Isabel’s sword crashed through the air. She shifted from blow to blow in a series of intensifying strikes. Magic trickled into her blade and swam in her movements, constrained just as Noah had requested.

Every slash Isabel made came faster and stronger than the previous. Even though she was restraining the amount of power she was using, Noah’s domain tingled as her body started to pull more magic.

He didn’t stop her. She was using a small enough amount that interfering here would have been pointless, and something told Noah that her pattern wasn’t going to physically allow her to keep using the same amount of power the entire way through.

Its entire purpose was to encapsulate a ramping avalanche. It started light and grew stronger with every attack until it overwhelmed her opponent – or she ran out of energy to fight with.

I can’t let her get that deep into it, obviously, but she’s still within the acceptable range of runic power where the risk is minimal as long as she maintains concentration.

Noah shifted out of the way of the sword as it passed by his face. Her blows were starting to accelerate even more now. Aside from using wind magic to fling himself around, he didn’t have any way to accelerate his reaction speed, and Isabel’s attacks were getting close enough to the point where he couldn’t just mess around anymore.

The magic prickling Noah’s domain grew stronger still. Isabel was starting to approach the upper limits of what was safe. Her sword rose and fell again and again, a relentless march of ramping power and speed.

If he hadn’t spent so much time in other fights, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to keep letting Isabel swing at him without some form of retaliation to slow her. But, even with the pattern empowering her attacks, Noah still had far more experience with close calls.

The sword whistled past his nose, passing a hairs’ width from it. Isabel jaw clenched in concentration, but she didn’t get time for another attack. Noah released his hold on his domain and let it swirl out in full force.

Oppressive magic around Isabel’s body and crushed her pattern. Her eyes widened in surprise but, instead of getting caught off guard or stumbling, she finished her blow to avoid shattering the pattern.

A grin passed over Noah’s features. That was the level of concentration he’d been speaking of. Even though the magic had randomly disappeared, Isabel knew her pattern so well that even such a jarring shift didn’t make her drop it.

That’s a really good sign for her mastering and using Formations in the future. Definitely at Alexandra’s level. Maybe even a bit better in a few ways. They both really felt like they understood their patterns perfectly, but Isabel was really one with the pattern.

“What happened?” Isabel asked, pausing to catch her breath as she squinted at her sword. “I was doing it! I could feel the pattern activating. Where’d my magic go? I didn’t run out.”

“I stopped it,” Noah said with a chuckle. “You were definitely doing great. One of the best today, actually.”

“You stopped–” Isabel’s confusion shifted to shock. Then her eyes narrowed. “You’re Rank 4.”

“Surprise.”

“How is it that you went from Rank 1 to Rank 4 so quickly? I know the Linwicks aren’t feeding you runes,” Isabel said as she shook her head in disbelief. “Are you going to teach us that too?”

“If I ever find a way to, yes. For now, just be satisfied with knowing that your professor is badass.”

“And very humble.” Isabel let out a dry laugh and sheathed her sword. “Is that the reason you were having us do this alone?”

Noah coughed into a fist. “It may have been a portion of it. I didn’t want you comparing yourselves to each other or getting distracted by how things went. I wasn’t lying about how important the focus bit was. If you had an audience, things may have been different. A portion of you would be thinking about the others and how things were going.”

“That’s probably true,” Isabel admitted. She brushed a few strands of hair away from her face and threw a glance over the edge of the plateau in the distance before returning her attention to Noah. “So… I did well?”

“I’d say so. Fantastic control of your pattern, especially at the end there.” Noah gave her a thumbs up. “That’s exactly what I was hoping to see. Don’t let that get to your head, mind you. It only takes one tiny mistake to go boom.”

“When you say boom, do you mean that literally?” Isabel asked.

“Very.”

“Have you…”

“Yes. A lot.”Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Isabel paled. She and Todd were the only students that were aware of his inability to die, and that made his warnings considerably more threatening. He was pretty sure telling the others would have been great motivation to keep them focused, but the secret was a little too significant to share for such an unimportant reason.

My name and some of Sunder’s powers are already a huge risk, but my immortality is too much to share with anyone that doesn’t absolutely have to know about it.

“Don’t let that dissuade you,” Noah said, pulling his attention back to Isabel before she could start getting too worried about pursuing Formations. “It means that I’ve stumbled into most of the mistakes for you. As long as you don’t go too far on your own, it’ll be relatively safe.”

“Relatively?” Isabel cleared her throat. “Is that relatively on your scale or a normal person’s scale?”

“Somewhere in between. You don’t have to do more if you aren’t comfortable with it. I won’t force you.”

“Oh, no. That wasn’t at all what I meant.” Isabel hurriedly shook her head. “There’s no way in the world I’m giving up. I was just trying to figure out exactly how much risk there was. I want to get stronger. Risk was always going to be a part of that. It has been ever since you started teaching Todd and I.”

“Maybe a bit too much, eh?” Noah thought back to his initial teaching strategies with the Slashers and other monkeys in the Scorched Acres. He wasn’t sure how many moral and ethical rules he’d broken in their training there.

“Hey, it worked. We’re alive. Does anything else matter?”

“Yes,” Noah said. “But that’s a topic for another time. Let’s get on to the more important parts so we don’t run out of time. You had great control over your pattern and it was really working well together with your magic. It does have one large, glaring weakness. Do you know what it is?”

Isabel’s brow furrowed for a second and she chewed the insides of her cheeks in thought. “The amount of energy it needs? I wasn’t paying all that much attention to the magic aside from trying to keep myself from pulling too much, but I feel like I used more than I was planning to.”

Noah nodded. “Exactly. To be completely accurate, I’d say the aspect you need to be aware of is that your pattern ramps up the power you use really aggressively. It starts off small, but just by the nature of what it is, it quickly starts pulling more and more. That’s good if you’re trying to overwhelm someone–”

“And bad if I’m trying to not blow myself up in the process,” Isabel finished. She pursed her lips. “Is there anything I can do about it to make training safer?”

“No,” Noah said with a shake of his head. “Not unless you want to change your pattern. Remember that your magic follows it. You can’t have something that embodies a growing landslide if you don’t feed more power into it.”

“Oh, yeah. I suppose that makes sense,” Isabel said. She drummed her fingers on the hilt of her sword and let out a huff. “I know where this is going. I can’t practice at all on my own, can I?”

“Not if you like your body in one piece,” Noah said. “Unless you’ve got someone with a domain that can shut your magic off the instant something goes wrong in your pattern, it’s far too risky.”

“Well, damn.” Isabel sighed, then gave him a nod. “I can’t say it’s that much of a surprise. I’ll hold off on trying anything when we aren’t in class. I should still be fine to continue practicing my pattern, right?”

“Yep. There’s still a good bit to work on there as well, don’t you worry. You aren’t going to be sitting around and twiddling your thumbs as you wait for class. The next thing you should really focus on is what exactly your magic is bringing to the table when you infuse your pattern with it.”

“Kind of like intention when combining Runes?”

“Pretty much exactly that. You have to figure out what it is that the magic is actually helping you with. Sticking power into a pattern will make it stronger, but if you don’t have direction, it might not be as useful as it could be.”

Isabel tilted her head to the side, nodding along with Noah’s words. He gave her a few seconds to think before continuing.

“You don’t have to come up with an answer now. I’m still working on my own Pattern. I don’t know if it’s something that you ever truly master. We just keep getting better.”

“Can I see yours?” Isabel asked. “Maybe it would give me some inspiration. It’s your violin, right?”

“Music, actually, but the violin is the medium that I use. The pattern is the music itself. And I’ve never been one to turn down a song request.”

The violin materialized in Noah’s hands and he laid the bow against it. Energetic notes sprang forth as he slipped into a song. As tempting as it was to fully sink into the music, there were still more things he had to handle. Noah didn’t let himself get carried off and only played for a few minutes before bringing it to a close.

“Helpful?” Noah asked.

“Not as much as I’d hoped, but it was really nice to listen to,” Isabel admitted sheepishly. “I think the pattern is so different from mine that it’s hard to draw inspiration. I logically know there’s pattern in what you were doing, but I just couldn’t see it.”

Noah dismissed the violin and clapped Isabel on the shoulder. “You’ll get there. It’s equal parts practice and not blowing yourself up. One is harder than the other. You might get some more inspiration during our next class when we’re all practicing patterns together, but feel free to talk to the other students before then to get ideas. Just don’t–”

“Do anything,” Isabel finished with a smile. “I know. I won’t.”

“Great,” Noah said. “Good job today, then. Unless you’ve got any more questions, we can head back and let you rejoin the others while I see where James stands.”

“Nothing pressing. I’m good to go,” Isabel said. She hesitated for a second. “I really want to see what James’ pattern does when he’s got magic in it.”

“Me too,” Noah said with a laugh. “But you’re going to have to wait until next class or until he tells you. James and Lee have really interesting patterns. If they come into fruition… well, only time will tell.”

Isabel nodded absently. Noah could tell her mind had already moved on to thinking on how she could improve her own pattern. He recognized the lost, distracted expression on her features from the one that had graced his own so many times.

They got onto the flying sword and Noah waited for an extra second to make sure Isabel had actually remembered to hold onto him before activating it. They rose into the air and shot back off to rejoin the others.

Only one more student left to test today. Out of everyone, you might be the biggest enigma. Revin’s student… anybody that can survive getting taught by that guy is going to be interesting.

Let’s see just what that laziness of yours can accomplish, James.