Corvis Eralith
I had no time to react after getting out of Bairon's melee range with my evasive manoeuvre.
Once I landed on the burnt grass of the Wykes villa, a long lightning bolt was hurled at my position, the crackling spell making an uproar of wild mana.
I attempted to dodge, but the recoil of Bairon's lightning magic was catastrophic: my hands flinched and I felt my nerves paralyzed.
Using all my strength, I stomped my foot to the ground, raising another wall of displaced earth to shield me from the blast. The lightning bolt striked true on my defensive spell, raising a cloud of dust and sending dirt and grass flying around.
I pushed Trucewater throughout all my nervous system, Inner Current working double to restore my body's functions.
I had virtually no practical experience countering lightning magic, and having a white-core Lance as my trial by fire did nothing to steady my racing heart!
Lance Thunderlord didn't give me time to breathe.
A relentless bombardment of jagged, arcing bolts of pure lightning cascaded down around me, forcing me into a desperate, frantic scramble.
I threw myself across the scorched lawn—diving, rolling, and bounding between impacts like a mouse hunted by a cat.
Bairon hovered above the ground, using his flight to his advantage. I had to either bring him down or uselessly run until he eventually killed me.
But what was I supposed to do?! This plan was based on the fact Bairon wouldn't have been here!
I couldn't—didn't want to fight a Lance, to be forced to potentially kill one of our strongest, admitting the fact I could kill Bairon in the first place.
One thing the novel made clear qas just how irreplaceable Lances were. Only Arthur Leywin had been deemed worthy to be named Lance outside of the original six throughout all The Beginning After The End's story.
I dodged another lightning bolt with a roll, using wind magic to make my movements seamless and faster.
"Bairon!" I cried out. "Your father is betraying the continent! You are a Lance of Sapin—he is your enemy too!"
My words struck home, drawing a sharp flinch from both the Lance and the Lord of House Wykes; the latter lingered at the perimeter, refusing to intervene out of pure disdain for dirtying his own hands more than he had already done.
"That is classified information!" Otis shouted, perfectly hiding whatever fear he had had by acting scandalised. "Bairon kill the intruder, and fast!"
I caught the subtle twitch of Bairon's lips, yet he bowed to his father's command regardless.
Like a descending bolt of lightning, he plummeted toward me, holding the crackling spear high above his shoulder with its lethal tip angled down for an impaling strike.
I moved away as fast as possible.
Bairon impacted on the ground, creating a alrge crater in the middle of the yard of his family's countryside villa. The impact echoed across the land and I wondered for a second how much Chul would have wanted to help.
But my nephew could offer no salvation here. His role in my plan was already fulfilled: executing Draneeve and scouring the vermin from the temple before word could spread.
Windsom had to believe I was doing this all alone: a pious, solitary servant of Epheotus taking justice into his own hands.
Through the sparks, the flames and the dust raised my Bairon's impact I saw the Lance moving toward me, a spectre of crackling energy in the dust.
"Bairon!" I shouted, my grip on Fiorwato strengthening even more. "You have to listen! Your father has been working with terrorists from across the ocean for months! You might not believe me, but do you believe him? How many times has your father equalised you—his firstborn and heir—on the matters of your family?!"
"It is House Wykes you speak of," Bairon said, his tone utterly flat as he coiled his frame, preparing to loose another of those blinding lunges that had shattered my jade bracelet. "And you are nothing more than an intruder carrying dangerous secrets. You will die here."
The Lance surged forward. Arcs of violent electricity trailed his every motion like a living flash, his platinum hair whipping in the gale, crackling with raw, static discharge.
I raised Fiorwato high, the jarring impact of Bairon's spear rattling up my forearm and sending sharp needles of electricity coursing through my nerves, threatening to render my limbs entirely numb.
What a terrifying fighting style, I cursed inwardly through gritted teeth as my Trucewater surged into overdrive to neutralise the invasive current.
This volatile magic was far beyond anything I could dismiss as effortlessly as I had Draneeve's crude disruption; the sheer potency of a Lance's lightning was on an entirely different level.
Through the heightened sensory Insight over mana of the Quadra-Elemental Greatrune, I could track Bairon's alien signature slithering into my frame.
It bypassed my primary mana channels to avoid immediate interception by my own magic, burrowing directly into the muscle tissue to shake and disturb the vital bio-electric signals travelling to and from my brain.
With a sharp snap of his wrist, Bairon retracted his spear.
Seizing the fleeting reprieve, I wove a layered sphere of Bubblespells around myself, each protective orb infused with a distinct elemental attribute that cast vibrant, shifting hues across their translucent membranes of magical liquid.
Yet Bairon's recovery took mere heartbeats.
The weapon within the Lance's grasp screamed with volatile mana, blinding tendrils of static enveloping his frame from head to toe, transforming the Wykes man into an avatar of pure electricity.
Then, like a coiled spring suddenly snapped loose, he lunged. A ferocious cascade of thrusts—faster than anything I had ever witnessed—riddled my barrier.
The Bubblespells burst one after the other like balloons, exploding into clouds of earth, water, air and fire mana.
Though they bled away a fraction of his momentum, I barely managed to deflect the opening thrust before the next struck.
I pivoted sharply on the ball of my foot, riding a compressed gale of wind magic to violently wrench myself out of the spear's path. The crackling weapon missed my left lung for bare millimetres, its energy tickling my skin.
That desperate evasion, though, cost me my stance, leaving me hopelessly exposed to the third consecutive lunge that arrived in the same breath.
A sharp gasp tore from my throat as the crackling spear tip carved deep into my flank, grazing dangerously close to my kidney.
A taste of metal flooded my mouth; my head felt suddenly heavy from the pain and light from Bairon's leftover magic. I clenched my jaw, biting my lower lip and suppressed another cry of pain.
Spitting a mouthful of blood onto the charred grass, I willed a surge of Trucewater to bleed outward through my skin, coating the cauterised laceration to arrest the searing burn.
Bairon stared at me, a flash of surprise in his green eyes. No one was supposed to resist so long against a Lance, especially not someone my age.
"Bairon!" I shouted, steadying my stance through the pain. "I am not your enemy! Your father is in cahoots with a group of terrorists from a continent named Alacrya, he has been giving them shelter here in your home for weeks! If you go there yourself you will find the proofs, and you will find the proofs of him betraying Dicathen!"
"Kill him, Bairon," Otis commanded.
In the span of a single heartbeat, the world fractured into blinding white—and the crackling tip of the lightning spear drove cleanly through my throat.
"I am a Wykes," Bairon stated coldly, wrenching the blood-slicked weapon from my neck with a sharp, dismissive twist. "My allegiance belongs to this House, and to this House alone."
A suffocating numbness swallowed my senses. I could feel the cold pull of the river, death racing across the fraying shores of my consciousness as my vision darkened.
Grasping at the final, fading dregs of my strength, I forced a single, blood-drowned word past my cleaved throat:
"Unleash."
—
"Uncle!"
I felt Chul's hand on my shoulder as the invisible Bubblespell of teal Trucewater exploded around me, returning me to the moment before I had moved toward the Wykes villa.
Mordain's light still bathed the hills surrounding the estate in shades of orange, the Grand Mountains standing as distant observers to this present, and I found myself wondering what I could have done different.
"Uncle! Is something wrong? Do you want me to go there myself?" Chul proposed, his voice brimming with barely contained eagerness. "I swear I will be done before you can even finish an apple!"
I chuckled and scratched Berna's head, my Guardian Bear having moved close to me as she knew I had died through our bond.
As always, she acted to comfort me despite the absurdity of my existence.
"The plan is flawless," I said, forcing conviction into my voice. "Let's stick to it. I just need to... make some corrections."
It was time to try again. And fail, if I needed to—fail and fail until I would have gotten it right. Thus was the way of the Arbiter.
—
For the second time, Draneeve fell by my hands. The slippery Alacryan spymaster found himself brutally crushed beneath the devastating weight of Suncrusher, his body mangled beyond repair by the catastrophic impact of the blow.
Hefting the heavy weapon, I tossed the warmace effortlessly back to Chul.
Turning my back on the bloody remains, I forced my racing pulse to slow and smoothed my features; it was time to step onto my waiting stage, fully adopting the guise of Leòn Leurenzian.
Outside, I gave gesture to Solleandro to free his Dharmakaya and for a fraction of a second the shade of a Phoenix, in all his true might, blotted the setting Mordain.
As the earthquake casued by Chul's fighting continued I withdrew Fiorwato and pointed it at the guards of House Wykes surrounding me.
"Members of House Wykes!" I shouted. "By the will of Epheotus and of the Divine Dragon I condemn you to death for affiliation with the filthy Vritra Clan. To those who are innocent and lay down their weapons, I give them chance to flee here and now!"
I paused as I saw the form of Otis Wykes jumping form his study to confront me.
"Do it, or perish by my hand." I said. "I am Epheotus' messenger and I am here to carry the judgment of the gods you have forsaken."
I paid little heed to Otis' ramblings. Instead, I moved with rehearsed precision, mirroring every step from the previous loop.
Fiorwato hummed with the resonance of all four basic elements.
Gale-force emerald winds, crimson fire, dense earthen amber, and pure azure water swirled along the Titan-crafted blade in perfect, layered harmony: a symphony of magic, background to my struggles.
I carved through the ranks before me with effortless familiarity, systematically disarming House Wykes' servants before pivoting to loose a final, devastating fireball straight at Otis.
It eclipsed every spell the nobleman had hurled at me—the Flame of Sapin superheating the roaring, maroon sphere of incandescent mana until it snarled with the fury of a World Lion.
And there he came: Bairon descended upon my fireball, sending a powerful shockwave of electricity to counter my magic and protect his father.
Otis truly had a loyal son, Bairon flied across Sapin just to answer his father's call. To have such power over a Lance, the only other person that was not royalty to claim such thing was Elder Rahdeas with Olfred.
A heavy silence stretched between the Lance and me, an instant expanding into an eternity across the scarred lawn of the Wykes villa.
We stood paces apart beneath the darkening sky, poised in stillness as Mordain's fiery descent bathed the western horizon in crimson, while the pale silhouette of Elenoir crested the east.
"Lance Bairon," I said, preparing myself to fight the Wykes once more, despite what I was about to say. "We are not enemies. Your father has brought your House to work alongside a foreign force of terrorists. Alacryans, people that serve the dark gods know as Vritra and want to bring us Dicathians to our knees."
But differently from last loop, this time I had brought proofs with me.
From my storage ring I threw in front of Bairon copious amounts of documents, symbols, objects and other items Solleandro gathered during his counter-espionage.
Bairon frowned as he stated down at the proofs of his family betraying him, surprised. Maybe because he thought me crazy, but his gaze perfectly told me that he had no part in this—it was all Otis' work.
"Are you letting yourself being fooled by a brat, boy?" Otis asked, venom in his voice for his own son, but I could feel a slight fear in that mask of indignation. "Every second he breaths he insults us. Kill him."
"Bairon! What you are seeing is really that hard to believe?" I asked. "Do you really think your father wouldn't betray everything and everyone just for power? And does it surprise you he kept you in the darkness? I think not."
"You are a Lance, Bairon!" I shouted, hoping to pierce the thick head of that man—something I knew was possible; the novel proved it to me! "You are a guardian of Dicathen! An hero that protects from the shadows!"
"Bairon!" Otis shouted, and his voice took the human Lance out of his contemplation. "What are you? A Lance or a Wykes?"
"I am a Wykes, Father," Bairon repeated.
He gave a single, resolute nod, the ambient mana violently constricting around him until crackling boughs of electricity wrapped his frame like a conduit of pure lightning—a human-shaped Tesla coil rich with pure energy.
Knowing what was to come next I raised my arms upwards and conjured a wall of earth between me and the Lance. The wall fractured under a lightning bolt, but it gave me time to think.
Bairon moved his arms in fast precise movements, sending jolts of blinding electricity at my position.
Not to be outdone I copied him, shooting Bubblespells from my hands.
Inside of them I engraved many condensed Articles of Solidarity, causing Bairon's lightnings to be absorbed by my Bubblespells that exploded in harmless water when the two spells met.
And as my left hand shot Bubblespells I jerked my right arm behind my back, gripping Fiorwato solidly as the Quadra-Elemental Greatrune flared on my spine.
I snapped Fiorwato forward, a loud melody accompanying the arc in the air.
From the green blade a gust of fast winds carrying maroon flames was shot toward Bairon, cleaving through the atmosphere.
The Lance changed his stance and pointed his lance toward my position, more arcs of electricity coiling from the weapon's tip all around the platinum-haired man.
He sprinted at me.
Slicing clean through the gale of wind magic I hurled from Fiorwato, the Lance closed the distance in a single, breath-stealing heartbeat.
Lance Thunderlord's spear hummed with blinding resonance, already angled to impale my chest.
Damn it, not again!
Driving Fiorwato straight into the earth, I channelled a violent surge of earth mana deep into the villa's foundation.
Jagged stone spires erupted in rapid succession, interlocking into a makeshift palisade to swallow his advance.
Bairon's electrified tip pulverized the first three pillars into powdered shingle, yet the obstruction bought the fraction of a second I needed.
Gathering an updraft of air beneath my boots, I kicked off the fracturing stone and launched myself up and away from his immediate reach.
As gravity claimed me, I swept Fiorwato in wide, sweeping arcs on the descent. Crescent waves of compressed wind tore from the blade, wrapped in the roaring, maroon shroud of the Flame of Sapin.
Each slash snarled through the open air like a ravenous World Lion, detonating against the courtyard below.
The manicured grounds of House Wykes vanished entirely beneath the onslaught, reduced to a scorched, cratered war zone.
"Thunder's Hand!" Bairon chanted.
Five devastating forks of lightning erupted from his fingertips, glowing a violent, menacing crimson as raw fire mana fused seamlessly into the electrical discharge.
For a white-core mage to resort to a verbal chant... Bairon has completely cast aside his restraint, I realised.
Landind on the ground, I raised a fortified earthen dome around myself, only to shatter it outward the moment the thunderous detonations struck the stone.
The concussive blast blew the shrapnel forward like buckshot, buying half a breath before the Lance breached it.
How can you convince him, Corvis?! I roared inwardly, forced back into a desperate defensive dance as Bairon's spear relentlessly lunged for my vital organs.
Then came the telltale crack. For the second time across these loops, my jade bracelet fractured into a thousand shimmering emerald shards—my only physical failsafe spent once again.
"Think of Lucas, Bairon!" I screamed.
Bracing for the inevitable impact, I encased my entire body in a dense carapace of earth mana, reinforcing the shell with the Article of Solidarity and Unity.
Instead of his weapon, Bairon's gauntleted fist drove straight into my sternum.
The concussive shockwave launched me violently across the courtyard, sending me crashing against the perimeter wall of the Wykes estate.
Stone and bricks gave way under the impact, my ribs splintering beneath the blunt force.
Spitting a mouthful of blood onto the rubble, I fought through a wave of nauseating vertigo and flooded my broken body with Trucewater to arrest the internal bleeding.
"How you dare to say my brother's name?" Bairon asked, slowly walking toward me; a field of pure electricity crackled in fury around the man.
I stood up and faced him. I didn't want to use the Lucas' card, no, truth to be told, I haven't been considering Lucas as a variable at all. Right now he was adventuring in the Beast Glades, far away from his abusive father's plans.
"If your father will succeed in his plans and the Alacryans will come there is no hope for Lucas!" I shouted. "He is an half-elf, those crazy bastards care only about the purity of their blood—there will be no hope for him!"
"Disgusting little wretch," Bairon hissed, forks of lightning dancing wildly around his frenzied eyes.
The assumption was plain on his face: he believed I was invoking his brother's name merely as a desperate attempt to bargain for my life, and that perceived insolence stoked his fury to a fever pitch.
"You know it better than everyone! This is you chance to take your brother away from this damned household that treats him only as human livestock!" I shouted.
Lucas Wykes was the sickening byproduct of Fiery House Wykes's abhorrent slavery and eugenics programmes: a systematic violation of my people designed solely to artificially enhance their bloodline's magic.
And, despite all his fierce aristocratic pride, Bairon could never deny that ugly fact.
"You are not a Lance, but a Wykes, right!" I said, using the same reasoning as Otis. "Then be a brother—do your duty as the older brother of Lucas! This is your chance to save him!"
I swore that for a second I saw doubt in the unshakable Lance's eyes, but that doubt was immediately broken as Otis spoke again:
"Still wasting your time, Bairon?" The Lord of House Wykes asked, his tone mocking. "Really? White-core mage and you take so long to take down a kid. You are a disappointment."
Bairon drew back his spear to strike, yet beneath that venomous glare, I saw it—the seed of doubt had taken root.
Before Lance Thunderlord could end my life a second time, I tore air into my bruised lungs and roared:
"Berna! Tackle him!"
The beautiful masonry behind me, something I would have spent quite some time admiring in different circumstances, detonated as if a charge of C-4 had exploded behind it.
The remaining stretch of the perimeter wall I had been hurled against was reduced to powdered bricks as a roaring, bear-shaped, battering ram breached the Wykes estate's outer fortifications.
Too focused on my throat to register the sudden collapse of his flank, Bairon never had a chance to set his heels.
In a blinding blur of violent kinetic force, the crackling, white-core Lance was thunderstruck by half a ton of fur: a Guardian Bear forged by Titan, bonded to Elf.
Incandescent flames spilled from between Berna's bared fangs, her heavy paws tipped with razor-sharp talons of dense, jagged stone.
The elemental fury of a localized tempest swirled around her body, whips of water and compressed gale currents fluffing her hazelnut coat until she seemed twice her size.
My Guardian Bear had come—and she was not happy.
—
For the first time since our clash began—and very likely for the first time in years—Bairon was shoved violently onto the defensive.
Berna reared onto her hind legs, throwing claws with the human Lance with the devastating power and mastery of a professional pugilist.
Her stone-clad claws battered through Bairon's guard. Snapping forward, she attempted to drag him down by clamping her blazing jaws straight around his throat.
Yet Bairon was still a Lance and that he soon proved.
Just as I surged forward to rejoin the fray—the Trucewater having finally knit my splintered ribs back into place—Lance Thunderlord of Sapin exploded into a concussive burst of static to break away.
Kicking off empty air, he took flight, ascending at a dizzying angle straight into the churning overcast of clouds above the villa.
Within seconds, the sky retaliated. A savage tempest of lightning rained down upon our heads—thick, vertical pillars of pure electrical magic that obliterated the few remaining trees across the lawn into smoking kindling.
"Berna! To me!" I bellowed.
Dropping back onto all fours, my Guardian Bear charged toward my position. I tracked the gathering clouds as I sprinted, weaving frantically through the barrage of thunderbolts hammering the turf.
Above us, the night sky was Bairon's personal domain now; up there, his white-core flight rendered him untouchable.
If he remains up there, I have no way to fight him! I screamed in my head.
I cursed silently, scanning the perimeter for Otis. For a fleeting heartbeat, the predatory, Phoenixborn urge to take the Lord of House Wykes hostage flared in my mind.
But no; that would ruin everything. I needed Bairon to see the rot festering within his own bloodline.
Sinking a blade into Otis's neck wouldn't break Bairon's indoctrination; it would merely blind him with even more bloodlust.
Then, a blinding spear of lightning ripped through the low clouds, plummeting like a cruise missile straight toward my chest.
Before I could brace my earth mana, Berna threw her massive bulk over me. The atmospheric blast crashed directly into her spine, illuminating her thick coat in a web of blinding, crackling white.
"Berna!" I shouted, terror ripping through my throat.
Yet my massive Guardian Bear simply shook herself out with an irritated grunt. She rippled her heavy shoulders, casually grounding out the remaining static as though she had merely been shocked by a rogue toaster.
My admiration of my bond was cut short as Bairon returned to strike.
The storm restarted in earnest, electricity showering me and Berna from high within the grey clouds. From the ground the sky now looked like a cluster of mirror balls projecting deadly lasers of lightnings on my position.
Is this how the Alacryans that faced Lance Thunderlord in the novel felt? I asked myself, raising protective panels of dirt, stone and gravel from the ground.
Each layer of protection fractured under the atmospheric onslaught, Berna joining me in my desperate countermeasures.
"We need to take him down!" I shouted, my voice augmented with mana, the only way to make me heard as the thunders summoned ny Bairon deafened every other sound.
I knew Bairon lacked any innate affinity for sound magic, yet he replicated its concussive devastation through sheer violence—using the instantaneous superheating of air around his lightning strikes to forge artificial sonic booms more commonly known as thunders.
I couldn't help but be terrifyingly impressed.
The original The Beginning After The End had mentioned Bairon was strong and talented—he wouldn't have been a Lance otherwise.
But only now I truly understood what kind of power a Lance wielded; without Retainers or Scythes on Dicathen, those six white core mages were truly the apex of Dicathian strength.
I clicked my fingers and REmould did its trick: I became Finn Warend and Massbinding's runes immediately appeared and started to spin on the back of my hands.
What was the greatest enemy of men that dreamt to fly? The natural authority of the ground: gravity.
It was time for Bairon Wykes to learn to respect Mother Earth, lest she made us remember to who we belonged to: her; as Darff, our progenitor, taught dwarvenkind.
"Berna, do you see him?" I asked, as a bolt impacted between me and my Guardian Bear. Through our bond, though, I felt a wave of confirmation—a yes. "Launch me!"
Driving my Servo-Foot hard into the cratered yard, I summoned the bedrock to my aid, encasing my frame in a dense, interlocking bodysuit of compacted soil and stone.
The moment the earthen plates snapped into alignment over Finn Warend's body, I channelled REmould: rapidly inscribing the Articles of Solidarity and Balance across the armour's surface to fuse the barricade into a seamless, highly defensive, shell.
The bodysuit, dark brown with deep grey streaks, shone with the two symbols, resembling letters of the Latin alphabet from Earth: B, for Breskan, Solidarity and R, for Ramdad, Balance.
Springing off my augmented Serve-Foot, I jumped toward Berna.
My bond had dropped her centre of gravity, lowering her broad muzzle to act as a springboard. The tempest of wind and water mana coating her fur began to spiral violently inward, compressing into a howling hurricane around her frame—something quite reminiscent of Tessia's Galeshot.
A jagged bolt of lightning missed my shoulder by mere millimetres, the blinding static violently ricocheting off my Article-enchanted earthen plating.
My boots slammed down against Berna's snout, and with a deafening roar of detonating wind magic, I was rocketed straight into the sky!
I covered my face with my left arm as I soared the night sky, directly en route to Bairon's location within the stormy clouds.
Gripping Fiorwato in my right hand, I summoned the slate-coloured Flame of Darv.
With a single, devastating sweep, I slashed through the clouds, cleaving the churning thunderclouds in two and exposing the Lance hidden within.
Bairon's eyes widened as he registered my altered form—the visage of a dwarven kid having abruptly replaced the boy he had been fighting mere moments ago.
Yet, true to his rank, his shock lasted barely a fraction of a second.
Recognising that my trajectory in the air was entirely ballistic, wholly dependent on the fading momentum of Berna's launch, Lance Thunderlord surged forward to intercept me.
Unfortunately for him, that was exactly what I was counting on.
Bairon was upon me in a heartbeat. His spear point collided with my reinforced earthen shell, fracturing the bodysuit into a spiderweb of jagged cracks, though the point failed to bite into the flesh beneath.
Gritting my teeth against the searing, ambient electrocution radiating from the sparking Lance, I lunged through his guard.
Swinging my offhand, I slapped Bairon Wykes squarely across the jaw.
The ochre runes of the Kain Clan flared to life, spinning wildly around my hand as I invoked Massbinding.
The crushing gravitational pressure of Berna's Acquire Phase crashed down upon the Lance. Bairon roared, his mana flaring as he strained to resist the sudden, overwhelming force dragging him down, but the raw, dominating weight of my Guardian Bear's Beast Will proved too much.
Pinning him beneath my boots, I rode Lamce Thunderlord as we returned to Mother Earth's embrace.
Dozens of volts of electric discharge ravaged my body, tearing cries of pain from my throat, but before I could be fried from the inside, we hit the turf.
Bairon Wykes slammed into the already battered courtyard of his family's estate at terminal velocity, the devastating impact launching a shockwave of shattered stone and earth into the air.
Rising from the crater, I thrust my hand outward.
Fiorwato—which I had cast aside mid-air in order to seize the Lance by the shoulders—snapped obediently back into my grasp.
My wand-cane-sword hummed with a triumphant, vibrating resonance the moment my fingers locked around its polished hilt.
I returned Leòn Leurenzian and as I felt Bairon shake beneath my feet, ready to fight once more, I drove my green blade near his solar plexus.
Far enough to not damage his mana core, obviously, but near enough so that I could assert my control over it; just as I had done with Kai Crestless the first time I interrogated him.
A ragged groan tore from Bairon's throat. In a desperate, reflexive defence, raw fire mana surged from the Lance's broken frame, seeking to use Fiorwato's conductive Green Gems as a bridge to incinerate me where I stood.
Yet water mana—my most prized elemental affinity—rose to smother it.
A torrential cascade of pristine azure liquid wreathed the blade, instantly neutralising the invasive heat.
The swirling currents coated the weapon like the abyssal depths of the ocean, the gemsteel thrumming with the deep, resonant song of the sea.
"Y-you have lost Bairon," I managed to say, every part of my body twitching involuntarily from the shockwaves I had suffered.
I stumbled backwards, losing my grip over Fiorwato, who remained sank in Bairon's back. I felt the urge to vomit and so I did, my mana core utterly spent.
Despite everything I still have reached my limit—maybe not that of my magic, but that of my body for sure.
I puked and puked on the ground, whatever had been inside my stomach leaving it alongside blood, teal Trucewater, that had the strange effect of healing the few surviving blades of grass, and a bluish mixture I knew were the Manacites I had ingested.
I tried to rise to my feet, my eyes going left and right in search of Otis.
I can't let him escape! I shouted in my head.
The nobleman, true to his arrogance, however, had not attempted to flee, and now that his son was defeated he stood at the entrance of his estate—fear finally creeping over his face.
Seeing my state his scheming face was trying to understand if he could kill me now, but when his eyes landed on Berna by my side he recoiled in terror.
"What did I tell you...?" I said, scrambling toward the nobleman. "You will pay Dicathen's due, Otis."
My ears were ringing so loudly that I didn't hear my own voice. I tried to call for more Trucewater to aid me, but the river was silent, the silver of my mana core bleak.
"Stay back!" Otis shouted. "Don't you realize what you have just done?! The entirety of Sapin will hunt you down if you even kay an hand on the Lord of Fiery House Wykes!"
"Now you invoke Sapin?" I asked, leaning heavily against Berna's broad flank as she helped me keep my footing. "You ranted and raved all evening about the absolute supremacy of House Wykes, boasting that Bairon's loyalty lay not with the Kingdom, but with his own blood. And yet, now you beg for Sapin's protection?"
I didn't know what I was saying, fatigue and pain clouded all judgment; it wasn't my reason talking, but something far more primal—my soul.
"Sapin is nothing without its nobility!" Otis screamed, ready to launch a fireball at me, but Berna's low growl shut him up. "You—you must be a noble too! Do you realize how much power we have? Yes! Power! We nobles deserve to rule over Sapin, because we know what true power is! Blaine and his family have grown unworthy of ruling over this kingdom, giving so much privileges to the people!"
I dragged myself a little bit closer, not listening to Otis' words.
"You are a follower of the Draconsecrate, know that I don't believe in anything about that... that Vritraism!" Otis shouted. "I have never offered a single prayer to their gods!"
The worst thing was that I believed him, Otis was too arrogant to accept the existence of gods, or of Asuras. He betrayed Dicathen for far worse things, because he didn't dislike the design of Agrona.
He was worse than Draneeve, than Scythes like Cadell, because he wouldn't see in Agrona a god, but an example—a model to imitate.
Eventually, the strain on REmould proved too great.
The Arbiter's authority over the Edict of Vivum dissolved, shedding the visage of Leòn Leurenzian to leave my true form in its wake: Corvis Eralith, Prince of Elenoir, advancing on Otis Vayhur Wykes.
"An elf?!" Otis spat, his face contorting in sheer aristocratic revulsion rather than fear.
"By the will of Everbosk," I declared coldly, rapidly amending the script I had prepared for Windsom to account for the unwanted reveal. "Die, pawn of Vritra."
Raising my arm, I channelled the last dregs of my mana and loosed a single, hyper-compressed Bubblespell.
The orb snapped forward, tearing through the Lord of House Wykes's skull with the efficiency of a sniper's bullet.
Before everything went dark and consciousness left me, I fell backwards; I felt an hand surrecting me and a voice praising what I had just done:
"A truly admiring feat of servitude, Corvis," Windsom said. "Lord Indrath shall be pleased."