blonde with black underneath hair

He then began to charge up his mana, trying to gather up every last spark in his body and form the golden aura he had long since lost. With his diminished strength, it wasn’t nearly as powerful as it once was, and it only covered the front of his body, but that’s all he needed.

She formed two more rings and used them to parry his thrust, then tried again to slash his throat. Noah conjured an illusory handgun and shot her in the arm, leaving it numb and breaking the spell. Shocked and worried by the sensation in her afflicted arm, the assailant launched a blast of explosive wind with her other hand, launching herself up and away like Bower with his fire magic. She flipped through the air, landed gracefully fifty feet away, and then hurled another ring at Noah. He shot it out of the air, shattering it like a clay pigeon, along with each subsequent ring after.

After exploiting a gap in her attack, Noah lunged and swung at her, his blade coming within inches of her throat as she backflipped beyond his reach, kicking his sword to try and knock it out of his hand. He succeeded in hanging on and went in for a thrust, but she parried his attack and countered with a diagonal slash, stopped by him catching her blade with the guard of his sword. The two of them went back and forth, launching attacks at each other while struggling to endure the onslaught they were both receiving.