“Grant!” Layla yelled, I caught her gaze, her eyes flicked at one corner of the workshop. I knew what she was trying to tell me. I didn’t like our odds, but I had no better option. “Plan Warhammer” it is, I thought to myself as I lept to grab the special weapon we’d made for just such an emergency as this.

  “Hey, if just knowing necromancy makes me a necromancer,” Layla said loudly, to grab the elf priest’s attention, “Then does this make me a druid? Entangling Roots!” She yelled, conjuring magical vines to burst from the solid stone floor of our workshop and wrap around the priest’s body, or rather a shell around the elf’s body, as there seemed to be a spherical shield around the priest, visible only by the effect of the vines squeezing against it.

  “Pathetic,” The elf priest said with a snort. “Low-level spells like that will have no effect, Dispel Magic!” The vines fell away and vanished back into thin air. “And to answer your question, let me ask you another one. If you are a cannibal and a chef, does being a cannibal take precedent? Yes. You are stained by black magic, just as a chef who knows a dozen recipes for human flesh loses the right to be considered simply a chef.”

  “Your analogy sucks! Magic Missile!” Layla complained before peppering the older elf with a volley of luminous projectiles. “After all, just because the chef knows the recipes doesn't mean he’s eaten human flesh. I happen to know the recipe for necromantic magic, but I’ve never raised a single corpse. I just wanted to know how to modify a standard “create wood golem” runic formula so that it would work on flesh and bone!”

  The inquisitor did not even flinch as the magic projectiles crashed harmlessly against the invisible barrier. I gripped the heavy warhammer and waited for my chance. The whole plan depended on the fact that the elven Magi disdained those who could not use magic, so I tried to make myself look harmless. The inquisitor believed I posed no threat. I just needed an opening to prove him wrong.

  “Please, you traitorous deviant,” he said with a dismissive, disgusted glance in my direction to make sure it was understood exactly why Layla was considered a deviant. She preferred a dwarf to her own kind. To the fertility-obsessed elves, sleeping with a human was considered unsavory, but as a half-elf child was possible, they believed it meant that their elven goddess had decreed such unions permissible. That an elf and dwarf could not bear young meant, in their eyes, that such a union was blasphemy, a violation of the natural order, punished by infertility. For elves living in the Elven Kingdom, marriage with a dwarf was illegal. Luckily, dwarven law was a lot more permissive. I clenched my fists around the warhammer’s hilt but made no move. I needed the racist elf to dismiss me as a threat completely, so I acted as if I was frozen in fear.

  “What matters in magic, isn’t the runes you use, it’s the source of the power and the result of your spell. With that in mind, a flesh golem is an undead, even if the source is clean, the result is the reanimation of a walking corpse. Resistance to divine sourced magic isn’t proof that it isn’t necromancy! To corrupt the runes we use to create wooden servants into a new type of necromancy only makes your blasphemy worse! Hold Person!” He chanted, causing Layla to freeze up.

  “Dispel Magic!” She hissed, using the cleric spell to counter the priest’s divine magic. Layla relaxed and grinned, “How do you like that? Looks like I’m a cleric too.”

  “You think I’m impressed?” The older elf sneered. “Five hundred years ago, I might have been. I would have wondered why you chose to multiclass and called you foolish for not properly focusing on one discipline. Maybe I would have been dumbfounded that you managed a cleric spell without a divine source. But the world has changed since then, and we Magi know how to use any ephemeral spell we wish to learn, simply because we now understand how the underlying formulas work. I should know, granddaughter, after all, I taught you, and this treason is how you repay me?! Feel lucky that we need you to explain this machine to the other Magi, your former colleges, so we can duplicate your work before executing you for your many crimes!”

  “The Magi’s understanding of magic might have changed!” Layla growled, “But their thinking hasn’t. Same stubborn elvish pride. Same religious dogma. Your goddess is a lie, old man, she’s only an abstract energy source powered by the faith of elven followers! On what basis do you decry blasphemy, when the Elven Magi all know this to be true, but pretend otherwise, even going so far as to call themselves inquisitors to hunt down any who try to speak the truth. You are all hypocrites, bound by lies and secrets to millennia-old laws that are as contradictory as they are oppressive.”

  The older elf snarled, “The goddess is real, you bitch. Just because she is dormant doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist. You and the other atheists have only proved she is inactive, not non…” The elf glanced at me, as I crept slightly closer. “Your words have only doomed your lover,” he said with a gloat on his face, “I was planning on letting him live, to avoid offending the dwarves before the plan begins to unfold, but now he’s heard too much! I’m claiming his life for being exposed to your heresy!”

  “Leave him out of it!” Layla screeched in fury. “Ephemeral magic doesn’t impress you? Obsolete spells from an age where magic ran on just the naturally occuring mana vapor? Let’s get serious, then.” Layla reached behind her to touch the side of the mostly empty tank of liquid mana, the level visible through the strip of glass that ran along its side. We’d already used most of the liquid mana in the workshop, but I’d never seen Layla try to use the liquid mana directly, that wasn’t supposed to be possible, I thought to myself. “Not much left, but enough to send you to your precious goddess.” She told her grandfather with a twisted grin.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Then the mana inside the chamber began to bubble and boil as chains of blue magical energy flowed through the sides of the container up Layla’s arm into her core, the source of her magic, the seat of her soul. Her eyes glowed incandescently as she harnessed immense amounts of magic directly. Then, wordlessly she released all that power at the older elf.

  The torrent of energy was incredible, I’d never seen anything like it. Lightning and fire twisted together in separate spirals to fuse into superheated plasma that built up into an enormous orb of devastation then blazed a bolt of pure fury at the energy shield that protected the elven priest. The very air throbbed with the sound of the energetic plasma. It was worse than the sound of the compressor, and I realized that was deliberate, a sonic and visual assault, to provide the perfect distraction. Squinting against the strobing glare, I ran towards the older elf.

  “Not bad,” the elf grunted, as he held his arms out to face Layla, pouring his own magic into reinforcing the shield. “But, I have a direct conduit to a vast reservoir of liquid mana beneath the world tree,” He tapped the taira around his head, “and all you have is a few gallons of liquid mana at best. How can you possibly hope to…”

  I slammed my warhammer against the back of the shield, triggering the disruptor built into the heavy weapon’s head. The “mana disruptor” was an accidental discovery Layla and I had figured out during the early phases of our work on compressing liquid mana. A pure magical pump built around a multi-layer runic circle with no machine support wasn’t able to properly compress magic. The feedback loop created by the meta-magic would disrupt the very runes that powered the effect. This created a defective pump, that turned on and off many times per second. The enchantment failed at what it was supposed to do, instead, it generated waves of magic. The mana vapor in the air carried the sound wave-like effect, repeated cycles of mana overload and mana deprivation that was extremely disruptive to active spells. It wasn’t perfect, it depended a lot on how exactly the spell was built, but most spells could be broken, regardless of how strong they were. In fact, the stronger the spell, the easier it was to disrupt. It was enough to give a simple engineer like me a chance to harm even the strongest mage.

  The magic disruptor shattered the shield as if it were glass, creating a gap large almost, but not quite large enough for me to simply walkthrough. Shards of broken magic flared and vanished as they fell to the ground. I pulled back my hammer for a second blow, aiming low to clear a path so my third strike could hit the inquisitor himself.

  “What?! Impossible!” The inquisitor cried, whirling halfway around to face me sideways while keeping his other arm outstretched behind himself to maintain the unbroken part of the shield that was still keeping Layla’s constant attack at bay. With the hand facing me he tried to rebuild his damaged shield. The gaping hole in the shield began to heal, even as Layla ramped up her own attack on the opposite side.

  It was pointless, the second strike of the magic disruptor was enough to shatter the repairs and enlarge the hole enough so I could gingerly step through. I was now close enough to hammer my foe directly. I grit my teeth into a feral snarl as I pulled back my heavy warhammer for a finishing blow. I didn’t care that he’d dismissed me as no threat, or casually discussed killing me. No, I was furious at him for another reason; how dare this elf threaten my wife?

  “Damn you, dwarf, Haste!” The inquisitor used a quickened spell to accelerate himself. I could only watch as his outstretched arm blurred, reaching beneath his robes to pull out a dagger. Faster than I could finish swinging the overly heavy warhammer, the elf had already stabbed me. I grit my teeth, feeling the blade pierce through my leather apron and dig between my ribs. It was a good hit, fatal even. But the same ponderous momentum that had exposed me to the quicker weapon’s bite, helped me now. The warhammer did not falter even as my muscles grew slack. Poisoned too? I gasped, falling to my knees, a poisoned blade had just nicked my heart, the world started to go dark. I reached up to my chest, but did not pull the knife out, I’d just bleed out faster, instead I held it steady as the inquisitor let it go. I needed to last just a bit longer, just to make sure our plan had worked.

  I’d been aiming for the tiara. I was just a crafter, for all my strength, I knew no one strike of mine could possibly kill the high-level inquisitor. His body was hardened, able to take more damage than the average warhorse. Those levels made him nearly unkillable for someone as low level as me. But that tiara was his link to the nearly inexhaustible liquid mana energy source...

  The inquisitor moved his head slightly to the side, using his enhanced speed to easily avoid my strike. He gave me a derisive smile, perhaps thinking he'd dealt with me successfully. But it didn't matter that I'd missed. The disruption effect on the warhammer had a very limited range, but just passing it through the air next to the inquisitor's head good enough to temporarily disable the tiara. The connection between it and the liquid mana reservoir the elf was using to sustain his shield wavered, shrinking from a river to a trickle. By activating the warhammer only when it had struck the shield, I'd made the elf think the disruption effect was on-contact, but in that final swing, I'd activated it early. Stunned, the elf had enough time for his eyes to go wide, then his force shield faltered.

  Layla’s plasma torrent broke through the weakened shield, spearing the surprised inquisitor through one side, passing through both lungs and his heart, then out the other end, just barely missing me. The elf didn't even have time to gasp as he fell to the ground, nearly split in half. His levels couldn’t save him from this. We’d done it, together we’d killed him.

  I slid to the ground, pleased. I was dying, even as my heart struggled to keep pumping, the poison was spreading even quicker. Paralysis overtaking the straining organ, it gave one final beat. Should I have pulled the knife out? No, I’d have died either way. I stared up at the roof of the workshop, content. This was a good death, I thought to myself. I’d saved Layla, that was enough to make my death worth it.

  “Grant!” Layla yelled, rushing to my side. “I can heal this!” She told me, tears already starting to fall. I was already close to death, vision nearly gone, no breath left in my lungs, but with my last bit of strength, I whispered, “I love you.”

  Dimly I felt her pull the knife out and pour in a healing potion and then use her own magic as well, but it was no use. The poison was formulated with liquid mana, designed to resist any cure poison spell, and my still heart could not be restarted. Nothing worked, and I heard Layla sob in despair as I faded away.

  “No! I refuse to let you go!” She yelled, frantic. "Even if you never forgive me, I'll fix this..." but then I died.