AO 6 Ch 24

In all of our training, Maribelle had repeatedly attempted to drill math and basic mathematical concepts into my brain. 

All of which I’d had no desire to actually learn. As far as I was concerned, working off of feel worked well enough.

But as I watched the fire swell, I had to acknowledge I should have paid a little more attention. Right in front of me was the proof of one of the concepts called square cube law. I think?

The difference between a bead and an apple did not seem like much. An apple could still fit in the palm of a hand. But the concentration of magic in the two was far different. I only had the surface area of the apple to apply pressure, but the volume would increase faster the surface area, thus always limiting the size of compression.

Another law of magic was that in order to condense something, the weakest part was the exterior. This meant that raising the volume by an entire magnitude likely increased the power by another.

All of this was to say that the little apple of blue soul fire was more than likely a hundred times more potent than the beads I'd been using previously. 

So when that apple detonated, it ripped Eva's magic to shreds with a force beyond what I could have expected.

Really, I never ceased to amaze myself with my own abilities.

The blast grabbed the bluesteel plate and flung us as if Lord Snappikins had just launched us with his giant claw.

Eva screamed and held tightly to me, even as the plate broke our legs with a sudden exertion of force, smashing us down into it and sending us sailing through the sky. 

My name was being screamed against my ear as Eva's shrill voice pierced everything else before a stream of expletives followed the wail. "Ard! Fuck! Ard!" she screamed.

I held on to her and pushed life magic into both of us. A sudden painful itching rippled down my spine, my hips, and my legs. I didn't quite realize how much damage I'd done to the two of us. The adrenaline of the situation hid so much of the impact. Or at least it did for me. 

By the way Eva was screaming, she was clearly feeling it a bit more. But the life magic I was pushing into her kept her from passing out. And thankfully, the force of it all was keeping the bluesteel plate pressed against us, so we wouldn't lose it. There was some silver lining.

I could feel us reach the zenith of our flight before gravity started reasserting its ever-present dominance. 

"Ard," Eva said, more controlled, as she too likely felt this shift in momentum. There was this feeling like our guts were about to drop out of our bottoms. She grabbed my face and turned it back towards her. "Grab the bluesteel plate before we start falling." 

I was already exerting my magic but was slightly distracted. Emlyn's soul had snapped back to Soulgard, and I could feel Aurelia's was wavering on the border of life and death. 

"Whoops," I said, slowing down the bluesteel plate before we picked up too much speed. 

"Whoops," Eva sighed and shook her head as straps of dark magic secured her to the plate. It was like she didn’t trust me to fly this thing or something. "Ard, I don't know if you'll ever make a fantastic spy, but I assure you, you always have a job in demolition." 

She held her chest, and I swore I could hear it thumping right along with mine. Our two hearts together nearly made a hum with how fast they were beating. 

"Well, that's nice of you to say. I still think being a spy would be more fun, but you do have a point. I might be too high profile. The whole four sphere thing. And I have a pretty memorable face." I sighed, letting go of my spy dreams. "I might just stick to blowing things up. Maybe healing people? And building things. Yeah, yeah. We're gonna scratch the whole blowing things up, and we're just gonna build things and heal people. It's really a lot more fun. Then when we’re done I’ll go be a spy." I rambled, as I felt a trickle of life magic in my skull.

Eva’s tone was soft. "I'm glad you think so. The entire world will take a sigh of relief if you give up blowing things up. And so far, Ard, while your soul fire might be capable of solving some situations, it does seem to come with its own set of complications every time you use it."

I shrugged. “I know the phrase ‘violence isn’t the answer’, but so far blowing things up has worked pretty well for me.” I let us gently sail back down to the fort. We had nearly touched the clouds, and the fort was just a dot below. But the closer we got, the more I realized the scale of the damage that I had done. 

Thankfully, I hadn't detonated the soul fire apple completely against the ground, and it seemed the giant stone golem had taken the brunt of the blow. Still, I had managed to smash it through a second one of the fort's walls, and the blowback took out most of the keep. A lone wall in one of the corners stood two stories tall. Beyond that, the rest of the place was leveled.

Thankfully, the Northmen hadn’t entered the keep yet, their forces gathering outside were very quiet in the afterman.

"Think we can still pin this on the Northmen?" I asked, continuing to drop us lower. I felt Aurelia recover enough that she began moving around once more.

Zuri had been flung off the keep, but somehow she'd managed to minimize the damage she had taken. Meanwhile, Maribelle was currently digging herself out of the rubble.

All of the forces from enemy mages to soldiers were fairly non-existent. The few I could sense scurrying about were hiding, keeping their heads low, and probably hoping whatever just created that explosion didn't set its eyes on them. 

As I floated us down on the bluesteel plate, I sensed Zuri rushing back, light on her feet, before jumping high and creating some sort of horizontal sail of light that she grabbed on to with a bar and flew towards me.

I was fairly sure she was not actually flying. It was more like she was riding the wind's current with a touch of magic control to keep the sail from pitching sideways in the storm. Once she got close enough, I grabbed that construct of light with my own magic, reeling it over to the bluesteel plate that I thinned and expanded slightly to accommodate what I assumed was about to be a larger party.

Zuri landed and looked out over the fort. "Subtlety is not your strength, is it, Ard?" 

"Nope," I answered proudly. "Can't say it ever was or ever will be." I mimed tossing my hair like I'd seen Emlyn do too many times. "It's pretty hard not to notice me when I walk in a room or, in this case, a fort." 

"Noted," Zuri chuckled. "I think this puts a few wrenches in our plan, though." The Trevis anchor continued to look over everything her eyes never stopped moving.

"Yeah, I was just telling Eva. No one’s gonna believe that barbarians did this." I scratched the back of my head.

"You don't say," Zuri drawled. "Either way, I think it's time for us to get out of here. Are the others okay?" 

I pointed down at the keep. "Maribelle could use a hand getting dug out. And I think Aurelia," I squinted down into the keep. “I think she's picking up Emlyn's body or what's left of it.”

“Emlyn really doesn't want you to use someone else's body to bring her back." Zuri reported.

"What, does she think I'm gonna put her in? A horse?" I asked, fighting a smile that threatened to jump upon my lips. 

"Yes, Ard, that's exactly what she's afraid of," Zuri rolled her eyes. 

"Well, she shouldn't be. Because I know if I did that I would be getting my ass kicked for the next, oh, I don't know, thousand years or so. That's assuming I can keep you all alive that long. I mean, with as much magic flowing through all of you, you're essentially mages. And sticking with me and Missy means your souls are going to grow stronger than any average mage. So, honestly, you should all live at least a couple hundred years. I'm sure I'll live far beyond that. And I have no intention of trading any of you out. Well, I shouldn't say that too loud, otherwise I can't use it to tease Emlyn in a hundred years when she starts getting wrinkles." 

Both of the other women gave me very unamused expressions, and I held my hands up in surrender.

"I joke," I said, "She's bonded to my very soul. I'm not getting out of this, even if I wanted to at this point. Which I certainly don't." I emphasized before they could glare at me. 

Feeling Maribelle struggling, I pushed magic into the rubble around her, lifting it enough that she could use her anchor's strength to push right on through.

She broke ground a moment later, completely ignoring any cuts or scrapes she was getting in the process as she rushed to get closer to me.

I let my life magic flow through her freely, to heal any damage done. 

At this point, my bluesteel plate was floating a dozen feet off the ground in the center of the fortress.

Aurelia came over with Emlyn's body. Despite all the jokes I had just made about her, part of my heart ripped apart seeing the current state of her body. Perhaps that’s why I felt the need to crack the jokes. I knew I could put her back and I could feel her soul in Soulgard. But regardless, I felt a physical pain, with no small amount of remorse for my actions.

"Alright. We're not done yet. Grab any mage and anchor bodies you can," I instructed.

I looked at Zuri and Maribelle, "You are going to stay here with me while I patch Emlyn up. Same goes for you, Eva. Only while we're waiting, do me a favor and use your magic to drag any of the ones directly around us into a pile. Now get to it," I said, suddenly finding myself in a hurry. 

As I bent down over Emlyn, I tried not to watch as I put her back together. She'd been in a bad state.

So I kept my head up, looking around to see if there were any other threats coming our way. I justified that keeping alert was more important than watching what I was doing with my life magic. 

Truth be told, Emlyn's sense of self was quite strong. Pushing the life magic into her and connecting her soul to the body did most of the work.

Emlyn groaned beneath me and I let myself look down to see her form coming back together nicely. Her face was already hale and whole, though the rest of her body needed work. And then, of course, her kingdom blues would absorb more life magic to finish clothing her.

Did I mention that I loved healable clothing?

She groaned again, "What hit me?" 

"Oh, that big stone giant really, really got you good. Big wallop," I said, only for Eva to look our way and raise an eyebrow. What? At least I didn’t call her Cyam when she came to.

"Yeah, well, truth be told," I corrected my story, "The giant was only part of it. I may have given my fire soul magic a good test of how far I could condense it. Apparently soaking up all of that soul juice and even a bit of Freya was effective. It packed a little bit more of a wallop than I expected." I flashed Emlyn a smile, only for her to scowl back. 

"Wait, did you kill me?" She started to push herself up, and I shushed her, pushing her back down.

"What? Me? Kill you? No, no," I chuckled and shook my head, "You were... debatably collateral damage." 

"Debatable, my ass. Me waking up extra crispy in your arms doesn't seem very debatable, Ard." Emlyn challenged. 

"Completely debatable. You say I might have blown you up. I say it was an accident," I shrugged before grumbling under my breath. “At least I put you back in your body.”

Emlyn narrowed her eyes before giving up the argument and flopping back down on the bluesteel plate. "I'm going to take a nap, Ard. Wake me up before you do your next stupid thing." 

"Aye-aye," I snapped a salute and reached under my tunic to free the necklace with three pendants. It included my father's restored medallion, my own mage's medallion, and Missy’s pendant.

The ladies were already gathering a number of bodies and pieces of bodies. I swooped down to the ground level and began going from one to the other, dipping the pendant. Some gave me a small sprinkle of mint, others more of a decent snort. And some gave nothing at all.

But suddenly when I touched a lone finger, I got a giant hit.

"I think we found the Chancellor," I shook my head and smiled at the knowledge that Missy would get another swing at Freya.

I was reluctant to admit it, but the truth was that I had benefited greatly from Missy's battle with Freya. I could feel the change in my magic at a fundamental level. Not only that, but being able to manage three different magics at once was new for me. I was using the soul magic variant of each, which was even more difficult than the base elements that every Avente mage learned.

That is to say, between the three chancellors and the bits of Freya, I felt that my magic had roughly doubled, as had my control via my soul. 

I was shaken from my thoughts as Maribelle cried out, "Ard! Down!" I didn't think, trusting Maribelle implicitly. I dropped like a rock, splaying all my limbs out on the frosty fortress ground as a beam of light whizzed over my head. It would have severed my head from my shoulders if I hadn't reacted instantly to Maribelle. 

And my maid was pissed. Maribelle drew on my stores of magic as she shot across the ground.

A figure blurred, coming straight for me, but they were readily stopped as Maribelle slammed into them at full speed.

She must have grabbed the other figure, because the two of them went flying off in a different direction. Grappling and rolling in the snow, Emlyn's eyes had snapped open and she jumped to her feet, grabbing for her sword at her waist, only to realize the blade wasn't there. 

She didn't need to ask. I broke off a piece of the bluesteel plate and flung it into her hands, even as it molded into a brilliant bluesteel sword. The design was simple, and it was all one piece, but it would do the job.

She swung it back and forth.

"The balance sucks. You owe me a new sword," she said before shifting herself next to me and standing on guard. 

“We’ll find your old one. It’s around here somewhere.” I said. The next thing I knew, Aurelia came flying through the air, her body alight with fire before she landed and skidded atop the snow-covered stone. 

"There's two of them," She reported, checking her axe and then glancing back in the direction of her arrival.

I looked out to where Maribelle and her sparring partner emerged from wrestling in the snow.

The other figure had a fistful of Maribelle's curls and tried to control her using that pain. But the enemy had underestimated the pain my maid could tolerate.

Maribelle let her hair be ripped from her as she buried a bluesteel dagger in the other figure's gut and tried to carve him up like a turkey.

She drew my death magic but the magic didn't have any effect. The woman, or perhaps more accurately the vampyr, was repelling the effects of the death magic with ease. She grabbed Maribelle by the wrist and threw her weight backwards before spinning with Maribelle and slamming the maid against the ground. 

At the same moment, another figure jumped up high in the air from where Aurelia had come and then strangely, his body lurched mid-air like he'd been thrown a second time and hurtled straight for me.

Emlyn jumped up to meet the man, but his body shifted mid-air once again. Her blade missed before he landed neatly on his feet and dove for me. 

But while watching, I had also been preparing. I dissolved the entire bluesteel plate we had been floating on into a dozen daggers that punched into the male vampire's chest and threw him backwards.

"Well, isn't this fun?" I said, smiling at Emlyn. "It seems that King Martin is shifting around some fun new toys."

Both of the vampires recovered, coming together to face me and my anchors. 

"They couldn't have traveled all the way from the capital," Emlyn said. "Even if they're crazy fast, they're not that fast." 

I shrugged. "Doesn't matter.”

“Understanding your opponent's communication logistics is one of the easiest ways to win a war." Zuri admonished me. "But I think it's safe to assume they were at least nearby or they wouldn't have gotten here before we left. Which also means that King Martin has some way to communicate with them very rapidly. Otherwise, even if he knew instantaneously that the chancellor was being attacked and killed, he couldn't have sent them here so quickly."