Velvet didn’t get involved in any more mishaps before locating Syon, who was at the forest’s edge, already with Skogul.

Huh, so we weren’t that far away from each other.

“Did you cross any of the fourteen oppositors?” She asked upon arriving, dusting off her dress.

“No, I did not.” Syon answered nonchalantly.

I wasn’t asking you… Obviously you didn’t cross any! If you had done so, all our preparations would’ve been for nothing!

“Nothing from my side.” Skogul said. “Drifa is still further away. We have to go get her.”

“She keeps stopping randomly.” That was Syon's nice way of saying she kept fighting stray mages.

Good to see one of them was working hard!

Velvet nodded, before they started moving. Not straight towards Drifa, since that would make being ambushed a possibility, even more in the case they were being followed or tracked.

It was fourteen versus four, and their advantage was the ease in which four mages could team up, instead of fourteen.

Drifa was in the basalt columns zone. Close to the volcanic zone, basalt formations, hexagonal in shape, grew in a 45º angle from the floor.

The columns were big enough to work like a tilted stairway: sometimes going up, sometimes going down, left, right, inside a hole… A slippery, trippable, impossible to run in stairway.

So Velvet used the broom, not wanting to deal with them. Why didn't Drifa pick an easier path, dammit?

Like the active volcano, for example.

…

They heard Drifa before seeing her. And she didn’t mean the clanking noise of metal against rocks.

“You son of a bitch! Once I get you I’m going to shove this axe up your-”

Now, that was the Drifa Velvet remembered from the Arena!

Glad to see she’s having fun!

The girl in question was chasing another mage, one who kept jumping from column to column. Looking at the destruction around the place, they had been at this for a while.

Raising her left hand, Drifa started to chant, "Ode for the frozen, drenching of calamity."

The air rumbled, with several gray clouds swirling over them, cracking. Sharp, pointy structures peeked from them, every single one translucent like glass.

As she lowered her hand, the ice spears rained down.

The enemy mage joined his palms, putting one hand over the other, with the right thumb kissing the left little finger.

“This too shall pass.” Separating his hands, an aura surrounded his body, draining everything it touched from color. The air, the rocks and his clothes became gray, a stillness dawning over him.

The ice spears lost their shine upon entering, crossing the mage without harming him, going into the basalt columns without shattering them, disappearing below the ground.

“Tsch.” Drifa spat, baring her teeth.

Apathy Paradigm. Velvet felt the pull of a Paradigm adjacent to her own, which allowed her to recognize it, even when she had never met an apathy mage before.

A bald man, probably around his forties, dressed in a long robe with wide sleeves. But what caught Velvet’s attention were his eyes. They were made by vertical lines, in different tones of white, who constantly moved up. Even when he tilted his head, the lines always went up.

Not all novice mages were young. The majority of them were, of course, but there was a minority who was older. Usually mages who first wandered around before entering the Mergifari, or mages from families who weren’t affiliated with them, and couldn’t or didn’t want to pay the price for entering.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The mage looked like a Paraiso native, so the chances of belonging to an unaffiliated family were low.

Mages from Paraiso never left Paraiso. Velvet didn’t know the reason, like almost everyone from other continents, the knowledge of what actually was behind the wall of light was a mystery.

Both him and Drifa noticed them.

Drifa looked at Velvet. Once their gazes met, she stuck the ground using her axe like a staff.

"Gertine sends her regards." She said.

Velvet looked at her in silence, blinking slowly.

Eh?

What does that have to do with anything?

Ah. Of course. She realized soon. Gertine probably encountered Drifa, got scared shitless, and used the fact that Velvet was her companion as a scapegoat.

Hehe, am I that famous? Chuckling to herself in silence, she nodded to Drifa. The taiga hunter could carry a grudge for a long time, so Velvet played along with Gertine's mysterious persona, not planning to give Drifa any reason to hunt Gertine later, at least for this reason, and instead giving her an enigmatic smile. "Ah, is that so? Guess I'll have to pay her a visit after this job."

Gertine, my beloved friend, once Drifa discovers I was the one who defeated her that day, she is gonna take us both down together. Glad to share the sinking ship with you.

Drifa mimicked her nod, believing something was between them.

Conversations over, they turned to the apathy mage. As if the situation didn’t matter to him, he hadn’t moved, nor tried anything.

And, even when they had no enmity with him, all of them were inside an Arena, and thus, doomed to fight.

They had to prove Syon was fit as a ruler to a military nation.

As a test, Velvet sent one of her figurines towards the mage, but, once it entered the decolored area, her connection to it got cut, and the figurine plopped down uselessly.

What would happen if a person entered? She pondered. Even when they outnumbered the mage, none of them made any moves to get closer.

Even Drifa, who had been chasing him before, chose to squint at him instead of attacking. Clearly, seeing her Ice Spear Rain fail miserably made her reconsider.

There wasn’t much information about the Apathy Paradigm. It was hard to obtain, the practitioners could be counted with one hand, and the most important mages from it tended to disappear with time, with no one to explain, or care to find out their destination.

One of its names was the Lost Paradigm, because a mage had to be truly lost in life to obtain it.

The only good thing Velvet could say to know about it, was that apathy mages never lost control.

And after saying that, she could argue that the mage looked more lifeless than Skogul, and he was dead.

Syon extended his hand, and blew on it. A tiny blow, and yet, a dense, snake-like sand formation, never-ending in length came out, coiling around the gray area, slowly sealing it shut.

The snake kept on coiling over itself, every spin faster than the previous one.

“This too shall pass.” Syon repeated the mage’s previous words. “But can you stand still until it does?”

“He cannot move using the spell…” Velvet realized, feeling stupid. It was obvious! Although the area surrounding the mage negated any attack, it could only be maintained as long as the mage ‘ignored’ his situation.

Syon wanted to take all the area’s oxygen, sealing first the zone shut and then grinding to ‘steal’ the available air.

He must’ve dealt with apathy mages previously. I would’ve simply ran away once I realized I couldn’t harm him… not like I could seal the area anyway.

Velvet saw Drifa chanting again, intending to stab the mage the same moment he exited.

Seconds passed, with only the noise of the grinding sand and the cracking ice being heard.

Then, a loud bang came from inside the snake, exploding it’s side, scattering the sand around in million particles.

Ice spears rained down instantly, all directed to the hole.

The apathy mage, now visible, raised his hand towards the falling spears, pointing a three-cannon shotgun against them.

Bang!

He shot again, this time, the noise wasn’t contained by the sand wall, reverberating everywhere. It was so strong, the ice spears disintegrated before even coming close to the ground, the shattered shards shining like daylight stars in the sky.

Velvet looked at them, amazed at the shotgun artifact power. How much would something like that cost?

She saw Skogul looking in her direction, before his eyes widened, and screamed something in a strange language.

Two corpses jumped at her, tossing her to the ground. She felt something smack them, augmenting the pressure over her body.

Getting over the surprise, she pushed the corpses away, finding them strangely joined.

Soon, she realized why. An ice spear had stabbed them, fully crossing the first corpse, and more than half the second.

Velvet pressed her lips and raised her gaze, her eyes meeting Igern’s.