Valentina meant it, or at least, she screamed it into the void of the corridor until the words became a shield. But beneath the defiance, a cold, honest sliver of her consciousness had already begun to calculate the impossible.
She saw the way his wounds closed; she saw the way his eyes never faltered. Finishing this wasn't a tactical objective anymore; it was a desperate prayer she had to recite aloud just to keep her muscles from seizing in terror.
But she buried that realization under a mountain of magical fury. A headmaster who allowed the taste of defeat to linger on her tongue mid-battle was already a corpse walking.
FZZZT WHIRRRR!
"Don't you dare stop!" Valentina roared, her voice cracking with the strain. "Morwenna, now! Push him into the next circle!"
Morwenna heard the raw desperation beneath the command, the way Valentina's voice wavered like a candle in a hurricane.
