Seeing Noel standing there, silver glow outlining her body, accentuating her naturally silver eyes and hair, after not having seen her for years, gave me a strange feeling. Stolid, strange, bracken, and coarse. Conflicting emotions of expectation and surprise. Contradictions playing out in my head as we stared each other down.

It wasn’t as if this possibility hadn’t crossed my mind.

Powerful magic, unbridled rage, and the image of Sharun in the Lux Republic’s senate. All of them had made me wonder. Made me guess and speculate. After realizing that the Ikon was a woman, how could I not wonder if Noel, my first friend in this world, had not appeared in front of me once again.

But somehow I couldn’t imagine the naive but brilliant elf becoming a genocidal servant of the same Immortal that had thrown her far into the future, ripping her from her family while perhaps also contributing to the horrible fate that had befallen them.

Yet, here she was. A little older, taller, with more lines on her face and calluses on her fingers. Her body was leaner and more muscular, her eyes more piercing, her hair wilder and more unkempt than ever before. When I looked at my own reflection in clear water, I did not see a face that had changed very much over the past few years. I had assumed that was because elves did not age as quickly as humans or demons, but Noel’s transformation suggested I had been underestimating the effect of one’s experiences. One’s apparent age comes as much from outside as it does from within. Noel must have been through a lot since she let me fall off a cliff near the ‘roof of the world’ and headed off on her own adventure.

We didn’t say anything. If Noel had wanted to speak to me, she could have taken off the robe and said something when I first appeared. And if I wanted to talk to her, I would have to ignore the steely silver stare staring daggers into my sockets.

Bain Rusta had crumpled to the side, unmoving. The sounds of the fight behind the gates was getting quieter. I could stall for a bit and wait for reinforcements. Noel was smart. She wouldn’t let me drag it out for so long. And honestly, I didn’t want to waste any time either. There would be plenty of time to ask her questions with my foot on her neck.

Noel materialized a large bubble, which reflected my image while being transparent enough to let me see her through it. I prepared three slingshots with iron balls I had recovered during our stare down. I also began moving the clouds overhead, hoping to clear the sky and let the sun shine through. Finally, I prepared a network of magic hands all around the area, all of them tied to trees or dug into ground. After using magic hands for so long, my ‘wisdom’ had increased so much I didn’t even have to worry about using dozens of them at a time.

The bubble grew in my vision, heading unnaturally straight and at a blistering speed. I swung myself to the side with a network of magic hands, avoiding the many bubbles she had hidden behind the larger one by pulling myself at awkward and sharp angles.

Three iron balls shot towards Noel, each coming from a different direction. Noel pushed herself backwards with air magic but the iron balls were released at an angle that would be difficult to avoid like that. As the iron balls approached her, Noel contorted her body backwards, letting the iron balls pass right by her. At the same time, she released a burst of fire magic that fanned out towards me.

I jumped in the air to avoid the flames but a round of bubbles was shooting towards me. The network of magic hands that I had prepared pulled me away from their trajectory once again. I launched a shower of pebbles and sand towards Noel, but she blew them away with a burst of air before bringing a burst of water out from the ground underneath me. The water jet was highly concentrated and there were pieces of sharp rocks inside. I avoided the artificial geyser by pulling myself away again. I made sure to pull myself firmly back to the ground.

The clouds cleared up. I used some more water and air magic to try to keep it that way for a while. At the same time, I gathered a small film of water in the sky and used it to concentrate the light for my light magic.

Noel noticed the sunlight and the water, and frowned. She raised her hands to the sky just as I readied my magic. A thin but terrifying point of concentrated light appeared on Noel’s tattered robes just as a storm brewed in the sky. Noel let out a loud cry before being blasted backwards. Her silver glow flashed brightly, shielding her from the worst of the attack, but I could still see some burn marks on her skin.

The sky began to rumble and roar as dark clouds gathered. Noel’s weather magic had gotten much stronger than before, and it didn’t help that the natural conditions were on her side. It would take me a while to clear up the storm, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t make the storm work in my favor either. Arcs of lightning passed between the clouds. The first drop of water fell on my head as I rushed forward. Two columns of earth rushed towards Noel’s falling body from either side, and a burst of fire spewed from my mouth, turning tiny water droplets into steam as it approached Noel.

Noel recovered mid-air, punching out towards both columns of earth. Her fists, still as small as ever, crashed against the heavy columns and cracked them into thousands of pieces. The falling debris swung in front of her body, shielding it from the fire and forcing me to shoot up into the air over them to aim down at Noel with another burst of fire magic and a piercing blade of wind.

Noel rapidly shot some bubbles towards me, ignoring my spells completely. Her body was engulfed in flame and the blade of wind sliced at her chest, but the silver glow shielded her from most of it. She did cough a little from the smoke, and the wind blade let a nasty red impression on her skin.

My network of magic hands was too far away and I was too high up to pull myself away with new ones. The bubbles had been shot straight above Noel, anticipating the trajectory of my jump. I would shoot myself right into the path of oblivion if I kept going. And there were enough bubbles coming up that even if I slowed my speed down with air magic, I would still catch the tail end of them and disappear unceremoniously when I touched them.

I grit my teeth, held my breath, and froze in the air.

The bubbles shot into the air just a few inches from my position. My eyes were frozen straight in front of me, so all I could see was my frozen, determined expression in the bubbles as they passed me by. As soon as the bubbles were gone, I let go of the ‘still life’ magic and let myself continue on my trajectory, wrenching my gaze towards Noel as quickly as I could. I couldn’t see her when my body was frozen, so I had no idea what her next attack was going to be.

A strange bubble, its walls a solid silver color like molten metal, hung in the air in front of Noel. The silver bubble shot towards me like a bullet, giving me no time to react. I realized I had come down just far enough to reconnect with my network of magic hands, and used them to jerk myself to the side as quickly as I could. The sudden motion made my teeth chatter, and I even bit my tongue by accident.

A searing pain filled me head. The air left my lungs and my scream tapered off into a raspy croak. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth as I fell to the earth. In the corner of my vision, I could see the silver bubble shooting off into the distance, only, it’s body was no longer silver but red. And in the other corner of my vision, I saw a hole in the side of my leg, letting off globs of blood as pellets of rain began to fall and merge with the blood to create a red halo around my leg.