Most of the soldiers stared blankly forward, motionless. The shock of losing their awakening powers, along with the lack of echoes to direct them, made them unable to register the ground shattering around them. The entire terrain kept shifting non-stop, while the sky was filled with spiral attacks, rays of destruction, and dragon breath attacks. Those that were lucky were merely petrified by Euryale’s glance.
The remaining few that were strong-willed enough to cope with everything that had been taken from them, struggled to survive in a world more hostile than they’ve ever known before, with nearly no success.
The ever-shrinking prize, Dallion thought as he finally managed to cast a ray of destruction spell of his own.
The purple beam flew forward through the mountain he had erected to keep the emperor’s echo from seeing it. Unfortunately, when it came to reaction, Dallion remained slightly outmatched.
SPELL NEGATED
A second beam, just as large, slammed into Dallion’s causing both of them to blink out of existence. Whatever the emperor had done to create his aether echo, it was not to be underestimated. Dallion could only assume that there were serious limitations or there would be armies of them roaming the battlefield.
I could help out there, Gleam said through the awakened realms. The dragon actually agrees with me for once.
It was notable that the shardfly had referred to Aquilequia in a non-negative manner, but Dallion strongly disagreed with both of them. After consuming a large part of the Academy’s magic, she had almost reached level twenty. In terms of speed, that was probably the fastest leveling up Dallion had ever seen or heard of. Unfortunately, that was where her progress ended.
In her current state, neither she nor Gleam would manage to withstand the echo’s attacks. Dark had to spend years with a Moon to get to where he was, and even so, he appeared a bit lacking.
Stay in the realms, Dallion ordered. You’ll get your chance.
You keep saying that.
This isn’t our enemy, it’s just an echo. We’ll fight the real deal soon enough.
A torrent of air ripped the sky, flying straight for the emperor’s echo. This time, instead of deflecting it, the echo cast a series of aether spheres around himself. The first three shattered on contact. The next cracked up before doing the same. The fifth managed to withstand the currents of air, allowing them to slide over.
“He’s weakening,” Dallion said.
Barely had he done so when Dark disappeared, reappearing a dozen feet away a moment later.
“Move.” Euryale ordered, extending her left hand, while doing a thrust attack with her right.
A point attack flew forward, shattering the final level of protection that the echo had cast. Before the attack could deal any damage, the echo had teleported safely away as well.
“He’s almost there.” Dallion said. “We just need to—”
“Stop!”
Surprised at the sharpness in her voice, Dallion turned in her direction.
“You’re weaker as well. The adrenalin rush won’t hold you forever.”
“I’m fine,” he lied. He was fully aware of the wounds he had and the impact they were having. Magic was keeping him alive and in a functional state, but in the long run of things that remained an illusion.
“Just come here,” the gorgon insisted. Even dark moved in closer to pressure Dallion into making the correct decision. “I’m not telling you to stop fighting. Just to rest a bit. We can fight together.”
Afraid that agreeing might make the exhaustion fall upon him like a ton of bricks, Dallion hesitated. Splitting into instances, he moved towards her, reaching out for her hand with one. Sadly. The emperor’s echo had no intention of making things easy. A new cluster of rays—a lot smaller than before—flew straight at the trio.
Three things happened at once. Euryale performed a spark infused spiral attack. Dallion caused a mountain to rise between him and the echo, and Dark cast an illusion spell that transformed them all identical to air.
A series of explosions followed, filling the sky with rocks and dirt. A few moments later, that dirt started falling back to the ground.
“When did you learn to do that?” Dallion asked, looking at his wife.
“The same way I got here.” She tapped her arm. “The ara creates bonds. I knew you were hurt the moment it happened. I also used her to reach you through the realms. Dark still has to work on his speed.”
Hey! The green dragon snorted.
In the distance, another explosion followed, thrusting large amounts of rocks in all directions. Despite signs to the opposite, the aether echo had no intention of slowing down. The mana it had used was monumental, but as every mage knew, mana was nothing more than stamina given physical form. At its current level, it would be a while before it was done for.
“Are you ready for a dance?” Euryale asked.
“Dance?” Dallion repeated the question.
“I tried to teach you long ago, but you didn’t have the traits for it.” The snakes on the gorgon’s head moved about. “Maybe now you’ll be able to keep up?”
For a moment, Dallion’s exhaustion didn’t feel that bad. Without hesitation, he nodded.
“Dark,” Eury said to the dragon. “I’ll need wings.”
Another illusion spell followed. Dallion and Euryale were all material again, although this time, the gorgon had large green wings coming out of her back. In a way, they reminded Dallion of the blue flame wings that he had frequently used back before he had become a mage.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Let’s go.”
More rays shot in their direction. Back on Earth, Dallion never would have thought that the speed of light might turn out to be too slow, but right now, it seemed to be. Thanks to spells, artifacts, and their combined perception, they were able to spot the echo’s spell in the making and determine the direction the ray would go. The time they had to react proved faster than the time it took for the ray of energy to reach them.
DANCE OF LIGHT
(+2 Body, +2 Reaction)
Just because it’s adorable. Better not put it to waste.
A rectangle flashed and disappeared. Dallion could swear that he could see arts, guard, and acrobatics markers flash in similar fashion, marking the movements they had to follow to reach their target unharmed.
What’s dancing without a little music, he thought as he slashed the air with his harpsisword, playing a series of chords in the process.
“You’re making things easier.” The aether echo moved forward. Dozens of spell circles formed around him, launching projectiles, rays, or bolts of purple lightning.
Spinning through the air, Euryale and Dallion combined spells and combat strikes to continuously counter them. Every now and again a red rectangle would appear as one of them was grazed by an aether shard, though that too would be quickly neutralized by a healing spell.
Rings of water formed around them, as Giaccia too joined in, using as much of her natural magic as she could.
How come I’ve never thought like that? Dallion wondered. There was a time when he’d gladly combined attacks with others. It seemed so far away that he had completely forgotten.
Like a champagne that had been uncorked, dozens of other memories came flooding in. There were so many more ways he could fight—ways involving knowledge out of this world. One word was all it would take for Lux to bombard the echo from a distance with the intensity of a meteor shower. Dallion could change the composition of projectiles and materials, granting them properties similar to rockets, he could fill them with various emotions that would continuously bombard his enemies with emotions of extreme sadness, depression, sapping their will to fight. At the end of the day, he could even recreate heavy artillery or other mid-range weapons from Earth.
Was that the right thing to do, though? The Stars had attempted it, and none of them had managed to achieve what they wanted. The inhabitants of the devastated aura swords had used weapons of emotions and ended up killing each other. Against opponents as crafty as Tiallia, Simon, and Jeremy, any mass destruction capabilities would be a double-edged sword.
To a degree, the same could be said about melee combat. Dallion had no doubt that all three of his enemies were observing him through various means, taking notes of anything that could be to their advantage. There was one thing that they lacked, though—none of them had anyone like Euryale by their side.
Aether sabers surrounded the echo as they got close. Dallion expected him to summon a weapon of his own, but no such thing happened. That was somewhat weird. For someone who had all the skills at a level twenty percent higher than they were supposed to, it should have been easy.
Out of sixteen sabers, ten flew towards Dallion, while the rest concentrated on Euryale. That was a rookie mistake. Everyone knew that gorgons were better in combat than humans. More than likely, Jeremy suspected that Dallion’s level advantage made him more dangerous.
Moving his arms so fast that they appeared to quadruple, Dallion parried the flying blades. Each strike created a spell circle behind it, as well as a trail of water. Giaccia was doing a good job propelling drops of that at the echo, even if they were easily stopped by concentrated cubes of aether that appeared and disappeared.
On her part, Euryale was focusing purely on attack, dancing between strikes with the elegance of an awakened ballerina, while performing point blank spiral attacks with ease.
“It’s amusing that both of you are here,” the echo said, still managing to cast rays of destruction in the course of combat. Of course, Dallion took full advantage of his combat splitting to make sure that neither he nor Euryale would suffer as a result. “You’re aware that you can’t kill me,” he continued. “You’ve seen it happen before.”
Each of the words had subtle strands of music within them. Most people wouldn’t even have noticed, but the former Duchess Elazni had made Dallion aware of such approaches.
“Using music so late in the game?” Dallion countered with his own music skill. “Things must have become tough for you.”
“Hardly.” The echo persisted. “My original was like you once.”
Eight of the sabers merged together, creating a fan. Its force was significantly greater than before, chopping the arm off one of Dallion’s instances. Naturally, Dallion chose another to become reality and split again.
“He had someone he loved and would go into battle with her. Eventually he saw the truth.”
“And what might that be?” Euryale asked, eyes wide open in an attempt to petrify the echo. Sadly, its level of magic made it impossible.
“That nothing lasts forever,” the echo replied, casting another ray of destruction. From this distance, it was able to slightly singe the side of her right arm before she could fully evade. Thankfully, the wound was light. “Only one could pass through the gate. Everyone close to those that do will die then or after.”
In fifty instances, Dallion thrust his harpsisword right at the echo. In forty-nine of them, the blade shattered through dozens of barriers, failing to fully break through to its target. In one, it succeeded.
“Got you!” Dallion shouted victoriously. Caution made him maintain the rest of his instances a bit longer, and it was a good thing that he had.
The echo looked at its wound. The death had triggered some sort of after-spell effect, causing its entire body to flash in a bright purple light. That wasn’t all, though. Hundreds of aether rays shot out in all directions, burning through everything. There was no escaping from that. The moment Dallion caught a glimpse, he quickly switched to one of the failed attacks. There was no way he’d lose Euryale in such a way.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
More spell circles emerged, doubling the amount of aether sabers. Dallion attempted to slice the threads of as many of the spells as he could, but the echo was annoyingly fast.
“That’s why no one has managed to kill the Emperor of Tamin. Many have tried, some even succeeded, yet they saw as you that killing me meant they would die as well.”
There was no denying it. That was a neat trick. And yet, Dallion knew that wasn’t always the case. During the last imperial ceremony, the fake emperor had really died.
“I saw you die once,” he said.
“You’re missing the point. Why don’t you look at me closer? I’ll allow it.”
A purple rectangle suddenly appeared above the echo’s head.
TAMIN III
Health: 0%
Traits:
- AWAKENING 121
- BODY 121
- MIND 121
- REACTION 121
- PERCEPTION 121
- EMPATHY 121
- MAGIC 121
Skills
- ATTACK
- GUARD
- ATHLETICS
- ACROBATICS
- FORGING
- CARVING
- ARTS
- SCHOLAR
- MUSIC
- HERBALISM
- ZOOLOGY
- SPELLCRAFT
Weakness: UNKNOWN