Inky darkness yawns above me, an open, voracious mouth that’s no less terrifying for the lack of teeth. My limbs thrash about in useless desperation as I’m drawn toward the tiny Rift like a nail toward a lodestone. Thirty feet. Twenty-five feet. I twist in the air as I draw closer, jerking and convulsing—a marionette in the hands of a child. Twenty feet. I scream and kick harder as I fight against the pull. Fifteen feet. Twelve.

Ten.

Fear lends me wild strength. I draw deeply on my well of mana, flinging the full force of my Domain against the inexorable pull. I slow down as the pull is working against me blunts, but it’s not enough to stop me entirely. Even so, I’ve bought myself time to think. I can only pray it will be enough. My fate will be sealed in a few seconds unless I come up with a way out.

My mind is flying through possibilities at record pace. My thoughts flow effortlessly thanks to the influence of sharpness and innovation. [Artisanal Acuity] activates, adding another layer of clarity.

Facts: I’m not powerful enough to fight back against a Domain directly. I have no leverage to push against physically. I can’t create a [Sanctuary] out of nothing. Without the [Eternal Glass Forge], I can’t manifest any glass, which locks me out of my strongest magic.

Or, wait. Maybe not,

My compressed Domain explodes outward, and I quest around me, searching with my senses for the half a dozen glass golems I brought along: Falcon is gone, cut off from me, but the other birds I brought along to scout for our target are still there. Each of them are clutching glass spiders to preserve a scrying copy of the events for us. I latch onto them like a drowning man reaching out for a raft of driftwood, binding myself to them to create an ethereal web of mana-empowered connections that enable me to struggle against the grip of the Rift in space.

It’s still not enough.

Seven feet. Six feet. Five!

With a keening wail of fear, I redirect all of my golems to my right and yank on the thick braids of mana binding us together as hard as I can. Energy whines in my ears as it builds up, overloading my connections to my little creatures. One by one, they shatter in colorful bursts of fragmented glass until I have nothing left to pull against.

Only one holds. Praying that it’s enough, I pull on my Domain as hard as I can. My trajectory shifts—

—and I tumble past the weaponized artificial Rift, missing the ragged, hissing maw to the abyss by mere inches. Momentum sends me soaring over the dark waters, reminding me that my terror isn’t over yet. Just because the first part of my desperate ploy worked doesn’t mean that I’m no longer in danger.

Without the array of golems to provide leverage, I’m hurtling through space, completely out of control. I don’t want to pull against the last one and risk breaking it, so I run through my options. My body contorts as I come to a conclusion. I twist myself around just in time to avoid slamming face-first into the cold, unyielding waters of the inland sea.

My feet cut through the surface, shielded by a condensed application of my Domain and intent, and I plunge beneath the waters once more. The impact stings. My shield shatters. My joints ache, as though I crashed into stone instead of waves, but the cold and pain only serve to remind me that I’m still alive.

Grateful as I am for the stay of execution, a grim reality remains: unless I can come up with a true miracle, I’m out of options. As soon as I resurface, the ancient [Death Mage] Tapirs will be ready for me. The gruesome image of a hawk skewering its prey in its talon and carrying it off to devour it dominates my mind. I can’t shake the thought that all I’ve done is delay the inevitable. He advances, cold and inexorable as the tomb. As death itself.

Unless . . . I don’t surface at all.

A mad scheme comes together in a flash. Marshaling the might of my magic, I run [Compositional Analysis] on the water around me and cut out elements of air with sharpness and the [Legacy of the Scalpel], holding the oxygen and other gasses in a bubble with my Domain. Unlike a few moments ago, when I lacked material to transmute into glass, since air is too diffuse to produce much usable results, I’m now surrounded by water. The deeper I go, the denser it becomes, exerting pressure that would kill a bronzie in seconds. But I’m no weakling. Not anymore.

Racing against the clock—I can’t hold my breath forever—I tap into two of my borrowed glass Skills. [A Master’s Touch: Thirty Seconds of Greatness] and [A Perfect Prototype] are potent on their own, but combined with innovation they soar to new heights.

By the time my mana runs its course, leaving me with a little less than a fifth of my reserves, I’m ensconced in an unbreakable glass sphere filled with breathable oxygen. It’s not a perfect replica of air, but my Skill confirms that the composition shouldn’t be toxic despite the high concentration of oxygen. I’ve rarely used the compositional Skill before, but if I survive, I swear to myself that I’ll rank it up. I can’t believe I’ve largely ignored such a lifesaver.

I drift in the deep, carried along by unseen currents. This far below the surface, everything around me is a deep, midnight blue, bordering on black. If I sink any farther, I’ll lose the last bit of light. Instead of panicking at the thought, I find myself embracing the darkness. I feel like an infant back in the womb, held up by life-giving water and preparing for a future birth.

I chuckle. Strange thoughts aside, I’m confident that I can survive the crushing weight of the water around me. Worst case scenario, I can deploy my [Sanctuary] if need be, although I’d prefer to hold back the last of my mana. No matter how much my Capacity grows, it’s never enough. Keep growing, Nuri.

As the seconds stretch on into minutes, I catch my breath, calm my pounding heart, and sit down on the gentle curve of the glass sphere to meditate and recover some mana. This far from the Greater Rift under Gilead, the energy density is less than impressive, but thankfully I’m close enough to Natan that their Rift helps saturate the environment. Even though their Rift is largely sealed off, enough energy escapes to help me refuel.

“Let’s be honest,” I whisper to myself. “Even topped off, I can’t hope to fight off a Third Threshold [Death Mage].”

My hastily-constructed diving sphere is too small for my words to echo, yet I swear I can hear them repeat endlessly in my head. There’s no way for me to win this encounter head on.

No way.

. . . no way . . .

No . . . way . . . out . . .

I shiver, pulling my clothes tighter around my chest for warmth as I conserve my mana. My only chance is if Tapirs relents and doesn’t want to dive into the sea after me. I have no delusions that he fears getting wet, but I’m guessing he’ll wait me out, confident that I’ll come back to check on my friends. That makes me wince. Maybe he’ll let my friends escape if he chases me. He did say he had no interest in harming the others, although I’m not convinced that I can trust a single word that comes out of his mouth.

Tiny fish swim past me, invisible to the naked eye but discernible in my Domain. I spend a quiet moment watching them dart about, wishing that I could be just as carefree and simple. No ambitions. No grand plans. No great fears. A tiny smile tugs at the corners of my lips as I imagine myself cavorting underwater and exploring the expanse of the inland sea.

My pleasant reprieve doesn’t last.

Dark pillars of power drill down into the water around me, sending me spinning in the turbulence of their wake. They multiple faster than I can count, weaving into a vast web that boggles my mind. Even my glimpse of the hidden nexus of power in the Lesser Rift I closed barely compares to the complex power of the mana at work around me.

Deathly chill invades my bones. The net closes, forming a powerful basket that snares the entire glass sphere and drags me up toward the surface. The dull ember of anger directly above me reveals that Tapirs is present and not bothering to veil himself. His power spills outward, threatening and unrestrained, and there’s a familiar tinge to it that makes my heart stop when I recognize where I’ve sensed it before.

In the lair of the Oletheros.

Dominion. Usurpation. The very thought of losing control like that makes my blood run cold. The [Death Mage] is preparing a new Skill, one aimed at subverting me. And it doesn’t exactly take a brilliant [Researcher] to figure out the target: my friends, who are fleeing at the very edge of my senses.

I refuse. I won’t be made a slave again. I went down that path with Scalpel once before, and I’d rather die than be turned into a weapon against my team. They’re family. I will not harm them.

My shoulders slump. I prepare a blade of sharpness near my heart, just in case. I’ll destroy myself from the inside out before I’ll hurt my family. As I fight off the mental compulsion, I prepare a secondary contingency, pre-priming [Vitrification] around my heart, lungs, and brain. Glass has been my constant companion since youth. If I’m going to die, then it’s fitting I should turn myself into a glass statue.

Light shines around me as the fishing net of pure mana lifts me from the deep. I’m moving too quickly, and pain stabs into me at the sudden shift of pressure. I fight back with my Domain as well as I can, lessening the deleterious effects of the rapid ascension. Without my body undergoing the intense tempering of ranking up so many times, I don’t doubt that this would kill me.

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I breach the surface. My ears pop. Sunlight stabs my eyes, unbearably bright after my dive underwater. I squeeze my eyes shut, plug my nose, and blow through my nostrils. The pressure in my ears finally normalizes, and I move on to shielding my eyes with mana to prevent the worst of the blindness as I blink and readjust to the brilliant light of the afternoon sun.

My makeshift diving sphere trembles as it lifts up into the air. Forces beyond me attempt to wrestle the glass away from my control. Tapirs very nearly succeeds, despite my high affinity to my chosen crafting medium, not to mention that I am tied to my own creation. I let it go, confident that I can win a contest of glass, and focus my energies on fighting off the usurpation bearing down on me.

My sphere bursts around me. The shards bounce off me, turned aside by my passive resistance to my own glass. The severing of connection resounds all about, a shivering resonance filling the air like the tinkling of a thousand tiny bells.

“Resourceful as always. You were almost beyond the range of my Skill to bind you and bring you back. That was well played,” the [Death Mage] says, a new note of respect in his voice. “You will be one of my finest knights.”

When he finishes his pronouncement, the subtlety of the domination attempts disappears entirely. In its place is raw power, crashing against me like endless waves eroding a sandy beach, driven by a furious, merciless tempest.

The more I struggle, the more the ancient [Death Mage] pours power into the Skill. If before it was a severe thunderstorm, now it’s a raging typhoon. The sheer power is awe-inspiring, as much as I hate to give Tapirs any credit. He’s simply on a different level from anyone else I’ve ever met before.

My vision tinges blood-red around the edges. The world darkens as Tapirs manifests his Domain in truth, flooding the entire area with oppressive death magic. The compulsion deepens, working its way into my head and swiftly overwhelming the hasty barriers I erected to keep my adversary out.

Autonomy. Self-determination. The concepts seems laughable as I consider the ease with which Tapirs breaches my defenses. I turn toward my fail-safe, determined to end things rather than end up in the thrall of a madman who will turn me against my family and bring my entire life’s ambitions to naught, but it’s harder than I expected.

My mana turns slow and sluggish. I push against the domination attempt, struggling to initialize the [Vitrification] that will take away the [Death Mage]’s ability to usurp me. Better to finish things on my own terms. I don’t want to work against everything I’ve built. I don’t want to simply become a blade wielded by my enemy against my friends.

Yet something restrains me. Instinct, perhaps. Desire, fierce and unyielding. Prescience? I don’t know what to call it. All I know is that I don’t want to die. Not yet. Not here. Not like this.

It’s so frustrating to lose control again. To realize that my precious agency is all simply an illusion. I swallow hard. This is just like the struggle with violence, when I was infected by the insidious effects of a corrupted higher-order Concept.

That thought flares across my consciousness like a signal in the sky. It’s enough to make my soul burn like a bonfire within me. I’m not the only one using axiomatic truths in combat. And if my concept of violence could be corrupted, so can Tapir’s concept of domination.

Howling in defiant triumph, I wrest command of my mana away Tapirs. Plans coalesce in an instant. I sink into my soul and find the telltale connection back to Tapirs. It’s easily twice as thick as the vein of violence that I severed from my inner world a few weeks prior, and at first I’m concerned that I won’t be able to affect it at all. A probing touch of sharpness soon puts my fears to rest. The first snick of the vorpal blade makes the link convulse and twitch like a worm plucked from the earth.

“Give it up, pest,” Tapirs snarls. His voice cuts through my mind, audible even in the subspace of my soul. “That’s uncomfortable, but you’re not strong enough to shut me out. Impressive quickness finding the link, though. Your adroitness pleases me; I’ll make sure to put it to good use.”

A vicious grin pulls my lips back in a snarl. I activate [Legacy of the Scalpel], preparing not to cut it in half, but to edit the meaning behind his domination. Overriding the entire concept is beyond me, but all I need to do is shift one part: the targeting mechanism.

I pour mana into my Skill, shutting out the voice that whispers Scalpel’s legacy is nothing but hot shame and bitter dishonor. I will use every weapon at my disposal if it means saving my family. The runes of his axiom sprawl before me, laid bare in their splendor, and I pounce before he realizes that I’m making a simple change, not foolishly contesting his strength.

“What are you doing?” he screams, alarm flooding through our link as he gets an inkling of my real intention. “Don’t touch that! You don’t know what powers you call upon, fool!”

Imprinting my own truth over his is easier than I could have ever dreamed. Ignoring his rant, I push onward, scrawling runes into his soul like a vengeful [Grafiti Artist]. Precisely as I hoped, he’s never faced anything like this. Attacks, yes. The power discrepancy lets him shrug off such pitiful attempts to defeat him. Subversion, however? The proof is before me, stark and undeniable as my attack slips through: he is unprepared and utterly defensive against a possibility he probably never imagined.

The new truth I introduce slips into its place in the concept eagerly, overwriting Tapirs’ current conception and rewriting his target. Through our connection, a wail of terror scrapes like claws across my face, raw and primal, as he dominates himself instead of me.

Desperate energy surges through the mana link, making my hair stand on end. My skin prickles, like I’m caught in a thunderstorm a second before lightning discharges. The dissonant thrum of overwhelming power oscillates and echoes in reverberating waves, each greater than the last as he fights off his own usurpation.

My consciousness emerges from my inner world when I drop back into the water with a splash. The [Death Mage] is thrashing about, flinging errant bolts of mana potent enough to vaporize me in an instant, and he can no longer spare me any attention to keep me aloft.

I claw together several shattered pieces of my broken diving sphere, adding new layers of glass and melting them in place with [Greater Heat Manipulation] and the force of my [Arcane Domain], creating a small boat to keep me afloat without treading water. When the mana attacks fade, I form a paddle out of glass and move closer to the dangerous Third-Threshold Mage, watching with grim satisfaction as Tapirs is locked into a self-defeating loop. His own incredible power works against him in a way he’s probably never defended against, turning his greatest strength into a sudden, terrible weakness.

For a brief moment, I watch in pity as he flails, helpless before me. Destroying him in this moment feels wrong, although I’m well aware that he wouldn’t hesitate if the table were turned. I stare as he falls from the sky, crashing down into the water nearby, and set aside any thoughts of letting him go. Mercy to this monster means cruelty toward my friends. I can’t risk letting him go. Not when their lives are at stake.

I pick up the paddle and run my fingers along the length of the handle. I don’t know how long I’ve got until he frees himself from the self inflicted attack. I’m almost certain that if he let the compulsion finish the job and he ended up dominated, some sort of artifact would kick in and break him out of the thrall of the mental and spiritual assault. I’m not willing to risk finding out if I’m right.

I draw on [Greater Heat Manipulation], warming up the glass until it’s malleable again, and fold the handle over on itself, thinning out one edge and honing it with an application of sharpness. It’s not exactly a work of art, but my new weapon will cut. It will kill. That’s all that I can ask for right now.

While Tapirs is still caught in the throws of this new, unaccounted-for attack vector, I pour mana into my creation and swing the rough-hewn blade. The edge does its job, severing a hand effortlessly. It’s almost shocking how easily even the toughened skin and bones of a Mage well into the Third Threshold parts before my crude sword.

I snag the severed hand with my Domain, levitating it over to me. With a pulse of my willpower, I hit it with [Vitrification], transforming it into glass and then overloading it with mana to break apart all of the tiny connections that comprise reality. The glass disintegrates, dissolving into minuscule pieces and falling into the sea. The dust floats away, spreading in ripples from my location.

With a grim set to my jaw, I swing again. The blade whistles through the air, and another half limb falls away. Wary of the endless regenerative abilities of a [Death Mage] who’s already shown a willingness to harvest vitality from his enemies, I devote myself to the bloody work methodically, cutting away his life bit by bit and transmuting his cut-up body into glass.

By the time I reach his head, I’m covered in gore and trembling from revulsion. Killing Scalpel was an act of desperation, a justified moment of self-defense despite unleashing my pent-up rage. Healing that treacherous snake Irving back in Halmuth and leaving him alone so the Oletheros could finish the job felt like poetic justice, even though I wrestled with the weight of his death on my conscience. I tiptoed up to a line there, though I could claim a pure motive of protecting my friends.

This?

Hacking apart Tapirs feels like crossing the line entirely. There’s no denying that, not to myself. Others will try to comfort me. Justify my actions. But I know in my heart of hearts that they’d be wrong. Murder is the only word for this. It’s no longer a fair fight where I can claim self-defense. I’m willingly executing the most powerful man in Densmore, while he’s incapable of defending himself anymore. I’m still doing it to protect my friends, but it doesn’t make me feel noble or righteous. I’m not the kind-hearted young man I once was, and that truth cuts me deeper than anything else.

I pack that away. Trauma for another day; it can get in line with all the rest, I tell myself. Saphora and her crew are still alive, and they’re watching us with slack-jawed horror. I can only hope they don’t have a scrying orb on board, or else my deeds will make it back to the Capital. Not even [Chief Inquisitor] Xharrote can help me if the recording ever becomes public.

I sigh. I have one more threat to end. And as much as I want to claim that I’m a kind soul, apparently I have zero qualms about staining my hands with blood thrice over if it means my family makes it out alive. I’m a wreck, but Lionel can patch me together later. Physically, at least. I don’t know what I’ll do about the ache deep in my soul.

Death magic wafts up all around us as I finish the job. The stench of it overwhelms my nostrils, but I press on, cutting apart the last of the ancient [Death Mage]. I only hope that it’s enough. For all I know, he’s got contingencies that will pull him back together.

If he can recover from the fires I inflicted earlier, this much damage still might not be enough. What if this is just the first battle in a war I can’t hope to win?

I wave the bloody sword in the air, beckoning my friends closer now that the danger is seemingly past. They cautiously advance, looking back and forth between me and the ship we’d originally pursued. Mikko pulls on the oars, but his gaze is locked on the Yathawn, whose craft has resurfaced and drifts nearby.

“What do you have against your left hand?” Lionel calls out when they draw up next to me. “At least this time you kept it close by, so we don’t have to go through all the trouble of regrowing it.”

I snort in surprised laughter. “All that, and you’re focused on my hand?”

He shakes his head sadly. “Good thing it’s attached to you, or you’d lose it again. Makes me worry about your head.”

“I’m always worried about his head,” Mikko mutters, finally turning to look at me. His jaw muscles clench at the sight, though his eyes don’t betray any condemnation. “You all right?”

“Not really,” I admit, my voice coming out in a shaky whisper. “We’ll deal with it later. Saphora can’t get away. Not after all the trouble we went through to catch her.”

“Agreed,” Melina interjects, her firm tone making it clear that she’ll not brook any dissention in the ranks. “Stay alert. I don’t have much mana left if we need time dilation again.”

“Understood. Time to finish what we began.” I point toward the ship and offer Lionel a grim smile. “Let’s go. We have a witch to catch.”