The Effaced: Chapter Thirty-Seven (Patreon)

I shot her in the leg. I wasn’t trying to kill her. 

Even still, with increasing the mass of the bullet, and thus, the weight of the bullet until it was effectively as heavy as a blow from a sledgehammer, moving with more speed than any non-magical bullet could hope to match, wrapped in anti-tampering spells, and infused with the aura-hiding arch-star, it was too much for her to stop.

Maybe if I hadn’t had any one of those, she could have stopped me, or kept fighting. If the bullet didn’t have the mass it did, her leg bones wouldn’t have shattered. If it had been moving slower, maybe she could have had time to break through the anti-tampering. If it hadn’t had those anti-tampering spells, she could have just redirected the shot. If the gun hadn’t been infused with the aura-hiding arch-star, her metal sensory spell might have warned her I was about to shoot.

If she’d had the experience I did, she might have known not to rely only on a sensory spell, especially when she was still new to the use of them, as evidenced by the fact she wasn’t running one in our last fight. But she had fallen into the same flaw that a lot of new fighters do – when someone takes advantage of a weakness, you overcorrect to cover for that weakness. She’d been relying on her metal sense spell too much, and it was eating up too much of her attention.

All of it came together at that moment, as Fake-Mist let out a scream and her spells collapsed. 

I dove down, quickly catching her with her coat, using metal spells to slow her fall and then stop it completely, then began layering my own anti-tampering spells over her equipment, to stop her from immediately seizing control again. She could push through them with time and aura, but she was in too much pain. 

The thing that people tended to overestimate about sorcerers in battle was how hard it was to hold onto a spell while you were in pain. Pain could sharpen focus, sure, but it could just as easily completely break concentration. 

It takes a lot of effort to visualize a dozen symbols in your mind at once, all interconnected with lines. Doing it while in pain was hard, even with the ability to split your focus via the second arch-star.

Fake-Mist hung limply in the air from her coat, and I had a split second to decide what to do. This building was much higher up than the hospital had been, and I didn’t think I could lift it, even if I infused my third arch-star into the spell to do it. It provided a steady stream of aura, yes, and I’d trained it to interface with infusion well, yes, but even I had limits. 

But I could save people. Skyships were already buzzing around the building, picking people up and ferrying them to nearby buildings, and many of the people who had flight, be it from sorcery, enchanted items, potions, or something else, had already left. But that meant only the poorest would be left inside – the staff. They deserved to be saved. 

At the same time, I couldn’t just let her go. She was bleeding, and if she didn’t get treatment, who knew what might happen. She might survive, but she might also bleed out, and that was to say nothing of the fact that I might be able to get information about the Arenamaster’s plans from her. 

“Kill me,” she whispered. 

“Don’t be dramatic,” I snapped. “You lost a fight against me, that’s not worthy of death.” 

I split my focus, then with one part of my mind, then grabbed ahold of her coat and began unweaving threads of metal. The bullet had probably shattered her leg, and I wasn’t a surgeon or healer, there was no chance I could set everything back together. 

I flicked the threads through her leg and forcibly stitched the wounds closed, then floated down into the hotel. There was going to be internal bleeding, since the wound wasn’t nice and clean, but it would at least stop her from bleeding out. I swept through the halls, and when I spotted a group of four people huddled together, ripped a chunk of the wall out, hammering it into a platform. 

“Get on,” I told them, and they hesitated, looking at the bloody, similarly dressed person floating over one of my shoulders, at my gun, at my sword. I drew myself up to my full two meters and change and loomed over them. 

“If you want to survive, get on,” I commanded.

They got on the platform, and with a crunch of power, I lifted them into the air and floated us over to a new building, then dropped them off and flew back.

On my fourth trip, I spotted an unwelcomely familiar sight walking through the collapsing halls. 

“Hello Arenamaster,” I said. 

She was walking through the halls, another orb harvesting power from the dead, though now that I got a look at it, I thought there was a chance that there was something else going on as well. It was drawing power from me, and from Fake-Mist as well. Was it harvesting emotions as well? I knew there was a lot of overlap between emotions and soul magic. That couldn’t be entirely right, either. There were two absolutely massive threads stringing to the west, in the general direction of the White Rooms, though one was of by somewhere between thirty to forty degrees. The threads vanished after about a meter, but that was still an anomaly. 

When the Arenamaster spotted me, her eyes grew amused and she shook her head, letting out a theatrical sigh. 

“I must say, I’m disappointed. I know that she hadn’t formed her fourth arch-star yet, but I had hoped that she’d be able to hold you down for a while.”

My heart was hammering in my chest as I looked at her delicate elven features. I couldn’t win against her, and I knew that. 

Oh, I might be able to defeat her in a fight. I wasn’t sure. Hadiya had held her off, and neither were super-combat focused witches. 

But I couldn’t win. 

She would always come back. 

I took a breath and focused on my mind, building a wall, but it did nothing. This wasn’t magically imposed fear, like Firefright’s boon. 

This fear was far more natural. Because even after twenty years, it’s not always easy to face down someone who raised you like a child, and betrayed that trust to abuse, control, and experiment on your body. 

I thought that I’d gotten over it. Maybe I could, one day. 

But in this moment, watching her click down the hall, slowly walking towards me, I couldn’t forget. 

She walked right up to me, put her hand on my chin, and smiled in an almost motherly way. 

“You’ve grown so much, and yet you still can’t resist the allure of glory, can you?” she asked. “You could have taken Mist and run, but instead you had to play hero. Or maybe you were here, thinking you could stop me.” 

“I…” 

My voice stuck in my throat, and I couldn’t say more. By the sundered thrones, I was thirty-five, and yet here I was, acting like a teenager. 

But you don’t grow out of fear and trauma with age. You grow out of them with effort, and even then, they’re subtle and slow. They can sneak up on you, even when you think that you’ve conquered them. 

“Have you put together what I’m doing yet?” the Arenamaster asked. “I know that you and Zone have been collaborating, as well as the girl from the labs, and the politician’s son.” 

“No,” I admitted. The Arenamaster let out a disappointed ‘tsk’ sound and shook her head. 

“How sad. Are you going to give Mist back?” 

I swallowed, and it was thick and phlegmy. 

“No,’ I repeated. 

The Arenamaster’s eyebrows rose.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly. What did you say?” 

I felt a throbbing in the back of my skull, where Odril used to be, where the seal was now, and I looked at her. I firmed my shoulders and drew myself up. 

“No.” I repeated. 

I expected her to summon Alyphize and unleash demonic magic at me. I was prepared for it, or at least, was prepared to react. 

I was prepared if she pulled a battle wand or artifact, or if she pulled out a potion. 

I was even prepared if red light was going to rise up for her to transport herself to the Fallen Void again. I might not be able to stop it, but I could try to fire before she was gone. 

I wasn’t prepared for her to shake her head sadly. 

“It won’t work, you know,” she said. “I never told the girl what our plans were. Her demon might have a few ideas, but certainly less than Zone and her demon.” 

“I… don’t care,” I said. 

As the words came from my mouth, I realized just how true they were. 

Even if I didn’t get anything from Fake-Mist, I needed to get her away from the Arenamaster. 

I stuck my hand out, and the Arenamaster tensed. 

“My name is Axel Font,” I said. “You don’t know me.” 

“I raised you,” she snapped, clearly irritated. 

“And yet, you only know the soldier you molded me to be. I’m sure you have your tricks that would stop me from shooting you, but I’m not just the child you used.” 

I wiggled my fingers. 

“My name is Axel Font,” I repeated. “You don’t know me. What’s your name?” 

The Arenamaster stared at me, like she was trying to figure out what sort of angle I had, then the building lurched. Her eyes flicked around, and she shook her head.

“Alyphize, do we… Good.” 

She looked up at me and shook her head. 

“You’re welcome to keep playing hero,” she said with a sniff. “But I need to go.” 

“No,” I said. I raised my hand and fired on her, throwing together a mass neutralization spell and my fourth arch-star, my classic ward bypass combination. 

The bullet slowed in midair, then reversed direction and flung itself back at me. I redirected it, but the Arenamaster had turned and was fleeing. Red light swirled out around her as Alyphize appeared, and the demon began casting a spell as they ran. I watched them go, then turned to look at Fake-Mist, who I was still…

Who I had thought I was still holding in midair with my spells. My spells were still draining my aura, and it still felt like they were attached to something, but Fake-Mist was gone. I whipped my head around to where the Arenamaster was running. 

For a second, I debated trying to follow her, but my good sense won out. There were still people I needed to rescue. Fake-Mist was among those people, but she’d be able to get medical attention with the Arenamaster at least. If anyone was trapped under debris, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case.

I let out a growl of frustration as I rose into the air, then shot off to try and find as many people I could before the constables swarmed the area or the building collapsed entirely.