Empty Names

15 - Matters of Technique

 

Ashan holds his wand upright before him, concentrating on willing an uncooperative flame into existence above its tip.

Eris paces the confines of the transparent dome holding her trapped, periodically striking out at the conjuration with a glyph-inscribed spear that leaves trails of frost wherever it makes contact.

Lacuna stands in her labcoat on the sidelines of the gym’s sparring ring, note-taking momentarily forgotten in the building anticipation of the duel’s tense lull.

Both combatants are trying something new this bout.  For Eris, it is the test run of Lacuna’s first enchanted weapon.  For Ashan, it is attempting a technique from Whispers of the Sun that he had found to be of particular interest whose mastery has so far eluded him.

For all that he has kept his frustration in check up until now, his repeated failures to replicate any of that tome’s spells has begun to gall.  Any magic originating from a world operating on a similar conceptual schema to the one he trained with on Orthon inevitably manifests as one of that world’s purely destructive pyromantic evocations instead of the intended effect.  Meanwhile, attempts at spells built around further-removed systems of rules simply sputter out and die no matter how much energy he draws upon to power them.

Hopefully the stress of battle - if only a mock one - will be the push he needs.  His opponent’s confinement is merely buying him a moment of breathing room.  Thus far in prior matches Eris has displayed a startling - if inconsistent - propensity for breaking through his conjurations with nothing but brute force.  Even without the gloves she employed on the Culescun ship it is only a matter of time until she is on him again.

Curious then that now she is only making quick, light prods and slashes that never land in the same place twice.

Ashan reins his focus back to the flame; it is already split enough between that and keeping the barrier reinforced.  Attempting to ‘draw out the fire from within’ as instructed has so far produced only the briefest of sparks, but what about a hybridized approach?  Perhaps if he conjures the flame in a familiar way, combusting a point in the air and then feeding it ambient energy the same way he would his barriers, and then attempts to manipulate it the way the text said.

The air above the tip of Ashan’s wand catches alight like a candle.  He directs more energy into the fire and the candle becomes a torch.  The growing warmth on his face and hands contrasts sharply with the sudden chill at his back.  While the office facilities are not without their own permeating aether field that he could be drawing from, best to focus these sparring matches on practicing with the power source guaranteed to be available wherever he goes.

With effort, he manages to tame the flame’s flickers into the pattern he memorized from studied diagrams.  Pattern stabilized, he moves on to the step of ‘pouring his will into the fire’.  The point of this spell is not to burn, but to entrance, capturing and drawing in the attention of onlookers like moths to a lantern.  Not true mind-altering magic that would send the spell into the realm of sorcery by issuing commands or stripping a target of autonomy, but merely inducing a brief but intense calm to stop an attacker in their tracks until acted upon or line of sight is lost.  Like any mage with a sense of ethics, the only time Ashan has ever broken that taboo is for the generally-accepted exception of Masquerade-preserving amnestic magic.  Even with so unintrusive an effect as this one, Ashan warned Eris and Lacuna what he intended to attempt ahead of time despite the opportunity it would give Eris to steel her mind for resistance.

Staring into the fire before him Ashan admits to himself that there is an undeniable allure to the flame’s dance, but not one he would go so far as to call truly magical.  Then again, it would be a poor spell unworthy of the Bridgewood library if it affected the caster.  Only one true way to test.

Just then Ashan feels his barrier around Eris fail.  The failure is not the shattering under pressure from raw force that she has accomplished before, the flicker of his own broken concentration, the fading of exhaustion, nor even the shredding or melting of dispelling countermagic.  It is a sudden pinprick puncture followed by an unraveling that collapses the multiple reinforced layers from the inside out and makes him dizzy with the sensory backlash.  The shock of the novel sensation is nearly enough to cause the fire above Ashan’s wand to go out.

The shattering cascade of ice falling without an invisible wall to hold it up snaps Ashan back to awareness just in time to sidestep the fist-sized chunk of ice that Eris kicked in his direction before it could hit the ground.  The unsettling thought that there shouldn’t be enough humidity in this room for anything more than a thin dusting of frost to form crosses the wizard’s mind and then the warrior is upon him.

Even after four duels with her prior to this one, the speed and precision with which Eris moves for a combatant of her size and build continues to catch Ashan off guard, especially now that she is wielding a weapon to further leverage those qualities.  Thrust after thrust after slash, it is all Ashan can do to dodge the strikes while simultaneously maintaining his concentration on unfamiliar magic.  It has been a long time since he last found himself dancing with an opponent rather than around them.

He does indeed however manage to keep that flame burning bright and steady while he holds it between himself and Eris.  So far however, it seems to be failing at its purpose; instead of becoming entranced and slowing - much less stopping - her assault, she just keeps looking straight through the flame and into Ashan’s eyes, predatory grin across her face all the while. 

Ashan tries to alter the conjured fire on the fly as variables come to mind.  Color, brightness, size, pattern, flicker frequency, aetherial composition; none of it produces the desired hypnotic effect.  He is just about to give up on the experiment in favor of focusing on reclaiming a chance at winning the duel when Eris shifts the grip on her weapon and changes up her style of attack, abandoning the spear thrusts in favor of flowing swings as if she were wielding a staff.

Against anyone else the sudden stylistic shift might have had the desired effect of unbalancing Eris’s opponent, but for Ashan it simply kicks a long-dormant set of reflexes into play.  His mentor favored staves over wands for spellcasting implements and melee combat with them had been a persistent, if relatively minor, part of his training even after he switched to a wand for casting.  This is a dance whose steps are well known to Ashan Glassheart, and for all Eris’s strength and speed, she is not half the accomplished staff fighter that Aliana Glassgaze is.

The styles may not be identical, but there is enough similarity that Ashan finds himself slipping back into the old, unthinking rhythm easily enough that he can manage to conjure short-lived shields to parry strikes away from him into the ground and nimbly leap over the follow-up sweeps at his legs.  Despite this, Eris’s grin only grows wider, showing ever more teeth.  Their dance sends Ashan’s mind’s eye back to his mentor’s expressions at times like this.  In most fights, she would seem to enjoy them much as Eris does now, but perhaps without the feral tinge.  The laughing banter that infuriated most of her foes made it all seem like one big fun game to her, and by extension to Ashan.  It was only when against the truly dangerous adversaries when stakes were high or on the rare occasions that Ashan got hurt that Aliana’s face took on the intensely cold and faraway look that was half the reason for her epithet of Glassgaze.

Ashan is picturing that expression, single-minded and unfocused all at once, when something about the flame he has been carrying changes in a way he cannot identify.  Eris slows to a stop, staring into the fire as tension drains from her face.  Ashan fails to suppress a shiver from the precipitous drop in temperature.  Ambient heat energy flows through and out of Ashan as magic, building in power to something new and grand.

The flame above the tip of Ashan’s wand flickers and goes out.

The moment of near-revelation lasted less than a second before ending in anticlimax.

The shaft of Eris’s spear cracks into the upper part of Ashan’s off arm, encasing it in ice and knocking him to the ground.

Ashan mentally scrambles, trying to get the flame back as it was right before it disappeared.  It returns as a roaring jet of fire that engulfs Eris and momentarily blinds Ashan from the unexpected brightness.  He barely sees the spear swinging down at him in time to roll out of the way.  Now held with its full length flat against the floor by a notably unburnt Eris, the glyphs lining the spear pulse with a chilly blue light.  Mist condenses in the air.  Ice spreads across the ground, bulging up into low walls in the spots where earlier deflected blows previously left trails of frost.

Ashan attempts to stand up, slips, and attempts to conjure a support to catch himself on.  A cold pain shoots through his arm in absence of sufficient surrounding air and ground temperature for the spell to draw from.  He gasps and the conjuration flickers out, dropping him back to the frozen floor.  The cold sharp point of a spear presses against his neck without breaking the skin.

“That makes three to two,” Eris says, “my favor.”

She pulls the spear away and offers a hand to pull Ashan to his feet.

The next several minutes are spent cleaning up the generated ice and moving it from the gym’s sparring ring to the lab’s testing chamber for disposal.  All the while, Lacuna chatters excitedly, going back and forth between commenting on how ‘cool’ it is to watch her teammates go at it and asking Eris questions about how well the spear performed.  Apparently the whole length of the spear being able to freeze on contact rather than just the spearhead was an unintended side effect rather than a designed feature.

“Where does all the ice come from?” Ashan asks as the testing chambers close, leaving said ice to safely melt into the chamber’s cleaning system.

Lacuna tilts her head to the side.  “What do you mean?  It’s an enchanted ice spear; it freezes things and makes ice.  Well, maybe more like it manifests the idea of freezing things?  In theory, based on the simulation results it should be able to totally encase someone and just put them in stasis to be thawed out later no worse for the wear, unlike normal ice.  Haven’t figured out an ethical way to actually test that though, so probably best not to try it.”

“But where is the water for all that ice coming from?”

Lacuna shrugs.  “I don’t know, same place as your barriers and fire?”

“My conjurations are all simply energy manipulation,” Ashan corrects that terrifying answer.  “The barriers are pure impartations of kinetic friction onto an area of space with no material component.  The fire is the controlled ignition of the oxygen in the air.  The frost and mist that often forms around me is merely a side effect of rapidly lowering the ambient temperature to fuel those other processes causing the same changes on humidity the same as any mundane overnight cold front would.  What it is not is a violation of the conservation of mass.  Or at least, not beyond the limits of an anchor world’s ability to stretch.”

“Ooohhh, so that’s the difference between conjuring and summoning,” Lacuna says.  “Fascinating.  I’ll need to go take a look at some of the source rituals the program drew from for the enchantment sequence later.”

Ashan dearly hopes that whatever that spear is doing is only a variation of summoning.  But even then, where is that water being summoned from?  An elemental plane?  The nearest ocean?  A random comet orbiting the solar system?  For all any of them know it could be ripping the bodily fluids from some unknown, distant victim, killing someone every time the spear’s magic is used.  That last one is highly unlikely with the Autogenesis Principle in play, but the point is that Lacuna is casually experimenting with magic that would normally take experienced mages and enchanters decades to master without even knowing the answers to such basic questions about how it works.  When Ashan asked her several days ago what such complex, high-output rituals use as a power source for their casting without a strong ambient aether field, ley lines, or other such element lacking from an anchor world (even a pocket dimension with loosened anchoring such as this), she had given the frankly horrifying answer that the power generation issue had been solved before she joined the project and she had never gotten around to reviewing that part of the legacy code so she just took it as a given that it worked safely and stably.

Ashan is just about to bring the matter up again when Lacuna takes a seat in front of her workstation and says “I actually got the idea for the ice spear from you.”

“From me?” Ashan asks.

Lacuna nods.  “Well, that is, partly from you and partly from…” The last half of her sentence trails off into unintelligibility.

“Sis,” Eris prompts, “you’re mumbling again.”

“Sorry!” Lacuna not-quite-shouts.  “It’s just that you and Road both have magic ways to easily subdue people without hurting them and I wanted to help Eris have a way to do the same, and then I got to thinking about something your outfit sort of reminded me of and looked up where I’d seen something similar and…”

Lacuna hands Ashan her phone, face blushing and not making eye contact.  On the screen is a manga cover with the title Crystal Witch Arya.  There, floating in the center of the screen with white staff pointed dramatically and a wry smile on her face is Ashan’s mentor.  The face is artistically stylized and the real Aliana was never so well-endowed as this fictional “Arya” character, but otherwise the resemblance is uncanny.  The midnight blue hair, the robe Ashan’s own was patterned after, the broad-brimmed white hat he had never incorporated into his own style, even the patterns carved into the staff; all of it certainly drawn by someone who met her.

Ashan thinks back to all the cases of mistaken cosplay identity this past convention season and groans.

“Sorry, I know it’s kind of cringe, copying from something like this,” Lacuna says.  “I shouldn’t have made the comparison to you.”

“No it is not that,” Ashan assures her.  “My mentor never was any good at amnestic spells.  It would seem that someone she rescued remembered well enough to capture her likeness.”  He taps on the phone, skimming through questionably scanned and fan-translated pages and cringing at the inaccuracies in personality and magic.  “Albeit not well enough to be accurate about much of anything else.”

Eris laughs.  “So you’re telling me that Crystal Witch Arya is a real person and you trained under her?”

“Her name is Aliana Glassgaze, but yes, this character does appear to be based on her.”  Ashan glances down at a panel of Arya intoxicated at a bar and flirting with a witch dressed all in black.  “Very, very loosely based.”

Knowing his mentor, she probably reads every issue and laughs the whole time.  The more uncomfortable implication is that she came back to this world after he left her on Orthon.

“Oh this is just too perfect,” Eris says with barely contained mirth, looking back and forth between Ashan and Lacuna.

“And why is that?” Ashan asks.

“Oh, no reason.”

Lacuna sinks into her chair, drawing her feet up onto the seat with her, red faced, and muttering something about “ruined cosplay plans.”  She bolts upright at the sound of the lab door opening.

“These are my friends I told you about,” Road says from the doorway.  “You’ll be safe here.”

Out in the hallway a beautiful young man nervously clutches subtly webbed fingers around the edge of the sealskin draped over his shoulders.

 

*******

 

Four hours later Ashan stands at the edge of a west-coast forest looking down a hill at a mansion.  With the timezone difference it is still only mid afternoon here.  The mansion is of a modern design and after Bridgewood Manor looks almost quaint by comparison with its mere two floors and swimming pool.  As expected, no one stirs on the property, for the inhabitants, staff, and prisoners are all in the phase-shifted pocket dimension mirroring mundane space but invisible to normal means of detection.

Road and Eris flank him, both fully armored, Road in their uncanny symbiote that’s taken on an almost mechanical look with a metallic sheen and overlapping geometric plates of green and purple, and Eris in her freshly crimson-painted tactical gear.  Unlike Road, her face is still visible through her visor and she looks about ready to do murder as she sets down the knee-high drone sent by Lacuna and unslings the spear from her back.  To Ashan’s eyes, the drone looks like nothing so much as a blocky, headless parody of black dog.

On the other side of Road is the dryad-turned-minor-harvest-goddess that brought them here and will soon be piercing the phase-shifted veil for their party.  From what Ashan has gathered over the past few hours, she was once in a similar situation to the poor souls they are here to save before Road and the Bridgewoods rescued her some years back and is more than eager to repay the favor.   She is yet to speak her name and if Road knows it they are not sharing.

“Let’s review the plan one more time before we head in,” Road’s voice resonates from their helmet.  “Down there is the home of a wizard going by the alias of Logos.  Once our fair lady of the green shifts us over to the true mansion our job is first to retrieve the various items binding the house servants to his will and then to escort them back here where they can be spirited away to safety.”

Mellírd, the selkie Road brought into the office, had recounted a tale that neither Eris nor Road were willing forestall acting upon for more than the minimal amount of time it took to throw a rough plan together.  According to him, this Logos individual has amassed a fortune over the years through bargaining, tricking, coercing, and stealing his way into the possession of objects that would grant him power over the beings they were bound to and then selling those objects - and by extension the people - to wealthy buyers.  Mostly it was selkies like Mellírd, swan maidens, and other shapeshifters who had animal skins to step in and out of to change, but from time to time others with more esoteric tokens would be captured and bound as well.  In every case, these tokens were no mere items but part of their rightful owners just as much as their hearts or brains.  Those still waiting to be sold were made to serve in Logos’s home, or worse, sent out to lure in others of their kind.

Mellírd managed to steal back his skin and escape while in transit to a buyer and in the following days was spotted mid-shapeshift by a photographer who posted his image on an on set forum for cryptid sightings.  Lacuna tagged the story as a potential Masquerade breach, and passed it to Road who followed it up after noting that Mellírd looked distressed in the photo.  As soon as they got him to safety and filled in the rest of the team, preparations of the now-imminent infiltration and extraction commenced.

“Thanks to Mellírd,” Road continues, “we know that Logos keeps the binding items in a display case on the second floor and we have a headcount of everyone that we’ll need to return those items to so they can leave.  For the safety of the people we’re rescuing, we’ll be doing this as stealthily as possible.  Or priority is getting them out; dealing with Logos can come later.  Now then, does everyone remember their roles?”

Eris speaks up first.  “Rescuee escort and protection.  And subdual if required.”

“Detecting and disabling wards,” Ashan says, “in addition to running interference if Logos catches on.”

“Remember,” Road says, “if it comes to a fight just play for time until we give the signal that everyone is out.  We can’t risk him feeling threatened enough to start using prisoners as shields.  Lacuna?”

“Right!  Sorry.  Was running last-minute checks on my end.  The remote mobile concealment rituals should be good to go.  Also, I’ve got Mellírd set up in the testing chamber for observation with cleansing rituals queued up in case any lingering linkage back to Logos flares up.”

“And I shall be ensuring your way out and ferrying any who escape to my demesne.” The trees shake in time with the cadence of each word spoken by the fair lady of the green.  “As much as I would prefer to do more to make this mortal pay, you are correct that rescue must come before retribution, but tarry not in this foul place lest you still be here when that hour of vengeance comes.”

Road nods.  “Consider that warning heeded.”  They turn to look down at the drone.  “Everyone gather in close.  Lacuna, show us what you can do.”

A screen on the drone’s back lights up with the most horrendous mess of a glyph circle that Ashan has ever seen.  To even call the tangled, spiraling mess of overlapping arcane symbols a circle is generous.  To his trained wizard’s eye there are a few scattered and warped fragments that look as if they belong in a visual concealment ritual, but much of the rest that is not gibberish looks to be warped pieces of unrelated functionality.  At a glance he can make out an arc from the start of most divination drawings there, a temperature modulation glyph there, and what looks like a complete miniaturized pattern for a common housecleaning ritual embedded in the middle of a spiral in the corner of the screen.  When what sounds like Lacuna’s voice speaking in an untranslatable tongue starts playing from a speaker and then speeds up into a high-pitched electronic buzz, Ashan is convinced that the whole thing is going to explode and take them with it.  His head certainly feels like it is about to.

“Is it working?” Eris asks.

Ashan focuses his sense for magic and the ensuing nausea from trying to perceive the incomprehensible mess of warped reality flowing from the drone sends him staggering backwards.  And then the noise - audio, mental, spiritual, and aetherial - is gone, along with his companions.  The buzz of the accelerated chant has stopped, ambient magical fields are normal, and the grass everyone should be standing on does not even appear to be bent.  He puts a hand forward to where he had just been standing and the hand stays visible, the shadow cast by the afternoon sun that should be falling across a presumably invisible Eris’s knees projects onto the ground unobstructed.

Ashan steps back into position and suppresses a gasp as everyone, the noise, and the headache all snap back into existence without transition.

“It works,” he confirms, “however unorthodox it may be.”

“Here we go then,” Road says.  “And remember, no names once we’re in.  Mellírd implied that Logos has at least some experience with nominal magic for exerting further control over those already in his clutches and we don’t know what else he can do with it.”

Their fair lady of the green raises her arms, puts the backs of her hands together, and then flings them apart as if throwing wide unseen gates.  The trees behind them shake, the air before them trembles, and the mansion down below appears in misaligned, translucent double.  Her hands drop to her sides and everything stills.  The double image of the mansion snaps into alignment.  Figures now move in the windows and mill about the poolside patio while a  lone gardener trims topiary at the front of the house that had not been there a moment ago and two figures in antique metal armor stand flanking the front door.

The drone begins loping down the hill toward the manor at a pace just slightly too fast for comfortable walking and much too fast for comfortable sneaking while Ashan, Road, and Eris try to stick close to it.  Halfway to the mansion the drone comes to an abrupt halt that causes Ashan to bump into it and Eris to nearly walk out of the range of its veil.  The pulsating buzz of the accelerated chant changes subtly and the glyph circle loses all claim to calling itself that shape as it begins growing new branches of symbols and folding in on itself.

“What’s it doing?” Road asks.

“Sorry.  Hit a ward.  Adapting,”  Lacuna’s voice comes over the line in clipped tones.  “Okay.  We’re good.”

The drone starts walking again.  Ashan takes a step forward and feels the ward that he should have sensed far sooner.  Would have sensed were it not for the horrid metaphysical noise surrounding him.  In any other circumstance he would be worried about having tripped it and chiding himself for not being more aware of his surroundings, but here and now he is too busy being torn between awe, disgust, and horror at the way the glyphs shifted.  One does not simply change a ritual in progress!  And to do so on one so chaotically complex…  Gods, is she trying to kill them all?

Road’s face is still hidden beneath their helmet so Ashan cannot get a read on their reaction to what just happened.  The concerned expression on Eris’s face gives him some hope that she at least might have picked up on how utterly reckless that maneuver was, but her words quickly bury that possibility.

“Nice job.  How you holding up sis?”

“Thanks.  Fine.  Shush.  Concentrating.”

Approaching the front door, it becomes apparent that the armored figures are in fact empty suits of armor.  In Ashan’s experience that is a sign that they are more of a threat, not less, particularly given that they are in front of the main entrance to a wizard’s abode and clashing with the decor.

“Move us to the back,” Road says.  “Might be an already open door if the pool is in use.”

“Okay.  Please shush.”

To call the pool “in use” proves to only be partially accurate in the sense that it is occupied by two mermaids that appear to be twins, one consoling the other at the edge of the water as she cries.  A man in a servant’s uniform with a selkie’s webbed hands scrubs the other end of the patio deck next to another suit of armor, pointedly looking in any other direction.  The drone is halfway across the patio when another uniformed man, this one with fox-red hair and yellow eyes, exits the sliding glass doors on the backside of the mansion carrying a tray of raw fish filets.  Ashan and the others follow the drone through the open door as the man sets the tray down and joins in consoling his fellow prisoner.

None of these people pay the intruding party the slightest notice.

Once inside the only other person they encounter on their way upstairs to the display case is a selkie woman at a bar furiously muttering about “polishing the same sun-blasted clean cups every drowned day.”  That makes all but one target accounted for and still no sign of Logos.  With any luck, he will hold to the routine Mellírd indicated and not wake up until an hour or so before sundown.

Upstairs, the door to the second-floor study is wide open, providing unobstructed passage into a room flooded by sunlight from a wall-wide window silhouetting a stout mahogany desk with bookshelves to its right and a glass display case to its left.  A fox’s pelt, two seal skins, a gown of swan’s feathers, paired driftwood carvings of a human and a mermaid, and a torc of woven grass.  In most folk stories, such treasures would be carefully hidden away from their rightful owners who spend years searching for them to regain their freedom.  It would take both arrogance and cruelty to display them openly like this, easily found but impossible to touch behind magical defenses.

Crossing the threshold causes the glyph pattern on the drone to shift for the seventh time since beginning the infiltration.

“We’re good.  Close door,”  Lacuna’s voice says once the drone reaches the center of the room.  

Ashan waves a hand and the door swings shut.  

“Thanks.  Dropping veil ward.”  The pattern goes dark and the noise stops, taking Ashan’s headache along with it.  Lacuna’s long sigh sounds in his ear.  “Sorry about that.  For getting snippy earlier.  Harder to concentrate on than expected with all the adjustments.  Lot of concepts to hold in my head at once.  Gonna need a minute before I do much else.  Sorry.”

“It’s fine, you did great,” Road says and then turns to Ashan.  “You’re up for getting the protections off the case.”

Ashan steps forward, wand drawn and holds it half an inch off the glass of the case.  He blinks in surprise and then slowly traces a looping pattern back and forth along the length of the case.

“There is nothing there,” he says slowly.

“That was fast,” Eris says.

“No, I mean there is nothing there.  The tokens are real so far as I can tell, but there is no warding on them.”

“A trap then,” Road says.

“No,” Eris growls.  “It’s a flex.  The bastard’s saying ‘Look all you want, but I don’t even need to lock it up because I’ve got your leash so tight.’  Mages.  Probably didn’t even cross his mind that anyone else would even get this far.”  She shoulders Ashan aside and slides the glass open.  “Arrogant prick.  It isn’t even locked.”  She reaches inside and pulls out one of the driftwood carvings.

Ashan flinches, but detects no indication of a tripped ward.  A quick divination spell fails to pick up any signal from a mundane electronic alarm either.

“We are clear,” he confirms.

Road nods and joins Eris in retrieving the items, taking the feather gown and the torc.  “I’ve got my own ways to avoid detection so we’ll split these up.  Eris, you and Ashan stick with the drone, get the people by the pool and head for the extraction point.  I’ll track down -”

“I could have sworn I left this door open earlier.”

Everyone goes still at the sound of the voice outside and the turning doorknob.  The drone lopes over to where they are standing and restarts the veiling ritual just in time for the door to open and give the feather-duster-carrying maid with pale hair a clear view of an empty room.  She looks around for a moment in confusion before her gaze lands on the empty display case and her eyes go wide.

“Ma’am,” Road says, stepping into visibility with helmet retracted and proffering the swan gown, “I believe this belongs to you.”  They give a soft, warm smile of reassurance.  “You’re free now.”

The handle of the feather duster clatters on the floor.  The swan maiden gasps, hesitates, and takes a shaky step toward Road with tears welling up in her eyes.  She closes the distance and reaches a tentative hand for the feathered gown.  For her true skin.  For the stolen part of her self.

She pulls her hand back as if burned and clasps it over her mouth.  She falls to her knees, sobbing.  Now with both hands over her mouth she chokes back muffled words as well as tears.  Road leans down close to her.

“What’s wrong?” they whisper.  “How can I help?”

The swan maiden just shakes her head, hands still over her mouth, doubled over now and rocking with effort until her forehead nearly touches the floor.  Road moves to drape the feather gown over her and she screams a cry more bird than human as she skitters away.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers before throwing her head back and screeching “THIEF! INTRUDER!  HERE TO STEAL MASTER’S TREASURES!”

Three flicks of Ashan’s wand and the poor woman is gagged and bound before she can keep being used as a living alarum against her will.  There was magic in those words tied back to the one who planted them in her.  Even if the master of the house somehow failed to hear he still certainly knows.

Even restrained, the swan maiden struggles against Road’s attempt to return her skin until it is fully around her shoulders.  She goes limp, eyes suddenly less frantic but still breathing hard.  Ashan releases her bindings and she pulls the gown tighter around her.  Into her.  Before his still-hidden eyes she shrinks into a ball of white feathers until wings unfurl and a long, graceful neck rises up, proud and free, a swan once more.  She looks back to Road and gives a snort of thanks.

“You’re welcome,” they reply with a nod.

Just as they finish hastily explaining the situation to the once-again-swan and shepherding her into the concealing veil around the drone, a sourceless masculine voice echoes throughout the mansion.

“It has come to my attention that we have an intruder in our lovely home.  I’m afraid you all know what this means.  I’m sorry, but you brought this on yourselves by allowing this miscreant to get this far.”

 

Servants by Token,
Your very selves in my hands,
Be as puppets now.

Servants bound by Name,
Hearken to your master’s will.
My word is your truth.

Servants and naught else,
As the sun rises, my will,
As sets, your action.

HEED!

 

“Now, defend your master’s home!  To the death, if need be!  Resist any attempts to take you away as if they were attempts on your life!”

The swan puffs up her feathers and shudders, but otherwise does not react to the spell and subsequent commands.  Ashan takes that as a welcome sign that Logos’s mastery of nominal magic is not so much that he can command others by Name alone.  It makes him feel a little bit better about what is about to come.  He and Road look at one another and nod in unison.

“Please allow me time to engage this Logos before leaving this room,” Ashan says.

“Of course,” Road says.  “The plan still holds.  I’ll signal when everyone is clear.”

“Make him hurt for me,” Eris growls.

With one last nod of acknowledgment to the swan, Ashan steps out of the drone’s veil, slips his earpiece off and into his sleeve, and draws a barrier around himself.  His next breath mists in the air.  There is even less of an ambient field to draw from here than in the basement office, and if Logos is employing the system of magic that Ashan suspects after that incantation then that makes for an even larger home turf advantage than normal.

The doorway ward crackles with electricity at Ashan’s unveiled approach and he raises a second barrier behind him to shield the others before stepping through.  Lightning meets forcefield and turns back on its source.  With senses no longer awash with the noise of Lacuna’s travesty of a ritual, he picks out the weakest points of the ward, flicks his wand with a hooking motion and pulls.  Safely unpicking a ward like this might take the better part of an hour but - as Eris is so apt at demonstrating - destroying one can be done in seconds, with one important caveat.

One must needs be prepared for the backlash.

A burst of light and noise leaves a ragged, scorched hole in the wall twice as wide as the erstwhile doorway.  What parts of the room and outside hall are not burnt are covered in frost, and debris lays in a neat line halfway across the room where it collided with Ashan’s second barrier.  The ring of carpet around Ashan’s feet is pristine.  He drops the barriers and glides out into the hallway.

 

All starts with a spark.
Grow it, nurture it, feed it,
Send it blazing forth.

FIREBALL!

 

The roar of the flame hurtling toward Ashan is almost enough to cover the clang of metal footsteps behind it.  He syphons the fireball down to a puff of hot air and repurposes the energy to lashing the charging suit of armor into place.  Gauntlets to wall, greaves to corners of the floor, chestplate to the ceiling behind.   He puts forward a clenched fist and then snaps it open, ripping the empty construct to pieces.  A dismissive wave of that same hand sends the falling helmet crashing out the window and into the topiary before it can hit the carpet. 

“That style,” says a blonde-bearded man in a knee-length maroon dressing gown at the other end of the hall, “so much flashy yet effective gesturing.  Orthonian in origin is it not?  Dancing Dream Paints I’ve heard the technique called.”  He strokes his beard.  “Yes, you must be the young Ashan Glassheart who’s been making waves lately.”

“You must be Logos,” Ashan says.  A statement, not an answer.  To answer would be to acknowledge his name to one who might wield it as his Name.  “Was that Dorbreithan Long Chant just now?  I have always heard it lauded for its power draw to output efficiency ratio but have never seen it in action until now.”

“At last, a proper connoisseur of mystic arts,” Logos laughs.  “Why, I’m almost glad I didn’t kill you for trespassing already.”

Ashan allows himself the faintest of smiles.  It seems like Logos is just like nearly every wizard he has ever met.  The slightest bit of flattery and acknowledgment of their craft and they become all too eager to stop what they are doing and start talking shop.  It was always one of his mentor’s favorite diversionary tactics.  As much as she claimed to be immune to it herself, even she was nearly as easy to talk into showing off with a demonstration rather than an explanation.

“And fair passing glad am I to still be alive.  Tell me though, is the use of nominal magic a native part of the tradition or your own hybrid innovation?”

“Caught that did you?  As keen as the rumors say, I see.  No, we can’t all be so lucky as to be born on an anchor world.  But oh the wonders I could achieve if I were.  Still, I think I do well enough for myself, mastering obscure branches of my home world’s traditions.  And besides, what other style can match its raw poetic beauty?”

“What other indeed?  I only lament that so much of that poeticism is lost in translation for me.  I am told that even the name of the style is a lyric unto itself in its native tongue.”

“Such is ever the plight of interworld travel.  But alas, as much as I would love a peer to speak of lofty arts into the small hours with, you are a thief and a vandal in my home and I have had my fill of stalling for time.”

“You think I would stoop to stalling?”

“No, but I would.  Now let’s cut to the chase.”

A quick rotation on his heel and a spiraling conjuration sends Ashan to the ceiling just in time for three blades to pierce the empty air where he had been standing.  He cups his hands and the three suits of armor that had tried to sneak up behind him are trapped in a dome.  Three less guards to cause problems for the others.  In the seconds it takes him to neutralize the one threat and then slide down a conjured rail toward Logo’s end of the hall another incantation is nearly complete.

 

Storm's wrath gathering,
Glistening blades fall and scourge

Earth lies bare, burnt clean.

LIGHTNING!

 

The air takes on an acrid reek of ozone and Ashan’s few unbound hairs raise from the gathering static.  He drops the prior conjurations to wrap himself in an opaque cocoon that slams into Logo’s evocation.   He skids to a stop a mere yard from Logos and unspins himself from the cocoon, wand pointed at the enemy wizard and empty hand up and blocking off the corridor behind him.  From here, the edge of a most-likely-enchanted-tattoo on Logos’s chest peeking out from beneath his robe is visible.

“One who goes by Logos,” Asha says with a voice flat as a frozen lake.  “For breaking the taboo of stealing autonomy I name you sorcerer.  Surrender now and submit to your judgment.”

Logo’s expression does an impressively fast shift from shocked to smug.  “By whose authority?  This is an anchor world and I have not torn the Veil or broken the Masquerade or whatever silly term for secrecy you like.  Nor have I committed a crime within the jurisdiction of any of the hidden city states.”

“By the code of honor amongst mages shared by all civilized peoples, including those of your homeworld.  And on behalf of those who cannot fight for themselves.”

“Hah!  Just a child playing hero then.”  Logos shakes his head.  “Given all I’ve heard about you, I suppose it was only a matter of time until it came to this.  And if it wasn’t you it would have been that Road boy.  Very well then.  I suppose you’ll be wanting a formal duel?”

The idea truthfully had not crossed Ashan’s mind, but it works all too well for his role here.

“Indeed.”

“Stakes?”

“Upon my victory, you release all people, beings, and entities currently bound to you by magical means.”

“I figured as much.  Stake accepted.  Upon my victory, you speak to me your Name and allow me to bind you to my service.”

“Stake denied.  Counteroffer: Upon your victory, I surrender unto you a book of spells taken from the private library of the sorceress Bridgewood.”

Logos’s eyes narrow.  “You’re lying.  Carnette Bridgewood never parted with the slightest morsel of her hoard during her life and the library’s been locked since her death.”

Keeping his wand still pointed at Logos, Ashan slowly reaches into his sleeve with his free hand and produces Whispers of the Sun.

“I swear on the Name of my teacher who named me, I speak the truth about the origin of this tome.  Furthermore, I have read it and it contains at least one spell compatible with Dorbreithan magic.”  Ashan returns the book to the safety of his robe’s sleeve.  “Do you accept this stake?”

If the look on Logos’s face were any hungrier he would be slavering.  Whatever price he is getting from trading in sapient flesh, this is knowledge money could never buy him.  “Stake accepted.  But first I must know how you came by it.  Better to die than to inherit one of her curses from beyond the grave.”

“I have reached a mutually beneficial arrangement with the current Bridgewood and this tome is not cursed.  That is more than you need to know.”

“Oh what dark secrets the little wizard in white hides,” Logos mocks.  “Who would have thought Ashan Glassheart, the young wannabe hero, would be so close with the wife-killer?”

“As the challenged, you have the right to set the terms of the duel,” Ashan says, once again ignoring his name.

“Victory by forcing submission or incapacitation.  Anything goes on magic forms.  Retreat is forfeit.  To be held outside my house.  I’d rather avoid yet more property damage.  And partisan outside interference is forfeit, while neutral is annulment.  If the Golden Death is involved in any way, I’d just as soon not have a knife in my back mid duel.  Do you accept these terms?”

“Terms accepted.”

Channeling power into their words to complete the specialized ritual, Ashan and Logos speak in unison.

“Stakes and terms agreed upon, I enter this duel of my own free will.  Upon my magic, may this rite be upheld until a victor is found.”

 

*******

 

Several minutes later Ashan is standing halfway to the edge of the mansion’s phase shift border staring down Logos.  Or perhaps staring up, given that the man is head and shoulders taller than him.  And up close it is apparent just how well-toned the muscles beneath that ridiculous excuse for a robe are.  A sign of another wizard who understands the importance of keeping the body in shape for a sharp mind, with none of the exaggerated bulk of novices attempting to shortcut transmutation enhancements on themselves.

The two duelists nod and take seven paces backwards without breaking eye contact.  At the edge of the designated dueling field the intact three suits of armor from the hallway now stand at the ready.  Laughable substitutes for witnesses, but not a technicality of dueling etiquette that Ashan is keen to point out right now with the alternative being one or more of the people the others should even now be spiriting away to safety.  When Logos sent his dragonfly-winged gardener to wait in the house to avoid “collateral property damage” Ashan could not believe his luck.

The casual confidence that Logos is comporting himself with does little to make that luck any more credible.  It is hardly the look of a man who just failed twice in a row at murder.  Tranquil as his own face is, Ashan’s own confidence is still shaken by this morning’s sparring match with Eris.  If she, with no arcane training, could pick out flaws in his barriers that neither he nor his mentor had ever noticed simply by examining the reactions different portions had to the ice spear’s enchantment - or so she explained to him - then what might Logos, a master of a notoriously difficult spellcasting discipline, have already picked out with properly attuned senses when their magic collided in the hallway?

Not to mention the well-known folly of facing a mage in his own domain.  That there will be some manner of trap or hidden resource in play for Logos to draw on is a given.  The most likely such play would be to rescind the temporary guest access that prevented Ashan from triggering the defensive wards on the way out of the house, but that seems almost too obvious.  A distraction then from whatever the real trick Logos has planned is?

Stop thinking and start doing.

His mentor’s words ring in Ashan’s mind.  The corner of his lip creeps upward.  For all that she drilled that advice into him in his youth, it has been many a year since he last needed it.  What would she do in this situation?  How would Aliana Glassgaze continue buying time while putting her opponent off balance?

“You know, when I heard about the great wizard Logos, I was expecting something more than an old man in his pyjamas,” Ashan says with an imitation of his mentor’s smirk.  “I shall see what I can do to be gentle about this.”

She always did enjoy treating the challenger’s call marking the start of formal duels with irreverence.

“Pajamas!?” Logos sputters.  “Are novices taught no respect at all these days?  These are the traditional vestments of the Mystics of the Unending Word!”

“You might have the color right, but the vestments of the Mystics of the Unending Word are floor-brushing robes of heavy wool to endure the climate of mountaintop temples.  That is a thin silk dressing gown short enough to be daring in a light breeze that you tossed on in a hurry after waking up to the sound of your house exploding.”

“You bottom-feeding anchor mage.  I will not abide such disrespect from a man in a dress.”

“Says the man still wearing fuzzy bedroom slippers.”

“Enough!  If you cannot recognize peak performance when you see it, then you must be -”

 

BLIND!

 

Ashan’s vision blurs.  Spots of black limned with chimerical colors bloom and spread like holes burnt in a page.  He wraps a barrier around himself by reflex, the motion rote enough to only need be seen in his mind’s eye.  He hunkers down, listening for the attack to come while he is vulnerable.

 

Hunter in the night,
A flash of claws then stillness.
Once were two, now none.

Mist upon the ground,
Such an ephemeral thing,
Gone with the sunrise.

VANISH!

 

Ashan’s eyes clear just in time to see Logos flicker into invisibility.  

“I understand your technique relies heavily on visualization,” Logos’s voice echoes from everywhere at once.  “Such an eminently exploitable weakness.”

As if any wizard worth their robes could not sense the aetherial hotspot of an active tactical-scale invisibility spell.  Ashan drops his barrier to keep its own signature from interfering as he quickly gauges the hotspot's speed and direction then begins visualizing the arc of a dome.

“What, all out of witty retorts already?”

Splitting his own concentration between banter and spellcasting was one skill that Ashan’s mentor never had been able to properly teach him, albeit not for lack of trying.  Just as well; he has come to find ethereally silent tranquility to carry its own intimidation factor.

“Or are you just now realizing how far you are outclassed, boy?”

 

The drunkard stumbles.
Streets leading home twist strangely.
The lantern smashes.

 

The hotspot is still on course toward where Ashan imagines the dome will be.  Impressive that the sorcerer can still chant while running at that speed.

 

Smoke reaches the peak,
The mountain cannot see past.
Its neighbors are lost.

 

Just a moment more…

 

HAZE!

 

A buzzing fills Ashan’s ears and the aetherial signature of the “Vanish” spell’s hotspot begins distorting and bleeding out across the dueling field.  As do any signs of the property’s wards.  Not a second later and Ashan’s magic sensitivity detects little more than a vague static.  While not as utterly overwhelming as Lacuna’s abomination of a ritual, it is still more than enough to keep him from picking out anything useful from the noise.

He flicks his wand in a key-turning motion and the glassy barrier of his trap arcs from the ground and snaps back down in a dome.  A muffled thump and an echoing projected grumble of “Nine hells!” soon follows.

His sense of timing, it would seem, is still as strong as ever.

 

Such arrogance to
Reject our reality,
Substitute your own.

DISPEL!

 

Ashan’s conjuration barely wavers at the attempt.  He points the wand at the apex of the dome and then begins lowering his arm, slowly so as to not destabilize the spell too much while he shrinks it.

 

Such arrogance to
Reject our reality,
Substitute your own.

One will against all,
A comforting lie you tell,
Doomed to fall apart.

DISPEL!

 

The dome begins to lose cohesion, bulging and sagging like a soap bubble in the breeze.  Irritating but nothing he cannot handle.  He cups his free hand so that distance and perspective give the illusion of gripping the conjuration to stabilize it.  It stabilizes and continues to shrink.  Half the original diameter now.  Ashan continues to look through his cupped hand while moving to a warmer spot, crunching frozen grass beneath his feet.

 

The tortured earth groans,
Writhing for its skin fits not,
Never shall it sleep.

We build on a shell.
Solidity is a myth.
The beast beneath stirs.

QUAKE!

 

The ground beneath Ashan’s feet trembles, but he has trained with far greater threats to his footing.  The earth roils in waves, but he has danced on the decks of storm-tossed ships.  The land splinters and cracks, vomiting up stones and leaving ragged pits behind, but he simply conjures a platform to stand on and leaves the attempt to break his concentration beneath him.

 

Such arrogance to
Reject our reality,
Substitute your own.

One will against all,
A comforting lie you tell,
Doomed to fall apart.

Fool who would be god
Your will does not shape the truth.
Behold your folly.

DISPEL!

 

Ashan’s dome is multilayered and near small enough to crush the sorcerer with it when it flies apart like water from a spun goblet.  He falls through his platform onto the still ground and lands lightly on his feet.  Logos’s spells of concealment are still very much in effect when the next incantation begins echoing from all around.  Ashan makes a tapping gesture with his wand, leaving behind a formless invisible marker that he can only just sense through the “Haze.”  He starts moving.

The scream and the crash from the direction of the mansion is enough to get Logos to break off his incantation without locking in the command word.  Ashan’s misting breath hitches.  Road’s promised signal?  No, that scream is not a voice he recognizes.  A complication with resisting rescue then.

“What infernal trickery is this?”  Logos’s shout rings throughout the phase-shifted mansion grounds.  “Call off your thieving accomplices Glassheart.  This duel is annulled!”

“It is no such thing,” Ashan replies cooly.  “The duel itself has yet not been affected, the terms still stand.  And my companions are not thieves for people cannot be stolen, only captured and forced into bondage or liberated.”  He places another marker.

“Hells take you!”

“You could try to stop them, but you and I both know that would count as a forfeit by retreat.”

The sorcerer’s sourceless growl of frustration is loud and low enough to be felt in Ashan’s bones more than heard.  

“Activate procedure twenty-two.”

The three suits of animated armor that had been watching the duel turn around and begin running toward the mansion to engage the still-unseen-from-here Road and Eris.  Ashan places another marker.

“As for you,” Logo’s voice says, “Enough playing around.  You’ll be incapacitated enough for the duel when you’re dead!”

 

All starts with a spark
Grow it, nurture it, feed it
Send it blazing forth.

Flame calls to us all,
We answer once and again,
In timeless cleansing.

Gift of the dragons
Raining down to cry out doom,
All before you burns.

FIREBALL!

 

A floating circle of flame appears yards in the air above the dueling field and dozens of balls of flame like the one Ashan stopped in the hallway begin raining down from its circumference.  Some seem to be aimed at him but most seem to scatter randomly.  With the “Haze” still in effect and preventing Ashan from sensing them without looking, not dodging out of the way of one fireball and into another is harder than it would normally be for him.

And yet it is still easier than keeping up with Eris’s spearwork, and hardly holds a candle to Road’s swordplay.  That had been enough to overcome both him and Eris at once.

More offensive spells come, all of a similar caliber with two and three verse incantations.  Writhing and persistent arcs of lighting.  Erupting stone spikes.  Spinning blades of light.  Throughout it all Ashan stays purely on the defensive.  Converting the heat from fireballs into conjured lightning rods and shields to stay the blades.  Balancing on the tips of the spikes.  Laying more markers in the air.  

There are strings between the markers now; a variation on the wayfinding spell he used on the cave mission.  They are not true conjurations, not yet, and should be invisible even to Logos.

Meanwhile, the sounds of fighting continue from the other side of the mansion.  Ashan has not seen anyone leave yet, but that could just mean Eris is keeping the guardian armors busy while Road smuggles everyone out with Lacuna’s drone.  Best to keep Logos thinking he has him on the run until Road gives the signal that everyone is out and the duel is void due to Logos no longer being able to fulfill his stake by freeing those who are already free.

Or until Ashan can wrap things up in a single move.

The sound of shattering glass, splintering wood, and tearing metal is not the signal Ashan has been waiting for, but signals an opportunity all the same when a giant metal knight formed from the composited and rearranged components of half a dozen suits of animated armor bursts backwards from the front wall of the mansion pursued by a gleefully howling Eris.  The sight and sound of this second duel destroying his house is enough of a distraction for Logos to momentarily cease his chanting attacks.

That is all the opening Ashan needs to trace the lines between his markers and spin a shining web that would make any spider proud, with himself at the center.  He raises his wand to the sky and spins in place, swirling the web into a contracting spiral and sweeping up anything caught between the gaps.  A strand whips around something unseen, dragging it along.  Logos’s shouted curse begins to transition into another incantation.  The rest of the web’s strands continue their path around until they t0o collide with the invisible sorcerer, wrapping around him and cutting off his words of power.

In the background, a corner of the mansion’s upper level, now bereft of support, crashes to the ground.

The strands of the web weave into a braided rope, neatly outlining the cocooned Logos and leashing him to the tip of Ashan’s wand.  Ashan jerks on the conjuration and his bound opponent flies over the half dozen intervening yards of broken, burnt, and frosted-over earth and grass to come to an abrupt stop within arm’s reach, still held upright.  Ashan stabs his wand into the cocoon and elicits a muffled grunt of pain.  With direct contact, the “Vanish” and “Haze” spells are no longer enough to conceal their source.  He rips the wand away and the concealing spells with it, revealing Logos struggling to open his mouth beneath Ashan’s transparent conjuration.  The front of his dressing gown has fallen partly open, revealing the geometric tattoos on his chest.

Behind them, Eris - now on top of the conglomerate knight - whoops with excitement as she repeatedly stabs into it with her new spear, freezing component pieces together for her to violently rip away from the central mass.

Ashan allows himself to shiver and flexes his numb fingers.

“By the terms of the duel,” Ashan begins, “you have lost by incapa-”

Logos’s tattoo flashes and the strands around his neck shatter.

“You are no longer welcome in my home.”

It is then that Ashan realizes he is standing on top of one of the ward lines he had lost track of in the “Haze.”

The ward abruptly and roughly lifts the young wizard into the air and begins violently shaking him.  Short, shallow, stinging cuts begin appearing across his skin, growing deeper every time they overlap.  Unable to stain his enchanted robes, his blood begins trickling out of his sleeves and around a ring at the hem near his ankles before being flung out in scattered droplets by the shaking.

Ashan drops his wand.  The conjuration binding Logos flickers out.

Unable to move properly to draw a conjuration, unable to concentrate enough to envision one through the pain, true, genuine fear steals into Ashan for the first time in a very long time.  His thoughts race.  Where is Road?  Was that flash just now the signal?  Why isn’t Eris helping him?  What would Aliana do now?  Is he really going to die to this ridiculous, arrogant, monster of a man?  Did they rescue everyone?  Did he buy enough time?  Why didn’t he see that coming with the tattoo?  How could he have been so careless with the ward?  What is Logos chanting now?  If he had forgiven Aliana, would he be in this mess now?  Why could he not bring himself to confront his true parents after returning home?

If he can convert the heat from another mage’s conjured fireball into energy for his own spell, what is stopping him from doing the same for a passive kinetic ward with no directing will behind it?

In any less desperate circumstance the idea would be absurd.  At any other time he would be able to recite eight different theorems on why it should not work.  At the moment he cannot recall any of them and the idea makes perfect, simple, elegant sense.

Ashan’s gaze goes glassy and distant as the shaking on his body lessens and a spark flickers to life in the air before him.  New cuts stop appearing on his skin and the spark grows into a candle flame.  The shaking stops altogether and the candle grows into a torch. He lowers until his toes just brush the ground and he cups his hands around the flame he has poured his will into.  It is warm, but does not burn.

Dimly he realizes that Logos’s chanting has trailed off and the sorcerer is now staring into the flame with a contented expression and glazed eyes that reflect the dancing fire.  Ashan moves the flame in his hands back and forth, still keeping his own gaze fixed at nothing, and the sorcerer wavers back and forth in place to follow it.

“By the terms of the duel,” Ashan begins again.

The last of the imbued power forming the ward runs out.

Ashan drops to his knees on the ground.

The fire in his hands flickers and dies.

The look on Logos’s face contorts into rage.

Ashan scrambles to coax the flame back to life.  Frost blankets the ground, rapidly spreading out from around him.  Grass freezes and audibly cracks.  Mist condenses and blankets the dueling field.  Ashan’s cuts from the ward flare with pins and needles.  The back of his neck burns.

The flame comes back, no more than a sputtering match.

Logos becomes enraptured once more, nonetheless.

Ashan tries to force the words to end the duel out through chattering teeth.  It makes no sense.  So much energy flowing through him, from him, out of him, exhausting him, but the flame is still so small.  Where is it all going?

The flame goes out.

 

BIND!

 

Ashan feels a tugging sensation on his numb arms, urging them to his sides

 

BIND!

BIND!

BIND!

BIND!

 

Ashan’s limbs snap together.  Not that he had much strength left to move them anyway.

He looks up.  Logos is standing over him, breathing hard.  He has Ashan’s blood on his hands.

 

No chains so tight as
Those in the prisoner's mind
Waiting for the rope.

The muscles grow stiff,
Blood congeals, breath halts, eyes glaze.
In death all is still.

BIND!

 

Ashan’s posture snaps upright, face forward, neck stiff and unable to turn, shoulders thrown back, arms and legs pressed in tight enough to be painful.

“Amazing isn’t it?” Logos pants.  “As worthlessly inefficiently taxing as chant discarding normally is, you can get so much extra oomph with just a little bit of blood to strengthen the targeting.”

 

Winter's lash falls harsh.
Wind bites, snow cuts, frostbite gnaws,
Scouring flesh and soul.

The storm drowns voices
Blinds the eye, and steals all warmth
Nothing left but white.

BLIZZARD!

 

A cold wind blows, stealing the last remnants of warmth from Ashan’s skin.  Unseasonal flakes begin to fall from the sky.

“The thermodynamic twisting was clever, I admit,” Logos says, “but I’ve had just about enough of that.  Now then, by the terms of this duel, you have lost by -”

“I do not yield.”

“Yield or not, there is no more you can do, boy.”

 

In the Beginning
There was the Word, and the Word,
The Word was Fire.

 

“Oh, this should be amusing.  Go ahead boy, knock yourself out.”

 

From stars worlds are born.
Is it any wonder then
They embrace in death?

 

Unable to move, but still able to speak, there’s one more desperate gambit from Whispers of the Sun to call on.  The author’s analysis of the spell’s poetry had been compelling enough for Ashan to read it all, despite the pure destruction of it.

 

Ashes to ashes,
Stardust to stardust. But lo!
In between is life.

 

Dorbreithan Long Chant.  The Unending Word.  The primary strength of the style has always been lauded as its efficiency in taking a small power draw and producing outsized effects.  The unwieldiness of its long cast times are supposedly made up for by the end effect increasing nearly exponentially compared to power input the longer an incantation goes, allowing dramatic end results for the price of what most other styles would expend on simple cantrips.  A midpoint between rituals and pure spellcasting.

 

Fire we all are.
From fire we all sprang forth.
In fire all end.

 

Ashan draws on the thin ambient magic, marginally thicker now in the wake of the duel.  He draws on heat as much as he dares and feels his body wrack with freezing pain and then go numb.  He draws on his own metabolism.  He feels a warmth inside.

 

Hark! I am flame and
flame is light.  I am fire
and fire is sun.

 

Five verses of chant.  The full spell has hundreds, ever increasing in structural complexity and conceptual density, but any more now would risk unacceptable collateral damage, even in his weakened state.  Even incomplete, the air is already growing hot.  What was moments ago frost and mist on the ground begins rising back up as steam.  Feeling creeps back in and sweat runs down Ashan’s face.  Something, somewhere begins to smell burnt.  Logos’s gloating face gives way to fear.

 

NOVA!

 

The back of Ashan’s neck burns.

The rising steam flash-freezes into particulate ice.

Ashan goes as limp as his bindings will allow.

Nothing happens.

Logos laughs.  Nervously at first, then mockingly, then victoriously.

“An admirable try boy, I’ll give you that much.  A shame to waste such talent so young.  But, let me show you how a real wizard does it.  Now how did that go again?”

 

In the Beginning
There was the Word, and the Word,
The Word was Fire.

From stars worlds are born.
Is it any wonder then
They embrace in death?

Ashes to ashes,
Stardust to stardust. But lo!
In between is life.

Fire we all are.
From fire we all sprang forth.
In fire all end.

Hark! I am flame and
flame is light.  I am fire
and fire is sun.

NOVA!

 

A pinprick mote of light appears in the air between the two mages.  It grows in size and intensity to the size of a heart and so bright that it pierces Ashan’s closed eyes.

A miniature sun.

The bonds holding Ashan vanish and he falls forward onto the ground.  He struggles to push himself up onto hands and knees, cracks his eyes open, and glimpses Logos fleeing the bright and still-growing thing he just created.  The thought crosses Ashan’s mind to start syphoning what surely must be abundant energy off of the working before him and converting it into a self-reinforcing bubble to contain the coming blast.

If he were in a better shape, that might be viable.  Funny, the second and third times in his life he has burnt out happening within a month of one another.   If Aliana were here she would lay into him for not being more careful.  And then hug him, cry, and promise to do better protecting him while she nurses him back to health.  Maybe buy him sweets that she knows he is too old for but that will somehow make him feel better anyway.

His leg is numb enough that he barely feels it when the spear pierces his calf and pins it to the ground.  It is more with curiosity than anything else that he watches the thick sheet of ice spread from the point of impact and crawl up his leg to engulf his body.  Where is it all coming from?

A crimson blur brushes past him and the light from the miniature sun dims.  He looks back up to see Eris eclipsing it.

The last thing Ashan sees before the ice reaches his face and he figures it would be best to close his eyes is Eris’s silhouette with her back to him and light streaming from between her fingers as she holds back the sun.

 

*******

 

The first thing Ashan hears upon regaining a tenuous consciousness is a repeating heavy, wet, crunching sound.

The ground he is lying on is warm and slightly damp, and after a struggle to open leaden eyelids he sees vapor rising up from the earth around him.  A white flake floats down and lands on the back of his hand.  He forces a blink, trying to focus.  It is ash.

There is a voice accompanying those wet, thudding, crunches.  He cannot quite make out the words.  Or is it only growling?

He tries to shift his position but finds the calf of one cold, numb, and immovable.  Oh right, the spear.  He stretches out an arm to find that the ground mere inches further away from where the hand had lain is intolerably hot.  The reflex of jerking his hand back is enough to tire him.

The sound continues.  He smells something burning.

Pushing himself up onto his elbows is a trial that he surprises himself in passing.  Lifting his head enough to look forward while keeping his fully unbound hair out of his eyes is hardly easier.  The urge to go back to sleep is treacherous and so he quashes it.

He is lying at the edge of a small crater, maybe about as wide across as he is tall.  Hard to judge with the smoke, ash, dust, and steam all swirling together in and around it.  On the other side of that blasted pit a hulking, demonic figure with fire for hair that flows down over the black-and-red carapace of its shoulders and back is repeatedly stomping something obscured by the low-hanging steam.  Its lips are pulled back nearly to its ears is what might just as easily be a snarl or a grin but either way is all teeth.

Amidst the creature’s slew of invectives and vocalizations more beast than human, Ashan manages to pick out the phrase “slaving piece of human garbage,” as one of the few intelligible mutterings directed at whatever it is crushing.

“Eris!”  A voice calls from off to the side.  Road, still armored and running at a full tilt, emerges from the smoke and dust.  They throw something small, round, and blue that bursts over top of the hellish creature, showing it with water and dousing its flames.  The monster does not seem to notice.

“Eris, stop!” Road shouts again, coming to a stop next to the stomping thing.  Their blade of orange light is drawn and lit.  It does not look at them.  It keeps stomping.

Road’s helmet retracts back into their armor and they gently place their free hand on the monster’s shoulder.  “You can stop,” they say softly enough that Ashan has to strain to hear.  It stops.  Their blade is still drawn and positioned at the ready.

A mechanical whir heralds the arrival of the headless black drone through the haze.  It nudges the looming creature’s leg, at last eliciting a reaction.  Its face softens as it turns to look down into the drone’s camera.  Road extinguishes and holsters their sword before it turns around all the way.

“Yo, sis,” Eris says.  “Don’t worry, I’m fine.  Ashan over there prolly needs one of those healing rituals you said you had.”  She cocks a thumb over in Ashan’s direction and then promptly falls over.  Road catches her.

The acknowledgement snaps Ashan from his surreal daze enough that he finally thinks to call out.  All that escapes his throat is a dry coughing fit that sends his face back to the ground.

 

*******

 

The first thing Ashan hears upon regaining a comfortable, if drowsy, consciousness is birdsong and the wall-muffled ticking of grandfather clock.

It occurs to him that he is alive, awake, and in a different place.  This revelation causes him to sit bolt upright and begin conjuring a shield.  The former makes his vision swim and the latter elicits a sharp pain in the back of his neck.  He gasps and falls back into the pillow of the bed of one of the guest bedrooms of the bed and breakfast above the office.  He tries again, more slowly this time and without doing anything to aggravate the burnout.  Scanning the room, he locates his wand on the bedside table next to an untouched water glass and his robes hanging in an open wardrobe.  The sight of them both intact and accounted for calms him.

More belatedly, he realizes that his arms are free of any sign of the myriad cuts inflicted by the tripped ward.  Lifting the bedsheets and finds his legs similarly unblemished.  At the lack of scar or even bandages, he begins to wonder if he only dreamt the spear and everything else that happened after tripping the ward.

He is still pondering the possibility when a gentle knocking at the door arrives, followed by a “Do you mind if I come in?”

“You may enter,” Ashan answers, realizing his mistake too late.  Glancing furtively from the turning doorknob to his hanging robes and back again, he pulls the bedsheets higher and tighter up around himself.

“I thought I heard you moving in here,” Road says, entering with a soft smile and a tea tray.  Their armor is an unassuming, if distinctively colored, jacket once more.  “You want the door open or closed?”  

It takes Ashan a moment to process the unexpected question.  “Open, please.”  The soothing, regular tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway is louder with the door open.

Road nods, sets the tray on the bed next to Ashan, pulls a wooden chair out from the room’s desk, spins it on one leg to face him and takes a seat.

The smell of steeped herbs and warm toast serves as a powerful reminder to Ashan that it has been at least a day since he last ate.  He resists the urge to indulge just yet and asks “How long?”

“Just under a day,” Road replies.  “You were in and out of it a few times but I’m not surprised you don’t remember it.  After we got everyone out safely Lacuna and I went back for you and Eris.  By that time you’d already beaten Logos, but it looked like that last big blast had just about done all three of you in.  Lacuna did some emergency triage and our fair lady of the green healed you up more thoroughly afterwards.  She doesn’t mix well with burns though and Eris had a few of those despite the fireproofing charm she had on her, so we had to get her back here for the autodoc to deal with the worst of it.  Lacuna’s downstairs with her, whipping up some sort of tailor-made ritual to deal with the scars and anything else that might have been missed now that she’s calmed down enough to safely cast anything complex.”

“And Logos?”  As much as Ashan fears the answer, he has to know.

The characteristic warmth of Road’s expression disappears as abruptly as any Ashan has drained from the air for a spell.  “I handed him over to Sullivan,” they say plainly.

A chill unrelated to magic runs down Ashan’s spine.  “I thought he was still out on the lighthouse keeper investigation,” he says.

“Following up on Logos’s past clients was higher priority, and between Eris and our fair lady of the green there wasn’t anything left of his house to search for records.”

“So you are leaving Sullivan to interrogate him?”  Torture him, he almost says.

The look on Road’s face seems almost hurt at the suggestion.  “No, he and Carnette had their own more effective and humane ways of information gathering, along with ways to hold beings like Logos in stasis, seeing as the powers that be in Crossherd won’t take him on account of it not being a Masquerade breach or in their jurisdiction.”  They pause and a measure of warmth returns.  “I can understand why you would think that though.  Sullivan does have a certain reputation in some circles and he loves little more than fanning the flames on rumors about himself.”

“So he did not…”

Road shakes their head.  “Sullivan didn’t murder Carnette, no.  More detail than that about what happened to her isn’t my place to say, but I can assure you, while their marriage did start out strictly as a business arrangement, they wound up loving one another in a way that I don’t think either of them ever had thought themselves capable of before.  Even if they were unorthodox with their displays of affection.  Don’t ever let him hear you say it, but he’s got a more tender heart than you’d think, underneath all the knives and gilt.”

“I shall… I shall take that under consideration.”  Truthfully he had not given much thought to their relationship.  To Ashan, the sorceress Bridgewood was the most famous mage of his time, pushing the boundaries of mortal magic while maintaining the will to refrain from abusing that which most considered taboo to even study due to the inherent temptations.  Sullivan was just an odd, obscure, off-putting, caretaker to her legacy.  To think of either of them in a romantic capacity with anyone, much less each other feels somehow wrong to him to contemplate too closely.

“Anywho,” Road says, brightly as ever, “I’ll not keep you from eating any longer.  I’ll be right down the hall if you need anything.”

Ashan blushes at the realization of how much his gaze has been wandering to the nearby tray instead of making eye contact.  “Thank you.

“Anytime.  Oh, and one more thing,” Road adds, pausing halfway out the door with one hand on the frame.  “If it’s not too personal, I’ve been meaning to ask, what’s with the tattoo on the back of your neck?”

Ashan blinks at them, uncomprehending.

“What tattoo?”