Matter to mana conversion hadn’t been something that I thought about since before Libbu’s sacrifice. So, I had failed to consider the disturbing possibility of mankind’s existence as physical creatures capable of holding mana naturally within their bodies. The flesh of man was a rich source of mana for any creature who converted matter into mana as their primary mode of growth. These foreign astral beings used mana imbued with the Truth of death so it stood to reason that they might feed on creatures within the Physical for mana.

Once upon a time, I had even considered harvesting Libbu’s children for similar purposes but my love for her and my attachment to humans stopped me. I remembered the fear in her voice when she told me of her dreams in Ur so many millennia past. Ironic that the very trait that gave them the chance to defend themselves against the invaders also made them more tantalizing prey.

I considered all of this as Lucille’s heart rate jumped again and again. She stared at the dead man and the blood coating his lower jaw with a mix of horror and trepidation.

Lucille, step away from him and calm yourself. I ordered giving the words a little oomph to snap her out of the daze. This is an unfortunate reality that you must face but I’m afraid that you will encounter other situations like it in the days to come.

She walked away from the bodies and leaned against the wall with one hand. She tried to steady her breathing as she had before but the smell of scorched flesh and blood hung thick in the air. Her gaze continued switching from the bodies to the slowly extending pool of bloody water coming from the area where she’d fought the acolytes. She could still hear the man she hadn’t finished off flailing in the water likely too weak to continue crawling due to blood loss.

I decided to help her. The stress of the situation was building in her subconsciousness despite my efforts to temporarily deaden certain limiters. She was trying her best; I sensed that much. However, she was only human at the end of the day and while I knew that she would eventually gather her wits, I could speed the process along significantly.

I gathered a tiny kernel of psykhe within the Astral imbuing it with the feeling of comfort, or at least the closest approximation I could offer. My memories of Libbu came to the forefront: those days after our reconciliation following the falling out at Ur, the warm embraces she gave me after every meeting, and the feeling of her energy humming through the Old World as I dreamed the millennia away. When I felt the kernel had the adequate sentiment, I pushed it into Lucille’s soul then forced it to diffuse its power and the emotion within it.

This was new territory for me. Because of my isolation from the affairs of humanity, I hadn’t experimented much with psykhe and most of my knowledge about the mana was theoretical, based on the Truths I used to cultivate it. As I did this, I released the mental limiters on her mind aiming to soothe the backlash while I calmed her down. I monitored the state of her soul during the few seconds it took for the process to finish hoping there wouldn’t be any unforeseen side effects.

Lucille?

“This is like a nightmare,” she said. Her hands trembled as she hugged herself. “But… I think I’m going to be ok.”

She was hiding her true feelings. Her gut twisted in disgust both at the cannibalism and the lives she’d taken while her resolve battled her desire to leave the nightmare behind. The comfort that I had instilled in her bolstered the resolve but negative emotions were powerful forces in the minds of men. After half a minute of staring at the double doors to the main suite of the penthouse, I offered her an out.

Lucille, you’ve done well to get us as far as you have. I can take over from here if you wish.

“No,” she whispered. “I have to do this. I can’t turn back now.”

She was talking to herself as much as she was responding to my offer. She pushed off the wall and began walking toward the main suite.

I am with you. I said, unsure why I felt the need to do so.

She faltered for a second when I spoke before continuing. Her hand fell on the doorknob.

“I’m going to miss you when you leave,” she said suddenly. An odd feeling hit me when she said that; it was simultaneously, alien and familiar, but I couldn’t understand it at the time.

So, I said nothing and she opened the door.

***

The suite rested in darkness. The massive hole in the roof opened up to a sky robbed of its light by the dark vortex still swirling above the clouds. Directly ahead, the raised platform from which the Archmage had given his speech stood tucked under the overhang of the mezzanine. Several bodies covered the ground in front of the platform, all twisted in varying states of agony from the suffering before their death.

“What is that?” Lucille asked as a red flash of light came from the mezzanine. Several seconds later, another followed then another.

The Archmage is attacking the city below. Based on what I can sense, it is a fairly powerful technique, around one hundred times the power of your Mana Bolt to be precise.

“That’s insane,” she said. “How am I supposed to deal with that? The Threefold Barrier is amazing but I don’t think it can deal with that.”

You have me.

Not having any way to refute my logic, she carefully made her way across the room using the light of the Archmage’s attacks and her enhanced senses to navigate the darkness. Eventually, she made it to the stairs and slowly made her way upward priming a Mana Bolt in one hand and drawing her athame in the other.

My mana tendrils extended from Lucille’s body. I surrounded the invisible appendages with a layer of her mana to camouflage them as Lucille’s doing since my concealment structures wouldn’t mask their presence due to her body not being my actual physical incarnation. I felt the residual mana from Delilah’s corpse being pulled away by another astral being and the thick miasma of residual foreign mana from the Archmage’s attacks. Strangely, there was no noise from the technique, only the red flash of light. From my understanding of the deathly mana, the attacks probably wouldn’t cause much environmental damage but they would decimate the body and soul of any living creatures hit.

Next, I turned my attention to the remnants of the ritual. There was much residue left and what was left had been diluted by Joseph’s antics after but I managed to piece together the basics in addition to what my sub-core had ascertained. The ritual had been an invocation much like the acolytes believed but there were hints of the foreign mana within the framework which meant that Joseph had either specifically called these invaders or he had discovered the mana on his own and then used the invocation to seek out a sympathetic entity.

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But how could Joseph have gained access to a unique mana type containing the Truths of Death and Darkness? I wanted to rule it out because it seemed so implausible but I had seen unique types of mana with my sub-cores in the hands of humans. It raised troubling questions about the species as a whole, its evolutionary potential, and the ramifications of Libbu’s gift.

While I investigated the area with my tendrils and ruminated on the troublesome nature of man, Lucille prepared herself for the coming sight. Her heart rate rested at roughly seventy beats per minute, which was a little high given the optimizations that I made to her body. Still, she never considered turning back once she started walking up the stairs and by the time that she reached the top, her face had gone blank and her mind was focused. It wasn’t to the extent that I had witnessed while I numbed her mental inhibitions but that was, perhaps, for the best in the long term.

The mezzanine had been leveled to a flat area with only the shattered portion of walls and ruin interiors as remnants of the top half of the main suite. Standing in the distance near the edge of the building, Archmage Joseph looked over the city laughing like a madman while his outstretched hand flared the accumulated dark mana from his attack technique. Behind him, a cloaked woman tore into the corpse of Sorceress Delilah with her bare hands. The woman’s hair had fallen out in patches and her veins stood out against her unnaturally pale skin. Altogether, she made for a repugnant image.

However, neither of these two drew my attention. My senses homed in on a single point as Lucille watched the scene, her disgust hidden by the mask of focus. The Archmage had something in his hand that reminded me of my darker days when I blinded myself to the suffering of my victims to maximize the knowledge that I could glean from them.

Lucille acted as soon as the pallid sorceress noticed her presence. A Mana Bolt slammed into the possessed woman’s head causing her face to collapse inward. When the astral being was ejected into the Astral by the death of its host, I descended upon it. Ever-concealed by my structures, it didn’t even sense my presence. I found it amusing that these astral beings utilized a type of mana that gave them a natural disposition toward hunting and consuming other entities yet they were completely at my mercy because of my perfected concealment structures.

As soon as the Mana Bolt struck, the Archmage stopped laughing.

“I had wondered what wolf prowled at the edges of my flock trimming its number,” Joseph said as he lowered his hand, the energy within still primed for release. “And who should I find but one of my very own baring her fangs at my throat.”

“You’ve lost all control, Archmage Joseph,” Lucille said. “You’ve betrayed your oaths to the Order, killed members of your own charter, and committed crimes punishable by death in the Conclave.”

The Archmage turned around and Lucille unconsciously took a step back at the sight of the man. He, like the others, had taken on an unearthly pallor and his black veins bulged against the thin façade of his flesh. His eyes had lost all semblance of humanity, now only containing dark pits of still darkness. He wore his ceremonial robes with silver trimming along the sleeves and neckline. Under the robes, his bare chest stood out only because of the black hole where his heart should have been. And lastly, in his hand, he held the severed head of his sister, Delilah Weiss.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t simply the head of a dead woman. Her eyes had been gouged out and filled with darkness while the bottom of her jaw hung loosely showing blackened teeth and the remaining stub of her tongue. Within the horrid trophy, I sensed a tormented piece of Delilah’s soul. It had been trapped by a seal carved into the forehand, likely by Joseph’s athame. The soul fragment cried out for release yet I ignored its call bidding my time to ensnare my target.

Joseph stared at Lucille for a while before he laughed and looked down at Delilah’s head.

“Did you hear that, dear sister?” he asked pausing a moment as if expecting an answer. “Yes, little Lucille has come back to me after you let her escape and oh, how she has grown.”

“He’s completely lost it. It’s hard to believe that this was once one of the most respected scholars in the Conclave and the founder of the Order,” she thought, pity and disdain rolling about in her mind.

It seems that though the entity possessing him has not assumed control, his mind has buckled due to the damage it has caused to his soul.

Archmage Joseph laughed again. “Is she mad? No… Nor do I believe she has come to find the enlightenment in the Dark, to hear the whispered wisdom of He Who Walks in Shadows, to walk with Him in death. I believe she is a foolish child basking in the Light’s Lies. She speaks of antiquated delusions such as law and oaths.”

He shook Delilah’s head at Lucille. “Tell me, dear child. How have you come here to stand before me? Did you peacefully pass the enlightened by and wish them well? Or did you whet the edge of your Will in their blood? To do what thou wilt, one must abandon the restrictions placed on us by the Light. We must feed our Will, gorge it on those who stand in our path. One Will against another and the winner is sustained while the other becomes a memory. This is the natural order of things”

“Then it's time you became a memory,” Lucille said launching a Mana Bolt at Joseph’s torso.

He thrust Delilah’s head into the path of the projectile and activated a technique. The head moaned, a sound filled with agony, as the bolt struck it. Instead of bursting the head like a hammer striking an overripe melon, the Mana Bolt simply vanished.

“I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be easy,” she said attempting to play off the slight feeling of dread building within her after having her attack nullified so easily.

“Wonderful! I’m sure you’ve fed your Will plenty on your journey to stand before me but let me show you what true power can accomplish!”

Fire another Mana Bolt now. I said issuing the command as forcefully as possible without harming her soul. Given our pact, a command of that severity could’ve compared to mind control.

Archmage Joseph raised his hand and released the pent-up power within his free hand. The area flashed red for an instant before the attack technique took flight. It resembled a writing mass of faces screaming silently as it flew through the air faster than normal human eyes could track.

Fortunately, Lucille wasn’t a normal human. Thanks to my order being issued to her mind and soul, she intuitively understood where I wanted her to aim and exactly when she should fire. Adrenaline and her enhanced body gave her the speed to line up the shot and fire the Mana Bolt in less than a second while her mind trembled at the magnitude of the attack headed toward her.

In her defense, it was akin to facing an anti-tank rocket with a handgun.

Partway through the casting, I surreptitiously altered the composition of the spell adding an unstable matric to the Mana Bolt and making the force projectile spin during its flight. The Mana Bolt collided with the life-rending technique.

It lasted about a second as the conflicting energies attempted to overwhelm each other. Had the clash been purely a contest of potency, the Archmage’s technique would have triumphed. Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t the case. The Mana Bolt’s rotation caused it to drill into the opposing technique and once inside, the unstable matrix that I added detonated sending fragments of pure mana into predesignated points. The Archmage’s deadly blast had ten times the power of the detonation yet it unraveled before his eyes all the same.

“Impossible!” the Archmage screamed, his face twisting with madness and rage. He raised his arm and mana began accumulating within it.

“How did you do that with a Mana Bolt?” she asked, almost as confused as the Archmage despite being able to feel my manipulation of her mana.

I overloaded his technique’s framework which caused it to fail, I explained. Techniques, or spells as you call them, are merely mana arranged in a certain way to create an effect within the physical world. The more powerful the spell, the more complex the arrangement. The more complex the arrangement, the more areas exist for potential failure.

“So, it’s like when taking out the vertical supports for a building to make it collapse?”

Her question came with a memory of a tall building, smaller than the one we were in at the moment but massive by the standards I was used to, collapsing after several booms went off inside of it. The building folded in on itself. The memory introduced the concept of contemporary explosives to me and I wondered at how much humanity's destructive capabilities had grown.

Yes, I suppose so. In a battle of sorcery, mana capacity and the magnitude of one’s techniques are secondary to mana control, mana sensitivity, and an understanding of the inherent structures that make a technique. The former will impress the uneducated and overwhelm weak opponents but the latter… the latter will bring you real power.

Before she could reply, Joseph released his attack, another vortex of darkness yet more condensed than the first. It was a far more dangerous technique than the one he’d used previously. I seamlessly took control of her arms and refilled her mana from my position within her soul.

Watch carefully, Lucille. I will show you true mastery.