Power was everything.

That simple concept was the core of Belinda’s entire being. There was no good or evil, no right or wrong, no truth or fantasy. There was just power, those who had it, and those who did not. With power, you could do anything, say anything, be anything. Those without had no choice but to obey, to accept the world presented to them, without complaint or question.

And she was a mage, so she had power.

When the great archmages of Lightire said that only nobles could practise magic, and the commonfolk must submit to the Seekers, she obeyed, because they had more power. When the travelling Seeker-mages had set up camp in her family’s holdings, interrogated and killed their people, she had obeyed, because they had more power. When the provost of the college said that she had to join this expedition at the behest of her father, to follow the orders of a mundane to collect some meaningless sum of money, she had obeyed, because he had more power.

It rankled at her, to have been surrounded for so many weeks by only weak and simple fools. Even Thio, maybe the most competent of the lot, was a mundane. Magicless. Powerless.

And therefore beneath her.

Her task had been simple. Follow Thio. Aid him with his mission. Return with all haste. A task she had completed with all the dignity her lofty rank required, just as the provost had requested of her.

He, after all, had real power.

And yet here they were, finally at their destination, finally about to pass the half-way mark on this ridiculous farce and begin the return to their lives. And this… backwater noble, this Reud, was refusing to comply. How could he not see the truth stood before him, the power that eclipsed his. The blindness wasn’t just incompetence, it was an insult against reality itself, against the fabric that held the world together.

How dare he.

How dare he.

“How dare you!” The words burst from her lips before her mind could truly catch up.

Reud shrugged. “I won’t repeat myself again. Feel free to stay for a day or two, enjoy the city. I’m told we have a rather nice inn that has set up shop at the far end of Littlestream Road, I’m sure you can find accommodation there.”

“Enough.” Belinda growled, mana rushing into her in a heady, intoxicatingly pleasurable wave. “We cannot be brushed off so simply, necromancer. You must obey, you have no choice.”

“Belinda, what are you-” Thio said, his voice tinged with panic.

“Back off Thio.” She snapped back, her eyes blazing with amethyst light, shutting the man up instantly. “Can’t you see, he has no intention of cooperating. Now we need to do this the hard way.”

“I see.” Reud said quietly. “So that’s how it’s going to be.”

“I don’t know who you are or where you’ve come from, but I will not allow some weak fool to so flagrantly spit in the face of the true order of things.” Belinda growled out. “I am a rank seven, and you are not. Obey, or be crushed.”

“A rank seven.” Reud rubbed his chin. Turning to the woman that had brought them here, Rachel, he continued. “Is that a lot? Do you have any clue?”

Rachel shrugged. “No idea, my lord. Telac was a rank three, though, as he kept telling everyone.”

These arrogant pieces of-

Belinda had finally had enough. If these fools could not see the truth, then she just had to educate them.

Raising a hand, she forced the captured mana through her affinity, and out into her hand. A diffuse, undirected, wide area attack. A flash of light, so bright it would debilitate and disorientate any person caught within it.

“Flare!” The woman beside Reud, Lilia, shouted, the instant before Belinda released the spell.

The light flashed, so bright and blinding Belinda could see her bones through her hands, if barely for a moment. Behind her, a chorus of agonized shouts filled the air, those of Thio and his men. She shut them out, focusing on the mages before her.

She had no time to spare for the concerns of the powerless.

Only a single cry came from ahead of her, a single female voice. Blinking the dazzling light from her eyes, easy due to her natural resistance to all light based attacks, Belinda peered at her foes. The guide, Rachel, staggered away from her, arm pressed across eyes that she knew would be blinded for minutes to come. But the other two, Lilia and Reud, turned back to her, opening their eyes but otherwise seemingly entirely unaffected.

How in Idia’s name had they avoided her magic?

Belinda’s eyes narrowed as she watched them. There was mana constantly flowing through the man and into the skeletons, a steady low stream of power that infused and empowered them. Maintaining any kind of persistent effect was always a difficult task, and she knew of no mages that could do more than a few at a time. This mage was powerful to be able to raise the sheer number of undead that saturated the city. But, as with all minion based mages, quantity could do little in the face of quality, and this mage would have stretched himself thin to breaking point.

Which meant he should be absolutely no threat to her.

The woman, on the other hand, was dangerous. During the fragment of the fight Belinda had witnessed, the woman had channelled an impressive amount of mana. A kinetomancer, if she had to guess, something in the rank five to six range. Powerful, but…

She was a rank seven. There was simply no comparison. Belinda just had more power than either of them.

Yet, they avoided her opening spell, seemingly with ease, as if they’d seen it a thousand times before. How?

“Luxomancer.” Lilia said. “You have no idea how many of you open a fight with that exact same trick.”

Which was odd, because Belinda was the first luxomancer, or light mage, in generations. It had let her climb to the lofty heights she now occupied, even at her young age.

“Good technique, but slow.” Reud said critically. “You should work on that.”

How dare this inferior judge her!

Belinda threw out a hand and fired a tight beam of light, so focused it could burn through flesh with a touch. Moving with blinding speed, Lilia brought her shield up between them, a shimmering field springing to life around it that dispersed her beam into scintillating colours that danced across the grass.

“I got this, she’s mine.” Lilia said, her eyes narrowing.

“Shout if you need me.” Reud said, and stepped back.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Which gave Belinda some satisfaction. At least the man knew to bow before the power of his superiors. Now she just had to subdue this woman, and everything would fall back into its rightful place.

Launching a volley of beams that the woman refracted into harmlessness, Belinda raised her other hand and charged an orb of condensed light. One of her favourite spells, and one that usually ended any duel in an instant.

A true showing of her power.

Belinda let out a wide area flash once again, Lilia immediately reacting to shield her eyes. Exactly as Belinda had planned. Before Lilia could react, she threw the orb high into the air, sending a beam right after it.

And when they touched, the orb shattered.

Where was once a single beam, instead a thousand incandescent lines radiated out, reflecting from unseen surfaces to cut through the sky back down towards the ground. A beautiful display of coruscating light.

Striking their target from all sides.

Mana surged into Lilia a moment before the beams struck, and then there was something surrounding her. A spherical shell of translucent white ice. The beams struck, and the shell exploded into steam and shards that peppered the ground. Lilia was immediately obscured from view, a cloud of white ice surrounding her body.

Belinda looked on, frozen in shock. The woman was not only a rank five kinetomancer, but also a rank three cryomancer at the very least. A dual affinity, which put her on equal footing with Belinda.

No wonder she was the real power here.

A figure exploded out of the white mist, a woman sheathed in a white glow and wielding a blade wrapped in vivid blue ice. She shot towards Belinda, murder in her eyes. She span, swinging the sword around in a great arc, the ice wrapping its blade growing the weapon to many times its normal length. An arc that would have cut Belinda in half, from shoulder to hip.

That was, if Belinda hadn’t merged with the light.

Belinda blinked to one side in an instant, putting a safe distance between her and the deadly blade she wielded with such ferocity. It wasn’t like she could block an attack like that, luxomancy had no spells that could withstand such force. No, all she could do was keep out of range and avoid getting hit.

And that was something luxomancy excelled at.

Raising a hand, she launched a barrage of beams at Lilia, aiming at her limbs first and foremost. Once a kinetomancer’s movements were restricted, they were easy picking. Yet, no matter how much she attacked, the woman always seemed to be one step ahead, her shield dispersing her beams into nothing more than a harmless light show.

Belinda blinked back again as Lilia charged, resuming her barrage the moment she reappeared. Eventually, the spell on the shield would run out of mana and her spells would finally find their targets. She’d proven she could outmanoeuvre the woman, so she just had to be patient.

And then something cut her cheek.

Stumbling back, Belinda reached a hand up to the stinging line, her fingers coming away bloody. Something flashed towards her again and she blinked away instinctively, just barely catching a glimpse of the projectile as it flew through the air her head an occupied an instant before.

It was a shard of ice. Shot from the woman.

The fight just got a whole lot more difficult.

A ring of frost was spreading around Lilia, chunks of ice slowly coalescing on its surface. Once one was large enough, it shot out towards Belinda like a bolt from a crossbow, trailing white ice crystals as it tore through the air.

Redirecting her beams, Belinda focused on destroying every shard forming in the ice before attacking the woman. No shards, meant no ranged attacks. And that meant she’d win, eventually.

Power always won out, in the end.

And then a wall appeared in front of the woman. It was made of ice, the centre just transparent enough to see through, albeit with a lot of distortion. It was twice the height of a person, and as wide as Belinda’s arms outstretched to their limits.

Belinda fired a tentative beam into it, but the light just split through its crystalline interior, emerging harmless on the other side. The perfect counter to her magic.

Which meant she had to move around it.

Blinking to the side, Belinda readied another orb, tossing it above Lilia to radiate down onto her. A shell of ice encased the woman once more, the beams blasting it to smithereens but otherwise doing no harm to the woman within. A frustrating outcome, but that kind of magic could not be maintainable forever.

She just had to wait out her stamina.

Blinking more and more, Belinda shot around Lilia, firing beam after beam at the stationary woman. Lilia didn’t even bother to attack any more, her sword hanging uselessly by her side. A combination of shield and ice wall kept the light beams at bay, for now.

Then, the walls started appearing further away from her.

The frost had spread out further along the ground, a delicate white that coated every blade of grass, every exposed mound of earth, every torn-away clod. A circle that stretched out beyond Belinda, nearly reaching the onlookers that backed further and further away from the deadly display. Each time Belinda reformed out of the light it crunched beneath her feet, and each time the unexpected slickness threatened to send her skidding to the ground. The ice walls too started appearing in random positions across the frosted ground, creating an obstacle course that Belinda actually had to think to blink through. Still, she’d navigated through worse whilst still throwing attacks. It would not be enough to stop her.

And then, surprisingly, she stopped dead.

In the moment between identifying a gap in the walls, and blinking, the gap had been sealed. Belinda slammed into its frigid surface as her blink failed to carry her through the obstacle, sending her reeling backwards. Spinning, she found her retreat similarly cut off, a final wall slamming into place above her.

Leaving the only opening to be the one facing Lilia.

An opening filled with a flying blade.

Without thinking, Belinda reached deep and threw every last speck of mana she could muster into the most powerful burst of light she’d ever managed. It flashed, so bright it even hurt herself, the ice surrounding her cracking loudly as the magic slammed into it. The sword clanged loudly into the ground at her feet, and the woman wielding it screamed and fell back, clutching her eyes, the skin of her face burned red.

The magic, however, hadn’t been without its cost.

Belinda screamed with her, burning pain erupting from every part of her body. That attack had taken not just her mana, but some of her flesh with it too, merging with the light to give it greater destructive potential. Flesh that had not reformed once the spell had completed. Lacerations covered her skin, red blood welling up and slicking her body.

But she still had working eyes, which was more than could be said for the woman before her.

Belinda raised a had and sent another beam into Lilia’s thigh, sending the woman to the ground with a renewed scream. Gathering her mana for a final attack, a fierce smile broke out across her face, elation briefly allowing her to forget the agony rampaging through her body. She’d done it. She’d won. She really was the most-

“Lilia!” Roared a male voice.

Then, true power exploded into being.

Belinda had always had a fantastically sensitive mana sight, ever since her affinity had awoken. A lucky mutation of her luxomancy, her provost had said. It was a gift that had allowed her to refine her magic and climb quickly through the ranks to the position she now held. She loved watching it dance around people as they cast spells, its iridescent colours representing true power, a fundamental truth that she’d followed with zeal all her life.

As she’d grown, she’d gone from one great source of power to the next. At the academy, her fellow students could channel mana that looked like the flames of candles that danced in some unseen wind. The stronger Seekers she’d seen could channel enough that it was like torches, burning bright and strong. Her provost, the man she’d followed for years, could produce mana that was like a captivating crackling campfire. She’d even met a powerhouse from Lightire briefly, his mana a roaring bonfire that seared her vision and haunted her dreams.

But never had she seen anything close to this.

A sun had erupted into life on the far side of the field.

Her spell collapsed as something ripped its fuel from her grasp, pulling it and every other last morsel of mana into some great whirlpool of power, dragging it down faster and faster, swirling down to its nexus.

And at the heart of it all, he stood.

Reud blazed brighter than anything or anyone she’d ever seen, so flush with mana it made her heart skip a beat. It was captivatingly beautiful. Intoxicating. Power in the most pure form she’d ever seen.

What had she been doing all her life, following minor mage after mage? Even the provost was barely more than a child before… this. She wanted nothing more than to fall to her knees, to worship this embodiment of power.

Then the mana poured out of him, forming into a great river that connected him to a skeleton that stood to one side of the field. Immediately, it lit up in kind, awakening some sort of affinity within the creature. Sparks flashed off it, crackling out over the ground.

“Y-yield!” She screamed, eyes widening. “I yield!”

Belinda barely had time to widen her eyes before an electric arc twisted out to play over her body, filling her with a renewed agony that sent her slamming to the ground.