Freedom and Loyalty: Star Sorceress: Book Two by D. L. Harrison

Author:D. L. Harrison [Harrison, D. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

There were nine shuttles on the tarmac that morning. Four for each club and five for each team, along with support staff. The three of them waved to the guys as they headed for the hand-to-hand club shuttle while they went to the dueling club’s shuttle.

Dueling did sharpen the mind, and she supposed it would make her a more effective mage, but in a lot of ways the largest thing it taught her was never to go into a fight unprepared.

Essentially that’s all a duel was, going into a fight unprepared and the only good aspect of that was so did her opponent. In all of her real fights, she’d always gone in shielded with the telekinesis, levitation, and magic detection support spells, that latter one since she’d made it, anyway.

Duels were fair, and they were decided entirely upon speed of casting and tactical response and flexibility. Of course, the whole point of fighting was not to do it fairly, when taking on a true enemy. So that was the major part of it. It cemented the idea of never going into a fight unprepared.

The other part that would help her was it forced advancement in adaptability and flexible tactics out of desperation. That would make her more adaptable in the field, where she’d also be cheating to win. If you weren’t cheating to stack the odds against a real enemy, then you were doing it wrong. Still, she was confident, and the point was she believed she’d already learned what the club had to teach her. She had fun, enjoyed the challenge, but she wouldn’t hesitate to join the flight club next year instead.

Of course, today was all about winning and bragging rights between the three branches of the military. She was already a little jazzed up and limber as they got onto the shuttle and took their seats.

Katherine stood at the front by the cockpit doors and held onto a bar welded to the wall as the shuttle took off.

“Alright, listen up. When we get there we’ll be led to a large tent where all sixty of us, plus our staff support and escorts for the three schools will gather. There’ll be food and drink between matches. Like the tryouts, the tournament is a double elimination rule. There will be large screens inside for the three fighting rings so we can watch the competition.

“Now, the marines favor cold looks and psychological intimidation tactics. They’ll look at you and make you think they not only want you dead, but that they might just hunt down your family and eat them for breakfast too. Don’t let them psych you out, they aren’t really crazy or bloodthirsty, they’d all die for us to the last man and woman while we backed them up in it. It’s just part of the game, so don’t let it get to you.

“The spooks are even worse in a way. They’re subtle about their psychological warfare. They’ll chat you up, pretend to be your friend,

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