The Ancients

by Adam-Clay Webb

  Adam laughed when he saw the wild expression on Lyla’s face. “You see, magic and elementalism are one and the same if you understand them well enough. They both play around with tiny bits of the universe that we can’t see. I could have afforded to talk so much, because now that you cannot shift, I will defeat you in a single attack.”

  Lyla’s eyes widened. She raised her mana, but Adam only needed to raise his left hand. With that single movement, there was a massive quake that spanned about three miles in every direction, and a perfect square of the ground of about a square mile was cut out from the earth – a giant tile. The tile of earth, at Adam’s command, speedily took to the sky, saving only the small piece beneath his feet, which then jutted out over the flatness around it.

  Lyla crouched and held on to the rising earth helplessly. Adam, as well as all else who could behold the spectacle, looked up at the rising tile. Adam folded his fist, and in obedience, the square of earth rapidly folded itself into a dense sphere. Adam gripped his fist more tightly and the sphere of earth crushed in on itself.

  The sage hissed. “What a persistent insect.” He could feel the repulsion of a strong arcane shield within the sphere. “Well then.” With a motion of his right hand, large chunks of earth tore up from the ground and latched on to the now strengthened sphere. The sphere became smaller as the rock compacted itself even further.

  “And now for the finale. Pardon me brother. Argronic Art! Final Impalement!” With this command, there were several small tremors, as solid rock beneath the earth compressed at a wretchedly wicked rate, fusing to itself other elements, creating iron. After only a third of a second, massive and perfectly crafted lances shot out of the earth at eight points, jamming into the floating sphere. Each spear was launched through the dense rock with such a force that it pierced through the opposite side. This happened evenly for the whole sphere, creating a work of art – what appeared to be wheel with spokes. Except most wheels don’t have dead witches inside them.

  But Adam’s smirk would disappear in a moment. Cracks appeared on several parts of the sphere, and rays of black light burst out. The cracks multiplied, until in a bay of what was akin to resurrection, there was a terrible explosion.

  “Garadan Eralf!” Lyla’s command rang out. Through the flurry of dark matter and scattering pieces of stone and rock, she flew down at the Earth Sage, wings of wind on her back and invisible swords of slender glass in her hands.

  ***

  “Anam Garadan!” the desperate Hawthorne commanded, summoning a strong purple shield to defend against another of Falcon’s fiery attacks. The fire wrapped around and seemed to consume the shield, but Hawthorne’s mana held firm. Within the shield were also Clover and Star, who were pretty much at their limit.

  Clover fell to her knees. The heat within the shield was unbearable. She collapsed in a pool of sweat. Falcon’s attack finally ended; he and Hilda stood side by side, looking forward at the three witches who were at the edge of death. The scale of the attacks of the magical battle meant that none of the elemental giants could join in. They, and even Ohm’s men, were indiscriminately obliterated by attacks made by both sides.

  Star panted heavily. She stooped down beside Clover, who was barely breathing. “She can’t go on,” Star said, looking up at Hawthorne desperately.

  “I… I can still…” Clover struggled to speak.

  “I’d tell you to go with her, but we cannot shift. Fall back for now. I will press them with the remains of my magic. Take Clover and run. Find cover somewhere.”

  “No. Hawthorne--”

  “Come, Clover,” Star stopped her, grabbing up her limp, burning body.

  “Summoning!” Hawthorne commanded as soon as Star was a few meters off with Clover. “Sixth Guard!” With that, a thin wall of purple mana was erected behind her. It stretched across for about half a mile, and went up to about twenty meters.

  “You don’t have skill of a councillor, but you do have a councillor’s honour,” Hilda said. “You’ve wasted the last of your mana trying to protect those witches who will only be slaughtered by the giants.”

  “And you?! Were you not a councillor as well? Where is your honour?!” Hawthorne blasted.

  “It is in serving the very god who created the council!” she replied, then dashed up to Hawthorne with purple blades. Hawthorne knew she had no time to call for complicated spells. She also knew that Hilda was superior in close combat, leaving her in quite the quandary.

  The Councillor summoned up swords of her own. “Damn it. This is it,” she muttered. Hawthorne made quick swings with the remains of her strength, defending against Hilda’s sharp strikes, but only for a few moments. As Hawthorne knew would have happened, Hilda started to overpower her. Trapped between the purple barrier and the vile ex-Councillor, Hawthorne saw no hope of winning. Even if she could have miraculously escaped Hilda’s pin, the masked sorcerer was there with hs arms folded, ready to land a final fiery attack if needed.

  Before Hawthorne could further ponder her direness, Hilda’s purple sword plunged though her chest, boring through her completely even to tear through the purple barrier, disabling it entirely. Hawthorne’s body fidgeted as she released her swords. Hilda let go of the bright blade that had bored through Hawthorne, making it disappear.

  Hawthorne’s body hit the ground as she slowly lost her version. Hilda walked back to where Falcon was standing. “Leave nothing of her,” she said coldly.

  “Araganian Thread!” Falcon commanded, and a massive beam of fire – more massive than even Hilda could have ever summoned with the same spell – went forth to devour Hawthorne’s body. The poorly named Araganian thread was a thick river of flames that stretched back to devour even a few giants and a few of Ohm’s men.

  The heat cleared away to revealed a sight that distorted Hilda’s face.

  “Damn it, Hilda, she’s already dead! What, are you trying to send her to hell?!” Viknor blasted. The purpleness from his appearance still hadn’t fully dispersed. He held the limp, blood-heavied woman in his arms. A strong purple shield that made even Falcon’s attack a trivial one was still firm around him.

  “Damn. Seems I made it here just too late,” Viknor said under his breath. “Having stopped to rescue the two young witches…” He hissed.

  “What are you so upset about?” Hilda asked. “I slew one councillor. How many have you killed?”

  Viknor focused his eyes on the still man who wore the ominous mask. “His magic feels familiar,” he said to himself.

  Viknor used a reverse summoning to get Hawthorne’s body to a concealed place. “Fate has a dark sense of humour, and a persistence in tying up loose ends,” Viknor said. His mana riled up around him, but Hilda stood unfazed.

  “Scatter!” Hilda commanded, dispersing the dark mist that hindered shifting.

  “An enemy like you will still manage to shift even through that technique,” Hilda admitted.

  Toppling Hilda alone is difficult enough, Viknor thought. Now I have this wizard to worry about as well. Even so, Azar doesn’t expect me to spend all day here, so I have to find a way to make this quick. Hopefully those witches managed to tire them out.

  ***

  Lyla rushed onto Adam, making another desperate bustle of swings with her dual glass swords. With arms folded in conceit, the Earthshifter slid along the ground seamlessly, evading the attacks easily. Without her ability to shift, Lyla was incapable of landing a surprise attack. Not only that, but due to particle manipulation, Adam constantly shifted the gravity on the battlefield to make Lyla’s movements tedious and slouchy, and to make his own movement as fluid as walking on air. As if things weren’t dire enough, the same technique that Adam had used to bind her shifting prevented her from spawning clones.

  Her greatest disadvantage, though, rested directly in who her opponent was. Her most dominant elemental power was earthshifting, but the earth simply refused to fight Adam. She had no control of the earth in this battle, throwing out some of her most power
ful attacks.

  It deeply frustrated Lyla that even while giving her all, and being already low on mana, her enemy was smugly toying with her, hardly even attacking. With a screech, the woman made a swing that outdid the rest, forcing Adam into making even a slight effort to evade. He slid back on the earth fluidly.

  Lyla took a few steps back and held her hand out toward her enemy. “Anam Resal Reprus!” she belted. Without even gesturing, a massive, super-dense block of earth walled up before the sage. Usually, a magical attack like this would consume soft things like rock, but this time, the stone was dense as metal. There was a brilliant brightness and a deafening sound as the black beam of arcane power clashed against Adam’s effortless defence.

  As the mana cleared from the powerful attack, the hairs on the back of Lyla’s neck stood erect. She felt her spine almost crack as a foot landed in her back with drastic force. An immediate reflexive magical aura came to her defence. She slammed into the stone wall that was smoking blackly from her attack. She left a dent in it and sent several cracks flying through the dense wall, then she fell, her teeth clenched in pain. Somehow still able to move, she slowly made it to her feet, the wall just crumbling behind her.

  “Is this really the extent of your power?” the sage before her asked.

  When did he even get behind me?!

  “Knowing how weak you are, why did you decide to fight me, the Earth Sage? Are you mocking me?” Adam sounded annoyed now. “You will be ripped limb by limb, but to kill you with my own hand is an honour you don’t deserve, and a disgrace I will not bear.” He hissed. “Summoning! Core Golem!” Lyla lost her footing and fell as a massive quake shook the land for miles around. The ground tore apart, and what sounded like a monstrous wail came out from the depths of the earth.

  ***

  Wizard felt his wind dragon shake nervously as a ghastly cry pierced the skies. A few meters ahead on her white dragon was Witch, her hand outstretched toward Wizard, but she too paused when she heard the cry. They both looked down. Even though they were pretty far from where Adam and Lyla were, they could see the Earth Sage’s summoning, which had emerged out of the bowels of the earth. Lyla was just an ant in its looming shadow.

  Witch laughed. “Do you remember that thing from the last war, brother?” Witch asked. “Your girlfriend has already lost the ability to shift. She cannot escape the range of that monster’s attacks. And from here, I can sense she is already out of mana.”

  “You’re right,” Wizard agreed.

  “Come with me, brother. Stop this foolishness, and I will have her spared.”

  “I can shift in and save her myself,” Wizard said. “But if she cannot find a way to defeat the Earth Sage’s summoning, then she isn’t worth saving.”

  A slam that ripped through the earth meters deep and dug up hard rock quarter of a mile around made Wizard look down at the massive golem, a beast that dwarfed Kizer’s elemental beasts the same way the elemental beasts dwarfed squirrels.

  Witch saw the worry that Wizard tried to play off.

  Lyla looked up hopelessly at the giant’s mighty fist, which still pressed down on her crumbling black shield. She clenched her teeth and dropped to her knees, her arms still stretched upward, supplying the shield with just enough mana to remain. But as the beast’s force pressured down on the shield, she had to be expending more mana to keep it stable, and her mana was nearing its end.

  “This is unbelievable,” she muttered. “I have reached my limit after landing not even a single effective attack… Is this really the power of--” A gasp chopped her thought as the giant of rock pulled its arm up. With another wail, it slammed its fist down again. Lyla could not move, and she knew well her shield would not manage.

  At that instant, Witch reached up to Wizard and grabbed him, putting a tight hold on his mana, seeing he was prepared to shift. The woman materialized a sword and plunged it into her brother’s chest, making him pay dearly for being distracted.

  “Dammit!” Wizard cursed as the beast’s fist finally made an impact.

  Lyla stared up at the monster’s fist, which had somehow stopped just before making its way to obliterate the arcane shield. She just then saw and felt the presence of a mana weaker than hers.

  “Can you still fight?” Azar’s voice came. Lyla spun around quickly, unable to speak. Beside Azar was Zen, whose fingers remained at her temples to support the life-saving force field.

  There was then an unpleasantly sharp sound as a thin wave of force beheaded the monster. Its body crumbled to the earth, quaking the place. Adam unfolded his arms and looked straight at the close-by Cyrus.

  “I must head back to HQ immediately,” Azar said, snapping Lyla out of her daze. “You’re too strong an asset to lose. We will need you when we find the gods,” Azar said. “But even so, I cannot leave both mindbenders with you. There are other sages to attend to. Cyrus will give you defence and help you defeat the sage.”

  Lyla nodded briskly. “Thank you,” she said. “I can still fight.”

  “Good. Without your ability to shift, you will need to stay close to him so you can be covered by his force field.” With that, Azar vanished in a red cloud with Zen, reappearing at his tower.

  “So reinforcements have arrived in the form of a capable mindbender,” Adam said. “Maybe I can no longer afford to be so carefree.” He folded his fists and the gravity everywhere increased dangerously, pulling on his enemies’ bodies torturously.

  “It seems help has arrived,” Witch heard her brother’s voice behind her.

  “Huh?!” She spun around quickly, still holding her sword in the chest of what was by now obviously a clone. Wizard was a few meters behind her, standing on a wind dragon, dense black mana before his right palm, which was pointing down to where Lyla was, and where Zen and Cyrus had appeared.

  “So you managed to clone even the dragon as well,” Witch said.

  Wizard turned his outstretched arm toward Witch, who was standing in his trap. The black tar had glued her to the fake dragon. “Hustle Flash!” Wizard commanded. With that, a compact beam of arcane mana that held the power of several massive mana beams like Herriot and her sister used to wield, bolted out at Witch. But the power of this attack wasn’t the only thing that made it worse than typical mana beams – its speed made spaceshifting too slow an escape. The earth was cratered quickly as the beam of power which consumed the mana and dragon clones struck Witch, plunging her hotly into the earth several hundred feet below in less than a hundredth of a second. The beam of power pushed her into the earth’s crust, creating a deep hole and a large crater that the explosion of mana created.

  Cyrus had to summon a force field to keep his footing even though this had occurred a few miles out from him and Lyla.

  “Chain Legion!” Wizard commanded, outstretching both hands down to where Witch had plummeted. From black portals that spawned before his palms, tens of black chains rapidly swooped down toward the hole in the ground. The chains, in a second’s fraction, had dug deeper into the earth than the hole had. Huh? From beneath the clearing dust and waste mana way down below, Wizard saw his sister running up to him on the chains.

  “Snaking Flames!” Wizard ordered, and fire suddenly covered the chains. Witch spaceshifted, appearing on her white dragon not far from Wizard.

  “Roast him!” Witch commanded, and the white dragon instantly generated and spat a massive sphere of fire at Wizard, whose wind dragon offered an easy escape. As Wizard moved around on his wind dragon, dodging the tens of fiery spheres, the earth was blasted and scorched all over. Wizard knew this could have been troublesome for Lyla and her ally. As Wizard dodged the spheres narrowly, he spawned a clone to appear on his sister’s dragon. The clone stooped quickly, palm flat on the dragon’s back. By the time the clone summoned a yellow mark on the dragon, Witch kicked him off forcefully, having him consumed with the dragon’s attack before gravity could have had him.

  A powerful mind wave cast by Cyrus sliced through Adam’s walling defence
cleanly, forcing him to shift himself along the earth swiftly. Lyla was already upon the sage, swinging valiantly with glass blades. The earth shook as a large rock was carved out from beneath him, on which he rose up quickly. The rock accelerated until it had ascended close to where the clouds were. Now he was just a spec. Then, in another burst of speed, he went even above the clouds. Lyla readied herself with wings of wind.

  “I can’t guard you if you go up there,” Cyrus said. “He’s trying to separate us. Don’t play his game.”

  “He doesn’t have any earth up there to attack me with,” Lyla said, but as soon as she was about to move off, she felt a heaviness that was due to Adam’s intensified gravitational excitement. “Dammit!” she muttered through her teeth. Cyrus too was under the same bind.

  “What the hell is this? Look!” Cyrus exclaimed. As Adam slowly raised his arms, something beyond even the expectation of Lyla occurred. But Wizard had known that if things got serious, the Earth Sage would have been pushed to this scale of techniques.

  The petrified two looked left and right. Out in the distances, they saw mountains rising up from the earth to the sky. Soil and rocks fell from their bases as the mountains ascended at an accelerating pace. Adam laughed in a long-forgotten thrill as he lifted from the earth’s crust billions of tonnes. On the mountains were battlefields where many thousands were still fighting, but they were now mere insects – even Kizer’s elemental giants.

  “What the—Is he going to drop those on us? I can’t even move!” Lyla panicked.

  “A sage can do even surreal things like this,” Cyrus contemplated.

  When Adam thought the mountains were high enough, he began preparing the attack. Witch kept Wizard too busy to do anything about this. The mountains, as Adam folded his fists mightily, crushed unto themselves and were forged into spheres. The spheres were made to condense until they were about a third of their original sizes.