“Come by when you’re free,” Lailah’s voice said in Ariel’s mind. Ever since Ariel took a page out of Abigail’s book and called Lailah ‘big sis’, the older girl had opened up more. Recently, she’d started communicating telepathically more - something she’d said she tried to reserve for family as it made people uncomfortable. Ariel chuckled as she set aside the last of the dishes from lunch, then set down her sponge and rinsed the soap from her hands before heading upstairs. It seemed Lailah was just as weak to ‘big sis’ as Ariel herself had been. Walking into Lailah’s room after a mental “come in”, Ariel saw the young woman typing furiously as usual, a half-eaten bowl of her mom’s stew at her desk and probably getting cold.

  “I’ve been looking into what you mentioned,” Lailah said, “about the little girl Abigail.”

  “You haven’t told anyone, right?” Ariel asked, nervous.

  “So far as I can tell, no one besides the five of us in this house - and, whoever’s after her in Black Hand - knows.” Lailah assured her. “But yeah… I searched around, and it’s a lot easier to find answers when you already have a guess. Black Hand abductions are way up recently, mostly in prepubescent children from insignificant families socially.”

  Ariel grimaced. “They’re just taking whoever they can get. Monsters.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” Lailah said, “but it doesn’t track. They’re abducting people, at great cost. Usually, the main reason you’d do that in significant numbers and at great cost is because of some interest in their magical power. If I’m right in that assumption, and that is an ‘if’, then it would make sense to grab some kids from important families, even at great cost. They tend to have rare and powerful abilities that make them distinct - like the Reginald family’s use of aurumancy or the Emmerson family’s psychic powers.”

  “But they haven’t been grabbing kids from special families?” Ariel asked.

  “Basically not at all. The few they’ve grabbed were relatively unguarded and easily taken. So it really just seems to be a matter of whatever’s easy,” Lailah said. “At least, that’s speaking ‘normally’. If you make the assumption that they’re going after children with shifting abilities and have some way to target them, it makes sense.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Ariel argued. “My family’s a bunch of nobodies in the boondocks.”

  “All great families were once just regular folks who discovered they have something ‘extra’, either hereditary or that cultivated and held as intellectual property. Most people don’t go that way, once finding out, anyway. Look at me - my mom and dad were born no one special, and I’m certainly no Emmerson, but I’ve got weird brain powers. There’s plenty of powerful genetics to go around.”

  “Even if that made sense, how would they know my brother had hidden magical super genes?”

  “I don’t know,” Lailah whispered. “All I know is that the few rich folk kidnapped were Fernaux kids - probably the only major family with a transformation-centric ability. There’s still so much we don’t know. The people in the capital are happy to just shit out ‘travel advisories’ to ‘important people’ and think that’s enough. I wasn’t sure whether telling you this would even be helpful. I’m sorry I don’t have more answers. But one thing’s important. Even though they didn’t take you the first time, they might change their mind.”

  Ariel shuddered at the thought, then started to doubt. Would that be so bad? At least that way, she might get to see Isaac. She put the thought from her mind before the psychic could comment on it.

  “Thanks for letting me know. I’ve gotta get to training,” Ariel said.

  Lailah frowned, but didn’t say anything. “Good luck.”

  ***

  Ariel lashed out with a palm strike at the incoming metal ball. The instant the metal touched her hand, it rebounded by her magic, launching across the room. She exhaled slowly, controlling the breath. The weeks since her fight at the farmhouse sharpened her instincts, and she was trying to get everything she could out of the training, but…

  “Dave, this is getting really boring. You’re not holding back a better launcher, are you?”

  The dark basement, lit only by cobalt lights a ways up, was a wide open space made of quality mats - they held up to the beating she threw at them - and something like a pitching machine was lobing projectiles for her to deflect. But she’d done this exercise a lot. It bruised her knuckles at first, but she’d been knocking balls away with the lightest physical touch since last week.

  “Perhaps you would like to spar again?” Dave said, his mustache curving in a wicked grin.

  “Only if you go easy,” Ariel hollered back, flipping backwards and kicking a projectile away on the upswing. That was harder.

  Dave wasn’t being fair. Ariel was proud, sure, but she knew when she was beat. She’d tried attacking at his consistent badgering yesterday, and hadn’t landed a single hit. The damn man was wind itself.

  “Any real enemy will try to kill you right away. Fighting against an opponent restraining himself leads to bad habits.”

  “So you like to kill your sparring partners,” Ariel mused, head-butting a ball in frustration.

  “The objective of sparring is to land blows without being hit, or to restrain your foe, variably. It’s an abstraction, but to pursue that objective less than earnestly doesn’t help anyone. As for this drill, you still can’t use MR without touching the metal, and you often fail when you’re not using your hands or feet to touch the metal. It’s a common restriction, but one you could overcome if you mastered the magic well enough.”

  Ariel groaned, getting distracted and taking the fast metal ball to the temple. The pain was instant even through her defensive aura, and she fell on her back. Dave had turned the machine off and was kneeling over her in an instant.

  “I’m fine,” she said, sighing. “I probably deserved that for all my whining.” She idly stuck a hand out to one of the balls rolling across the ground, trying to manipulate it across the distance. No dice - there wasn’t any connection.

  “You’ll get there,” Dave said. “Perhaps some more visualization exercises will be of help, or you could work on another spell for a time.”

  Then, a knock came at the basement door. Dave went up to get it, then began discussing with… Lailah?

  “Are you here to train too?” Ariel asked curiously.

  “She was my first student,” Dave said proudly.

  “My parents made me learn self-defense, after the incident,” Lailah grumbled. “I’m not interested in spending any more time fighting than I have to.”

  Lailah crossed the spacious basement training room, pulling up a chair and sitting in the middle of the floor. Dave started rolling the pitching machine that had been shooting metal balls at Ariel out of the way, and Ariel wordlessly assisted. She was quite sure the old man didn’t need her help, but her mom had told her that didn’t matter when it came to courtesy.

  “She came down here at my request,” Dave said by way of explanation. “I needed someone closer to your level to properly test you.

  Wow, Ariel thought. It was the first time Ariel had seen Lailah downstairs. What had motivated her? She didn’t seem motivated, sitting primly in a folding chair, her hands in the skirt of a long white dress. She wasn’t dressed for a fight. Still, Dave didn’t argue.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “When you’re ready, Ariel, you may begin,” Dave said. “Your objective is to land a blow on her, but - it should go without saying - nothing lethal.”

  The entire situation was bizarre, but her dad had said to listen to Dave. Here goes…

  Ariel walked up to Lailah, who didn’t respond, and halfheartedly kicked at her arm. A few feet away, Ariel’s leg was stopped by a rigid, invisible wall, making her stumble. Ariel grinned. A psychic wall? Now that was a badass trick she could get behind. Ariel hit the wall harder with a testing jab, then put all her weight into a punch. Her knuckles stung as they bounced back soundlessly. She rotated around Lailah, testing the barrier from multiple angles, but it was the same from the side or back - no dice.

  Suddenly, Dave cleared his throat. “Lailah, I won’t force you to do this. But if you’re going to spar with Ariel, you shouldn’t hold back. At the very least, she should know she’s already dead.”

  Lailah bit her lip, but nodded. She stood up, then a wave of invisible power rushed out, pushing Lailah’s chair away and knocking Ariel dizzily to the ground. Ariel cursed as she rose up into the air, her whole body held rigid as if she’d been buried. Ariel wasn’t claustrophobic, but the sensation was still terrible enough to make her feel sick. Lailah smoothed out her dress, then looked at Ariel apologetically.

  “You’re dead to rights,” Lailah said in a soft voice, “since I just have to press on you at the right vital points until you die, and you can’t move a muscle, so you can’t attack or use magic. Do you concede the match?”

  Grudgingly, as Ariel felt the invisible grip around her head, neck and shoulders slacken, she gave a curt nod. In response, Ariel was tossed lightly across the room and landed, sliding, on her feet.

  “Again!” Dave yelled briskly, and Ariel took off immediately. She remembered, now, what Dave had told her about psychics - what she hadn’t paid enough attention to.

  Many people think a psychic most dangerous at a long range, where they can throw things at you without being harmed. This is not true. A psychic is most dangerous at close range, where their powers are the strongest.

  Ariel ran in a circle around Lailah, getting serious by empowering every step with lighting magic. Sure enough, while Ariel felt several tugs on her arms and legs, Lailah couldn’t get a grip on Ariel’s body when she moved quickly with several meters between them. She could build up speed, then attack all at once and break through -

  As Ariel thought as much, Lailah turned to look at the dozens of metal balls scattered around the room, hurling them at Ariel with a thought in rapid succession. Ariel grinned, her shell aura blooming to life as a dense blue sphere around her. Moving with blurring speed, Ariel dodged several of the balls, punching away the dozen that came after her while she was mid-stride. Still, the focus on defense kept Ariel from moving at her top speed.

  Ariel jumped to the side, then decided she would need to chance an attack before Lailah wore her down. She picked up what speed she could, then turned on a dime, rushing to close the distance in a pair of strides. Before she could reach Lailah, Ariel felt inescapable pressure around her waist, stopping her short, and the power snaked around her way too fast. Before she was trapped, Ariel extended her hand with a new ranged attack of hers - the Tier 1 Spell, Shock Orb. Putting aside the lack of creativity in the spell’s name, Ariel focused on the intuitive flow of electricity in her body and contained it in a layer of thick mana. The yellow orb of power fired out of her palm, rushing towards Lailah.

  Psychics like to maintain the illusion of invincibility, Dave had lectured, but their power - and their attention - only go so far.

  Sure enough, the ball stopped in place and Lailah’s grip on Ariel slackened, allowing her to struggle free and jump back out of range. Just like that, Ariel knew Lailah didn’t have her psychic wall up anymore - if she did, the Electroball would have cracked like an egg instead of stopping. As she thought so, Lailah pushed the orb back at Ariel, but she dodged it narrowly. So Lailah started to press the attack again, hurling a volley of metal balls at Ariel. Ariel ran until they closed in - then set her stance and focused on parrying them all.

  The balls came impossibly fast. Ariel didn’t have the luxury of hitting them all with hands and feet, where it was easiest to control magic. Her elbows, arms, thighs, and shins became weapons too as she hit the balls away, using Magnetic Resonance to neutralize their momentum. But it was all she could do just to keep up, and trying to use the spell with more obscure parts of her body caused Ariel to fail sometimes. She let out hisses of pain and Lailah pressed her, brow furrowed in focus but completely motionless where she stood, arms crossed. Ariel’s aura wasn’t slowing down the projectiles enough to protect her if she took many more, and she was running out of steam a lot faster than Lailah - she needed a way to strike back. If she could just deflect the metal better…

  Ariel put the thought from her mind and rolled as metal balls clattered loudly against the floor where she’s been. She ran quickly, planning her moment to stop. It came too soon when Lailah got a momentary psychic hold on her leg and threw Ariel down. From the ground, she watched as the metal balls flew at her, then acted. She swung her leg out in a sweeping kick, hitting a ball with Magnetic Resonance. The ball flattened into a thin metal plate as tall as Ariel was, shielding her from the barrage, and Ariel got up and sent the plate at Lailah with a jump kick. The sheet stopped abruptly and then was crumpled by Lailah’s strength, then hurled back at Ariel along with several more balls. But at the same time, Ariel struck. Shock Orb was an expensive spell mana-wise, so she threw a metal ball she’d grabbed at Lailah instead, Magnetic Resonance accelerating it to high speed.

  As Ariel parried the first wave of attacks, Lailah mentally caught the projectile but stopped attacking, and Ariel followed up by parrying two of the balls back at Lailah. Caught off guard by the timing, Lailah caught them each but lost sight of Ariel entirely. Ariel started running, picking up momentum as she circled the room again and again. By the time Lailah started attacking again, she was too fast to hit, too quick to grab. Lailah turned in a frenzy to try to keep up, but Ariel was one step too fast every time. She practically vanished behind the psychic, then rushed at her. Lailah turned only in time to see Ariel close, sailing through the air. She tried to stop her with a psychic grip, but they both realized it wasn’t going to be fast enough. In that moment, Lailah’s eyes widened. She looked shaken, like something had upset her. Ariel remembered how reluctant she’d been.

  Releasing her balled fist, Ariel flew straight at Lailah and wrapped her in a tackle-hug. The older girl caught her, surprised, but lost her balance as they circled around, falling with Ariel on top of her. She looked at Ariel in confusion, but seeing her smile… she started to laugh. Ariel liked the sound, and immediately started laughing herself. Dave pointedly cleared his throat, and that just made the two girls laugh harder as they rolled over on the ground.

  “I suppose, Ariel wins round 2,” Dave said with resignation.

  Eventually, Ariel got to her feet, and gave Lailah a nod of acknowledgment.

  “You’re pretty strong, for a lazy old psychic,” Ariel said. Lailah scoffed.

  “I’ve got more nothing to do. If you’ll excuse me…” she gave Ariel a rare grin, then gave Dave a bow and started walking upstairs.

  “Thank you,” Dave said quietly, then turned to Ariel, looking at her silently. He seemed to expect something, but Ariel wasn’t sure what it was. So, rather than be awkward, she went with the safe bet and stood with a formal at-ease posture, legs shoulder width and hands clasped behind her back. When in doubt, Dave probably wanted to test her patience. Her intuition proved good enough as he gave a thin smile after a long moment and asked his question.

  “So? What did you learn from that battle?”

  Ariel didn’t answer right away, thinking it over. “My opponents won’t always be what they seem. Lailah looks like a civilian who hasn’t slept in a week but takes good care of her hair, not a powerful psychic. If I was walking past her in the street, I’d end up in her full control range without even knowing it. She could squish me dead without lifting a finger.”

  Dave nodded, narrowing his eyes. “You seem to be taking that fact in stride.”

  Ariel shrugged. “It’d probably bug me more if I didn’t trust her.” Dave smiled. “I don’t imagine there’s a good way to sense powerful psychics?”

  Dave nodded. “High tier sorcery spells can determine an enemy’s attributes instantly, but at your level it’ll simply be a matter of recognizing the feel of an opponent’s mana. Of course, most powerful people suppress their mana, but that feels different as well, if you know what to look for.”

  Ariel nodded. So far, the best ‘feel’ she had on mana was relative size. Dave’s supply was huge when he got serious, while Lailah’s was maybe a tenth of his - which, in turn, was still more power than Ariel had as far as she could tell. Strategy had saved her in that fight - and it’d still cost a lot of her mana. She figured that if Lailah had managed to make it a battle of attrition, it would have been easy win.

  “What else?” Dave asked.

  “Well,” Ariel admitted, going off of that thought, “I see why you’re against holding back. It was an exciting challenge, trying to figure out the limits of her abilities and test myself against them.

  Dave smiled proudly. “You did well, after your initial ‘death’. Most young people start flailing around in frustration when they first fight a psychic.”

  “Again, owed to Lailah being a gift to this world,” Ariel said easily. “Otherwise it’d probably feel like some unfair nonsense, but I’m happy she’s strong enough to defend herself.”

  “You get along that well?” Dave asked.

  “She’s the only person who took me seriously from the start. I guess the whole mind-reading thing helps with that, but still.”

  Dave sighed. “I don’t mean to dismiss your goals, and I’m sorry if I’ve given that impression. I simply want to you to understand the gravity of the threat Black Hand poses.”

  Ariel nodded. “I don’t blame you. That’s a good topic, though. I’d like to get a family meeting together to talk this over, with everyone.”

  Dave raised an eyebrow. “What exactly do you mean to discuss?”

  Ariel gave a bold smile. “How we’re going to strike back at Black Hand without putting anyone in danger.”