I had only just taken shelter with Mizuki when it took mere seconds for my fear to come to fruition.

  “You ruined everything!” Raven bellowed at Eva.

  Just like she had done during the conflict with the jocks at school, she rapidly twirled her arms in a spiral pattern and summoned a massive cyclone around her body. The ferocious wind whipped the bench behind her, as well as a host of other miscellaneous debris, into the air and launched them at Eva as makeshift projectiles.

  The prodigy was able to dodge the flurry of smaller objects that flew at her, but when the large, wooden bench was about to hit her, she stood her ground and swung her arm in a swift, vertical motion. Her hand was encased in flames that sliced through the furniture like butter and burned the wood up in the blink of an eye.

  Raven roared, clearly frustrated that Eva had avoided the onslaught of flying objects with graceful ease. She stomped her foot and ceased the spiral she was weaving, transitioning instead into a forceful lunge with both arms that sent a violent gust directly at Eva.

  Anything in the path of the sudden burst of wind was blown backwards—including Eva. She gasped as she was thrown from the ground but managed to recover quickly. In midair, she cast more fire spells, concentrating flaming jets beneath her feet to rocket herself out of range of Raven’s wind spell.

  Raven didn’t miss a beat, though, and called upon fire magic of her own. She took aim at Eva as she zoomed through the air and began hurling fireballs at her in quick succession. Eva was able to evade them all and landed safely on the ground beside her opponent.

  The fireballs didn’t miss without consequence, however. They hit the walls around them in every direction, causing light fixtures, banners, and neon signs to burst and crash to the ground, and one of them even hit the ceiling, shattering the skylight high above and sending a storm of glass raining down around both girls.

  “Shinsuke…!” Mizuki panicked.

  “I know. This is crazy!”

  Eva slid behind Raven and grabbed hold of her arm. She pinned her limb behind her back in an attempt to force her to the ground and restrain her, but Raven swung her free arm across her body and towards Eva’s head.

  Eva released the arm she’d captured and bent her body backwards to duck Raven’s swing. She rolled away from the actress, her blue eyes huge with shock for some reason.

  “Are you insane?!” she yelled.

  Everything was happening so fast that I didn’t even notice Raven’s hand. She hadn’t simply swung at Eva; she had done so with a hand encased in shadow magic.

  “If you would have hit me with that spell I would have been decapitated immediately!”

  A terrifying smirk stretched across Raven’s lips, and she spared no words. She simply shrugged.

  Eva’s cheek began to twitch, and so did the muscles around her nose. Her brows furrowed and her lips quivered until it was evident that the shock had washed from her face. Something inside her had snapped, and the snarl that emerged was something far more ruthless and frightening than I ever thought she was capable of producing.

  Eva shot her arm out in front of her and fired a barrage of ice blades from her fingertips. The blades all pierced right through every surface they made contact with, and Raven just barely avoided being shredded to pieces by throwing her body to the floor with nanoseconds to spare.

  What kind of a battle is this turning into?!

  Eva slammed her fist into the ground, a pink arc of energy trailing her arm the entire way down. A fissure formed at her fist’s point of contact, causing a quake that shook the entire mall and split and collapsed the floor beneath Raven.

  The hole Raven fell into would have sent her plummeting into the basement below, but the actress stole a page from Eva’s book, using a fire spell to launch herself up in midair and back onto solid ground. It didn’t help much, though, because as soon as she landed, Eva pounced on her, tackling her and attempting to deliver the same devastating punch she’d just used to split the ground, but this time, the target of her fist was Raven’s face.

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  “Get off me!” Raven yelled, blowing Eva back with another gust spell just in time to avoid getting smashed by the incoming punch.

  “Shinsuke, this is really bad,” Mizuki cried. “Those trails coming from Eva’s punches are energy leakage.”

  I cursed my brain for blanking on the term’s definition in the moment, but, luckily, Mizuki seemed to read my lack of reaction for what it was and continued.

  “Energy leakage occurs when a spell is performed with an excess of magical energy. It’s usually a mistake, but she’s a prodigy. She wouldn’t make that mistake. This is more than not holding back; she’s intentionally overpowering her spells. She could kill her if any of those land.”

  I tried to understand how the situation grew so dire so quickly, but I came up with nothing. Raven and Eva were both out of control now, and if someone didn’t do something, things were going to end in disaster.

  Raven rose to her feet, her eyes darkened and fixed on Eva who was also getting back to a vertical base. She held her hands out to her sides, her palms facing upwards, and began to cast bolts of lightning down around her as she slowly approached Eva.

  Eva dove out of the way of each bolt of electricity just as each one would have struck her. When she was out of striking distance, she began to spin rapidly, sending a flurry of multiple elemental orbs hurling at Raven.

  Raven was clearly caught off guard and found herself pelted by a few of the orbs. Each one left bloody, painful looking welts and gashes, causing her to cry out before she eventually deflected the bulk of them with another gust spell.

  “What’s wrong?” Eva taunted, drawing nearer to her panting opponent. “I start getting a little serious and all you can do is keep pushing me away with a little wind. Kind of sad, don’t you think? I mean, you have all that power somehow, but if you ask me, it doesn’t seem like you know how to use it. You’re looking pretty gassed, too. But me? I can do this all night long.”

  Raven ground her teeth and yelled, “shut up! I’m going to end you right here!”

  She held out her hand again and concentrated. Some kind of chaotic sphere formed in her palm that looked like a larger variant of the orbs that Eva had hurled at her.

  “What exactly do you plan to do with that?” Eva scoffed initially, but something about the shape in Raven’s hand caught her attention and wiped away the mockery in her expression.

  The orb had transformed from something that resembled a plasma ball, to a dark, spinning vortex with onyx tendrils spiraling out of its center.

  “You really are insane,” Eva remarked. “Okay. You want to try to kill me? You like playing with shadows? Allow me to show you the light!”

  Eva’s lips parted to carve out a wild grin. She raised her arm high above her head and summoned a bolt of lightning down upon it like a rod in the middle of a storm. Electricity crackled up and down from her shoulder to her hand until a spiked sphere formed in her palm. She grasped it, sinking the tips of her fingers inside and filling it with a blinding light that reacted with the electricity inside the ball. The result was a radiant supernova, rotating at a high velocity.

  One look at the spells in their hands was all I needed to get me off the floor. I didn’t know what they were about to do but it was evident that I had to put a stop to it immediately.

  “Shinsuke, don’t!” Mizuki called after me as I sprinted toward the exit of the store we’d taken shelter in.

  I saw Raven and Eva preparing to lunge at each other and shouted, “both of you, stop it!”

  But it was no use. They’d already begun to charge at one another, their gazes interlocked in shared tunnel vision. Yelling was pointless now, too. They were deaf to anything but the sound of their own furious thoughts. I only had one option to stop what was about to happen. It was simple, but risky.

  I jumped between them, planting myself firmly in their path and holding out my arms.

  The fire in Raven’s eyes was extinguished the moment she saw me in her way, but she couldn’t properly cease her momentum in time. She stumbled just beside me and tossed her body to the floor, keeping her hand that held the vortex of dark energy in its palm high above her head.

  Eva’s animosity also became acute panic, but she was too close to have any hope of stopping. At the last possible second before colliding with me, she was able to pirouette around me like a figure skater but tripped hand first into the fountain, causing a massive explosion that blew me backwards.

  A plume of smoke kicked up around the blast and chunks of debris rained down around the entire area with countless thuds. From the cloud of dust, Eva slowly emerged, panting and limping, blood dripping from her hand that previously held the supernova.

  I remained on the ground, my head hazy from both the explosion and the fall. Mizuki quickly rushed to my side.

  She frantically checked me for injuries and asked, “are you okay, Shinsuke!?”

  I assured her I was fine, but I never took my eyes off Eva and Raven. The vortex in the actress’ hand had dissipated, but she was still on the floor. Her worried eyes were locked on me, so much so that she hadn’t noticed Eva looming above her.

  Eva used the blood on her hand to swiftly paint a magic circle on Raven’s back. When Raven realized, she tried to stand up but was violently yanked back to the floor by an unseen force.

  “I just tethered you with a gravity spell,” Eva panted. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  She fell to her hands and knees and began to collect her breath.

  The fight was finally over, and in its wake, the mall that had served as their battlefield was a wreck. The smoke that enveloped the fountain had mostly dispersed, and its absence revealed a gaping crater exposing the basement and innards of the shopping complex. Broken glass, shredded furniture, and all other forms of debris littered the area that had previously been a perfectly preserved fossil of consumerism.

  I sat up and surveyed the scene to the distinct, unsettling silence that befalls destruction.

  Good thing this place was already marked for demolition, because holy hell… What just happened?