The Archmage: Chapter Fifty (Patreon)

A spike of otherworldly power, the mentalist power of the dreamscape, echoed in my mind. For a moment, I thought that I would be forced to see images of my worst memories, live through my nightmares, or see splinters of the worst futures possible. 

Instead, the world sped up around me as chains formed around my thoughts. My mind was sluggish, and I barely registered the flashes of danger coming from my front and right side. 

Even with the forwarning, I wasn’t able to tap into the functions of my cloak to get out of the way in time, and a demonic needle slammed into my chest, slipping through my force armor as if it wasn’t even there in the first place. At the same time, flames washed over my body. The enchantments to resist fire that Osheen had helped me build were capable of activating on their own, thankfully, so I was shielded from that, but the glowing red light of the demonic needle was starting to grow, spreading across my chest like mold spreading across old bread. 

I hadn’t even finished registering what had happened when Osheen’s cousin was in front of my face, a blade in hand, swinging at my neck. In the same moment, the demon mage’s magic flashed, growing the needle in my chest even further. 

The sword blow bounced off my force armor, but another blow hammered in, and then a third. 

Before the fourth blow landed, I finally managed to activate a single function of my cloak. 

The temporal hasting spell was dangerous. Tara used it sparingly in fights for a reason. All the spell did was speed up time around you in a bubble.

That meant if you were bleeding out, you’d bleed out faster. If you were poisoned, it would spread through the body faster. And perhaps scariest of all, there was no recovering the extra time that you had burnt away.

But it had its advantages too. 

As the charm spell flooded me from my cloak, everything sped up. That meant that the demonic spell spreading through my body sped up, but so too did the speed at which I was thinking. 

The world returned to normal speed. My body was still moving many times faster than my mind could move, but with my thoughts sped up to normal speed, I was able to treat it more like my life and force enhancement spells. 

I drove one of my knives into the gut of Osheen’s cousin and released a water bullet, imbued with the power of the fish constellation. It punched through his thin chain armor with a horrifying squelching sound, and I rose into the air. The demon mage was casting even more frantically, and I could feel the mindscape spell battering against my mind furiously, but it wasn’t enough. 

I aimed my staff at the demon mage and released the attack I’d been building. 

The demon mage thrust his hand up, and the magic finished crawling around my heart.

Lightning speared down in an instant, but then the purpose of the demonic spell became apparent. 

Rather than striking the demon mage and killing him, the magic got a few feet from my body, then turned back around and fired directly at me. 

I was thrown off guard, and if Mellt’s cage hadn’t dispersed the attack, then I would have likely died there and then. 

As it was, the secondary layer of my own attack spell, which would fire off the massive storm of wind enhanced, electrically charged, water bullets, started to build. I frantically tore my own spell apart and stored it in one of the pockets of my cloak.

Before I was finished, the Roark mage on the ground released a beam of force from a tattoo right at me, surrounded by a swirling vortex of flame. 

I activated my force enhancement spell and threw myself out of the way, and with the combination of flight, temporal haste, and force enhancement, I was tossed massively off course, and slammed into someone else. A moment later, I realized I’d struck Eira’s giant water turtle elemental. 

When I’d fought it, Eira had imposed several limits onto it, in order to make it an easy fight and let me join her against Frank. 

Now, though? 

The true power of her secret familiar was out in full force. 

The turtle was easily the size of a house, and it was currently locked in a fearsome stalemate against three phoenixes, each of which was the same size as Bridgette. 

The massive turtle extinguished one phoenix, but the other two would use the moment to launch streamers of flesh-searingly hot flame at him, evaporating part of his body. He would turn his attacks to another phoenix, and the one he had just extinguished was thrown out of the fight for a moment while the bird re-sparked itself back to full power. That gave the turtle the time to recover the water that had been boiled away, but the moment the phoenix was re-lit, the cycle repeated itself. 

I paused a second and hid behind the massive turtle’s shell as the trio that I’d been fighting started launching volleys of attacks at me. For a moment, the turtle – which was named Gaius, if I remembered Eira’s shout from last year correctly – gave me an angry glare as it encased itself in a massive dome of water, retreating back into his shell.

The chains around my mind suddenly redoubled, and the world slowed again. It took me precious seconds to accelerate the temporal hasting spell to account for the spell again, and when I was back, I noted that the three phoenixes fighting Gaius had already swarmed the dome. 

I waited until the timing was exactly perfect.

When all three of the birds were touching the dome, I unleashed another charge of my staff into the dome. 

The demonic magic operated with principles I didn’t understand, but I was willing to bet that the adage of water carrying lightning wouldn’t be easily overwhelmed by a single demonic spell. 

I bet right, as the lightning coursed through the birds, and each of them was fried until they dropped a stone of condensed aura. The secondary layer of my spell still tried to warp back around to attack me, and I caught it again in my cloak, then turned to Gaius. 

“Gaius!” I shouted. “The demon mage!” 

I didn’t know how intelligent the turtle was, so I pointed at the fused man far below us. Gaius, who was still in his shell, gave me a look I thought was that of understanding. He started to emerge from his shell, and the massive bubble around us started to weaken. One of the injured Roark’s attacks pierced the dome, and I caught it, breaking it apart and firing it at the mindscape mage. 

Even though she was still maintaining a massive spell that was keeping me somewhat inhibited, she was still more than skilled enough to take several steps out of the way, while attempting again to tighten the chains within my mind. Once again, I was forced to push my temporal hasting spell further, and I wondered how much time I was throwing away. 

In the end, it didn’t matter. 

As I was caught back up, I saw the spell Gaius had built in his mouth. It was a massive spell, easily on the level of one of Eira or Frank’s siege spells, and the aura flowing through it could have restored my own five times over or more. 

Gaius unleashed the spell, and a beam of water, only the thickness of a strand of my hair, sliced through the air. It moved fast, fast enough that I was only confident I could dodge it with the forewarning of my danger sensing spell. 

The demon mage fell into two halves. 

I stared, mouth open. 

Osheen’s cousin stared. 

Even the dreamscape druid stared. 

Gaius, on the other hand, released the spell, gave me a slow but deliberate nod, and turned to swim through the air and join Eira in the battle raging far to my right. 

I snapped back to myself fastest, likely thanks to the fact that I’d been in more life and death fights than anyone had any right to. The attack had been scarily impressive, sure, but I’d seen other scary attacks before. 

I dove at the druid who was chaining my mind, straining all of my hasting spells to their very limit. 

I appeared in front of her in an instant, and she let out a surprised yelp. Before she could do anything to stop me, I released the first of my two attacks from my cloak. 

Without the demonic magic rerouting the spells to attack me, the wind enhanced, charged water bullets ripped through the air. I saw the woman’s eyes widen for a moment, and her body began to warp, presumably trying to fuse with another familiar and stop it, but it was too late. 

The spheres of water tore her body apart, even as the world around me started moving painfully slow. 

Freed from her mental restraints, I let go of the temporal hasting spell, and everything snapped back to normal. I reflected a pair of immolation spells and force bolts at the Roark mage as I watched. 

Druids were tricky, and while my attack had been good, it hadn’t been on the level of Gaius' attack against the demon mage. More than that, this druid had connections to the spring court.

Sure enough, one of the woman’s boons activated, and a flashing green light spun through her body. It was quite similar to the vibrant power that had allowed the Spring Queen to heal during my battle against her, but there was also much less of it. This woman had been a skilled druid, but she was no Spring Queen. 

Unfortunately for her, I was a Faerie Lord of Change. Spinning circles of silver flashed out of my hands, a variation of the very lifeline damaging attack I’d used against the Spring Queen, and that I’d nearly killed myself with in the first year. 

I wasn’t trying to turn her into an Aura spark. While I was sure there was a philosophical argument that doing so would have been the correct thing to do, I already felt like enough of a hypocrite for using Edward Elide’s aura spark to help save my life. 

But I didn’t need to harvest her into an aura spark. 

All I did with this spell was redirect the flow of rejuvenating magic into my own thin lifeline, instead of using it to fuel and restore her body. 

She died, but her soul was left untouched. A mortal death for a mortal archmage. 

I turned to face Osheen’s cousin and sighed. 

“Listen. I don’t want to kill you. You’re my cousin in law.” 

“Die!” he screamed, shouting an obscenity as he released a column of fire over my head. I stole the spell with a wave of my hand. 

“You’re making it difficult,” I said. “Just sit this one out, okay? I’m letting Chantal and Heenling sit it out, and they’re not–” 

I cut off as I broke apart another one of his spells and fired it at one of the Byron mages I could see at the edge of my vision, battling against Zachary Dormer. 

“Just sit it out!” I snapped, “I’ve already stabbed you. If you don’t get medical attention, you’ll die of your wounds.” 

I turned and burst away. Maybe it was foolish to leave a potential enemy behind me, but he was also quite injured, and I wanted to give him a chance. Besides, I chose to take him not firing off a bunch of attacks at me as I flew away as a sign he might actually have listened to me. 

I landed next to Zachary Dormer with a flourish of my cloak, and flicked my eyes around to take in the situation.