Simon didn’t have a chance to attack. Every second was spent avoiding the scorpion’s pincers, stinger, or attempts to ram him at full force. He would duck behind a boulder, only to have it cut cleanly by the beast’s shears. Its speed was surprising, and it never paused for rest. The metal coat that Breen had given it made it invulnerable to any of Simon’s efforts—so he didn’t waste his time or energy trying. Simply stalling Breen seemed to be all he could do. And it was beginning to anger the pretorian.

  “If I can’t kill you, then I’ll just leave and go after your friends. It makes little difference to me. I know you can’t harm me if you tried. Yes… I’ll go to I and use my powers to collapse its buildings one by one. It will be magnificent. Never before have I been allowed access to such destruction.”

  “Is that all you think about?” Simon shouted back as he barely kept from being cut in half by a pincer. “Kind of simple minded, aren’t you?”

  “Your insults will have no influence on this battle’s outcome.”

  Simon had figured out some time ago that the creature Breen had summoned wasn’t natural at all; not like a rairer. He was maintaining a hold on it somehow—perhaps if its owner could be disoriented or knocked out, the creature would disappear completely. Unfortunately, Breen’s visor was dark enough to block the few light bursts Simon had sent his way.

  His only other option seemed to be getting to Breen himself, but with the scorpion always right in front of its master, doing so looked like a difficult task. And now since the battle was locked in a stalemate, the real worry was Breen simply giving up on it and going after the others. Simon knew he had to do something quickly—and there appeared to be little other option than to simply overload Breen’s defenses.

  He waited for the scorpion to attack again, and using the few seconds the creature needed to stabilize itself, he fired up several techniques at once. The first was a weak elemental travel, essentially giving him small bursts of high speed with a long recovery time. Simon was by no means a strong person, but he figured that if he could land one punch on a frail man, it might be enough to turn the tide of the battle.

  He appeared out of a ray of energy, right at Breen’s side. He shot his fist outward, but Breen had a good reaction time, and a metal wall sprung up seemingly automatically that Simon avoided hitting at the last moment. A blade formed out from the wall and launched outward as a countermeasure, and he had no choice but to turn into light again to avoid it. He tried the same maneuver at a different angle, but to the same effect. Attempts three and four—all done within seconds of each other—also yielded no results. A wall of metal sprung up and retaliated with an iron spike or blade. Simon almost got himself sliced during each try.

  The scorpion was then back on him, and it utilized a new attack: firing the hundreds of small needles lining its back. Breen’s walls protected him from his creature’s attacks, made up of thick and limitless needles. Simon hid behind one of Breen’s barriers, but it only provided a few moments of defense as it quickly produced spikes to attack him, as well.

  Simon fired up his diffusion dome, but it didn’t dissolve the small, sharp missiles; the thin coat of Breen’s metal protected them. A few of the needles from the heavy rain hit Simon’s arms, and he had to work through the ensuing pain to remove them. The scorpion at his back, Breen turned to Simon and watched him as he plucked the spikes out one by one.

  “As a paradigm, I have enough energy even with an elemental out to keep myself protected. So, tell me, child, how do you expect to get past my iron and steel when your light can do little but bounce off of it?”

  Simon was tired of coming up with responses to Breen’s remarks, so he instead got right back into action. With the scorpion on him again, he tried a second time to breach the pretorian’s defenses. This time, however, he put up a small diffusion dome at the last moment before his fist made impact, expecting it to destroy the barrier Breen created.

  And while the diffusion did have an effect, it wasn’t nearly enough. Some of the alchemagi-based iron barrier was destroyed, but it was far too thick to plow through in time for Simon to get to Breen. Not quite expecting the failure, Simon couldn’t stop his arm in time and ended up slamming his fist into the remaining thin layer of hardened steel.

  He cried out in pain and retracted his hand, feeling the damaged wrist to see if it was broken; he figured that it almost had been. As Simon soothed his injury, the scorpion’s stinger came down, and he sidestepped it by mere centimeters. He looked at the tail that had almost impaled him for a moment, and another idea suddenly popped into his head.

  He tried once more to get through Breen’s barrier, but this time, he purposely did it more slowly so that the scorpion could track his movement more easily. When the angle was exactly right, he slowed his swing almost to a halt, and the scorpion instinctively took the opportunity.

  As the stinger came down on him again, Simon fired up a tiny diffusion bubble around Breen’s barrier, burning off its outmost layer of protection. He then moved out of the way of the stinger at the last moment—letting it puncture straight through the weakened metal.

  Simon didn’t see what had happened, but he did hear a small gasp of pain from Breen. He thought for a second that he had finished him, but after feeling the ground rumble below, he quickly leapt backwards like he had before until the sprouting blades ceased their pursuit.

  Breen lowered all of his barriers and stared at Simon angrily. He was hunched over, and his right arm was bleeding where the stinger had gotten him. Realizing that Simon would likely manage to do the same thing again, he released his scorpion, and it faded out of existence.

  “You’re resourceful…” He coughed. “I never expected to have to go this far with someone of your age and level… But very well.”

  The slab of metal on Breen’s back activated, and in seconds, he became surrounded by a thick, reflective metal sphere. To Simon’s surprise, it took to the air and hovered a few feet above the ground. The encasement looked impenetrable, and he wasn’t going to try and prove otherwise.

  A narrow slit opened up at the top half of the sphere and rotated until Breen’s sharp eyes could be seen from inside the dark interior.

  “You’ll never get through this,” Breen said, his voice echoing from inside. “Two inches of metal as tough as titanium.”

  “I believe you, but how are you going to attack me from in there?”

  “Just because I am perfectly safe does not mean I lack offensive ability… Have you forgotten about the other glob of metal I carry about?”

  Simon looked over to where the scorpion had just been. The metal coat it had adorned was spread out over the ground and turning to liquid. It gathered up and reformed into the small orb that it had been before. And then, like Breen’s sphere, it took to the air and hovered in place.

  “That orb you see was created just for me. It looks small, but only from being so compacted. Its weight is no less than five tons.”

  “F-five… tons? How do you carry that thing around?”

  “I don’t. It’s made almost entirely of platinum—its only impurities being other metals. No living thing could carry it, and technically speaking, neither do I; I keep it elevated, just a couple millimeters off of my body. I control it with a constant stream of alchemagi. But five tons is still not quite enough for my personalized, special technique that no one can copy…”

  The ground vibrated. Simon watched cautiously as millions of tiny, sparkling bits of metal floated upward like dust and collected onto the sphere as if it were a magnet. The floating orb doubled in size within a minute’s time, and kept its reflective luster.

  Once the rising metal dust faded away—perhaps Breen had run out of material to extract—the sphere compacted even more. It had gone from the size of a bowling ball to the size of a marble in a second’s time, and the transition was forceful enough to send out a loud, small shock wave.

  “This is my ultimate technique. It has no official name, because the council has never approved of its use. Though I’m fond of ‘Iron Gavel’. I hate politicians, but I do respect their wishes—under normal circumstances. If the king can blow up a square mile of land with his nova spells, then the way I see it… I should have my own overly destructive spells, as well.”

  The sphere launched itself high up into the air, where it looked like little more than a speck. And then it came back down again. Simon knew of its potential, and got himself to safety before it smashed straight into him. Using light travel, he got himself to what he thought might be a safe distance—about a third of a mile away, at the edge of the forest clearing.

  The impact made it seem like the ground itself was comprised purely of explosives. The resulting crater was shallow, but the force of the air blast tore the tops off of trees. Simon had to hide behind a boulder that was dug well into the earth just to avoid being blown away.

  After the dust settled, he got back up and had a look at the impact point. Breen’s sphere kept its owner perfectly safe. The crater was coated in reflective metal dust, like silver paint had splashed all over it. Even some of the surviving trees had the shiny particles sprayed on their sides.

  He watched as every single particle of dust took off towards the center, where the metal sphere was quickly reconstructed. After being forced into a small pebble a second time, it was launched directly at Simon. Reacting in time, he used his light travel again. Instead of fleeing, he warped in almost directly in front of Breen.

  In the distance behind him, the sphere tore straight through the boulder and hit the edge of the forest. The result wasn’t far removed from the impact of a meteor. Much of the forest was shredded apart and reduced to splinters. Breen didn’t hesitate for a moment before reforming the sphere once again, and directing it until it was high above Simon.

  All of the spells Simon had used had taken their toll. By this point, he wasn’t even sure if he could muster another attempt at elemental travel. One way or another, the battle was going to end within ten seconds or less.

  He looked up at the sky, and saw that the one tool he had hardly used this entire battle was ready: the sun. The dull Aurrian sun, burning no hotter than a red dwarf, was at the highest position it would be at for the north’s late winter. He found the ‘gavel’ floating above him, focused on it intensely, ran numbers and angles through his head, and took a deep breath to prepare for an attempt at an extremely lucky shot.

  “This is it, Earthen. What’s left of you will be spread out all over the forest,” Breen said from inside his shell. “If you think this battle was close, you’d be dead wrong. You didn’t even touch me once.”

  “Yeah, yeah…” Simon muttered, after Breen just bought him a few more seconds of calculation.

  “Such disrespect. Should you seek another humiliating death, then by all means, seek me out again… Give the queen my regards.”

  Simon knew Breen was just moments away from closing up the slit he used as his eye for the battlefield and slamming the megaton pebble down once more. The window to act was closing, and regardless of its odds at success, it was Simon’s only remaining chance.

  He used the last of his strength to power up the same magnifying technique he had used earlier, but this time, he aimed at a careful position near the pebble. With the sun helping him much more this time, the spell was cast quickly, and it only took a split second for a powerful beam of light to reflect off the tiny sphere and bounce back down onto Breen’s cocoon.

  The angle wasn’t perfect, and the beam of light scattered in all directions after hitting the bigger sphere. Some rays hit trees in the distance, torching them. Breen didn’t realize that he was being indirectly attacked at first, and by the time he did, it was already too late. Simon adjusted the angle—only a very subtle change was needed—and the beam went straight through the narrow gap in Breen’s metal shell.

  Simon couldn’t quite believe what he had done at first, and he didn’t expect the result to be so dramatic. The light bounced a thousand times over inside the perfectly round and flat inner sphere, turning Breen’s protection into a solar oven. The shriek of pain lasted only for a moment before the pretorian was entirely incinerated by Aurra’s sun.

  Its controller vaporized, the sphere returned to its cube state and dropped to the ground with a heavy thud. All that was left of Breen were his innermost layer of armor and respirator, smoldering and blackened. The pebble above released all of the metal it had gathered in an explosion of dust and dropped from the sky. Simon remembered where it was just in time, and barely dodged the small orb. Both of Breen’s components were firmly planted in the ground, likely never to move again due to their weight.

  Simon fell to his knees, his mind scrambling over what he had accomplished. A paradigm pretorian had just been defeated—and by his hand. But now he was too exhausted to help anyone else, and found that he could barely move in his state. All of his alchemagi usage had heated up his body, but now the cold was returning to him. He realized that if someone didn’t find him quickly, or if he couldn’t gather up enough strength to get himself back to some place warm, he would be in danger again.

  But he also knew that the others were probably having more problems than he was at the moment, and humbly waited patiently for someone to show up.

  Still in disbelief over what he had just done—and it was also the first time he had actually killed anyone—he looked around to make sure he was alone, and then took out his small digital camera to take a picture of the destruction Breen caused. He shook his head and laughed at the absurdity of the moment, and then curled up to protect himself from the frigid air.

  Jeryn didn’t have a moment to be impressed by his own potential. From somewhere deep inside, a wellspring of vigor and strength had erupted, and he was suddenly pushing back Palar with a relentless assault from his javelin, which he twirled about in his one good hand. He filled it with fire and struck again every few seconds with fearsome intensity. All while avoiding or parrying everything Palar used to counter him.

  He also found success in the air, and constantly came down with multiple strikes against Palar. With one arm dead, his legs found much use, and he used them to deliver powerful kicks whenever he got the chance. Slowly but surely, it seemed as if he was able to chip away at his defenses.

  “Why are you trying so hard?” Palar huffed. “Why go this far? After all you’ve been through, it’d be easier just to lay down and die.”

  “I disagree.”

  “When they learn about what you are, they’ll never trust you again. You’ll lose their respect. Why continue this meaningless pursuit?”

  “Because I want to.”

  “You’ve lost your mind. Look at you. This is all you have left. Judo kicks and a flailing stick. You’ve lost the respect I once had for you.”

  “You assume that matters to me.”

  Jeryn missed one of his jabs, and Palar took the moment to regain some of his footing. He swung hard at Jeryn, slamming a fist into his chest and sending him back. Jeryn stumbled forward a bit, but managed to stay on his feet. Then there was a distant boom in the background. The ground trembled under the two pretorians.

  “That may be Breen,” Palar sighed. “He has little patience. Always starts using his most powerful abilities to wipe out an annoying enemy.”

  “And how does that make him different than you?”

  “Shut up…” Palar grumbled and caught his breath. “This is a sad way to die. Let me end your life while you still have your dignity.”

  Jeryn began to sink into the ground as Palar’s earth control pulled at him, but he still had enough strength to get out and fight back with the javelin again. Once more, the relentless assault of weak attacks continued.

  But the jabs had a purpose. Jeryn was trying to position Palar into a very specific spot—one that he had probably forgotten about in the midst of the battle. Now, it was just a few feet away. Jeryn knew he only had one shot left at taking down his subordinate, and it would have to be something that didn’t rely on much alchemagi; he hardly had any left.

  As Jeryn fought on, he could feel some of his older wounds again. The black fire he had been hit with returned first, still causing a great discomfort and burning up his nervous system. Then came Milla’s stray vector line, from way back when the Stonehenge portal was attacked. Before that was the pain of having his mind tampered with, and before that was the time when Drides had proven his strength to Jeryn.

  These memories of pain brought him one more clear recollection, when the king had found someone new; someone special, and Jeryn was to be replaced. Showing some respect to the pretorian leader, Lontonkon allowed Jeryn to contest his replacement. A simple duel would be enough.

  Yet it didn’t matter what Jeryn had thought about using against Drides, because before he had even left his seat, the young man had hit him with something tremendous. Simply by opening his eye patch and staring straight through him at a distance, Jeryn could feel himself being torn away from his body. Another second of it, and he would’ve died then and there. But Drides had enough control over his immense power to be able to bring his victims to their limit without actually killing them.

  That was a lasting pain that Jeryn wanted to rid himself of. If he were to die—to really die, all of that pain would be gone. He’d no longer be able to feel it in his memories. It would never resurface again for every lifetime that followed. He could recall what it felt like, but the actual feeling wouldn’t come back again. And he had experienced so much pain already in this lifetime. He didn’t know how much of it he could take.

  But he was used to it, and he could still fight through it. The only pain he’d take with him to Hold was that of leaving his friends behind. But perhaps he could fight through that, as well.

  He wasn’t scared anymore of what awaited him. Aurrians typically didn’t fear death at all until they were staring it in the face, because it was only then when they came to realize all that they may be leaving behind. Often, the most powerful loss would be the memories of others, their ability to recall past friends. After an Aurrian lifetime, it was a scary thing to think about losing recollection for the first half of one’s next life.

  None of that mattered now. The best thing Jeryn could do was to truly kill Palar; to make sure he wouldn’t return to Aurra for a long time. Yes, he’d be replaced, but it’d be with someone who didn’t have a history, someone who didn’t have an obsession with destroying his loved ones.

  Palar, Breen, Viveri, Trinqit… and Jeryn himself. They represented the old ways of thinking. Their minds and attitudes had been shaped by the king’s corruption. With any luck, their replacements would be a little more open-minded. That possibility alone might make his friends’ trials easier in the near future. Without pretorians who were long hellbent on crushing those against the king’s ideals… what chance did Lontonkon truly have?

  And there was still old Leovyn. But the brief, former vector pretorian had been missing for years, and was unlikely to seek any sort of revenge. That made it so that hopefully, within the next hour, Jeryn’s allies would only have three pretorians left that would be of any concern—or two, if Simon somehow managed to take down Breen.

  And for Jeryn, that was suddenly enough.

  “Look at you.” Palar wiped the blood from his chin and breathed deeply. “You’ve got nothing left. You can’t even move anymore, can you?”

  They were about twenty feet away from each other. Although Jeryn was on the ground and hunched over, Palar still showed the smallest degree of fear and had been backing away slowly ever since the attacks against him stopped. And now, he was just about in the right position. Jeryn watched carefully, even as he felt his body fail him.

  “Right. I suppose—I hope that this is the end. Truth is, I don’t have much left, either. But good duel, Jeryn… In the end, you didn’t let me down. I expected no less from you.”

  “And here’s something you did not expect…”

  “W-what?”

  The elemental dragon of fire came into existence behind Jeryn, the flames rolling off of its body generating intense heat and melting whatever small clumps of ice remained on the battlefield.

  But because of Jeryn’s weak state, the dragon was small and only matched its summoner’s height. Palar was impressed, but without worry.

  “And what do you hope to do with that puny thing? You’ve got nothing left to power it—it’s just going to end up killing you if you try!”

  “Oh, no? Ha, maybe you’re right. Where am I going to get heat from around here? It’s just all tundra, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t get smug. We both know there’s nothing you can do.”

  Jeryn’s dragon growled and pumped out flares from its nostrils. The flames around the creature were little more than embers. Compared to the full beauty and power of the fire dragon, it was a pathetic sight.

  But he knew that rekindling the dragon was an easy task. And with a subtle command of the mind, it launched into the air, screeching upwards to the heavens and burning holes into the clouds it passed through.

  “The hell?” Palar muttered. “What are you attempting?”

  “Your funeral pyre.”

  “You damned fool. You’re just going to laugh your way to the grave, aren’t you? What’s your dragon going to do? Shoot off fireworks?”

  “No… Not quite.”

  Jeryn shot out three fingers and manipulated the ground around Palar’s ax’s handle. It sprung up, twisted, and dug back into the earth in seconds—taking its owner’s foot with it, under the hook on the backside.

  At first, Palar had no idea how he had come to be stuck to the ground, and he thought little of it. His right foot was completely pinned, however, and every effort to free himself yielded no progress. He went from a calm state to a small panic, and began moving around the ground under him in attempt to crush whatever had trapped him.

  As expected, his ax absorbed everything related to alchemagi. Jeryn was relying on the time Palar needed to fully realize what was happening, as once he saw what had trapped him, he could easily adjust the handle instead to free himself. At that point, it’d be a struggle of power alone, and Palar would easily overwhelm Jeryn’s small control over the ground, which was quickly draining what little alchemagi he hadn’t used up for the dragon.

  “What the hell is this?” he shouted out angrily. “Release me!”

  With both his manipulation and the dragon sapping him, Jeryn could feel his strength leaving his body. He was devoting all of his energy, however much remained, towards keeping the dragon in existence and Palar ensnared. If Palar freed himself, he’d be able to get away from the dragon with time to spare, at a point when Jeryn would have no control over it.

  Miles above, the dragon entered the upper atmosphere. The lack of oxygen was making it more and more difficult to sustain, but all it needed was a few more seconds. As soon as it entered the space above Aurra, it would come down again—the burn of reentry empowering it. Jeryn had never attempted the move, but had practiced it in his mind as a pretorian. It would use all of that atmospheric friction, and he would only have to keep it alive long enough for it to slam into Palar, who was frantically digging into the ground with his hands to find what was keeping him down.

  Jeryn couldn’t do much of anything to stop his digging, but stayed focused on keeping the handle pulling downward. Once Palar saw the tip of his ax, he looked over at Jeryn in almost embarrassing surprise.

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  “You cunning bastard…” he grunted.

  He used one hand to try and pull the ax out, while keeping the other free for alchemagi. Now the struggle had begun; Jeryn had to prevent Palar from wrestling away his control over the earth elements. If he gave out for even just a moment, Palar could either free his ax, or at least shatter the handle so that Jeryn had nothing to grab onto.

  The struggle only lasted for about five seconds, but Jeryn hoped that was long enough. Palar yanked his ax out of the ground, swung it down with one hand, and glared at his foe.

  “I am going to cleave you in half. I’m sick of your little games.”

  A sonic boom erupted overhead. The temperature soared. Clouds above evaporated. A dim red glow covered the battlefield.

  Jeryn smirked. “Goodbye.”

  Palar looked up to see the face of an angry fire dragon coming straight down at him. Its body was fully ablaze, burning off the air and haze that it drilled down through. Its size had tripled, and the flames stretching off of its tail went upward for miles.

  “No…” Palar wheezed.

  He created a barrier of stone at the last possible moment, and Jeryn did the same with a heat shield. Only one was capable of surviving the blast.

  The dragon’s impact point vanished in a ball of pure white plasma. Blues and violets poured out from the center, splashing Jeryn’s dome shield like water. The radiant heat and light could be seen and felt across the landscape, and when the explosion finally dissipated and Jeryn’s sight returned, all that was left was a rising mushroom cloud, a battlefield cooling off from a molten mess, and streaks of crystalized earth.

  Nothing remained of Palar, other than the red-hot blade of his ax. Where he had stood was a deep but small crater, smoldering with embers.

  Jeryn didn’t fully comprehend that he was still alive until long after his dragon had slammed into the ground just twenty feet ahead of him. He released his heat shield and entered into a world that felt like a rapidly cooling oven. The ground was audibly cracking as the natural frigid air was sucked into an area that had been scorched at several thousand degrees.

  Jeryn collapsed and breathed lightly. He was too tired and worn to feel relief, and it felt like his muscles went into a survival instinct on their own. His one good arm pulled out the two claws from his side bag, and he brought them over and held them in front of his face. His fingers fumbled around with them, dropping both several times.

  Knowing that he’d survive if he could drag himself to Earth’s side, he tried weakly to open up a tear. But he couldn’t position the claws with fingers alone—nor did he actually have the strength to open a tear at all.

  He put one of the claws into his mouth and bit on it hard to hold it, but he still only had the strength to open the tiniest of tears, which disappeared into the air quickly. He knew that by this point, he probably couldn’t even drag himself through a portal, if he could create one at all.

  Accepting this, he released himself of all his burdens. He couldn’t survive, and he wouldn’t have to try to anymore. He could finally rest.

  He dropped the claws and took in a deep breath. It had been a long time since he had last died in Aurra. He wasn’t sure if he remembered how it all went—and almost laughed at the thought.

  “Sorry, everyone…” he exhaled. “This was all I could do for you in the end… I just hope it was enough.”

  Jeryn suddenly remembered that he had forgotten about the thing he was supposed to tell Milla—but now, that was his only regret. He looked up at the northern Aurrian sun, allowing its rays to fill his vision. He smiled as much as his muscles would allow him to.

  “I’m sure you’ll find out, anyway…” he thought aloud. “But if you don’t… Well, Milla, don’t be afraid to seek me out…”

  Jeryn Klowsk never took his eyes off the dark, red, but somehow friendly and warm sun of Aurra.

  “Garder…” Kamsa coughed in his arms. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to regress… I still have emotion. Everything you taught me is still there. I was just… I was in shock about what happened, that’s all.”

  A massive, fiery explosion went off in the distance. A warm light glowed over Kamsa’s face for a few seconds. Garder hardly noticed.

  “It—it’s okay, Kamsa. Look, I have my demirriage with me. I’ll take you back, and I’ll use those claws we have, and I’ll bring you back to Earth, and… Oh, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about do you? If you… If you die on Earth, you go to this hidden kingdom in Hold. Have I told you about this before? I—I can’t remember, but—”

  “Please… There’s no time for that. Look at yourself. We are surrounded by the enemy…”

  “If… if only I had a pair of those claws with me, I’d…” Garder wiped tears away and tried to keep his voice from stuttering. “But I can still take you to Hold’s kingdom. You can even stay there if you want. There are people there… they’ll take care of you. You’ll even get to meet the person you were cloned from. She’s… she’s really nice, and…”

  “Garder, listen to me. Even if you could do all of this for me, I wouldn’t want it.”

  “What? W-what are you saying?”

  “Please… Just let me go. I want this… this is how it should be.”

  “You can’t mean… You don’t really want to… to die, do you?”

  “How else will I know… that I’m truly alive?”

  “You are alive! You’re alive, and I’m here, and the whole world is just waiting for you to explore it, and—”

  “Not in this false prison…”

  “False prison? What?”

  “This body. This is not me. I am not a real person. I believe that my soul is real—I really, truly believe that, because of you. But this is my chance to free myself. I’m not scared…”

  “But…” Garder clenched his fists. “But Kamsa… Please—what about me? Why do you want to leave me?”

  She smiled. “I think I’m beginning to understand love. Is that what this is? Admiration… respect… it’s something I can feel. Warmth…”

  “I can save you! I don’t want you to leave me! I want you to live!”

  “You really want that, so much?”

  “Yes! Yes, I do! We could be happy, and get away from all this!”

  “Thank you. But I can’t… I can’t accept that… Not now. Maybe in another life, we could be happy together. Maybe when I’m a real person…”

  “B-but you are a real person… I… I don’t understand.”

  “It’s okay.” She looked up at him with compassionate eyes. “I’m sorry. But this is the best way… Thank you… I won’t forget you.”

  “Kamsa! Kamsa!”

  He shook her as her eyes closed and her breathing slowed. Garder couldn’t believe that he was allowing her to die like this, when he was fully capable of saving her. He would’ve even gone with her to Hold’s kingdom. He would’ve stayed with her there for as long as she needed him to.

  Why wouldn’t she let him? Why couldn’t he find the strength to defy her wishes? It wouldn’t have mattered where she was reborn. If it was a laboratory somewhere deep underground, then he would’ve sought her out no matter how long it took. Even if he had to abandon everyone else.

  But… it was too late. He felt her give out in his arms. It was a subtle movement, and Garder couldn’t even be sure that she was gone until she finally disappeared completely. For a few moments, he held nothing but her black and white, featherlight dress in his arms.

  “Peh, what was all that about?” Trinqit chuckled behind him. “False prison? How poetic. Didn’t think she had a creative gene in her.”

  Garder’s muscles tightened. He felt like he was on the verge of erupting, and yet he still couldn’t find the strength to stand up.

  “Don’t weep for her, boy. She was a pretorian traitor. Neither of us should feel sorry for her and the actions she chose.”

  Garder stood up and turned away from Trinqit. The army was straight ahead of him, but they were silent and unmoving. Some of them even appeared to be mourning for Kamsa.

  “Viveri was supposed to take her down, but the sorry guy couldn’t bring himself to it. I really don’t know what the two of you saw in her… She was just a clone. There are dozens just like her. Expendable, all of them. And I couldn’t care less if any of them have souls or not.

  “I think the entire project should be scrapped. It’s obvious they’ll all just develop personalities and betray us. Kamsa exposed such a flaw. Now we know that, at the least, the program needs significant refinements.”

  Trinqit waited eagerly for a response. She had always enjoyed observing and triggering the sadness or anger of other people.

  “Come on, boy. I know you want to say something. Show me your rage. I want to see your anger. Emotion always brings out true talent. I want to see yours—or the lack thereof, before I slice you apart.”

  Garder didn’t move a muscle.

  “Come on! I know you trained with Kamsa. If you want to give any respect to her meaningless life, then show me what she taught you! There’s no need for restraint. I want to see what you’re truly capable of!”

  “You want… you want to see anger…” Garder exhaled. “You want to see me make an idiot of myself, is that it? Have a good laugh…”

  “What else should I be seeing here, huh?”

  “The value of a human life…”

  “Oh, yes, that ‘value.’ How noble of you. You need to avenge poor, sweet little Kamsa right? Like I give a damn about the so-called ‘value’ of a life—much less of a clone birthed in Aurra. Kamsa was worthless as a living thing. Her only value came from being a possibly useful weapon.”

  “If all you really want to see…”

  Garder turned around and glared at Trinqit in the eyes. She was pleased at the look of pure fury spreading over his face and smiled.

  Then something neither of them expected happened.

  The energy inside of him renewed itself and exploded. For a moment, he felt his insides turn into an inferno. All of that energy swarmed down to the back of right hand, where it gathered into a single spot.

  The recently implanted second alchemagi pebble took in as much as it could, and burnt off the rest in a stream of blue and green that dissipated in a trail behind Garder. Holding his sword firmly in his hand, he could only stare at the vibrant little stone under his skin at first.

  “What… what the hell?” Trinqit mumbled.

  “Lady Trinqit! What’s happening?” one of the officers shouted.

  “Unbelievable… He has a second rock, and it just tripped.”

  “What? How? Damn it… a level three alchemagi-knight? That means that we’re facing a vanguard. All men—take him down!”

  “No, wait,” Trinqit yelled back. “Leave him to me.”

  The sudden surge took Garder by surprise, and he wasn’t sure of what was happening to his body—but when he saw the vector mandala Trinqit had just thrown at him, it seemingly acted on its own and took to the air with a powerful blast of air.

  Nearly fifty feet above Trinqit’s vector attack, Garder came to his senses and his anger came back to him. He took control of the air currents to slow his fall, and then lashed out with his elemental sword.

  The four blades of wind he produced were much stronger, sharper, and faster than before. They screamed downwards with terrifying whistles before slamming into four separate tanks. Each was sliced in half and promptly exploded before anyone could get away from them. He turned in midair and launched two blades at Trinqit, who stepped out of their way.

  Once he landed, he went straight into another attack. This time, he used his new power to blow away the nearby ice in all directions, creating a thick blanket of white and hurtling the enemy army’s front line backwards.

  Astounded by his new degree of strength, he already wanted to use it to wipe out everyone in front of him. He wasn’t thinking about Kamsa anymore—his indignation had reached a point where his mind was only concerned about causing destruction. And it put him in a dangerous spot.

  He couldn’t recall clearly what Vlad and Kerchief had told him, and having never taken part in level three training, the rules of the upgrade had never been drilled into him. What made him a vanguard—a swordsman with third level alchemagi capabilities—was a second pebble placed in his casting hand. And upon activation, much of the body’s energy was supposed to be absorbed, filtered, and redispersed over about a month’s time. It was designed to be a long, careful process; one where someone wasn’t meant to use even low-level spells regularly until its completion.

  He was shedding his body’s energy at a rapid, dangerous rate, but was in such a fevered state that he couldn’t feel the resulting alchemagi burns caused by overuse—or notice the waves of hot air coming off the glowing second pebble. But Trinqit saw the signs, and knew what they indicated. She wouldn’t have to lift a finger if she didn’t want to; if he kept up his pace for much longer, he would most assuredly die.

  And he might have not stopped even if he had had noticed. He had lost control, his mind lost to one devotion: to see the enemy wiped out without mercy. As he wasn’t sure just what all he was capable of now, he turned to something that would make fighting at a high level much easier.

  “I don’t care if I’m not supposed to be able to create you…” he muttered as the ice around him drifted back down. “I’ve always heard you calling… I know what you are… I demand you come out…”

  He concentrated on the leopard as he tried to force it into being, despite there being no reason he should be able to conjure it. But he was in a panic, and desperately needed something else to do the thinking.

  He saw Kamsa in his mind, briefly. And then she was replaced with a pair of yellow glowing eyes, staring back at him.

  The ice leopard formed out of a flurry right in front of him. Garder was so surprised that it had actually worked that he could only gaze back at first, instead of giving it a command. It was big—twice the size of Kamsa’s.

  The last of the uplifted ice fell and the air cleared to reveal the monster Garder had just birthed into existence. The soldiers were frozen in place, as Trinqit looked at the beast in disbelief.

  “Lady Trinqit! Is that—is that a pretorian elemental?”

  “H-how did you…” Trinqit murmured. “How in the hell…”

  “Is this what you expected?” Garder shouted back. “I thought you wanted to see something special, Jenera!”

  He ordered the leopard to attack, and it did so. Garder felt as if he could kill Trinqit whenever he wanted, so he turned his focus on the enemy force. The leopard let out a booming roar and charged, claws extended.

  It crashed down into dozens of Guardsmen, burying and crushing them beneath its icy body. Its breath froze men in place instantly, while its claws tore them apart. They shot at it with their rifles and their tanks, but to no effect. All manner of alchemagi—vector lines, fire plumes, sharp blades of steel, boulders—it all only scratched the creature ripping them to bits.

  Trinqit needed to know how Garder could pull off the feat, but she quickly shrugged off that desire and prepared to bring out her own vector serpent; the only way she’d be able to counter Garder’s summon. At this point, she wanted to see if she could bring back him alive, if just to study him and discover how he was able to give life to the leopard. After all, there was a reason they were known as pretorian elementals.

  But suddenly, the leopard disappeared right before it took another swipe at the mass of panicking soldiers. Garder then collapsed onto the ice, and it wasn’t until he was on the ground did he realize it: he had no energy left in him. The transition had been so quick that he couldn’t feel it coming.

  Trinqit walked up to him with a smile and a sigh. She gave him a small kick on the side and shook her head in disappointment. For all of his bravado, Garder had become little more than a trembling child dying in the snow, and she knew he had no chance of survival.

  “Oh, look at what you’ve gone and done. You went and brought your reserves to absolute zero, and now you’re dying. It’s a shame, too. All of that splendid power in one place, for such a brief moment in time.”

  “W-why…” Garder coughed weakly. “I… I just wanted…”

  “I know. You wanted to avenge Kamsa. That’s really sweet, but you went and blew it. You can’t stress your alchemagi stones like that when they first activate. And then you coupled that with a pretorian elemental… Who the hell knows how you made it, but that just doubled the rate of your energy burn off. You committed suicide, kid. Too bad.”

  “N-no… Please help me… I—I don’t want to die like this.”

  “Are you asking me for help? Look at you—you can’t even move. You’re beyond help. Well, at least you provided some entertainment. I look forward to doing battle with your sister. Farewell now.”

  “Milla…” Garder coughed. “You… stay away…”

  So full of life just second ago, Garder felt himself slip away. This was exactly what Kamsa had warned him about, and now it was as if he hadn’t listened at all. He felt utterly ashamed as the last of his breath left him. He didn’t know if he could look her in the eye if they met in Hold.

  “I know you’ve suffered heavy casualties, but we’ve got a City to capture,” Trinqit called out. “Pick yourselves up and let’s move.”

  Garder heard the moans of the wounded as they and their comrades got back to their feet, to do what they could to get their force back in working order. The leopard had dealt extensive damage and death, and the men were having their doubts by this point if they could really successfully capture even the second smallest Aurrian City.

  “I said move!” Trinqit ordered angrily, and then looked down at Garder again. “And hurry up and die, would you? Your body’s in the way.”

  He didn’t reply. Trinqit figured that his heart must have been pumping a few more blood cells about, and began her leave. All she wanted now was to get the army going again and go someplace warmer. Her patience following the day’s events had worn thin.

  Garder saw blackness. Blackness—and weight. He had expected to be in Hold by now, but something was keeping him… anchored.

  And then, a pulse. Some unknown source of life awoke. He looked around in the darkness—and found a pair of unfamiliar eyes floating in the abyss. They blinked once, and then the darkness began to fade.

  He was breathing, and his heart beat steadily. He opened his eyes to see the ground, and the only thing he could think about… was how it could be possible to still be alive. Verim put him in this situation before, but nothing like this had happened. He was still here, yes… but he was terrified.

  Slowly, he picked himself up, his mind still unable to grasp how he was waking up. The army stopped what they were doing, and Trinqit turned around to discover why her men had fallen silent.

  “Garder?” she said in disbelief. “What the hell are you?”

  He was hunched over. Pain then suddenly ripped through him, and for a moment, he felt paralyzed. There was another wave of pain, tearing across his body. A surge went through him—power, energy, or life itself; he wasn’t sure. Something was also happening with his right eye. He covered it with a hand and felt something, wet, and cold. He uncovered it to find that he had just gone blind in the eye—and it was bleeding, as well.

  It got worse. Being partially blind wasn’t enough—something was also escaping from his eye and crawling down his face and neck. It trailed down his right arm and raced to his alchemagi stones, like it craved them.

  He looked down to see that the strange, parasitic life force took the form of a solid blue line. It wasn’t a vein; it looked like his arm had a living paint running down it. The line split in two when it hit his casting hand, and the branches traveled right into his stones. Pulses of light began streaming from the pebbles and up Garder’s arm, and his vision returned.

  Yet, it wasn’t his eye that returned. It wasn’t synchronized with his other, and he couldn’t control it. His fear turning into panic, it took courage for Garder to flip his sword sideways to use it as a mirror.

  He hardly recognized himself. The line that ran all the way to the back of his hand started from right under his eye—and the eye indeed no longer belonged to him. The white was solid black, the iris was gold, and the pupil was a black triangle. It was the pupil that scared him the most.

  He fell to the ground and scuttled away from Trinqit in terror as he began losing control of the rest of his body. But she had no answers, and appeared to be almost as frightened as he was of the transformation.

  “What’s happening?!” he cried out.

  Trinqit kept her focus on Garder’s face as she tried to get a clear look at his affected eye. Finally, he looked straight up at her, as if he were desperate for an answer she could provide. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and yet… she had seen that eye before, on one other person.

  “Holy hell…” she muttered. “What is wrong with you?”

  A voice from his subconscious spoke to him suddenly. He had no choice but to listen, as the voice echoed loudly through his head. To him, it was like someone was yelling right into his ear.

  “Let me take care of this,” the strange, omnipotent presence said. “You can just sit back… and watch.”

  “What are you?” Garder shouted out.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll give you back your body. When I’m done.”

  He blacked out. Every part of his body fell away from him—except for his left eye. He couldn’t blink or move it, but he could watch, even if he wasn’t in a state where he could consciously understand what was going on.

  He, or what now controlled him, stood and grinned wryly.

  “Hello, Jenera,” he said in an unfamiliar, altered, flat voice. “Garder has to rest for a moment. The idiot overexerted himself a bit. Not that I’m complaining. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be able to come out, at least until he got all of that messy alchemagi of his out of my way first…”

  “Who… who are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’m just here to show you something.”

  He brought up his index finger, and before Trinqit could react, she was blown away by a powerful gust. She hit the side of a boulder, which nearly knocked her out. Dazed, she slumped over and struggled to recover.

  Garder then turned to the wounded army and smiled.

  “Lontonkon’s men, as useful as ever. I’ll put them out of their misery. And what perfect timing. With level three spells, this will be easy.”

  He lined up three of the fingers clutching the sword tightly, and began working on a spell—one far from ordinary. The weather itself started to change. Dark clouds formed, and the wind picked up to a squall.

  Trinqit wouldn’t know where to begin if she tried to describe the scene. As she braced herself against the rock, she watched a tornado form around Garder. He took control of it and launched it outward, and it began to rip apart what little left there was left of the already beaten army.

  Maelstrom? How? It was the second most powerful watairre technique, created by one of the alignment’s legends. And it formed so quickly, despite such cold weather. It shouldn’t have been possible. While it was still quite smaller than its expected size, Garder shouldn’t have been able to create anything even resembling a controllable tornado. He wasn’t close to being in same league as people who had the capability.

  The twister roared like a freight train as it rampaged through men and twisted the turrets off of tanks. But Garder didn’t seem pleased. The destruction was there, but as it was merely a tornado, the actual breadth of that destruction was small. He needed to go further.

  He sighed and released the monstrous funnel. “No, no. That won’t do. We don’t have time for this.”

  The weather steadily returned to normal. At this point, most of the soldiers were trying to retreat—but the battlefield was in such a bad, rugged shape that they were having trouble doing so.

  “Watch this one,” he said to himself. “You will be impressed.”

  Three fingers out again. Nothing happened at first. No change in the weather, no gust of wind. Only silence. Everything became still.

  Then Trinqit’s ears popped. She thought it absolutely impossible. This spell? Created by a teenage knight with little battle experience?

  A mist began to form throughout the mountain pass. The soldiers didn’t know what was coming, and other than the mist and a change in air pressure, nothing seemed exceptionally dangerous. But Trinqit knew what was coming, and she was struggling to get her body moving again.

  She looked to the sky for an indicator on the size of the pressure dome. Clouds were growing quickly, but they were strange, cut off suddenly and cleanly at the edges of an invisible hemisphere. The dome was huge—probably at least about a mile across.

  Then the pain began. Trinqit and her men gasped for air, and if they stayed for much longer, their blood would begin to boil. And by that point, the actual technique would be seconds away from completion.

  “I don’t believe it…” she murmured, even though there was no longer enough air to carry her voice. “From this stupid kid…”

  After finally getting her arm moving, she looked out at her men and felt the slightest bit of regret. They had no idea what was coming.

  “Sorry…” she breathed out.

  Garder, or the being controlling him, saw her moving, turned, around and fired out a blade of air. Trinqit was already gone in a vector beam by the time the blade demolished the boulder.

  “Oh well. We can get her next time,” he grumbled.

  The men collapsed into screams of pain as the pressure dropped to almost zero, all of them desperate for air. The mist turned to a thick blanket, only breaking up again when it passed through the small, protective barrier Garder had put around himself.

  Satisfied, Garder finally completed the spell. The massive dome of low pressure contracted within seconds, gathered into a single spot, and then exploded. Hurricane force winds blasted out from the epicenter—an area right in the middle of the doomed battalion. Its men and vehicles were then completely, effortlessly pulverized.

  Nothing was left but a clean spherical crater. Small fragments of metal from armor and weaponry rained down onto a battlefield reshaped by a massive bomb created using air pressure alone. Above, the airship reflecting sunlight over the area was sucked in, broke apart, and exploded into a fireball. With the sun’s light gone, only the lamps on Garder’s belt protected him from the all-devouring haze.

  “I need rest,” Garder said to himself over the silence. “But I do hope you’ll allow me to come out again. This was most exciting.”

  The force left as quickly as it had taken him. The next thing he knew, he was looking at an emptied wasteland. He had seen all of whatever just happened, but he couldn’t understand it. It had felt like a dream, and he wanted to think that someone else had caused such destruction.

  The battalion had vanished. Trinqit was nowhere in sight. The color of the landscape and the surrounding mountains had been changed.

  He couldn’t ponder for long; he collapsed just seconds after exiting the dreamlike state, and the thoughts in his head disappeared completely.

  “Simon!” Milla’s voice called out. “Simon, is that you?”

  His bones shivering, he turned and saw friends approaching. Milla, Shin, Verim—and with them, a bearded stranger with a cat on his shoulder.

  “Oh. Milla… hi…” He coughed and got to his feet. “I’ve been waiting for someone to come find me.”

  “You must be freezing. Here…” She said and wrapped a spare heat cloak around him, as Shin formed the demirriage nearby.

  “What happened out here? Are you okay?” Verim asked.

  “I’m fine, I guess. Just cold and exhausted.”

  “Look at this place,” Shin said as she looked around. “Took a beating. What happened out here?”

  “That iron pretorian… I beat him.”

  “Really?” Verim said with wide eyes. “You did? That’s incredible.”

  “Yeah, well… Training was arduous. I’ll tell you about that later…”

  “We’ve got to find the others,” Milla replied. “I can’t believe you defeated Breen… But really, I’m just glad to see you back with us.”

  “So… who’s the new guy?”

  He introduced himself, “Wendell Celin, and my partner, Scud. I’d like to learn all about you, but for now, your friends may be in danger.”

  “Then we should hurry—” Simon stepped forward, but almost fell.

  After catching him and standing him up, Milla replied worryingly, “You’re in no shape, to move. Let’s get you to Tess’ place first.”

  “No. No… really, I’m fine. We don’t have time for that. Look, I heard two explosions go off in the distance not too long ago. Neither sounded like it came from artillery. Then it got a lot darker over there.”

  “More pretorians?” Wendell suggested.

  “We need to find them,” Shin urged and stepped into the carriage.

  The others hurried in, with Milla operating. Using the method where she warped to the most distant point she could see, looked around, powered the carriage again and then warped a second time, Milla hopped the five of them quickly across the frozen landscape. The signs of heavy battle were widespread, and she followed one trail until they arrived at an area covered with rising steam and three giant craters.

  “Looks like Palar’s work,” Shin muttered. “Milla? What is it?”

  She stepped out and walked forward. Verim followed Milla’s eyes and saw what she had. It didn’t take long until all of them were looking upon Jeryn’s robes, fluttering in the distance in a visible circle devoid of scorch marks, despite the land surrounding it having been blackened.

  “Jeryn…” Milla dropped to her knees with a frozen expression.

  “Milla… he could still be…” Shin whispered.

  “I’m afraid that I sense no one else nearby,” Wendell said while focusing with his eyes closed. “No… It’s just us.”

  “But—but he got Palar, right?” Verim asked.

  “Whatever he did, it looks like he really went all out,” Simon said.

  “It’s still a bit warmer out here than anywhere else,” Shin observed. “This probably happened not too long ago. Oh, and Milla… I’m so sorry.”

  “He had something to tell me,” she said and wiped away a few tears. “Now I’ll never know, will I?”

  “That’s not true,” Simon replied. “Look, I’m right here—someone, well, you know… I can go to Hold and pull him out. R-right?”

  “There’s a barrier between our kingdom and the rest of Hold,” Shin replied. “It’s like the two places are on different planes of existence.”

  “So… Jeryn’s really gone?”

  “I wouldn’t put you through all of that to bring him back, even if we could…” Milla said. “I don’t know why he’d let this happen. I didn’t really think that he was saying goodbye to us. He couldn’t have meant…”

  “I think I see the claws down there,” Verim spoke up. “I… could go get them.”

  “Would you, please?”

  “Yeah. Be right back.”

  While Verim used the demirriage to go back and forth, Shin turned to Milla and offered her some further sympathy.

  “I’m sorry about Jeryn. He was with you since the beginning, right? That has to hurt…”

  “I think I could’ve accepted saying goodbye if I had to… It’s just that he had something to tell me. And he left before he could.”

  “Maybe he was expecting to eventually return to you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll never be sure.”

  Verim returned, claws in hand.

  “Heat’s almost unbearable in that pit,” he explained and began charging up another carriage. “Hurry up and get back in here. Don’t forget that your brother’s in danger, Milla. We’ve still got to get to him.”

  “Oh, no… If anything has happened to him, too, I…”

  “I’m sure he’s fine. He had Kamsa with him, remember?”

  They said nothing else, each clinging to the hope that he was still alive. The site of the other battle became obvious after another couple of hops, but no one had words to describe what they saw there. Shrapnel was spread over a large area, and there was no sign of an invading army at all.

  Garder was found unconscious and barely breathing in the middle of the mountain pass. Verim and Wendell lifted him up into the carriage without a sound while Milla watched helplessly. No one mentioned Kamsa. No one said anything until they were back inside the warmth and safety provided by Tess’ apartment.

  City I and Rivia’s group had been changed forever that day.