[Book 4] [336. One minute]
The chamber was silent.
Veranthos stood with the staff upright in his hand and his brown eyes on the team, and he said nothing more.
He waited.
Luna’s right hand had not moved off the rapier grip.
Her left hand held the longsword. Lisa, half a step behind her on the right, was still half a step out of position from where she had been when Veranthos’s pulse hit her during the rise. Ian was on Luna’s other side, daggers loose, the puppy-eye thing all the way up. Fty was farthest back, staff in hand, looking past Veranthos toward something only Fty was seeing.
The silence lasted three seconds, but it felt longer.
Fty moved first.
“Protect me,” Fty said. He did not look at Luna. He was looking at the staff in Veranthos’s hand. “I have an idea. Don’t let him reach me.”
Luna had been about to give an order. The words she had not yet picked sat in her throat and dissolved. Fty was telling her, in the most polite voice she had ever heard him use, that he was driving now.
She nodded.
“On it.”
Veranthos heard every word.
He looked at Fty. His shifted from Luna to the healer at the back of the formation, and they did not narrow, did not focus, did not register concern. They processed Fty the way someone processes an empty cup on a table — present, not interesting.
“You can’t,” Veranthos said, and it sounded almost kindly. He sounded like a teacher correcting a student’s homework, marking minor errors in the margins.
“But you will all die regardless and serve me as a result.”
“Did he forget we don’t die?” whispered Ian, but Luna’s eyes were on Veranthos. “We’re kind of immortal too.”
“Let’s not anger him,” she whispered back.
He started moving.
The first step was unhurried. The second was the same. He was walking toward Fty in a straight line that took him past Ian’s right shoulder, and his head did not turn.
Ian, who was right there with both daggers drawn, who had stabbed this man approximately ninety seconds ago, registered the not-being-seen. Turned to Luna and whispered again, “He didn’t even mention me.”
“Ian, not now.”
“Before. He said something about everyone, but skipped me.”
“Ian, focus.”
“Now he’s walking past us. Like we’re furniture.”
“Ian, he’s about to kill our healer.”
“...okay.”
Luna’s brain had already started moving. She watched Veranthos’s stride, the line he was taking, the way the staff was already lifting slightly in his free hand as if he were about to lecture. The full kit was up.
Bone armor reformed, robes settled, mana visibly flowing in from the chamber walls.
She had been in command of the army. She had been in command of the courtyard. She had been in command of the apprentice's fight. This was different. “Lisa,” she said. Her voice came out like Mila’s.
“He’s yours. Don’t kill him fast. Fty needs time.”
Lisa’s eyes were already gold. Hair stood up at her shoulders. “Got it, Luny.”
“Ian. With me. We’re working the flank. Stay close, stay quiet, do not engage him directly until I call it.” She glanced sideways. “He doesn’t see you. Use it.”
“...okay.”
“Fty. We will protect you. We’ll cycle as we can.” She did not say what she wanted to say, which was we trust you. “Do your thing.”
Fty’s staff had already dropped into a fixed channel. He had set himself a meter behind the formation’s center, planted his feet, and put both hands on the staff in a grip that suggested he would not move again until this was done. A thin gold thread rose from the staff’s head and laced toward the ceiling, like a thread of honey poured upward.
It did not look like a battle spell.
Veranthos glanced at it on his way past. Useless. Luna could see the word in his posture without him saying it, but Fty’s thread continued upward.
Veranthos lifted his staff.
“Now then,” he said, and the voice was already turning toward Lisa as he turned his head, the lecture voice sliding back into place. “I was correcting your anchor structure when you interrupted my breathing. Where were we?”
He stopped four meters from Lisa, in the open center of the chamber, with the staff raised at a comfortable angle.
The fireball that left Lisa’s right hand was the size of her head.
“Wider stance,” Veranthos said.
The necroball that left his left hand was the same size.
They met in the air between them.
Phase Two began.
The first exchange was short. Lisa’s fireball broke against Veranthos’s ward; his necroball broke against her wall of heat.
Same as it had been before the apprentice’s death, except for one thing.
Veranthos’s left hand was free. The bone armor at his ribs was whole. The staff was in his right hand at lecture height, and his left hand was open at his side, and as Lisa drew breath to throw again, the left hand came up.
A second necroball left it.
Lisa caught it on a second wall.
“Better,” Veranthos said. “Two anchors instead of one. You’re learning.”
Lisa threw a third fireball. The staff matched. The free hand threw a fourth necroball. The wall matched again. Lisa’s wall was bigger than it needed to be.
“Your anchor’s still wide,” Veranthos said. “You’re casting from your sternum. Pull it to the diaphragm.”
“Shut up,” Lisa said, but she looked like she was having fun.
She threw two at once.
The staff matched one. The freehand matched the others. Four casts in a single beat, sparks falling.
Veranthos smiled.
Luna moved.
She circled left. The agility from the potion she’d taken in the apprentice fight was still on, ticking down somewhere in her HUD.
She did not check as the telekinetic sword came at her from the right.
It drifted up off the marble where Veranthos had left it, came toward her chest at the height of her ribs, and Luna stepped inside the strike and let the longsword take the blade aside. The floating sword corrected. Came at her again. She stepped through it.
It was harassment. The sword was the part of Veranthos that was watching for her. The rest of him was on Lisa.
“Ian.”
Ian was at her left elbow. Daggers loose.
“He still doesn’t see me.”
“I know.”
“This is personal.”
“Stay on me. We’re working on a flank. Same as the apprentice.”
Ian’s head came around. “Now?”
“Not yet.”
Lisa…
The fire exchange in the middle of the chamber escalated. Lisa was throwing faster. Veranthos was matching faster. The chamber’s air had shimmered at the edges from the heat coming off Lisa’s hands.
“Your wrist,” Veranthos said. “You’re flicking. The release comes from the elbow.”
“I said shut up.”
“The lecture is free. The lesson is included with the duel.”
Lisa threw a column of flame. The staff produced a mirror-column to meet it, and the columns held against each other for a second longer than the last time before they collapsed.
Veranthos nodded. “Excellent.”
Lisa’s eyes were the bright gold of her mythic now, and her hair lifted off her shoulders. The mana lines on her wrists were visible through her sleeves.
She threw a triadic-anchor fireball without thinking about it.
She caught herself doing it half a second after she had released it. Three points instead of two. The cast went out in a tighter, denser sphere than her previous throws, and the staff matched it half a second late. She hated it was working, but also she liked she was improving, and that made her frown.
Lisa’s fireball clipped Veranthos’s left shoulder before his ball cancelled it. The robe at the shoulder burned through. The bone armor underneath cracked.
Veranthos looked down.
Then at Lisa.
He was smiling wider.
“Yes,” he said.
Luna had been waiting for the moment Veranthos took a real hit.
It was now. He was committed to Lisa; the lecture fully up, the staff arm dropping for half a second as he reset for the next exchange. The telekinetic sword had drifted ten meters to her right and was wandering back toward Veranthos in a slow arc.
She looked at Ian.
Ian read it.
She tilted her head toward Veranthos’s back. Ian nodded once.
Same play as the apprentice.
Luna moved.
Three steps to close. Rapier low, longsword high. Veranthos was four meters from Lisa with his right side toward Luna, the staff arm forward, the bone armor at the neck visible above the collar of his robe.
[Paradox Slash]
The longsword came down at the back of Veranthos’s neck, behind the helm-line of bone armor. The first cut hit the ward at the seam. The second cut, from a possible future, came through the same line, and the ward unraveled along it.
The gap opened.
Ian was already there.
[All-In]
Both daggers came in fast and low. The first hit went into the gap at the base of the skull. The second hit went in beside it. The third hit went in two centimeters lower. The fourth.
Veranthos folded.
The lecture stopped.
He sat down on the marble, slowly. The staff stayed upright in his right hand. His left hand came up to his throat. His fingers touched the gap. He looked at his fingers.
Then at Ian.
The brown eyes focused on Ian for the first time in the fight.
“Oh,” Veranthos said.
He fell forward.
Loot did not drop.
Luna stepped back from the body. The HP bar in her HUD ticked to zero and stayed at zero and did not produce a notification.
Lisa, four meters away, had her hands up at her sides. The fireball she had been about to throw sat in her right palm, undecided. Her eyes were still gold. She was looking at Veranthos’s body.
“...did we get him?”
“Wait,” Luna said.
The staff pulsed.
A single beat of pale light ran down the wood from tip to base, and the body on the marble drew a breath. The bone armor at the neck flexed inward, then outward, then closed along the line Luna’s blade had opened. The robe at the shoulder unburned.
Veranthos sat up.
The brown eyes were ordinary.
“As I was saying,” he said, “the release comes from the elbow.”
He stood.
Ian stared at the spot the daggers had hit. His daggers were still in his hands. He looked at them, then at the bone armor, then at the back of Veranthos’s neck, who was ignoring him again.
“...are you SERIOUS.”
Veranthos stepped back into the lecture position. The staff at the comfortable angle and his free hand open. Lisa had not moved.
“You’ve been practicing without consequences,” Veranthos said. “Let me adjust the variables.”
He gestured.
The apprentice’s body lifted off the marble.
She came up in the same order Luna had killed her in. Helm first. Pauldron seated. Greatsword pulling itself out of the seam Luna’s rapier had opened at her throat, sliding back into the back-sheath. The pale violet returned to the eye-sockets last.
Veranthos paused and looked at her.
“Apprentice,” Veranthos said. “Engage the duelist.” The Death Knight turned toward Luna as Ian let out another curse.
“Same as before,” Luna said.
“She remembers how we killed her, right? S knows,” Ian said, but he started circling her.
“I know she knows.” The apprentice came at them in a different opening this time. Last fight she had led with the heavy diagonal Luna had ducked under. This time she opened with a short thrust at Luna’s chest that Luna had to step sideways to avoid.
The greatsword corrected immediately. Caught Luna’s longsword on the bind and twisted, and Luna had to release her grip and turn the hold to keep from being disarmed.
The recovery was faster than last time. The apprentice knew the path she had died on. She would not walk it again.
In the middle of the chamber, the fire-exchange had not paused.
Lisa refused to give him the breath. Her fireball clipped the staff on the way past. Veranthos’s necroball caught hers on the recovery.
“Wider stance,” Veranthos called over his shoulder.
“I HATE YOU.”
“That’s an improvement. You used to hate me without volume.”
Luna and Ian had the apprentice in a corner of the chamber.
She was working them. Luna on her left side, Ian on her right. The greatsword swept between them in a wide arc; Luna had to step back from it, and Ian got inside the recovery on the right and tagged her gauntlet with a Quick-Draw strike that didn’t bite.
The bone armor at her wrist held.
She caught Ian’s second dagger on the cross-guard and pulled him toward her, and the pommel came around at his temple, and Luna had to call.
“Ian, back—”
Ian had already let go of the dagger and stumbled out of range. The pommel passed where his head had been.
The apprentice corrected and came back at Luna.
The next exchange was bad.
Luna had set up for the same neck-strike that had worked last time. The apprentice had set up for it too. Luna’s longsword came down at the seam, and the apprentice’s greatsword was already there to meet it, and the bind closed Luna’s blade against the bone armor with both blades locked.
The apprentice’s pommel came around at Luna’s face.
Luna saw it.
She would not get out of the way in time. The agility from the potion was real but not unlimited; the apprentice was Lv.42 and the strike was already inside her guard.
The pommel was going to hit her temple.
She would die.
[Slipstream]
The world skipped.
Luna’s body was at the position she had been at half a second ago, with the longsword raised differently and her boots a foot to the left. The apprentice’s pommel passed through the space where her head had just been.
She brought the longsword down on the apprentice’s wrist instead of the neck. The bone armor at the wrist was thinner than at the neck. The longsword bit.
The apprentice grunted.
“...did you—” Ian had seen something.
“No,” Luna said.
“Okay.”
Lisa was losing.
Luna saw it without looking at her directly. The casts were closer together now, and Lisa’s wall-defenses were going up later than they should have. Veranthos was still lecturing.
“Your last cast was good. The one before it was sloppy. Be honest about which one was the accident.”
The wall held. Barely.
Luna got the longsword out of the apprentice’s wrist. The apprentice swung at Ian with the off-hand. Ian was already inside it. Daggers, daggers, daggers, but the bone armor flexed.
It would not be fast enough.
The apprentice would take another minute to kill. Lisa had less than that against Veranthos. Fty was working on its own timeline behind her; Luna did not know how close.
There was one option.
She had been hoping not to need it.
“Lisa!” she yelled.
Lisa caught a necroball on her left wall, and the wall barely held.
“The potion—do you want to—”
The card popped up before Luna had finished the sentence.
[Liquefacted Mana Inject]
Quality: 7-legendary
Effect: 2× magic stats for 1 minute. Immunity to conditions. Death upon expiration.
Info:Made by Queen Charlie and Scamantha™ — the one your alchemist told you not to worry about. The Goddess of Exploits found a way to contain mana through a loophole, which will be patched in the future.
The world brightened.
The potion went down burning, the mana inside it electric in a way Lisa had not felt before. Her chest tightened. Her hands warmed. The mana lines under her sleeves went shining.
The minute started.
She grinned at Luny. “I only asked,” Luny was saying. Soft. Lisa heard it like Luny was on the other side of a window.
It was okay. Luny had asked. Lisa had wanted to. Sometimes asking and wanting were the same answer.
She turned back to Veranthos.
He was looking at her, the lecture-posture had dropped, and his staff lowered an inch.
“Ah,” Veranthos said. “There you are.”
Lisa threw the biggest fireball she had ever thrown, it crossed the chamber in a sphere the size of a dinner table.
Veranthos’s staff matched it.
The two casts met in the center of the chamber and detonated. The shockwave rolled outward, peeled the dust off the marble, lifted Lisa’s hair off her shoulders, and Lisa was already throwing again.
The next one was tighter with three anchors; She had not had to think about it.
The staff matched.
She threw again.
Three anchors.
Faster.
The staff matched, late.
Lisa’s cast caught the bone armor at his ribs.
Veranthos staggered for the first time in the fight.
“Yes,” he said. The pleasure in it was different from before. He was looking at her with the attention he had been giving the lecture, turned upward.
Lisa felt it.
She also did not care.
She threw a column.
He met it. The columns held against each other and Lisa pushed and felt his column give and pushed harder. The columns broke against each other and the chamber filled with orange and dark fire and Veranthos shifted weight backward by a step.
A step.
He had not stepped back for the entire fight.
Behind her, somewhere, Luny and Ian were finishing the apprentice. Lisa heard the impact of Luny’s longsword on bone armor and the clatter of the Death Knight going down. The apprentice would be dead in seconds.
Lisa was alone with Veranthos.
It was what she had wanted from the moment he had started lecturing her.
The next exchange was hers. She knew it as it was happening; she had thrown the fireball before she had decided to throw it, and the cast was triadic and tight and faster than anything she had cast in her life. It hit the bone armor at the chest.
The bone armor cracked.
The chest underneath bled.
Lisa stepped forward.
“Stay there,” Veranthos said as he was raising the staff.
She did not stay.
The next fireball was at his head.
He blocked it, but late. The staff caught the cast at the last instant and the cast skipped past his ear and detonated against the chamber wall behind him.
Lisa felt the heat of her own casting come back at her from the wall. She felt blood at her lip. She had not noticed where the wound was from. The potion was not making her stronger; it was just letting her cast faster than she was paying for. The cost was running on a clock she could see in her HUD.
Forty-two seconds.
She threw a triadic.
He matched.
She threw two at once.
He matched both.
She threw three.
The staff matched two. The third one was a second too fast and it hit him in the same shoulder she had cracked at the start of the fight, and the shoulder opened, and the bone armor came off in a piece the size of her hand and clattered on the marble.
Veranthos’s robe at the shoulder was burning. He was not putting it out. “Where,” he said, breathing now, “did you anchor the third one.”
Lisa told him with a fourth fireball.
He took it.
Thirty seconds.
The wound at the shoulder was bigger. The bone armor around it was retreating from her fire, his staff was still up.
The mirror-casts were still coming.
They were slower now than her casts.
The next exchange was the one.
She set her feet wider, because he was right and she hated that he was right, and pulled the cast from her diaphragm, because he was right about that too, and let the release come from her elbow.
Runes flared and the fireball that left her hands was the cleanest cast of her life. It crossed the four meters between them in half a second.
Veranthos’s staff came up.
The mirror-cast was perfect. He had assembled it the moment her fireball had left her hands, three anchors of his own, dark fire at the same speed and trajectory.
The two casts met.
Hers won and took him in the chest. The bone armor at his chest was already cracked, so the fireball drove through the crack. It came out the back of him.
Veranthos stayed standing for a second.
He looked at her. “Good,” he said and folded. He sat down on the marble, slowly, the same way he had sat down the first time. The staff stayed upright. He looked at the staff. He looked at Lisa.
His mouth moved.
Lisa did not hear what he said.
He fell forward.
The bone armor at his chest hit the marble.
Lisa’s HUD pinged.
[Effect: Liquefacted Mana Inject — Expired]
Lisa’s body dissolved, and the pile sat on the marble next to Veranthos’s body. Luna saw it. Veranthos was face down on the marble.
The staff was upright, and his body moved. Veranthos’s right hand twitched. The fingers closed on the marble. The bone armor at the chest began to knit shut along the line Lisa’s fireball had opened.
The staff pulsed. A single pulse of pale light ran down the wood the way it had after the first kill, and the body on the marble rose, the limbs reassembling, the burned robe weaving itself whole, the chest closing.
He was coming back.
Luna’s hand went to the rapier grip, and she was calculating which exchange came next without Lisa.
Then the thread changed.
Fty’s gold thread, the one that had been rising slowly from his staff for the entire fight, stopped rising. It hung in the air for a single moment.
Then it broke into runes.
The gold ribbon folded itself in midair into a circle of glowing characters Luna did not recognize. The runes spread outward across the chamber’s ceiling and down its walls, twelve of them, each the size of her hand, each rotating slowly on its own axis. The pattern resolved itself in two seconds.
The chamber lit up gold; the runes turned at the staff in Veranthos’s hand and pulled.
The wood of the staff went translucent.
The runes funneled inward, twelve glowing circles narrowing toward the staff like water finding a drain, and Veranthos’s body went with them. His feet first. Then his legs. Then the half-formed torso, the reaching arm, the shoulder, the neck.
The staff caught the last of him.
It glowed brighter for half a second. The runes contracted around it and disappeared into the wood. The golden light at the staff’s tip flared, dimmed, and went out.
The staff remained upright on its own, and the chamber was quiet.
Luna stood with the longsword in her right hand and the rapier in her left, and nothing to put either of them through. The agility from the apprentice-fight potion had expired somewhere in the last minute; she had not noticed when. Ian was leaning against the back wall with both daggers in one hand.
Fty had not moved; he was still in the channel posture, both hands on his staff, feet planted, eyes on the standing staff that had been Veranthos’s. His shoulders were shaking very slightly. He let his hands off the staff, stood up and looked at the staff that had eaten Veranthos.
He smiled.
“Lisa and the boss,” Fty said. “Are not the only ones who can free-form cast.”