Harry vs Ascher

So as another white-hot sphere splashed into flame against my shield, I whirled the butt end of the staff where the energy storage spells were carved toward Ascher, focused my concentration on the shield, braced my feet, and shouted, “Arietius!”
The staff bucked in my hands like a living thing and shoved my shoes several inches across the floor as the stored energy unleashed itself and drove into the rear of my shield. For a second, I worried about the staff shattering—I had never tried it with this much stored energy before, and there was always the chance that I had exceeded the design tolerance of the spell at some point. If I had, I would be the center of my own spectacular and splintery explosion. But my work was good and the staff functioned perfectly. I held the structure of the shield together and let the energy from the staff drive it forward, toward Ascher, and suddenly a large, obdurate, and extremely solid invisible wall was rushing at her like an oncoming freight train, shedding a trail of fire in its wake.
I had never lowered the shield, and my actions had been obscured by all the fire chewing away at it—so Ascher recognized the danger a second too late, and that was where her inexperience showed. She might have real power and a gift with fire, but in a fight there’s no time to think your way through spells and counterspells. Either you’ve done your homework or you haven’t, and despite the advantage of having Lasciel in her corner, Ascher wasn’t ready for something like this. She was focused entirely on offense, not on protecting herself as well, and couldn’t come up with a counter in time.
The wall hit her with about the same force as an oncoming garbage truck, and blew her right out of the veil of purple mist that clung to her naked form. She flew back off the stage in a windmill of flailing limbs, and crashed into a display of particularly fine ecclesiastical robes and garments, most of which burst into flame as the sheath of shimmering heat around her body brushed against them.

Skin Game Chapter 378-379


Ascher let out a bitter laugh. “You’re scared, Dresden. Admit it. I’ve got access to power that makes me dangerous and you’re afraid of what I can do.”
And, right there, she showed me the fundamental difference between us.
I loved magic for its own sake. She didn’t.
The Art can be a lot of work, and it can sometimes be tedious, and sometimes even painful, but at the end of the day, I love it. I love the focus of it, the discipline, the balance. I love working with the energy and exploring what can be done with it. I love the gathering tension of a spell, and the almost painful clarity of focus required to concentrate that tension into an effect. I love the practice of it as well as the theory, the research, experimenting with new spells, teaching others about magic. I love laying down spells on my various pieces of magical gear, and most of all, I love it when I can use my talents to make a difference in the world, even when it’s only a small one.
Ascher . . . enjoyed blowing stuff up and burning things down. She was good at it. But she didn’t love her talent for the miracle it was.
She merely loved what she could do with it.
And that had led her here, to a place where she had tremendous power, but not the right frame of mind to understand the consequences and permutations of using it—or at least not where she needed it, deep in her bones. To wield power like she currently possessed, she needed to understand it on the level of gut instinct, having assimilated the Art so entirely that the whole reality of using it came to her without conscious thought.
It was why virtually every time she’d used magic in the past few days, it had been to destroy something, or else to protect her own hide from the immediate consequences of her own power. It was why she hadn’t put in the practice she needed to go up against someone with a broad range of skills. It was why she had focused exclusively on attacking me, to the neglect of her own defenses a few moments before. It was why she’d said yes to the Fallen angel who was now driving her emotions berserk.
And it was also why she hadn’t thought through the consequences of unleashing that much elemental destruction in a large but ultimately enclosed area.
 Ascher had talent, but she hadn’t had the training, the practice, or the mind-set she needed to beat a pro.
“I’m scared,” I told her. “I’m scared for you. You’ve had a bad road, Hannah, and I’m sorry as hell it’s happened to you. Please, just walk. Please.”
Her eyes narrowed, her face reddened, and she said, words clipped, “Condescending bastard. Save your pity for yourself.”
And then with a cry she sent another lance of Hellfire at me, redoubled in strength.
Again, I caught it with a conjured cyclone infused with soulfire, though the effort was even more tremendous. Again I sent it spiraling up toward the ceiling—but this time I sent it all to one spot.
Even before the last of the Hellfire had smashed into the ceiling, I dropped to one knee, lifted my staff, and extended the strongest shield I could project, putting it between me and Ascher. It was a calculated bit of distraction on my part, giving her something she wasn’t psychologically equipped to ignore.
She screamed at me, her eyes furious, gathering more fire in her hands, seeing only a passive target, weakened and fallen to one knee, one she could smash to bits with a third and final strike—but I saw Lasciel’s glowing eyes widen in sudden dismay and understanding as the Fallen reached her own comprehension of consequences a few portions of a second too late to do any good.
An instant later, several hundred tons of molten and red-hot rock, chewed from the earth above us by Ascher’s own Hellfire-infused strike, came crashing down on top of her.
The noise was terrible. The destruction was appalling. Glowing hot stones bounced from my shield and then began to pile up against it, pushing at me and physically forcing me back across the ground. The pileup shoved me a good twenty feet across the amphitheater floor, with Michael hobbling frantically along a couple of feet ahead of me, crouching to take advantage of the protection of my shield.
After a few seconds, the falling stone became less violent and random, and I dropped my shield with a gasp of effort. I stayed right where I was, down on one knee, and bent forward at the waist, struggling to catch my breath, exhausted from the efforts of the past few moments. The vault was spinning around and around, too. When had it started doing that?
The air had gone thick with dust and heat and the smell of brimstone. Half of the freaking amphitheater had been buried by fallen stone. One of the enormous statues was covered to the thighs.
And Hannah Ascher and Lasciel were gone.
A few last stones fell, clattering over the mess, bouncing. I noted, dimly, that their arches didn’t look the way they should have. Gravity was indeed something heavier here than in the physical world. It was so heavy, in fact, that I thought I might just close my eyes and stay on the floor.
“Harry,” Michael breathed.
“Sorry about that, Hannah,” I heard myself mutter. “I’m sorry.”
Michael put his hand on my shoulder. “Harry? Are you all right?”
I shook my head, and gestured weakly at the fallen rock with one hand. “Hell’s bells, Michael. That wasn’t even a fight. It was just murder. She wasn’t a monster. She just made a bad call. She let that thing inside her and . . . it just pushed her buttons. Drove her.”
“It’s what they do,” Michael said quietly.
“Could have been me over there . . . There but for the grace of God goes Harry Dresden.”
Michael limped around to stand in front of me, slapped me lightly on the cheek, and said, “We don’t have time for this. Reflect later. We’ll talk about it later. Get up.”

Skin Game Chapter 46, Page 386-389