Thread: The Dirty Part of Physics [ClockworkCadence ║ Ryees]

Sherlin watched Olivia return to her dueling circle, looking for all the world like a woman marching up to her gallows bearing a rope she had tied herself. She took up her stance readily enough, but the twitch in her fingers and the glint in her eye told him that she was much more on edge now than during her duel with Helen in the minutes prior. He did not blame her for that. Rather, he made a mental note in her favorhad she faked some sort of confidence, he would have noted her arrogant and lost his faith in her. As his thoughts lingered on her, he took a moment of deeper analysis. Promise and potential existed within all things, and she was no exception, but it had not yet been long enough to see how deep Olivia's ran. She certainly had social potential, as she was clearly intelligent and pretty, well-versed in social situations enough to be an ambassador, and clearly either driven enough to take this assignment or adaptable enough to accept being voluntold. Regardless, her presence in his class meant that whether or not she had any faith in herself, someone up the chain of command did. Sherlin knew his turnover rate. He knew the expectancy of graduates from his classes. She would need to be exceptional. Starting now. His arm flexed subtly, and the rest of him moved all at once. He stepped forward and his wand hand straightened into what in all regards looked like a thrust. His shoulders dipped, his hips extended, and his leg stepped firmly forward. These things were odd to see in context of a magical duel, but not odd in and of themselves. The oddities lied in two specific places, instead. The first oddity was his left hand. It moved in time with his thrust, extending forward and aligning with his other. It was the wand that ghosted up out of his boot and into that hand that did not align with reality. Whereas his Red Oak wand was elegant and refined, long and tapered, this one was markedly more utilitarian. Black wood, gloss-shined, with a simple ten-inch cylinder with a collar of gold that separated the handle, it was perhaps the opposite of his wand. If his was a rifle, this was a blunderbuss. The second oddity was even more noticeable, and likely the most bizarre thing any of the students had seen in their magical careers. Sherlin's mouth opened to cast his spell as it did, a deep vibrating sound came from his throat as though some aboriginal tribesman had begun a funeral dirge. At the same time, his lips and tongue moved and articulated what sounded to be normal syllables. They were only consonants, though, a garbled mish-mash of what sounded to be the start of the Reductor curse, but ticked and clicked into some other syllables. It became more clear then, that the throaty singing sounds were only vowels. The two tracks overlaid each other in a miraculously precise way so that the casual ear could actually hear both spells simultaneously C o r e nd u fcr i t o ng o! Both wands flashed. Sherlin's flared orange as a roar of flame coalesced into a tight ball and screamed from its tip as the blasting curse. The black snub-nose spat the blue-white ball of the Reductor curse in the same instant, and the proximity of Sherlin's hands saw their spell structures momentously bind . The two balls helixed around each other and merged, a particularly nasty heat and light emanating from them as they sped the distance towards Olivia.