Sirens were blaring.

The sound of cars, boots, and rifles filled the air. The entire street stank of fear.

The humans hadn’t been ready for the Dark Legion attack. Stilas could relate. He glared at the back of Demetrius’ head. He hadn’t been ready for his ‘friend’. Now Bethany was dead. There was a pain in his chest. It felt like someone had pulled his heart out, leaving him empty. His magic was hiding as well. Nothing felt right. The world seemed dull. Time was moving slowly, but not in a good way. Like it was just him that was moving slowly.

“Freeze!” One of the soldiers screamed

Stilas looked at the soldiers hiding behind the jeeps. The guns were wavering left and right. The soldiers knew they were outgunned.

Demetrius pointed his staff at the soldiers.

“Fire!” One of the soldiers screamed.

Dozens of guns barked, sending thousands of bullets toward them. Stilas closed his eyes. Maybe one would get through and kill him. Then he could move on. His hands fell to his side, daring one of the bullets to hit him.

Magic curled around the end of Demetrius’ staff. It blasted out of the staff, sending a wave of force in front of them. The bullets hit the wave, sending ricochets in multiple directions. The soldiers ducked behind their vehicles, but some weren’t fast enough. Screams polluted the air as half of the soldiers started dying.

“Seal them!” Demetrius screamed. He started walking over to the jeeps.

Stilas trudged over to the first jeep. If he thought Demetrius would kill him for disobeying, he would’ve run. Demetrius wouldn’t oblige him. The twisted Dark Master would torture him for decades before he would allow him to die.

Stilas rounded the bumper. Demetrius was killing anyone that moved. Blood was everywhere. Soldiers were scattered everywhere. They didn’t care about fighting anymore. All they were thinking about was getting out alive. Stilas shook his head. The dead ones were the lucky ones.

He knelt down next to a soldier. The man had a gash on his head. Blood was running down his face and pooling on his uniform.

Stilas called magic into the mark on his hand. He reached out to mark the soldier’s forehead. As he touched the blood the soldier flinched. The motion was enough for him to jab a pistol in Stilas’ jaw.

Stilas froze. He couldn’t move fast enough to disarm the soldier. He didn’t want to block it anyway. All he wanted to do was die.

“Do it,” Stilas whispered

The soldier’s head bobbed, and his grip on the pistol began to falter. Stilas grabbed the soldier’s arm, “Do it!”

The soldier squeezed the trigger. Stilas closed his eyes. He was ready to go. The gun went off, but there was no white light. No darkness reaching for him. He opened his eyes. The gun was lying on the ground. His right ear was ringing. The soldier had missed point blank. Rage grabbed Stilas’ hand and folded his fingers around the soldier’s throat. Before he realized what he was doing he had snapped the soldier’s neck.

Stilas looked down at the soldier’s body. The rage felt good. It gave him purpose, but most of all it numbed the pain.

He turned to the next soldier screaming on the ground. He picked up the pistol and shot the soldier. He forgot how good that felt. How much he enjoyed killing things.

“What are you doing?” Demetrius yelled

Stilas looked up. Demetrius was stomping towards him. He really wanted to kill that one. He couldn’t take on the Dark Master head-on, but he was going to kill him.

Demetrius grabbed Stilas by the collar, “What. Are. You. DOING?”

Stilas turned his head away. He clenched his jaw, “Sealing them.”

Demetrius slammed him into the side of the jeep, “You’re killing them! Not sealing!”

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Stilas hung on the end of Demetrius’ arm. He angled the pistol, but then let it fall to the ground. Demetrius would have a bullet shield around him. Shooting him wouldn’t do any good.

“Demetrius!” Feletis screamed

Demetrius dropped Stilas and turned towards the lawn, “What are you doing here?”

“Giving you a chance to surrender.” Kark said. The rest of the group was standing behind them. Water was hovering over the two mages. Mettan’s icy glare promised a quick death.

“The hypocrisy of the Congress ends today!” Demetrius shouted. He pointed his staff at the group. Power gathered around the staff. The power shot out and the lawn was full of the humans that Stilas had collected.

The group backed away from the hundreds of dying or dead humans on the lawn. The Elementals began pulling themselves out of the dead humans, but only a few dozen were actually dead.

The air got colder as Demetrius drew on black magic for the first time. A death spell was the only way to ensure that everything in front of them died. Death spells couldn’t be fueled by normal magic, the act of killing so any required energy from a demonic place.

Stilas slid behind Demetrius as the wave burst out of the older Mage’s hands. The wave was black and cold, draining the life out of everything it touched. Grass turned brown, the leaves on the trees shriveled and the bark cracked. Every human also fell down. Except for the ones behind Feletis’ and Kark’s shield. He should have known that the two strongest Mages in the Universe would be able to make a shield that could block a death spell. The spell fizzled out about three hundred feet away, leaving only two small circles where there was any life.

Demetrius stumbled backwards. Stilas remembered the rush of using black magic for the first time. It was like ice cube being poured through your veins. There was a brain freeze that distorted everything. He had been so weak that he could barely stand for almost a minute.

At that very instant Demetrius reminded him of Bethany. How weak she had been in front of the mage. Powerless to stop what was about to happen to her. That rage fed Stilas’ black magic. As his ‘friend stumbled backwards, he stepped forward and jabbed his hand into Demetrius’ chest. Rage fueled his trust, allowing him to wrap his fingers around the older Mage’s heart.

“Gak!” Demetrius squeaked as his back stiffened

Stilas leaned in close so he could whisper into the traitor’s ear, “You took everything I cared about away from me.” A tear dropped from his eye onto the other mage’s shoulder. “Now I’m taking everything from you.”

Stilas fed the back magic into the tattoo on his hand. The magic plunged into the other Mage’s heart and began sucking. This time he wasn’t just absorbing magic, no that would be too merciful for a dark mage. There was still a chance a dark mage could make the transition to a lich if all he did was drain his magic. Stilas wanted Demetrius’ life force. He wanted the older mage’s magic, his Guardian, his memories. He was taking the traitors life.

Everything began flowing into Stilas. The feeling was like nothing that he had ever experienced. The rush of so much magic was recharging him. Giving him strength. He stood up straighter as the lessons that Demetrius had studied so diligently at the University flooded into his brain. He knew how to do magic that had been out of his grasp for his entire life. The bond with the Blue Dragon almost knocked him off his feet. He took a step back and leaned against the jeep behind him. As a disgraced Mage, the only Guardians that he had were ones that he had forced a bond with. He was still forcing this bond, but since it had been made honestly by Demetrius, it was an actual bond. The thought made him dizzy. He was bonded with a blue dragon.

A fireball exploding on the shield in front of them broke him out of his thoughts. Feletis and Kark were both throwing fireballs at them. Once Demetrius died the shield would drop, not that it was going to last very long with the two strongest mages in the universe pounding on it. He needed a distraction. He had almost drain Demetrius of everything. A fiery death would be ironic for the traitor.

“This.” Stilas whispered, “Is for Bethany.”

Stilas shoved the mage forward, pulling his heart out in the process. . The next barrage of fireballs rushed past a broken shield and caught Demetrius’ purple robes on fire. He hit his knees, then fell on his face. He was dead.

Stilas fed the fire, using his ring. Soon there was nothing left, but a pile of ashes. The heart in his had vanished as he crushed it to dust and flicked it over the field. Feletis and Kark were about to send a third wave of attack, but they weren’t going to make it.

The bodies in between them were quivering. Part of Stilas’ sealing process was that the body would be forced to squeeze out an Elemental after it died. Normally only the strongest Elementalists would leave behind an Elemental, but his spell would force even the weakest Elementalist to leave behind a small Elemental.

The Elementals began pealing themselves out of their human bodies. The drawback to his spell was that it left the Elementals mindless. The Elementals that were usually left behind had some sentient functions. They could be talked to and would accept orders from certain people. These weren’t like that. They were raw collections of power. Concerned with only absorbing more power. They would rampage across the globe until they were stopped.

Stilas summoned the blue dragon with little effort. Burr snaked his way out of the portal in dragon form. It was a serpent dragon. Long and slender, they were built for carrying a mage while flying, unlike their cousins, the cave dragons, which were shorter and more muscular.

Stilas jumped onto Burr’s back and took to the skies. He knew Kark would follow him. The leader of the Elders wouldn’t be able to resist an aerial battle between dragons. Which suited him fine, because he had already picked the next mage that he wanted to drain.