The way her face twisted was simply unnatural. There were scholars who said that people took after their prime elements. For irregular mages, it was magnified in a different way. Sigi often became morose, distant, and lost in thought. Angry too, sometimes, but Tyr wouldn't say she experienced sudden swings in mood like Alex sometimes did. 'Stormy', that was a word for the expression, and an appropriate one too considering how she'd snap at random. Astrid on the other hand would become inappropriately happy over the strangest things. Anything that interested her, she'd become obsessed with it for some time, light and love – when turned under the human prism of emotions all things would eventually lead to their most inappropriate place. She was the person who disturbed Tyr the most, a completely and utterly unhinged woman.
Alex on the other hand... Well, it was self evident, she pummeled him with a wrathful screech. Free-falling into the rage that was hard to get her out of. Something just snapped in her brain, similar to the way he felt sometimes – he thought, and she was unleashing all of that bottled up anxiety. Wind was not her prime element, he'd guess it was fire and she'd simply reached into the energy projection component of it. Months of calm, patient study, the perfect student letting loose all of her worries at once on the only target she felt comfortable enough to. People thought she was perfect, but Tyr knew otherwise, though he'd agree with them in any case. Because she was perfect just the way she was, to him, but perfection was abstract, no man could define it, not even him.
Thinking these things even as she turned him to paste on the arena floor, leveraging her emotion to grant her power beyond the norm.
Alex worked very hard. Surely her pedigree, heritage, and bloodline all had something to do with her latent potential – but she had an incredible work ethic as well, one that Tyr would never discount. She'd noticed his ethic herself, affectionately calling them 'two peas in a pod of pea pods full of peas'. Odd, really, considering 'two peas in a pod' would indicate that said pod currently contained at least two peas. Tyr didn't like peas. What an odd thing to willingly eat. From an agricultural standpoint, they weren't even a high yield crop. Compared to other greens like cucumbers, green beans, kale, or any manner of significantly better tasting vegetables. Zucchini... Such an odd word, zucchini, but that, too, existed.
Of course, this was a rather odd train of thought to ride off on as he was being slammed violently into the ground, but he just didn't understand it. Like... There was zucchini, cucumber, broccoli, spinach, artichoke, watercress, soy beans, green beans, asparagus, brussel sprouts... So many greens! And yet people chose to eat peas. Peas!!! Wait... Was it brussels sprouts, or brussel sprouts, what the hell was a brussel? Tyr jotted a note in his mind to remind him to ask someone with experience in agriculture or botany. Leda, Alex's halfling friend and his fellow professor, she had a garden. Perhaps she knew. Should he call her now? No, probably not, the force at which Alex was juggling him was intense. It was quite unlikely she'd hear him through all of that noise.
Cucumbers were just so good, refreshing and flavorful, especially when one put some salt and vinegar on them. Peas...!? Humanity was truly irredeemable, it was a wonder they'd manage to become the second most dominant race on the place. Second most? There was another, apparently, though he didn't know where he'd heard that... Tyr couldn't remember. Somewhere to the south...
All the humans thought they were the big 'number one', but there were so many races on the planet – many of which Tyr had never encountered though he knew innately that they existed. Everywhere was just... Human. It was so boring. Humans were boring and so was their magic. It was strong though, or at least it could be if they reached deep for it. He already knew that, and he was getting a reminder in living color as Alex entrapped him in a web of kinetic barriers typically used as shields, dozens of them crushing his arms, neck, and torso, slamming him face first into the ground. Grabbing at every limb like a pair of hands and making a mess of him so easily. Drawn and quartered, his limbs flying off into the distance.
Her rage, that anger inside of her was an incredible source of power. Sometimes emotions had an enhancing effect on magic, but they could be very dangerous by the same coin. Magic was a scourge in many ways, its use had become normalize but if there was any greater evil in the world, it was magic itself. Emotions could allow mages to bring out any latent bloodline abilities, giving the mana the capacity to hurt them the way Tyr's did when he pushed himself beyond the acceptable limit. Only... He'd always survive, he wasn't sure how Alex was faring on her end. Perhaps she was just that phenomenal of a person to experience none of the negative side effects.
But, peas!?
Wait, where am I...?
Oh... Right.
There was that, and then there was her endgame. The apex of her original plan. Turns out all of those lights she'd shot off were a delayed activation spell after all. Thousands of lilac fireflies splattering him all over the arena. Buried into the walls and flying to life at a flick of her finger. She was so talented. So beautiful, even when she was wroth to such an extent. Tyr knew she was trying to inflict pain on him, which was unfortunate, but she felt so alive doing it. He wanted to suck on her. Er... In this moment she looked like she'd taste... Good? There were, perhaps, better ways to say it – but he was still thinking about PEAS!
WHY PEAS!?
“You're still not taking this seriously!” Alex shouted up at him, he was quite a ways skyward now, an impressive juggling act courtesy of her lilac bolts become nails in his flesh. His bones were crunching and grinding against one another but he could still hear her just fine. That was always odd, even without ears or eyes his senses remained, by why? “Because you honestly think you can beat me, is that it? You think you're better than me – still?”
Tyr slammed into the stone head first, feeling his neck twist at an odd angle. Something inside of his gut came loose and he could feel his organs moving in ways they shouldn't. That was often worse than the pain. Pain could be quantified and related to, it was something everyone experienced to some degree or another, but feeling one's individual organs moving around was not something he'd recommend anyone try.
“You know nothing about magic! You use it as a dull tool, not the fine scalpel that it is. I'll admit that the steam was fairly clever, but ultimately it was rudimentary. Crude. Do you even know the difference between a ward and an array? The identifying characteristics of heritage and bloodline magic? Could you even explain to me the key differences between a warlock, wizard, templar, adept, and sorcerer?”
“I get it, you've said it before.” Tyr groaned, all his pieces sliding back into place, pulling his helmeted head from the ground like a spud. Blissfully, his mind was still intact. Whether she'd kept herself in check just enough to ensure that it remained so was an unknown, but it was a fact that she was stronger than he'd given her credit for. “If you had half of my 'talent', you'd have done so much more with it. But you don't, so what's the point in repeating yourself? I could say the same thing about you, and I'd be right – what if I had your mind?”
Tyr wasn't an optimist nor a pragmatist, the glass could be half full, full, half empty, empty... He was a man who simply saw the glass and recognized its existence, never caring what was in it.
Just as he stood, her hands chopped the air again and a storm of level one wards of such number that he couldn't react to them all pounded him into the ground again. Displaying unbridled might over her magic, utilizing fine control to turn defensive wards into blunt objects again. Not many mages could do that, that was the realm of the kineticist. A school that was not her own, but she'd practiced it like so many others.
But why peas? There were so many choices available to the modern man. Oh, but nothing was worse than fucking olives, disgusting! Kriegers even put beans on toast, calling it breakfast! These 'people' were truly lost.
“Let's see...” Tyr coughed, spitting a mouthful of stone and shattered teeth and pondering her question.
The difference between a wizard and a sorcerer...? On the baseline, humans didn't 'use' magic in the realer sense, they generated arrays that acted as a medium and a conduit between them and mana, the 'weave' between planes of energy. Even some archmages didn't have the mana reservoir that Tyr did. Kael wasn't even close, because he was a wizard – not a sorcerer. Someone who used knowledge and various tools to make clever use of energy, their internal core only serving as an anchor, the control arrays they developed made use of mana drawn from the atmosphere or from artifacts. The most common form of mage, their disadvantage being that to access their full potential they needed to carry charged mana crystals with them, and foci. Once upon a time, that had meant a wand, but nowadays they were usually staves or really any other weapon based on preference. Orbs, some used orbs but Tyr didn't really know why, probably because they looked cool – floating around in the air the way they did aglow with energy.
In comparison, a sorcerer was magic. They had far more internal mana, but they were rare, and because they had so much of it – it was harder for them to generate gateways to conduit mana that wasn't their own. Something comparable to the process of osmosis, they might have more mana but being denser made it harder for them to access the external. Sometimes it made it harder to properly use magic at all, since they effectively started stronger than the rest, it was an early advantage but would quickly become the opposite.
Sorcerers were fairly uncommon so the phenomena wasn't all that well understood. Whereas 'wizards' were a dime a dozen. All of the various categories fell under the wider classification of 'mage', but later into their lifespan they would separate into one of the various archetypes. One couldn't become a sorcerer, you were either born with it or you weren't, or so they said. But there were many 'classes' freely accessible to anyone should one had the means or training.
Wizards, healers, templars, elementalists, oracles, occultists such as warlocks and witches, summoners...
The list went on, it was long, and some mages could be more than one in terms of classification. Even the slightest difference in how their magic worked was used to identify and categorize them. Paladins and priests, technically, also fell under this system, some had nearly no mana and could use magic because they took it from a higher plane. Then came the more esoteric and harder to explain, divine cultivation. Seekers, who took their power from elsewhere or purposely cursed themselves, obtaining a gift – mostly telurian mages who made use of tattoos to shape their inherently stronger but less distinct mana cores were technically of this category. With the right foundations, an artificio could be considered a class of mage as well, which would make Tiber one considering he'd developed the sudden talent for auramancy. Making him an adept, too, at least at the general standard for a college.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Adept's meaning someone with one ability in particular but very little or no talent for any other field of magic.
A sorcerer on the other hand, was always a sorcerer and nothing else. They could emulate to some degree, as Tyr did, though not quite the same, others had a much easier time at it. Or so he thought, considering Tythas – a man who'd found a source of empowerment via his bloodline unlike Tyr, unless the later considered his emotion power. There was another reason entirely for the difficulty though, and it had nothing to do with his bloodline. Presumably.
Shaper magic was far more unique, so much so that it existed only in legends as 'old magic' and wasn't considered stronger by any means than the modern schools. Some believed it 'elven' in nature, but Tyr doubted that very seriously, he'd always been looking for an elf and had never found one in all of his travels. Abaddon claimed they didn't exist, and he was very 'old and wise'. Heavy on the quotation marks, he should know something like that regardless.
Perhaps a higher ceiling, but the floor was equally low and the effort needed to raise it was so high that humanity had abandoned it eras ago. He'd only ever met three people perhaps capable of using it.
Hastur, Nala, and now Alex. He could confirm all of these personally.
Tyr was certain. It wasn't the same, but it felt close enough, like she was banging on the door and looking through the keyhole. Almost there, inconsistent flickers of spira in some of her mana emissions. Her already immense talent for the arcane about to awaken into shaper magic, making her a terrifying opponent if he'd compared her to any other mage he'd ever fought.
In the future, that is, Alex could very well rival the greatest mages ever known among humankind. Tyr was an idiot, and he did exactly as she'd accused him of – using it as a blunt instrument. Even so, he considered himself very powerful situationally, whereas Alex was just... Better.
Nala was a magical beast or at least in the wider classification of magical beings, but not all magical beasts could use shaper magic. Okami couldn't, not yet at least. There was some fine identifier between the more 'natural' magic and shaper magic, though he didn't know what it was. Looking for that was like finding a single thread on a tapestry the size of a town square. He also didn't care to, as it wouldn't explain how to use it more effectively, and that was what mattered to him. All he knew was that the original shapers were perhaps the first gods ever to exist, making it possibly the first brand of magic to ever exist as well – and it could be very simply boiled down into a complete melding of mana and spira to achieve a result. It sounded simple, but it wasn't, spira was 'real' – real fire rather than magical fire, etc.
Tyr had no plans to write a book about 'old magic', the benders and appropriately named shapers of the far flung past. If it was really so much better, it'd never have been replaced, but for some reason either through his unique body or lack of intelligence he couldn't use anything else.
Even if he did write that book, who would believe him? Eight foot tall titans among men, every man a primus. Or perhaps not, just an awakened nephilim – but if power was the standard there would've been thousands to equal Jartor. Sanguinar had said that primus was the world for 'herald' and they were rare, even back then. Then again, he could have been lying. Trusting a vampire seemed like a tricky proposition. Or rather, vampyre. Tyr didn't really understand the difference – there were no books that mentioned the latter, but 'striga' were well documented and apparently they were the same thing.
Peas, though?
One might wonder why Tyr was thinking such wildly random thoughts while in the process of being beaten to pieces by his beloved wife. Well, that was rather simple. He realized he'd been doing it his whole life. Exposition in the brain, chasing random threads of thought because it helped him calm down and center himself in a way. He'd already forgotten about the peas, well no, that was a lie – peas were disgusting and so were olives. Meditation was something he still did, every single day, but he spent most of that time focusing on his thoughts – not emptying his mind.
That way his way. Trying to control the random flow of impulses in his brain, completely different from what he'd been taught. If one were to listen, it'd sound a lot like inane babbling, he'd imagine – it got loud in there, sometimes. Better for it, he thought, when he emptied his mind he felt terrible. An immensely foreboding pressure, an anxiety of someone breathing on the back of his neck, he could feel the drool tracing a line down his spine.
“What's the difference between a personal spell and technique, eh? Do you have any idea? You don't, do you? Memorizing pages from a tome is far from true understanding.” Alex punted Tyr across the field again. It was grisly, this scene of a rag dolled man being torn apart. Any stripe of observer would be horrified, beating a downed opponent was not permitted in a duel, nor proper spar. Not in this world, yet she continued and Tyr could only think about how much he enjoyed the breeze on his face, what was left of it at least. Ah man, the peas again... The peas haunted him in a way he could never properly articulate.
She's still going...? How long has it been? Tyr replayed it all in his mind, perhaps ten to thirteen minutes she'd been abusing him. Odd, that. She 'hated seeing him get hurt', but here she was beating him down herself. He didn't mind it, really, but the hypocrisy was there and he didn't like that in particular. It was only okay if she did it, he would imagine that was how she rationalized that side of herself. Self possessed as she was, but they were all innately selfish – it was an intimate part of their fabric.
“Do you even know the formula for input velocity on a purely elemental spell versus a physical component array?” Alex asked, there was contempt in her voice and it was starting to bother her partner. Her hands clapped together and an arm thick bolt of lightning fell from the sky to smash Tyr apart again, groaning and prone on the ground as he was.
Until at the last moment a spraying gout of flame came from his shoulders and he went from laying prone to standing up in a split second, completely straight. Before the bolt could land, that was how fast he'd moved, betraying all laws of physics with the display.
His eyes locked onto hers, and...
“What in...” Alex gawped at the bolt of lightning hanging barely an inch from his flesh, a rod of pure white hovering in the air and perfectly still. Frozen in time. Tyr bent at the knees, wheeling his arms, index and middle fingers extended. Hard, sharp movements, the movements of a practiced lightning mage. Tyr had no talent or skill of his own, that was how he felt, but he was exceptional at copying others, and now he was emulating her own casting style. Every minute detail she'd drilled into her muscle memory after thousands upon thousands of hours of practice, all in a span of a few minutes and he was indistinguishable from her.
Just like martial forms, many mages had their own, and she was no different. At the crescendo of this movement of his, the bolt connected with the fingers on his right hand and ceased to be. White light was pouring from his eyes, his body shuddering in ecstasy. An demonstration of raw power that made absolutely no sense with what Alex understood of magical law, which was quite a bit if she had anything to say about it. One could not simply catch a spell...
“Level four, high level four – almost five. You are so close. That really is impressive.” Tyr nodded contentedly. The runes carved into his very bones were glowing through his skin, armor removed after being pressured too much, not interested in breaking it again. Deuritium wasn't anti-magic as many thought, he'd repeat that, and every day he learned more about it.
It was vampiric, friendlier to magic that almost every other material. Breaking it apart and sucking it all up inside of itself. The problem was, finding that much magic to satiate the raw appetite of the material was near impossible. This was no different, but with the runes carved on them, the magic was sent into his body, sucked away and satisfying the black steel within him for the time being. A much more subdued, controlled reaction, and that was the point – he'd constantly been forced to do this and in a manner of speaking it was keeping him alive. Only now had he figured out how to absorb it like that without harming himself. Temporarily, at least, it couldn't last forever – making him a literal battery overcharged by her use of lightning, or perhaps a capacitor that would slowly drain over time if one were to nitpick – and it'd be painful all the while. “I hope you know how proud of you I am.”
Alex tried again, a dozen spells. They'd fly barely a meter before freezing in the air, blurring and shaking at their edges. Ethermancy. There were those who could disrupt via clever use of wards, and there were those few archmages of such power that they could steal a spell from a weaker opponent and do with it as they'd like. Just not like this. Tyr was doing something similar, grabbing them and absorbing the latent energy like a leech.
“Is this a mana domain!?” She asked, and that was the realm of a greater magical beast, the realm of legend.
“Of course not. Domains aren't that easy, you'd know one when you saw it. Or more appropriately, felt it.” Tyr snorted, walking to each spell individually and swallowing them. There was a limit to it, it wasn't something he could do forever – and the pain was incredible. The agony of taking another person's mana into his body was far worse than being hit by any spell, sans what he'd felt under the lycanthropy curse so long ago... It felt like so long, and what a wild journey it had been. Here, at the end, the cliff that allowed him to see the raw stretch of footsteps he'd left in the sand below. “Even I haven't figured out how to properly generate a domain. That's still my ultimate goal, best I've done is an aura but I can't use it at will. My mind is too loud.”
What he was doing was latching onto her spells with spira. The equivalent of expanding his energy outward like an additional limb and clamping down on it. It was difficult, near impossible for the current him to perform in the midst of combat, so he rarely used it. And if he extended it and lost control it would be akin to a normal person bleeding themselves dry. Couldn't use it on pure adepts, unfortunately, he had tried and been unsuccessful. Their command of that one brand of magic had far stronger a force than his will necessary to cease its motion. This was nothing more than a play at intimidating her, only catching the bolt because the spell itself was so large – mostly just dumb luck.
But Alex was smart. Calmed now, no longer surrendering to her passions. She plucked a handheld, four limbed crossbow from her dimensional ring, and before he had time to blink... A deuritium tipped shaft punched through his skull, silencing the 'oh shit' prepared to leave his mouth. Held to her shoulder steadily, below lowering the weapon when he seemed to have been properly put down for the time being.
Tyr himself had said 'there were no rules in a fair fight' – and she was intimately aware that he'd refrained from cheating as he might have in the past. 'Cheating', he'd been an honorable opponent and if anyone needed to learn a lesson – it was limp.
She sighed, exhausted, staring sadly at his limp body that lay on the ground. He really was strong now. Truly powerful. A match for most, if not all standard mages in a fair fight – and he was only going to keep improving. Never stopping, the word complacency didn't exist in Tyr's vocabulary.
But his regenerative capacity, the healing factor, made him arrogant. Often pausing to go on some monologue about completely random things in their training sessions. If he'd gone all out from the beginning, he could have won, Alex doubted it would've been very hard – and she was surprised that he hadn't. Tyr was a headstrong person and often released all of his power at the start of a fight unlike most mages, who would go through the steps of testing one another to learn the full capacity of their opponent. If not, a mage would get caught with a clever counter spell or backlash. As evidenced by the fact that Tyr had jumped straight into her trap in the first place.
Seating herself beside him, she plucking the bolt free and cast it aside. Rubbing at her leg where she'd kept it on her belt, feeling the painful rash there and wanting for a bath. She was covered in bruises and burns, groaning and wincing as topical ointment was rubbed into the exposed skin. It'd be a few days at least before those sores went away, but then there'd be work to do.
“I win.” Alex said calmly, flopping her back atop his chest and laying there with him amidst the meters of shattered concrete. “Now you'll keep your end of the bargain.”