Tana's watery blue came spilling out around her feet, but she was far too focused on that.

Without hesitation, I took a quick step forward as my azure whip uncoiled from my thrown back palm. In the same movement, I swung my arm forward and sent my bright blue rolling towards her. If she reacted to it, I did not see it because my eyes were held on where I wanted to hit her.

It was no great feat. Finding an opening was just as easy as it was when I was playing points. I was just doing it from much further away.

The sound of my whip lashing across the middle of her blue silk dress filled my ears before I saw her fall back into her own pool of aura.

"Why would-you-what are you doing!" Tana yelled as she clutched at her stomach.

The only answer I gave was another rolling lash of whip.

It cracked against the aura in front of her feet and broke the watery blue like Mallory had the stone it covered earlier.

I didn't wait for her to speak again.

It felt too good to throw my power at her. She had threatened all of me. My place at Lun, the small freedoms I was allowed, the friendships that had begun to bloom between the others and I, she would take them all from me just so she could appear to be strong.

True Tana had been right.

Her daughter was weak.

My third strike did not land where I had meant it to.

A wave of watery blue came rising up from the floor and covered Tana before she could be hit again.

"Good, Puddles! On your feet!" Precept Zetta shouted from where she stood on my right.

If my one armed teacher knew how Tana had beaten me before, would she still be so happy? I did not know, but I would show her how weak Puddles truly was.

Swing after swing, I lashed out with my whip and brought it back again without pause. Every strike that cracked against Tana's unmoving wave sent flares of our blues into the air, but I did not slow. With each impact, I stepped closer and closer to where she was hiding.

It was only a matter of time before her strength failed and she begged for the duel to end while my azure coils squeezed the breath out of her like Plia had done to Mallory.

I crossed into her pool and the high of my aura brought words to my lips that I never would have said without it. "Puddles? You know this is a duel, right? All you have done is get hit and-"

Warmth washed up my right leg and I looked down to see it painted to the knee with Tana's watery blue.

She snatched me forward and brought me down to one knee. The wave she had been hiding behind came rushing forward and crashed into me just as it started to crest. It did not wash over me like water would. Its weight settled onto me and covered me in darkness as I lost my ability to move.

The muffled shout of my teacher was the last thing I heard before my ears were filled and I became senseless. "Well done, Puddles!"

My focus broke and my whip turned to dust in my hand. I could not see, hear, or move. All I could feel was the pressure and weight of Tana's working. I had felt something similar before, and all of the terrible memories of that day came flooding back to me.

I think I screamed, but I couldn't be sure.

All I knew was how much power had welled up behind my channel.

It was not about showing her how weak she was. It wasn't about the pact or refusing to let her threat control me.

I wanted to hurt her.

"Do you give up, Ire?" I heard Zetta's voice through the wave of darkness that held me.

I gave my answer in a blinding blue flash that blew all of Tana's aura off of me.

The metallic smell of blood filled my nose as the loss from my firework tried to keep me on the cold stone of the floor.

A storm of thrown up dust filled the air, but the glow of Tana's eyes gave her away.

Without thought, I reformed my whip and resumed my flurry of strikes. The strokes of my power cut great gashes through the swirling dust and sent ever more flashes of blue up from another of my enemy's waves.

I could not hit her yet, but my will was stronger than hers.

She would not outlast me.

I would leave myself hollow before I ever allowed myself to think about giving up.

The storm of dust began to turn and spin down from the ceiling in streams. Into the upraised palm of Precept Zetta it went, condensing and coalescing into a small shape that clinked like glass when she threw it to the floor.

I would have to thank her for clearing the way for me after I won.

Letting more of my whip slip from around my wrist, I forced it to slither across the watery pool in front of me instead of snapping it through the air. It swept away Tana's blue and left me with safe ground to stand on because I willed it to.

Over and over, I struck her frozen wave, but I could not break through it no matter what I did.

"You have her pinned, Ire, but you cannot reach her. What will you do?" My teacher called out from my right.

I clenched my right hand into a fist and gritted my teeth without slowing my assault. If my channel were open, if I was not forbidden from being as strong as I truly was, I could have kept her in place with my whip and finished the duel with a firework.

You are a sorceress. Bending reality to your will is what you do. I reminded myself and began to build my aura behind the smaller of The Mother's seals on my body.

Truth. The Autumn I liked agreed.

I did not want my right palm to be sealed any more. I needed it to be open. So, I would make it so.

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The more my power built for my second working, the harder it became to hold my focus on my whip, but for the first time in the short part of my life that I could remember, my weakness in my sense of self became an advantage.

I was holding my whip.

A different Autumn, the other autumn, the stronger autumn was building my aura in my left palm.

Just like Sam's Othersam, my Otherautumn could do things that I could not.

Even with Precept Zetta's help, I had not been able to open my seal.

Otherautumn was strong enough to.

She had to be.

"Come on, Ire. You're running out of time!" Zetta called out again.

A second wave had begun to raise up next to the one that ended all of my strikes.

With one glance, I knew that Tana meant to send it crashing down over me again. I knew that like I knew none of my attempts to escape Alexei had worked.

The same feeling that made me dizzy when I was searching for my soul filled my body and I nearly collapsed from the rush.

Otherautumn had built far more aura in my right hand than I thought was possible, but the seal would not give way.

I could not hold it any longer, I would faint from the high of it all if I did, but I could not let it go. I could not allow myself to lose.

Zetta called out for the third time, but she was not speaking to me. "Let it loose, Puddles. Now is your chance!"

The second wave began to roll alongside my whip and the ground I had cleared was washed in my enemies watery blue once again.

Just before I collapsed, just before my focus failed and I was swallowed by Tana's working, Otherautumn released what she held and pushed all that we were against the seal.

It did not so much as crack.

The power that filled me did not dissipate or disappear.

It rushed back through me, desperately searching for some way out.

It found one.

Through my left arm, through the channel in my palm, and into my whip, my power followed out of me like it never had before.

Bigger, brighter, longer, my whip bulged at its base and cut through the second wave as it lashed back towards where Tana hid.

My azure met her wave once again, but it did not burst into flashes of blue like it had before. All the aura that coursed through it split Tana's working like a wet scrap of paper and I saw her terrified face staring back at me.

Then, the power reached the end of my whip and burst into a firework that left my ears ringing and my eyes burning.

By the time I could make sense of what had happened, Precept Zetta was at Tana's side, the remnants of my working glittering in her blue black hair and on her half cloak.

It was over.

I had won.

Applause followed my victory. Still holding the coils of my whip in my hand, I turned to see all the other new moons standing in the doorway of the class room. They were cheering for me. Plia was still crying, but all of them were cheering for me.

They had expected me to win, and I had met their expectations.

"Ire, have you done that before? Combining your explosives with your whip?" Precept Zetta asked as she strode to where I stood.

It took me a moment to understand that it was my turn to speak.

"No. I was trying to open my other channel. When I couldn't, it just came out that way." I answered honestly, the same proud feeling Zetta had given me earlier welling back up in my chest.

I had done something good.

I knew that like I knew Anna loved me.

The look of pride in my teacher's sapphire eyes only strengthened my surety.

"You're a little monster, do you know that?" She laughed and patted me on the back.

I thought of all the times Anna had called me that and felt a smile spread across my face. "I do."

I saw Vanda go to where Tana was laying amongst what was left of both of our blues, but the honey haired underwitch pushed her away as she sat up. The neckline of her uniform dress was torn, and her right hand was clutching her blue stones necklace like it was the most precious thing in all of chaos.

"No, get off me," She spat as she stood. "Cheering for her, you don't even know who she is."

I was almost about to release my focus until she said that.

"She's a criminal. I saw something on her stomach when we were at Daddy's, and I didn't know what it was. I asked my mother, and she said that it's a seal. Sorceresses who have committed crimes or betrayed The Mothers have their channels sealed so they can't hurt anybody else," Tana said as she began to cry. Her legs were shaking almost as badly as her voice was, but still, she stumbled closer to me with every wavering word. "She is bad. She has done something wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if she isn't supposed to be here. I told all of you she was crazy. That you should stay away from her, but nobody listened to me. You all think I'm just a silly little girl, don't you? I'll show you that I'm right. I'll show you the truth."

Her ranting had distracted me enough that I had not noticed her aura flooding out of her feet and pooling underneath mine. She gritted her teeth as the watery blue rushed up my legs so tightly that I thought my bones would break.

"Spring Tana! Enough!" Zetta snapped with her voice and her fingers.

Something dark came to life within me. It was hot and ragged, violent and hungry. It was a feeling I had not felt in a very long time, and as my blue fell into dust, I knew with all I was that a different color would soon come to replace it.

I would split her in half.

I would hurt her in a way that she would never recover from.

I would ruin her because that's what a ruiner would do.

All I had to do was not look at her in her eyes.

A cold wind brushed against the back of my neck as Tana's power flooded up my legs. It was followed by a sudden weight that pressed against my palm. An expressionless voice whispered into my ear from behind me and I understood immediately who was speaking to me.

"Use your mind. You are a sorceress, not a savage. Conceal yourself." Alexei said so quietly that I could barely hear him.

The watery blue reached the hem of my dress and drove it upwards as Tana made good on her threat to expose me. The same cold wind that had marked my guard's arrival came again, and his pressure vanished.

"Look! Look! I am right! She's crazy! She's an enemy of The Mothers!" Tana shouted as her power brought my dress to my chest and uncovered my stomach.

Alexei had come just in time.

If it had not been for his words, the nine colored rings around my navel would have still been visible and Tana would have likely been on the floor bleeding. Instead, all everyone could see was what I looked like underneath my dress.

"I-she-but-it's a glamor! It has to be! I know what I saw!" Tana shouted, still holding me captive and exposed with her power.

Zetta's eyes glanced towards the door before she turned to Tana and placed her hand on the underwitch's shoulder. "That's enough. Go to sleep. I believe that it is time for me to have a talk with your mother."

"No! That's," Tana shouted, but her eyes swam before she could shout anything else. My dress fluttered back down as her power receded and then I was finally released as the honey haired underwitch closed her eyes and fell to the floor and muttered. "I want my Daddy. I want to go home."

Zetta knelt down and lifted the limp Tana onto her shoulder before standing and meeting my eyes. "I wish I had the words to describe how sorry I am that I let that happen to you. Class is over. Get some rest. I will come by your quarters soon to check on you."

She carried Tana out of the classroom then, and Vanda was at my side not a moment later.

In the aftermath of what I had just been through, I could not think of a time that I had ever been more happy to see her kind face.

"Why don't we go to the covery. You've just done a lot. I know you are tired." She said through a sweet smile and wrapped her arm around me as she pulled me into motion.

First came the loss.

Second came my afterglow.

It took all three of the others to get me to the dark room, and even through the soul crushing sorrow that consumed me, I was grateful because I would not have made it without them.

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