Ends of Magic

“They’re ready for us,” Nathan said as Stella charged up the spell. He could feel the soldiers above, buzzing around like a kicked anthill. The heirs were under the plaza that surrounded the tower, and there were both soldiers on foot and in the air. Hundreds of them, armed with powerful suits of enchanted armor.

“Then we fight them.” Khachi’s tone was matter-of-fact, his shield still raised to hold back the weight of stone above them with golden magic. “Then fight the Questors when they arrive.”

Aarl was in full armor, but his voice was tight. “Hear me, let’s kill this problem and live to tell of the deed.”

“Casting now,” Stella said. She unleashed her spell, and the stone above them stopped being above them. It blasted away and upwards like the Heirs were the magma chamber of an exploding volcano. The only thing they could see out of Khachi’s bubble was a roiling cloud of dust, but at least it wasn’t crushing rock.

Khachi leapt upwards, his bubble of protection moving with him. The Heirs followed with their methods of flight. They stayed within the magical aegis as rocks fell from the sky. Stella had fired hundreds of tons of stone into the air, and now it was starting to return to the ground. The size ranged from fine gravel to boulders the size of cars.

I hope it didn’t catch any civilians. At least the soldiers locked down the area.

The Heirs stayed in the cover of the dust cloud, unable to see what was going on as they broke above ground level and into the open air. Nathan could tell that the soldiers were scrambling. A few dozen of them had been knocked around by the blast, though their armor had kept them from death. The rest had scattered and were just starting to form back up into squads oriented on the newly manifested threat.

Nathan took that as his cue. He fully unleashed his aura for the first time in months. It billowed outwards as an entirely intangible explosion that cut off sensor spells and broke the forming cohesion of their foes. In moments, his aura stretched for hundreds of feet in every direction. It could have gone further, but the more concentrated it was, the more potent.

He was permitting all of the magic associated with his allies, and Stella conjured up a wind spell to wipe away the dust. One screaming gust later, and the battlefield was revealed. The flying soldiers were wavering through the air like a bunch of drunk idiots, most of them trying to make a safe landing as the flight magic of their armatures sputtered and died. Stella’s wind battered them around and sent several crashing into the ground with bone-shattering force.

Nathan stood in place on solid air, and the Heirs cut loose. Sarah fired like a metronome. Each shot was a penetrator round pulled from her new pouch, and they punched through the soldiers like rocks going through wine glasses. Aarl zipped around in midair, moving faster than Nathan had ever seen him go before. Any soldiers who came close to the Heirs received his attention and usually ended up in multiple pieces. His new belt radiated gravity mana as it tugged him through impossibly tight turns, equally distributing the force of acceleration across Aarl’s entire body to enable inertia-defying motions.

Those are some potent pieces of gear.

Not willing to be left out, Stella and Khachi were fiddling with their new acquisitions. One of Aarl’s skills let him understand and use magical gear more easily, but the other Heirs didn’t have anything like that. Nathan thought of telling them that battle was a bad time to try out new abilities, but they knew that already. If they were doing it anyway, they had good reasons. He hovered with them, ensuring that the dozens of attacks directed their way dissolved in his aura.

Khachi raised his hammer high. “My holy might shall strike you down!” The proclamation rolled out across the battlefield, and golden light shone from the wolfman. Khachi’s magic had never been well-suited for direct attack except through the medium of his hammer or against the undead. But this time, the divine presence of his magic fed back upon itself, channeled through the new amulet, crossing back to the aether and through the jagged shard of divinity that Khachi had in place of a mana pool. The feedback loop strengthened the mana, and the prayer swelled massively in strength until Khachi released it. A dozen golden spears formed around him and shot outwards like ballista bolts. Each one detonated in a rattling explosion that scattered the squads that Khachi had aimed them at.

Not to be outdone, Stella channeled her laser spell through her staff. As soon as she was done, the staff mirrored the spell through a flex of powerful wizardry that felt a bit like a teleport spell. Nine more identical copies formed in the air. The spells charged for barely a second before firing, each perfectly lancing through a faraway soldier. The spells reoriented, and less than a second later, Stella repeated the feat to kill another ten soldiers.

Nathan just floated there, watching in growing distaste as the soldiers of Esebus tried to rally against the invaders that had appeared in the center of their city. They were arranged on all sides of the Heirs, and each squad of soldiers was trying a different solution. Some fired the weapons mounted into their armatures as if they could burn through the resource that maintained the antimagic. Others attempted to disperse smoke to block the Heirs’ sight, or close into melee combat, while a few tried to break chunks of rock off buildings and hurl them. But every single attempt relied on magic in one way or another, and Nathan shut them all down with his expansive aura.

He felt like an adult getting involved in a fight between toddlers. He effortlessly plucked away their weapons and left them helpless as his friends steadily picked them off. Aarl had run out of nearby targets and floated nearby, ready to pounce on anybody who made another attempt.

This isn’t a fight, it’s a slaughter. Are the Questors going to show up?

The rout started slowly, but then it happened all at once. The soldiers turned and ran, getting behind whatever cover they could. The Heirs stopped killing them, letting a moment of silence descend on the battlefield. It was a strangely sterile scene, with bodies draped across the cityscape but no gross damage to the city aside from the crater directly underneath.

In that instant of relaxation, Khachi collapsed. He fell from the sky like a dead weight. Nathan bounded towards him and got his arms underneath the wolfman, lifting him back up. He gashed his hand on something stuck into the wolfman’s armor. The world blurred for a moment, and Nathan burned Stamina and Focus to remain conscious.

Poison, and a stronger one than I’ve run into before.

Stella reacted quickly, wrapping them all in a multilayered bubble of force further strengthened by her new staff. Nathan contracted his aura into a protective bubble around the shield. Any attacks would need to penetrate Stella’s shield without the benefit of magic.

Nathan turned Khachi over, finding a tri-bladed disk or shuriken embedded into a joint in the armor on his back. It was spiky and engraved, looking like something out of an anime. It had once carried enchantments, but Nathan hadn’t even noticed it until now. He should have. There was some kind of powerful mental skill at work that had hidden this attack from all of them.

He wrenched the blade out, letting out a spurt of blood. “The Questors are here. They’re staying hidden from us for now. I think this was Amon’s. Hidden by some kind of mental skill.” He handed Khachi’s still form to Aarl.

Aarl took him gently. “Attacking our healer. What do we do?”

Nathan swiveled to Stella. “You know healing magic. We just need him to be conscious for a moment so he can heal himself.”

“I can hit that target,” the mage replied, holding out her hands above the still form.

Nathan was distracted by a faintly familiar sensation. It was barely perceptible even to his senses, but it was the faintest touch of radiation impinging on his antimagic. It was only barely magical, and most of it went straight through his aura to weaken Stella’s shield. The pressure was barely getting started, but it was ramping up with quick pulses.