Saving Windfall (MXM)

Chapter Twenty-five: Dax In Training

"Its so nice finally meeting you guys," I say with tears of my own. "When all of this virus stuff is over, we will have to come visit again," I add.

"Russell told us about how reckless you can be," she says growing more serious, "we are worried about you so try to be safe, please." I chuckle.

"The most reckless I've ever been was when I somehow got myself involved in some kind of black market blood cult or something. Some guy named Theo and two girls helped me get out of it though. I guess now that I think about it, with all things considered, it could have been ran by vampires," I finish with a laugh. I look at my parents who are looking at me with horrified expressions. I brush off their looks and walk away to stand where I was before.

"Alright, lets go," I say with a smile turning my ring back into a staff. Picturing a ball of energy forming, I swing my staff around to fling the energy but what leaves the end of the staff isn't what I had pictured in my head. Instead, it is small, the size of a golf ball and flitters out before it can do anything. Darius doesn't even have to put up his shield.

"Take it slow, you need to have the action become natural. Once you get the basic shield and energy ball down, you can change it up. For example," Darius says then he brings his shield out. At first it looks normal but then it starts surrounding him until there is a circular shield all around him. "Then you can take it farther by doing this." His scepter changes into a staff then water starts to form around the base of the shield. Suddenly tentacles of water spring out and begin to slowly move around. "Mirana, if you would dear," Darius says to his wife, gesturing towards his creation.

Mirana nods then walks over to me with her staff in hand. She then turns to Darius and begins to fire energy balls at him. His shield stops whatever he can't deflect with the tentacles but that isn't all he does. Mirana puts up a shield that surrounds us both just in time for Darius' water tentacles to shoot towards us and slam into it violently.

"Holy shit-that's awesome!" I exclaim. Mirana chuckles then releases her shield. I look over at Darius and see him releasing his Magic too. "You'll eventually teach me how to do that?" I ask excitedly.

"Sure, but first you need to learn the basics of defense and attack. You've done well with shielding so far, but your attacks aren't that great," says Darius and I nod.

Meditating some more, I refill my energy then stand up with my staff in hand. Darius gets ready for any attacks by putting up his shield then gestures that he is ready. As I am about to try to fire an energy ball at him, I get a weird feeling. Listening to it, I transform my staff back into a ring, then hold my palm facing up.

After closing my eyes, I push my Magic energy out and into my hand making an energy ball. I let it get a little bigger in my mind before I open my eyes and throw it at Darius. All of this happens within a few seconds and because I had put away my staff, he wasn't completely ready for my attack. Luckily, he is a very talented Witch so he is able to quickly pull up a shield just before it hits and explodes against it.

I then hear a few gasps behind me so I turn and see that Russell, Dante, Accalia and a few Witches had been watching me train.

"How the hell did you manage to do that?" Mirana says completely shocked.

"Well, the talisman works to focus our Magic better, from what I can feel, and using that knowledge and the feeling I got to put the staff away, I decided since its all three anyway, to use the ring as a focus as it is," I reply, unsure if what I did was bad. I look at Darius and see that he is thinking about something.

About half a minute later, he asks, "can you try that without the ring?" I nod at him and pull if off then toss it to Mirana to hold. Just as quickly as last time but without closing my eyes, I form an energy ball then throw it towards Darius. Before I can see what happens, I start feeling very drained and fall to one knee as I try not to collapse.