by Andrew Rowe
“I call upon your divine might,
Flames that can burn even the soul of the sun!
Rage of the God Phoenix!”
The mana crystal in the ring on Elora’s right hand shattered.
An explosion of white flames enveloped her, rising into the shape of a blazing bird.
Elora, barely visible amongst the flames, pointed her finger.
The flames surged forward.
No. I’m not sacrificing Derek for this.
I raised Ceris, the Song of Harmony, and I willed it to work.
The white fire arced, shifting course in mid-air, straight into Ceris’ blade.
I didn’t wait an instant. I could see Saffron turning, throwing Derek off.
I lowered my arm to strike.
Haste.
Jump. Jump. Jump.
The force of activating the ring repeatedly threw me forward with a speed I couldn’t possibly control. But I didn’t need to.
I’d already aimed.
I jammed Ceris right through the center of Saffron’s chest.
There was an explosion of incendiary whiteness as the stored spell was released.
And when my vision cleared, a spherical hole larger than a fist was missing from the center of Saffron’s chest.
Saffron stared at me in shock.
I pulled the sword back and swung again, aiming for his neck.
He raised an arm and deflected the blow, almost casually.
The sword cut into his flesh, but...
Saffron shook his head, grinning through bloodstained teeth.
Where his hand had been burned by touching the sword, the wound was already gone.
The hole in his chest was beginning to close.
And even the cut I’d just made on his arm was almost closed.
No.
I screamed, swinging the sword again and again. He blocked every strike with his arms.
He was healing faster than I could hurt him.
And then, with sudden force, he struck back.
I’d never felt my ribs buckle like that before.
I fell backward, hit the floor, and rolled.
The sword tumbled from my fingers.
“That,” I heard Saffron say, “Was incredible!”
The Tyrant’s child burst into laughter.
My coughing produced blood. That seemed bad.
My silver phoenix sigil was active, already working to try to fix my injuries. But it only had a fraction of the power of the ring of regeneration, and even the ring took time to address broken bones.
I’d left the ring with Sera. In retrospect, that had been a costly mistake.
With effort, I managed to push myself over to face upward.
I tried to reach for Ceris.
Derek ducked down and picked it up first. “Not my first choice of a weapon, but it’ll do.” Derek cracked his neck. The left side of his chest was stained with blood now, and I couldn’t tell how much of it was his.
“You already tried that. It didn’t work.” Saffron shook his head. “At least be creative.”
“Creativity has its place, of course. But in the absence of good ideas, I usually find that hitting something hard enough repeatedly will solve the problem.” Derek grinned. “And I’ve noticed something.”
Saffron tilted his head to the side. “Oh?”
“You’re healing slower than you were a few minutes ago.” Derek pointed Ceris at him. “I think you’re running out of mana.”
Saffron growled. “Not possible.”
Derek stepped to the side. Away from me, and probably deliberately. How generous.
“Oh? So you have an infinite supply of mana? I doubt that. We all have our limits.” Derek tilted his head downward. “And I think you’re dangerously close to hitting yours.”
I managed to cast a glance to the other side of the room, toward Elora.
She had collapsed against a wall and fallen to the ground. I wasn’t sure if she was even conscious.
She clearly already had been low on mana before she’d thrown that incredible spell. Whatever she’d cast had taken what she’d had left, and probably more.
I couldn’t move more than a hair. I’d burned nearly all of my mana just trying to get free from Saffron’s compulsion.
It was down to Derek now.
And Derek was, from the looks of it, pretty badly injured himself.
Saffron moved.
It was the slightest thing, just a hint of a step forward.
Derek took the bait, swinging at Saffron’s outstretched hand.
Saffron side-stepped the blow and caught Ceris’ blade.
Then he slammed a palm into Derek’s jaw, knocking him back.
And tearing Ceris free from his grip.
“Tavare,” Derek said, coughing as he stumbled backward.
“Your summoned monsters are useless,” Saffron said as he hurled the sword into a nearby wall. Ceris pierced through the stone, embedded to the hilt.
“I call you.”
A slight variation in phrasing, I realized.
No elemental appeared at his side.
Instead, a gleaming sword flew down the stairs and toward Derek’s outstretched hand.
Saffron turned and grabbed for the hilt.
The sword shifted mid-air and moved out of the way.
Then Derek was armed.
“Much better.” Derek stepped forward, swinging at a diagonal, and projected a wave of cutting force.
Saffron side-stepped the shockwave, but Derek twitched a hand and the energy followed Saffron’s path.
Saffron raised his hands just in time to block the impact. It left long gouges along his arms.
“Just as I expected. You can’t absorb kinetic energy.” He swung his sword again, horizontally this time. Another shockwave flew out, but this one stretched then split apart, each one flying to hit Saffron from a different angle.
“You have become an irritation.” Saffron pronounced. “I don’t like to do this, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to resort to taking this a fraction more seriously.”
Saffron clapped his hands. “A shame, really. I’d like to—”
Derek blurred forward and slashed Saffron across the throat.
Saffron flickered as the sword passed though him, and I realized what that meant at the same moment that Derek must have.
Illusion.
Another Saffron appeared behind Derek a moment later, and then slammed a fist into his back.
Derek stumbled and fell to his knees.
“As I was saying, I try not to use magic actively, because it spoils the thrill of the hunt. But you’re exceptional, for a human. Even if the other humans did wear me down a bit first.”
Derek spun around, bringing the sword upward in a rising slash.
Saffron caught the sword between his palms, then shoved backward.
Derek stumbled, running into something—
A second Saffron, who spun him around and punched him in the face.
Derek fell to his knees again, lips bloody.
“Illusions. Simulacra.” Derek spat blood, shaking his head. “Can’t fight me with just one of you?”
Saffron smiled. “I could, of course. But you’re getting special treatment since you’ve done so very well!”
One Saffron threw a punch, which Derek side-stepped and responded to with a series of rapid slashes.
The other Saffron folded his hands together. They began to glow red.
My ribs were still burning.
My hand was still barely functional from all the mana I’d used.
But I could not just lie here and watch Derek get beaten to death.
I couldn’t stand, but resh it, I could crawl.
I slowly began to pull myself across the floor toward the wall where Ceris had impacted. I didn’t think I had any chance of doing much with it, but maybe I could get it back to Derek. He was trained at fighting with two swords.
Another Saffron appeared in front of
me.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
He reached down and lifted me by the throat. “You managed to do me considerable harm earlier, young man.” Saffron shook his head. “That was uncalled for. I think it’s time I return the favor, hmm?”
For the second time in a day, I charged transference mana into my forehead and slammed it into someone.
It was considerably more effective than I expected.
In fact, it erased a good portion of the false Saffron’s face.
He dropped me, falling back and reaching upward toward the eyes that had just been evaporated.
As tough as the original Saffron was, simulacra were made of mana. Enhancement mana, or a derivative of it.
And transference mana, my very favorite for attacking, was the exact opposite.
I fell to the floor, rolled to avoid the simulacrum stomping a foot on me, and drew the transference sword straight into a swing.
I cut his legs off at the knees.
The Saffron simulacrum fell to the ground, and I rolled on top of him, jamming the sword into his back.
The simulacrum vanished.
I turned my head back toward the other fight. Derek was falling back, being attacked by three different copies of Saffron striking him from different sides.
I pointed my sword at the nearest Saffron, focused the energy in the tip of my sword, and pushed.
It blasted a hole right through the simulacrum’s back.
Incredulous, it turned toward me. Derek swept his sword through its neck a moment later.
We can do this, I told myself. I just need to—
Another Saffron appeared next to me.
I slashed at him out of reflex.
He caught the sword in his hand, lifting it. “Interesting.”
Then he snapped it in half.
Oh.
Saffron — the actual Saffron — leaned down, with half a broken sword in his hands.
I heard a noise toward the entrance, briefly turning my eyes in that direction.
Saffron placed the sword against the center of my chest. The broken blade’s edge began to glow with white light, brighter and brighter. “I think it’s only fair that I do to you what you did to me. Symmetry is important.” He nodded to himself. “Any last words?”
I managed a slight smile. “Keras Selyrian is right behind you.”
Saffron went still, then laughed. “As far as last words go—”
A hand landed on Saffron’s shoulder, then spun him around.
“...Oh.”
The punch that followed carried Saffron across the room, into the mansion wall, and then through that same stone wall.
I looked up at Keras, coughed, and then smiled. “Hey.”
Keras reached down and pulled me to my feet, then turned toward where a very-much alive Saffron was walking back through the hole in the wall.
“I’ll take things from here.”
Saffron clapped his hands together. An aura of white flame began to swirl around him.
“What was it again?”
Oh, no.
The flames intensified, swirling around Saffron in a nexus of fire. “Ah, yes.” He pointed his hand at Keras. “Rage of the God Phoenix.”
The aura of flames formed a soaring bird, rushing over Saffron and then following his pointed hand toward us.
Keras stepped in the way. His aura shifted in the same way I’d seen it move a hundred times before, forming a blade of energy around his right hand.
He cut the spell in half.
The remaining streams of white fire flew to either side of him, impacting against the back wall of the house and burning a pair of holes straight through it.
I stared in disbelief.
Keras tilted his head downward. “Saffron.”
“Keras.” Saffron spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor. “This is a surprise.”
The swordsman put a hand on the hilt of his sword. “I’ll give you a fair opportunity to leave.”
Derek swung his sword in an arc, dispatching the last of the simulacra. “Are you kidding? This guy wrecked my house, Keras. Also, less importantly, he may have killed Elora.”
Keras took a step toward Saffron, drawing his sword just an inch out of the scabbard. “Leave.”
Saffron’s eyes scanned across the room. Elora. Derek. Keras. Me.
“I’ll remember this. I’ll remember all of you.”
Then he snapped his fingers and vanished.
Derek glanced from side to side. “I seriously think I’m going to need a new house.”
Then he collapsed, senseless, to the mansion floor.
***
There’s something absolutely terrifying about not being able to move.
Saffron’s magic had forced me to remain sitting. Now, I had to force myself to lie still. Not as bad, but still far from my favorite activity.
Keras stood up from checking on me. “Good news is that I don’t think any of your ribs punctured a lung. Bad news is that I am not a medical professional.”
I nodded, then coughed. I was lying down on the floor. He’d insisted that I remain still until I got proper treatment. “You going to go get help?”
He shook his head. “Not until someone else gets here to watch over you, or more likely when Derek wakes up. There’s too much of a chance that Saffron will come back.”
I winced. “Could you beat him, if he does?”
Keras shrugged. “Maybe. In the state when he fled, most likely. From what it sounds like, you wore him down pretty badly. I’m proud of you. But if he comes back any time soon, he won’t do it by himself. And two Children of the Tyrant?” He shook his head. “Not good odds. Even for me.”
I didn’t like the sound of that in the slightest. “...Is there anything we can do right now to make sure that if he does come back it’s, you know, less likely to be fatal for us?”
“Don’t think so. As I’m sure you saw, there aren’t a lot of people who can stand up to one of the Tyrant’s children. I don’t know anyone local who can fight as well as Derek. Maybe I could grab his equipment for him? It looks like he just got out of bed, and he doesn’t have all his Soulblade items on him.” Keras shook his head. “Frankly, he probably did better than I would have without a weapon.”
I nodded at his logic. As a Soulblade, Derek was almost as reliant on his equipment as I was. I didn’t know if he could have beaten Saffron if he had all of his items on him, but it probably would have been a closer match.
I considered telling Keras to go get the items, but I hesitated. I didn’t want to take the chance that Saffron would return in the few minutes Keras left me all alone.
Before I had a chance to reply, a burning figure flew in through the back wall. I reached for my sword on my hip, only to realize that it wasn’t there, and belatedly, that the figure was just Delsys coming back.
Delsys had reverted to his humanoid form — a red-skinned man with blazing wings and a tornado of flame surrounding him. He hovered just a few inches above the floor.
He moved toward Derek’s fallen body, tilting his head down, then turned his head toward Keras. “This is unacceptable.”
“I hear you.” Keras sounded exasperated. “Sorry, I couldn’t get here in time.”
Delsys let out a low growl. “When I find the creature that did this, I will burn it until nothing but ash remains.”
“Delsys,” I managed, before breaking into a coughing fit. The blazing figure turned its head toward me.
“Young Cadence,” he replied.
“Derek and Elora need a healer. Do you know any nearby?”
“I am not well-versed in the skills of mortals.”
I pondered that. “Sheridan Theas. Can you find them?”
“I am aware of the home of Sheridan Theas. If they are present, I will retrieve them.” Delsys nodded, then changed into the shape of a blazing bird, and flew back out.
...Leaving another hole in the wall.
“Well, at least no
w help is probably on the way,” Keras remarked.
I sighed. “...Yeah.” I managed to lift a hand to my forehead, wiping away sweat. “How did you get powerful enough to fight people like that, Keras? It’s...the gap in our strength seems impossible to bridge. As you said, Derek is about as strong as humans get. And even he was at a disadvantage against Saffron.”
“I wouldn’t completely agree with you there. Derek might have been weaker than Saffron, but if he had all his equipment, I think he could have forced Saffron to retreat like I did. Immortal beings like Saffron don’t generally like to risk fighting anyone who stands any chance at causing them lasting harm.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t get the impression Saffron considered any of us a serious threat. “But what if we wanted to win, rather than just force a stalemate? Is it even possible for a human to achieve the power necessary to do that?”
Keras shrugged a shoulder. “I have met a few humans with as much raw power as Saffron...but they’re people who have found ways to extend their life span beyond normal human limits.”
He’s probably talking about people like Wrynn Jaden, I realized.
“So, if I wanted an equivalent amount of magical power to someone like Saffron, I’d need more than a human lifetime to get it?”
“Not necessarily, although that would be the most plausible route. You saw what Saffron could do, yes? The Children of the Tyrant are all like that — they can absorb magic. Not just for a short time, either. They can steal power from items, or from people, in ways that make themselves permanently stronger.”
He shook his head. “Many of them have had hundreds of years of practice doing just that. Imagine not having to train in the slightest, just putting your hand on some hapless victim and taking all their strength.”
“And there’s no downside to that? No limit to the amount they can absorb?”
Keras shook his head. “Not that I’ve seen. They tend to specialize in a few types of magic, so maybe they have difficulty absorbing opposing magic types. It probably causes conflicts in their body if they have too much of two opposing types. But while that is a limit, it’s not one that’s particularly exploitable, when they’re practically invincible and still have several types of magic to work with.”
“How would you beat one, then? You said you thought you might be able to.”
“I have something of an unfair advantage.” He patted the sword on his hip. “I can hurt them in ways they can’t regenerate from. That doesn’t mean I’d be guaranteed a victory, though. Many of them, especially the stronger ones, would have tactics that would allow them to wear me down without ever getting into my swinging range. Saffron isn’t the most strategic of the bunch, which is why I’d stand a reasonable chance.”
