On a Thursday night, Maria was out practicing her spells in the desert. The sun hadn’t set yet, so there was still light for Maria to read one of the spell books by.

She only had 3 more to go before she had memorized all the spells and Ander was right, it hadn’t been that hard to memorize all the spells. Her mind soaked them up like a sponge.

Maria was in the middle of practicing a spell that would allow her to create a wall of water and solidify it into ice. For some reason, this spell was hard. There was so much concentration involved in making liquid into a solid, much less a large wall of it.

She was in the middle of performing the spell when she heard a voice say, “I must say, good work. You have the ability to go far. To bad you won’t be able to.”

Maria’s concentration dropped and the water wall fell back into the small lake that was in front of her. She transported the book back to her room, having the strangest feeling that if she kept it there, it would get destroyed.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“You don’t know already? I’m Luke. You know, the person who’s going to kill you and steal the amulet from you?”

“You will never kill me and you will never get the amulet.”

“Are you so sure of that, little girl?”

Without warning, he sent a lightning-fast stream of fire for Maria, which Maria barely dodging. She jumped off of the high rock she was standing off and landed on the ground smoothly, glad that Ander had taught her some physical skills as well as magical. Luke, who was floating in mid-air, slowly lowered himself to the ground.

Maria shot an energy bolt for Luke, but he dodged it and it hit the rock instead, breaking it to pieces. He threw one back at her, but she also dodged, allowing it to hit the rocks behind her.

They went back and forth for a minute or two when Maria decided to take a different course of action to prevent the area they were in now from being destroyed even more. She threw an ice bolt at him, but he turned it around using his power, which was a hard move to do, turn around something that someone was hurling at you using magic, and he flung it back at her.

Maria was so stunned that she didn’t try to dodge it and it hit her right shoulder, going right through her flesh and impacting with the rock behind her.

Luke outstretched his hand and sent a force of wind that pushed Maria back into the wall, almost knocking her unconscious. “I don’t want to kill you now, I want you to put up a better fight that that. I’m giving you two days to prepare yourself for the final battle. Good bye.” Luke disappeared, leaving a wounded Maria lying on the ground.

Maria, who was shaking, raised her left hand and held it over her wounded shoulder. She healed it as quickly and efficiently as she could, being as weak as she was. When she was sure that her shoulder was healed, she used her remaining energy to transport herself back to her bedroom. She transported herself back to her bed and still in her school clothes, she fell asleep above the covers.

***

When Maria awoke the next day, feeling as if she had been run over by a truck. She pulled herself out of bed and went into her bathroom so she could assess the damages made by Luke. She stripped off all her clothes and looked at herself in the mirror.

When she saw what the damages were, her mouth dropped open. Yellow and black bruises mottled her skin, making her look sickly. She saw the damages done and she started to cry. < How am I going to beat him when he’s so much stronger than me? > The voice of Ander came back into her head. “You’re the strongest mage ever.” Remembering what Ander had said about her and her powers, she felt her confidence build up. She wouldn’t be caught off guard. She was going to work extra hard to memorize the last three books so she could use them to fight Luke.

She looked at the clock that she kept in her bathroom and noticed that she had an hour before school started. “Well, better get to work on these bruises.” Maria spent the next 20 minutes healing up her bruises, not noticing the one on the inside of her right arm. While the bruises may have been gone, Maria was exhausted from healing herself and the evening before.

Dressing quickly, she grabbed her keys and walked out the door. The morning at school passed quickly, no one, including Maria, noticed the large mottled bruise on her right arm. But, when Michael saw her, it was almost the first thing he saw. “Hey Maria,” he said, sitting down next to her in the cafeteria.

“Hey Michael,” Maria said, her exhaustion seeping into her voice. Michael opened his mouth to ask if everything was all right when he spotted the bruise on Maria’s arm.

Grabbing her wrist, he asked, “What happened Maria?” Maria looked down at her arm and was almost shocked speechless. < I missed one. Shit! > When she didn’t answer Michael’s question, he asked it again, but more fiercely. “What happened Maria?” “I fell,” she said. She was telling him half of the truth. She did fall, but he didn’t need to know that someone helped her fall. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Do you want Max or Isabel to heal it?”

“No, I’ll be ok.”