When a spell hits a barrier, part of its power is spent first on breaking through it. Then whatever energy remains keeps flying and actually strikes the victim. He managed to block most of my explosion, but a large bloody mark still remained on his chest. His skin, muscles, even his ribs were laid open. But… though he screamed from the terrible pain, he began healing and restoring all the damaged tissues and bones right before my eyes.
Not bad — his healing is excellent too. But he was drained; you could see it.
"Wait, wait!" he said as I flew in to finish him. "I recognized you. You're Ivan Orlyk, right? The guy who killed that count's daughter?" he asked in a sycophantic tone, trying to stall me.
I descended slowly, drifting toward him. The skeletons around us stepped aside to make room for a conversation and didn't dare attack until I gave the order again.
"Oh! And judging by your accent, you're a countryman. Hold on… I know you. Are you Nestor?" I said, walking forward while he pathetically backed away, breathing hard—as if a few meters of distance could save him.
Killing a prince hadn't been on my agenda, but so be it.
"Yes, the second prince of Rus' at your service. I didn't think you had such abilities. What's your secret? Warm climate? Or did Darya's father train you this well?"
"Exile hardens the spirit, and then the body. I simply became better — than you and everyone else. Surrender, or I'll kill you on the spot."
"Yes, yes, only first…"
He didn't finish. He straightened his arm at me, having just cast an explosion in it. He hadn't been casting while we talked—otherwise I would have noticed. But he managed to recover enough strength to fire off a spell at insane speed. I, in turn, extended my hand, made a palm gesture as if taking remote control of his arm, and jerked it upward. As though invisible strings stretched between my hand and his, I yanked his arm up. The explosion discharged above us, and he stared at me in shock.
"He knows Aira!" he thought.
Aira—the final spell of the higher style. The ability to control another person's body. An extraordinarily mana-hungry spell. The duration of control over the victim—and the commands a mage can issue—depend on the mage's mana reserves and mastery, as well as the victim's resistance. The victim can resist only if they're a mage too. But even without resistance, taking control of someone else for a few seconds demands colossal mana.
That's precisely why I didn't seize his body and order him, say, to fire an explosion into his own head. Judging by his level, I think I could have done it. But even I didn't want to risk my enormous reserves. Ordering the opponent to raise his arm— even that was just peacocking on my part. It would have been more efficient to simply blink aside or shield with a barrier. But I was itching to see how he'd react to my level.
And I wasn't wrong. I saw the shock in his eyes and gave a sly smile.
"Haha! He thinks he can scare me," he was telling himself, mustering courage. "I can do this. I can!"
With those thoughts, his face grew calmer and at the same time hostile. He blinked behind me to strike. I scanned the mana around us, caught the trace of his blink, turned, and hit him with lightning, throwing him back.
The lightning partially pierced his barrier, burned him, and hurled him away. But he twisted in the air, landed on his feet, and healed almost instantly. He was covered in blood now, his sleeveless shirt shredded to rags, so he tore it off and flung it aside. Then, wasting no time, he started casting fire in his hands. I didn't attack; I only evaluated his movements.
I ordered the skeletons to swarm him. He had been casting fire to hit me, but seeing the skeletons, he released flames in all directions around himself. The fire burst forth so fast it looked like lances. It wasn't mere flame, but a rapid, bright red, searing stream like molten metal.
Wonderful flame. Interesting.
The skeletons scattered, clearing about ten meters around him. The ground was littered with bones. Seizing the moment before the next wave of skeletons attacked, Nestor cast the flames again.
"Here, I'll make it easier for you. Shoot me with the strongest spell you've got," I said, landing in front of him and ordering the skeletons to halt.
Seeing that I truly wasn't going to attack, Nestor grinned—cheerfully and mercilessly.
"With pleasure!"
"But we may need a bit more room first," I said, snapped my fingers, and the skeletons began to withdraw. Not toward the ravine, but rather toward the army's center.
I looked and saw them piling atop one another, growing. The heap of skeletons became a mass out of which two, then four limbs sprouted. Very quickly it formed into a colossal bone giant, roughly a hundred meters tall.
"Anna, Capellia, how are you there?" Nestor said.
"Holding on. And you—what… Oh, God!" Anna answered, seeing that mountain of bone.
"Capellia, take the giant—distract it. I need a few more minutes," he ordered.
"Okay!"
"Go on," I told Nestor in the tone of a displeased customer waiting for his dish.
When I turned back, he had already gathered a huge clump of bright red mass in his palms. A hundred-meter wave of flame slammed into me at insane speed. Its streams flew so fast they looked like white-hot charges, ricocheting and flinging fire hundreds of meters around. As if someone had taken an erupting volcano and forced all its power through a small nozzle that Nestor now controlled—and he drove it all straight into me.
Not bad. But I can see from the mana waves he's close to his limit. The flow has grown unstable and gusty.
From the side, you could see deadly torrents that ate through and scorched the earth slamming into me as if against something immovable and unbreakable.
When it all died down and Nestor was gasping for breath, trying to recover, I revealed myself. I slowly spread my arms wide and looked at him proudly, as if to say: "Here I am. Looking at pitiful you."
"Not bad. So, what do you say—want to surrender?" he asked.
I smiled and began casting a slash, but he did the same and for some reason released his faster. I blinked once to the side—and sent a slash at Nestor, which he barely blocked.
Then his counter—lightning.
I answered by creating several clones around him. Nestor tried to fly off, but one clone blinked to him and detonated midair, hurling him away.
The other clones swooped in, but he destroyed them, loosing lightning in all directions. Looking up, he saw me and the streams of fire I sent from above.
What followed was a brief melee. I blinked to him and cast an explosion in my right hand. But he activated Ta and knocked my arm aside. All the mana I'd poured into the blast vanished with one light parry. Damn—looks like it's time to focus.
I bared my teeth and, after a few exchanges of spells, caught the moment and slashed across his legs, cutting them off. He immediately cast lightning around himself, but I simply blinked away. Breathing hard, I watched him scream again in pain.
"A-a-a!" he cried, healing his legs and throwing a powerful barrier around himself.
Wait—am I already winded? Yes, my mana reserves are low, but I'm still full of strength, while he's almost dead.
But when I looked at him, I saw him regenerating his limbs in real time. He can even do that? Even I can't restore limbs that quickly.
"I am Nestor! I grew up in the slums, raised by nothing but my rotten fate and myself. The whole world turned its back on me—so I'll destroy anyone who stands in my way. You! You're much, much stronger than me. And I like it! I'm going to kill you right now! — he declared, looking at me with a gaze so merciless and bloodthirsty it was as if my death had already been decreed by all the powers of the world. — I'll rip you to pieces, limb by limb, and dance on your corpse… Yes! Interest. Interest. I'm dying to know how much pain your body can take before your tongue cries for help, — he smiled with a madman's stare, like a psychopath who genuinely revels in watching a human body destroyed."
He can keep operating even on reserves this low. I don't know exactly how much strength he has left, but it isn't much. And still, by sheer will, he keeps gathering every scrap of strength and mana he has. Now that is true fighting spirit.
I smirked, readying for his strike. If he's charging in this state, all I need to do is hold the line.
When he got to his feet, he took a deep breath and rushed me, pelting me with explosions, lightning, and flame. Every spell he could muster. He now seemed twice as strong and precise. One explosion, then a blink to the side and a lightning bolt, then again and again.
He hit me with fire and managed to partially pierce my barrier, forcing me to blink aside. Wait—he pierced me? Damn, I've already bled off a sizable chunk of mana. I expected him to die once I cut off his legs, and then, instead of finishing him, I let him live to gauge his healing capacity. I need to focus—I'm not losing this fight.
I called my skeletal giant back to me—he'd likely already finished off the others, and I needed help. In the dust of battle I couldn't see where it was now, but it should be showing up any moment.
I struck him and knocked out his lower jaw entirely, tongue and all. He healed it the next instant, but not fully… He only stopped the bleeding; he didn't regrow it. He's conserving mana even on that.
And again—constant blows of fire, lightning, and slashes at me. With his jaw gone, he looked like a real blood-soaked lich with nothing inside but the desire to kill me.
When he struck me again with an explosion from his right hand, I raised my barrier, but I felt I might not have enough mana to block it. No—calm down.
It's very hard to determine a mage's true mana limit. A mage—or any living being—dies instantly with no mana. But in a fight, how do you gauge your limits? It comes down to feel. When a mage's reserves drop, he instinctively gives up and stops casting so he doesn't accidentally spend the critical remainder. But in most cases that behavior is just plain cowardice and weakness. Just as athletes learn to break their mental blocks and keep pushing, a mage must calm himself in battle and say, "Go!" Nestor is doing exactly that. I've never seen such willpower. He's covered in blood, exhausted, and still keeps fighting.
I scraped together the mana I had, with special effort, and blocked his explosion, but… right then something hit me with lightning from behind, and immediately after, Nestor blasted me point-blank in the gut. I barely had time to bring up a barrier, so he broke through it and almost shredded my internal organs. I flew back dozens of meters and started healing at once.
What hit me from behind? I turned and saw his clone, which promptly dispersed into a bluish haze in the air. He can summon clones too?
I hadn't finished healing before he attacked again. In his eyes I saw genuine delight, as if he were playing with a new toy.
---
"I wonder if I can hit him with flame," I told myself before striking again. I absolutely had to sustain my manic mindset. I imagined it and, right in the fight, coded myself to be insanely curious about how to defeat him.
And I hit him.
"I wonder if I can now create a clone to the side and strike him with lightning through the clone while slashing myself?" I issued myself that command purely to muffle the unbridled feeling of muscle pain, nausea, and the urge to give up. The more I spoke these code phrases, the more I could do.
And I managed to hit him with lightning. It stunned him, and after that I slashed him. He put up a barrier, but this time the slash cut off his arm.
"I wonder if I can finish him now? God, I want to know!" I said while my whole body begged me to collapse.
But I moved in on him and blasted him with lightning point-blank, after which he didn't put up a barrier or blink away. The tremendous current tore through his body, turning him into a charred half-corpse.
Ivan crashed to the ground, powerless, trying to heal himself—but he had no mana left.
Vitory.
"Hah—hah—hah…" I was gulping air like a madman, standing right over him, covered in blood, wounds, and sweat. "Hah—hah—hah! Hah—hah—hah!"
Ivan still writhed on the ground, agonizing in pain. His crown had fallen beside him, since he could no longer maintain the barrier to keep it on his head. Perhaps the mana he spent on that was exactly what separated him from victory. I sent a small explosion into his head, and his skull burst to pieces.
Only then did I remember I had neither a jaw nor even a tongue. By the way, it's actually easier to breathe like this. I should remember that. I couldn't heal it; I had the bare minimum of mana left. And even if I had more, I was too exhausted to channel it into spells. You can heal an arm, a leg—but healing can't wash away mental stress and fatigue. Even I can't do that, and apparently neither could this Ivan. Seeing the crown on the ground, aching and whining all over, I walked over and crushed it.
"That crown is mine," I thought to myself and smiled at my own private joke. At least as much as I could smile, given I had no lower jaw. Now, covered in grime and my own blood, I looked even more terrifying than those skeletons. I had stopped the bleeding and critical wounds across my body, but healing couldn't wash off the "old" blood that now covered me.
"But that's nothing—where are the others?"
---
While I fought Ivan, Capellia, at my command, ran off to deal with the giant, and Anna was still defending the ravine from the other part of the skeleton army.
Using blinks, Capellia gradually climbed onto the giant and started sprinting over him, cheerily spreading her arms and tossing explosions and slashes all over his body as if scattering candy. When some skeletons detached from the giant to fight her, they simply fell from great height to the ground—they knew neither blink nor levitation.
When Anna was free from defending the ravine, she immediately rushed to help Capellia, drew her spear, wound up, and delivered a massive slash across the giant's legs, sending him toppling.
"Yippee!" Capellia shouted, falling with the giant, arms and legs spread like a star. When she neared the ground, she activated Ta and hit like a meteor.
Anna ran to her, but of course she was fine. She was even giggling at full volume from her own epic drop.
"Up, up! They're splitting back into separate skeletons!"
With that, they spent a few more minutes finishing off the skeleton army. Some, under Ivan's old commands, slipped into the ravine—but what can you do. One way or another, they handled them.