1

Wood and brick and glass and bone shattered as the force of the blast struck them. The inn itself groaned in protest as it began to collapse further. Piece by piece the building fell upon them and bounced off the barrier of the shield he and his sister had raised.

“Damned be the Gods,” Elric muttered. His limbs and chest burned from the mana pouring out of him, more painful than he’d ever felt before. The initial blast had almost broken their barrier, and as rubble continued to fall upon them he couldn’t be certain how much longer it would last.

He had never felt magic on that scale before. Even had he and his sister combined all their power they could not have matched the white-bearded mage’s attack.

Even with a third mage he wasn’t certain they could have unleashed such devastation. With fire they could have torched the building; the building was mostly wood and filled with ale and beddings and rugs and other flammables. An easy thing. Pure force was an entirely different thing.

And it was pure force, he was certain. The front walls had been blown apart entirely, and the men beyond had been tossed back, scattered by the magic filled with shrapnel. Most were dead, and those not protected by the barrier lay bleeding upon the floor, wailing in anguish as they bled from shrapnel wounds, broken bones, and disembodied or disfigured limbs. Most would die, he knew. Even without casting diagnosis magic he knew. People just didn’t live through those injuries without magic, and he had none to spare.

Focus, damn it, focus.

With every stray thought he felt the barrier weaken, shrink.

“Can we move?” Uhtric asked. Another distraction. Important, though.

“Slowly,” Elric replied. “Gods damned slowly.”

There were some fifteen of them standing beneath the barrier, and another five or so injured they were carrying. Caldwell included, he saw.

Together the group inched its way out of the inn and into the open streets where a number of their own men lay waiting and brandishing steel. Safe from the danger of the building, Elric and Aerin released the barrier, the two collapsing as one as the strain of mana burned through their bodies.

Elric gasped for air in heavy breaths, his hands clutching at his hauberk near his chest. The mana burn was unreal this time, unbearable, like a pit of lava had opened up within him. His vision blurred from the pain, then cleared as he collected himself.

All in all there were nearly forty survivors. Good numbers, considering. Not enough.

Checking his pockets he found broken glass and cool wetness. His mana potions. Three had cracked and spilled their contents at some point or another, the other two still intact. He drank them and felt stronger for it, more awake.

The white-bearded mage approached them with a loathful smirk, not at all afraid or concerned about the swords and spears and arrows aimed his way. If anything he seemed to find their presence amusing.

“Out of mana already? Pitiful” the mage said. Elric balled his hands into fists. “I shall offer it one final time. Surrender, and you all may yet live. Refuse, and I shall have no choice but to kill you all.”

He would have shouted if he could. If the pain in his chest wasn’t near so bad, he would have stood and shouted and cursed and more besides. Damn it all, he thought.

“Who the fuck are you to offer us anything?” Uhtric asked, glaring with all his fury.

“I suspect you wouldn’t know my name even if I mentioned it, and it would most certainly be worse if you did know it. Now, as I see it, you all are at a crossroads with two clear paths laid before you. One towards living. The other, death. My only question is why have you chosen death so readily?”

A hollow chuckle rang out, and as Elric turned he saw that the chuckle was coming from Gosfrid. Covered in blood and dust, he had been among the injured carried out, and now lay against the stone roadway. He lifted himself up by a hand, his body shaking from the effort. He stared at the bearded mage with a grin of his own.

“We’re fuckin’ Drygallins you dumb Hilvan bastard. How long ‘til you and yours learn?”

The mage looked on, bemused, that infuriating grin of his holding steady. “It is not we who must learn,” the mage said, his accent suddenly thick and dripping with partially veiled anger, “but you.”

He raised a hand and dim white light encompassed it. The air buzzed with energy as the mage brought forth his power, a painful pricking sensation that crawled across the skin like biting ants. The mage was in a class of his own, far above Elric and his sister, even combined. And stood behind him were two more.

Breathing deep, Elric pulled every fragment of power he could from within himself into his hands, the red light of his magic like a lantern’s glow. He couldn’t break the barrier, couldn’t kill the mages. But he knew the barrier's size, knew it didn’t cover all of the bastard Hilvans standing before him. He could kill some of them, at least.

Flames shot forth from his hands in different directions, left and right, brighter and hotter than any natural fire and shaped like a spout of water. The flames grazed the edges of the invisible barrier, twisted around them, then continued onward to their targets. Those unlucky enough to be standing outside the barriers' protection let loose terrified screams as the flames took them.

Mage fire was a terrible thing. Hotter than any forge, it melted flesh and armor alike and turned cloth of all kinds to ash.

As the flames receded and the air cooled, Elric saw that his fires had taken a fraction of what he had anticipated, some twenty men to the forty or fifty he had hoped.

2

Notice

Companion Elric is able to level up.

The screen appeared overtop his current topic of study, so familiar and yet, at the same time, incredibly foreign. It was an exciting thing to see. And dreadful.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Alden already knew they were fighting. Every death of his men had come with a screen of its own. No penalty came with them, he was grateful to see, but that did little to ease him. He was stuck waiting, unable to help, unable to do anything but bide his time and hope for the best.

He did not know how strong their foes were, nor how many of them. With each death he could only hope their fight was over, and then another screen would appear.

There was little that enraged him so.

Still, he reasoned, there was hope. Willing the System to do its duty, he watched as Elric’s level changed and the frame of his column transformed into one of shining bronze. He only hoped the changes to Elric’s Stats would be enough.

3

Power flooded his body out of nowhere, an intoxicating swell of force that filled him to the brim and empowered every inch of his being. It was not mana, nor any energy he knew of, and its workings on his body were as perplexing as they were invigorating. He was stronger in all the ways he could tell. His muscles bulged against the skin, the world seemed to slow, and his mana was refueled all at once and his core deepened further than it had ever been.

There was no questioning it, not now, not when the bearded mage was still conjuring forth his own power, only hesitating a moment to watch as fire consumed a fraction of his soldiers.

O thank thee, mine Maker, for this blessed shield, may it protect your lambs from slaughter.

Pure force struck the barrier as it formed, sending out a cascade of lights as the magical power bounced between the shields. Back and forth the energy rocked, a thin strip of the paved road between cracking with a tumultuous roar, amplified further as the inn behind groaned its last and fell. Dust and smoke clouded the air and passed through the barriers as if they were not there, shrouding all in the street in choking darkness.

The bouncing energy ceased and the street quieted somewhat. Men coughed and flailed their arms, trying to wave the dust away only for more to take its place.

Elric held his breath and concentrated on the barrier, afraid to let up. His eyes stung and watered, and as long seconds passed his lungs began to burn in protest.

He could see shadows moving in the dust, and as it cleared he began to make out the individual details of the men opposite them. They had backed away some, their faces covered with cloth. The bearded mage, too, held cloth before his face, and his eyes were narrowed in a mix of discomfort and anger.

“Aerin!” Elric called out.

He felt a tug at his side and looked to see her.

“Here,” she whispered.

“Can you take over my shield?”

She shook her head, paused, tilted it inquisitively, and raised her hands to her chest. After a time she nodded. As close to a maybe as he’d get.

“Do it,” he said.

Putting out her hands, Elric felt Aerin’s power overlap his own and take hold of the shield. He released his own hold of it and backed away.

The barrier would break this time. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did, and that gave him the confidence to try.

The power flowed to his hands and they began to glow. Sparking tendrils appeared and disappeared and grew more and more furious.

He pushed his hands forward and shoved forth his power in all its glory. Beams of white lightning appeared and struck the barrier with a tremendous, deafening boom. The shockwave hit him like a full-bodied punch, and he almost ceased the flow of mana as he watched thick tendrils of lightning crisscross against the barrier’s surface. Lightning carved against the barrier, peeling away at the layers of solidified mana, and then the barrier was gone. Lightning tore through them, searing flesh and metal alike.

The bearded mage raised his hand high, the mana coming off him so dense that it created a shimmer in the air as he created a new barrier. Elric continued to pour mana into his attack, releasing bolt after bolt of bright booming lightning.

“Go!” he said between bolts.

“What?” Uhtric yelled.

“Go! Get out of here, I’ll hold them off.”

I can’t beat that mage, he wanted to say, but didn’t. Even now, after losing half his men, the bearded mage did not look worried in the slightest. Even now he smirked and waited, biding his time. As soon as Elric ran out of mana the man would attack, and it would be over. For all of them.

“Keep my sister safe,” he said.

Uhtric nodded to him sadly, signaled the others to follow, then left.

4

The moment they left the street with the inn the yellow-clad bastards were upon them. If not for Aerin they would have swarmed the group, killed them all. Thank the Maker there were no more mages, Gosfrid thought.

Everything hurt as he limped down the streets, and he was certain his ribs had broken. Something in his feet, as well, he suspected, but with the threat of spears and swords and maces in every direction paid his foot little mind, hobbling along as fast as the pain would allow.

He had a bow, at least, and a ready supply of arrows. Some of his archers had made it. The green ones, mostly. He would have preferred the skilled ones now.

Loosing an arrow at the nearest enemy, he looked past them and saw the city’s gate. Twenty feet of crisscrossing iron bars thicker than a man’s torso, and ever so slowly it was descending.

“Gate’s closing! Can you break it?”

Aerin turned and looked but did not answer.

Scythes of wind flew out from her hands, cutting through yellow clad soldier after yellow clad soldier as they came in groups. Eventually they caught on, falling back as their archers came forward and loosed a volley at them.

The girl mage must not have had the mana for another barrier, as the arrows fell upon them and the horrendous sound of dying screams followed. Those that had shields raised them high, forming a roof of wood and metal as the group slowly inched its way towards the gate. They carried with them as many injured as they could, with some bleeding men having to be dragged along. Others still were corpses, dragged along by foolish and distraught friends.

“He’s dead,” Gosfrid told one man. “Let him be.”

The man stared into Gosfrid’s eyes, stared through him the way every hopeless man did. The man let the corpse fall limp, then shoved his way past the shield wall and ran towards a group of enemies, sword in hand.

Gosfrid did not look long enough to see the man die.

By the time they reach the gate Aerin was panting heavily enough to be heard. Her magic had diminished noticeably, each wave of cutting air weaker than the last, each ball of flame smaller, each bolt of lightning less bright.

She drained a mana potion as she ducked behind a wall of men—her last, Gosfrid could tell.

They waited patiently for her mana to recover, each second as tense as the last. And as deadly.

Even with a roof of shields, stray arrows slipped through and caught in a man’s chest or throat or eye, and with each death the roof lost a shield.

“Blast the damned gate already!” Uhtric called out.

The girl mage nodded and put her hands out, the air around them shimmering slightly as mana poured out. White lightning struck the gate with a deafening roar, its deathly tendrils lashing out at the guards surrounding. The metal transformed from cool black to hot orange in places, yet the gate held.

“Again, damnit!” Gosfrid yelled.

There was a change in her after that last blast. A confusion. Aerin raised her hands and looked at them, then down at her body. Finally, she focused on the gate once more, raised her hands, channeled her magic.

And the gate was no more.