Deadly Wands by Brent Reilly

buried in deep basements. He argued for hours with other
enthusiasts over the smallest of details or the silliest of dueling
philosophies.
    William thought he had a solid Top 10 list of
favorite duelers until Billy cruelly picked them apart. Not content
with just ten favorites, Billy constantly reshuffled his Top 100
and speculated in detail over theoretical matches between fighters
who lived in different centuries. William spent less time offering
constructive criticism of Billy’s dueling and more time defending
his own victories in the arena. The boy showed more mercy in the
stadium than in his analysis of his father’s duels. William became
a much better dueler, but Billy turned into a perfectionist. Liz
had to forbid the topic in her presence.
    To salvage his self-respect, William tried
teaching Billy about war. They bought maps, read books, and studied
geography. William took Billy to battlefields to show how terrain
affected campaigns. They debated old war slogans like “An air force
flies on its stomach” and “Tactics win battles, while strategy wins
wars.” They studied the greatest generals of the ancient world --
Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Alexander, Gaius Marius, and Caesar.
Billy wanted to become the world’s best dueler, but William wanted
him to become the world’s best general.
    Armed with Millennial Wands, father and son
dominated twice as many arenas. Billy would stay until he ran out
of challengers, then take on teams of two. And who feared a six
year old? Billy dueled ten times as many opponents as his father
simply because he could, and in the process made a fortune. They
hired more of Liz’s family to open up more bank branches. Global
Bank gave interest-free loans to France and Spain to keep them
afloat.
    Speed is thrust versus weight. Given the same
wand power, a twenty-five kilo boy could maneuver four times as
fast as a one hundred kilo man -- it was like boxing against
someone who could punch four times as fast.
    For his 7 th birthday, Billy wanted
to visit American University, a famous flight school founded by
American Jack in San Francisco. Global Bank already had branches on
the American east coast, so William sent employees to start their
first branch on the west coast. Meanwhile, they loaded down every
Siberian quad with gold and flew them to San Francisco to fund
their newest branch.
    William walked into American University with
thousands of great wand sets and offered to employ every American
marathoner, near-marathoner, and near-marathoners that they could
train.
    A marathoner could fly a thousand kilometers
a day, a near-marathoner eight hundred clicks, and a
half-marathoner five hundred. The University had been training
quads for two centuries, so they could find them all from their
graduates. It’d still take a year for their best veterans to become
proficient at maneuvering together in formation.
    To get the best fliers, William offered
double the normal salary, plus half of the spoils from raiding, but
he only wanted those who could fly the minimum distance one hundred
days straight, instead of just ten. The best wands would go to
those who could fly the farthest.
    To spread the word, William sent Billy with
their recruiters to show off at America’s biggest cities.
Meanwhile, they showed William their ten lines of fortifications,
stretching from the Bering Strait, which separates Siberia from
Alaska, to Anchorage.
    Unimpressed, William paid the University to
construct hidden bunkers capable of housing a battalion within a
few hundred clicks of the coast. He ordered ten million bombs to
distribute among these bunkers. William spent a month flying from
the Strait to determine the Khan’s likeliest invasion route before
taking the family back to work.
    The downside of constant dueling was it put
Liz in a state of perpetual fear. Her husband and son suffered
serious wounds weekly. Billy got hurt so much he sucked wand in his
sleep -- something that William did not know was