Playing with Fire: Arcturus Academy, Book 0 by A.L. Knorr

Author:A.L. Knorr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Intellectually Promiscuous Press

Five

Cat & Mouse

I found myself staring across a long, narrow room. It might have been a library once upon a time but was now filled with cubicles of frosted glass and steel. A computer terminal nested in each nook. Above the work stations a metal-cutout sign screamed: ABSOLUTELY NO FIRE IN THE COMPUTER LAB

From the far end came a frustrated snarl and a flash of orange light. Going up on my toes, I stretched to look over the tops of the stations. The intruder was huddled below a window. He looked up just as I spotted him and we made eye contact. My stomach lurched as I went around the desk to stand in the aisle. He was directly across from me now; if I sprinted, I could be on him in seconds. Heat swelled under my ribcage as I readied to detonate. It was time to show this guy I was no regular first-year. No regular mage, even.

“I don’t have time for you,” he snarled, throwing a hateful look as he straightened to face me.

Then he launched into the air.

I stood gaping as blooms of light pulsed beneath his skin as he moved—a masterful series of detonations he wasn’t bothering to hide. His body arced into a sequence of tumbles down the row between the desks. Straight at me. His pure athleticism and agility—like an Olympic gymnast—shocked me so completely that my joints locked up and my brain fizzled.

Red glows flashed beneath his skin and clothes as he bounced off his hands as though coming off a springboard, both feet aimed at my chest. I tried to twist away but dismay slowed me down. Air exploded from my lungs and pain blossomed under my collarbones as I flew backward. My twist became a corkscrew before gravity brought me down at an awkward angle. Hard. A softer-than-usual, squishier detonation went off in my shoulder, hip, and at the base of my skull. An impact that might have snapped bones or dislocated something was diminished into a series of blunt compressions. Maybe my body was learning from the last time I’d been thrown without my brain having to make a calculation. I’d never used the fire in this way before, and if I hadn’t felt so poleaxed, I might have celebrated my accidental find.

Instead, stars danced in front of my eyes and I tasted metal in the back of my throat. Sucking in air, I forced myself to my feet, bracing a hand against the nearest desk. Between the photo-flashes of my still popping vision, I saw the mage headed for the exit in the opposite corner. My first step wobbled and so did the room. Oh for three.

He’d caught me off guard, but I wasn’t out of this cat and mouse game yet. I felt a wry twist cross my face. I’d begun this pursuit thinking I was the cat, now I wasn’t so sure. Burned mage or not, I was in over my head.

Maybe I couldn’t handle him on my own, but I could track him, and maybe slow him down.

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