The second fight didn"t go much better. Neither did the third. Or the twelfth. Or the twenty-seventh.By fight twenty-eight, however, he had a breakthrough.
He had to literally think about nothing. Literally. His mind had to be a blank slate for his powers to work. As soon as he started thinking about what his body was doing, or what Rose was about to do, or attempted to plan any strategies, they immediately failed and he got his happy little a.s.s beat like an incel piñata. He just had to learn to zen out, and let his body and its new magical abilities do all of the work and thinking for him. It felt strange and completely counter-intuitive, but, for better or worse, it was his only choice.
Once he realized this, things got better.
Granted, not MUCH better. But lasting longer than three seconds flat and actually getting a few good moves in felt like an absolute triumph by comparison to feeling like a human baseball.
By fight fifty, he finally managed to score a blow on Rose"s body, and by fight seventy-seven, he"d disarmed her, knocked her to the ground, and swung for the killing blow before freaking out and stopping himself when he saw the look of actual fear in her eyes.
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So, his instinctual fighting skills only understood combat to the death. That was something he was going to have to keep in mind.
He reached down and offered her his hand with a smile, and helped her to her feet.
After that fight, he never lost a match again, but was careful to pa.s.sively monitor his actions as he fought to keep things from ever going as far as they did again. Rose, to her credit, never got easier as an opponent. Even when he won, with all of his wish-given prowess, the fights were still very close, and on more than one occasion he barely escaped getting caught off guard and trounced. The girl was insanely strong, skilled, and fast, and he had no doubt that she would be the death of nearly anyone who tried to go up against her.
Between bouts with Rose over the weeks, Jack also spent a lot of time with Eleanor, having her teach him how to command and control his magic skills. He was definitely a sorcerer, she confirmed, and she promised to do all she could to help him learn how to use his abilities, but warned him that there was only so much she could teach him due to the differences in their magic cla.s.ses.
The key similarity, she said, lay in their shared use of vocal expression to cast magic. Every caster, regardless of type, had to speak to use their spells, though the words and languages they used varied wildly. She, for her part, cast her spells in Infernal.
The primary difference, however, was that wizards used material components and somatic gestures to cast their spells, and sorcerers used their imagination alone. Because they always used the same materials and gestures, wizards could always get predictable results and experienced no fatigue from their magic use, but were limited by what spells they knew and how long they took to cast. Sorcerers could do anything they set their mind to, provided they had a clear vision, and knew the right trigger word. Sorcerers she told him, however, couldn"t always control the results of their magic, and drained their own life force to cast, meaning if he cast too much magic too soon, he would wear himself out or potentially even die, which was, naturally, not a rea.s.suring thought.