Chapter 768: Use It... Use Your Magic
Gabby came at Liam harder than before, and this time, she stopped trying to test him in simple straight lines.
Her flames changed first. Instead of only wrapping around her fists and legs, they began to pulse in shorter, sharper bursts along her limbs, flaring and tightening in controlled intervals that made each movement look like it had two beats instead of one.
Fire flashed around her right hand as she threw a high feint toward Liam’s face, but before the flame even reached its full shape, air compressed beneath her left foot and snapped her body sideways, turning the feint into a fast, low entry toward his ribs.
Liam shifted back, but Gabby did not follow in the same line. She kicked off the floor with a burst of wind, spun with her right leg cutting upward in a flame-coated arc, and used the rotation to send a short crescent of fire across the space between them.
Liam leaned beneath the kick, turned his shoulder away from the crescent, and let the heat pass close enough to warm the side of his neck. His foot slid across the platform as he gave ground, not retreating wildly, but stepping with controlled precision, each movement just enough to avoid the next impact.
Gabby did not let the distance remain open. She landed, pressed both palms toward the floor, and released a sudden blast of air behind herself that launched her forward again, flames streaking from her arms as she crossed the gap like an arrow released from a bow.
’Use your affinity,’ Gabby thought, her teeth pressing together as she drove a punch toward Liam’s chest. ’Use it.’
Liam redirected the punch with the back of his wrist and turned his torso to avoid the second strike that came immediately after. Gabby used the momentum of his redirection instead of fighting it. She let her arm swing past, pivoted on the ball of her foot, and sent her other elbow toward his jaw, the flame around it tightening into a sharp orange-blue edge.
Liam dipped his head and stepped closer rather than farther away, forcing her elbow to pass over his shoulder. For an instant, he was inside her range again, but Gabby had learned from the first two losses. She snapped air outward from her back and slid herself diagonally away before he could fully capitalize, then used that distance to kick a burst of flame toward his feet.
Liam lifted one foot, stepped over the flame line, and shifted his body around the second burst that followed. The attack was not meant to hit him directly. He realized that the moment he felt the air change. Gabby had used the flame to make him choose a foot placement, and now the compressed air around the platform floor surged upward in a sudden pressure snap meant to disrupt his balance. Liam twisted his ankle just enough to avoid being caught flat-footed, but the edge of the air burst still clipped his stance and forced him to slide back half a step.
From the side, Sasha gasped and immediately cheered. "Yes! That almost got him!"
Anna’s eyes were wide, but more focused than excited. "She forced him to move differently."
Dylan smiled with his arms folded, though his gaze stayed sharp on the platform. "Good catch. She’s starting to make him answer instead of just avoid."
Sasha looked at him suspiciously. "You sound like you actually know what you’re talking about."
"I do that sometimes. It scares people."
"Mostly it surprises them."
"That too."
On the platform, Gabby pressed the advantage without letting herself celebrate the small success. She moved in again, her body low, flames gathering at her hands while wind tightened around her legs. Liam watched her carefully, his expression unchanged, but his thoughts moved quickly behind it. Her rhythm had shifted.
She was no longer simply boosting herself with air while disguising it with fire. She was using both affinities together in layers. Fire created the obvious threat. Air altered the timing, angle, and recovery. The real danger was not in any single strike, but in the way her missed attacks kept creating new positions for her to launch from.
She still had patterns, though.
Her left foot always anchored before she used a heavier air burst. Her shoulders dipped slightly when she planned to redirect mid-combination. When her flames brightened around both hands at once, it usually meant she intended to blind his view before attacking with her legs. Her aggression was high, but her adjustment window was narrow. If interrupted at the moment between flame flare and air release, her balance became exposed.
The flaws were obvious.
The problem was his body.
Liam’s body was still not fully recovered. Under normal conditions, Gabby’s speed would not have pressed him this far without him using an affinity. But now, after Nalim, after the training he had forced on himself, after only one proper night of sleep, his movements still carried small restrictions. His reactions were fine. His judgment was fine.
But the body answering those commands was not at its best, and Gabby was sharp enough to keep exploiting the difference even without knowing it.
Another exchange began.
Gabby rushed in with a low flame sweep aimed at his shin. Liam stepped over it, but she had already compressed air beneath her planted foot and used it to rise sharply into a knee strike. Liam tilted his upper body away, then raised his forearm to guide the knee past him without taking the full force. Heat licked against his sleeve.
Gabby landed almost chest-to-chest with him and immediately drove both palms forward, releasing a burst of heated air wrapped in flame. Liam crossed his arms and angled his body, letting the pressure slide across him rather than taking it directly, but the force still pushed him backward toward the edge of the platform.
Gabby’s eyes sharpened.
She noticed it.
For the first time since the spar began, Liam was not simply choosing to create distance. He was being pushed there.
’You’re not untouchable,’ she thought, excitement and frustration mixing inside her. ’You’re still not using magic. Why? Are you looking down on me that much?’
She attacked again before the thought could slow her down. Flames gathered around both feet as she ran, but the real movement came from air snapping behind each step, making her acceleration uneven and hard to read.
She cut left, then right, then suddenly slid low across the floor with one leg extended, using wind to reduce friction beneath her while fire crawled along her heel. Liam stepped back from the sweep, but Gabby planted both hands, twisted upside down for half a second, and kicked upward with her other leg toward his ribs.
Liam’s palm touched her ankle and guided it aside, but she used the contact to release a short burst of air from beneath her shoulder, flipping herself upright and sending a flame-covered backfist toward his face.
Liam ducked, but only narrowly.
The flame passed close enough that Dylan’s grin widened.
"She’s actually forcing him," Anna said quietly.
"She is," Dylan admitted, and there was no teasing in his tone for once. "Not enough to win yet, but enough that he can’t keep playing pure defense forever."
Sasha glanced at him. "So Gabby can hit him?"
Dylan’s smile returned. "Maybe. If he keeps being stubborn."
Liam heard none of their words clearly, or rather, he did not give them room in his mind.
Gabby was in front of him again, and her pressure was becoming harder to ignore. She threw another combination, fist, elbow, knee, kick, each strike wrapped in flame while air corrected every overextension.
Liam redirected the fist, stepped outside the elbow, leaned away from the knee, and turned his shin to avoid the kick, but the space between each dodge had narrowed. He could feel it. If he remained only defensive, if he refused to use any affinity, she would eventually force one clean hit. Not because she was stronger than him overall, but because the conditions of the spar favored her persistence against his recovering body.
Gabby felt it too.
She smiled slightly through her heavy breathing.
Then her flames changed again.
They stopped flaring outward.
They pulled inward.
Liam’s eyes narrowed.
The fire gathered close around Gabby’s arms and legs, no longer flickering loosely but winding tighter, thinner, almost like streams being compressed into lines. At the same time, the air around her began circling in a faint spiral. It was subtle at first, but the dust near her feet shifted. The edge of her hair lifted. The heat around her no longer spread naturally. It funneled, wrapped, and spun with the pressure of wind guiding it.
’Fire and air,’ Liam thought.
Not layered.
Blended.
