The Magic Tower representatives did not leave that day – not even the Chancellor. Instead, they listened to message after message left by Caligra, translating and transcribing them. Everyone in the room was now fully convinced of the existence of a historical era that became the mythical Tower Era over the ages, and was greatly interested in the information relayed of the last days of the city-state of Dragonia. Of special interest was the event that started its decline: the Black Sun Starfall.
“One day, without warning, the sun turned black, and the stars began to fall from the heavens,” Torval read from the transcript. “All over the world, burning and molten metal rocks of various colors streaked from sky to earth. Wherever they landed, they changed the flora and fauna, and caused anyone highly attuned to magic to be mentally affected; many went insane, especially those with high numbers of mana circles in their mana hearts. For the entire duration of the event – nearly a month – the majority of our magical infrastructure stopped working, and even after it ended much of it remained broken. In addition to many mutations to plants and beasts, strange creatures began to appear, some of them highly dangerous, though most of these vanished when the sun returned to normal.
“Unfortunately, the mutations and madness induced by the starfall were permanent, and we lost the vast majority of our most powerful mages to insanity, as well as our brethren the dragons. There was no recovering from this. All the tensions that had existed, both internally and between cities, exploded into conflict during the Black Sun Starfall, and true war began shortly thereafter. It was the beginning of the end.
“We have no idea what caused the Black Sun Starfall; the gods have been silent on the matter. Perhaps they do not know either. What I do know is that even if we had known it was coming, the outcome would have been the same. Was it fate’s way of saying that our civilization had reached the end of its life, of forcing its end? We will never know. I will never know. It will forever remain the greatest mystery in history.”
Torval shook his head. “That honestly sounds terrifying, but strangely exciting.”
The Chancellor smiled at him. “That’s because you are young. Even disasters seem exciting to those who crave excitement. To me, it is merely terrifying, not the least because there is no way of knowing if it will ever happen again. Well, today is at its conclusion. I will collect my people and return to the Magic Tower.”
“Chancellor, is there no chance I can stay longer?” Dean Derx asked. “I am a scholar of history, after all, and this is simply incredible.”
“You think you’re the only one who is excited by all this?” Master Gold said. “But we have responsibilities at the Tower. Besides, we haven’t even worked out the official relationship between Rai and the Magic Tower yet.”
“Master Gold has the right of it,” Elliot said.
“Then… can I at least run an errand in the city first?”
“What errand is that?” Elliot asked.
“It’s personal.”
“All right,” the Chancellor said. “But be quick about it.” She turned to Rai. “Rai. You are an excellent field scholar, and I look forward to working with you in the future. I will meet with you in perhaps a week’s time to discuss the working arrangements between you and the Magic Tower.” She smiled. “These are exciting times we live in. Who knows what the future may hold?”
“I, too, look forward to our working relationship,” Rai replied. “May it be a fruitful one.”
-x-
Rai’s eyes snapped open at the mental ping from his alarm ward. Someone had just opened his door, despite it being the middle of the night.
How did the organization get people inside? Rai thought worriedly, throwing aside his blankets and rolling out of bed onto his feet, snatching his sword off his bedside stand. His eyes darted around the room, but though he could see everything dimly in the moonlight streaming through his second-story window, including the open door, he saw no intruder.
“Dancing Sparks,” he cast, centering the flash in the middle of the room while closing his eyes. He saw spots when he opened them, but he hadn’t been blinded – and he now saw two humanoid figures outlined in dancing electrical sparks, one of which was only a few feet away. Both were armed with daggers, which were also outlined with sparks. The one further away reeled back, but the one closest to him immediately struck with a flurry of attacks, becoming visible: a man (or woman) wearing leathers studded with iron and a bandana over his face.
Rai twisted out of the way of the first thrust, backstepped away from the follow-up swing, which tore his bedclothes but missed his skin by a fraction of an inch, and then took a hit just below his ribs from the third strike, another thrust. He stepped back, shifting his stance and infusing himself with a mix of qi and mana. His body heated up, and the bleeding from his injury stopped as the wound slowly began to close. Then stepped forward, slashing rapidly in a diagonal, his sword blazing brightly with fire and lightning as he activated his new third tier art “Elemental Brand.” The weapon cut through whatever clothing or armor the enemy was wearing as easily as their flesh, carving deeply from shoulder to hip and sending a great blast of elemental energy surging into the foe, blasting them back fifteen feet to slam into the wall with a crack.
Rai rushed forward after them, intent on finishing them off, but they counterattacked as soon as he was within range with a trio of slashes. Ray deflected one with his sword and dodged another, then used Silver Parry to send the third attack upward, leaving his opponent wide open. He slammed his left palm, trailing flames and lightning, into the foe’s chest, whereupon fire and lightning blasted into and engulfed them. They went down with the smell of burning flesh, burnt to a crisp.
“Dammit! Fireball!” yelled the other one, stepping back around the door and becoming visible as he did. A conflagration exploded, catching the entire room on fire… except for Rai, who jumped back and blinked out of reality for an instant at the moment of the explosion.
“Shit!” he swore, looking around at the burning furniture and carpet. He grabbed his belt, which had the dimensional bag, which had resisted the flames, and rushed out of the room. The surviving intruder stumble-ran down the hall and smacked into the wall at the corner. Just as they turned, Rai dropped his sword and flung out his hand.
“Crackling Ray!”
Not one, but two cords of violet lightning shot forth, streaking down the hallway and striking the fleeing mage. The mage spasmed and collapsed.
Rai’s sixth sense for danger blared and he spun around taking a step backward as he did, but he was still unable to avoid two of the three rapid rapier thrusts from the now-suddenly-visible third assailant, a black-leather-clad woman with a bandana covering her face. He stumbled back, throwing his hands forward with a shout of “Lightning Bolt!” A full-sized bolt of lightning cracked down the hallway, slamming into the stone wall at the end, but the woman sidestepped, her body blinking out of sight at the exact right moment, leaving her unscathed upon her reappearance. A man’s scream sounded out from further away, only to be immediately cut short.
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She stepped forward, striking in another rapid flurry of thrusts. Her moves were quick and precise, and though Rai managed to dodge the first, the other two pierced him. She flung the blood off her sword by whipping it to the side.
“Invisibility!” Rai shouted, disappearing from sight. He immediately crouched down. The woman stabbed directly above him. Kicking out, his slammed his foot into the woman’s ankle and sent her to the floor, reappearing, before grabbing his sword and rising. The woman rolled aside and sprang to her feet, evading his attempt to skewer her, stepping into a guarded stance. The two faced off, the woman uninjured and Rai full of holes (which his current Blazing Soul stance prevented from bleeding further).
“You’re with the ouroboros organization,” Rai growled. “I don’t know who you are or what your goals are, but if you think attacking me in Lord Amit’s home is going to go unpunished, you’re insane.”
“Your combat skills are better than I expected, but Eternity sent elites tonight. You won’t survive. After all, we three aren’t the only ones who came.”
“Then I guess I’d better finish you off quickly.”
The woman’s eyes flicked to his injuries, and she noticed that they were beginning to gradually heal.
“What the hells?” she said in surprise. “What kind of combat art is that?”
“One that takes advantage of the fact that I use both qi and mana to accelerate my healing in combat. Not that it matters, since you’ll be dead soon.”
He struck. His sword moved blindingly fast as he stabbed, activating both his new third tier art Lightning Strike, an enhanced and refined version of Swift Strike, as well as the support combat art Thunder Sunder. It seemed as though the air itself was torn apart by his thrust, generating a beam of lightning and a beam of flames on either side of his blade. His sword pierced through the woman’s chest, erupting out her back, and the beams struck her in the shoulders, shooting down her arms and across her chest. Her eyes went wide and rolled back, She slid off his sword and landed lifelessly on the floor, blood pooling around her.
Rai mentally commanded his sword’s elemental energies to cease, then slipped out of his combat stance. He quickly put on his belt and slid his sword into it, then pulled out a healing potion from the pouch and quaffed it. His wounds healed, leaving only tender sore spots for each of the stab wounds made by the woman.
Smoke drifted out of his bedroom.
Dammit! I have no way of putting out the flames… I can’t conjure water like a spirit mage or scholastic mage!
-x-
A short while earlier, in a room on the opposite side of the hall and down a little, the sound of a man shouting “Fireball” woke the kobolds from their slumber. While Torval looked around blearily from his nest of blankets on the floor, Isa immediately sprang to her feet and summoned her cloak and halberd from the Equipment Ring she wore. She quickly scanned the room, noting the partially-open door but failing to find any intruders. Her sixth sense for danger was blaring, however, and she knew that they weren’t alone. She slipped into a wide combat stance, shooting blood up to cover the blade of her halberd and infusing the weapon with qi. Silently, she cast Enhance Scales, infusing her scales with defensive force.
“Stop skulking like a weakling and attack me already,” she growled.
“Mana Bolt!” a woman cried, appearing next to the door with one hand outstretched. Two shining red bolts zipped out and together, smashing into her, and at the same time a lightly-armored man carrying a double-edged sword and a large wooden shield flickered into visibility as he swung down across her chest with the power of an art, spraying blood and cracking bone, forcing her back a couple steps.
She entered Berserk Mode, thrusting her halberd forward. Clearly using an art, the man parried the strike with his shield. She turned the failed strike into an almost circular motion and followed up with a powerful slash before he could counterattack the weight of her weapon multiplying at the moment of its impact with his torso, sending him stumbling backward as blood fountained out of him from the deep gash. He regained his footing and lunged, bringing his word down with all his might.
“Sword Breaker!” she shouted, swinging her halberd to meet his blade with all the might of a third tier art. Steel met silversteel and lost; the man’s sword shattered into pieces. She shrugged off the pair of mana bolts that struck her an instant later, raising her halberd high and bringing it down with a shout of “Wrath Strike!” The man tried to block with his shield, the object glowing slightly as he reinforced it with an art. It, too, shattered, and her halberd cut his arm off halfway down his forearm and continued through to carve into his chest. He screamed in agony at the same time as a deafening crack of thunder echoed from the hallway.
She impaled him with a lunge, cutting off his cries.
Two more mana bolts struck her, and she turned toward the mage, yanking out her halberd.
“Savage Silver Rush!” she cried, activating two new second tier arts (Silver Rush and Savage Rush) as she charged the short distance to the mage. With a powerful pair of slashes in the shape of an X, she cut the mage into quarters in a moment. She dropped out of Berserk Mode, leaning against the wall and listening to the voices of Rai and a woman outside, down the hallway, as she caught her breath, her wounds no longer healing from the effects of her cloak. While she listened, she healed by lapping up beads of healing blood, silently casting the spell several times in a row.
“…Not that it matters, since you’ll be dead soon.”
Isa heard the crackle of fire and lightning, and then nothing. Her wounds were mostly recovered save for a bit of soreness, so even though she hadn’t completely recovered from her post-Berserk tiredness, she exited her room, immediately spotting Rai further down the hall, staring at the smoke billowing out of his bedroom, and the dead woman at his feet.
“Need some help?” she called out, striding toward him.
“Unless you’ve got a way to put out this fire…”
“Leave it to me.”
“Wait, really?” Rai said in surprise. Isa kicked the door open wider.
“Close your eyes. Firesmoke Burst.”
There was a blinding flash of light, and the fires went out.
“Done.”
“What was that spell?”
“Firesmoke Burst. A second circle spell. I can extinguish a fire to transform it into a blinding flash of light or a choking cloud of smoke, whichever I want. It’s supposed to be used offensively, I guess, but I mostly use it to put out fires.”
“Well, anyway, thanks. I guess you had assassins to take care of, too?”
“Yeah. A mage and a warrior.”
“I had three: a mage, a dagger user, and a swordswoman. You think there are more?”
“Don’t know. We should check on the lab; I know you’ve got most of the stuff in the bag, but the alchemy and enchanting stuff’s still there.”
Rai nodded, then glanced down at the last person he’d killed and grimaced.
“Don’t look inside my room,” she warned. “It’s… messy.” Then she yelled, “Stay in the room, Torval! Hide in the closet!”
“…Got it!” the younger kobold called back.
A forcefield flickered over Rai as he finally (silently) cast Force Armor, and then they were off.
-x-
“Hurry it up!” the cloaked mage whispered loudly as the other two black-garbed men carefully loaded the laboratory equipment into a large sack – a modern dimensional bag. The fourth person, a cat-eared/cat-tailed beastfolk man, stood at the doorway and kept watch. “You heard that thunderclap! That means the others are fighting! The scholar must have kept all the other stuff with him instead of in the lab – quite the paranoid man – so we’ll have to trust the others, but if the others fail, we’ll still get out with this stuff if you hurry up!”
A couple minutes later, they had put it all in the bag.
“Damn! They’re coming!” the lookout shouted.
“Silver Rush!”
The lookout flew into the room, nearly cut into two by Isa’s halberd. The mage cried out in surprise and fear as Isa, surrounded by aura and with eyes glowing, stalked into the room, Rai behind her.
“Crackling Ray,” Rai cast, two lightning rays striking the mages and causing him to fall, unconscious, to the ground, spasming.
“Drop the bag and surrender yourselves,” he commanded.
They dropped the bag and drew daggers.
Isa threw her halberd aside and rushed the one on the right, casting one of her new third circle spells.
“Hurling Toss!”
He tried to dodge, but her claws dug into his stomach and he went flying up and back over a dozen feet, landing on his back and smacking his head against the floor, his ribs and skull all letting out loud cracks. He didn’t move.
“Die!” the other cried desperately, slashing at her. His blade skittered along her scales. Her aura punched him in the face, and she stabbed her green-and-red-trailing claws into his gut. Green lines instantly traveled throughout his body and ate him up from the inside; his scream was short-lived.
“You are a very gruesome fighter,” Rai commented.
“Death is death, regardless of how gruesome it is,” she pointed out as he Berserk Mode ended.
“True. Now let’s meet up with the guards and sweep the mansion for any other intruders.”
“Right.”