Tristan Flamesworth
Ten years. A decade spent bleeding on Sapin's ragged edge, commanding men against elven rebels who spat on their own King's treaties—even though I always suspected the Eraliths were behind this.
Ten years of loyalty etched in scars and the hollow eyes of dead soldiers. And what was my reward? To still be nothing more than Tristan Flamesworth. Son of Trodius. A walking emblem of a House whose very name curdled something bitter and cold in my gut. It was the cage I had been born into, the brand I couldn't scorch off, no matter how much rebel blood I spilled for the Crown.
The hatred for that name was a physical thing, a lodestone of resentment heavy in my chest, heavier than any armor and hotter than any flame I have ever wielded.
This… this was my key. Prince Corvis Eralith, the fugitive ghost haunting the borderlands as 'Outis'.
King Glayder's promise echoed like salvation: capture the Prince, and I will be granted to found my own House. House Peacemaker. The word tasted clean, sharp, like mountain air after the stifling rot of Flamesworth Manor.
Tristan Peacemaker. A name I chose. A legacy I forged, untainted. My first gambit years ago—shaming Trodius by exposing Jasmine's lack of fire magic, proving his prized bloodline flawed—had crumbled to dust when he simply cast her out.
Cold, efficient, utterly that infamous Trodius. But this… capturing the crown prince of Elenoir… this was a blow that would reverberate. Once I wore the mantle of Lord Peacemaker, my real war would begin.
A relentless, political siege against House Flamesworth. I would dismantle it brick by gilded brick, smear its honor in the mud, reduce it to a cautionary footnote in history books.
Aunt Hester, with her weary eyes and misplaced loyalty, had pleaded. She saw the injustice, the obvious political trap sprung on the Eraliths. I knew it too, a cold knot of understanding beneath the ambition. But my dream—the sheer, blinding need to be free of that name—burned brighter than any inconvenient morality.
If Aunt Hester stood in the way of the Peacemaker's justice… so be it.
So why did this feel like ash in my mouth? The Prince hadn't surrendered. Of course he hadn't. He stood below me in the ravaged bandit camp, radiating defiance like heat from a forge. Reports lied.
Coreless, this kid? Absurd. The speed, the precision with which this camp was cleared… it screamed mana, honed and lethal. And the bear… that monstrous shadow guarding him, effortlessly holding off ten of my orange-core veterans. An AA-Class beast, at the very least.
Proof enough the Prince wasn't playing with toys. This was Outis. The scourge of slavers, the bane of poachers, the shadow dispensing brutal justice across the Grand Mountains. He embodied the peace I craved to enforce a peace who wasn't afraid of using force to maintain itself, yet he stood squarely in the path of the name I needed to claim.
"Prince Eralith," My voice cut through the tense air, aiming for authority, hoping to mask the sour twist of distaste. "This is your last chance. I am sure both of us want justice served. You, as Outis, ensure peace is kept. Follow me. I promise justice will be served."
Empty words, perhaps, but I meant the respect part. Dragging a prince through the mud served no one, least of me. He deserved a cage, yes, but one befitting the leverage he represented.
His retort was ice wrapped in steel. "I can say the same. Retreat and no one gets hurt. Continue to threaten my freedom…" His gaze, unsettlingly sharp for one so young, locked onto mine. "...and you won't return home in one piece."
Arrogance? Or cold certainty? The challenge hung there, a gauntlet thrown onto the blood-soaked earth.
Fine. If he craved the hard way, he'd drown in it. The order tasted foul. "Conjurers! Target Prince Corvis! Avoid hitting him directly! Force him towards the augmenters!" My voice was a whip-crack, the familiar cadence of command settling over the nausea.
Twenty soldiers against one kid. This wasn't war; it was butchery. I loved war—the vast, chaotic symphony of clashing armies, the thunderous roar of thousands, the intricate dance of strategy and raw power. Against Elven rebels, especially, the fire in my blood sang.
But this? A battalion descending on a lone figure? It felt grotesque, beneath contempt. It made my skin crawl, a sensation utterly divorced from the grim satisfaction of duty. It just felt… wrong. Sickening, even facing an Elf. The thrill was absent, replaced by a leaden weight of obligation.
The shock was visceral. A collective gasp ripped from my throat as much as my men. Their spells—bolts of fire, lances of ice, shards of earth—didn't impact. They stopped mid air.
Dead in the air mere feet from the Prince, hanging suspended like grotesque, vibrating insects caught in an invisible, sticky web. My mind raced, tactical assessments colliding with disbelief. They pulsed, straining, held captive by… what? Then, the horrifying clarity detonated.
"He's throwing them back! Be ready!" The warning tore from me, raw and urgent, a fraction of a second too late.
Chaos. The stolen spells reversed course with terrifying speed. Fire roared back, ice shrieked, earth shattered against hastily raised barriers. Men cried out, staggered, the air filling with the acrid stink of scorched leather and ozone, the sharp tang of blood joining the mud's metallic reek.
Clever. Brutally clever. Magic manifesting not in raw power, but in deflection, redirection. Using the enemy's strength as his weapon. A tactic born of necessity, of weakness turned cunning. Admiration warred with cold assessment.
Impressive, Prince. But you haven't faced me yet.
While my conjurers reeled, the bear—Berna, I recalled distantly from reports—was a whirlwind of fur and fury. Ten augmenters, seasoned veterans radiating orange aura, pressed her. She moved with impossible speed and power for her bulk, claws like scythes, jaws snapping bone. She wasn't just holding; she was winning. Each roar vibrated in my chest.
S-Class? Possibly higher. A formidable guardian.
Corvis moved. Not away, but through the chaos. Lightning crackled from his hand—pure, savage energy that lanced towards a conjurer. Then wind, sharp as a blade. Earth, a spear of rock erupting from the mud. Fire. My mind stuttered. A hot, orange sphere blazing from his palm. Followed by… ice? A chilling bubble.
Was he a quadra-elemental? And two deviants? Impossible. Elves couldn't wield fire, lightning or ice. It defied everything, shattered foundational knowledge. What unholy trick was this? What hidden power did this 'coreless' prince possess? The reports weren't exaggerated; they were catastrophically, dangerously wrong.
One soldier, Galen—steady, reliable, orange-core augmentation flaring a veteran of the Second War against Elenoir—broke through the defensive storm. He lunged, sword a silver blur aimed at Corvis's flank.
The Prince didn't flinch. His left hand snapped out, not to block, but to strike. It moved strangely, vibrating, a blur of flesh. It connected with Garen's neck, just below the jaw. Not a crushing blow, but precise, almost surgical.
Galen's eyes rolled white. His augmented strength meant nothing. He crumpled like a sack of grain, unconscious before he hit the mud. What was that? No mana flare I recognized, just… vibration. A technique speaking of terrifying control, honed in shadows I hadn't imagined.
The leaden feeling solidified into cold dread. Twenty soldiers. Orange cores. Against a kid who wasn't supposed to have one. The Outis stories… I had dismissed them as the usual tavern exaggerations. Bandits were fodder.
This was different. This was precision, power, and a chilling disregard for the impossible. What stood before me wasn't a cornered princeling; it was a seasoned, dangerously innovative battle-mage. My calculations laid in ruins. The cost of this capture was spiraling.
Enough. The spectator role was over. The nausea, the distaste, were buried under the imperative of the mission, the crushing weight of the prize—my new name, my freedom. The fire within me, the legacy I despised yet wielded with lethal efficiency, surged.
Heat flooded my limbs, familiar and fierce. Mana ignited at my feet with a whoomph of displaced air, scorching the earth. I launched myself from the outcrop, a comet trailing flames, the heat singing my eyebrows.
I landed with a ground-shaking thud, boots sinking into the churned mud, a deliberate five meters separating me from the Elven Prince. Flames wreathed my fists, casting flickering, monstrous shadows.
The world narrowed. The cries of my men, the bear's roars, the crackle of residual magic—all faded to a dull roar. There was only him. Prince Corvis Eralith.
Outis.
The boy who defied categorization. His grey uniform was spattered with mud and worse, his hood shadowing his eyes and his high collar covering his vulnerable parts, but his posture was unyielding. My gaze snagged on his left hand, now hanging loosely at his side. Strange, intricate markings coiled up his forearm from the wrist, disappearing under his sleeve.
They seemed to pulse faintly with an inner sick light, a language of power I couldn't decipher, whispering of secrets and threats utterly alien. What magic had he made? What wellspring did he tap?
We stared at each other across the gulf of mud and ambition. A second stretched into an eternity, heavy with the stench of blood, ozone, and the raw, metallic tang of spent potential. In his eyes, I saw not fear, but a chilling, focused resolve mirroring my own. He was the obstacle to my future; I was the chain to his.
"It seems you are not retreating," he stated, his voice calm, cutting through the lingering echoes of battle. A simple observation, devoid of inflection, yet it resonated like a challenge in the sudden stillness.
The flames around my fists flared higher, casting dancing light on his impassive face. The name Peacemaker burned in my mind, a beacon against the suffocating darkness of Flamesworth.
"I am not," I replied, my voice low, gravelly with the strain of contained power and the weight of the inevitable. The heat radiating from me pushed against the damp mountain air. "You will come with me, Prince Corvis." I let the flames speak the unspoken threat, the promise of violence held barely in check. "Either you want it... or not."
Corvis Eralith
The air still tasted of ozone and blood, but now it crackled with a different tension—the focused, lethal intent of a Yellow Core mage.
Tristan Flamesworth landed with a crackling thud on the churned earth, dust swirling around his polished boots. His grey eyes, sharp and analytical, held none of the bandits' malice, only a cold, professional determination that was somehow more unnerving.
"I don't know why, but this Tristan Flamesworth seems genuinely committed to bagging you," Romulos observed, a spectral spectator leaning against a scorched tree stump. "Not just duty. Conviction."
I barely know him, I shot back, my mental voice tight. Fragments from a spin-off. Strong. Hated his parents. That's it. The uncertainty was a weight.
Against beasts or bandits, I knew the rules. Against a disciplined, high-core mage with unknown capabilities and Jasmine's blood in his veins? The rules blurred dangerously.
He didn't wait for formalities. One moment he was assessing, the next he was a blur of motion. He was fighting barehanded. A calculated risk, perhaps underestimating the coreless prince, or maybe a test in itself.
Fire wreathed his right fist, not a roaring inferno, but a tightly controlled, white-hot corona aimed like a piston at my ribs. Melee range? That was Accaron's domain. Relief warred with apprehension.
I reacted, Beyond the Meta snapping the world into greyscale mana-flows. My right hand whipped up, aiming to intercept his wrist, vibrations primed to shear away the flames and disrupt his balance. But Tristan was fast. Alarm bells screamed in my mind as his fist blurred past my guard, the searing heat washing over my side even before impact. Too slow!
Instinct took over. Mana surged from Against the Tragedy, flooding the reinforced weave of my uniform. It hardened instantaneously beneath the point of impact. The punch landed with a muffled thump that drove the breath from my lungs, staggering me back.
The heat was intense, a furnace pressed against my side, but the uniform held—no burn, just the bruising force transmitted through the barrier. My meta-vision scanned him frantically.
His mana defense wasn't layered; it was uniform, a seamless, shimmering shell of yellow energy encasing his entire body, impenetrable to my quick scans. No obvious weak points. Just solid, unyielding power.
He didn't let me recover. Using the planted heel of his striking leg as a fulcrum, he pivoted with lethal grace, his right leg snapping up in a vicious roundhouse kick aimed at my head. I barely got my right forearm up in time, channeling another burst from Against the Tragedy into a localized shield.
The impact jarred my arm to the shoulder, the bone-deep crack echoing in the sudden silence after the camp's chaos. My boots skidded in the mud.
"He's testing your reserves, Corvis," Romulos murmured, his tone clinical. "Methodical. Using just enough firepower to pressure a red core, gauging your stamina. I like this efficiency at its most tedious."
He was right. Tristan wasn't unleashing torrents of flame; he was precise, economical, each attack carrying just enough weight to threaten, to force a response, to drain. A mage-hunter's tactic. Wear down the prey.
"The joke's on him," Romulos added, a hint of dark amusement returning. "You siphon ambient and enemy's mana like a desert drinks rain. And worst comes to worst..."
He left the immense, terrifying reservoir of Sylvia's core unspoken, a silent threat hanging between us.
Tristan seemed to sense the stalemate. A sharp tch of frustration escaped him. He disengaged, leaping back not with muscle alone, but propelled by twin jets of flame erupting from his palms. He hung suspended for a heartbeat, a dark silhouette against the sky, then shot forward.
This wasn't a probing strike. This was commitment. Flames roared to life around him, not just coating his fist, but streaming behind him like the incandescent tail of a comet, painting the air with heat haze and casting long, dancing shadows. The ground beneath him scorched and cracked from the sheer thermal backwash. He aimed straight for my center mass, a living meteor intent on obliteration.
Time compressed. Fear, cold and sharp, pricked at my focus, but Beyond the Meta held, analyzing the trajectory, the mana density, the speed. Blocking this head-on with pure defense was suicide, even reinforced.
Berna, a blur of brown fur and protective fury, was already moving, intercepting the remaining soldiers trying to flank, a thunderous roar shaking the ground as she swatted one aside like a ragdoll.
Romulos's voice cut through the rising panic, cold and decisive: "Decay, Corvis. Meet force with entropy. No Dicathian mage armor is woven to withstand true dissolution. Strike now."
He was right. It was the only counterplay potent enough. Against this raw power, only unraveling could prevail. My left hand snapped up, palm facing the oncoming inferno.
For the Catastrophe ignited, a sickly violet light flaring beneath the swarm-of-flies tattoo. Mana flowed, converted instantly into pure, hungry decay. Accaron's offensive resonance awoke, not as a blade, but as a focused field of entropic vibration concentrated on my palm and fingers.
It wasn't about brute force; it was about inducing catastrophic failure at a molecular level.
I braced, legs sinking slightly into the mud, the heat from Tristan's approach blistering even through the uniform's protection. The roar of the flames filled my ears, the light blinding. Beyond the Meta locked onto the trajectory.
Wait… wait… NOW!
I didn't punch. I didn't block. I slapped. My vibrating left hand whipped forward like a serpent's strike, palm meeting the core of Tristan's comet fist just as it would have impacted my chest.
The collision wasn't metallic or concussive. It was a soundless void. A negation.
Where vibrant, roaring orange and white flames met my decaying palm, they didn't explode. They withered. Like paint dissolving in solvent, the brilliant fire simply… ceased. It vanished in an expanding circle of nullification centered on my hand. The heat vanished, replaced by an unnatural, sucking cold. The roaring silence that followed the flame's abrupt extinction was deafening.
But it wasn't just fire that vanished. Where my vibrating palm made contact with Tristan's magically reinforced fist, the shimmering yellow defense… frayed.
Not shattered, but visibly weakened, flickering erratically like a dying bulb. And spreading rapidly from the point of contact, replacing the extinguished orange, was something new, something terrifying: Soulfire.
It clung to Tristan's knuckles, cold and utterly silent, leeching not heat, but vitality, a visible stain of absolute negation against his yellow aura. His eyes, moments ago filled with focused intensity, widened in shock and dawning horror as he felt the unnatural cold bite through his defenses, saw the hungry darkness spreading—an unknown horror for a mage who never saw what the Basilisks could do.
A savage grin, born of adrenaline, desperation, and the chilling power at my fingertips, split my face. The impossible counter had landed. The tide, for this crucial moment, had turned. The victory, snatched from the comet's heart, was mine.