I heard the sudden inhale of surprise from the others as they processed my declaration.
“Hah!” She laughed at me with vicious scorn. “Why would I ever-”
The Challenge has been accepted.
Beneath our feet the ground began to shake, the earth turning violent as if we had angered it.
“What’s going on?” Tez turned toward me as if I had the answer.
“I’m not sure!” I lowered myself, arms outstretched to aid my balance as the trembling grew even more tumultuous.
“This is your doing!” Iris screamed from across the throne room before flicking her wrist toward us. As she did, what looked like a veritable thunderstorm of grey particles shot toward us, her steel haze ready to swallow us whole. I raised my sword in response, wracking my brain for how I could possibly defend both myself and the rest of the group from such a large scale attack, but before it could even reach us, it was as if it had crashed into an invisible wall.
The Challenge has been accepted. Combat shall only be permitted on arena grounds.
Oh. Right, now I see.
It had taken a second for the information to process, but the voice wasn't just some grand crescendo of sound. Modulated, distorted, and booming it had been hard to tell at first, but there was no doubt left in my mind anymore. With each booming decree, it only reinforced what I suspected, that it was none other than Wisdom who was speaking through the dungeon.
The Will of the Dungeon demands a Trial of Blood before the Hallowed Throne.
Yeah, in hindsight, this is right up its alley.
I could imagine the ghostly vestige smirking to itself from somewhere within the dungeon, a theatrical play with which to amuse itself.
“I think we’re going up,” Elsmere spoke up, catching our attention as she shouted over the sound of the shaking earth.
“How can you tell?” Tez questioned Elsmere, arms outstretched as she attempted to hold her balance much as I was.
“My earth affinity is strong enough that I can tell when the ground around us is shifting so dramatically!”
I had heard of sensitive earth affinity mages being capable of detecting earthquakes minutes in advance, but I hadn’t known it to be possible from within a dungeon.
“Getting….out?” The voice surprised me, so taken in by the shaking and booming voice of the dungeon, I had all but forgotten about the third adventurer with us.
“Amir!” Tez stumbled over to his side, the man trembling on the ground as he cradled the stump of his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Do…I…look….okay?” The man forced out a laugh, a harsh-sounding laugh. “Blood…loss.”
“I can cauterize it, but it’s going to hurt like hell, okay?” Tez reached her hands out, but he shook his head.
“Won’t….help….lost….too…much.”
He was right. One didn't have to be a seasoned adventurer to figure that much out, a single glance of the spreading pond of blood beneath him was enough.
Tez bit her lip, looking at Elsmere first, who merely shook her head, her earth-based abilities would be of little use
“Rook?” Tez asked, finally turning to me, her eyes pleading. “There must be something you can do, right? You saved Veronika once.”
“She hadn’t lost this much blood,” It had been years ago, one of, if not the first time I'd managed the usage of external magic, forced to cauterize her wound, something which had forever maimed her.
And even then, it hadn't been close to this bad.
Tez frowned, her eyes desperately darting around, looking for something, anything, before they widened, turning back to me.
“Do you remember the story I once told you about the Heartstoppers?”
“Heartstoppers?” I stared at her, confused at what she could possibly be getting at, until a second later it came to me.
“No.” I shook my head. “That’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible?” Elsmere was looking between us, confused.
“There was a story I once heard about a magical beast called a Heartstopper. It could manipulate and absorb blood, preying on people by entering their bloodstream and consuming them from the inside out." Tez gripped Amir's hand, his face deathly pale. "There was a legend that it was possible to dominate the consciousness of a Heartstopper after they had invaded a host and take that power for yourself.”
“Wait, are you saying he has blood magic too?” Elsmere looked at me with shock, but I shook my head instantly.
“No, but that’s not what she is getting at.” I pointed at the bleeding man, at the blood all around him. “I’m the only one here with a water affinity. She wants me to try to give him a blood transfusion using his own blood.”
“Is that even possible?” Elsmere scratched at her nose, doing her best to keep from getting her hopes up.
“It’s not,” I answered. “It would require me to not just manipulate his blood and filter it, but I would have to direct it from within his body.”
“And you can’t use your magic inside another person’s body,” Elsmere answered, a fact that any competent mage would know.
“No, you-” Before I could finish the thought, I froze mid-sentence as a memory flashed through my mind. “…can’t.”
It wasn’t technically true.
Elsmere, Tez, myself, regular people, we couldn’t do such a thing, but that didn't change that I had seen it done once before. From none other than the Sage Above All, who had once killed a man by burning him from the inside out.
But that’s different.
She was a sage, after all.
“You are all but at the point where you would be officially recognized as a potential apprentice, qualifying you as a Sage whether you accept it or not.”
“Damnit,” I growled, seating myself next to the dying man as I recalled the words of the very same sage, vestige or not, who had once been rival to the Sage Above All herself.
“You’ll do it?” Tez seemed to glow, eyes sparkling as she watched me.
“I’ll try, but no promises.” I pressed one palm into his pool of blood while my other hand grabbed his bleeding stump. “Once I return his blood, that’s if I can; you'll need to be the one to cauterize it.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Elsmere asked, not wanting to be the odd man out.
I jerked my head toward where Iris was still seated, watching us with deranged eyes. “Just make sure if she tries anything to at least give us a heads up.”
Without waiting for her response, I closed my eyes.
“Aulous.”
My intent, my will, surged through my meager reserves of mana, but luckily for me, all I was attempting was moving a small pool of liquid, relatively speaking, from one place to another.
Which might be oversimplifying it, but whatever, now's not the time for self-sabotaging thoughts.
The mana spread out from my hand into the pool of blood, but when the spark of energy hit Amir’s liquid lifeforce, it slowed as if the blood were a thick quagmire.
Damnit. Should have expected that.
Blood, while related to water, wasn't water, it was something more extraordinary, profound. If I wanted to control it, I needed something more than simple water magic.
Going to need to give it an extra kick if that's the case.
“Kinzlous,” I whispered with such harshness it sounded as if I were trying to make the blood move by the sternness of my voice alone.
The sparks of mana pulsating from me into the blood grew more intense as I took my water affinity and forced it to fuse into a higher state. The drain on my mana reserves was instant, but I ignored it, it was the only chance to save the man's life.
The state of my mana growing more intense, the blood, at last, responded, drawing in on itself before the seeping flow reversed course, back into his veins as if sucked in through a straw.
Damn it, if this isn't difficult.
The moment the blood entered his veins, it was as if my ability to sense my mana clouded, diluted by the internal protection of his body. If I wanted to keep him alive, I had to hold my grasp on the blood, or more specifically, the mana within it, to ensure that his blood flowed correctly through his body, at least until Tez cauterized his wound.
“Zero, Tez?”
“What is it?” I gasped; speaking and manipulating his blood felt like I was trying to juggle and play a piano simultaneously.
“We’re slowing down. I think we’re nearing the surface.”
Damnit.
I still had to face Iris; if we reached the surface and I depleted my mana reserves, I would be good as dead.
“Tez, we’re just going to have to plug him up and hope for the best.” I closed my eyes tighter, concentrating.
“What? But we’re almost there.”
“Can’t help it. Don’t have the mana for it.”
“Fine. Withdraw your mana on the count of three, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
Without my mana guiding his blood flow, the wound would begin freely bleeding once more. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place if I chose not to withdraw my mana from his body, my mana, foreign to his body, could potentially run amuck and devastate him from the inside.
“One.”
I began to draw my dispersed mana back, unable to fully gather it all but then that was expected.
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“Two.”
Blood began to drip from his arm once more, the stream increasing in intensity as more of my mana was withdrawn.
“Three!”
Like yanking a splinter out, I drew out the remainder of my mana in one single thrust. At the same time, Tez pressed her hand, glowing crimson with heat, against his bloodied stump, the smell and sound of sizzling human flesh permeating around us before the wound could begin spurting blood with any more intensity.
My part finished, I leaned back, staring up at the ceiling of the throne room far above us, surprised with how exhausted I felt as I felt my eyes flutter for a moment.
“I’ll be damned.” Elsmere whistled.
I peeked open a closed eye, staring at the injured man. While we hadn't managed to transfuse all of his blood to his body, the pool of blood was still around half its former size, his complexation at the very least looked considerably less ghoulish.
“You think he’ll live?” Tez was observing me, her hand no longer glowing.
“How would I know?” I answered, shaking my head.
“Maybe you two should get into medicine.” Elsmere gave us a weak smile. “I’ve never seen something like that.
“Well, Rook was the one who really did anything.” Tez returned the weak smile with one of her own.
“I don’t mean to get down on everyone’s fuzzy warm feelings.” I interrupted. “But for now, I think there are bigger concerns.”
As if on command, the rumbling of the earth stopped.
The Challenge shall be born witness.
The throne room shook one final time, but rather than from any sort of seismic origins, it was the room itself that shook as the walls began to bend and split, reshaping into grand-looking columns as light streamed in through them.
Son of a bitch, that’s bright on the eyes.
For the first time in months, we were met with natural, genuine sunlight as the throne room continued to twist and turn in on itself, reshaping into what I could only call a coliseum of sorts. Rubbing the light from my eyes, I noticed we were now on a sandy hill, and as I looked off to my right, I choked back a gasp.
There was an encampment roughly three times larger than when I’d last seen it. The camp was a hive of activity as what must have been nearly two or three hundred adventures raced toward where our colosseum had suddenly appeared, bursting forth from the ground like a flower eager for the sun.
I can only imagine what’s going through their heads right now.
As the adventurers neared, I saw many of them slow to a hesitant halt, trying to process the sight before them.
Can't say I blame them.
I saw as many within the massive gathering of adventures pointed at the four of us, who were very much still alive.
Well, not all of us. Theron and Intilda’s corpses were now laying face first on the dusty floor of the arena, the remains of the statues and their weapons has vanished into thin air.
Looking away from the corpses, I saw even more confused expressions appear as they noticed Iris seated on the throne, her eyes darting around like a trapped animal.
A minute passed like that, until at last, a feminine-looking figure pushed her way out from the crowd, staring at us in shock, then confusion.
“You five. Can you confirm your identities?”
Right, a coliseum appearing from the ground with some adventurers who were assumed dead probably comes across as a trap.
“Adventurer Tez Scarlet, present. We need medical assistance for adventurer Amir.”
“Before that.” The woman, the guild representative I had met when I’d first arrived at the base camp months ago. “What is going on here?” She waved toward Iris, still seated on the throne.
“I have been challenged to a duel for the rights of the dungeon, to the death,” Iris spoke, her voice carrying the strength of well-accustomed authority.
“It is because you have lost yourself!” I rebuked, my voice sounding like it fell short in comparison.
“Now, adventures, I understand things must have-” The guild representative was cut off as a voice boomed out from around us, the ground vibrating with each word.
The Challenge before the Throne has its witness. Prostrate yourself before the Glory of the Trial of Blood.
I felt a wave of oppressive power wash through the gathered adventurers, who, as one, dropped to their knees, leaving only the guild representative standing. At the same time, Elsmere with Tez still cradling Amir in her arms, were rebuffed from the vicinity, pushed away by an invisible wall of power.
Wait, this is all escalating too quickly.
The Hallowed Throne which Iris sat upon suddenly sank away into the earth beneath her, leaving Iris standing across the small, freshly formed arena, facing me with a mixture of anger and instability on her face.
To the Victor goes the Glory. Prove your worth.
Raising my rapier before me, one arm behind my back, I gave a single curt bow.
Here goes nothing.
Where the invisible barrier had separated us, I saw the air shimmer before cascading down like a shattered window, the reflective splinters disappearing as they fell.
Iris was the first to act, the air filling with her familiar grey metal mana particles, rotating overhead like forming storm clouds.
From those storm clouds of metal it began to rain, not droplets of water, but daggers, hundreds, thousands falling upon me.
Wisdom sure wasn't exaggerating when he said she overcame her limits.
When we had dueled before, she had only been able to form daggers by the handful from her steel haze, but now she was nonchalantly bombarding me with thousands of them from the get-go.
But, she’s not the only one who has improved since then.
What she had gained in raw volume she had traded for in finesse, the daggers, unlike before, weren’t chasing me like a hive of angered hornets; the mental capacity required to micromanage so many at once would have required to focus with a magnitude of orders greater than what she, or any human for that matter, could feasibly achieve.
Which is to say, even as the daggers fell, not one ever neared me, my rapier striking them down like it had a mind of its own.
“It’s not going to be that easy!” I shouted, racing forward and closing the distance between us. Her plot had been obvious, trying to force me to call upon null to protect myself against her rain of daggers, and in doing so expending it before the fight had progressed in earnest.
Before I could reach her, a wall of steel instantly formed before me, the sudden force of the displaced air throwing me back as I slid across the ground.
“You should have stayed dead, Zero!” She snarled at me, thrusting a hand forward as the cloud of steel reformed into a needle storm which shot toward me blindingly fast.
I pulled my rapier close to my chest, sliding a finger over the edge as I whispered under my breath.
“Renlous.”
My blade was covered by mercury, but rather than elongate, the liquid edge shrank, turning short and stout as it hardened into a smaller dagger.
Null would be my reserve card, something to hold onto for as long as I could, something she wanted me to expend, as evident from her choice of attack.
“Flow.” I activated the word magic of my first ring, and the steel needles zipping through the air like streaks of gray light suddenly slowed down, my mercury dagger capable of intercepting them.
And when it did, the mana forming the needles was pulled free, the mercury trapping it within like a bog trapping a small animal. I smiled with vicious satisfaction as I saw her scowl, realizing what I was doing.
Iris’s magic was something of an enigma, an oddity. Most used magic by actively fueling a spell with mana from their core, pure mana reshaped on demand to approximate the affinity of a spell. It was that direct manipulation of pure mana from a person's mana core that made it so that another mage of the same affinity could redirect such magic without a considerable difference in magical strength.
Iris, and her abilities, did not operate by those rules. Rather than using mana to directly fuel magic, it was the mana itself that was important, its granule quality allowing for her Kin magic to directly manipulate it without having to conduct it through a spell first. Meaning, that while it looked like an impressive display of magic, it wasn’t genuine magic in the simplest terms, but rather a physical redirection of mana. Without being contained within an active spell, the mana was effectively uncontrolled, something that most people, even if they understood the theory, wouldn’t be capable of making capitalizing upon.
I, of course, wasn’t most people.
Drawing the appropriated mana into my fusion ring, I reassembled it, assimilating it into the ring and regaining some of what I had lost in the process of healing Amir. Still scowling at me, Iris drew the cloud of steel haze in on itself, the steel needles reforming into more robust and tightly contained shapes.
Thought as much.
I released the mercury magic on my sword, which returned to its original shape. The entire intent of the display had been to dissuade her from attempting the broader scale attacks or risk having the mana siphoned away before it had the chance to ever hit me, regardless of if I used null or not.
So then Iris, what are you going to do now?
My answer came when the metal cloud began to reform into even larger shapes, massive, oversized cannonballs launching toward me and exploding on impact with the hard-packed earth as I zipped about, dodging the oncoming barrage.
Still channeling flow, I flickered about the arena like an afterimage. Yet, for every time I attempted to close the distance between us, I was rebuffed by a steel wall appearing before me, the woman somehow capable of keeping up with my movements even now.
Was sitting on the throne for only a few minutes enough to do this?
The giant cannonballs continued to rain down around me, the ground looking like a warzone as it was torn apart by the impact of the metal spheres.
This isn't working.
I grimaced as the concussive force of a nearby impact rattled through my body. I had an order of magnitude more mana than before I formed my fusion ring, but an order of magnitude more than what I had before was still less than even most silver adventurers had access to. I wouldn’t be able to sustain a fight like this forever, even with the small amounts of mana I’d captured from Iris.
I could always try null, but once the effects were over, if I hadn’t already won the fight, Iris would be free to throw the full scale of her might at me without fear of my mana erasing field. Flow was already nearing its end, it had maybe another ten or twenty seconds at the max.
“Which leaves me with… that,” I muttered under my breath. Try as I might, during my time under the Vestige of Wisdom, I hadn’t been capable of summoning it, even after I’d fully formed my third ring.
“Well, no better time than the present.” I sighed, and as I sheathed my rapier, I could almost feel the confusion from the nearby adventurers who had been forced to their knees as they watched me put away my weapon.
I held out one hand and saw as Iris recognized the move for what it was, seeing it once before.
“Rainsplitter!” I shouted, calling upon the word magic of my fusion ring.
Perhaps in a storybook, the hero would have finally succeeded in calling upon their secret power, their ace in the hole needed to overcome adversity.
Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky. In a rather anticlimatic showing; my hand remained empty of the blade of light I had summoned once before.
“Fair enough,” I grunted. “New plan, throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.”
Seeing nothing appear in my hand, Iris was emboldened, metal spears forming and firing toward me like a repeating ballista. I sprinted forward, holding my breath as I leaped and dodged and slid under the metal bolts, all the while the giant cannonballs continued crashing all around me.
Hand snapping out, I caught one of the spears by the haft before twirling around and tossing it back, the spear exploding in a shower of metal flakes as Iris’s automatic defense kicked in only an arm’s length from her face as she flinched back in surprise.
So, her magic is slow to react against itself.
I saw a moment of panic spread across her face having nearly been hit, as a moment later my limbs were weighed down, metal chains having appeared from nowhere and binding me in place.
There is it. We’re in the endgame now.
“Null,” I called out, freeing my limbs within moments of the heavy chains shackling me. A spear exploded into a shower of metal sand against me, only a hairsbreadth from my torso. Since the last time I'd been forced to use null, I'd tightened the zone so that I could defend against the more powerful mana Iris was tossing around.
“Devil!” She hissed, more and more metal spears slamming into me but failing to ever pass through my null field intact.
The irony wasn’t lost upon me as I ran forward, passing through the fog of steel haze, denser the closer I got to her. It was almost beat for beat like our first duel, held back by metal chains, freed only by calling on null, passing through her metal cloud.
I thrust my rapier forward, attempting to pierce through her gut, but before it could reach her, it was blocked, the metal cloud around her hardening in instant response.
Iris’s panic turned to relief before morphing entirely into deranged glee.
“You lose Zero.” She all but spat into my face.
“I’m sorry, Iris.” I shook my head in apologetic regret. “It wasn’t your fault. They used you.”
“What are you talking about?” I saw her eyes clear, her broken mind coming together for a brief reprieve.
“He always knew more than was let on. We were just pawns on a chess board.”
Taken off guard by my words, her shattered mind struggling to piece the words together, she failed to react as I silently whispered, spoken so gently it could have been mistaken for a sympathetic prayer for the woman.
“Rainsplitter.”
Her face contorted in pain as she slowly looked down in bewilderment.
Stabbing through her was a blade, entering from beneath her ribs before exiting through her upper back.
And piercing straight through her heart on the way out.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered one last time as the woman, once a proud adventure, stumbled off my blade. She pressed a hand to her stab wound before raising the bloodied hand to her face as if just figuring out what she was looking at.
“Father?”
And then, she simply fell, toppling over as her body failed to pump her all-important lifeblood through her body.
Final words are a strange thing. Many hope to have some dramatic, eloquent speech as they meet their ends, while others imagine spouting off one last witty remark. The truth I had come to learn, and would only further reinforce over the years, is that dying words are often simple, uncomplicated things. Most common of all, from the lowest of beggars to the proudest of warriors, was a simple utterance. Nothing more than a plea, searching for solace in one’s parents as the world grew cold and the question of what, if anything, lay beyond.
Iris was dead.
Her end hadn’t come through some dramatically showy glowing blade that could split the heavens but a simple-looking sword. It was as plain as a simple steel sword, yet still, I marveled at it as if it were the finest sword in the world, looking anywhere but the unmoving body on the ground before me. As the last of my mana ran out, the sword, Rainsplitter, disappeared in a shower of golden sparks which floated away from me, leaving me standing before the fallen form of Iris, unable to avert my gaze any longer from the consequences of my actions.
The Challenge has been witnessed. To the Glory goes the Victor, The Sage Who Flows.
Damnit. I sucked in a breath over the fact that Wisdom had decided to go and use my sage name.
Iris dead and my victory declared, in a storybook, the crowd would erupt in cheers, the hero finally coming out the other side victorious.
Again, I must stress that this was no storybook.
The adventurers did not cheer for me, nor did they rush out to celebrate my victory. In fact, to the gathered adventurers, I wasn't even a hero. Without any way of knowing everything that had happened, the entirety of the unfolding events had likely painted a rather… grim picture of myself. One moment they had been going to confront an arena that had magically burst out from the earth, the next, they had born witness to a duel to the death between the leader of the prior expedition sent to delve through the unknown dungeon and the silver ranked adventurer who had joined in on it.
If anything, I mentally grumbled to myself. I would be the villain if this were a story.
Lost in thought, it wasn’t until I heard a woman, her voice with a commanding authority, that I snapped to.
“Adventurer Zero.” It was the guild representative, flanked by quite a large amount of adventurers.
“Yes?” I questioned, still dazed.
“By the guild’s authority, you are under arrest for the murder of high-gold rank one expedition leader Iris Steel Haze. Do not resist, or you will be taken by force.”
I couldn’t help it.
I laughed, an ugly-sounding snort of exhaustion escaping from me as the guild representative watched me with scorn that reminded me of Iris.
“Do you have something to say, Zero?”
“Yeah, just one thing.” I looked about, exhausted of my mana as I was; there was no escaping from this many adventurers, even had I wanted to.
“Can I get a lawyer?”