I stared resolutely at elder Sunki as I stood frozen by my own magic. There was a sort of resignation in his eyes. He’d been the most hesitant of the three elders that I was fighting. Perhaps that was something I could exploit? My mind raced for other ideas. I had to come up with something quickly. Elder Rann would be down for a while, since landing on those rocks was probably excruciatingly painful, but Priest Oxi would be back up any moment now. The worst part was, he had fallen somewhere out of my field of vision. I couldn’t turn my head, so I had no idea where he was or if he’d gotten up yet. I’d like to think I’d hear him coming but there was no guarantee that I would.

I had no choice. There wasn’t enough time to think. I released my breath, feeling the energy drain out of my body. Still-life magic was incredibly inefficient. I had no idea how many other spells I could use now, and I didn’t even have my dagger with me. Even if I’d had the dagger, my arms felt heavy and moving my legs would be a chore. I almost fell to my knees and only managed to steady myself by gritting my teeth and embracing the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

My mind raced, even as I stumbled towards elder Sunki. Noel and I had spent all our time before the other tribes arrived, working on light and gravity magic. The complexity of those two fields was so high, we couldn’t muster the energy to use any spells unless they were made incredibly efficient, which meant they had to fulfill the criteria of knowledge as ‘justified true belief.’ The trickiest part was to ‘justify’ a belief through reason and experimentation. The disguise magic wasn’t going to be very useful right now, since it was merely based on clever refraction and manipulation of visible light, which meant my only other option was the gravity magic.

We couldn’t develop gravity magic much, since we had no way to measure the mass or radius of this planet, and were stuck with the speed of objects in free fall or at an incline. And since the elves and humans of this world didn’t even have a system for dividing up, recording, or telling the time beyond days and seasons, I ended up importing measurements of time from my own Earth. Still, we couldn’t get accurate measurements of time without clocks, so the best we could do was count our heartbeats and hope elves and humans from this world had the same average resting heartbeats as the humans from my world.

All of this meant I couldn’t create a black hole in Sunki’s chest or squish him to the floor with gravity. Instead, I ran up to him as he was reeling from the confusion and fatigue of having his powerful magic canceled out by mine. I grabbed him by the beard, pulled him forward and activated the only gravity magic spell we had developed so far.

The old man fell forward, tried to balance himself, and fell flat on his face. He had been unable to control his center of gravity!

I swiveled on the balls of my feet. In the corner of my eye, I could see elder Rann, still writhing in pain on the floor. In front of me, Priest Oxi hobbled along without a cane. His palms were open and clearly seared. His wrinkly forehead was stained with sweat, and his lips were quivering.

“Just give up already,” I said, “do you really have to defend this orb with your life?”

He didn’t respond. Or perhaps he was unable to. Instead, he raised his hand. I anticipated another red magic line, but instead, waves of red energy pulsed out from his hands. I ducked under them as the approached, but the next wave was a vertical one. I skipped to my left, slid under the next wave, and continued dodging my way towards the quickly tiring old priest.

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I was breathing rapidly, with my heart thumping so loudly it was flooding my ears. Every step I took made pain shoot through my body, and my muscles ached in protest every time I avoided an attack. I didn’t have enough energy for any flashy magic, which meant I had to get all the way up to the old priest.

The priest took a deep breath. My eyes widened. A rush of adrenaline gave me a second wind and I dashed forward. The old priest’s body began to glow red, threatening to release the same wall of red magic that elder Sunki had almost decimated me with. I tackled the old man with my whole body, lifting him off his feet and smashing him away. My teeth clattered against my jaw as I made contact, and I cried out in pain. Priest Oxi flew threw the air as I stopped my forward motion, and crumpled onto the ground.

I panted. Taking broken breaths, I clasped a hand against my forehead as piercing pain seared through my skull. A familiar metallic taste flooded my mouth. I spit the blood out on the ground, and forced my protesting body to make its way to the ominous glowing red orb that the three old men had tried so desperately to defend.

There was no way this thing was just an artifact for whatever ritual the human tribes of the double river basin did every year. The colors and symbolism was way too reminiscent of the three immortals. A red orb with silver beams and flocks of birdlike specks, what did that have to do with long dead human ancestors?

I leaned down to scoop up my battered copper dagger. It had lost its edge, but with no more energy to cast any magic, I had no choice but to use it. I winced. Tackling the glowing red priest had singed my skin pretty badly. Fortunately, I had mostly made contact with him with my shoulder, which was protected by my clothes. Still, I was in pretty rough shape.

As I approached the glowing red orb, I had to narrow my eyes. The sunlight was bright enough, but the flashing colors and pulsing light coming from the orb were painful to stare at for too long. Now that I was closer, I could see that the silver objects that had been scooping out bits of red energy all had weirdly shaped ends. Some were shaped like spoons, others like knives or picks, or had flat or rounded tips.

The specks of color really were shaped like birds, but not like real birds, with beaks and talons and stuff. Instead, they looked like the v-shaped birds you might expect on a children’s drawing. Heat radiated out of the red orb. I raised my copper dagger and aimed for a spot where there were no silver objects or brightly colored birds.

Pain shot through my hands. Like digging into a pile of hot coals. But I persisted. I stabbed into the red orb, repeatedly, rending chunks of red magic from its surface. The silver objects seemed to realize what I was doing, and redoubled their own efforts. The flocks of birds stopped crashing into the silver objects, and instead formed up in a large flock, circling the orb while avoiding my hand.

I yelled as I dug through the red orb. I grit my teeth and endured the pain, forcing myself to go on, because I had convinced myself whatever was inside this thing would help me find Noel. My copper dagger felt so hot, I could barely hang on to it, but I kept going.

As I brought my hand down one more time, the silver objects shivered and swung towards me. My hand was outstretched, and I was to close to avoid them. But just as the various silver objects threatened to sever, poke, pummel, and in many other ways injure my arm, the flock of tiny multi-colored birds rammed against the silver objects like a tidal wave, which let my dagger swing down unimpeded. The dagger hit a hard surface, which audibly cracked like a walnut in a nutcracker.

The silver objects, as if hearing the crack, suddenly lost all of their will to fight, and faded into nothingness. The flock of birds dispersed and disappeared like ashes in the wind. The red orb lost all its shine and luster, and both of its halves convulsed and writhed, before falling to the ground and dissolving into a puddle of liquid, which then seared the ground and dissipated.

Floating where the red orb had been was an astonishing but familiar object: a beetle, shaped like a sunflower, pointing its face resolutely into the distance.