Requiem flexed her fingers as she walked down the hall towards the training room. A minor incident had shown her that her magic was rather underpowered at the moment so she had taken it upon herself to get stronger and come up with new spells.

Her main focus was compensation for the fact she wasn't particularly skilled in a straight fight. Sure she could kill someone in twenty different ways within seconds, but if they didn't go down quickly and managed to avoid her dirty tricks she was screwed.

Requiem set up several training dummies and started with a warmup before getting serious. Her main issue was that she was a small person so close combat naturally put her at a huge disadvantage. This led her to the conclusion that her main focus of the new spell she created should compensate for that.

With that in mind, she decided that using a ranged attack would be best. The only ranged spell she knew was Bitter Tear, so she decided to use that as her template and started envisioning the spell. She focused on the mechanics of the spell. How did it work? What did it do? How could it be improved upon?

Pulling out a notebook, she formed the spell Bitter Tear and studied the spell circle intently. The Bitter Tear spell circle was purple like all dark element spells, and had the image of a winged reaper holding a scythe in the middle. She thought of ways to improve it, naturally it would be stronger, she would also need longer range. She decided to work on the basics. She set her notebook aside and channeled her magic, building up as much as she could into her palm before throwing it. The amount of mana was too much for the small spell to handle and it collapsed, fizzing out. She frowned and tried something different. This time, rather than forcing all her mana in one go, it would be a slow feeding. This time the spell was unable to hold form, "hmm... how am I going to get more power into an attack for such a small space?"

She paced about and studied her notes on the magics she had already encountered. Most of them involved sizing the attacks to the amount of mana used. That didn't help her any though. She never was a fan of big flashy attacks that would give her away and leave her open. But she did like attacking from various points. So what if she simply multiplied her spell? Requiem focused. Instead of a single point, she mentally mapped out two separate focal points in her hand as her palm glowed. She opened her hand and saw two shuriken that had been formed by her magic.  The spell faded, but she was convinced she had a way to make it work now.

She focused again, this time trying to do it as fast as possible so she'd know where to work at. Looking at her glowing palm again, she saw she had accidentally fused the two together but otherwise the spell was fine. Dismissing the spell, Requiem tried again, this time focusing her magic to both palms. When she checked her hands again, she saw she had created four tiny unstable shurikens. "Seriously?" She groaned as she dismisses the spell and tried again, this time going slower and making sure to mentally map out the entire process.

Two shurikens in one had. Stable and ready to use. Requiem gave an experimental throw. The two stars flew their trajectories towards the same target. On inpact, they exploded with a much larger blast radius than Bitter Tear. Intrigued, she tested throwing two stars at two different targets. The stars were the same size but the blast remained as large as the two together, "let's see... is it possible that both stars are sharing mana and that's why they're more powerful?" She set up for another test. First, Bitter Tear. Then, her new spell. The damage output of the individual shurikens were the same. But the blast of her new spell, regardless of whether they struck together or separate, was larger.

She sat back to rest a bit and think of what to work on for her spell. The spell moved faster now, and when she tried banking throws, it could take turns much better. She nodded as she wrote down her observations before setting ithe notebook aside and getting back to work. She set up more training dummies and decided to make a gambit run, throwing her new spell at all the targets as fast as she could while running across the room.

Most of her spells nearly missed as she passed. She frowned in thought as she picked up her notebook and wrote down what happened. It seemed that the spell took a bit longer to form. She sat down on the floor as she wrote, "I wonder if I can set up like I'm casting Bitter Tear and them change it mid cast." She snapped her notebook shut and tried on the first dummy. The spell fought her the first time she tried, but she felt the magic and tried again. Letting her magic flow naturally as she cast her new spell, it started casting faster.

Now that she was getting the hang of it, Requiem started trying to move faster with her casting motions. She dashed forward and threw her new spell at the first target before spinning on her heel and attacking the next one. She jumped towards the wall and kicked off, casting her new spell and guiding their individual trajectories at two different targets. She nodded as the magic faded away from the blasts before heading to grab some unfortunate lackeys to spar against and practice her new magic. She reached the main area and found several pages sitting around in their training gear, "hey, I have a quick favor to ask you three." She had a small smile as the young men eagerly agreed.

Requiem stood in a ready stance as the three of them prepared their ranged magics for their match. Requiem nodded and dashed to a nearby pillar to climb it before launching her Sting of Death the the furthest of the three. The man dodged away with a roll as he fired some kind of ice projectile at her. Requiem leapt off to avoid the attack when she was nearly blindsided by a light spell almost catching her in the face forcing an awkward midair twist to avoid.

Thankfully the move had caused her to land in the third man's blindspot and she threw her Sting of Death again. Both shurikens struck the unfortunate victim and knocked him through a wall. Without missing a beat she pivoted and threw her Sting of Death again, one shuriken at each opponent. The second man cast his spell and the burst of light overpowered her attack before slamming her into a pillar. Requiem grunted as the wind got knocked out her, "Oh shit. You OK ma'am?"

A few minutes of coughing and getting her air back in her lungs later she gave a thumbs up, "I'm fine. Let's get ready to do it again." She took a ready stance and waited for the three to make the first move. Light and ice flew at her as a series of lava pillars shot into the air before turning into a series of blades that fired at her. She launched her Sting of Death at the lava and ice mages. Since the light element had a natural resistance to her darkness. It would be easier for her to fight the guy in a one on one where she could focus.

Side stepping the attacks, Requiem threw a punch before opening her hand and releasing a pair of shurikens. The move worked perfectly. The spell flew away from her and the light mage towards the other two and knocking them over with the blasts. Requiem followed up on her advantage against her opponent before the others regained their feet and attacked, forcing her to fall back and rethink her plan for dealing with them. She had initially thought o blitz them and keep them on their heels, but obviously their training was very well done as they adjusted themselves to limit her movement so the light mage could strike.

Huffing a strand of hair from her face, Requiem considered her options at this point. 1: to keep up the original plan. 2: a more defensive approach. 3: balance out attacks against the pair and the one. She threw Sting of Death at the two and ran at the light mage with her fist cocked. The page, caught completely flat footed, tripped over himself trying to avoid getting his face smashed in only to realize she was actually releasing her spell at point blank range, "GAH!" He clutched at his face as they both reeled back from the blast.

Requiem took advantage of the slack jawed look on the other two pages and sent Sting of Death at the two of them. She quickly jumped back into the light mage's guard as he recovered and hastily cast a spell that caught the both of them and sent her into the ceiling while he got slammed into the floor. The attacks tapered off as the unaffected pages ran over to help them, "perhaps we should take a few minutes for lunch?" The ice mage suggested. Requiem nodded and collected her stuff before leading the way to the cafeteria, "so,  thoughts on the spell?" She pulled out her notebook, "well, it certainly works, I'd hate to get caught in that during a real battle."
"There's also the fact that it's small. Hits well above its weight despite its looks" Requiem smiled, "it serves its purpose then. Thanks for your help." The pages nodded before tenderly walking to their own training.

She returned to the training room where she had created her new spell and paced, deep in thought. She liked her spell, but it felt like she was missing something. Requiem set up training dummies to help her work through what she might have missed while testing the curves of Sting of Death. Kickass spell? Check. Name? Check. Several more dummies were sacrificed honorably to the cause as she worked on figuring out the nuances of her new magic. One thing Requiem noticed was that while the turning could be much sharper, she still had to essentially guide the individual projectiles. Or she could mentally preprogram a curve and it would follow. The problem with the first method of guidance was that she could only track so much at any given time and in all likelihood she would not use this in battle. The second method wouldn't be able to chase the target if they moved out of the way, but she would be able to fight without having to track multiple people at once in a chaotic situation. She wondered briefly if the pages had gone easy on her, but quickly dismissed it. Even if they had, reflexes couldn't be faked.

Requiem rolled her neck, stretching out the kinks and tension in her muscles as she set up the dummies for one last run through before calling it a day. She fixed her boots before taking off in a sprint and races along the wall, throwing Sting of Death spells at the various targets. For the most part, she was going to test how her motion affected the movement of the spell.

Once Requiem reached the end of the wall, she jumped to kick off it and planted a foot on the nearby column before pushing off and grabbing the windowsill. From there, she threw spell after spell at all the dummies she could see and curved some of them at the ones she couldn't.

Gently leaping down, Requiem went to examine her handiwork. As expected, the dummies that had been left in the open were totaled. She winced at the thought of the reprimand she was bound to get from that. The ones behind cover were hit or miss, some were simply at too sharp a turn and out of blast range while others got struck with various degrees of success.

Requiem glanced out the window and realized that the sun had gone down. Stifling a yawn, she cleaned up as best she could before going to the barracks for a well earned rest.