Wenzel's body sank down limply onto the highland meadow. He had no idea how to process all of this. What had his adopted child been doing in this place? How had she found herself with Petra? And why had she taken her out? Questions upon questions. “No!” His Majesty jerked his head around to pull himself out of his stupor. “I can't concern myself with trivialities now! Petra is dead. All that matters now is Viktoria,” he tried to set his priorities straight.
“She will try to reduce the Imperial City to rubble. I have a strong feeling that this will be the fulfilment of my once so dreaded prophecy. Yes, I am absolutely certain that it is.” The memory of him seemingly having appeared as an old man in the past vision was simply repressed. The Sovereign was in intense soliloquy. He pondered what he could do now. But he didn't have much leeway, because time was pressing. He had to return to Meglarsbruck as quickly as possible. Yet, he knew that he would not be able to speak with Viktoria in a civilized manner. She would attack him, and he wouldn't stand a chance. At their last meeting, it had become undeniably evident how great the difference between the amount of magical power they had was. Wenzel was hopelessly outmatched.
And to be able to talk to her, he would first have to be able to put his daughter in her place. Oh, how heavy these developments weighed on him, how much they pained him! But he had to stand firm. Who, if not him? He still held the sceptre in his hand, which did not light the way to Viktoria, as she was somehow able to circumvent its effect. As he stared briefly at the blue jewel inside it, an idea finally occurred to him. As always, he ran it through his head, but this time he kept it short, as he had no time to waste. “All right, then. Let's do it like this,” he commented while emptying all the Holy Artifacts, including the clunker from the labyrinth in Galadea, out of his backpack in front of him.
He laid them out one by one in the grass and picked up a larger chunk of stone to break the colourful crystals. Yes, that was indeed what he had decided. He would destroy the Holy Artifacts to absorb the magic that lay dormant in them and hopefully become strong enough to stand up to Viktoria. That was all he was able to do at the moment. The child would not listen to him, unless she was physically curbed. Only the Chosen One was capable of such a thing. There was no one else. Besides, this was still a better utilization of these objects than they would have otherwise had in this context. Most of the artifacts were of fairly limited usefulness anyway - with the exception of the sceptre. It was still a pity to shed them, though.
After some quick consideration, however, he decided to keep at least the sword. As a swordsman, flying sword strikes could be useful to him after all. So, he lifted the lump of stone over his head and first brought it down on the sceptre with full force. “Crash!” It shattered. A dazzling light flashed forth. Wenzel was overcome with a searing hot sensation for a moment, then he dropped down. Immediately afterwards, he awoke again. He knew that hardly any time had passed as the sun was still in the same position in the sky. His head was spinning. He felt strange, so strange that he almost thought his inner consciousness was slipping away and escaping him. Still, the magician wasn’t allowed to wait, but instead had to carry on. He grabbed the rock again and smashed it onto the next artifact.
Candles lit up the otherwise gloomy cellar rooms. It was really dusty here, but in defence of the staff it must be said that these were normally only used to store outdated or no longer needed furniture or other such goods. No one had expected the officials to be accommodated here. And yet, that is exactly what was happening. Crammed into a small space, the high lords were now all gathered here. The windowless chamber barely let in any sound from outside. No one knew what was going on out there. Well, that's not entirely true. They had been told that a magician with red hair had suddenly appeared in the city and started tearing down the bridges over the Duhn. When the first houses were set on fire, they decided to seek shelter in the basement of the Imperial Diet building. Here, so they assumed, they would be safe. God willing.
Nonetheless, the fear was clearly written over the faces of most people here. They had no idea what was going on. The deputies with their garish yellow robes, their noble garb including expensive shoes and hats, they were all cowering here in the cramped underground, unsure of what would happen. A soldier entered, his armour still in pristine condition. “Your Serene Highnesses, I am here to inform you that the Imperial Diet is yet undamaged. But the same can hardly be said of the rest of the city. It almost seems as if the vandal is deliberately sparing some buildings here. But I can't see any real pattern behind it yet.” He paused shortly, but then something else came to his mind. “The perpetrator is clearly Her Highness the Princess. We don't know why she's doing this, but for the sake of everyone's safety, you should stay down here until this is over.”
The nobles naturally agreed with him. But then Eugen von Rauttenstein, the Speaker of the Imperial Council, approached the bearer of the news and had one more question, “His Excellency Elias II, has he been taken out of harm's way?” - “I'm afraid I can't answer that question with absolute certainty, My Most Serene Highness. When the devastation began, the Patriarch was holding mass in the Cathedral of the Annunciation. The cathedral has already been knocked down by now. Therefore, I dare not speculate on the condition of His Excellency. It would probably be wiser to simply wait and see.”
Eugen agreed with him. Sending out a search party for the head of the church under these circumstances was probably futile and irresponsible towards the soldiers who would have to do so. No, as sobering as it was, all they could do at the moment was wait and hold still. Only, it was a pity about Elias II, who was already very old. Although, he was still incredibly energetic and one might have thought that he was considerably less geriatric than he actually was, he had nevertheless been the patriarch of the Teleiotic Commune for nearly fifty years! Whether he had it in him to survive such a catastrophe was in doubt.
After finishing the provision of information, the soldier saluted and left. With a brisk stride, he then climbed back up the winding staircase to his right, which he had also come down before. He crossed the numerous corridors at a running pace and finally left the large building complex through one of the side exits. The first thing he looked at was the sky. Like Judgment Day, it presented a nightmarish picture. The thick clouds that covered the whole firmament were so pitch black, that probably no one alive had ever seen anything like it. Lightning was flashing down from them ceaselessly and with unimaginable frequency. Everywhere the eye could see there was lightning, and the rumble of thunder had become an omnipresent background noise. And yet, there was no rain. Not a single drop of water came down.
Despite all this, a tiny number of people were still on the streets. Some stopped in awe, threw their hands over their heads and called up to the heavens to their Lord: “Oh, God Almighty! Have mercy on us! Oh, Chosen One, come forth and deliver us from evil!” In the howling of the wind, this was followed by a series of ejaculatory prayers, basically those that everyone was taught from childhood. High up on the Imperial Diet still flew the Sunflag. Wildly flung about by wuthering squalls, it was holding on for dear life. Even the commander could not help but succumb to the belief that he was witnessing the apocalypse.
After all, there was huge destruction in the entirety of the Golden City. The flames had spread to large parts of the city, a conflagration that engulfed everything. At the same time, however, many buildings - he had no idea how many or which ones exactly - had been destroyed by the sorceress. Many of the pillars that lined the Imperial Road had been toppled, specifically to render the streets impassable. In addition to the main cathedral, the guildhalls had also been demolished. Everything to do with the economy, trade and transport, as well as the symbol of the institution that glorified and legitimized the emperor, had fallen victim to the attack. Those who were more of an obstacle to the ruler, like the Imperial Council, had been deliberately spared. This connection, however, was not clear to the commander, and the seemingly illogical selection of destroyed building objects remained a mystery to him.
Swift as a hawk, he was soaring through the air. From a distance, he could already see the blight that had befallen the metropolis. He had to hurry. The Chosen One passed the city wall entering the inferno. Or rather, he witnessed what the inferno had already done. To the left and right, in front and behind, everywhere smaller and larger seats of fire could be seen. Most of the buildings that had caught fire had already burned down. The mage would not put them out. First, he had to find the source of this disaster. Unbeknownst to him, all the while hectic fire-fighting operations were underway in the north-eastern part of Meglarsbruck, carried out by the troops under Ferenc's command.
He walked between the ruined buildings and over piles of rubble, startling many of the crows, that had gathered here. There were many bodies scattered about, but he looked past them. The man accidentally stepped into a puddle and then looked into it. His reflection only showed a single remaining strand of red hair. The sword still was in its sheath at his hip. It was the last of the Artifacts. He walked on and finally reached the tumbled-down pillars on the main street. The Chosen One looked over at the distant backdrop of the collapsed Cathedral of the Annunciation. At the sight of it, a sigh escaped him. Then it happened. The voice rang out in his head:
“So, you're here, old man. Do you like my work?”
Although he had foreseen this scene in his vision, although he knew that this was what would happen here, he simply allowed things to take their course. He had accepted fate. Only now did he fly on. He landed on the square in front of the church in the centre of the city. Here stood a huge statue of Melgar the Great. It had been placed on the spot where an identical one had once stood, before the Alethic usurpers had replaced it with a different monument. The Chosen One was briefly taken in by the appearance of the sculpture and tarried for a moment in order to behold it. The facial features, smooth yet expressing a degree of rigour, had been sculpted by true master stonemasons, even if the nose was smaller than the original, as it always was with these depictions. Actually, he had something VERY important to attend to, but for almost a minute he was utterly enraptured. Finally, the girl who had noticed his arrival earlier came out of the sacral structure. She stopped just after emerging from the huge entrance portal. The aura she was exuding was both overwhelming and daunting.
Viktoria had put on a broad grin. It looked disconcerting and dazed. When she saw Wenzel coming up the stairs, she immediately noticed his hair, which was shining in almost complete white. "Have you fallen into a pot of paint, sir?", she asked in a contemptuous tone. Addressing him politely as "sir" was part of the intended mockery. When Wenzel reached the top of the stairs about twelve cubits away from her, he looked her straight in the eye. The girl was startled and immediately retreated quite a distance. Two large stars were shining out of his eyes, one for each eyeball. There was no pupil to be found, just one large star that took up the entire field of vision.
Only now did she realise that something was amiss. The aura emanating from the man standing opposite her created a completely different pressure, was of a completely different nature than the one she knew from her adoptive father. It was much stronger. "What is going on here?", Viktoria tried to ask in an as confident as possible manner, but the intonation and pitch of which slipped, unintentionally revealing her uncertainty. The man didn't answer, and just stared at her with his big stars. It was impossible to tell what he was feeling, or if he could even see her. The absence of his pupils had added an air of aloofness to him. They both just stood there, staring down each other. Viktoria would not avert her gaze, signalling fear, because that would make her the one to have given in first, so to speak.
Finally, it got too long for the impatient lady, and she began to speak, "Do you have nothing to say to me? Are you just going to stare at me, old man? Look what I've done! I have destroyed your beloved city, ruined your beautiful prosperity! Does this not bother you at all? " There was no reply. At this the girl only got angrier and she shouted wildly at him, "That's what you get! It's your fault that.... " She hesitated briefly when it occurred to her in her confusion, that Wenzel hadn't actually killed Achaz. But then she continued, "Yes, you're also to blame for what happened to Achaz. If it hadn't been for you, if you hadn't interfered, none of this would have happened!" Still silence from Wenzel. Viktoria became uncertain, but now this uncertainty made her think for the first time. She focussed her magic on her counterpart and looked into his thoughts.
Once she had done so, she stared at him blankly. The penny had finally dropped. "You are......Melgar!" The wizard was still looking at her with a serious expression and without any emotion, almost as if he was trying to imitate Theodor. Finally, however, he opened his mouth. A different voice came out of it. An ancient baritone, that seemed unnatural for Wenzel's body, emerged from within him. "’Tis not thy fault." Viktoria's eyes darted back and forth in confusion, her breathing shallow. "Wha...." The mage interrupted her, "And ‘tis not Wenzel's fault either. He could not have known how to deal with thee. Nor could he have known that being born a magician cometh with a strong tendency towards madness. This knowledge was lost even to the Inquisition. Regrettably so." - "It really is him!", was all Viktoria could manage to utter. Her face was bright red, her pupils dilated.
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"Just lookest at thee, child. What a tragedy! We should never have let it come to this. That was exactly why I had created the Inquisition. There can only be one." He paused briefly and then added, "I am that one!" Viktoria gritted her teeth angrily, but Melgar continued, "Your father, Wenzel, really loveth thee. He hath tried everything to help thee. Unfortunately, there is only one right thing to do here," quoth he. Melgar knew that demons had to be destroyed. But his words had now been what finally tipped Viktoria over the edge! The corona of her magic began to flare up like a solstice fire.
From one moment to the next, she yanked her right arm forward, unleashing an explosive shockwave against him! Melgar was startled but managed to activate his telekinesis in the nick of time to avoid being hit directly by her attack. Nevertheless, the oncoming blast pushed him back and the man was hurtled backwards by more than twenty cubits. Hovering a good distance above the ground, he then came to a halt. A gust of wind made his red cape flutter around, as if to show off the emperor’s coat of arms depicted on it. The imploring hands with the soul stone emblazoned above them could be seen on it. The stone, it was more than just a symbol, that now linked Wenzel and Melgar in multiple ways.
The large paving stones at Victoria's feet had now been shattered by her. “Thou art leaving me no other choice anyway, child!”, the Chosen One called over to her. Furious, the young lady let out a scream. She pushed herself off the ground and flew towards her challenger to pounce on him. The fight had begun, the fight between two wizards! And what a pointless duel it was! No matter who triumphed, no one would win in the end. But the course of events could no longer be stopped, and Melgar knew this. As the out-of-control beast shot towards him like a lion on the prowl, the emperor went on the offensive. His palms produced flames, which he fired out ahead of him. The girl with the crimson hair was caught completely by surprise by these two huge fireballs. She was forced to fend them off with her telekinesis, which, however, caused her to lose all her momentum, bringing her to a standstill.
Meanwhile, the Chosen One put more distance between himself and her, a mistake as it turned out. Because now she lifted a gargantuan chunk of rubble from the collapsed cathedral. On it were many of the still unrestored statues of saints, all of them descendants of Melgar the Great. Said person could not help but make a signum at the sight of it. All the grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren he had never met, of whom he knew nothing, their memory would once again be desecrated here. For him, there was no meaning, no “sanctity” in the stone from which this memorial was carved, but it was still wrong to treat things that carried meaning for others so condescendingly.
The girl used all her strength. Her face turned bright red as she aligned the rock and, hovering in front of her, began rotating it. The rotation picked up speed more and more, while her opponent simply watched from a distance, gathering his strength and waiting for her next move. It came quite quickly. When the block had built up a vast amount of kinetic energy from the violent spinning, Viktoria finally catapulted it at her opponent with all the force she could muster. Melgar calmly accepted the colossus. He drew his sword and enhanced its flying slash with as much mana as he could manage. A high-pitched whistle resounded from the sword strike, followed by a loud bang. Right before it would have come into contact with the mage, the solid sandstone suddenly parted from him. To his right and left it roared past, split down right the middle by the blow! The two halves crashed into the adjacent buildings behind him, kicking up huge clouds of dust.
This left the little sorceress absolutely speechless and for a moment she just stood there with her mouth open. However, her astonishment immediately turned back into frenzied fury when her opponent unleashed a couple of sword swipes at her. She hauled up the next piece of debris - this time it wasn't as big - and launched it at him. He dodged to the side, but immediately had to evade the next projectile that came from her, too. Then he used his magic to hold onto it, ducked under the next round that came his way and finally returned fire. It was a wild spectacle. Huge rocks were constantly crashing into all the surrounding buildings, causing enormous damage. But one thing soon became clear: the brat was firing at a far higher rate than Melgar was.
“I have to conserve my strength. Maybe if I go about this in the right way, I can force her to overexert herself,” he strategized in his mind. Then again, this could just have been his justification to himself, since the teenager was STILL able to muster more than he could. Whatever the truth of the matter, the battle continued to rage on. A piece of debris came with spin from the left - the Chosen One dodged upwards. Another came from the right and he deflected its trajectory slightly to the side. But then the next one reached him, and this one would hit him with pinpoint accuracy! He faced it with both palms directed forwards. “RAahh!”, he let out a roar. A loud crash resounded across the square, as the stone block shattered into several smaller pieces.
Melgar gasped, sweat dripping from his face. This time he hadn't even had the chance to go for a counterattack. He could feel himself getting more and more tired. This fight was extremely draining. When he looked over at Viktoria, he could see that she was also panting, yet she was showing no signs of slowing down or giving in in any other way. The man's body was now past its prime, but above all, he was no longer used to such crazy exertion, given that Wenzel mostly did desk work. But it was also obvious that the devil's child's anger was not calming down. She was still livid and continued firing stones at him.
Boom, boom, boom! Three times he smashed the remains of the buildings here, that were sailing towards him. Then, all of a sudden, he made a sideways lunge. The sorceress immediately gave chase. Melgar created a strong gust of wind that whipped up the dirt and dust particles all around, generating a wall of disorienting grey. Of course, Viktoria simply passed through it unhindered, but then found herself directly in front of the crumbling ruins of the great guilds. Broken roof tiles, collapsed gables and turrets, shattered windows and all kinds of damaged furnishings presented themselves in front of her like a hidden picture puzzle. But no sign of Melgar! She tried to sense him, yet she couldn't detect anything. His aura had completely disappeared. What’s more, she couldn’t hear him either, which meant that he had probably hidden somewhere around here. Slowly, she let herself float down into the skeleton of the former guild headquarters and set herself down on the floor littered with rubble.
“Is this the great messiah everyone's been talking so much about! Come and show yourself, coward! Fight with me! Hit me!”, she screamed with seething anger. No answer. It really was a pain for her. Unlike her, the old man was able to control his emotions, and thus could completely prevent his magical energy from escaping. If she couldn't perceive him with her five “conventional” senses, it was as if he didn't even exist for her. But she knew he was here. He had to be!
She put one foot in front of the other and walked through the ruin. In her mind she knew that she should tread softly, and that was what she tried to do, but her insane tenseness, her rage, her hatred, taking their toll on her, made this impossible. The countless fragments and stones crunched under her soles as she crossed the mountains of rubble here in a decidedly precipitous manner, giving away her presence as a consequence. A thin veil of fine dust hung in the air; everywhere was total devastation. Apart from the distant sounds of continuously rolling thunder and of roaring fires, nothing could be heard in here. Melgar was dead silent. But then, around a corner, she surprisingly spied something moving. The witch created a flame from her hand and fired directly at what she had seen. When she rounded the corner to enter a dilapidated room, it turned out to be just a torn curtain that had been blown about by the wind.
Viktoria only grew more impatient and continued her search. Meanwhile, the Chosen One was waiting with sealed lips behind a cracked wall close to her. Sword drawn, hand firmly on the hilt, he stood there under maximum tension. He would wait for just the right moment to strike. Power alone was not the “silver bullet” to victory, it never had been. No, cunning, adaptability and creativity were at least as important, if not more so. He heard the girl's footsteps approaching. His concentration was now at its highest level. He could not afford to make a mistake. This was his big chance to win here. He didn't have forever. The man was standing next to a door frame, on the exact other side of which the other magician was now approaching. Only a thin wall was separating the two of them.
The tension was palpable. Then a blade hissed through the placid ether filled with tiny dust particles. The young maiden was struck! But immediately a deafening banging sound followed, and the sword tumbled away. Torn from Melgar's hand, it could be heard a little way off as it clattered onto the ground. But the emperor was also knocked back a little. Viktoria had been able to react at the very last second and had let his blow bounce off with a shock wave. Well, more or less. Her hand had received a cut, which was now bleeding, but it wasn't a particularly severe wound.
“So, there you are!”, she screeched, immediately attacking him again. The wrong-footed guy flew off and back out under the open sky. His ambush had failed. The battle resumed. Under the canopy of menacingly dark clouds, the two “blessed by God” flew over the city and fought each other to the last, while lightning was constantly crashing down around them. It was an uncanny spectacle. But no matter how many fireballs or blast waves they unleashed on each other, no matter how much additional damage they caused to the settlement, neither of them managed to land a decisive hit on the other. Melgar was completely worn out. He quickly tried to fly away again, but his adopted daughter was hot on his heels. Again and again, he dodged her attacks, but suddenly he noticed how they had stopped.
He halted and turned around. There he saw Viktoria standing on one of the countless steeples. She seemed to be concentrating, and he could feel magical power building up in and around her. He quickly grasped what was going on. The little girl was raising her hand with a very specific position of her fingers and was now pointing it forward towards him. The lightning flashed; its thunder rumbled. It only just missed its target. The Chosen One had dodged to the side, but he would have been too late in doing so. If the youth's lightning strike had been more precise, he would have been finished! He couldn't take that lying down. Hovering above the wrecked cityscape, he did the same and gathered his mana for a counterstrike in the form of a lightning bolt. It took the girl a while to realize what he was doing here. She obviously was slow on the uptake.
When it finally had percolated to her, she dashed forward to attack him first. Melgar remained cool-headed. He focused intensely on his big strike. Again, it was important to choose the right moment. The mage was almost upon him when he finally unleashed it. “BOOM!” The lightning roared indescribably loud in the ears of both of them, its light shining so brightly that all sight vanished. ....
She was still there; he had missed Immediately afterwards, however, something struck him like a punch in the face. He was catapulted backwards and before he knew it, he found himself on the roof of some random edifice. There was a gap in his mind as to what had happened in the last few seconds. Melgar looked down at himself and realized that his upper body was bleeding, and not too little! Evidently, he had crashed into the chimney here, which clearly also bore the marks of an impact. This time he seemed to have received a deeper wound. The girl had probably hit him with her telekinesis directly after his attack. But then he saw Viktoria moving towards him again. Only now did he realize how painful his wound was. The man immediately pulled himself together and dashed off. He had to flee. Melgar the Great was too gravely injured and saw no other way to win this fight! Of course, the sorceress chased after him again on the spot, but he dipped down closer to the ground and maneuvered between and through all kinds of destroyed, intact and partially burning houses. Smoke was billowing, visibility was poor and from one moment to the next he was gone. Again, the girl had lost him; again, he had been able to hide from her.
Wenzel was now sitting in a charcoal-black, burnt-out room, by the window of which he had flown in. He hastily wiped away the soot and dirt to reveal the white tiled floor beneath. Then, without further ado, he simply used his own blood to write and began to draw the outer circle. By now he knew the magic circle inside out. While Viktoria's search for him caused entire houses to collapse, she moved further and further away from the place where the person she was looking for actually was. When he had finished his drawing, he took out the vial of bone marrow and black sand. His Majesty was incredibly nervous. He knew that the moment he performed the healing ritual, his daughter would sense the magic from it and be able to locate him. He had no choice; the wound had to be healed. But then what? The battle would continue anew, despite him already being at the end of his tether. He could no longer prevail, and he knew it! The Chosen of God was too weak to get rid of the demons he had summoned himself, so to speak.
But it didn't help. So, he took the materials in his hand and recited the magic formula: “Osto me osto, haima me haima. (...)”The arcane blue lit up the room and his wound healed up completely. Viktoria detected this immediately and desisted from the building she was currently “working on”. “Got you!”, she obsessively sputtered and made her way towards her enemy. Wenzel didn't know what to do now. He simply remained where he was. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't stop the girl. Was this really the end for him? He didn't want that. It couldn't be! In desperation, he dropped to his knees and did something he hadn't done for many years. He prayed to God.
“Oh, Lord, protect me! Save me! Yours is not the present one, but the Kingdom Come.” Meanwhile, Viktoria was getting closer and closer. At a certain point, she suddenly began to perceive the aura of the Chosen One. It appeared to have given up on stealth. Consequently, she accelerated her flight towards him even more. He was on the lower floor of a residential building. “I'll get you!”, she thought to herself. But then something very peculiar happened. The texture, the quality of the magic that the man was radiating had somehow changed. All of a sudden, it spiked. Without a warning, Wenzel began to tremble. It overcame him and then .....................nothing!
Now the witch entered the room he was in. “Huh?!”, she voiced in utter confusion. Where was he? A magic circle drawn in blood, which had already been smudged, could be seen on the floor. But no sign of Melgar. No aura, no sound, no nothing, even though she had felt his presence just a moment ago. It was as if he had been vanished from the face of the earth! What was going on here? Fretting and fuming, she tore down the walls and proceeded to flatten the entire building for good. However, this did not reveal any sorcerer who might still have been hiding somewhere inside. The man would not reappear in front of her again.