Macbeth had been smart enough to remain hidden, shrouding his core and concealing his aura. But Jabari could sense him as clearly as the sun in the sky. Concealment was a branch of the soul arts not many took the time to give much attention. It was interesting to find a gold authority mage outside of the seminary who knew enough about it to do so.
Jabari stepped away from the pool of blood and death he’d wrought in barely five minutes. He walked towards the overturned car holding the kid. His steps were simple as if on a casual afternoon stroll.
The door on the side of the car hidden from him shot out, blasted away by a significant force. From the hole it made, Macbeth stepped out. He cracked his neck, adjusting his shoulders as if loosening up for a duel. Too much posturing before a fight was the domain of children. But considering what he had done to protect the child, Jabari let him have his moment.
When the instructor was done, he turned his attention on Jabari.
“I hope the seminary understands this is as much a declaration of war on the Baron and government as it is on the academy,” he said.
Jabari was mildly impressed. The man’s voice was authoritative, almost condescending. Someone else could’ve mistaken him for someone far stronger than the gold mage that he was. But Jabari was not someone else. From the distance he could hear the man’s fear thundering like the clouds of a blizzard.
Jabari gave the man no answer. Instead, he reached behind him. A hand went into a slit in his cassock somewhere at his lower back. He wrapped his hand around a slightly curved hilt, and pulled out a short sword. It was a white sword, curved slightly so that it looked like a scimitar. But where the breath of a scimitar was slim, this one was as wide as his hand at its curve. Its blade was outrageously sharp but did not glint in the sun light. The blade, an almost milky white, was the color of morning clouds. Its handle was brown as if someone had burned it in leather. The weapon came free with a particularly bloody hiss.
Its name was Varmei, and Varmei was a friend to no one.
Jabari held it off to the side as he stood and waited.
“What in the name of God is that?” Macbeth stammered.
A weak mind, Jabari noted in response. He knew the man had scanned the weapon with his gold eyes and knew exactly what the man had found. This was merely one half of a twin. To any who could sense something of its kind they would find it eerily empty, void of reia or will, power or purpose. It was proof that Macbeth was at the pinnacle of gold, merely a step from advancing into the authority of a Baron.
It was a pity the man would not see Barony.
Still, Jabari was pleased to see the man surpass his fear before bursting into a flurry of movement. In a flash he stood before Jabari, and his arm struck out in a devastating blow.
Jabari leaned to the side, keeping his feet beneath him. Where the gold’s fist stopped, lightning shot out, traveling till it struck a tree. Jabari felt the power behind the blow. He dodged to the side to avoid the kick that followed.
Sword still in hand, he stepped away from the man, increased the distance between them while closing his distance to the upturned vehicle.
Macbeth struck at him again, chasing him down with a flurry of blows. Each strike was a herald for a burst of lightning. Jabari dodged each one, his feet carrying him graciously in a dance of life, his body bending and weaving in avoidance.
In the brief exchange he had mastered Macbeth’s pattern of attack. This was the problem with the way soul mages fight. It was a myriad of patterns no matter how varied and multiple. To an attentive and knowledgeable enough opponent, every move came unraveled. It was the reason the boy would be raised to be a brawler at heart, a soul mage with no pattern that wasn’t subconscious. And even that, Jabari would do his best to chip away from the boy. Or, if his plans worked as he intended, the boy would do away with by himself.
Macbeth broke his rhythm, halting his charge before resuming it abruptly. When he attacked again, he did so differently. Jabari felt him cycle his reia. With it coursing through his channels, Macbeth moved.
The gold mage blinked through the atmosphere, moving in streaks of lightning to reach Jabari with the activation of a skill Jabari didn’t care to listen to.
When Macbeth arrived, he came from above.
Jabari side stepped the attack with ease and the man struck the earth with a boom. The ground dropped beneath them and Jabari stabilized himself as dust and earth came up in an eruption of sand and grass and… Jabari was certain he’d felt a piece of glass bounce off his cassock.
Macbeth struck before the dust cleared. Again, sword held out and away from the instructor, Jabari side stepped the attack. Macbeth was doing what he could in this fight but Jabari was yet to be tested.
If he was being honest, he would likely describe the fight as boring. For the first time in a while he wanted to return home. Back home there were opponents that tested him—mages strong enough to make him fight with his core unveiled. Here, there were only children—none even past the age of a hundred and fifty.
Macbeth also didn’t seem to be taking him seriously. Jabari knew this as he knew they fought now in a crater of the instructor’s own making. It did not annoy him, but it did not please him either. He had promised to make the man’s death painless, though it had been a promise to no one, more a reward than anything. He’d intended on making the man feel as if he’d done his best before sending him off into death, but at this rate it was going to take forever.
So, with a growing lack of patience, Jabari raised his sword above his head as the instructor came at him with a frontal attack, driving a blow into his midsection, the home of every soul mage’s core. Jabari turned his raised weapon on its side and brought it down.
The instructor’s attack changed.
Macbeth reacted on nothing but instinct. He brought both arms up to shield himself. The flat of the blade struck his crossed fore arms above him and drove him to his knee. The impact deepened the crater and the dust fled in a ring of force around them. Jabari withheld the effects of the blade. It was not his wish to devastate the entire forest.
When the dust settled, it revealed Macbeth on one knee. From his arms blood dripped, and beneath the sleeves of his robe runes came alive in yellow lights.
There was a certain calm that came with the settling of dust. A dampening revelation that crushed the tension of the instructor’s actions underfoot. In it Macbeth felt his mistakes. In it Jabari gave him the opportunity to correct them.
“Now do you take me seriously?” Jabari asked.
Fear, worry, confusion, and rage warred in Macbeth’s expression. In an instant he picked his emotion of choice.
Rage, Jabari thought, was always the emotion of choice for a soul mage. And when Macbeth picked it, he deigned the man ready to face his death.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The world around Macbeth came alight, lightning crackled, seeping into the air around him in yellow streaks that blinked in and out of existence as he activated every rune in his arsenal. Where the lightning had influenced only the gold mage, making its way into the world with bursts of attack, it now permeated the world around him, corrupting the world’s reia with Macbeth’s own. Jabari was almost impressed. The man was combining his ability with the use of rune magic to emulate the effects of Barony. He was activating skills without verbal chants.
Sadly, as impressive as the man’s action was, it couldn’t save him. This was, unfortunately, his limit. Perhaps given more time and more opportunities he would’ve broken into Barony. Perhaps not. It made this meeting more unfortunate. Jabari almost felt pity for the man.
Almost.
Macbeth moved with a new vigor, his power on full display. To Jabari’s suppressed senses he was a dying hearth in a vast world of reia. Insignificant. But he replied the man’s power with one of equal force.
He raised his sword one more time as Macbeth pushed himself forward, blood and lightning crackling in the atmosphere, and brought the flat of it down casually. Macbeth displayed his battle intelligence in his next move. He abandoned his attack like a child did a toy that no longer interested them. Knowing he didn’t have what it took to evade, Macbeth threw his power into defense.
A light of pale yellow formed around him in a dome as he crossed his arms above his head again. Once more he was emulating the realm of Barony through the aid of runes. The light that surrounded him emanated from the robe he wore. It solidified into a barrier of crackling lightning, activating a skill without words. Blood dripped from Macbeth’s nose as he enforced the barrier with the power of both his reia and his countless runes, and around him a solid dome of lightning sprang to life.
Jabari’s sword did not hesitate. It came down upon the barrier with the casual grace of a war hammer on glass.
He could only hope the young mage did not hold his defeat against himself in death. Jabari, after all, was a power too strong. By even his own rules, he wasn’t meant to be here.
……………………….
Macbeth had never fought a Baron before. It was one of his dreams to do combat with one, to test the limits of his strength as more gold mages were proving weaker than him with every passing day. A part of the reason he’d agreed to do Lord Darnesh the favor of taking Seth to the academy so early was because the gold lord had agreed to spar him officially after making a petition to his Baron.
Darnesh had a reputation. It was one he’d held long before he’d bent the knee to the Baron of the Deep. In the realm of gold authority, he was said to be unmatched. Thus, barring Barons, he was the next best thing.
So confusion was Macbeth’s steady spouse as he faced this priest. At first he’d thought he’d stand a chance, allowing the silver mages riddle him with bullets. He couldn’t sense the man’s authority or see the wisps of reia rising from him in his gold eyes even after Darnesh’s son had pointed him out. Macbeth attributed this failure to quite the complex shroud the priest had over his core. But even Barons were forced to use their reia reserves, drawing from their cores when faced with those guns.
When the priest had evaded every attack and Macbeth had watched a few shots bounce of the man’s cassock without impact, he brought himself to believe the seminary had sent a reverend of Baron authority after him. Macbeth was flattered at the thought. It showed that the seminary was smart, that they had done their research. After all, nothing short of a Baron would suffice to kill him.
It was sad to find himself in such a position, though, since the council had made the decision to leave the seminary alone. They’d believed that if they stayed out of its way, the seminary would do the same. But there were those who didn’t believe the same, those who believed it was only a matter of time before the seminary struck out against them.
Macbeth was one of those people. Thus, an attack from the seminary didn’t come as a surprise.
He had worried for the safety of the child when the priest had stood before him, naught else but death and gore behind him where there had once been soldiers—the typical visage of a priest’s presence. Then the man had drawn a soul forged weapon and Macbeth’s gold eyes had been blind to it. Only then did his panic begin.
There were only two types of weapon Macbeth knew he could not sense. One was a weapon forged by mundane blacksmiths, unsouled even if skilled—he could sense them but they were too weak to afford much attention. The other were weapons of significantly higher authority than himself. The latter was merely speculation, a theoretical conspiracy, as he could sense Baron level weapons.
But the weapon the reverend held fell into none of these categories. What had brought the cold touch of fear on him was the fact that he had sensed the weapon very clearly. In fact, he’d never sensed a weapon clearer than he did this one. And from it he sensed nothing—an emptiness with neither purpose nor will. Every weapon had a purpose or a will, no matter how minute. It inherent at its forging or ingrained over time. To have none was to be the impossible in a world of the impossible.
The reverend’s weapon had none of it. It was as though it had been forged of nothing, with nothing, by nothing. The emptiness terrified him.
Macbeth had schooled the terror quickly as the academy taught, believing that if he had survived the first world crack and lived long enough to climb through the authorities from his first fragment to his fifth, from fragmented to iron, from iron to silver, to now stand at the peak of gold, then he would survive this.
Then they exchanged blows and Macbeth learned more.
The fight with the reverend so far had been an education in skills. Everything he threw at the man the man evaded easily, moving mere moments before he struck.
Macbeth thought to test his theory that the man was somehow predicting his moves, calculating his points of attack before he even made them. But when the man had raised his sword and finally attacked, panic had flooded Macbeth and he discarded of the idea. The blow was heavy and the sword weighed significantly more than it looked.
On his knees, and debatably at the mercy of his opponent, his confidence had waned while his anger grew.
“Now do you take me seriously?” the priest said.
His tone was flat and filled with disinterest. He sounded like a man who thought he was wasting his time. It annoyed Macbeth greatly and he chose to show the priest the error of his ways.
An affinity with lightning had been the gift the soul fragments had given him, and he had perfected it to its limit as a gold. He knew that there would be no more to accomplish until he became a Baron. But with rune magic he could push himself a step further. The technique was a mockery of the authority Barons possessed but it made him significantly more powerful than his peers. Macbeth believed he could, even if for the barest moment, stand toe to toe against a Baron while under its effect.
So his surprise had been more than palpable when he’d activated his runes and struck out at the reverend only for every fiber of his soul to scream in danger at him, begging… no, pleading with him to pick flight over fight.
Macbeth abandoned his attack like a disease infested whore and threw his power into defense. He invoked his reia into the world and pulling out every ounce stored in each rune scripted into his robe. He threaded once more on the realm of Barony to manifest a shield around him just to bear the brunt of the descending sword.
In this moment naught else mattered. The safety of the Darnesh boy was no longer important. The boy’s death had become inevitable as priests rarely ever left witnesses. Macbeth’s safety was all that mattered now.
The boy would die and he would make his apologies to the house of Darnesh. He would perhaps offer a gift or two of extravagant nature, even secure a black soul fragment for their youngest son in anticipation of when the time came for him to be souled. But first, he would survive and report today’s events to the council. Maybe they would take the threat of the seminary’s existence more seriously when they heard of what had happened here.
Then the sword came down and the wrath of a thousand soul beasts came down with it.
When the weapon broke through the shield, unhindered by its presence, Macbeth knew all he’d done was for naught. If he had gauged his enemy from the very beginning and acted on his initial instincts, perhaps things would have been different. All those lives wasted, the Baron’s men dead alongside the Academy’s. He should’ve used the time to escape.
Macbeth accepted his fate in the last moments of his time alive. He would die today to a priest whose name he didn’t know. But he would die knowing it wasn’t the reverend that had killed him.
It was his hubris.
…………………….
Jabari brought his sword down with a power equal to the one that stood against him. It broke through the instructor’s barrier without resistance. It came down on the man’s rune infested forearms crossed over his head, smelting flesh and muscles, and crushing bones. In its descent, it crushed the man’s skull and flattened his head. An explosion of blood and bones blasted backwards, splattering against the dying vestige of what was left of the man’s barrier.
When the barrier faded away, the blood simply dropped to the ground like spilled water.
Jabari swung his sword in a simple arc, ridding it of whatever blood remained. He sheathed it and turned away from the dead instructor. Somewhere in the swing of the sword the body fell on its side.
Jabari walked out of the wide crater the instructor had made in their fight. He was unimpressed by its size and the fight they’d just had. Disappointed, he made his way to the upturned car.
There, the reason for all this death laid unconscious.