The Beginning After The End

Chapter 476

Chapter 474: Cracks in the Ice

VARAY AURAE

“If the army attacks, I don’t think we have the forces to hold them back.”

“Of course we don’t! We haven’t had a chance to recover from the war and the Battle of the Bloodwater. Without the dragons, we might as well throw open the gates and let the enemy march right on in!”

“Spoken like a true Beynir.”

“How dare you, madam! House Beynir is the oldest and most loyal supporter of House Glayder!”

“And yet Sir Lionel, your brother, was part of a treasonous plot to take over the Wall and hold it alongside the Flamesworths for his own personal enrichment.”

“That was—”

“Enough.” Lord Curtis didn’t raise his voice in anger; instead, he just sounded tired.

I glanced at him surreptitiously from the corner of my eye. He had dark bags under his eyes, his usually impeccable mahogany hair was disheveled, and there was a certain softness to the way he slumped into his chair that reminded me intensely of his father.

Beside him, Lady Kathyln looked as she always did: rigid, sharply aware, and immediately present in the conversation. Her dark brown eyes gave away no hint of her thoughts, and, unlike her brother, not a single jet-black hair was out of place as it framed her pale face and cascaded down her straight back.

Even the mana the two royals exuded was the polar opposite: Curtis’s flickering and fiery mana seemed to ebb and flow with every comment, while Kathyln’s was still and stoic, just like her.

Across the ornate table from the royal siblings sat their council. Otto Beynir, a short, pudgy man with particularly unhealthy-looking skin glared at Lady Vesta of House Lambert. The older woman, who looked every bit the part of the elder stateswoman of her house in her puffy purple and maroon dress and her silly feathered hat, did not glare but simmered with derision, one brow raised and her lips slightly pursed.

Sir Abrham of House Astor, a man of middle years with a paunchy belly and a patchwork beard from the scar across his left side, cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I struggle to see how Otto is wrong here, Vesta. Look at the facts.” He stabbed the mahogany table top with a calloused finger, his mana wavering with suppressed nerves. “We put everything we had into guaranteeing a relationship with the dragons, but they’ve up and left us to die. Arthur Leywin’s mysterious strategy has spread Dicathen’s defenders thinly across the continent. We’re facing an opponent who already defeated us once, and handily I might add. The only positive development I can see is that the Alacryan forces haven’t turned their attention to Etistin yet.”

Miss Mountbatten trembled as she leaned forward over the table. The elected voice of the commoners, Dee looked more like a baker than a royal counselor, but she was normally a voice of reason within the council’s politics. “I still don’t understand. You promised that the dragons would protect the people!”

Jackun of House Maxwell let out a booming laugh, causing a surge of mana to ripple through and around him. The retired warrior was a big man, and when he wished it, his voice easily swallowed everyone else's. “They’ve left us proper fucked. It’s clear we were utter fools to ever put faith in them.”

A chorus of admonishments erupted around the ornate table, but Jackun waved them off with his customary disregard for the expected niceties.

“This isn’t helpful.” The council chamber fell silent as Lady Kathyln’s icy voice cut across their arguments. All eyes turned to her, even her brother’s. Her steady gaze swept across the counselors. “You forget yourselves, all of you. Our purpose here is to serve the people of Etistin, and all of Sapin. This panic, infighting, and fatalistic complaining hardly does so. We are not defeated, so we are not abandoning our duty.”

She paused, inviting the counselors to respond, but the chamber was the quietest I had ever heard it. Within the silence, though, was a palpable tension that I sensed as a kind of focusing of the multiple mana signatures. An expectant shiver ran through my core, and I shifted uncomfortably.

“We have made mistakes, all of us,” she continued, some of that sharp edge leaving her tone. “Curtis and I were eager to believe the dragons were our salvation, and perhaps we have allowed that desire to cloud our judgment. But you all speak as if hope is lost when there is a greater plan unfolding that we don’t fully understand.”

Otto Beynir scoffed. When Kathyln answered with a piercing glare, the shifty little man at least had the good graces to appear apologetic. “My Lady Glayder, it would be a fool’s hope to trust that Arthur Leywin can stop what is unfolding.”

“Was it not Arthur who warned us not to trust the dragons?” Kathyln interjected. “I am ashamed to have allowed the malcontent of this counsel to convince me that it was Arthur who posed a danger over the dragons.”

“Lady, let’s not act as if Arthur Leywin is infallible,” Beynir countered. “If the messages we have received are correct, the Alacryans so ignorantly ‘imprisoned’ on the other side of the Wall have turned against us, and Alacryan forces have struck out across most of Dicathen. The only saving grace at all is that they seem to be focusing their efforts on finding Leywin himself.”

Florian Glayder, third cousin to Curtis and Kathyln, brushed his fingers through hair that matched Curtis’s in color before speaking for the first time in several minutes. “And that, I think, is our strategy. We have already evacuated the surrounding countryside, bringing everyone within fifty miles behind the walls. We have provisions to last through a siege if they attempt such a thing, which would be unlikely since Lance Godspell is not within the city anyway. We just need to stay within our walls and wait.”

“Perhaps it would be best if the man were caught,” Vesta said tentatively, as if she were verbally testing the waters of this line of thinking.

My gaze jumped to Curtis and Kathyln. Curtis leaned forward and rubbed his chin with his fingers, a small frown creasing his brow as he considered his advisor’s words. His mana jumped and sparked like a fire struggling to catch in wet wood. Beside him, his sister had frozen, her mouth open slightly, a crack in her carefully managed facade.

“Finally, the lady from House Lambert speaks sense,” Otto said, throwing up his hands.

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Miss Mountbatten said at nearly the same time.

“Now, Dee, it may seem cruel, but think about it,” Abrham interjected with a gesture of peace. “Arthur Leywin has been antagonistic toward the dragons and disrespectful to Lord and Lady Glayder. If the enemy wants him this bad, finding him might just give Guardian Charon enough time to settle whatever emergency he’s been called to so he can sweep the rest of the Alacryans from the continent.”

“The dragons spit in your face, and you open your mouth to drink it in like fresh spring rain,” Jackun growled, shaking his shaved head. “I don’t care much for this high-and-mighty Leywin feller, but the dragons have shown us just how much they think of us. How many of those scaly bastards are in Dicathen? And they don’t leave even one to guard Lady Kathyln and Lord Curtis? Nah, you’d have to be a complete moron to expect that they’ll be back to help.”

Otto leaned forward, pressing his palms into the table top. “Perhaps, but that doesn’t discount the rest of the plan. We know where the Leywin boy is hidden. We could eliminate two threats at once if we offered to trade that information for a promise of peace.”

Kathyln’s head tilted to the side, and her eyes narrowed dangerously. “So your suggestion is to offer the enemy what they want and beg for them to just leave us alone?”

“It would be a more sensible path than using the bodies of your people as shields for a man who refused even to explain why he expected us to die for him!” Otto barked.

There was a sharp scraping noise as Kathyln pushed her chair back from the table and stood suddenly. “You go too far, Otto. Go, now, and be glad that I’m allowing you to do so instead of locking you in the palace dungeon.” Kathyln’s glare was bitterly cold and empty of emotion. Her lack of anger only made the expression more cutting.

“L-L-Lady, I…” Otto stared at Kathyln with wide eyes as his voice left him, his mouth continuing to puff mutely.

“Kathyln—” Curtis started, reaching a placating hand toward his sister, but she silenced whatever argument he was preparing to give with a single look.

Curtis cleared his throat and stood, gestured for the chamber doors to be opened, then lingered beside them and spoke briefly to each counselor as they left. I followed behind Florian, but Kathyln spoke my name, stopping me and indicating I should stay. When all the others were gone, Curtis also dismissed the guards and then closed the doors behind them.

He regarded his sister warily. “That was poorly handled, Kathyln. These people are just as powerful as we are, perhaps even more so, and we owe much of our success to them.”

“I do not see that as the benefit you seem to,” Kathyln answered matter-of-factly. ”They were out of line, and they needed to be reminded of their role here.”

Curtis raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “I’m not suggesting we follow through with Otto’s plan, of course, but they aren’t exactly wrong to be scared.”

Kathyln took a deep breath, outwardly settling her nerves. “I’m afraid Otto’s desire might come to pass even without our interference. According to our scouts, the Alacryans are growing near to finding the hidden cave. Our earth-attribute mages covered it well, but we can’t know what kind of magic these invaders may be using to search for Arthur.” Kathyln’s eyes met mine. “Lance Varay, I would like to know what you think we should do.”

My voice was slightly rough from disuse, and I had to swallow to wet my throat. “I do have a suggestion, but I’m…not entirely certain you will like it.”

Kathyln allowed herself the smallest of smiles, while Curtis crossed his arms and regarded me with undisguised concern. “Go on,” Kathyln said.

“Arthur made one thing clear to us,” I began, calling back to our last conversation with him before he went into hiding. “He asked us to do everything in our power to ensure that his location was not discovered. With the Alacryans searching the surrounding wilderlands, it seems like only a matter of time. We need to draw their attention in a different direction.”

“What exactly do you have in mind, Lance?” Curtis asked, stiffening.

“The coastline to the southwest is full of natural caves. The Alacryan forces haven’t yet concentrated on them, but we have reports of a few scouting parties moving in that direction.” I paused, knowing how the next part sounded. “I will fly there immediately and strike, acting as if I’m preventing them from searching the coast.”

“You would use yourself as a distraction?” Curtis asked, his voice full of disbelief. “Absurd. I know how powerful you are, Varay, but you can’t hope to fight off an entire army on your own. What if they are led by retainers or Scythes?”

Or even Wraiths, I acknowledged, though I didn’t speak the thought out loud. “The harder fought the battle, the more it will sell the diversion.”

“You are too valuable,” Curtis answered, shaking his head and taking a step closer to me and Kathyln. “I won’t allow you to risk yourself for Arthur, especially since we have received conflicting reports of his actual location.”

Kathyln’s brows rose. “Arthur has asked us to buy him time. If he had a reason to make us believe he was in that cave, then it doesn’t matter if he is actually there or not. We must act as if he is.”

“Of course, it matters,” Curtis countered immediately. “If he isn't here, then we don't need to risk Varay's life or the lives of the soldiers behind the walls.”

“And yet giving in and letting the Alacryans pass would allow them to search their next destination even more quickly,” Kathyln countered.

“That is a problem for the defenders of those locations then!” Curtis burst out, crossing his arms defensively.

A sudden crack silenced all three of us, and even Kathyln seemed surprised as she pulled back the hand that had just slapped Curtis’s face. Mana seethed between them, rearing up like two opposing hades serpents preparing to strike. But the shock and hostility melted away almost instantly, and Kathyln continued. “Are we not meant to be leaders, the hope and strength of Dicathen, not just of Etistin? Don't lose sight of the bigger picture. Do not become our father, Curtis.”

The royal siblings regarded each other for some time, Curtis’s hand still pressed against the cheek Kathyln had slapped. Although his face was pale except for the red mark where his sister’s hand had struck, his shock faded to a kind of steely grit, and he nodded, his eyes hardening with determination as he met first Kathyln’s eyes and then mine.

“Let’s discuss the specifics of this plan. Please, Varay, continue.”

With no time to waste, I provided the details of where I would strike and what my fallback plan was in the event that I became overwhelmed. And within the hour, I was flying southwest along the coast.

I kept high, within the cloud cover. Cold moisture collected on me, but I didn’t feel the chill. My mind remained abuzz with considerations of how the assault could unfold, and by the time I sensed the Alacryan search parties below, I felt confident in what was to follow.

Coming to a stop high above my targets, still shrouded within a dark cloud, I directed my senses toward the dim mana signatures below. Four battle groups moved together, scouring the countryside. By the way their formation moved, I was certain that at least two of the mages were Sentries. Spells were active, the crackle of their mana present in the atmosphere around the Alacryans, sparking like a lightning spell across the surface of water.

A deep, unfocused piece of me wondered what it would be like to see the individual particles of mana the way Arthur could. If he were present, could he tell me what the spells were doing just by looking at the way the mana formed? But the entire reason I am here is because he can’t be. And I need to ensure that he remains protected.

The moisture within the cloud condensed into needles of ice, each one a foot long. These needles rotated around me as I drifted to the bottom of the cloud and emerged into open air. I already had a strong sense of exactly where my targets were, and it took only a moment to visually hone in on the sixteen Alacryans. Aiming very carefully, I launched the series of needles in a sudden hail of death.

Barely audible cries floated up to me on the wind as half of the Alacryan mages crumpled, killed instantly by the strike. Shields of wind, water, and fire erupted colorfully over the remaining Alacryans just as a second volley of ice spikes struck them. A beam of sickly green mana speared through the air toward me, but I wove around it easily before catching a series of blue fireballs on a heavy shield of ice.

I countered with more spells, which deflected off the interlocking shields. The Alacryans’ shouts were unintelligible, but their panic was clear. They could do little aside from huddle beneath their shields with their last two Casters hurling weak spells.

Pushing mana into my eyes, I peered through the distortions in the air to watch them closely. A woman I’d identified as a Sentry was channeling a spell, her attention turned to the east, while a Striker rapidly scrawled across a crumpled parchment with a shaky hand. I hit the shields with more ice spikes, making sure not to overpower the mages conjuring them.

The Sentry’s eyes snapped open, and she shouted something I couldn’t make out. Word sent. The cavalry should arrive soon enough.

Weaving a net of fine, nearly invisible ice filaments, I cast it over the remaining enemies. A couple of Strikers darted out of the way with a burst of speed, but the others came together, hunkering beneath their protective barriers.

The fine filaments sliced right through the mana and eviscerated the handful of soldiers beneath it, dousing their spells in an instant.

The two Strikers sprinted away at impressive speeds. Instead of cutting them down, I floated back up into the clouds, vanishing the same way I had appeared. There, I prepared for the next stage of the battle.

My first series of strikes had been precise, killing the strongest mages and most of the Casters while only wounding the others. The following barrage had been weakened purposefully, pinning the Alacryans down but giving them time to send word for reinforcements with whatever artifacts or magic they had at their disposal. With that concluded, there was no reason to allow them all to live, but letting the final two Strikers escape provided a backup in the event that the earlier messages went awry. It should also, I calculated, provide a sufficiently believable outcome considering the image I was attempting to portray.

The dense cloud, heavy with moisture and already bitter cold, was the perfect staging ground for me to prepare for the next phase of this diversionary battle.

Drawing on the atmospheric mana, I felt it rush into my core and begin to purify. At the same time, using the technique Arthur had taught me while removing the asuras’ limitations on my growth, I began releasing my own purified deviant ice-attribute mana, which clung to the vapor that made up the cloud. The sensation of mana rotation never failed to conjure goosebumps along the back of my neck as I absorbed mana, channeled it, and continuously clarified my core simultaneously. Even the simple act of clarifying my core felt strange and exhilarating after spending so long in the white core stage with no change.

The clouds around me began to harden, freezing into a kind of cocoon or shell, which my mana kept stationary. As that cloud froze, the effect extended outward, the ice crawling over and through each vaporous mass, hardening and growing heavy in the air.

It required a meditative mindset to utilize mana rotation in this way, and my mind was full only of the act itself as I froze the very sky. I experienced no sense of time focusing so intently, and so it was with a slight jolt of adrenaline that I felt the approaching mana signatures in the distance

At first, there were only two heavy, potent auras. The mages exuding them were confident enough that they approached openly, without attempting to suppress their signatures. I did not recognize the signatures, but based on the strength they exuded, I thought they couldn’t be Scythes or Wraiths.

Confident as they seemed, the approaching signatures halted well away from where I’d defeated the scouting party. Churning behind them, only sensible from this distance as their numbers grew, a host of Alacryan mages gathered as well. Hundreds at least, perhaps thousands, I thought in a detached kind of way. Once, perhaps, I would have balked at the idea of facing such a host. After all, hadn’t Lance Alea and her entire regiment been defeated by only a single retainer and a much smaller force of Alacryan mages? And yet much has changed since those days.

Tense against the strain of holding such a great weight of mana-formed ice aloft, I waited. Continuing to utilize mana rotation, I did my best to suppress my own mana signature and disguise my mana usage within the dense, heavy atmospheric water- and air-attribute mana.

The retainers lingered at a safe distance, likely conferring with their Sentries or the heads of their various battle groups as they searched for signs of danger or hints regarding Arthur’s whereabouts.

I breathed deeply and settled my mind. Patience was a skill I had cultivated from a young age. The patience of the iceberg, of the permafrost, I chanted silently to myself.

More and more Alacryans gathered until an entire army waited on the horizon. Then finally, at some shouted order, they began forward. The retainers stayed back, I was surprised to note, leading from the rear, but that suited my plan well enough.

Several battle groups collected around the corpses from earlier, investigating the evidence of our brief battle, but most marched toward the coastline behind me. They moved purposefully and with care, their Shields conjuring protective barriers of every element and design, while Casters and Strikers had their own spells at the ready, mana channeling into many hundreds of Alacryan runes all at once.

More and more of them entered the shadow of the frozen clouds, but I waited. The forefront of their lines passed beneath me, and I felt the touch of probing mana as the spell of some Sentry sought me out. A ripple ran through the army, and I felt as their collective attention turned fearfully skyward.

Gritting my teeth, I gripped the frozen clouds within my power and shoved downward. The ice slipped past me as it fell, leaving me floating above the falling floor of rippling gray. The clouds plummeted, their unnatural movement looking momentarily strange, like a child’s drawing instead of the real thing.

I sensed the barrage of spells from below, even though I could not see it past the solid gray mass. Bolts of fire and jets of burning acid burned into and through the clouds but did little to interrupt the descent. Hundreds of shields flared bright.

Tons upon tons of solid ice struck the ground with a cataclysmic shockwave, and I forced mana to my ears to deaden the explosion of sound.

The frozen clouds shattered, becoming a maelstrom of razor-sharp blades of ice that flew in every direction. I pulled the shards back and forth across the shattered earth, and my enemies were as stalks of wheat beneath a thresher’s blades. Mana signatures winked out like stars hidden behind storm clouds.

The attack lasted ten seconds, no more. From my vantage hundreds of feet in the air, the ground gleamed in blue, white, and red: snow and spikes of ice, as if a sudden and violent storm had raged, littered with the blood-soaked corpses of hundreds of Alacryan mages.

A black bolt of mana careened toward me from the distant figure of the retainer. I ducked beneath it, but it exploded, filling the sky with an obscuring shadow that stole not only my sense of sight but seemed to smother my feel for mana also, well and truly blinding me. In the darkness, something hard and cold gripped my arms and clutched at my throat. The ice forming my left arm cracked, sending a shiver of phantom pain up into my shoulder and chest.

A frozen nova erupted from me, and the grasping limbs shattered. Freed from their unseen clutches, I dove beneath the darkness. Frost crept across my skin and armor, cladding me in a frozen barrier that deflected a burning glaive that glanced off my ribs before spinning around and returning to the hand of the man that had thrown it. The impact sent a jolt through me, and my core ached—No, not an ache…a shudder?—with the force of my focus on maintaining my defenses.

A statuesque man in black and crimson plate armor flew only a hundred feet away, and he caught the glaive as it returned to him, flickering with dark fire around his gauntleted fist. Silvery gray eyes shone from beneath his helm, through which protruded two short onyx horns. From the description I’d been provided, I knew this to be Echeron, retainer of Vechor.

Past him, hovering just above the ground a half mile or more distant, wrapped in a cloak of shadow that left her barely visible except for a shock of white hair and two bright yellow eyes, was the second retainer: Mawar of Etril.

Echeron swept the glaive across his body, and a wave of dark fire-attribute mana spilled across the sky in an arc.

Condensing the ice further around my body, I crossed my arms in front of me and plunged into the flames. Ice hissed and cracked as the flames sputtered and withered, and I punched out the other side. My arms slashed outward, and two blades of ice carved through the air before me and closed like scissors toward Echeron’s neck.

He brought his burning glaive up, catching both attacks, and there was a burst of the dark fire. A flaming echo of my spell flew in reverse back toward me. I changed direction, dipping to my left, but the burning echoes followed as if tethered to me. I swerved again as a series of black bolts of mana launched by Mawar burst all around me like so many dark fireworks.

“Casters, fall back and attack from a safe distance,” Echeron ordered, his voice booming through the battleground below. “Strikers, Shields, and Sentries, focus on protecting your Casters!”

The rear lines of the Alacryan force had avoided the worst of my spell and were now scrambling back toward Mawar’s location. Some few survivors of the fallen ice clouds also managed to pick themselves up and drag themselves through the shattered landscape of broken rock and shards of ice.

I pulled up short as the glaive flew just in front of me, then rapidly hurled a series of frozen crescents toward Echeron. Dark fire enveloped him, and the crescents shattered ineffectively against his armor.

Every nerve in my body lit aflame as the echo of the twin blades caught me from behind. They didn’t burn flesh or bone, but I felt them carving through my mana and burning up something I couldn’t name within me. Breathing rapidly, I dropped beneath a volley of spellfire from a pocket of Alacryan Casters, then reached toward the atmospheric mana around Echeron.

The heat of his flames pushed back any natural cold or moisture in the air, and so I poured out my own, willing the air to freeze as solid as the deepest permafrost.

A crystalline barrier of ice formed in the air around the retainer, gleaming in the sunlight that hadn’t yet been swallowed by fresh cloud cover. But where the black fire touched my ice, the two forces spit and snapped, breaking each other.

A jagged bolt of lightning sparked across my back, and I went into a spin to avoid several other spells targeting me.

Within the cage of ice, Echeron was momentarily distracted, his focus on holding my spell at bay. When his glaive returned to him, however, it shattered the ice and snapped back into his hand.

A flick of my wrist sent dozens of spears of ice raining down on the closest Alacryan soldiers. Some burst against shields, but many more found their targets, and more mana signatures went dark on the ground below.

Echeron flew forward, his sudden movement causing a burst of noise and leaving a visible trail in the air. The burning glaive spun, leaving behind a black afterimage.

The ice of my left arm extended out into a shield, while a sword formed from many layers of overlapping blue ice appeared in my right hand. I smashed the glaive aside with the shield and thrust the sword at his hip. Shadows emanating Mawar’s dark signature condensed around him, forming into scything tentacles that writhed wildly as they caught and deflected my blow.

The glaive twirled and came down on the top edge of my shield. The haft flexed, and the blade parted the hairs atop my head. I thrust up and away with the shield, then forward, smashing his gauntleted fists. As the shield went up, I drove the point of my sword down toward his legs, but again the shadowy tentacles deflected my blow.

Echeron pushed off my shield, flying into a backflip before thrusting forward again with the burning glaive. The impact of the blade against my shield rocked me back, and I felt the follow-up strike glance off my ice-covered side. I snapped my arm down, pinning the haft against my ribs, and swung the edge of my sword toward his shoulder. A shadowy tentacle wrapped around my arm, but I twisted my wrist and drove the point of the ice blade into the gap between Echeron’s gorget and helmet. It trembled against his mana and was turned aside, but I felt him jerk next to me and saw blood at the tip of my sword.

As we fought, dozens of spells from the soldiers on the ground continued to hiss through the air all around us.

Echeron attempted to pull back and collect himself, but I kept his weapon trapped at my side. The shadow tentacles emerging from the dark creases of his armor snapped and cut like bladed whips, punching into my shield and sending cracks spider-webbing across its surface. A sharp pain radiated out from my shoulder, and I pirouetted away from the offending shadow, ripping the glaive from Echeron’s grasp.

Several more spells from the remaining soldiers struck me, and there was a sharp tug from my core as mana surged out to maintain my protective barriers.

Echeron eased back, watching me warily. “You Lances are more potent than I expected. You have fought well and earned a clean death.” His wariness melted away, and the glaive jerked free of my grip painfully, flew through the air, and settled back in his fist. He smiled haughtily. “Do not despair. Your people are simply unprepared to face the true might of the Alacryan continent—”

As he had been speaking, the core of his spear was freezing solid, my ice overtaking the runes embedded into the haft. The black flames moved jerkily, then froze in place around his arm, unnoticed by the retainer. It wasn’t until the frost had crept halfway up his arm that he noticed its burn through his heavy gauntlets.

Echeron cursed and tried to toss the weapon away, but it was frozen to his hand.

I met his eyes as they widened. My own face showed no emotion. “I offer you death in return, Alacryan, but it will not be clean.”

Flying backwards toward his allies, Echeron continued to flail with the spear, attempting to free himself of the creeping ice that now covered his entire arm up to his pauldrons. The protective shadows conjured by Mawar receded as the other retainer left him to his fate, prompting him to turn and shout, “Help me, damn it!”

Spells continued flying from the remainder of their army, but I deflected them with a sparkling curtain of ice-attribute mana, which also penned Echeron in, preventing him from retreating. His left hand was clawing at his right arm, the metal gauntlets scraping audibly across the layer of ice. This clawing became hammering as he drove his fist into the frozen appendage. With a sound like shattering crystal, his right arm broke off just below the shoulder, it and the spear tumbling together toward the ground a hundred feet below.

But the ice was in his mana veins, and from there, his channels. Normally the barrier of his flesh would have prevented me from controlling the mana in this way, but his own weapon and runes worked against him, as his magic bonded to mine to create the echo effects he had used to attack me earlier.

In moments, the ice reached his core, and then he was falling. Gray eyes stared up at me in disbelief, and I watched as frost crept over them, turning the silver-gray to a blind blue-white.

When he struck the ground, he exploded into rough chunks of frozen red and bone white.

The spellfire from the remaining Alacryans momentarily eased.

Taking a deep breath, I refocused myself on mana rotation. My core ached with the effort of overcoming Echeron’s mana, and I still had a retainer to face. As I did this, I flew down to the ground and picked up the frozen glaive, which had survived the fall intact. Flying only a few feet over the ground, I approached the Alacryan army. Mawar now hovered at the front, watching me with an unreadable expression.

The retainer had short, bright white hair that stood up in a series of spikes. Her predatory yellow eyes followed me closely out of midnight black flesh, and most of her body was indistinct, lost in a cloak of moving shadow.

I held up the glaive in one hand, parallel with the line of soldiers, then squeezed forcefully. The frozen haft shattered, and the two ends tumbled from my grip. “I give you all this one chance. Arthur Leywin is under my protection, as is this continent. Leave it now. Return to your High Sovereign and tell him that he has failed. Do not return.”

Mawar didn’t outwardly express any emotion at my statement. “Kill her.”

My hand shot toward the sky, then dragged downward. A hail of ice spikes rained down on the force, manifesting from the shreds of the pale clouds that had filled back in above us. The soldiers collapsed into disarray as their Shields struggled to hold off the bombardment while the remaining Casters and Strikers just fought to stay alive.

A dozen dark and writhing bladed whips formed of shadowy mana snapped and speared at me from Mawar, and wherever they cut, the color bled from the surrounding area, leaving it cold and devoid of atmospheric mana. I dodged rapidly between strikes, building up my next spell.

Ice-attribute mana filled in a space the size of my fist, condensing until it became visible as a transparent floating sphere. As I flitted across the battlefield dodging Mawar’s attacks, I put all of my mana toward this sphere. The transparent shell darkened, becoming white, then growing denser and taking on a blue color. I imbued into it not just mana by my intention, giving the spell both power and purpose.

When an opening between attacks appeared, I unleashed the sphere. It flashed toward the retainer, leaving a line of frozen air behind it.

Mawar gave a warning shout and melted into shadow, flitting away. The sweat on my brow froze as I gritted my teeth against the strain of the spell. As if I were pulling against thousands of pounds, I struggled to twist my wrist even slightly, causing the ice-crystal sphere to turn sharply and follow behind the streak of shadow, the air freezing behind it as it flew into the center mass of the retainer’s shadowy form.

Mawar jerked to a stop, appearing as nothing more than a swirling incorporeal mass, at the center of which was the ice-crystal sphere spinning rapidly in place.

The trail of frozen air the sphere had left behind fell to the ground and shattered.

Tendrils of ice snapped through the shadows like bright blue lightning. Steam was rising from the shadow in a cloud, and where the cloud spilled over nearby soldiers, they screamed and their skin blackened from the cold.

Pain erupted from my leg as a bladed tentacle pierced the ice of my armor and my layer of protective mana. It parted flesh, cracked bone, and then stuck out the other side of my calf. I sank to one knee, largely ignoring the wound as I tightened my focus on the spell. The flashes of cold came in bursts, overwhelming my enemy’s defenses with sudden spikes of power, and inch by inch the shadows solidified.

Suddenly the vaguely human-shaped shadow burst apart in a soft puff of black ice, and Mawar melted away. In the same moment, something slammed into me from behind.

I was thrown onto my face, then dragged up from the frozen ground by the tentacle piercing my leg. Upside down, I met Mawar’s emotionless gaze; she was wrapped in shadow, forty feet behind me, unharmed by the sphere of ice that was still pulsing and flashing.

Spells slammed into me from every direction, and I could only harden my barrier against them. The effort sent a quaking ache through my core, and I felt the leading edge of backlash cutting through my focus.

With a jerk of my limbs, I sent the sphere through the heart of the Alacryan army. Each pulse flash-froze a dozen men or more, but there were no cries of pain; they died with the air frozen solid in their lungs. The spellfire let up as mages dove out of the spell’s path, but more of the tentacles were grabbing and striking me. Some turned aside, but others broke through my armor, and wounds began to accumulate all over my body.

The ice-crystal sphere curved around, passing through where Mawar stood, and again she melted away. I fell from the air, spun, and landed on my feet. The sphere was moving in a spiral pattern through the battlefield, and when it closed in on me, I grabbed hold of it and drew it back into my body, reabsorbing the mana I had spent in the casting.

A stabbing pain came from my core. I gasped and fell to my knees, clutching at my sternum as if I could dig it out of me. Something was wrong. Reabsorbing the mana should have eased the backlash, not intensified it.

Looking up slowly, realization dawning bitter and unwelcome, I watched as Mawar, once again hidden behind her remaining soldiers, raised a hand and shouted her orders. The Alacryan forces rushed back into formation, and dozens of spells again hissed through the air in my direction.

My head snapped back as the pain reached a crescendo. Never before had backlash felt as if something were ripping and clawing at my core from the inside. I grew cold and frightened, knowing that the retainer’s shadow magic could be doing to me something like I’d just done to Echeron.

The army’s spells closed in on me.

As one, the spells stopped.

I blinked away tears, staring at dozens of elemental bullets, balls of fire, bolts of lightning, and steaming rays of yellow and green mana that were hovering in the air around me. Time seemed to freeze.

Slowly, so very slowly, the core in my sternum cracked. I could feel the pieces begin to separate from each other.

The frigid claws of death beckoned to me, but I held them at bay. If I was to perish here, then I would not die alone.

Utilizing mana rotation, I fought to keep drawing in and cycling the mana that my core was no longer capable of manipulating properly…trying to shape and condense it to burst out like a bomb.

I felt something, some primal recognition, spark in my mind just as my core split open.

A scream ripped free of me, and with it a nova of bright blue mana.

As if seeing myself from above, detached from my own body, I watched as the nova moved outward, consuming the floating spells before colliding with the enemy force. In an instant, a hundred mages froze solid, their bodies clear as glass.

The expanding nova rippled, and cracks ran through it, then it was reversing, sucked back into me in a blink.

The explosion that followed shattered the glass soldiers and my consciousness both.

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