WWDtS Chapter 139 (Patreon)

A nice meaty chapter, posted a day or two early courtesy of me being very sick today.

My fight ended up being number twenty-three, the first among our year, which was about what I had expected. Fifteen pairs of first years fought before us, most of their matches just as one-sided as the one between Grahm and Eileen. Only two had been remotely fair, and one of those because both sides were almost comically incompetent. 

That particular ‘fight’ lasted nearly half an hour, and the two first years did more damage to themselves with their terribly sloppy spellcasting than they did to each other. By the end of it half the crowd was loudly discussing how they'd managed to survive their first semester without killing themselves. Truly it seemed the universe sometimes favored fools. 

The seven pairs of second years were slightly more impressive, but only slightly. There was only one properly lopsided fight, and interestingly it was the challenger who’d proven to be woefully outmatched rather than the challenged. Otherwise, it was mostly a bunch of first-circle shields and combat spells with little finesse or technique behind them, some enchanted weapons, and one young man with a belt full of explosive potions. 

It was early afternoon by the time my name was called. There had been an hour-long break after the last pair of second years had fought, and I’d made sure to eat something light enough that it wouldn’t slow me down. I was glad for that foresight. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference, but it would have been terribly embarrassing to give a bad showing because I’d over eaten. 

I didn’t head down to the field immediately. We had five minutes to present ourselves after all, and that was more than enough time for some last minute prepwork. I briskly reached into my bag and pulled out a trio of potion vials which I unstoppered and downed one after another. The first one was a nasty shade of yellow, tasted vaguely like rotten meat, and had the consistency of pond scum. The second looked and smelled like clear water but burned like a strong spirit on the way down. The third was rich, sweet, and creamy and immediately cleared the lingering taste of sludge from my mouth.

I blinked rapidly, feeling the potions settling heavily in my belly. The first was a delayed healing potion, just in case I did manage to get injured. The second was a short-term mental enhancement, very dangerous to the mind if taken frequently but useful when taken right before a fight or difficult magical working. The last was a single shot of elf milk––the dose I typically would have taken this morning––and left me feeling instantly invigorated. 

With that taken care of, I began to cast one of my newest spells. It was a fourth-circle personal ward, a protective spell complex enough that I doubted I’d be able to cast it in the middle of a fight any time soon but that lasted for roughly an hour and was designed to play nicely with both combat magic and protective enchantments. 

It was easily the most complex spell I knew, and casting it for the first time several days ago had been incredibly stressful. However, I’d practiced it several times since then and could get it down in just about three minutes. 

I could see now why personal wards, despite being incredibly useful and versatile, simply weren’t really a thing before fourth circle. Spells like force lance and barrier were simple enough that you could scale them up and down easily enough by replacing complex elements with weaker, simpler versions or removing them entirely. 

However, there was only so far you could simplify a spell like this before it stopped being at all useful. A force lance without the piercing elements drawn from the Penetration spell form was still a veritable battering ram that could crack lesser barriers and bunch clean through thin walls. A personal ward that didn’t distinguish between spells you were casting and spells flying at you was a liability. 

I finished with a minute to spare and felt a cool film of magic settle over me. It covered my entire body from the tips of my fingers to my toes but was loose enough that it covered both my pants and shirt, though my boots and jacket were outside the field. It was far from a foolproof defense, but it should tank a few spells if things went poorly, and hopefully stop any tricks I didn’t see coming. 

Seeing that I was finished, Camille and the twins who’d been hovering around me took a step forward. “Good luck, Orion,” Camille said softly, and Alan and Ulan echoed the sentiment a moment later. 

Miranda, who had remained seated, smiled at me tightly. She was acting unconcerned, but I could feel her fear and worry. Not only was I her meal ticket, but the oath she’d sworn wasn’t one that would break easily. My death probably wouldn’t kill her, but it might cripple her. 

“Thanks.”

I turned towards the stairs that led to the field, but Miranda finally decided to speak up. “A favor from Clarient isn’t worth your life, Orion,” she told me quietly. “Be careful.”

I nodded sharply. “I know. I won’t.” Then I spun on my heel and walked briskly down to the arena sands.

I would have noticed when I stepped through the wards around the battlefield even if I hadn’t been able to sense them parting around me. The breeze vanished, the sounds of the crowd fell away, and the smell of blood and death hung heavily in the air. 

Delphin Oratorio had beaten me down to the arena by several minutes and was standing in his spot with his back straight, his head held high, and a sneer on his lips. He cut an impressive image. He was tall, well built, and had the exact sort of aristocratic facial features favored by vast swaths of the nobles I’d seen. He was every inch the young scion of a powerful family, resplendent in silvery armor reminiscent of Clarient’s golden plate.

I narrowed my eyes, examining the handful of visible runes on the armor’s surface and the magic I could feel on it. It was excellent armor, the sort of enchanting work that cost a small fortune in experts and materials to produce. 

I wasn’t sure of exactly what it did—I was still years and years away from analyzing complex enchantments at a glance from a hundred feet away—but I could make some educated guesses. Protective wards and durability were a given, but I thought I could see something intended to pierce through mental illusions and effects like pain induction and sleep.

If this had been a fair fight, that armor could have very well been the deciding factor. If this was last year, it might have made Delphin all but invulnerable against most of my repertoire. Even now it would severely limit what kinds of magic I could use. It was certainly better protection than the clothing I was wearing. 

But this was not a fair fight. I’d done some research into my opponent—or well, I’d told Miranda to do so and checked her work—and though we’d both finished out five semesters at Avalon, he was not my equal. 

If he had been wearing Clarient’s armor, then maybe I would have been worried. That was a treasure that would make even archmages salivate with greed. But that was not Clarient’s armor. Just a shallow copy, a shadow of the real thing.

I unhurriedly made my way towards my side of the field, doing my best to project an air of nonchalant confidence. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Delphin’s reaction. Outwardly, he looked confident and composed. Beneath that however, I could almost taste his nervousness. His fingers were twitching, his magic unsteady, and his eyes were darting back and forth between me and a spot off in the crowd. The spot where Clarient and her allies were sitting, if I had to wager a guess. He was absolutely petrified and regretting every single one of the life choices that had brought him to this moment. 

I took the time to consider my strategy. His armor necessitated a few changes to my primary plan, but I’d accounted for that possibility. I mentally picked apart what I could read from his armor, looking for any obvious flaws or weaknesses but not finding any. It might not be a one-of-a-kind masterwork, but it was still well made and designed armor. A custom piece crafted to his size and needs most likely. 

When I reached my spot, I paused to stretch languidly, then turned to face Delphin. His sneer intensified, a familiar, ugly look stretching his features.

I smiled pleasantly.

He took a half-step forward, his stomp raising a small cloud of dust around his ankles. “You will regret the insult you gave to her majesty Clarient Valorous!” he called out loudly. “For a Queen to be forced to treat with an uppity serf like an equal is an affront to the proper order of things. I will enjoy putting you back in your place, Hunter.”

False bravado. I had expected nothing less. I raised a single eyebrow, then yawned, covering my mouth with my palm.

Delphin bristled. His bravado might be fake, but his pride certainly wasn’t. “You think you’re something special? A thousand men like you toil to death in my family’s fields each day! You got lucky against Kwesta, but she is an empty headed girl and a love-blinded fool. But I know your tricks now. You won’t get lucky a second time!”

I hadn’t planned to say anything, but looking at him now I could see that there was something more effective than apathetic silence for riling him up. Clarient had been wrong. He wasn’t just trying to get out of his family’s large debt to Clarient. He wanted a lot more than that from her.

“Big words from a tiny, tiny man. You’re lucky a big, strong woman like Clarient stepped in to beg me to spare your worthless life.”

It worked like a charm. Delphin’s magic boiled with rage, wild and uncontrolled. Before he could respond, Professor Glassoak’s voice blew over the field like a storm. “On my signal,” he declared, a new wreath of wildflowers floating over his outstretched hand.

My magic rose inside me, not yet pouring out of my soul and into the physical world but poised to do so on a moment’s notice. The wreath drifted gently through the air, my mana sense tracking the shimmer of the illusory flowers while my eyes remained focused on D.

The wreath hit the ground and vanished in a burst of ambient mana and ethereal sparks. Mana flooded out of me, twisting and warping as it took on the mind bending properties that allowed mages to replicate the higher-dimensional segments of spell forms and cast spells past the third circle. The spell matrix formed faster than I’d ever managed before, a full second faster than it had the day before. 

Delphin had barely even started casting his first spell when the matrix snapped fully into place and activated. A line of force drew itself between us, visible only by how it cut through the barely-noticeable cloud of fine sand particles that hung in the air, disturbed by the footsteps and magic of the previous duelists.

It cut through the outline of the spell matrix Delphin was sculpting, disrupting the spell but not quite enough to make it backfire, and crashed into his armored shoulder. There was a sound like a thunderclap, and the silver lines running through the shade-darker armor flared to life, their glow almost blinding in its intensity.

The enchantments on his armor held, swallowing the piercing aspects of the spell and stopping it from punching clean through metal, flesh, bone, and out the other side. It also blocked most of the force I’d put into the spell, but not all of it.

If I’d hit Delphin in the chest, he probably would have staggered back but been otherwise fine. But I’d seen the way he held himself, the uneven distribution of his weight, and the way his boots slid slightly across the sand as he moved. 

He spun like a top, completing a full revolution and neatly tumbling to the ground before he managed to catch himself. The spell matrix he’d been forming collapsed, though he hadn’t yet charged it with enough mana for the backlash of the failed spell to do more than sting. 

I didn’t give him a single moment longer to recover than I had to. My first spell had been a probe, intended more to knock him off balance and reveal more about the armor’s limits rather than disable him. It had done the first part admirably, but the barrier that had appeared over the armor and absorbed most of my spell’s strength had vanished too quickly for me to get a proper read on it.

I chose my next spell carefully. It was much less impressive than the first, something any half-competent second year could have managed. A trio of different colored beams—orange, silver-white, and acid yellow—shot towards Delphin, spiraling around one another and buzzing as they flew. 

Unlike the force lance I’d used to open the fight, this spell moved slowly enough that Delphin should have been able to easily dodge or shield himself before it reached him. Off balance as he was however, he only managed to get his armored forearm up to shield his face. The beams hissed and spit as they crashed against his bracer, the enchantments lighting up once more though far less brightly than before, but otherwise had no effect.

Unlike my force lance, this spell was not a single sudden impact, but a two-second burst that forced the barrier the armor produced to remain in place until it ended, giving me plenty of time to examine it with my mana sense. I started to prepare another spell but didn’t fully form the matrix, focusing on the feedback my spell provided.

Ah. That should do it. I didn’t know the exact spell I needed, but I did have something close enough in my arsenal. A few tweaks and it would do just fine. 

Delphin had noticed just how ineffective my second spell had been and was taking full advantage of the ‘opening’ his armor had provided him. I didn’t quite recognize the spell he was casting, but I could see bits and pieces of the fire, sound, and destruction spell forms so it was probably something like a fireball variant. There were enough of those to fill entire libraries; mages of all circles and walks of life loved the idea of a big, flashy, destructive fire spell and kept coming up with variations on the concept century after century.

I considered the spell matrix I’d started to form. This wasn’t quite what I would need to deal with his armor and I was trying to show off, wasn’t I? An ounce of intimidation now could save me a ton of trouble in the long run.

Instead of carefully dissipating the mana I’d already used and starting over, I reasserted my control over it and twisted it into a new shape, forming a completely different spell matrix. I still wasted some mana, but not nearly as much as I would have, and saved a crucial second or two besides.

Timing was one of the most important parts of properly utilized counter magic. That was why it was nearly impossible to use classical counter spells against an opponent you couldn’t see. I didn’t get it quite right. I’d been expecting him to finish casting a hair's breadth later, but it was still good enough to get the job done. 

My counterspell shattered the just-released spell matrix, snuffing out the bright blue fireball before it could fully form. Delphin cried out in pain as the backlash hit him, but stayed on his feet and didn’t even lose a hand like he probably would have if I’d timed things just right. 

He started casting another spell, an incineration ray, or perhaps a heat-focused flamethrower. His casting was slow and clumsy, and there was a pained grimace on his face as he struggled to focus. 

I didn’t bother with a counterspell this time. I began walking towards Delphin, my mana rising like an invisibly shroud around me but clearly perceptible to anyone in the crowd with a smidgen of sensory ability. My pace was unhurried, my hands folded behind my back palms open to show anyone that cared to look that I wasn’t hiding anything in them. 

Delphin finally managed to finish his spell, and a ray of brilliant white flames shot towards me, the air around it warping and shimmering from the heat of its passage. Slow. Crude. More flash than substance. Compared to what Briella, a second year, could manage in half the time, it was pathetic. 

Mana condensed into a rapidly spinning circle of interlocking strands the size of a dinner plate directly in the path of the ray of flames. The spell did not so much smash against the impromptu shield as simply sputter out and die, flames extinguished and the power behind them spent. The shield remained in place for a moment longer, long enough that it was obvious that there wasn’t so much as a scuff on it, then dissolved back into the cloud of mana from which it had come. 

Delphin’s eyes widened. I was almost on top of him now, having cut the distance between us by more than half. He stumbled backwards, fumbling for something inside a pouch on his belt, but it had taken him much too long to recognize the threat right in front of him. Most mages preferred to fight from a distance, where they could have time to counter or respond to most of their opponent’s spells, but some of my most effective tricks needed a more personal touch. 

A tendril of telekinetic force shot forward and swept his feet out from under him. It cost a lot of mana to extend it that far from me, but it was more than worth it. His armor flared to life, draining much of the force out of the impact, but he was already off balance and it took little more than a tap to send him to the ground. 

I continued to stroll languidly forward, a smile stretching my lips uncomfortably wide. He tried to roll to his feet, but I was much closer now. A trio of tendrils hammered him back into the ground, not enough to really injure him, but plenty to keep him down. 

Where there were less than ten feet separating us, I stopped and knelt down, running my fingers through the sand. Through my mana, I could feel the arena’s true stone floor beneath nearly fifteen feet of sand. I picked up a handful of the coarse grains and then let them trickle down between my fingers, my eyes locked on Delphin. 

The spell matrix I’d been shaped me snapped into place, and Delphin barely had time to yelp before he was suddenly falling, the ground collapsing away beneath him and sand rushing in towards him to fill the sudden void. 

It was difficult to directly affect the space immediately. around another mage with magic, souls naturally resisted such intrusions, but such a loose substrate came with its own advantages and disadvantages. I hadn’t done anything to the sand Delphin was lying on. But I had done something to the sand five feet beneath him, where his soul’s protection didn’t reach. 

With Delphin thoroughly distracted, I finally began to cast the spell I’d been mentally modifying during my ‘lazy’ walk towards him. It was not a very well put together spell, filled with inefficiencies and bloat that doubled the size of the required spell matrix, but that was fine. It required twice as much mana as a third-circle spell should, but that was fine too. It was much more important for the spell to work than for it to look elegant. In fact, perhaps it was better that it looked so crude. 

Penetration and Reconstruction bridged the gap between Destruction and All-Material. Bits of Entropy, Heat, As-Things-Were, and Metal joined them, carefully balanced to make sure the resulting spell didn’t backfire and kill me. I was very glad I’d drunk that mental enhancement potion. Without it, I’d have needed another couple of minutes to work out the kinks. 

A ray of sickly-orange, somewhere between rust and rotting blood, shot towards where Delphin’s shoulder, the same shoulder I’d hit with my force lance earlier, lay half-buried in sand. The barrier flickered to life and died just as quickly, the spell’s magic sinking right through it to touch the metal hidden beneath. 

At first, it looked like nothing had happened. Then the surface of the metal began to lighten. A few grains of sand slid down his shoulder. Then a few more, and a few more, and a few more. Metal flaked away, transforming bit by bit, grain by grain, into the same ruddy red sand as the arena’s floor. 

The shoulder piece was almost fully gone by the time Delphin finally noticed what was happening. He tried to cast something, but I was close enough to smother the spell before it could form, just like the Myrddin had demonstrated for my Mana Manipulation class earlier in the year. The next time he tried, I slapped him with another tendril of force, and this time there was no armor to dull the blow. Blood vessels burst and bone cracked, and Delphin cried out in pain. 

Another tendril wrapped around his shoulders and neck and pulled him bodily up into the air. The spell matrix for a general purpose counterspell hung fully formed beside me, ready to be cast on a moment’s notice. 

He flailed wildly, sending sand flying all around him. His chestplate was half gone, one arm was completely unarmored, and the gauntlet on his other hand was rapidly vanishing into sand. Bits of silver filigree littered the sand and clung to the fabric underlayer of his armor, mana rapidly draining out of them as the structure around them dissolved.

Still smiling, I formed two more tendrils, these ones much thinner but just as strong. I waited until his other gauntlet was completely gone, then wrapped one delicately around each of his wrists. His eyes widened. “Nonono,” he chanted, his voice a weak whisper. 

The ligament in his thumbs tore first, and then the bones cracked. He screamed. Two by two I broke each of his fingers. Then I moved up to his wrists and then his arms. 

The tendrils slid lightly up to caress his shoulders, and he finally snapped. “No! Please! Anything!” He was sobbing, tears pouring down his face and snot dripping from his nose. 

I tilted my head to the side. “Anything?” I asked. 

He nodded frantically. “Anything!” he choked out. “Anything!”

The dueling challenge had rules. Lots of rules. As much as I would have liked, I could not force Delphin to swear a proper slave oath, or even to swear to swear a slave oath to me later. But there was one oath I could extract from him. 

“I’ll cast the spell. Both parts of it. You know the words.”

He looked like he couldn’t believe his good fortune. Leaving your opponent in a venue like this was typically considered distasteful and dishonorable, especially if they were the one who’d challenged you, but deals like the one between Clarient and I were not unheard of. Thus, Avalon had chosen to allow an out very few people would be willing to take, but only if you could implement it yourself. And it wasn’t like I’d ever cared much about being tasteful or honorable. 

I walked forward and took his hand. He flinched at my firm grip, but didn’t try to pull his hand away. I let the counterspell I had been holding dissolve, but kept a careful watch on Delphin with my mana sense, prepared to act if I so much as felt him try to cast something or shape mana. 

As I began to prepare the hand oath, I let the tendrils still holding him in the air tighten slightly, bones groaning from the pressure. Not enough to break anything, but a warning that I was not as wholly consumed by my spellcasting as I appeared.

I was honestly half expecting a trick. That was one of the reasons very few people decided to go for a non-lethal ending to an honor challenge. An opponent sufficiently intact to swear an oath was also one who could still be very dangerous, and an at-circle oath took a not insignificant amount of focus to cast. Plenty of merciful duelists had had their mercy thrown back in their face by opponents who weren’t quite as willing to give up as they’d appeared. Hopefully Delphin wouldn’t do anything stupid.

Hand oaths typically required both parties to cast the spell, but there were ways around that. I certainly wasn’t going to let Delphin cast anything while I was standing so close to him. Mirrored spell matrices appeared around our clasped hands, the similarities of the two halves and my deep familiarity with this type of magic allowing me to cast both simultaneously.

Well, mostly. I still needed a catalyst from Delphin. “When you finish speaking, you’re going to inject just a drop of mana into your side of the spell. Do you understand?”

“Yes! Yes! I won’t try anything!” His words were slightly slurred, but easily comprehensible. 

We both felt it when the spell snapped into place, faint tendrils wrapping around our spirits. Delphin took a deep breath and, speaking as quickly as he could, blurted out. “I will not hold a grudge against you. I will not act against you or your interests. I will not fight against you except for in self defense as outlined in the Avalon code of conduct. I will not sway others to act against you. I will not challenge you again.” A tiny trickle of his mana flowed into the spell, just enough that it would take hold all the better. 

Well. Fair enough. Clarient would be happy. Though, in hindsight, perhaps she’d known ahead of time that Delphin was the sort of person who would agree to anything to spare his own life. 

“I accept your oath,” I told him formally. “May all conflict between us vanish into memory.”

The spell snapped into place, chains of magic and promises wrapping tightly around Delphin’s soul. I relaxed and took a step back, my telekinetic tendrils vanishing back into mana and dropping Delphin’s prone form onto the sand. 

Turning towards the judge’s box, I found both Professor Glassoak and Lady Ambrosius watching me intently. I inclined my head and gestured towards Delphin. 

The two exchange a glance, and then Professor Glassoak’s voice blew across the stadium. “I declare this match concluded. Victory goes to Orion Hunter.”

I marched out of the arena. Behind me, Lady Ambrosious swept her hand through the air, restoring the arena to its prior state and teleporting Delphin’s prone form to the healing hall. Stepping through the barrier around the battlefield, I found the arena nearly as silent in truth as it had seemed from inside the barrier. 

I smiled, a real smile and not one of the ones I practiced. That had gone quite well.