Chapter 34

“Interconnectivity is at the heart of the art of magic. Each spell that is cast draws on the mana created by the world around it. Each resultant expulsion generates mana anew which goes on to influence the environment around it. If a fire burns for long enough, a region can be charged with its affinity. In the deep oceans, the floes of mana creep along, crushed beneath the terrible weight, but massive all the same. What we create with magic begets what will be created with it in the future. What has happened in a place colors its mana for the rest of time. What we put out into the world is what the world becomes. Our very presence shapes the future.”

—Fundamentals of Arcana, Albrecht Magnus

While every previous bout had started with both mages going at it, this time they emerged blinking into the starlight from their respective entrances to find Instructor Aurea and what must have been the leader of one of the other campuses, a stout looking dwarf man with an immaculately plaited beard. They stood at the center of the arena, waiting patiently, so Malachai, the Greyhall Champion and Sylvas all proceeded to them. The same enhancement that Bael had used on his voice earlier was clearly cast on them, as their voices reached everyone in the arena, regardless of distance.

“The final bout of the crucible will be between the three final contenders, with a single winner selected from amongst them.” Aurea began, “It shall continue until such time as two competitors are no longer able to continue. An adjustment will be made to the crests of each of the contenders so that on activation they will be transported out of the arena proper to receive immediate medical care.”

As she spoke the dwarf walked around, actually making that change to the enchantment. As she did with everything, Mira recorded the spell-forms that he used, but something caught her attention.

The stasis spell, take a look at it.

Sylvas pulled up the spell form from his memory to the slate and stared. Not all words in the Aion language had a singular fixed meaning, and while spell-forms relating to a certain affinity had similarities they weren’t all identical, but there was enough there to make an educated guess. The stasis spell that slowed the passage of time for those being protected by the crest was unmistakably based in the gravity affinity. He went on staring at it for a long moment, trying to confirm his suspicions, but there was something in the spell-form attached to the crest that just resonated with him. A gut feeling of familiarity.

The cold storage spell opened up a portal without the massive gravity spike, teleportation did the same with a reduced amount of gravity on display, once Sylvas reached his fifth circle, he’d have the freedom to start tinkering with his spells to emphasize one aspect or another. Time was clearly just another thing that gravity effected, and by eliminating the other effects of a gravity spike, he could theoretically slow it without also creating a miniature black hole.

By the time he brought his attention back to the arena, his crest had been altered and the Instructors were wishing them luck before teleporting away. 

The horn sounded almost the moment they were clear, and the najash girl was fast off her mark. Sylvas barely had the time to throw up a Gravity Shear to protect him from the sudden tirade of ice being launched his way as she skated off across the arena. Malachai simply watched her go. “I have been looking forward to this for a long time.”

Sylvas let the shield drop as the ice mage made some extra distance and the torrent of hail slowed to more of a gentle blizzard. “The feeling is mutual. Did you have some terms that you want to lay out?”

“Not at all, please use everything at your disposal to best me, I just—” He was interrupted by the return of the najash, she had made a turn at the far end of the arena, cast a cavalcade of spells and was now racing alongside them back towards where the two of them still stood. It looked like nothing more or less than an approaching ice age, a glacier racing across to crush them all.

Sylvas launched himself into the air, ready to put some distance between him and he encroaching winter, but Malachai did not. He simply cast.

On Mournhold, his scythe had given shape to his magic. Curving sickle blades of death had launched from it and lashed across the battlefield. But he had yet to summon the weapon from cold storage. The spell that he launched now was more like a misshapen sphere. It wouldn’t be until later Sylvas realized it had taken the shape of a skull.

It passed cleanly through the wall of ice that she’d raised to protect herself without leaving a mark, struck into the dark shadow behind it and abruptly all of her magic fell apart. The approaching storm of ice dissipated into a cool breeze by the time it reached the men and her body was vanished before it hit the ground.

Malachai turned back to him. “As I was saying, I just don’t want this opportunity to be wasted. Give me everything you have.”

“If you’re sure about that,” Sylvas replied, offering the man a thin smile right before he launched his orbitals out from his bag. None of them hit home. The other mage was already cloaked in an aura of death, and as each sphere shot at him, he slapped it aside, killing the mana within.

Sylvas launched himself straight up into the sky, trying to gain some distance from which to operate, but Malachai followed him right up. At a glance, Sylvas had no idea how the other man was flying. He’d shown no capability of doing so before. Then his second sight showed the tattered cloak wrapped around him, the spirits of the dead, bound to his body, had seized the necromancer and were carrying him up.

Sylvas unleashed a focused Gravity Spike, expecting Malachai to try and bat it away as he had the orbitals, but it seemed that he had more sense. He darted aside, letting the tiny event horizon Sylvas had summoned pass him harmlessly by.

Still trying to put more distance between them, Sylvas went on darting away as Malachai pursued. He was breaking off fragments of his psyche as fast as he dared. Storing spells away. Readying himself for the battle to come. Malachai was less slow off the mark.

The killing spell that had ended the other mage so abruptly was launched from his hands, leaving Sylvas chill and numb as he narrowly avoided it. 

One after another the skulls came after him soundlessly despite looking like they were screaming, and one after another he dodged around them. Malachai didn’t seem terribly frustrated by his failure to instantly kill his opponent. If anything, Sylvas suspected Malachai would have been disappointed if he actually managed to land any of these attacks and end their clash.

Malachai’s barrage ended and he reached into cold storage for his scythe. Exactly the kind of opportunity Sylvas had been waiting for. He launched a Gravity Spike, not at Malachai, who could move all too easily, but at that tiny hole in reality that he’d just punched. The scythe was already halfway out when the gravity spike hit it, causing the tiny hole to expand into a tear. Everything else that Malachai had stored in there began to spill out. Books and artefacts that must have cost a fortune, a second scythe that looked like a prototype of the one Malachai used now. A veritable flood of antiquities went streaming out to hit the red sand beneath.

Anyone else would have been distracted, tried to catch their treasures before they could escape, but Malachai was built differently from the average person, he never took his eyes off the prize. He cut cleanly through what looked like some sort of statue as he drew out his scythe, slashing a great line of death affinity mana right at Sylvas, focused down to a sickle blade. This was how he worked around the limitations of casting. He could go on the offensive with the scythe while casting at the same time, so long as his mana supplies held. And since he’d achieved his forth circle already, they were definitely going to outlast Sylvas own reserves.

Oh please, don’t hamstring yourself. Your forth circle is ready whenever you are.

Mira’s voice distracted Sylvas so much that he lost the opportunity that his last gravity spike had bought him. “What? Already?”

Don’t be surprised my dear, this is what you made me for, Mira’s reply whispered into his mind. I have balanced the mana flow through my, our, new paradigm, everything is integrated, we can forge the new circle as soon as you are ready.

“Do it!”

Sylvas dropped to the ground, unsure of how creating his circle in the midst of combat was going to affect his ability to maintain his grip on his internal gravity. Normally he was alone in the dark guiding himself through the final steps of the process, having Mira doing it felt oddly like cheating. The result was the same though, the mana flowing through his new embodiment and the mana flowing through his new paradigm flowed together in a single perfect continuous loop, and just like that a new circle solidified around his core.

I really wish you’d been my first paradigm. Everything would have been so much easier.

Darling, we already know I’m wonderful, why don’t you focus on the fight instead?

Sylvas opened his eyes to an oncoming storm of scything blades, but he knew no fear. Using just a portion of the newly blossoming well of mana inside him he completed a teleportation spell and vanished, to appear behind Malachai and the lethal whirlwind he was doling out.

Barely a word into the Gravity Spike that would have ended the battle, Malachai’s head snapped around, and the cloak of ghosts that was holding him in the air detached itself to rush at Sylvas. He had no idea whether ghosts were affected by gravity, and this was not the time to find out, he too let himself drop so they passed harmlessly overhead, though not without leaving him infected with a little existential dread from their proximity.

Instead of trying to break his fall or save himself, Malachai unleashed the spell that he’d been casting the whole time he’d been swinging away with his scythe. A great wave of death magic leapt up out of him, taking the shape of a man, a skeleton, of course, extending out its arms and leaping up to embrace him. It took a second teleportation spell to avoid it, even as fast as he could move.

He’d prepared some gravity shears into his mental fragments mostly out of habit, knowing that they likely wouldn’t touch the death magic that Malachai flung around so casually. But as he appeared beneath the necromancer again, he cast one. Not out into the blossoming umbrella that usually protected him, but using his clawed hand to focus it down into a tight band. A scimitar of compressed, warped gravity that he swung.

Once more Malachai was entirely too aware of his surroundings, the scimitar blade passed harmlessly through the space where he’d been as a fresh cohort of ghosts burst out of the ground and carried him aside. Sylvas wasn’t sure if that was a spell or just something that Malachai could do freely, but it certainly was annoying having to concede that he wasn’t going to win the fight on mobility.

The two of them were on the ground now, face to face with one another. Their respective magics swirling around them. “That teleportation spell is very useful I can see, but no doubt costly.”

“And the ghosts are cheap to summon, I assume?”

“Effortless.” Malachai couldn’t fully restrain his smirk.

“Launching raw mana is hardly the most efficient way to fight either. You must be very confident that your reserves will last.” Sylvas could feel his own reserves refilling the longer that they went on talking, so extending the delay could only help him.

“Can you think of any world in all the universe so thoroughly drenched in death?” Malachai spread out his hands. “Every life on this planet was snuffed out. In this place, I am as endless as eternity.”

“Here,” he said in an ominous tone while readying his scythe. “Let me show you.”