I let out a sigh of relief as I wrapped the assassin in my mana senses as tightly as I could, then activated the Runelight Lens. For a second, I was worried it wouldn’t work. While hiding in Dusk’s realm, I’d eaten one of Dawn’s self-harvesting crystals, and didn’t know if I’d have enough knowledge and mental energy left to draw on.

But Impel Senses had just enough power to activate.

Strengthened by the power of my Analyze spells, Sense Directionality, and Sky Dragon’s Senses cut off the lines of sensory magic connecting her to the massive storm core in the sky, and the magic began to slowly blow apart.

For a second, there was silence, the assassin staring at me like I’d grown a second head.

Then she blurred into motion, and I snapped my hand out. With the restored power in my gates, thanks to Dawn’s crystals, I flared Enhance Forging at full power. In the same instant, I drew power from the Ninelight Morels, funneled it into a three-layer Fungal Lock, and began cycling Mantle Dragonfyre.

Mycelial tendrils rippled into the assassin’s skin, greedily sucking on her body’s energy. With all of her body enhancement spells, it had plenty to drain. She flared her mana, trying to empower herself and rip them apart, and while she made some headway, more of the tendrils repopulated, so she swapped her strategy.

Wind began to whip around her, spinning into a whirlwind of devastation that outpaced the replication of the mycelium, though not by much. She would eventually free herself, but it wouldn’t be fast or easy.

She seemed to reach the same conclusion as wind and pressure lifted her off the ground. She spread her hands and laughed.

“Congratulations, Malachi! For all of your efforts, you’ve brought me down to about half my mana…”

That was a bluff. Probably. I really hoped it was, because if it wasn’t.

I glanced at Kene and Dusk.

“How are you two?”

Dusk whistled that she was okay, but if we wanted to stop this forest fire from spreading, she was going to need to break off from the battle.

“Go,” I said. “I’ll handle her.”

There was more confidence in my voice than I really felt.

Dusk raised her hands and began calling on the spellcraft of her colony of Naiads. Portals snapped open, and water began to pour from them, rushing over the land to put out the fires, then returning to her realm when it passed beyond the control of her Dominion.

She began to forge water from her mana with the Naiad’s spells, and the Naiads themselves emerged from within her, spreading their magic through the burning forest.

Above us, the assassin was beginning a new, complex spell that mixed lightning and life.

“Gotta cut that off,” I muttered. “Kene you good?”

“Stopping all of that lightning took most of Siobhan’s mana,” they said, speaking quickly as I continued to cycle my spell. “My solar mana is almost dry, but I’m keeping life in reserve to heal in case.”

I nodded and shot into the air. As the assassin’s spell started to finish, my own third cycle of Mantle Dragonfyre completed, and we unleashed our power in unison.

An enormous serpent of living lightning, a summon that had its own lightning-producing core in its center, exploded from her hands. It bellowed and a bolt of lightning shot from its jaws.

I met it in the air with Mantle Dragonfyre. My spell crashed through the lightning and tore out a chunk of its flesh, but the spell core inside it began to rebuild it. I rapidly cycled another Mantle Dragonfyre, unleashing a much weaker breath. It drilled off more of the spell, but lacked the potency to

I bit my lip. I didn’t have a whole lot of third gate hudau mana left, even with Dawn’s crystal, but I could probably release two or three more bars of dragon breath. I needed to use them wisely – no more quick releases.

As I started to cycle another cast, the air around me filled with blades of compressed wind from the assassin, who was still wrapped in the cyclone battling Fungal Lock.

I met them with Briarthreads and Pinpoint Boneshards, though my internal stockpile of bones was running low.

“Why won’t you just give up?” I shouted at her, dumping a bit of extra mana into Fungal Lock, since my morels were starting to run dry. “Why are you even doing this? What possibly makes it worth it?!”

“Stop. Therapizing. Me!” the assassin shouted. “I don’t have some tragic, poetic reason.”

“Noboey just decides to be a contract killer,” I said

“Fine, you wanna know? I’ll tell you,” she spat.

We were both biding our time for our spells to reach full strength, but that was fine. I really did want to know.

“Money,” she said. “So much money.”

“Why do you need money?” I pressed. “You say you don’t have tragedy. Is it greed? Lacking empathy and wanting money is still a disorder, and guess what? It’s one that can be worked with. Therapized, if you will. A disorder doesn’t make you a monster.”

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“Shut up! It’s not that.”

“Then why? It isn’t tragedy, it isn’t underlying issues you don’t want to treat. But normal people don’t murder.”

“Shut up!” she howled, thrusting her hand out.

The lightning dragon, which wasn’t entirely done reforming, rushed me. I was caught between my second and third cycles of dragon’s breath, not having expected her to attack until her spell was done repairing itself.

I flared Tortoise Time, wove Enhance Forging into Briarthreads, set my Pinpoint Boneshard in a defensive position, and strained my flight potion to throw myself out of the way.

If I’d mastered or ingrained Tortoise Time, maybe the extra half second shaved off would have let me escape.

If I’d been a true alchemist, rather than one who relied on a handful of combat potions, maybe I could have evaded the strike.

If I’d been more advanced, I could have conjured Fungal Armor to take the blow.

If I’d forced my roots to obey me, or hadn’t had them at all, I could have Foxstepped out of the way.

If I had been the kind of person capable of aiming my very first Mantle Dragonfyre at her head, rather than melting her hammer, I wouldn’t have been in this position to begin with.

If.

But I didn’t live in a world of if, I lived in the world now.

The forged lightning dragon reduced my Pinpoint Boneshard to fine ash, burnt my Briarthreads to cinders, and was on me before I could dodge, even with Tortoise Time and the potion.

So I did the only thing I could think of in that moment.

I drew back my hand, formed it into a fist, and drove my punch down the throat of the dragon.

I let out a roar of defiance, which shifted into a scream as the windblade teeth ripped into my arm and its lightning body discharged into my flesh with a sizzling, burning scent.

Mantle Dragonfyre wasn’t done with its cycle yet, but I pushed it with desperation fueled by pain, a feat of mana manipulation and will alone.

Brown-red light kindled in my fist, and an eruption of heat and force and power shredded the spell apart from the inside.

I was left hovering in front of the assassin, one arm torn and blackened from lightning burns, left to hang limply from my side. I began Starfish Regeneration, and the burnt, useless flesh began to dissolve, converting into the minty wash of healing power.

Across from me, the assassin had finally freed herself from my Fungal Lock and was keeping herself aloft with the dregs of her power. I didn’t have Analyze Mana-Garden, but she couldn’t have much left, and all my sensory abilities gave me a sense of weariness from her.

She raised her hand, and I drew my good arm back, charging another Mantle Dragonfyre.

Windblades rushed out at me, and I used flicks of my hand to meet them with crescents of blademoss, then focused and overcharged my mana. I rushed at her and slammed my palm at her. She twisted out of the way, thinking I was planning to release an attack right into her chest.

But I was aiming for her hand. My fingers brushed hers, and I formed a spatial anchor, then another, then another.

I converted down third gate mana and overcharged Transport Item.

Pulling enchanted items through space was difficult, their magical power lending a metaphysical weight, but with three anchors, overcharged mana, and the element of surprise, I teleported her spatial ring, her new shielding bracelet, and her old illusory face bracelet, all into a self on the alchemy room.

“What?”

That was all she got out before I released my final handful of boneshards at her. She cut them out of the air with windblades, but I unleashed my Mantle Dragonfyre. I aimed at her legs, just in case, but she reacted with a blast of lightning, powered until it stopled my dragon breath dead in its tracks.

Then she fell out of the sky. A slowfalling spell caught her, but her third gate tempest mana was finally, blessedly, dry.

I floated down next to her.

“Normal people don–”

She cut me off, shouting loud enough to raise the dead.

“I am normal!”

She snapped her hand back, and sparks began to fly up around it. I felt the familiar power of a dangerous technique, one that reminded me of Burn Future or the Ascending Death Crystal that the warlock in the Idyll-Flume had used. It seemed to come from within her spirit, but it wasn’t of her mana.

Some sort of natural treasure, then?

The sparks began to gather around her hand and compress into a ball. I raised my one good arm, then snapped it back. I drained my third gate hudau mana dry as I started to cast Mantle Dragonfyre, then reached for more, but my gates were burnt out, empty of power.

Except that, just because they were out of power, didn’t mean that I was.

It was possible to move a domain weapon or staff with force of will alone. Ikki had done it, even while limiting himself to a first gate mage. I clenched my good hand into a fist, and my staff flew to tuck itself under my shoulder. I wasn’t sure when I’d dropped it – maybe when I’d punched the lightning dragon? Maybe before that?

Even as she built power with her dangerously self-wounding treasure, I cycled Mantle Dragonfyre, and I reached for the power in my bones. Converting that into Hudau Mana was inefficient, but I needed everything I could get right now.

Then I reached for Temporal Basin.

I hadn’t drained the power from it since the Beastgate Trial Trail and the integration of my new Spread-Crystal. Inside of my staff, a deep ocean of power awaited, responding to my call and rushing into my temporal mana. Even with the horrible losses from converting it to Hudau Mana, I was able to pack more power into a single cycle than I’d ever managed before.

The assassin screamed, drawing both of her hands back as her power reached a crescendo, and thrust them forwards to let go. I thrust my one good arm forwards, kindling the dragon’s breath and unleashing it at her.

Our powers met.

A bar of brown and red light clashed with a blue and silver fork of lightning in mid-air, and mana exploded across the burnt clearing from the sheer force of the magic in our spells.

As our powers clashed, something inside my spirit shifted. Something that wasn’t a part of me, but had been added. It took me a second to recognize it, as I was rather busy fighting for my life against the assassin’s final gasps of power.

The complex bloom of information that Aerde had placed within my mind was shifting, outlining a new path to rid Kene of the hag.

I was going to win. I didn’t need Aerde’s analytic power to see that the assassin’s lightning bolt was being pushed back, inch by inch.

But what Aerde laid out was simple. The assassin’s sacrifice legacy was potent, and opened a spiritual channel between her and what she killed – or what killed her.

If I aimed my spell ever so slightly to the right, I could punch a hole in her lungs, and she would begin dying. From there, I’d only need one of Kene’s orbs, or Kene themself, to approach. By combining Dusk and Dawn’s dominions with spellcraft inlaid into the bloom of knowledge that Aerde had given, the hag could touch on that connection. The hag could kill the assassin, devour her soul, and use her spellcraft to stabilize the body, like she had with Kene after the destruction of the Idyll-Flume.

Two of my biggest problems would be solved, as the assassin would no longer be around to harass us, and Kene would no longer be living life on a timer. Then, when we delved a sepulcher, they could repair the gap where the hag had been, repairing and harvesting that differential to give themselves a powerful legacy.

It was the clear, logical thing to do.

All I would need to do was sentence the assassin to death.