Meeting Lloyd always meant one thing… food. This time their meeting was in a coffee shop, which was far more informal than usual. And much quicker as well.
“So what was so urgent?” Lloyd asked once they had all caught up.
“It’s not urgent,” Yaric replied. “We just have a question about using lightning spells.”
“Yes?” Lloyd asked, prompting him to go further.
“Well, they seem like they are very useful in combat. I don’t even know how you could block the spell we’ve learned so far, but it's almost impossible to use.”
“They are difficult to block, you have to almost entirely rely on precast defense spells with good activation triggers, and you are a long way from learning anything about those. I don’t understand why you can’t use them to attack though.”
“We can, it's just… they take so long to cast.”
Lloyd began to chuckle. Taking a bite of a biscuit, Lloyd leaned back and looked at each of the students in turn, chewing slowly. “How long did it take each of you to cast?” he eventually asked.
“If I start charging the spell as soon as I’ve created the sinks, it’s about ten seconds.”
“Hehe… kids. If you’re still fighting after ten seconds, you’ve done something wrong. Look, all forms of lightning spells have powerful effects, and they’re a favorite in combat for a reason. But they are also powerful for a reason; you need to channel a lot of arcana into the spells to power them. It doesn’t matter how much you four have accomplished so far, you are still Novices.
"You know that your power rating is mostly a measure of how quickly your ability to channel arcana will improve, and you’ve finally hit that wall. There isn’t anything you can do beyond continuing to practice, you have to wait for your channeling ability to catch up to everything else. The time to cast that spell will slowly come down as you get stronger, and it might even be useful by the time you reach apprentice, but you simply can’t channel enough arcana right now to use more powerful spells.”
Lloyd turned to look at Yaric specifically. “Even if you were capable of casting one of those insanely complex teleportation spells, you would stand here channeling arcana for a week before you had enough arcana to power the spell. It’s one of the reasons that more powerful arcanists are… well, more powerful. If the gap is large enough, the more powerful arcanist will be able to use spells that the less powerful one can’t.”
“So we should put that spell aside for now?” Lauren asked dejectedly.
“No, keep practicing. You can use it to track the growth in your ability to channel arcana. And those spells are generally harder to cast anyway, so they are good options for training. The more you can cut down the casting time, the better.”
“Then we should keep doing what we’re doing,” Li Na mumbled.
“I didn’t say that,” Lloyd replied. “You four should put a lot more focus on augmenting yourselves, or you’ll just get knocked around again. Physically.”
“We’re already working on that,” Yaric said. “It’s not great, but we’ll be ready long before the next competition. Then we’ll show those guys.”
“No you won’t,” Lloyd laughed. “Do you think the spell you’re learning is the augmentation spell? Students in their tenth year know around half a dozen different augmentation spells, and most have far more range than the one you’ll be learning right now. How do you think arcanists can keep up with fights at such speeds?”
“But we’ll be able to move at those speeds as well?”
“No, you won’t. First of all, the spell you’re learning won’t boost you that much. But most importantly, it only boosts you physically. More advanced augmentation spells can do a range of things, but the most important thing for combat is your ability to think and perceive things fast enough for you to keep up. That component you learned a few years ago can do that as well, if you learn how, but very few do. Wait until you see how those impossible-to-follow strikes slow down to more regular speeds, and you’ll see what I mean.”
“That sounds useful everywhere,” Lauren said.
Lloyd smirked. “It can be. If you get good enough at that spell you could potentially practice casting other spells while speeding up your own mind, though you should keep in mind that your channeling speed won’t be affected.”
Lauren glanced excitedly at Yaric.
“Is there any way we could get that spell after we -.”
Yaric was cut off when a messenger arrived, running at full speed. His speed was phenomenal, and when he stopped at their table Yaric was shocked to see that he was a full Mage, at the very least.
“Urgent summons from Council Head Ivers for High Wizard Chen,” the messenger declared, handing over a thin slip of paper.
Lloyd read the whole thing with a glance, frowning as he did. Standing up, he glanced at the students with a smirk. “Got to cut this short. Urgent summons,” he added conspiratorially, waving the slip of paper as he did. He immediately set out toward the Council Chambers with a quick wave. The messenger had been standing oddly to one side ever since he’d delivered the message, instead of leaving as they usually did, but he now ran off again, running ahead of Lloyd and toward the same destination.
“That was odd,” Li Na said. She leaned over the table and pulled Lloyd’s plate of cookies over. “He wouldn’t want these to go to waste.”
----- ------- -------- ------ ------- -------- ------ ------- --------- -------- -------- -------- -------- -------
It had been over a century since Lloyd had received a summons like that, but he still didn’t run. He’d received a summons, not a direct message via magic. There was no imminent threat about to befall the Academy.
Still, he was concerned. There were so many problematic events occurring at once that the issue could be almost anything. Hopefully the arcanists involved in organized crime had been uncovered and he was being sent to apprehend them, which in this case, when one considered the likely sentence, would mean being sent to contain the damage from the fight that would ensue, while also ending the fight as well.
Walking up the front steps, Lloyd saw the first sign of bad news. Guards had been placed right at the entrance and were blocking anyone without authorization. Lloyd prepared himself for an annoying argument, but they let him through without a word.
There was no one inside except for security, which had been doubled. Another troubling sign.
“High Wizard Chen, please go straight through,” a voice called from beside the large doors to the chamber. Lloyd quickened his pace upon hearing how he was granted immediate permission and rushed through the already opening doors.
The entire council was seated around their table, and no one was speaking when Lloyd entered. Glancing around, Lloyd found Eli and made eye contact, but the corpulent clot just stared back impassively. Lloyd’s concern jumped another level.
“High Wizard Chen, thank you for coming so quickly,” Sandy said, opening the meeting. Everyone had been sitting in silence until that moment, indicating just how concerned they all were.
“I’m not going to stand on pleasantries, there’s simply no time. Five weeks ago we received reports of a dozen strange men camping in Esterline Peaks. The news only reached us because the men seemed unarmed despite the danger, and they were conducting no visible trade. There were no traps, hunting equipment, woodcutting tools, or even signs of gathering items. With the serious threats in those mountains, the ranger who spotted them reported possible criminal activity.
“He was lucky he wasn’t detected, or he’d likely be dead. One of our squads was sent to investigate the area, and while they never found this group, they did discover another transporter, recently installed.”
Sandy paused, and Lloyd took the opportunity immediately. “You believe that those men were the ones responsible.”
“We have no evidence to prove that, but I personally believe that it is likely.”
“It will be difficult to find and catch them after all this time, but I’ll give it a try.”
“No, it will be impossible. At least one of them is well-versed in space magic, and they have a few weeks head start. With such infinitesimal chances, we aren’t even going to try. There is a more important avenue of investigation anyway – we cracked the transporter.”
“What? Cracked the transporter?”
“There were tests run to ensure it worked, but nothing had ever been sent through it before. One of our wizards was able to copy the connection tests and use them to take over. Well, 'take over' might be an exaggeration. Someone on the other side can still send things through, but we can also do the same from our side.”
“You want to retaliate.”
“We do. But we also want information. You are to gather five more High Wizards or High Mages and proceed directly to Bronzemere via transporter, you will follow the guide who will meet you there. Once you’ve gone through the transporter, find out who is attacking us. Apprehend anyone you can and bring them back for further interrogation. But make sure you crush anyone who resists.
“This is our first chance to strike back. The King wants our response to be firm enough that they will be too afraid to continue in future. He wants your strike team to inflict enough damage that not only will it destroy their ability to fight, but the memory will remain as a promise of the consequences should they try this again.”
“Authority and resources?” Lloyd asked simply.
“You go on behalf of both the Academy and the King. Your team as well. Volunteers only, we’re not technically at war. You may requisition anything you feel you might need.”
“I need the wizard who unlocked the transporter, so we can get back. The others I’ll organize.”
“He won’t be going with you. We asked, but he felt he was not combat-orientated and would hold everyone back.”
“But then how -.”
“He will wait behind,” Sandy interrupted. “With someone on the other end, all you’ll need to do is power the transporter from your side, and he can bring you back from here. Apparently he’ll even be able to pick up when you begin to power the transporter, so you can come back anytime.”
“Alright,” Lloyd reluctantly agreed. “Is that all?”
“You’re dismissed. And High Wizard Chen? This takes precedence over all matters. Whoever it is on the other side, you hit them hard enough to hurt.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Lloyd turned on his heel and strode back out of the Council Chambers. He was relieved to hear the normal discussions start-up in his wake, but he was only distantly paying attention. Names and options were swirling in his head. Nobody likely to be off campus would even be an option, and everyone had to volunteer.
The twins were an obvious choice, despite their dedication to smithing. Their passion for metal work came from their passion for combat, and they had been locked away for too long. No one spent two hundred years as the core of an infiltration and strike team and simply settled down.
Hiawatha seemed like an obvious choice as well, and Lloyd almost finished casting the spell to send him a message, but at the last second, he remembered that they had no idea where they were going. Due to Hiawatha’s past, there was more than one nation that would consider his arrival within their borders as an immediate declaration of war.
Lloyd cursed as he was forced to skip option after option. Most of those who were truly suited to the task would be closer to the Abyssal Fields or sitting in luxury in the King’s court.
‘Artem is retired, but he’ll certainly come for this,’ Lloyd thought, ticking off a third name and sending the message.
‘Ionna would be dangerous wherever we go, even if she has dedicated herself to healing now. And I know she responded to the call for help after the wyvern attack. There’s no way she would turn this down.’
Lloyd settled on Archie for the fifth, but he was coming up short on names if anyone turned him down.
The quartermaster outside Crafter’s Square started when Lloyd turned the corner. People didn’t often pull equipment directly from the top crafters, especially without prior warning.
“Contact the Council Head,” Lloyd said immediately. “I have several things I need, and I need them right now. This can’t wait.”
The quartermaster nodded into the room behind her and one of her assistants ran out a side door, already sprinting toward the Council Chambers.
“What do you need High Wizard?”
“I need something runed, something small. But it needs to hold arcana, and when the time is right, it needs to convert that arcana into something… destructive. Extremely destructive.”
The quartermaster smiled. “Let me show you a few options while we wait. Now, do you want something that’s explosively destructive? We also have something that can cover an area in flames if you prefer. Or there are fuel-air explosives, concussive bombs, and kinetic force generators that work in a way that looks like a bomb but simply throws things away from the center. We even have items that can instantly drop the temperature in an area by at least one hundred degrees, so long as the area is around room temperature. Or would you prefer something that casts specific spells in all directions? Simple explosives also work.”
“Yes.”
“Yes? For which option?” she asked.
“Yes.”
------ ------ -------- ------ --------- -------- ------- ------ ------ -------- ------ ------- ------ ------ ------
The arrival of the twins threw everything into chaos. They each had their own ideas of what would be needed, and the experience to back up their claims. Worse, their time working with other crafters also meant they knew of several items already, including a few the quartermaster hadn’t shown them.
Archie surprised everyone by showing up next, but he didn’t have much to say on the subject. Instead, he asked questions about the mission, and surprised everyone yet again when he readily agreed. He booked out a proper wizard’s staff and a wicked-looking saber, then ran off to collect everything else he would need.
Ionna arrived just as they were finishing up. She seemed to be completely against the idea until Lloyd filled her in on the reasons behind the recent spate of attacks, including the transporters they had discovered.
A shield and sword crafted by a High Mage was soon booked out by her as well.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Lloyd was feeling good when he messaged Artem to meet him at his house instead. The most difficult team members were already on board, and Artem was likely to go just for the trip. If necessary, Lloyd had already booked out another item just for Artem, from a very different crafting section. The distillers.
People arrived one by one at Lloyd’s house, except for the twins. Artem finally arrived, already carrying his bag and a ridiculous collection of weapons. He looked slightly drunk.
“Hunting! We haven’t done that in a while!” Artem was slurring slightly as well.
“It’s not hunting, it’s infiltrating,” Lloyd said, carefully pushing the cask he’d booked out with his foot. With it shifted further behind the table and even further out of sight, Lloyd stood to shake his hand. Artem cast a spell to sober up, and the change was obvious.
“What’s the job?”
Lloyd explained everything once again, and then with his own bag ready, they all departed, heading for the central square. Lekton was a major city and as such it had a busy transporter hub, but the Academy had its own as well. It was almost always empty, but they built the things for training, so it didn’t cost much to keep them available. Besides, what would it say about the Academy if staff had to leave and go to civilian-controlled transporters whenever they needed one?
A Mage training to specialize in space magic was monitoring the transporter with a bored expression, but the arrival of two teams broke him out of his stupor.
Lloyd arrived with his team just seconds after the second team he had messaged.
Rebekka and eight other Apprentices were carrying their own bags. Four Wizards stood among them, ready to travel. Lloyd hoped that the team of fifteen would bolster the team watching over the transporter. While it wasn’t very likely, it was still possible that the people responsible for building the transporter could come back, and they were likely to be powerful if they were so comfortable operating deep inside a nation they were launching terror attacks against.
The jump to Bronzemere was instant, with the familiar rise and drop sensations overlaying themselves. Every transporter was built within an identical building, built to exactly mirror each other down to the positions of the cardinal directions. That way the shift was far less disorientating. Which made the sudden appearance of a Mage leaning against the wall more startling than it should have been, as if he had been the one to suddenly teleport into their hub.
“High Wizard Chen?” the Mage asked, looking through the unexpectedly large crowd.
“Here,” Lloyd said, pushing his way through.
“If you and your team could follow me, we will leave right away. I have transport waiting.”
They experienced their first hiccup outside the hub. Due to the nature of the building, several nearby businesses rented horses, mules, and carts. Mage Crocker had horses waiting, but only six. He looked shocked when he realized that everyone in the group that had arrived would be going with them, though he was happy to find out that most would be staying behind to protect the camp and those waiting for everyone to return. Which included him.
Everyone split up into small groups and organized three or four mounts from each business. It greatly sped up the time required to get the horses ready, leaving them only an hour late when they finally got underway.
Bronzemere was not as large as Lekton, but it was still a large city. They were restricted while riding through the pedestrians, even if they had their own lane. Breaking out of the city, Mage Crocker sped up significantly, pushing the horses to the limit of what they could maintain.
They spent two days travelling on the roads, before turning just before a bridge and following the stream into the wilderness beside the road. The terrain got rougher and rougher until they were spending almost all their time leading the horses on foot. It took six days to reach the location of the transporter, hidden in a tunnel that started inside an illusory tree and went deep into the hill behind it. Lloyd absently wondered if Yaric would even see the tree.
The original team was waiting for them.
“You’re the team going in?” one of them asked excitedly, not even waiting for introductions.
Everyone made sure to do exactly that before going any further, and then they all had a look at the transporter for themselves. It was an exact copy of every other iteration.
“This isn’t the best campsite,” Lloyd observed, looking around him.
“We couldn’t wait anywhere else, we needed to watch the tunnel.”
“You still do,” Lloyd said. “But the camp can be anywhere. Where’s the nearest water source?”
“Just around that hill.”
“Alright, let’s go find a better location before the sun sets. We’ll walk the horses,” he added, patting the side of the horse he’d spent the last week with. It was visibly fatigued, just like the others.
The choice of campsite was always going to be a compromise. It had to be close enough to the tunnel that they could help quickly if needed, defensible, and well situated for the horses. They settled on a flat area a short distance past the hill. It was right beside the stream, had some decent grazing for the short term, and had good sight lines all around. It was never going to be easy to defend, but they would see any danger coming before it was too late.
They decided to wait until the next day, so the infiltration team could rest. Lloyd also wasn’t comfortable with splitting from the home team if they weren’t on the top of their game. Watches were set up between those who would be staying behind, while the others got some sleep.
They woke early, but that didn’t mean they could get underway immediately.
Everyone ate well while the others kept watch. Lloyd donned his mail hauberk straight over his robes, which he belted down in several places. His longsword was belted at his waist, and he kept his staff at hand at all times. A large pouch at the small of his back held a collection of special items.
The others were equipped more traditionally with various forms of plate armor, along with the equipment they had chosen before leaving.
Then they had to go through the operation of the transporter, and how to activate it from the other side. It wasn’t difficult, but there were a lot of possibilities and contingencies to plan for.
Finally, it was time.
The twins stood beside Lloyd on the platform. Having multiple arcanists in the same family was exceedingly rare, even across several generations, but Jammal and Ava were the only arcanist siblings he had ever heard of. He was sure it had something to do with being twins, but even then, they were unique. Lloyd had never heard of another arcanist with a twin, even an unconnected one. To make matters even more confusing, they both had four affinities, as most arcanists did, but shared two of them. That obviously meant that half were shared, and half were unique. Either way, they had a stellar reputation for missions deep behind enemy lines. Both looked unconcerned as they waited for the teleport.
Lloyd made a mental note to put them in contact with Yaric in the future.
Artem stood to the other side of Lloyd, his shield and axe in hand. Far from unconcerned, he looked almost eager. He’d almost become a Battle Mage in his youth, but decided that he wanted to study more advanced magic. So he did, but with a focus on advanced combat, becoming something of a battle wizard. High battle wizard? No matter how he was categorized, he had an impact on any battlefield.
Ionna stood behind them, nervous but determined. She’d seen firsthand the pain caused by these terrorists, and she would do what she could to keep anyone from suffering through another attack.
Archie looked pale. He was an accomplished swordsman and an excellent High Wizard, but he had a surprising lack of combat experience. It was a weakness, and a serious one, but Lloyd had been constrained by time and availability. Archie’s organizational skills tended to put him in non-combat roles during major conflicts, but he did train seriously for the possibility that he would be on the front lines during the next war. His great disadvantage was that it was always ‘the next war’.
“We’re ready,” Lloyd finally said. “Send us.”
This transporter was rough. It worked, but the jump was more like a jolt than the smooth transition Lloyd was used to. On top of that, there was no consideration for the travelers. The room they wound up in was completely different from the one they had left, resulting in a sudden shift in scenery. The only plus was the mage lights that were already illuminating the dark underground room.
Lloyd raised a hand for silence and carefully made his way through the room to the passage that led out, scanning for any signs of people or magical devices as he went. The passageway ended more suddenly than expected, as they exited into a pitch-black hole hundreds of meters wide and surrounded by one hundred- and fifty-meter-high walls of rock. It was just a very large, very deep hole in the ground.
Most disturbing, however, was the sky. They had left during midmorning, with the summer sun beating down on them from an azure dome.
Now they were once again looking up at twinkling stars floating in a sea of black.
“West or East?” Artem whispered.
“We’ll find out soon enough. The continent doesn’t go far enough west for it to be more than an hour or two before dawn. If it doesn’t get light soon, we’re east. But very, very far east.
West seemed more likely, and it was far less problematic, so Lloyd kept glancing up as they circled next to the walls, looking for the way up.
It soon became apparent that there wouldn’t be one.
“What’s that?” Archie whispered, pointing out into the center of the hole.
A large object was shuffling slowly in the darkness. Lloyd watched it carefully, trying to make out what it was, but several more silhouettes made their presence known as well, occasionally with loud grunts.
“Ogres,” he hissed. “These are what they built the transporter for. They’re meant to be dumped on the other side.”
Ionna stepped up beside Lloyd, her sword drawn.
“Clear them first?” Jammal asked quietly.
“Clear them first.”
It wasn’t particularly difficult or dangerous for a High Wizard to fight an ogre, no matter how devastating they would be in a town full of unconnected. But they didn’t know who might be nearby, or even what lay above the pit they found themselves in, so they killed each ogre as silently as they could.
Lloyd made quick work of each ogre he came across, decapitating it with a single slash of his sword before creating a vacuum around the head. Ionna, Archie, and Artem all struck up into the skull from under the jaw.
Jammal and Ava silently riddled their heads with holes, dropping ogre after ogre with almost no sound, and no sign of any weapon.
‘Maybe they’ll take a private tutor role with Yaric?’
In less than fifteen minutes the ogres were all dead, with no sign or sound to give warning to anyone above.
“I’ll take point,” Archie said out of nowhere once they were done. He pushed through them and to the wall. Rock began flowing like liquid, dripping the wall in a two-meter span and accumulating to form a thick, meter-wide walkway. The area the stone had been taken from formed a depression, making the walkway slightly wider.
The other five followed Archie up the wall.
There wasn’t much to see on top of the pit. Tree stumps lined the ground where a small forest had been leveled, and there were no structures to speak of. The only feature visible to the infiltration team was a rough road leading from the pit. No one needed to say a word.
Thankfully the road was short.
It led straight to a fort, with high wooden walls built on top of compacted dirt. There was no way to be certain, but it looked large enough to hold around five thousand men, and the guards above the wall were acting professionally as well. At the same time though, every man they could see was equipped with different weapons and armor, making them look like a mercenary outfit.
“Well, there’s one way to find out,” Lloyd murmured, walking forward and into the light cast by an advance row of torches.
Shouts immediately issued from towers flanking the gates. “Identify yourselves!” someone commanded from the shadows.
“I should ask the same of you,” Lloyd replied, trying to place the accent as he did. It came across as a mix, as if the speaker had been raised in many different regions.
“Name and rank!” the same voice replied, this time with a hint of warning.
“What outfit is this?” Lloyd shouted back.
Arrows replied, whizzing invisibly through the darkness, only to ping off the dome that sprang up around Lloyd.
“Mages!”
A bell above each tower started clanging in the night air, the clamor sure to wake up everything for kilometers around.
Lloyd’s response struck the front gate, his message plain to see. The large ball of flames hit dead center, but it didn’t bounce like the arrows. It exploded.
The gate was obliterated, sending a hail of splinters and chunks of timber into the camp and any reinforcements unfortunate enough to have arrived quickly.
Lloyd dropped the mage shield he’d erected to serve as a wall against the shockwave and strode forward. Ava waved her hand to the right while her brother did the same on the left, extinguishing the rows of torches as they did. The twins sprang for the gate the instant the lights went out, disappearing through the swirling smoke.
“Take no prisoners?” Artem asked, stepping up next to Lloyd. Ionna stepped up on the other side at the same moment. Archie was hanging back. The ground he was standing on was rising in a wide cylinder, and every two meters it stopped, only for an even wider cylinder to rise under the last. He was forming his own tower from which he could bombard the camp.
“Take prisoners. We need intelligence.”
“You won’t find none here,” Artem replied derisively.
“Capture anyone who looks important.”
Ionna nodded as well, and the pair hurried forward to join the twins inside.
Arrows were just beginning to be fired once again when Lloyd jumped. He changed spells in midair, giving him a great view of the camp inside the walls. His enhanced vision let him see everything perfectly, even in the darkness that seemed to be seeping through the camp.
It wasn’t mercenaries. Not unless enough mercenaries had come together to form an army.
Rows of tents filled the camp. Several more permanent structures sat in the center, including at least a dozen that were very obviously residences.
Lloyd landed on the wall where it crossed the tower and looked at the soldiers still trying to get to their feet. Timber began exploding all around them, showering them in splinters that cut and impaled. Both bells dropped, ending the continuous cacophony that somehow set Lloyd on edge.
Bells on the other side of the camp took up the call.
Lloyd jumped down into the tower and flicked his staff to the left, over the void left by the destroyed gate, and then right, down the length of wall he was currently standing on. A large ball of plasma shot in each direction, their light searing the vision of anyone who looked its way. Everything they struck was vaporized, everything they passed was left charred and burning.
The wall they had approached was already ablaze when Lloyd jumped off the other side, with the intense heat even causing sections to split and shatter.
Archie’s tower finished growing and he began unleashing his own spells. Large balls arced across the sky, made visible only by the stars that disappeared as they passed under. They reached far across the camp before exploding into sudden brilliance, lighting up everything below them in a rain of white-hot slivers. Thick white smoke trailed behind them, only to be smothered in turn by the dark grey smoke that started rising once the tents below began to catch fire.
Ionna and Artem were fighting side by side, smashing through the formations that tried to resist them. The twins were nowhere to be seen, but that was to be expected. The random explosions that periodically shook the camp marked where they had been.
Lloyd waved his staff again, and shards of ice shimmered into existence, only to disappear with a crack. Wind tore through the camp at hundreds of kilometers an hour, ripping up every tent nearby and flinging all soldiers in the path along with them. The broken soldiers and debris piled up halfway across the camp.
Then a fireball arced over the wall from inside the camp, toward Archie.
‘They have their own arcanists!’
Archie only paused for a moment before continuing his barrage, but Lloyd wasn’t going to take any chances.
“Regroup!”
Artem and Ionna quickly fell back to where Lloyd stood.
Six disheveled-looking Mages and Wizards strode through the panicking soldiers, their eyes locked on Lloyd and his group. From slightly to his left came another half a dozen arcanists.
“Who are you?” one of them shouted.
“No, who are you?” Lloyd replied, still hoping to get some additional information.
“How can you come into our land without knowing who we are? How could you even… The transporter!”
Lloyd had heard enough. They weren’t going to volunteer any information, and his certainty in their guilt was now absolute. Before it was a simple matter of them trying to murder him for answering their questions with questions of his own. Understandable. But now they had also confirmed their involvement in the terror attacks across Malvec. Unforgiveable.
A lightning bolt cracked across the divide, flashing on the shield that instantly manifested to protect the Wizard. But it didn’t stop. Channeling enough arcana to power it instantly and indefinitely was easy for Lloyd, but the same couldn’t be said for his target. The shield lasted almost two seconds, and then the lightning was tracing up and down his body while his companions stared in horror.
Spells began to fly. Bolts of plasma, shards of stone, invisible waves of force... the ground between them was torn up in seconds and quickly started glowing with heat. Artem and Ionna were struggling under the sheer weight of spells flying their way, though Lloyd was okay for the moment. He was able to maintain a ludicrous number of precast defensive spells.
Lightning flashed repeatedly, every third or fourth flash dropping a Mage or Wizard. Five more arcanists strode through the wreckage of the camp, only these five were dressed differently.
CRACK!
A bolt of lightning thicker than Lloyd’s torso struck his shield, followed immediately by a fireball that exploded with a muffled boom. The shockwave was enough to stagger Ionna, and even Artem looked shaken, despite both being behind their shields.
High Wizards.
Lloyd was required to hide much of the time, even in plain sight. No matter the situation, exposing himself would almost always be worse than simply staying unnoticed. But with Ionna and Artem about to be overwhelmed, and now the arrival of five High Wizards, this was not the time for hiding.
Lloyd stopped holding back.
He shot into the air, carried by a combination of wind and force, before pausing to channel a new spell.
His lightning bolt split the sky, turning everything white. The thunderous crack ruptured the eardrums of every unconnected still standing and hurt everyone else. Closing your eyes made no difference as the river of lightning pummeled the ground in rapid-fire bursts so fast that they were nearly indistinguishable from one another. Then the lightning began to drift, obliterating everything as it went. Mages, Wizards, High Wizards, nothing stood for more than the barest fraction of a second under the tumultuous torrent, its overwhelming power turning everything it touched to ash.
Balls of plasma began swirling around Lloyd’s hovering form, spinning faster and faster, even as the lightning left craters of glass below him. Hundreds of the balls shot out across the camp, some setting everything on fire before burning straight through the walls on the far side, others burning everything in their path until they buried themselves deep into the earth, only to explode in a massive eruption of molten rock a moment later.
Plasma rained down like an apocalypse in a cataclysm of light, explosions, and fire.
Everything was burning when Lloyd let up, the smoldering ash already beginning to come down like a perverse inversion of snow.
“Let’s go,” Lloyd said, turning on his heel. “We still need to find people we can interrogate.”
Artem and Ionna stared, still blinking their eyes to try and get rid of the afterimages.
“We have your suspects right here,” Jammal said, grinning.
He was standing outside the gate with his sister, each holding a prisoner tightly. Both were in their night clothes, and while the one stared at the camp behind Lloyd in apparent shock, the other had blood dripping from his head and looked concussed.
“This one’s a High Mage,” Ava explained. “Didn’t have time to do it properly.”
“Do it properly?” Artem asked.
Ava gestured for him to come closer, and once he did, she shoved the mage unceremoniously into his arms. She pulled a tiny pipe from a pouch at her waist and, holding the pipe away from herself, took a deep breath and held it. Then she leaned close to the High Mage, until their noses were just a few centimeters apart, and raised the pipe to her lips.
Pfff.
A puff of dust blew into his face, and just a second later his pupils dilated even wider.
“I see,” Artem mumbled uncomfortably. “How long will it last?”
“No magic from this baby for at least twelve hours,” Ava replied. “Once he starts speaking actual words, we give him another dose.” Ava waved her hand across his face as she spoke, and Lloyd saw small cinders appear like dust.
‘Not like, it is dust,’ he realized, watching as the remnants of the drug she had used were burnt away. It wouldn't do to accidently dose yourself on the spillover.
“That’s good enough, and we’re unlikely to come across a target like this again. I’m not indiscriminately attacking some town in who knows where. We’ll head back first, then interrogate these two. If we make it quick enough, we might even be safe making a second trip. If necessary,” he added.
‘What they say might make it necessary too.’