Book 3, Chapter 74

I stepped off the teleportation platform and unleashed a spell through my staff. The dozen or so Breakers guarding it all crumpled to the floor, their shield wards overwhelmed and their minds battered into submission by pure pain. Their brief screams were a chorus to announce my arrival.

At the far end of the hall, Averin and his co-conspirators jerked upright from their work and stared at me with wide eyes. Between us stood a few dozen Breakers, surprised but already reacting to my unannounced intrusion.

I held up the arm with the glass bracelet hanging from it and unleashed the spell it contained. I’d only been able to fit enough mana in there for a single cast, but that was all I needed. The whole point was to have the magic prepared and ready without having to go through the lengthy cast time of the spell.

Crystalline prisons flashed into existence, trapping all but a handful of the Breaker defenders. Almost immediately, several of the prisons started to crack and splinter, their occupants fighting to escape. I could have stopped that, but it wasn’t necessary. It would still take upwards of half an hour for them to break free at the rate they were going, and those were the best among them.

That left me with Averin, his five companions, and two terrified children and their minder, all of whom—barring the children, of course—were at least stage three. Averin was probably stage four.

“Keiran, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“I could ask you the same question,” I said. “From where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve decided to cut me loose, never mind that you only know about this door’s existence because of my hard work.”

“We don’t even know what’s on the other side!”

I made a show of looking at the three dozen Breakers I’d incapacitated. “Seems like you brought a lot of muscle. Are you expecting a fight behind the door, or was it just to stop me in case I caught onto your scheme?”

I already knew the answer, of course. They’d made extensive plans to handle me if I interfered, but it had mostly boiled down to swamping me with sheer numbers while their heavy hitters spent the mana needed to punch through my defenses. That plan wasn’t going so well for them.

“Just get back to working the door,” Seven snapped. “We’ll handle him.”

With a last, lingering sneer in my direction, Averin turned his back on me. Seven and the other four of their group stepped up, forming a line across the hallway as they revealed various implements, including two wands, an athame, a walking stick, and what I was pretty sure was a human femur.

“Mine’s bigger,” I said with a smirk as I brandished my staff.

They were holding off on attacking me because they’d laid a trap across the hallway, one that would draw the mana out of any spell that crossed it and return it to its owner as a paralyzing burst of lightning. Not coincidentally, that was why my own lockdown spells had ended where they did. What they weren’t aware of was that I’d laid my own traps on this hallway earlier, ones I’d thoroughly shielded to prevent anyone from noticing them.

“Go on, then,” the ugly man said. “Let’s see how you do against my defenses. I know master-tier defensive conjurations, and I’ve got four friends ready and willing to blast you to pieces while I keep you from harming a single hair on their heads.”

“As you wish,” I told him. I lifted my staff and pointed it in his general direction to send a gout of fire at his seemingly-unprotected face.

His eyes lit up in triumph at my apparent mistake, only to turn to confusion and then panic in the span of a quarter-second when the wards they’d laid down failed to activate. I had to give him credit, though; he raised a shield around himself instantly, one strong enough to casually repel my conjuration.

It hadn’t been meant to hurt him, just distract and provide a visual barrier. At the same time their entire group was flinching back from the burst of fire, I sent a second spell rolling across the floor. The barrier in front of me would resist any sort of conjurations, a trait almost all defensive spells shared. Conjurations were the overwhelming majority of all offensive magics, after all.

If this guy was any good, he’d also have a defense that resisted divinations and enchantments. But given the relatively immutable nature of the tower itself, I was betting he didn’t have a lot of practice defending against transmutations. And why would he? They very rarely were useful in combat situations, being among the slowest and most cumbersome spells to use.

True to my expectations, the spell slid across the floor and through the barrier wall without slowing down. It washed over the group’s ankles, unnoticed by anyone but me. As it started to work, they brandished their various implements in my direction and unleashed a salvo of their own attacks. My shield wards flared to life, multi-layered from three different sources, and deflected or dispelled lightning bolts, force missiles, a roiling sphere of darkness, and—from the femur wielder—an ectoplasmic frog that tried to land on me and then explode.

My shield wards shed all of the attacks, and I instantly flushed them with more mana to bring them back up to full. “Points for creativity,” I said, “but your spells lack the power to punch through my defenses. Perhaps you’d like to try again – or is it my turn now?”

I wasn’t taunting them to mock their inferior spellcraft. I was doing it because it would take a few more seconds before they started to notice that they couldn’t feel their legs, and the longer I could keep them distracted, the better. The full transmutation took about thirty seconds, and while it was difficult to counter, it wasn’t impossible. If I could reduce the window they had to act with cheap words, I’d be negligent not to.

I pointed my staff down the hall, causing all of them to flinch back, but no master-tier spell erupted out of it. Instead, it was a simple phantasmal arrow, one that I expected to split the barrier easily. Even if it failed, it would still serve as another distraction.

It didn’t fail, but the mage maintaining their defenses was actually quite good. Even as I cast the spell, he recognized the arrow for what it was, and created a small, circle plane of phantasmal energy to intercept the attack. My arrow bounced off it and unraveled into wisps of mana, then disappeared.

“You’ll have to do better than that!” the ugly mage declared pompously.

I gave him an indulgent smile and threw six more arrows in his direction. Three more phantasmal shields bloomed in front of him, one ingeniously placed to deflect two of my arrows at once. The two he couldn’t catch slammed into him, but were harmlessly disintegrated by a secondary defense. That didn’t overly concern me; duels between master mages often went like this.

We’d probe each other, trying to find weaknesses in our shields or some clever combination of spells that would overload them entirely. Or we’d set traps if we knew the battleground beforehand, or bring a few friends along to overpower our opponents completely.

In short, nothing about this fight had been anything unexpected. Magical warfare hadn’t changed much since I’d been gone, at least not in terms of strategy and doctrine. The overall quality of magic had decreased markedly, and now that I was up to stage five, I was in the proper position to leverage my knowledge.

That was why, when the first of their group cried out in surprise, I merely gave them a grim smile and poured on the pressure. I doubted they’d be able to save themselves from petrification even if I let them try to reverse the spell unhindered, but I wasn’t about to do that. Spells flew from me in a storm, some breaking themselves against the barrier that was even now being maintained, some slipping past and having to be manually dispelled.

At the same time, I started attacking their minds. Normally, it wasn’t worth the effort, but in this case, it served as a feint to keep them from devoting all their efforts toward saving themselves. That didn’t stop them from trying, and I silently applauded their resilience even as I watched the creeping stone spread across exposed skin until all five were nothing but vividly-detailed statues dressed in cloth and leather outfits.

“Now then,” I said as I stepped past them and turned toward the Breaker keeping the two children held captive, “that just leaves you. Would you like to surrender those children to my keeping, or shall I kill you first?”

“Do your worst,” he spat. “You won’t harm them while I’m still alive.”

My eyebrows rose at that. “Harm them? Oh, no, you’ve got entirely the wrong idea. I’m actually quite upset about your little group dragging them into this. Children shouldn’t be made into pawns for their elders. They will be returned to their homes as soon as I’m done here.”

Even this was a stalling tactic. Averin was working on the door, and while I was confident I could take over and open it up, I did not know the mechanics of this ward well enough to state with certainty that the other three locks wouldn’t reset soon. Considering I’d just turned one of the keys to stone moments ago, it would be better for everyone if Averin succeeded.

I considered the man for a moment. He’d drawn both children behind him with shaking hands, obviously aware that he didn’t have a prayer of stopping me but determined to try anyway. I could respect that. In fact, that was a rare form of heroism that deserved a reward.

“Run away,” I offered. “Take those children and return them to their homes. Do that, and you’ll live through the day.”

The Breaker glanced at his leader, but there was no guidance to be had there. Averin was deep into his work now and oblivious to the world around him. It was entirely possible he hadn’t even realized I’d broken through their defensive line.

The Breaker gave me a single, jerky nod, then ushered the children past the stone statues of his leaders and the crystalline prisons of his companions. The handful of Breakers I’d put down with mental attacks were starting to stir, but their groans of pain were muted, and the man led his two charges through their ranks. He made eye contact with me as he stood on the teleportation platform, then vanished in a surge of mana.

I hoped he was as good as his word. I’d hate to have to hunt him down and kill him later, but I would. The tracking divinations I’d attached to both the children and him would make it easy.

With the distractions sorted, I turned to Averin and peered over his shoulder. He was struggling, at the very edge of his skill and still not quite through. I doubted he could hold everything he’d done for a minute more before it all collapsed, so I sent four tendrils of my own mana in to assist him.

The ward twisted hard, threatening to throw us both out and probably reset in the process, but a fifth tendril reinforced the section that was buckling, and a moment later, everything broke. The ward was finally down, leaving nothing but the physical door itself standing between us and the contents of the room.

“Let’s see what’s so important that it demands this level of security,” I said, causing Averin to flinch and scramble to get away from me. His eyes darted down the hallway and took in the scene in an instant.

With a bitter laugh, he said, “I should have known it wouldn’t be enough. Well, come on then. We might as well see together.”