Dapplegrim had only closed part of the distance between him and the rest of his group when Ihra revealed the mage. With a stomp of his feet, the Djinn tore a wall of rock free from the side of the cliff, completely blocking the arrows that Ihra had already sent flying toward him.

Clever, Jasper had to admit, but the mage clearly hadn’t seen him - he’d left his back completely exposed. Jerking on Dapplegrim’s reins, he swung around and above the others in a wide arc, hoping the mage wouldn’t notice him. As for the rest of the guards, who continued charging toward his four friends, he could only hope that Ihra could hold them off a little longer.

The stone mage didn’t see him. The spectral wings were as silent as a whisper, offering no sound to alert the guard until Jasper attacked.

Swooping high up into the air, Jasper renewed the fiery charge spell before he spurred Dapplegrim forward. The wind whistled in his ears, fire billowing behind him in great plumes, as the two dove toward the unprotected back of the mage. The stone wall complicated things. Sure, he could splat the mage against the rock like a bug on a windshield, but Jasper was pretty sure that would hurt him and Dapplegrim just as much. Instead, he readied Scourge of Despair on the edge of his fingertips, and prepared to jerk Dapplegrim away at the last second.

But as the old poet said, the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. As the two descended on the unsuspecting mage, something unexpected happened. The guard stepped into the wall.

The rock bulged and stretched around him like a piece of saltwater taffy forgotten on a hot summer day. Then the wall snapped back into place around him, obscuring him entirely from view.

What the hell? Frantically jerking on the reins, he managed to swerve Dapplegrim to the side just in time. He wasted his essence, though, as the Scourge of Despair whistled harmlessly through the empty space, smacking uselessly into the stone wall.

As he shot past the impromptu barrier, he saw what had happened to the mage. There was no sign of his greenish armor, nor was even so much as a single scrap of his skin left visible. Instead, a thin sheet of grey rock covered him from head to toe, encasing him like a suit of armor. The rock bent and crackled with each step he took, but there were no vulnerabilities - Ihra’s arrows bounced off it uselessly.

Sweeping his gaze back to his friends, he saw their situation was well in hand. Ihra had dropped another two guards, and though the remaining five had almost caught up to them, she was no longer alone. Tsia had managed to break free from the stone shackles that had bound her and had planted herself - hovering a few feet in the air above the path - between the guards and the others. They can handle themselves, he quickly decided, and started to turn his head back toward the mage.

His head rocked back as a small boulder smashed into his chest. His armor held, spreading the force of the impact across his entire body, but he could still feel the cracking of his ribs. Worse, For a moment, he hung, suspended only by his stirrups until the leather. Somehow they held, and despite the explosion of pain working its way across his body, he managed to grab hold of Dapplegrim’s tail and try to pull himself back up into the saddle.

“Gamlābnu.” The stone mage screamed again, tearing an even larger boulder from the cliff face. Struggling desperately, he yanked harder on Dapplegrim’s, ignoring the screaming in his ribs as he pulled himself back into the saddle and Dapplegrim, responding entirely on her own dove out of the trajectory of the rock. But like a locked-on homing missile, the boulder swerved back toward him, mere feet away now.

There was only one thing he could do. Jasper threw himself out of the saddle as the bolder shot overhead. The horse screamed in pain as the rock clipped the back of her neck, but he had been the target and as he fell, the boulder adjusted again in his direction, speeding up. Damn it.

His hands shook as he hastily pulled every thread of essence he could snag toward him, weaving it together into Spectral Wings. A spasm of pain tore across his ribs as the spell took hold; then the wings emerged.

He darted away from the rock, leaving it in his dust as he turned a tight spiral back toward the cliff. Shooting past Dapplegrim, he yelled for the horse to head back to the cliff - not wanting the horse to be dashed on the rocks whenever the spell wore off - and aimed his sights at the mage.

Gamlābnu. Gamlābnu. Gamlābnu. Stomping his foot in quick succession, the mage tore one boulder after the other from the cliff, hurling them toward Jasper. He dodged the first, barely skirted past the second, and cried out in pain as the third clipped his arm, sending him into an uncontrolled dive.

He recovered almost immediately and willed himself forward. Sweeping mere feet above the narrow path, a quick glance over his shoulder confirmed the mage had managed to regain control of the boulders, which shot after him in close pursuit. Damn it. Focusing on the mage, he fired off a Sacred Star, only to watch in disappointment as the fire exploded harmlessly against the man’s stony shell.

Yanking his sword free from its scabbard, he let the flames of Fiery Charge spread down the blade, agilely dodging one of the boulders when it got too close, and then dove in for the attack. Let’s see if he can shrug this off.

But his instincts were screaming for him to stop. Unsure why, he swerved to the side when he was mere feet from the mage. It was the right decision.

With a wave of his hand, the stone mage summoned another wall of rock into the space between them.At the speed he was going, Jasper’s turn wasn’t fast enough to entirely thwart his momentum.His legs slammed against the wall and dragged across the rough rock painfully, tearing into his flesh, before he managed to break free into the open air.

Still, the mage’s trick ended up benefitting Jasper. He didn’t know whether the mage was unable to guide the rocks without seeing them or if he simply couldn’t alter their trajectory that fast, but the three boulders collided with the stone barrier with a resounding boom. And as he spun himself in a tight circle, he saw a small portion of the wall had crumbled. It wasn’t a large opening, no more than three or so feet on either side, but it was enough.

He squirmed through before the mage had time to recast the spell; the spectral wings glided seamlessly through the rock, fluttering with the same heavy beat as always, despite his enhanced speed. He spun to the side in a sharp curl and lashed out with the edge of Arutû’s sword, ablaze with the white flames of Fiery Charge. The sword scored a long, charred channel across the breadth of the mage’s stone breastplate, but it couldn't penetrate all the way through and though a few tongues of fire burned briefly in its wake, they guttered out quickly, as the stone offered no fuel for the fire.

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Abandoning his attempts to recast the boulder spell, the mage lashed out with his own weapon, a stone-encrusted mace whose head outsized Jasper’s by a large measure. Aided by the wings, Jasper easily ducked beneath the blow and thrust straight at the Djinn’s heart, aiming for the already damaged section of the breastplate. He missed his target, landing a few inches to the left, but his strike still scored a hit. Empowered by the unnatural flames, the sword’s tip pierced through the stone armor more deeply this time, sinking deep enough to slice into the Djinn’s pecs.

The mage’s grunts of pain were muffled by the stone shell that covered him, but his actions were unaffected. Reacting with the well-honed instincts of a trained warrior, the captain's left hand immediately clamped down on the flaming sword and pinned it against his body. A frantic tug-of-war ensued as Jasper struggled to wrest his sword free from the Djinn’s grip, but the stone mage had the advantage of long years of training and more levels. Keeping the sword tightly pinned, the mage planted his right leg firmly on the ground and swung his enormous mace straight toward Jasper’s chest.

Jasper abandoned the tug-of-war in the nick of time, dropping to his knees a fraction of a second before the mace tore through the space he had been standing in.But the mage had been expecting that too.Lashing out with his other foot, he caught Jasper square in the ribs.

A cry of agony tore free from his mouth as his already damaged ribs gave way. He was tossed backward like a ragdoll, straight into the remnants of the stone wall the mage had summoned. His head snapped hard against the rock, sending a myriad of shooting stars across his vision, and he fell to his knees.

Jasper tried to move, to get out of the way the blow he knew must be coming next, but his hands and feet responded only haltingly to the screaming in his head. As he struggled to rise, the rock beneath him dissolved into a viscous liquid that wormed its way up his limbs, binding him in place.

I...Have….To....Move... Barely able to form conscious thoughts, dark spots swam across his vision as the guard knelt down and grabbed him by the throat. The rough, rocky shell of the Djinn’s armor tore at his skin like sandpaper as the man squeezed, but after a moment, the captain released him. Slowly the rock covering his head receded, allowing Jasper to catch his first glimpse of his opponent.

The Djinn’s skin was a darker grey than any Jasper had seen before, more stone than flesh, and his eyes were equally strange, a faint pink possessed of an almost crystalline essence. His straight black horns towered nearly two feet above his skull, indicating his age and prowess. The man was a monster.

“Why did you maim my son?” The man slapped him across the face with a hand encased in stone. “Who sent you? What game is your House plotting against our city?”

“Don’t know….what you’re talking about.”Jasper managed to rasp out haltingly, his brain only dimly remembering…something about Tsia.

An arrow shot over Jasper’s shoulder and struck the man’s cheek.It dug in just deep enough for the tip to find purchase.With a muttered curse, the man yanked it out and, stomping his foot, summoned enough stone to repair the protective wall.

He returned his attention to Jasper, grabbing him by the throat again. “My son.” He growled. "Why?"

His interrogation was interrupted again as a blade of wind smashed into him from the side. It shattered uselessly against his armor and with a grunt of annoyance and a flick of his fingers, the Djinn pulled a bolder from the cliff and flung it in the direction of the attack. Not bothering to watch if his blow had connected, the man shifted his leg again, and raised another wall of stone, completely cutting them off from the rest of the world.

Jasper was barely conscious at this point. What little air was getting to his lungs was wasted as, with every shallow breath, his ribs screamed in agony. The man shook him again, yelling something angrily at him, but he barely noticed.

A peace reached out to him - a feeling he had felt once before - and he eagerly accepted it. It washed over him faster this time, the ceaseless flowing of a babbling brook in a sheltered mountain glen. A soft wind blew against his cheek as a silent deer stalked by, bending its head to drink from the icy waters. I am the river; I flow around all things. I am the rock; all things flow around me.

The words floated through his head, strange sounds that in his oxygen-deprived state bore no meaning that he could comprehend, but they felt right. A trickle of power begin to flow through him, the first rains of spring that quickly turned into a flood. Then a sense of surrealism swept over him as he once again found himself floating above his body as his unconscious took control.

The response was immediate. The stone shackles around his hands and feet burst into a thousand broken shards as a wave of blue fire erupted from his spine. Wordlessly, he rose to his feet.

To the Djinn’s credit, he responded decisively. Letting go of Jasper’s throat, he swung his stone-encrusted mace straight toward his head. It was a crushing blow that if it had connected would have likely exploded his skull like a melon hit by a baseball bat. But Jasper’s body responded faster. Possessed of a strength fueled by the burning of his soul, his hand reached out and stopped the mace dead in its tracks. With a simple squeeze of his fingers, the weapon shattered.

Black, feathered wings fluttered in and out of existence behind him as he floated slightly above the ground. Slowly, almost theatrically, he extended his hand toward the mage.

“FEED ME YOUR SINS.” A booming voice issued from his lips, both his voice and yet not, that reverberated against the narrow walls of the hastily-created chamber.

With a pained cry, the stone mage arched his back, clutching at his side as his essence was forcibly ripped out of him. But Dūrilī’s father was still not done fighting.

Blood flowed freely from his mouth as he chomped down on his tongue, and slowly, painfully, he straightened himself out. His eyes were wild and crazed, and if Jasper had still been in full possession of his body, he might have turned and run. But his subconscious ignored the man’s rage, pulling harder on the veteran warrior who glared at him balefully.

“You want to burn your soul, weakling? Fine. Two can play at that game,” he snarled. The air grew hazy, full of silt and soot, and the ground beneath them dissolved into a bubbling pit of mud. It quickly spread across the Djinn’s armor, reinforcing and expanding it, and stretched out its tendrils to the blazing being floating above it.

The blue fire scorched the liquid stone, withering it to nothing but it kept coming and coming, growing closer and closer to latching onto his skin and while the battle between stone and fire raged, the Djinn had not been idle. With a wave of his hand, he summoned the shattered pieces of his mace back into his hand, fusing it together like new, and, with a mighty roar, swung it again at Jasper.

Jasper blocked the blow again, intercepting the mace's shaft with a steady arm. This time, though, he could not so easily remove it from the Djinn’s hand. Empowered by the burning of his soul, the two wrestled for control in a near deadlock; their arms shook like leaves in a summer storm, but the mace barely budged.

Joining his second hand to the effort, the Djinn slowly bent Jasper’s hand back, inching it closer to his skull, and as it moved, the mace head began to bulge, with long stone spikes erupting from its base in every direction. The Djinn seemed on the cusp of victory.

Until that is, he crumbled to the ground as the last dregs of his soul were consumed by the magic. The spell continued to take from him, devouring his armor and withering his corpse as he sank face-first into the viscous mud he'd created.

Jasper had won - a fact he barely had time to absorb before he himself fell unconscious.