Syl sensed Lia die three times. Once through a master-class surveillance spell he had placed around the area to ensure that no further cloaked individuals would just pop out of nowhere, one through the loose flux release signifying a magician’s lack of ability to control their internal flux, and once when James Rokho roared in fury.

Uriel confirmed the death not a minute later, adding the fact that by standard rules, they had in fact lost that round, putting them down one to two. Syl wasn’t sure what that meant in terms of how much they were going to lose of the country in real terms, but it was insult to injury.

It was still raining.

Syl looked up towards Gluttony once he’d confirmed that Wildcard wasn’t going to accidentally cast something at his own people. That anger was almost certainly going to result in someone else getting killed—that, he was almost certain of. Whether that was James or a Cascadian was anyone’s call, but Syl knew who he had his money on.

The rain couldn’t have been natural. Gluttony had devoured the clouds themselves less than an hour ago. Even taking into account the unnatural weather effects that would thanks to a great deal of flux rushing in to fill a gap, there was no way it should have been raining this quickly. Wide-area effects that would have been required to regenerate the clouds and re-seed them would have been detected not only by Syl but by the half-dozen other perception spells that both sides had placed across the battlefield.

Unless, that was, if it had been a paragon-class spell activated on a scale that regular detection would have just clocked as atmospheric changes.

Why would she do that? Syl wondered. Changing the weather on such a broad scale was certainly possible for a paragon-class mage—though to be fair, that went for nearly anything. It was likely faster to list what a paragon-class mage couldn’t do than what they were capable of, especially when it came to devastating broad-range spells.

If she’d wanted to demolish the Aurian side, though, it would have been far easier for her to just use one of her signature spells to depopulate the entire region. It wouldn’t even have been that difficult to do it without hurting too many Cascadians if that was what she had wanted.

She didn’t even seem particularly excited about the fact that she’d just granted a boon to every magician on Cascadia’s side, providing running water for them to passively draw flux from and empower their spells with. It wasn’t the most dangerous she could have made them—that would come from river rapids or something similar, but Gluttony didn’t seem to want to open it up.

Nobody else had noticed that it was her, it seemed, which was a crucial piece of information. Paragon-class spells were extraordinarily subtle or ridiculously powerful—sometimes both, but very rarely so.

That she didn’t seem to have reacted to it was a clue in itself. The purpose of this spell couldn’t have been just to give Cascadia an advantage—no, the fact that it had to stay silent meant that she was playing a different game.

If there was a spell at all. Syl was fairly certain there was, but there were so many confounding factors that it was possible Gluttony hadn’t even acted. If Cascadia had pre-seeded the clouds or even just activated pre-prepared spells from a distance far enough that Syl’s standard detection suite couldn’t catch them—hell, if they had used their own paragon-class for some reason—then it would make sense why the Sinner didn’t care.

Too many possibilities, he thought. At the rate things were going, there were going to be a lot more deaths before he was able to conclusively state anything.

James was going next, and he looked like he was ready for blood. He was up against a tactical-class magician, but in the rain, it was very possible that a tactical-class Cascadian would be able to match him.

Under normal conditions, that was. The master-class Aurian’s flux was pulsing with a rage palpable even by those withoug any sensitivity to it. Syl suspected that his mindset had fallen in alignment with the nature of his flux cycle. If anger was his trigger, this was not going to go well for someone.

His FCD buzzed as James stalked towards his duel.

Syl frowned, which drew Bianca’s attention.

Private message, he signed to her. The secret princess nodded.

Lt. Jennifer: Syl. Gluttony is casting.

Syl: What?

Lt. Jennifer: I have my blockers set to about ninety percent, which means I can still see a bunch of the ambient flux. I wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t gotten rid of basically everything in the region, but my program’s still going on. She keeps on forming activation processes in the air. I can tell because I have it geared towards water-based spells and I can see that there’s a ton of spaces where activation processes could go around her right before they disappear.

Lt. Jennifer: Under normal circumstances, that could be environment changing, but it’s going way too suddenly for it to be anything but a spellcast. I’m not a hundred percent certain, but I’m pretty sure of it.

Syl: That confirms one theory I’ve had, then. Why come to me about this, though? Why not Uriel or the others? I’m not leading this operation.

Lt. Jennifer: You’re the only one that I think can manage this.

Syl: What makes you think that?

Lt. Jennifer: I found your file.

Over in the arena, James had started dueling his opponent. Both were using high-class spells right off the bat, modifying the arena conditions. The tactical-class magician would have normally been instantly overwhelmed, but the rain surrounding them both allowed him to cast faster and more effectively, contesting the raw power of an infuriated magician a full class above him.

Syl: What file? My student entry?

Lt. Jennifer: A different one. You’re not who you claim to be.

Syl paused, watching the duel continue to play out. James had recognized his opponent’s advantage through his rage, and he was trying to block it out now with an attraction-type spell that was mimicking what Gluttony had done on a much, much smaller scale, drawing air and water towards him and turning it into energy that he spat right back out with a projection and transmutation-type spell.

He could already tell who was going to win this, so he went back to his messages.

Syl: I told you that you wouldn’t like what you found.

Lt. Jennifer: You’re not Sylvester Auria.

Syl: On the contrary. Surely you have a DNA scan of me somewhere. It fits.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Lt. Jennifer: Those can be faked. Sylvester’s file has him on record as dying in 61 AFI during the war.

Syl: Your records may be incomplete.

Lt. Jennifer: Do explain. I’m getting the impression that you’re hiding something, but you’re doing a very poor job at it. You haven’t been limited like you claim to be at any turn of the road. I’m not going to ask you what you are again, because I know you won’t answer honestly. All I can ask is this: can you deal with this situation?

That was a fair point. Syl thought on it. Secrecy had been a priority for him, but it was true that he’d been unable to resist showing off a few times—and that was if he didn’t count the engineering, which he was abjectly unwilling to pretend to be terrible at when he had some of the brightest new minds and newest technology available to him at the academies.

The arrogance of the powerful, I suppose. There was nothing Syl could do about that now. Multiple dice had been cast already. He was starting to form suspicions about what exactly Gluttony was doing here, and if any of them were close to true, he suspected he would have much less to worry about with regards to secrecy soon.

Syl: I can’t tell you whether or not I’ll be able to. I will do my best, as I hope you do. Thank you for the information.

Lt. Jennifer: If you’re going to do anything, do it soon. I think this is about to get messy.

As if to punctuate her statement, Syl heard a cry of angry victory ring out from James’ voice as he overpowered his tactical-class opponent, his spell combination having successfully reduced the surrounding moisture to zero.

The Cascadian scrabbled back, trying to surrender. He held his hands up and towards James, mouth open to call it quits.

James finished his spell and the tactical-class Cascadian’s skin tore from his flesh, leaving exposed bloody muscle, organs, and skeleton behind.

“Poor guy,” Bianca murmured. “Nervous system’s still active.”

Not for long, it seemed. The gory corpse splattered across the ground, painting the cracked grey of the arena floor red.

The arenas weren’t cleaning up properly. The resets weren’t at full efficiency, so cracks weren’t getting mended and bloodstains weren’t getting cleared. Syl wondered if they’d bothered putting in the reserve fuel to finish resetting. Had that been a power play of some kind?

At this junction, it no longer mattered.

Us next, Syl signed to Bianca.

She nodded. The next duel was two-on-two, and they were both aware of how to take down a tactical or master-class magician pair without giving too much away. Granted, it was entirely possible that the spectators would grow to understand, but Syl had greater priorities at the moment. Secrecy was a nice thing to have, not the first priority when Gluttony was still in the sky.

Lt. Jennifer: Hey, I got some comms back up. We have evac coming in five. Shouldn’t be immediately necessary, but it’s a good backup option.

Interesting. Comms had explicitly gone down earlier, but now that things were heating up, the Sinner had stopped focusing on suppressing them. Her motives remained unclear.

Was Gluttony trying to bait Bianca out? A Sinner shouldn’t have been interested in Aurian politics, but they’d been known to do stranger things. If knowledge of a member of the royal family had leaked to the Cascadian side or Gluttony herself, it would be devastating for Auria. Their country stood on tradition. Even if that tradition had emerged in the wake of flux integration and was not yet even a full century old, it was valuable, and the loss of a royal family member would mean the loss of a propaganda machine, a powerful magician, and a vessel that could have been used for their eugenics program.

Not that all of those were things that Syl particularly cared about, but he recognized Bianca’s value to Auria—and besides, she mattered to him.

But Gluttony being here for Bianca didn’t make sense. As a motivation for Cascadia, it might have, but would Gluttony really care about the princess? She was powerful yes, but to a Sinner…

Mj. Uriel: We’ve got a problem. We selected two, but they’re saying now that this is a three-on-three—and that one of us requested that.

“Yeah, that would be me,” Drew Violet said, strolling towards Syl and Bianca with the casual arrogance of a noble even in these circumstances. “They’re using stealth-type illusion and subversion specialists. You’ll need a Violet to counteract them. Can’t go losing good magicians, after all.”

That has to be a lie, Bianca signed.

Syl didn’t disagree.

Lt. Jennifer: Drew is clear to join. It does look like he fits this fight’s profile well.

He turned back to where he knew the engineer was running operations, looking in the approximate direction of her eyes. She would understand the gesture. She had the eyes for it.

This is a setup.

Syl no longer knew whose hands he would be playing into here. There were too many players on both sides—all three, including Gluttony—and every action he took would almost certainly be a factor in someone’s larger plans for this.

Or maybe that was the magician’s arrogance speaking. It was entirely possible that these plans involved the country itself, not any single magician.

That same arrogance was what was going to carry him through this duel either way, though. In the absence of knowing which option was the best, Syl would play along. If things got too bad, secrecy was a secondary concern.

Nobody would question the deaths of everyone here if a Sinner had made an appearance, after all.

“We’re wasting time,” Drew said once they were out of earshot of the others and waiting before a larger version of the same arena . “Shall we get moving, princess?”

Neither Bianca nor Syl stopped in their stride, but a flash of understanding passed between them.

Drew knew. How much he knew was unclear, but he’d gone poking in classified enough records to find out about Bianca at the very least. If that was the case, given the cooperation from Jennifer, it was highly likely she’d obtained the same information.

That was bad, to put it lightly, but Syl could forsee it going worse.

“I have a name, you know,” Bianca said as they stepped into the dueling arena.

“Bianca, second in line to the throne,” Drew said. “Once upon a time, at least. A pleasure to meet you for the first time.”

Around them, the forcefields went up, cutting them off from outside interference and vice versa.

“You got my name wrong,” Bianca lied. She didn’t look at Syl, but the awareness was there.

“Turns out that when your family is full of brainwashers and assassins and you have a world-class engineer on your side, you get really good at finding information that’s not meant to be found,” Drew said casually. Opposite from them, the Cascadians were getting ready themselves, their FCDs loading. “A rogue element. That’s what the royals called you. A danger to the future of Auria. Worth executing if not for your power and blood.”

This time, Bianca did look at Syl. She didn’t sign or speak, but the message in her eyes was clear. What do we do?

“And you,” Drew said, turning towards Syl. “Don’t even get me started. Your files might be burnt too far to find properly, but don’t think your trail is perfect. People can still talk, and they do.”

Ah. It was getting worse. Syl loaded a program on his FCD, eyeing both the Cascadians in the arena and Drew himself.

“The Silent Archmage,” said the prismatic, clearly relishing his words. “You think you’re untouchable. You think that just because you have some power, you’re indispensable. Well, let me tell you something.”

Syl signed in the middle of Drew’s sentence. You talk too much.

Drew, of course, didn’t read it and continued. “I have power of my own. Allies. Contacts. Do you take me for a moron?”

“Yes,” Bianca said.

The prismatic snapped, and flux exploded from not just the Cascadians in the arena but the ones outside as well—and then from the Tower itself.

“You say a lot about loyalty for a traitor,” Bianca said quietly.

Flux flickered over them both. A spell, cast quickly and meant to affect the mind and senses simultaneously. Bianca’s form flickered, then righted itself. Syl purged himself with his own flux, preventing the master-class spell from taking hold.

“A temporary alliance is a small price to pay for an end to your kind, simpleton,” Drew snarled, trying to hide his surprise. “Don’t you see—“

Syl finally finished the spell he’d been holding. He’d seen enough.

Strategic-class transmutation spell. The Wedding of Cana.

This spell was an infamous one most known for its use by a magician most commonly known as Greed.

Syl had seen it cast once. He’d never forgotten a single detail.

Its range was short when cast like this on the fly, but it didn’t need to be very long. With the amount of flux he was capable of supercharging it with, he could target an area the size of a basketball, which he did.

This spell was situational in that it required a great deal of flux, its range was short, and it only showed any major effects when it had been ritual cast for a good deal of time or was cast in its native form at paragon-class. At this level, at close range, anyone who could see it coming could simply avoid the area it damaged.

Drew Violet had not been paying attention to the area of effect.

Drew Violet, who was not a strategic-class magician, did not have the internal flux to defend himself as four-fifths of his brain melted into still water.

Then, as spells flashed out and fresh forcefields snapped into place behind them, as flux exploded from a sudden portal in the side of the tower spewing out Cascadians by the dozen, a single, terrifyingly calm voice reached Syl’s ears.

“Finally,” Gluttony said. “It’s starting.”