A crescent of black tore out from the notes of magic that Noah had laid, streaking out to meet the immense torrent of flame bearing down on it. The wall of fire curled like a wave as it made to crash down on top of Noah, screaming like a scorned god.
Sunder’s arc touched the flames.
The room fell quiet. Barb’s magic was swallowed, sound and flame alike, up by a devouring silence and an endless black. Firelight blinked out. All that remained was Sunder and its advance toward Barb.
Her eyes widened and she flung herself to the side, three glistening Shields erupting around her body preemptively. Sunder didn’t even register their existence. They were beneath it, so pathetic that they weren’t even worth destroying.
Its black blade continued on, disappearing into the wall without a sound. Barb hit the ground with a pained grunt and rolled to her feet. Fear gripped her face for the first time as she looked back at where Sunder’s power had gone. Her shields still shimmered around her, waiting in silent anticipation.
“What was–”
Barb’s shields shattered. Three rings fell from her fingers, their power completely spent, and clinked against the ground. Even as she looked down in shock, a wet squelch split the silence. Her arm hit the ground before her, severed right above the elbow, the blood only just starting to come as it realized that it had been cut.
The pipes behind Barb screeched. Purple smoke hissed out in a deluge, curling around her body as she clutched at the stump of her arm and took a stumbling, terrified step back. Blood poured out of the brutal wound as her vessels finally remembered that they were meant to be bleeding.
Barb grit her teeth and fire erupted from her remaining hand. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air as she cauterized the wound. Before Noah could try to draw on his powers again, Barb thrust a palm toward him.
A spark caught in the air, then detonated. Brayden rolled over and sank into the ground with a shimmer of magic, then reformed before Noah, slamming his sword into the ground. Purple energy erupted from his blade and swirled up into a shimmering wall an instant before the room disappeared in a flash.
Fire roared past Noah and pipes shattered all around them under the force of Barb’s magic. His domain shuddered and desperately tried to hold strong. Even with Brayden by his side, the fire licked hungrily past them. The only patch of the room that wasn’t completely devoured in its hungry grasp was a small cone behind them.
Brayden’s purple magic cracked. His grip tightened around the hilt of his blade and he snarled in defiance. Noah tried to call the moisture in the room to create water, but there was almost nothing left to work with. Barb had evaporated almost all of it. He quickly gave up and turned his attention to the flame, trying to push it back with Natural Disaster.
It was like trying to fight a brick wall. There was so much magic coiling within the fire that it was completely untouchable. All Noah and Brayden could do was stand there and bear the brunt of the attack, hoping it would end.
After what felt like minutes but was truly only a few seconds at best, the fire sputtered out. Brayden’s grip on his sword slacked and he pitched forward. He caught himself just before he could fall face first, bracing a trembling arm against the ground.
There was no sign of Barb. She’d vanished in the flames – but she hadn’t gone alone. The glass cylinder had melted to slag. Any imbuements that had once been on it had been reduced to nothing but molten trash. And, of the artifact that had been hidden within it, there was no sign.
There was something far more important missing than any artifact.
“Tim!” Noah yelled. “Where are you?”
“Over here. I’m fine, Professor.”
The relief struck Noah with such intensity that he nearly dropped on the spot. He turned around as Tim rose from behind a cluster of pipes, his hair badly singed but otherwise unharmed. Tim brushed soot of his arms and walked over to them on shaky legs.
“Thank God,” Noah said, grabbing the older man by his shoulders. “I thought you’d gotten fried.”
“I almost did,” Tim said. “That healer had me by the neck. I was waiting for a good time to fight back, but when you knocked the life out of him, I figured it would be best to hide and avoid drawing any of your attention.”
“Probably for the best.” Noah turned back to scan the room. None of the purple smoke that had been pouring out of the pipes remained. It had been completely burned away by Barb’s magic – along with just about everything else.
The floor, and ceiling where Barb had been standing strongly resembled the Scorched Acres. Pipe and bronze had blackened and turned partially to ash. The damage lessened the farther it got from where she’d been, but the room was still thoroughly torched. A grimace passed over Noah’s lips as he spotted Richard. Or, more accurately, as he spotted what remained of Richard.
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It looked like he’d tried to run while Noah and Brayden were distracted with Barb, but he’d only made it a few steps away from them and toward Barb before her spell had gone off. His lower half was mostly in one piece, but the entire top of his body was nothing but a pile of soot on the ground.
“You okay, Brayden?” Noah asked. He kept Natural Disaster at his beck and call as he spoke. There wasn’t much area left to hide in the room, but he wasn’t going to take any chances in case she was biding her time somewhere.
“Alive,” Brayden said with a grunt. He grabbed his sword and pulled himself up with a groan. “She’s gone.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I felt spatial magic a moment before she disappeared. Wizen pulled her back. We figured out what they were after too late. I only just caught on a short while ago and raced over here, thinking I could grab the key and move it elsewhere before Wizen’s people arrived. Evidently, I wasn’t fast enough.”
“That was a Rank 5,” Noah reminded Brayden. He couldn’t lie – he didn’t really give much of a shit about what Wizen wanted. If it wasn’t Moxie and it wasn’t him or anyone he cared about, Arbitage could eat dirt. Their secrets weren’t worth dying for. “You did everything you could. But… what happened here? Was Arbitage seriously keeping some super-weapon just… sitting around in the transport cannon?”
“It wasn’t a super weapon,” Tim said. “And it wasn’t just sitting around. That’s how the transport cannon operated. Magic doesn’t come from nowhere, and Space Runes are incredibly difficult to get to high ranks. For an operation this powerful, normal imbuement would have been almost impossible.”
“So you drew magic from a spatial artifact to power the whole thing?”
Tim nodded. “Yes. It wasn’t any sort of weapon, though. Not as far as I’m aware. The Torrins donated it some time ago because they couldn’t figure out how to use it, and Arbitage set it up as a transport service. That’s all I know. That woman – Barb – she had an Arbitage researcher badge, so I paused operations on the cannon to show it to her. You saw most of the rest.”
“She had an inside agent,” Brayden said. He nodded to the remains of Richard’s body, then grimaced and swayed. He braced himself against his sword again. “This idiot. Probably got paid off. It’s not your fault, old man. Father is going to be furious – or elated. I can never tell. He might actually be more of the latter. The Torrins, on the other hand, will definitely be furious.”
“I’ll be honest with you. If Blancwood was on fire, I wouldn’t piss on it to help,” Noah said. He glanced around the room again, then slowly let Natural Disaster slip from his grip. It didn’t look like Barb was still around. “Most of the Torrins can rot. They get whatever comes to them.”
“I don’t care about them either, but Father gave me orders to interfere with Wizen. He won’t be happy about this.”
“I’ll deal with Father,” Noah said with a wave. “Have you really been running around this entire time trying to find what Wizen was after? You should have worked with Moxie. She was already doing the same thing. If you’d told her, you probably would have found it earlier.”
Brayden coughed into a fist and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yes. That probably would have been advisable, but I didn’t consider that she’d actually be doing anything. I’ll apologize to her later.”
“You’re not too badly injured, are you?” Noah asked as a flicker of concern passed through him.
“I’m fine.” Brayden let out a dry laugh. “What about the old man?”
“Alive,” Tim said through a sigh. He wiped some of the soot from his face. “And probably in better shape than you. We should go find help immediately. Someone needs to report what happened to Arbitage.”
“I agree,” Brayden said. “Do you think you can go do that? I need to have a talk with Vermil.”
Tim glanced at Noah, who gave him a small nod in response.
“I’ll be back with aid soon,” Tim promised. He hurried over to the ladder. It had been mostly warped and destroyed, but some of the metal had managed to hold its structure. He jumped and grabbed onto the lowest rung that hadn’t been completely destroyed before pulling himself up and into the tunnel.
“So,” Brayden said wearily. “You just cast a Formation with music.”
“So I did,” Noah said.
“You’re Rank 4 now, and with a pretty strong domain. Midway through it, if I had to guess.”
Noah nodded.
“I’ve never seen the Rune you were using as its head. That might have been the most oppressive Rank 4 Rune I’ve ever seen. Even with a Formation, cutting straight through the domain of a Rank 5 and nearly killing her in a single blow is almost unheard of. I take it there’s a reason I’ve never heard of the magic you were using?”
Noah nodded once more. “Yes. I’d prefer to keep any information on it completely wrapped up.”
“Would I be remiss in guessing this is somehow connected to the way you can’t seem to stay dead?”
Noah gave Brayden a noncommittal shrug. He trusted the large man, but the truth of Sunder and how it worked was something he had no plans to give any more information on than he absolutely had to.
“Fair enough,” Brayden said. “I wouldn’t tell anyone if I were you. I’ll avoid mentioning it to the Enforcers and anyone else that comes to look. I don’t think Tim understood the magnitude of what he saw, but we can play this off as you being a Formation master. I’ll avoid mentioning just how powerful that final attack was. Acceptable?”
“More than.” Noah gave Brayden an appreciative nod. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Brayden corrected. “Saved my ass. I would have been dead if you didn’t show up.”
“Any time. But… before anyone else gets here, do you have any idea what that artifact actually was?”
Lines of concern creased Brayden’s face and he drew in a deep breath, letting out in a sigh. “Yes. I do.”
“And? Is it something we have to be worried about?”
“I don’t know,” Brayden admitted through a grimace. “It was a key that opens a very long-distance portal.”
“To where?”
“The Damned Plains.”