[i]Well, that didn't work[/i], thought Travis after witnessing Alya rushing through his fiery blaze with little effort at, all thanks to her barrier that seemed to intensify against the attack. If anything though, he didn't expect his spell to have much effect in the first place and rather served its purpose in prodding against the barrier in order to expose its function and weaknesses. Based on the results, the barrier was reactionary; strengthening once a magical attack was upon it. The defensive spell was no doubt a more hardier element to deal with than he first expected.

However as he guessed, Alya was already pushing ahead with another swing of her staff ever-radiating its draining haze, this time to Travis' right flank. It truly surprised him how much ground Alya was aggressively gaining in order to strike out at him; it was almost a wonder why she wasn't using any spells to engage him. The fact didn't matter to much to him but if he had to surmise, it was likely an attempt to passively neutralize him which made sense considering the effects of the aura he could easily pick-up on. 

With mana already collected, Travis had little choice but to respond again through another evasion. However retreating backwards again would only be more encouraging for Ayla to keep up her assault in a single direction and eventually cornering Travis to one of the erected walls. Moving was his only sure way of keeping his counterpart off balance. While it was completely against his personal wishes, Travis leaped into the path of Alya's swing with his hands extended forward, this time conjoining his palms as a spell formed in response to his released mana. Just before the staff connected, he had then casted a repulsion spell in hopes of reflecting the attack. But with his own present momentum flying against the oncoming attack, his spell propelled him away from Alya to her rear left flank.

Meeting and rolling against the ground, Travis quickly enacted another part of his strategy and formed two additional runes his palms; another backdraft rune and his new cryo rune as well before discharging them at once in close proximity to one another. The two opposing elemental forces reacted to each other's presence as the streams of fire and cryogenic gases converged, exploding into mass cloud of steam that rapidly enveloped the entire arena. Now that a natural smokescreen has been laid down, Travis spent only a few seconds to recuperate himself, especially after he had grazed the exhausting influence from Ayla's attempted strike. But he couldn't stay still for long however; he still didn't know whether or not could even see through the thick mist of steam. 

Just as he was about to move out while using the steam to cover his movements, an idea had then came to mind. He still needed to keep Alya off of him somehow and restrict her movements as he formulated away of dealing with that barrier and hopefully his opponent in the process. A spell and a tome incantation came to mind but both required preparations to meet. For the time being, he would press his right hand into the ground and imprinted once of his runes in with the stone and dirt before vanishing into the mist, repeating the process while maintaining mobility. If Travis' opponent were to continue her assault, there was now an inlaid and overly mana-sensitive "minefield" to pass through.