The Archmage: Chapter Forty-Nine (Patreon)

Remember, other chapters may not be coming this week, as I'm with family.

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Managing to kill Archmage Byron had been quite impressive, if I did say so myself. 

First and foremost, I’d had to open a small hole in the wards, one that was large enough for me to shoot through, but not so large that it would be immediately obvious. Frankly, if these wards weren’t so similar to the ones that had been thrown up around Edward Elide’s estate, it wouldn’t have been possible at all. 

After that, I’d had to slowly unholster the revolver, then whip it up in a single quick motion and fire. If my spells hadn’t been veiling the gun somewhat, then I’d certainly have been detected. 

Even with all of that, Byron’s contingency arch-star had still allowed her to form a water shield in the instant that she’d had to register that she was being attacked. If my gun hadn’t been enchanted with accelerating spells that could help it push through the thin layer of water, and my bullet hadn’t had a one use shaping disruption spell on it that frazzled the simple shielding spell array for a few moments, then it wouldn’t have worked. 

But none of those things had managed to stop me. 

The veil around the gun faded, the echoing boom of the shot carrying across the vast space.

The archmages on the enemy side stood there, stunned, and several of their spells flickered out as they lost their focus. Justin’s beak-mouth hung open slightly. It was as if none of them had even considered the idea that behind their ward, they might not be as invincible as they thought. 

Then Draven began to laugh. His laughter boomed across the space, almost as loud as the gunshot that had killed Byron, and it seemed to act as a trigger, snapping the opposing archmages into action. They unleashed their flurry of magic, and the One Battle War began. 

Eira Talik moved first, and I was fairly certain that this was exactly what she’d been preparing. 

Ever since the first time her name had been mentioned, it had been said she used siege ritual magic of her own, straddling the line between a witch and a druid. I’d never had the opportunity to see it myself, since when I’d seen her fight against Roark, she’d not known where she would be attacked, and hadn’t been able to set up rituals beforehand.

I wasn’t sure how she’d gotten these done so quickly, but I could make some guesses. Awell Meddal had helped me to rush-charge a ritual last year, after all. 

Regardless of how she had done it, she’d managed to set up her offensive rituals now. At least, I had to assume that was what happened. 

A massive lance of flame, filled with lightning that crackled like the judgment of an angry dragon, smashed into the ward and tore it to shreds in a single instant. It was a truly absurd display, and I would have put it up against the massive force construct that had required both Osheen’s father and his attending witch working in concert, with days of preparation. 

The instant the ward was down, Draven exploded into shadows that swamped a chunk of the battlefield, roots exploded from under the ground courtesy of Dormer, Osheen flew towards his cousins, and I activated my speed spells to take me towards the Hasting druids. 

I activated the planar locks in my cloak immediately – my generic one, the faerie one, elemental one, and the demonic ones, all at once. I felt my own faerie power recede slightly, as the easy path through the realms to the Fae Sovereignties was stretched and warped away, and I could see the auras of my dual opponents flexing and warping. I didn’t think it was still under the same amount of strain as mine, but that was fine. I wasn’t reliant on my faerie magic to fight, not usually. 

At the same time, I activated my abjuration magic. I had a fair bit of information on faerie magic squirreled away, but not much else, so I focused on the woman first, while simply blasting out my 

I leveled the gun at her and fired another bullet, but with the magic no longer hiding it from sight, she was able to move out of the way in time. She wasn’t faster than a bullet, sure, but she didn’t need to be. She just needed to be faster than my ability to move my arm, aim, and fire, and that was relatively easy. 

She thrust her hand out and vines exploded toward me, lightning crackling alongside them, but Mellt’s cage nullified the lightning, and I cut off the spell midway through casting. As I prepared to release my staff’s attack, my precognitive spells screamed a warning. 

I leapt aside, barely managing to get out of the way of a volley of metal feathers from Justin, which glowed a bright red with demonic magic tracing along them. The demon spell seemed to warp and buck against my locking spells, feeding on all but the demonic lock to grow in power, and I shut them down with a curse, flickering upwards in a burst of enhanced flight.

“Murderer!” the man who was fused with a demon shouted. I stared at him, completely unsure what I was even supposed to say to that. Was he related to Byron? I had killed her. Or Edward Elide? 

He was right that I was a murderer, though, and. 

No, I could unpack this later, because right now there was magic building around my hand. 

Not my hand.

My gun. 

And I was fighting someone with metal magic. 

I threw the gun at Justin, but it exploded in midair between us, pinging against the force armor. 

A gout of bright emerald flame shot at me from below, the faerie druid, and I caught it with one hand, then redirected it towards the demon mage and Justin, but then the air was filled with lightning and feathers.

“You really think this can stop me?!” I asked as a massive orb of feathers began to enclose me, lightning bursting from metallic tip to the down of another feather. Demonic lightning coursed along the feathers and locked onto me, making it clear that there was some sort of strange tracking spell in use. 

It was certainly an impressive trap, and it would have rivaled some of my own work with the way it wove together three different realms magic to create a three dimensional cage. 

Unfortunately for them, I was extremely well suited to countering this spell. I didn’t let that show on my face, though, allowing it to draw in closer as I bobbed and wove, trying to stay out of the way of the feathers. 

“It’s well known that you’ve some sort of resistance to lightning boon,” Justin cried as he floated up into the air, leaning in to mock me, even as the magic commanding the feathers danced in his hands. “But that can’t save you from two hundred ferric feathers. We’ve noticed it, you know. It stops the lightning a while away from you. When my feather hits you and cuts through your force armor, it will unleash everything right into your body. Your spell can’t stop that!” 

“You think it’ll take one feather to break my armor?” I scoffed, even as one struck the edge of my cloak and was turned aside. It did take more out of my reserves than I expected it would, I had to give him that, but it was still manageable. 

“You haven’t unleashed your staff,” Justin pointed out. “For all your playing at power, you know you can’t stand against a real archmage.” 

I glanced at the feathers and Justin. Now was probably close enough. 

“If you are willing to serve in bondage to mysel–” Justin tried to say, but he had trouble finishing that sentence. 

I activated multiple functions of my cloak all at once. First, I tapped the metal repulsion spell, and sent the cluster of feathers that were closing in on me firing back at Justin. 

As his eyes widened, I broke apart the lightning spell that ran through the hundreds of feathers caging me in, and rebuilt them around the feathers that I’d sent back at him. 

Then I activated my vision protection spells. 

The feathers struck his half-metal body, and lightning exploded through the air, burning and crackling, and the air was filled with the smell of char. It perversely smelled like cooking food, rather than the death of a human being.

I was sure the smell of death would come soon, but I couldn’t stop moving, even as I felt the bile rise in my throat. The huge explosion of lightning that had roasted Justin alive had given me an opportunity to strike at the other two, and I couldn’t waste it. 

I dove at the demon mage, ignoring the faerie druid. She was actually helpful – she could provide spells that I could grab and use for my own purposes – so I didn’t want to get rid of her too quickly, especially since my quick bid to kill her had failed. 

As I tore through the air, I unleashed my force spear enhanced with the constellation of the hunter, but the demon mage just barely managed to react in time. 

Thin planes of red light formed in the air between us, and while my spear punched through the first two, it was stopped by the third. 

I frowned. I really needed to look more into how demon magic worked at some point. That hadn’t felt like it was just normal planes of force.

Whatever. I couldn’t focus on it now.

Then I was forced to use my force enhancement spell and burst away as swiftly as I could, as my precognition sent another warning at me. 

One of the flame sorcerers that belonged to House Roark had released a lance of fire at me, and it was now chasing me, but my cloak had spent years next to Osheen. I stole the spell and fired it off at the demon mage, even as I redirected a burst of sharpened vines from the faerie druid, throwing them at the Roark archamge, who burnt it to ash with some sort of fast-acting fire that his imbued item produced. 

I threw a knife at the faerie druid as her form started to warp and blur. She must have figured out that there wasn’t anything her spring fae familiar could do to me. The knife struck and bounced off before my belt started pulling it back to me on a thin cord of force. 

Oh well. It had been worth a shot, at least. 

I was forced to dodge backwards again as a needle of red light that sent major flashes of danger moved through the air where I was standing, then my attention was forced to return to the faerie druid. 

I didn’t think I could call her that anymore, though, because she was clearly fused with some sort of dreamscape creature. Both of her arms were ghostly and ethereal, and a crown of purple light swarmed around her head. As she locked eyes with me, I felt my mind bubble activate. 

There was a firm pressure on it, but it wasn’t cracking, the overall power of my sympathetically linked defenses allowing the bubble to repair itself faster than she could push through it. The constant battering was distracting, but at least it wasn’t able to get into my head.

I spun to dodge another one of those dangerous needles, stole the immolation spell that the Roark tried to fire at me, then dropped it on top of the ex-faerie, now-mindscape druid. 

To my surprise, it actually hit her. For a moment, I wondered if the stolen spell had killed her, but then I saw the flashing of red and purple magic inside the smoke. 

I sucked in a breath. Some sort of combination spell again? I whirled around and leveled my staff at the demon mage to try and kill him and take him out of the fight so I could use my planar locking spells again, but before I could finish aiming, I felt my mind bubble explode.