Emilia

After a quick introduction they all formed groups of 2.(Angie, a blond girl Emilia had never seen before, seemed to be quite disappointed that Sally chose Emilia as a partner this time) and started practising. Today's spell was simple: a spell that would push the opponent off their feet. Sam directed the schedule, but often times two groups came together. It seemed like they all watched others from time to time to either correct their mistakes or find their own. Whenever someone attacked very well, making their opponent fly through the room, or some of them just started to fool around, the group burst into laughter – not in a rude way though. They all seemed to have lots of fun.

Sally surprised Emilia. They had practised the spells in their last lesson but weren't satisfied with their result, Sally however seemed to have it under control already. Still, Emilia blocked all her attacks.

Sally kept getting better and better – still with no success against Emilia, which baffled her each time. She seemed to have underestimated how good Emilia really was.

“Don't treat me like a baby Emilia”, she suddenly said.

“Huh?” Emilia answered confusedly.

“I have absolutely no chance to attack you, you block everything! But your attack is super simple to defend. Are you scared you will hurt me, or that I will be mad if you attack me?”

Emilia didn't answer immediately. It was true, she didn't want to attack her best friend (best?? She had a best friend? The sudden realisation warmed her heart). She however increased the intensity of her attack with every turn, hoping to challenge her enough so she could learn.

Sally was right though – Emilia was afraid to hurt her.

“I guess I.. uhm..”

“I can take it Emilia, we had other things here that were worse to defend! I am supposed to learn, right?”, Emilia said with a smile.

“Yeah… right. But I don't think you can defend my attack -”

“That's why I said learn. Ok?”

Sally raised her wand again, casting her spell without letting Emilia answer. She defended without any issues, although she had to admit that her efforts to defend were increasing. Emilia took it as a good sign.

“Your turn”, Sally teased with a sincere smile.

Emilia sighed. “Fine”, she said.

“But remember, that's what you wished for!”

Without a warning she cast the spell non verbally at Sally, who didn't even have the time to start her defence. Sally flew for at least one meter, turned in the air and landed on the floor, still rolling. The rest of the group turned around, some of them grinning, others not sure on how to react.

Sally gathered herself from the floor. Seeing how everyone stared at her she just blurted a quick “What, no laughter this time? I'm sure it looked funny!” through the room.

Emilia smiled. She still didn't feel welcome in the group, but at least Sally seemed to have her back.

“No non verbal during the first round!”, Robert remarked.

“Yes”, Sam added, “Casting the spell non verbally is part of the second round! Sorry Emilia, I forgot to mention it”

“Dont worry, its okay.”, Sally said. “Well… I guess I have to step up my game….”

The lesson continued. Emilia could see how hard it became for Sally now that she tried to not hold back in her attacks, but she didn't stop pushing her friends limits. Sally was not bad, she had surprised her a bunch of times, but she was certainly not the best. Still, she learned quickly. When the non verbal part started, Sally already surpassed most of the others in the group.

Emilia gave lots of tips, and after some time it was hard for her attack to get through to Sally. She even started to struggle defending at some point. Non verbal was very hard for Sally, and after a few times of flying through the room she needed a break.

“You made really good progress”, Emilia cheered her up. “You are already better than the majority here!”

“Are you sure?”, she said, looking a bit disappointed. “Not gonna lie, its kind of frustrating to fight you...”

“Well, I had fun, especially in the end you still were a challenge for me! We have to work on your non verbal though”, Emilia grinned and was glad to see her smile back.

Both sat on a couch in the seating area for Sally to recover. She seemed out of breath, but not tired. Sally leaned on the back of the couch and Emilia sat slightly diagonal to her. Their knees almost touched. A strand of Sally's blonde, wavy hair fell over her blushed cheek. She was still panting a little, but her red lips formed a smile. She brushed the strand out of her face and tucked it behind her ear.

“What?”, Sally asked.

“Uhm… What do you mean?”

“Is something in my face?”

“Uh… no.”, Emilia answered. She didn't even realize her staring and quickly turned away. “Do you want to continue”

“… yeah, I do. The final duels just started”

“The...”

“In the end of the lesson we will duel, mainly with the spell we learned, but also with others. Basically we try to incooperate what we trained into our regular duel style, to make sure we will remember to use it.”, Sally explained.

Emilia grinned, although she wasn't sure on how far she could go this time. Not holding back in her attack to make Sally learn defence was one thing, but Sally releasing all her skills on her during a duel was another. It did sound like lots of fun to her, but she didn't want to frustrate Sally or, worst case, even hurt her, but she was also sure Sally wouldn't appreciate it if she let her win.

“I am not sure how far I can go with this...”

“Don't worry”, Sally said. “I know I stand no chance but maybe switch it up? One round you let me fight you a bit, another round you show me what I have to be able to defend one day? I mean… that's the point, that we are able to defend ourselves. We will see how it works out, I guess. But don't you dare let me win all the time again!”

Emilia laughed. It seemed like a good idea.

Both went back to the fighting area where the others already started the duels. Sam was in full teacher mode now. He walked around, gave tips, showed others what they did wrong.

Sally positioned herself maybe 2 meters away from Emilia. She played cool, but still looked tense. Emilia decided to let her fight the first rounds, and launched a variety of spells at Sally, and many of them seemed unfamiliar to her. Nevertheless she did a good job defending. Emilia's judgement was correct – Sally's defence was very strong.

After some time their duel didn't really have a start and an end since it was clear who would win. It was rather a back and forth in attacks and defence. Sparkles flew around the room and from time to time a large bang indicated a strong attack that had been blocked. The rest of the group was in full duel mode now, and the different kinds of spells people came up with was fascinating even for Emilia to see. She imagined that the others had learned a lot from themselves simply by duelling regularly.

Sally was very tense in the beginning – she probably was a bit afraid of Emilia – but started to relax aoon. Emilia's attacks and defensive strategies were rather on the fun side, such as creating a wall of hopping bunnies that would make Sally loose vision to Emilia and block her spells if she hit one, which amused both of them.

Of course they made sure to use the practised attack from time to time as well. With every attack Sally's creativity grew. One time she made the floor slippery with ice so Emilia almost tripped if she hadn't broken it in tiny pieces with another spell.

There was one attack Emilia didn't see coming however. An extremely simple spell to move objects around. Sally cast it onto her, but instead of pulling her feet away to make her loose balance, which Emilia was prepared for, she simply turned Emilia around. The perplex girl suddenly stood there, facing the wall, away from her “enemy”.

Sally laughed when she realized it had worked.

“Haha, I got you! I'm over here Emilia, that's the wrong way”, Sally giggled.

This was too much teasing for Emilia, THAT game Sally would loose.

“Are you SURE you got me?”

Before even fully turning around she cast the practised spell completely non verbal on Sally – and Sally flew off her feet. She hadn't hit the ground yet when Emilia cast another spell, tying Sally's arms and legs so she couldn't move. It was just a simple move to show her who she was still dealing with.

“I win”, Emilia declared with a victorious grin, walking towards her friend.

She looked at Sally on the floor in front of her and realized: her attack might have been a little harsh.

Her plan was just to immobilize her a bit, but there were glowing, magical ropes all around Sally's body. Her legs were tied together on her ankles, below and above her knees and on her thighs, making it impossible to separate them even just a little bit. Another rope looped around her thigh and ankle which pulled her feet up as far as possible, as if she would kneel. Her arms were tied on her wrists and above her elbows, with two ropes tying her already tied arms to her torso. A silencing spell muffled her sounds, as if something was stuffed in her mouth.

The sudden immobility took her by surprise visibly. Her eyes widened as she looked up to Emilia with a silent surprised scream. She bent her spine which pushed up her ribcage, she wiggled with her feet and tried to writhe out of her ties, but it was completely futile. Emilia released her immediately but couldn't hide her grin.

“So that is your victory?”, Emilia giggled.

Sally struggled to regain her composure while rubbing her arms and legs. Her knees seemed weak when she got up.

“Holy crap”, she panted.

“Holy fucking crap”.

“SHIT”

Some of the other students laughed around them. It seemed like they had just waited for Emilia to destroy Sally. Emilia didn't pay attention to them.

“Are you okay?”, she asked, although she couldn't stop laughing. Her face when she lay below her, writhing while realizing how little chance she stood had just been too funny. To her relief Sally laughed as well, although she seemed a bit huffy.

“I'm… I'm good. Holy shit that was… I would have imagined it differently!”

“Uhm… you mean -”, Emilia started.

“This… bondage spell… I didn't think it felt like… uhm”, Sally struggled to find words to describe it.

“What? No one ever attempted to beat you in duels with bondage so far? I've had at least 10 people try it in class alone!”, Emilia said in disbelief.

Suddenly Sally went red. She remembered those times when their class bullied Emilia. She even remembered the instances where people in their class tried the bondage spells.

One time they succeeded, and Emilia was left on the floor helplessly with random spells shaking her body. In a few minutes more and more bullies had used the opportunity to make her suffer all those spells they never were able to make her endure before.

Sally had been sitting on her desk, she hadn't attempted any spell but she also hadn't even thought about helping her. In fact, no one had. Out of the 25 students in class, not a single one even attempted to step in. They all had either watched and laughed, bullied, or were bullied themselves.

More and more pupils had gathered around Emilia, and the spells had become crueller and crueller. Sally had looked at Emilia from the corner of her eye, watching her face and body closely. Emilia had tried to be very silent and not show any emotions, probably to not give them the satisfaction they had wanted, but in the end a tickling spell eventually broke her.

After only one second she had been laughing hysterically, writhing in any way she possibly could between the legs of two benches and with the little movement her ties gave her, trying to scream at the top of her lungs between her laughter. Although she laughed, her face was distorted, as if she had been in severe pain.

Sally remembered how she had laughed herself, how she even made fun of Emilia for breaking afterwards. She remembered the cheering crowd…

But now, right in this moment, Sally had experienced bondage herself. And although the experience had been very quick, just imagining not being released by Emilia, with people around her who would do anything to hurt her made her stomach twist.

She felt guilty, she should have done something. Emilia had been a very good friend. During their entire fights she helped her and made sure she wasn't frustrated. Sally’s magic was way worse than Emilia’s, but Emilia made sure she had fun and managed to make her laugh numerous times despite her loosing every single duel – and what had SHE done?

“Emilia, I...”

Emilia laughed. “Its ok, you weren't really part of it anyway. I'm not mad if that is your concern, otherwise this fight would have ended differently.”

Sally smiled shyly. “Im sorry. I… should have...”

“Hey, stop it! Its fine, I promise.”

Emilia meant it. She wasn't mad, she knew what people had done to her, but she also knew how Sally helped her.

“Lets keep fighting, okay?”

Emilia leaned forward, with her face centimetres away from Sally’s.

“Because destroying you, was super fun”, Emilia teased, and the sparkle in her dark eyes made Sally shiver, although she had to admit, it was in a good way.

Sally tried to answered with a stern look but couldn't help herself and smiled. Yes, it was fun for her to duel Emilia as well.

They continued, and Emilia stopped herself a few times to wreck her friend again. Explaining her magic to Sally and giving her tips gave Emilia a perspective she never got from books.

When Sam ended the lesson Emilia knew, joining was a good idea. She felt isolated in the group, just how she had feared, but she still enjoyed the time.