“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked Kierra as she stepped onto the stage and stood in front of the other girls.

  “Having second thoughts?” Henry retorted, who was hovering in the air, twenty feet from the ground.

  “I was being considerate towards you, dragon. You will regret underestimating us. You will regret underestimating me.”

  “Then, make me regret.”

  “As you wish,” Kierra said and cpped her hands together, before thrusting an arm out with the palm spyed open. A magic circle appeared in front of her open palm. Magic bolts of energy shot out from the circle in a burst, each was as rge as a human’s head.

  The magic bolts flew towards Henry like a volley of missiles. He conjured shields, yered on top of one another. As the magic bolts bombarded his shield, Kierra was already preparing another spell.

  Kierra spyed both of her arms out. Energy gathered around her palms.

  Henry felt his hair standing up. The next spell was dangerous. He had to stop it. He worked his wings and flew towards the Magus.

  “Too te,” Kierra said and unleashed the magic that converged in her hands. Twin torrents of magic beams bst towards Henry.

  “Oh, shit.” Henry quickly raised his Spell Barriers, but each yer was swiftly destroyed and the beams continued travelling towards him. “Oh, damn!” He abandoned the notion of defending and resorted to dodging. He moved just in time to let the beams streak past him harmlessly.

  Kierra smirked and moved her hands. The persisting beams moved towards Henry.

  “What the fuck? This is a fucking ser!”

  “Laser? Is that what this is in your native tongue?”

  Henry didn’t have the leisure to ponder Kierra’s retort. He was busy dodging the ser. Thankfully, the ser beams didn’t st forever. When the beams died out, Henry charged at Kierra.

  A block of floating wall of darkness rose in Henry’s path, preventing his straight dash to Kierra. Instead of punching through the shadows, Henry turned around.

  Rayne flinched with an astonished expression as she swung her fist.

  Henry smiled and caught her bare fist. “I told you. You have to stop aiming for my six.”

  Then, Rayne’s look of confusion turned into a sneer.

  Henry frowned. “Oh, you clever little—” Before he could finish, something wrapped around his leg and pulled him to the ground. He positioned himself upright just as he hit the ground. He avoided a face-first nding.

  Ani came charging at him. Her sword was glowing blue with energy.

  “Dangerous,” Henry muttered. Yet, he didn’t try to dodge. Instead, he raised his arm in defence as Ani brought her sword down on him. He felt a sharp, hot pang of pain on his forearm. “Ouch.”

  “Why didn’t you dodge!?” Ani excimed in a panic. “Do you not know you will be hurt?” Henry told her he could roughly sense if something would truly wound him or simply give him a little bit of hurt. She thought he would avoid her bde, which was imbued with a spell by Kierra.

  “I do know. I just wanted to know how deeply it can wound me.”

  “That was very reckless of you.”

  “Better now than ter. What better time to gauge my limits than now?”

  “Gauge this!”

  Henry sidestepped as Rayne went streaking past him. “That would have hurt a lot.”

  “That was the idea.” Rayne was quick to recover her composure. Within arm’s reach, she threw punch after punch at Henry.

  “I should put you in your pce tonight,” Henry said and dodged the punches by retreating his steps, until his retreat was cut off by a wall of dirt that was in his path of retreat.

  “Got you now!”

  Henry dropped to the ground as Rayne’s fist rammed into the wall behind him. He felt the explosion of the punch and the pieces of debris flying off and hitting him. Henry quickly rose back to his feet and tried to grab Rayne, but she was yanked out of his reach by shadows.

  Sarynn had made her way to Henry’s blind spot before he knew it.

  Henry turned around just in time to match Sarynn’s breath attack with his own. The victor was quick to be known. It was, of course, Henry. However, winning the scuffle was not Sarynn’s intention. Feeling something squirming beneath his feet, he looked down to see his shadows whirling like a pool of living slime. Small tendrils of shadows crawled up from his shadow and onto him. As he tried to shake those tendrils off, Ani and Rayne lunged at him. “So, this is your pn?”

  “And what of it?” Rayne challenged as she swung her foot.

  Henry blocked the kick, but the shadow tendrils crawled up to his knees.

  Ani let loose a flurry of attacks.

  Henry dodged them all, but the shadow tendrils had wrapped themselves around his waist. “This is annoying.” He brandished his wings, and the winds blew Rayne and Ani away, along with the shadows that were coiling around him. As he was about to take flight, a gust of wind rained down on him from above. Though it was only wind, it felt heavy and solid. It was pressing him down, preventing him from taking flight.

  From a distance, Sarynn had picked up a rge rock with her tail. She twirled and flung the rock at him.

  Henry destroyed the rock with a firebolt. From the smoke and dust of the exploded rock, Rayne shot out of it. Henry jerked his back, narrowly avoiding her kick. “Always aiming for the obscured moment. Is this still the same Rayne that I know?”

  “Fighting you straight-on is a fool’s errand. Even with all these tricks, I still can’t nd a single hit.”

  “Going to give up?”

  “As if,” Rayne scoffed. “I was just hoping to try my luck to get you myself, but it seems that I have to leave that honour for our new sister.”

  “New sister?”

  Rayne merely smiled instead of answering. She then leapt away from Henry.

  “What was that about?” As Henry was wondering, he saw Sarynn darting towards him at full speed. He knew she was fast, but not this fast. He wondered if she had been hiding her true abilities from him. Also, she was never one to fight within melee range.

  The tattoos on his body glowed radiantly, and he beat his wings once more, against the pressure holding him down. The solid wind shook against his might, and after some struggle, the wind was dispersed. Henry took flight, just as Sarynn caught up to him. She coiled around him with her serpentine body, following him into the air. He had no choice but to assume his true form. If he didn't, he would be smothered. His body mass and form turned into one that befit a dragon in the truest sense.

  Sarynn tightened her constriction around Henry’s new size. “You are not getting away, love.”

  “Are you sure?” Henry questioned. Though Sarynn was physically stronger than all the other girls, she was still weaker than Henry.

  “Yes, very. Thanks to our new sister.”

  “Again, new sister? Who’s that?”

  Suddenly, Sarynn’s entire body was glowing a faint, soft blue. “Who else, but our dear, lovely Magus?”

  Henry tried breaking out, but Sarynn’s constriction was stronger than he expected. It was stronger than usual. Sarynn’s strength and speed had been enhanced by Kierra’s spell.

  “You can’t break out, not unless you want to hurt me badly. You won’t do that, will you, dear?”

  “There are other ways of getting out of a bind,” Henry said and retook his human form, shrinking down enough to escape the constriction. He slipped out of her hold and dropped to the ground. He raised his gaze immediately. Someone was waiting for him.

  Ani came out of nowhere with her sword swinging. Evidently, she had been waiting for this moment.

  Henry raised his arm, yered with his Spell Barriers. He parried the first blow, but Ani was insistent. She pressed on and unched another blow.

  Ani’s sword broke through all the barriers, but stopped at his skin. The barriers had did their job to soften the blow enough to not let the bde cut into his skin.

  As Henry was about to fend Ani off with his other hand, shadows appeared from below and restrained his arm.

  “Don’t forget about me, Henry,” Yu giggled.

  “How could I?” Henry responded with a smile. As he was about to yank himself free of the shadows, Rayne came up from behind, aiming for his feet. “Again, going for my back!”

  “Why would I ever vainly attack from the front if I can help it?” She slid and swept her feet and Henry’s own.

  Henry had to jump. If his bance was broken, he would not be able to defend himself. However, when he jumped, he saw Kierra grinning. She was aiming for this moment. She was conjuring a spell. The spell felt familiar, to some degree. It felt simir to the time just before, when his fmes were extinguished by her.

  “You’re finished!” Kierra bellowed and fired the spell she had been preparing. It was a magic projectile, imbued with another spell; the spell to extinguish his fmes.

  “...Well, my hands are forced,” Henry muttered. His fmes were not only his trump card. With a calm expression and voice, he uttered “Gravity.”

  In an instance, the shadows around his right arm disperse in a flick. Ani was pushed away. Rayne was thrown off her feet. The magic projectile shattered upon reaching within a few feet of Henry. It wasn’t just the girls and the spell; the ground around him also fractured radially and broke off from the foundation.

  “What in the god’s name…” Kierra gasped in awe and surprise. She realised she had severely underestimated Henry. She had presumed his fmes were the sole concern in terms of his ability repository. She couldn’t be more wrong.

  In the blink of an eye, Henry appeared in front of Kierra,

  The magus tried to respond with a spell, but Henry caught her hand and threw to the ground. “You lose, again.”

  If this were Rayne, she would have looked away and clicked her tongue with a grimace. However, Kierra wasn’t so dishonest. The two were simir in many aspects, but not in this particur aspect. She met Henry’s fierce and dominating gaze with a sweet smile. “I sure did. You won, dragon.”

  “Strange, it doesn’t feel like I have won.”

  “Because you haven’t,” Kierra said and twisted her hand, reversing Henry’s grip on her. She gripped his hand tightly and pulled him to the ground.

  “Son of a—!”

  “So naive,” Kierra tittered.

  Henry could easily yank his arm free, but that little action still cost him a second. When he did pull his arm free, Ani was, once again, upon him. He dodged her ssh and swatted her sword out of her hands.

  Ani was disarmed. Instead of backing away, Ani threw herself at Henry, and she tched onto him by hugging his right arm tightly.

  Kierra rose from the ground and hugged his other arm.

  From in front, Rayne came and took a swipe at Henry’s head with a kick.

  Henry dodged the kick by simply moving his head a little.

  Rayne only grinned and leapt. She wrapped her legs around his head and flipped. Using the momentum, she lifted Henry off the ground as the other two let go of his arms. She then swung him through the air and smmed him back to the ground.

  Before Henry could scramble to his feet, tendrils of shadows erupted around him and wrapped him up, tching him to the ground with his arms and feet bound. He could break free of his binds, but it would take him a few seconds. It was more than enough time for Rayne to hit his head, which she did.

  Rayne knelt down beside Henry, and threw her fist— only to stop just right before reaching his face. She loosened her fist and flicked his forehead. “You lose.”

  Henry sighed with a wry smile, letting his head y completely on the ground. “I supposed I have.”