-darts spell, and the force-dome spell were at the top of his list. Currently, he was practicing so many different spells each day that he really wasn’t sure where his next breakthrough would be. But for now, I need to focus on improving my accuracy, he reminded himself.
He practiced for several hours, but he didn’t feel like he had really improved. At a hundred yards he could hit a man-sized target about three times out of four; at two hundred it was about fifty percent of the time, and that just didn’t feel good enough. Footsteps alerted him to someone’s approach, and he turned to see Elizabeth Sundy walking toward him.
“Scholar Sundy,” he said, giving a deferential nod. It was the first time he had seen her since the night she had helped him with the ritual to purge the city of vampires, and he noticed that she now had a water elemental hovering over her shoulder. “Congratulations on your elemental.”
She smiled faintly. “I see I’m not the only one who thought it might be a good idea to get some practice in.”
“Should a researcher be worried about battle magic?” he asked.
“After what we went through I’ll never be able to sleep without knowing I can defend myself.”
He nodded. “It helps that you have an elemental now. You don’t have to shorten your life to practice new skills.”
Elizabeth glanced around, making sure they were still alone. “I don’t intend to keep it. When I get older, I’ll release it.”
Will raised one brow. “Master Courtney told you?”
She nodded. “Even more importantly, if you could help us understand how you became the way you are, it would be easier to get rid of the elementals.” Looking down the range, she sighted on a target and unleashed a fire bolt.
“Wouldn’t a water attack be simpler since you have a water elemental?” he asked.
Elizabeth shrugged. “For the elemental, but the turyn that it gives me is converted to my natural turyn mixture by the heart-stone enchantment. I actually lean a little bit more toward fire, so fire spells are easier.”
That wasn’t something he had really thought about before, but it made sense, so Will filed it away along with all the other random information he had learned about magic and spellcraft. The sun was starting to get low in the sky, so he decided it would be good to return home. It was time to face the music. “I need to be going,” he told Elizabeth. “Good luck with your practice.”
Chapter 2
Will had given himself enough time to start cooking, but when he arrived home, he could already smell something on the stove.