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Toren Daen
My blood flowed freely from my stomach, but I couldn’t see it. I could feel the red dripping down to the floor, hear my lifeforce sizzling as it steamed on the impossibly red spear.
But even worse… Even worse, my senses for my core began to mist away. Any and all control over the ambient mana left me as the cloaking artifact that hid my appearance was disrupted.
My limbs lost their strength as I gripped the jutting spearshaft. I could feel in real time as the cold clutch of death inched its way along my mana veins and channels, sealing them off. Sonar Pulse fractured. My hearing dimmed. My vision darkened.
Through the painful haze, I was barely aware that Sylvie was already moving. The dragon put herself in front of me with quick and shocked steps, her fists clenched in anger. The red stain of my blood across her chest drank in the light.
“Taci, what is the meaning of thi–”
“Step aside, Lady Indrath,” the pantheon warrior hissed, his fists clenching at his sides. His aura redoubled, washing over the cavern and making my innards squeeze. I coughed, blood dribbling from between my teeth. “The intruder will die.”
Arthur’s bond didn’t flinch at Taci’s threat. Instead, soulfire sputtered across her fingers as she blocked the pantheon from my sight. Those dark flames rippled with a purple incandescence that haunted the shadows themselves.
“You tried to assault me,” Sylvie hissed. “The heir to Clan Indrath! If this ‘intruder’ hadn’t placed himself between us, then I would be–”
“Incapacitated,” Taci sneered. “For as long as it took to finish my purpose. Because you are a weak, short-minded dragon who doesn’t understand what it means to be a deity.”
I blinked past the pain, gritting my teeth as I slowly wrenched the spear from my stomach. At the same time, I called on my heart.
I knew what this spear did. Whenever a target was cut by it, the spear severed the target’s connection to their mana core for a time. It wasn’t unlike… the mana shackles that had held me so long ago.
My heartbeat quickened. My lifeforce flowed. And the head of that spear slowly, painfully sliced back through my ruptured innards, blood dribbling out in steady waves as I blinked past my weakness. Little tendrils of fire traced their way along every cell of my Vessel as my other hand desperately fumbled with the phoenix wyrm pendant.
But I couldn’t activate it. Not without mana.
“Get out,” Sylvie snarled, her visage rippling as dark scales slowly shifted over her skin. “By the power vested in me by Epheotus, you will leave, Taci Thyestes.”
More and more dark, Vritra-tinged mana swirled around Sylvie’s hands, which had shifted to something approaching claws. That energy licked at the edges of the shadows themselves.
Taci didn’t seem to notice me in that short moment. He was too focused on the dragon blocking his way in the dungeons to realize that I had almost wrenched that wretched spear from my gut. His aura had frozen in the air, but that was somehow more intimidating than the overwhelming pressure from before.
He doesn’t think I’m a threat, I realized. And why should he? With his weapon embedded in my stomach, I wasn’t able to use mana. Its suppressing effect was constantly attacking my veins and channels, and though my heartfire healing fought to keep me alive, this wound would’ve been mortal for any other mage.
God, the pain was hard to think through. My weak grip slipped and fumbled along the blood-slick shaft as I coughed, agony racing along my nerves. Just needed to… activate the pendant, and–
“I have been weak,” Taci finally said, his voice devoid of all emotion as it bled away. “I bent before you, Lady Indrath, because surely this was just a phase of yours. This ignorant desire to be some sort of mothering caretaker for these… lesser beings.”
The asura took a single step forward, that footstep echoing louder than all the heartbeats I could hear. “But you seek to keep me from my purpose. You are a traitor to Epheotus. Made soft. You are a wolf who was made a sheep.”
My eyes widened as I struggled to stay on one knee, feeling Sylvie’s aura rise in turn. Her choppy hair flared with light as her mana swirled around her like a mane. The stones of the floor rumbled as the dragon began to bend the world around her to her whims. She was going to fight this child. She was going to battle him here and now, but she wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Your purpose?” Sylvie scoffed, shifting lightly into a battle stance. “You have no purpose! It is wrong. My grandfather is wrong. Maybe if you detached yourself from your blind–”
The dragon never saw the strike coming, and neither did I.
At one moment, Taci was standing at the near end of the hallway, seconds away from a temper tantrum. The next, he was suddenly right in front of Arthur’s bond, his knuckles burning the air as they surged towards Sylvie’s skull.
The impact was like a thunderclap, and it made the castle stones shake.
The young dragon crashed sideways through one of the cells, a sickening crack echoing outward like a gong. Her lifeforce flickered from that sudden blow, her soulfire spell detonating and annihilating half the cells in the hallway.
“I am going to drag you in front of Lord Windsom,” Taci yelled, his eyes wide and dangerous. They were nearly mad. “For trying to stop my purpose, the very thing I have been training for for years! I am a weapon. A deity. Not some lesser-loving fool like you,” the pantheon growled, his crazed eyes glaring holes into the rubble where Sylvie’s body had disappeared. “While you were simpering and doting on those worth less than you, I was training in the aether orb, becoming the pinnacle of my race!”
Sylvie’s blood dripped from Taci’s knuckles in a slow, steady stream as he declared his anger to the crushed stones. Each drop felt like slow motion as I watched it in the darkness, slow and dawning realization reaching me.
I wouldn’t be able to escape this place anymore. Not with Seris’ plan to use the phoenix wyrm pendants. That took time. It would take precious seconds for the pale crystal to enshroud my body and whisk me away. Precious seconds that this rampaging child would never allow me to have.
I needed to fight. If I wanted even fifteen seconds of an interim period, I would need to make that fifteen seconds. An asura would make me fight, in a place filled with innocents. Again.
A guttural, furious roar erupted from my very soul as Resonant Flow engaged, one primal pulse of my heart ripping away the restrictions of the spear. My lifeforce expanded and seared along my mana channels and veins as I wrenched the weapon free.
Power returned to my limbs like the flip of the world’s greatest light switch. One moment, I was in the dark, grasping at the stone as I bled out like a snuffed candle wick. The next, I was bathed in the light of the sun.
I lurched upward, my fist outlined in explosive white fire. Soulplume burned hot in my veins, kindling the rising desire to break this asura’s bones and grind them to dust beneath my feet.
Close as I was, Taci barely had time to react. But react he did. His body shifted with precision and power that reminded me of Aurora’s pristine form. My furious eyes locked with his. Olive-green battled a sea of sunlit orange. His intent was hot, but not as hot as mine.
My punch soared past his ear, the white fires illuminating the darkness under the burning, single beat of Resonant Flow. His lips curled up into a sneer as my attack missed his head, but I had never been truly aiming there in the first place.
The red spear flashed as it drove toward Taci’s ribs. Under my telekinetic control, it was poised to sink under his arm and drive straight into his heart.
Yet somehow, the asura flickered just the tiniest bit to the side, barely a single foot. His intent vanished in that split instant, leaving me off-guard and off-balance. The red spear missed him entirely, blurring through the darkness.
Mirage Walk, I realized with rising horror, my thoughts feverish in my head as the weight of a young god’s aura made the world around me tremble. He’s able to use it with such precision!
“You should’ve stayed down, lessuran,” Taci’s voice misted past my ears. “I would have granted you a quick death. More than your kind deserves.”
I felt Taci’s knife-like hand pierce through my ribs, his fingers reaching for my core. I gritted my teeth, then engaged my regalia.
I lurched away from the mad pantheon, surging down the hallway and back towards the iron door exit. His hand ripped its way free from my back in a slew of steaming blood. My heartbeat sang in my veins as my wounds struggled to heal.
I barely pulled to the side as Taci’s red spear blurred towards me. But limited as I was in this cage of stone, I was the prey. One of the fanlike wings of the weapon clipped my side, sending me tumbling to the ground as my senses for mana cut out again. Soulplume flickered, my power wavering.
I rolled along the ground, frantically calling on my lifeforce to wash away the constricting effect of the spear. My power hesitated, wavered, then solidified.
I rolled up in a crouch, my telekinetic shroud reappearing in record time. I sensed Taci’s intent mist away just like it had a moment ago.
And just like before, he blurred forward, his spear poised to drive through my core.
In one fluid motion, I rose upward, a shrouded saber poised like the lash of a whip. The edge of my weapon met his spearhead as it dove downward like a swan’s graceful neck. Sparks danced in the darkness like vengeful fireflies as I diverted his thrust into the stones by my feet. His weapon sank deep, but it retracted as quickly as a viper’s bite.
This time, Taci didn’t use the bladed edge of his spear to strike. He pivoted, swinging the blunt tip of the shaft like a quarterstaff to relieve me of my skull. His intent was deadly focused as the blur of red neared my head. I could almost imagine what was going on inside the vindictive asura’s mind as I tasted his emotions.
He wanted that weapon to drive through. He wanted it to be efficient and true. Every strike was supposed to be perfect.
I yelled from the depths of my soul, erupting with an unfocused nova of mindfire force. As my magic danced with vibrating sound waves, the lowest levels of the castle began to tremble and shake as the structure caved in on itself. Cells crumpled inward, support pillars shattered, and the entire floor looked as if someone had turned on the sun belowground. Taci’s attempted bludgeon clipped my ear, before the impact struck him.
The young asura snarled as he was hurled back the way he’d come, trailing a thin line of smoke with his robes singed. He clenched his teeth, reorienting with expert precision as his eyes locked on me. In a flash of red, he swung his spear in as wide an arc as the cramped dungeons would allow.
I could barely sense the attack that lanced toward me through the dust and debris. A crescent of invisible power pierced the range of Sonar Pulse, nearly indetectable to my mana sense. In response, I swung my shrouded saber, conjuring an arc of white plasma that rushed forward like the tide.
The two attacks charged toward each other in the middle of the room like galloping stallions. Invisible force met fire and sound, before destroying each other utterly.
I was reminded of the last time I’d wielded my plasma arts against a foe. In my battle against Arthur so long ago, his frostfire had reacted violently upon contact with my spells. But when Taci’s force-type mana art kissed the deadly hum of my attack, there was no cacophonous explosion. No eruption of power bathed the entire room in light.
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Instead, the two simply canceled each other out. There was a crackle and a pop, and the two absurdly mana-dense streaks just… ceased to be. Aside from a few lingering motes of white fire and buzzing discord that warped the air, it was as if nothing had happened at all.
Taci landed on his feet a ways away, already in his combat stance again. His eyes narrowed contemptuously as they noted the lingering burns on his martial robe before they flicked back to me. There was a wariness there that told me he wouldn’t be caught off guard.
“I have trained long and hard for this confrontation, lesser,” he growled, his speartip glinting in the lingering fires. “Much have Aurora Asclepius’ plasma and combat arts been praised by the elders of the Thyestes Clan. To see them wielded by one of mongrel blood is a disgrace to her legacy. I will savor putting you down.”
I rose back to my full height, feeling my body heal over in patches of orange and purple. I rolled my shoulders, loosening them for this coming fight.
There was something in the depths of Taci’s emotions… Some sort of fear. Not of me or this fight, no. But it clouded his mind like smog.
I expected to feel fear, too. This asura was a child, yes, but he was an asura. His aura alone was one of the most powerful I’d ever felt. It made the hairs on the back of my arms stand on end and my senses scream of danger. Even his very stance—solid, resolute, and trained over decades—told me everything I needed to know about this warrior.
He was efficient. Deadly. A weapon of war. I’d read about this creature in an otherworld novel. Perhaps this rendition of him was less experienced, trained, and capable, but that didn’t matter.
Indeed, I did feel fear. I knew that emotion was coming, and I’d braced myself for it. This was an asura, the epitome of this world’s power. But what I hadn’t been expecting was the blistering hot rage that trailed in its wake.
I listened to the heartbeats pulsing throughout the castle. People were waking up now. Our preliminary clash had made the stones shake and tremble in fear. Not far from Taci, Sylvie Indrath lay unconscious in the rubble. She’d placed herself in a position of danger to protect me. An enemy. And now, the dragon was bleeding in a heap of stone for daring to do the right thing.
“I’ll give you your fight, Taci Thyestes,” I said, maintaining the barest veneer of respect. “But we will do this somewhere else. Where there will be no casualties and loss of innocent life.”
I heard the dragon’s heartbeat flicker. I sensed her shift in the darkness.
Taci’s nostrils flared. “You have no place to make demands of me, lesser,” he said, his tone feeling forced. His aura flared as he prepared for the openings of a duel. “You can’t escape this trap that you walked into. Your wings are clipped.“
I inhaled. Then I exhaled. And then I inhaled again. Visions of Burim flashed through my mind. I remembered Barth as he fell, cradling a child who had never had the chance to know their life. I remembered how empty I’d felt, blaming myself for every lost life.
Because while I was busy questioning myself and my actions, fools like Taci Thyestes would always continue their rampage. Innocents always suffered under their yoke. It was just easier to see when fools burned them before your eyes.
I felt rage. Rage that burned hotter than nearly anything I’d felt before. I remembered that vindictive hate that had gripped me while tracking Wolfrum Redwater. That was a side of me I never knew I had. I had never known I could enjoy the suffering of an enemy before that.
But even those emotions felt paltry right now.
“I’m going to kill you,” I whispered, mana flowing along my veins as my aether reacted to my will. The world flexed under my vow. Seris would have demanded I flee. But so long as fools like Taci stood in the face of a better world—so long as they backhanded those seeking life—then none of her plans would ever see fruition. “I’m going to rip your heart from your chest and feast on it.”
I fell a bit deeper into Soulplume, my soul starting to burn as the corona of my eyes banished the darkness. The orange-feathered runes along my arms glimmered and flared in the low light. I stared deep into Taci’s heartfire, tracing the near-invisible lines of lifeforce as they pulsed in tune with his heartbeat.
A pantheon’s lifeforce was nearly transparent. Fascinating.
“Petty words for a man doomed to die,” Taci said defiantly, his tattoos melding with the shadows.
The asura’s intent misted away. I didn’t have time to think on that information. Only act.
I stepped to the side, barely parrying the slash of Taci’s spear as he used Mirage Walk to close the distance. The impact of our weapons made my joints protest in their sockets as I redirected his spear high in a shower of sparks.
And then the fight was on. Taci’s spear was sharp, precise, and angry. It left me no openings as I desperately tried to keep its edge from drinking my blood. My arms blurred as I fought to keep up with the asura’s speed. His martial form was second only to Aurora’s in its deadly efficiency.
It felt like I was trying to duel force itself. Every clash released shockwaves of force-type mana that carved furrows a dozen yards deep into the dungeons around me.
They’ll all die if we fight here, I thought, fury guiding me as I felt the imminent approach of another tragedy. When gods battle, lessers die.
The asura thrust his spear towards my core. I twisted my wrist, sweeping my saber sideways like the flick of a whip as it streaked along the crimson edge. The edge of my shrouded blade streaked down toward Taci’s fingers like a skater’s blades along ice, but too late did I realize the truth of his attack as he shifted his back leg with a vindictive sneer.
It was a feint.
With the precision of a chef chopping ribbon-thin slices, the martial artist dropped low, then snapped his leg outward in a perfect sweep. It connected with a painful crunch, my telekinetic shroud shattering. My ankle bones creaked from the casual, textbook-perfect move as it robbed me of my balance.
And as I fell in slow motion, my world rotating ninety degrees as I fell toward my back, I saw the flash of his spearpoint as it surged toward my head. The glint reflected deep in my eyes.
Taci made a mistake. He thought I needed the ground for leverage.
I pulled on the four corners of the room around me with my regalia, contorting my body with impossible speed. Taci might have expected me to try and play his game of combat.
So when I pulled myself impossibly close inside his guard, hovering at a sideways angle with my arms extended and a roiling mass of white plasma condensed between my palms, I imagined he was at least a little surprised.
“Let’s see if you char, Thyestes,” I hissed, my adrenaline singing in my veins as the impossible heat of my magic singing the edges of Taci’s robe.
Then I released my attack point blank, expecting to sear a hole straight through his chest.
Instead, I somehow missed.
The unerring beam of white plasma was nearly as wide as the room itself as it thrust forward like a ballista bolt, searing towards the very far wall. Yet I didn’t feel the impact until long after I should have.
Finally, my attack met resistance. The beam was split in two as Taci’s red spearpoint carved through the flow like the prow of a ship through the sea. Half a dozen arcs of divided plasma melted their way through the dungeon walls as the ambient temperature ramped upward to an insane degree.
He blurred backward with Mirage Walk to avoid a direct hit, before summoning his spear in front of himself, I realized half a heartbeat later as mana flowed from my core to strengthen the steady beam. How fast are his reflexes to do that?!
I didn’t relent in my spell. It was pushing him back slowly towards the far wall of the dungeons, and once his back hit…
“I heard much about the prowess of Lady Dawn’s plasma arts from my clan,” the asura seethed, his voice somehow audible over the hum of power that made the castle shake. “I expected to face a warrior of the highest renown. Not a lesser mage with a pathetic imitation of greatness.”
Alarms rang all throughout the dungeons as the floor rumbled. If I weren’t supporting myself in the air with telekinetic stilts, I would have stumbled.
“You care more about lessers than any god I’ve ever heard,” I sneered back, amplifying my voice with sound magic as my arms strained.
I prepared to activate Resonant Flow once more and increase the output of my spell for a single heartbeat. It didn’t matter if Taci’s spear was in front of my spell and parting it. If the power was too overwhelming, it would simply swallow him whole and continue past.
He would no longer be Moses, parting the sea. Instead, I would make of him a Jonah, swallowed by the tide.
But then two heartbeats—two that would be within the range of that attack—thumped against my ears.
Sylvie and Mawar.
I remembered the devastation of the aftermath, where the scar across Burim’s roof denoted my failure. The last time I’d battled a god, innocents died.
That brief window of hesitation was all it took. A scythe of invisible force-type mana carved its way through my plasma as Taci blurred into one of the nearby cells with Mirage Walk. My attack slammed into the far wall, melting its way through at record pace.
I twisted myself sideways, desperately attempting to avoid the slash of force-type mana. I was only partially successful. My right hand was nearly completely severed at the wrist as it traveled past. I grunted in pain, but I had no time to lose focus.
Taci blurred back into range, angry and focused. He was entirely unharmed from the entire exchange, where I was left bleeding and wounded.
I whirled in midair, building up a hurricane of force as I concentrated sound mana and heartfire around my leg. I snapped it out in a roundhouse kick, attempting to intercept Taci’s forward momentum.
The asura wasn’t phased. He sneered, twirling his spear like the world’s deadliest lever. As my foot approached the pantheon’s side, his weapon reached it first and cut it off with contemptuous ease.
I grunted in pain, still carried on by my momentum. Then a shrouded foot grew over the stump of my bleeding leg, flaring with lifeforce and sound magic.
Utterly unprepared for me to grow a construct to replace my severed foot, my attack struck home right beneath Taci’s ribs. I felt them crack as I ripped at his lifeforce, drawing it in and soothing my aches and pains. My sound spell traveled through his insides, rattling and disrupting all it could.
Taci grunted in surprise and pain, before his arm wrapped down to capture my leg. “You like to flit about like a bird,” he hissed, a single drop of blood leaking from his mouth as he held me fast. His spear glinted as he prepared to drive it into my chest. “But you have nowhere to go. This dungeon is your tomb.”
For a moment, as the spear neared my skull, I thought he might be right. Deep underground with limited mobility and facing a master martial artist, I was little more than a lamb before a sheep.
But I wouldn’t surrender. I wouldn’t go down today.
Telekinesis pulsed between my hands in an undeniable concentration of force. My palms glimmered with shimmering, crystalline white as they crashed together like a thunderclap.
And I caught Taci’s spearhead, just before it would drive through my burning eyes. My limbs burned and strained as I tried to hold off this monster’s weapon.
The asura leaned forward, pressing my back into the ground as he pushed harder on his spearshaft. I was shoved deeper and deeper into the stones, my telekinetic shroud straining as the pantheon savored his position.
Not far away, I sensed another heartbeat flare.
“I’ve already died twice, pantheon,” I wheezed, the breath pressed from my lungs as I fought to keep the spearpoint from my skull. “How many times will you have to kill me before I rip off your head?”
Taci’s olive-green eyes gleamed vindictively as his grip on my leg strengthened, making my bones creak and fracture. “It is in a lesser’s nature to die,” he hissed. “It seems you haven’t learned that truth well enough. I will be your master in this lesson.”
And his intent bled away again, just like it did every time he used Mirage Walk. Except he was right in front of me, looming like a specter of death. What need would he have to move his legs–
I realized almost too late.
I engaged Resonant Flow, forcing my heart to beat for a moment. My scars screamed with the light of the morning sun. At the same time, I called on every ounce of sound magic I could, forcing it into the asura’s spear in an oscillating wave.
Barely in time. My spell traveled up the spearshaft towards Taci’s arm at the exact instant he fired mana across his muscles and tendons for a Burst Strike.
My frantic, last-ditch attack just about saved my life. As Taci’s arms blurred from sudden force—the same concept that made Arthur’s Burst Strike work—my reverberating sound magic ripped at his muscles and pulped his flesh.
His spear ripped itself free of my grasp, becoming a blur as it severed my right hand instead of obliterating my skull. The crash of the spear into and through the castle’s foundations created a hole a yard wide that stretched down into an abyss.
Taci stumbled backward with a pained grunt, clutching at the pulped meat of his right arm with disbelief.
My shrouded foot dissipated for a split instant, before it resolidified as Resonant Flow flickered away. I ground my teeth as I kipped back to my feet, adrenaline running hot as I pulled my right hand back to my severed wrist with my regalia, healing over the damage.
Taci stared at me with a mix of disbelief and confusion for the first time as his right arm hung weakly at his side. He clutched his shoulder with his left, eyes wide. I tasted that fear of his again. Not fear of me. But I didn’t understand what he was terrified of.
“You are like the Lesser King,” he said quietly, his emotions shifting. “A mortal defiant.”
The air was silent and still except for my heavy breathing. Sweat rolled down my skin as I reasserted the truth of my situation. I’d barely survived that last confrontation. If Taci had used Burst Strike—Mirage Strike?—that close again, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to save myself the next time. This damned dungeon limited me in every way.
“Not used to being defied, Thyestes?” I taunted, regenerating my foot slowly. Blood stained my pants and arms in a quiet reminder of how close I’d come to death.
Then the young asura did something I would have never expected. Though anger rushed through his intent at my taunt and a vein pulsed at the back of his skull, I felt his… respect. Acknowledgment. The darkness of the dungeons suddenly seemed all the more ominous. The melted rims of the cells where my plasma had seared past cast the warm in a dim glow. The many scars of Taci’s force-type mana arts across the stones reminded me of the battlefield outside of the Redwater.
“I have not granted you proper respect, Toren Daen,” he said through gritted teeth, shifting his stance. “I shall do so now.”
I need you now, Aurora, I thought, the shadows of this dungeon clawing at my robes and trying to pull me down. I need your light.
But then something entirely unexpected happened. A dark, dark power erupted from one of the nearby cells, tumultuous and turbulent. I felt goosebumps rise along my neck as I abruptly shifted to face this new threat.
Sylvie—her form partly draconic, with scales the color of waxed obsidian gleaming in the darkness—leapt from the shadows of the cells behind me. Her glinting amber eyes met mine, resolve and anger threading through them.
And in her hands was a concentrated nova of soulfire that danced with pure mana that was far, far too dark. “Not here!” she snarled, her voice deadly and deep. “Not in my castle!”
Oh, fuck, I thought, recognizing the power that flickered between her palms as she aimed them at both Taci and me.
Then the world erupted in a storm of black flames, erasing everything in their path.
I threw out a bubble of telekinesis, white fire, and vibrating sound in a tried and true method of withstanding dark Vritra arts, just before it struck.
It pushed me backward, the devouring flames flickering as white and black danced like yin and yang. I couldn’t see anything as I flew backward under the force, fighting to keep my defenses high.
Those black flames rushed past and around me as I hurtled down the length of the cell. Through the rock as they were gradually eaten away. On and on and on we went, my muscles straining until–
The conflagration of soulfire erupted from the side of the earth like a gout of volcanic anger, spewing me and Taci out into the night sky like hurled stones.