Erec hung upside down, wire wrapped around his ankles and digging deep into the skin. His feet throbbed, and the blood rushed to his head; all around him, shadows and fog swirled. Now and again, he caught a suggestion of wolves in the mist, spiraling through the fog in the warehouse Dame Morgana brought them to.
Without straining to listen, Erec heard the cries and grunts of his friends. After a second or two, he’d see a flash of light through the fog that marked the use of lightning magic.
I have to give it to him; they are impressive.
When Colin used his lightning, it cracked through the air with a violent light, cutting through vast swaths of fog and hitting with a force Erec would find difficult to match. Since returning from the expedition, Colin had been working to improve his magic, using his newfound Talent.
But until now, Erec had never seen practical results from the training.
Below, Erec caught a fat squirrel scrambling by, rushing around and avoiding the paws of a foggy wolf; in five seconds, both the squirrel and the wolf returned to the haze that dominated the warehouse once more.
Utter chaos.
A fog wolf appeared right below; jaws extended as it leaped to bite Erec—he curled up, flexing his abs and narrowly avoiding it and consequently not having his face bitten off.
“Come on,” Erec swayed, relaxing as the wolf vanished, moving back and forth to gain momentum and getting himself out of the way of another fog-wolf apparition.
The more he moved, the harder it was to control his swinging body while upside down. Coordinating like this was nearly impossible. Even worse, Dame Morgana had forbidden him from using his axe; without it, and with the near-infinite supply of her shadows, he felt like a sack of dangling meat for their dinner.With each dodge and his lack of control over the situation, he felt his inner control disappear.
They came thicker by the second—he kept swaying, dodging, but eventually, with the number of wolves and their sheer volume, he began to catch wounds, stinging, cold bites as their ethereal teeth cleaved through his flesh. Blood started to flow, and the anger built.
It was like hot coals in his stomach; each little nick and wound roared them into a heating inferno.
Useless.
Without his axe, he couldn’t reach them. He couldn’t cut himself down. Which was Damn Morgana’s point, but when they’d first gone to Boldwick, Erec had assumed the Master Knight would be the ones training them.
No, though. He brought them to Dame Morgana, who within five seconds came up with this crazed plan to begin her ‘five-day sojourn to form the foundation for the rest of your exceptional lives’ and hanging here acting like a sack of meat for ghost-wolves to take bites out of wasn’t the type of training Erec banked on when he first begged Boldwick for this specialized training. What was he supposed to get out of this? While Dame Morgana had her merits, especially regarding the matter of the soul, that had not been what Erec thought to be the most important thing his friends lacked.
Lifting heavy weights, fighting to the brink of exhaustion, blood—admittedly, he was already bleeding… That was the type of training they needed to prepare for the inevitable battles headed their way.
A wolf jumped at him, twisting in the air as Erec moved to dodge; the fang cut the skin above his eyebrow, leaving cold, searing pain. It landed with a howl as warm blood gushed from the injury it left.
The veins in him seared, anger building like that of a volcano.
Beneath, he heard scampering, and Erec was already twisting, trying to get a look at the next conjuration headed this way—but it wasn’t a wolf. No. Just a fat squirrel beneath him, its whiskers twitching as it grunted and gestured at him.
Munchy?
A wolf appeared next to the squirrel, jaws wide as it flew at it.
“Move!” Erec yelled.
Munchy heard him, then threw itself to the side, letting out a massive squeak as the incorporeal fog wolf tripped over its failed attack and vanished.
A second later, the fog bent away from Munchy, then from Erec—wolves circled in a ring as Garin walked through a bubble of empty space, holding the mist away as if by a spell.
His face was screwed up in a look of concentration, but as he laid eyes on Erec, there was pure relief; he reached out and steadied Erec, stopping the wild swaying all of the dodging had brought. Seeing a second of peace in the storm, Munchy scampered up Garin.
All the while, Erec watched the wolves in the distance, circling, testing the perimeter. The fog tried to find a weak point in the invisible barrier to attack once more.
“Hanging in there?” Garin asked.
“No choice but to,” Erec sighed, the fire in him burning brighter. The whole solution to this wire problem was his axe—but Morgana had taken it away.
The only solution was to summon that silver axe of his and to call upon the fire he barely understood. If he could wield that power, blowing away these pesky wolves and freeing himself would be trivial. That power was his—according to Morgana. Until he could learn to grasp it, he would stay hanging here. Both Garin and Colin had strict instructions that he had to free himself; they were to try to deal with the wolves on their own.
This game was a competition between the three of them. Morgana said they each had a way to deal with the fog; they just had to find it.
Erec knew his solution.
But it wasn’t that simple. The last time he called upon that power, he’d gotten the distinct impression it wasn’t his power. When he fought the former CEO-turned-monster of Vortex Industries, Dan, it felt like another person joined him. Even now, the memories he’d experienced from the depth of that inferno haunted him and left a spark of wariness; if he used that power, would he even be himself anymore?
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Since then, trying to dive too deep into the silver fire was impossible. A mental block.
Fire roiled in him, but Erec feared what might happen if it boiled over.
I can’t let this continue. Not with what could happen.
Garin twitched as five wolves tried to breach his invisible barrier at once, flinching but maintaining their flawless defense once more. How that power translated to Garin dispelling this mist… Erec could see how, but his friend would need much more power than he was currently straining to muster.
“And how are you hanging on, down there?” Erec asked, letting the fire in him burn, trying to focus and concentrate on it, to let it grow.
“It’s too difficult, I can’t do it,” Garin replied, sweat rolling off his face… The skin on his friend’s hands was flaking away. A sign of his body’s impurities being flushed as his skill with his Soul virtue increased. “This is harder than talking to the rats. It’s like those wolves have voices… But they don’t. They want to bite us, attack us, but it’s not like a hungry animal, and they aren’t alive—they don’t even have individual memories, more like a collection. And trying to ‘talk’ to that and convince it to stop is… Difficult.”
“Then I’ll get out and end this,” Erec vowed.
“Will you? Hurry then, I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this,” Garin said, his face screwed up further—outside in the fog, several wolves appeared, running straight towards them. Munchy uttered a cry of fear as they leaped—clearing through the edge of the fog held at bay and into the bubble of free space that should have kept them out.
A bolt of electricity tore through the three from the fog, vanishing them in an instant.
In the wake of the attack, a channel was carved out of the warehouse’s fog, through which Colin ran until he was in the protective bubble.
As Colin looked at them, sparks danced from his eyes—they glowed a brilliant gold as his gaze shifted left and right. Without even saying a greeting, he raised a pointed finger towards a condensing part of the fog barrier; a purple glyph formed quicker than Erec had ever seen his friend muster before. The spell discharged into another bolt of lightning, dispersing the thickening part of the mist.
Only this time, part of it looped back, shooting into Colin and slamming into his chest; Colin convulsed but stood his ground, more sparks flying from him.
Like Garin, Colin seemed to have yet to break past the threshold where using his Soul virtue stopped taking a physical toll.
With that last blast, Garin established a solid hold over the area; the fog retreated at the edges and became less dense.
It was only a matter of time, though, before it regained strength and attacked once again.
“Work quicker, rust bucket,” Colin said as the electricity started to ease. No more bolts were running from his eyes, but sparks were still dancing between his fingertips. “Damn, that woman. ‘Defeat the spirits of the world before—for we are in the world of now, my lovelies,’ as if such drivel makes any sense. At least her pointer about focusing on lightning has worked. I get far more for my mana by using it than other spells.”
Colin’s golden eyes narrowed—he raised those hands, already sparking, and then yet another purple glyph formed and firmed, blasting off and cutting a line through the fog this time.
He stood for a second, a smug look on his face before his body convulsed, and he fell to his knees.
“Colin!” Garin said, rushing over to him to help him back up.
Erec swayed above as his friend helped the once spoiled noble, who then took a deep, shuddering breath.
“I am alright. That was another trouble spot brewing; I could see it with my eyes. You both may offer me gratitude now, considering Erec has failed to end this task for us, like he should have done twenty minutes ago.”
“I’m trying. Alright? It’s not easy to wield that much firepower,” Erec growled, letting his temper flare at the clear goading by Colin. He wasn't sure whether or not his friend was trying to help or make a jab. Either way, might as well use it.
The fire inside stoked brighter, and he could catch flickers of silver.
But as he dug deep, trying to grasp the silver flames, they flickered out of his hand, sensing his fear. Instead, he was hanging upside down inside the massive warehouse—the place was large, primarily used for storing crops, yet currently empty. It’d been purchased and repurposed for future trading good storage by the merchants below just a couple of days ago, likely for an ambitious bid at establishing surface trade.
Dame Morgana deemed it perfect for their first ‘step along the path of enlightenment.’ Still, it was just a convenient sealed location where her power could be used without affecting innocent bystanders.
Still, since it was so large, this was the first time all of them managed to regroup since the test started thirty minutes ago. And Erec was quite glad to see his friends—even if they were forbidden from cutting him down.
“If you cannot muster your power to end this, then I suppose I must,” Colin declared, taking a deep, sagging breath, “I, the son of a great Duke and heir to the House Nitidus… Yes. This is where I surpass you, Erec.” An edge that wasn’t usually there.
There was something to his tone. Erec swayed as much as he could to get a good look at the noble.
“Behold.”
A glyph appeared before Colin as both hands raised—purple lines began to streak outward from the extended palm, circling back upon each other and forming complex angles and curves; yet, even as the first glyph appeared, a second came into existence in front of it. A second layer that instantly took Erec’s mind to the last time he’d seen such a formation, back within the depths of the Vortex Industries facility, wielded by an Arch-Magi.
In an explosion of lines, both glyphs expanded, intertwining in a way Erec had never seen before—the air felt thicker, and something intangible drew him towards the glyph.
From Erec’s understanding of Mysticism, it was a power supplied by the mana within. It was one of its fundamental teachings in class. Faith was the opposite, power provided by the goddess above and brought into the world through the pathway of prayer.
But as the glyphs developed, as they glowed brighter, they pulled, adding weight to the room. The glyphs beyond them wavered and retreated further, afraid of what Colin was calling.
There was a sudden bang, and the glyphs vanished—a lance of pure crackling thunder tunneled out of Colin’s palms directly into the mist, branching off in a thousand pathways like a temporary, split-second network of plant roots. Each line split, breaking, twisting, and tearing through every inch of the warehouse’s interior; Erec’s eyes ached as it was filled with a blinding white and purple flash that seared itself in his retinas even as he closed his eyes.
A second later, the light was gone.
Pockets of mist existed—separated, loose, and rapidly dispersing.
All at once, shame, anger, and the hate brewing in Erec retreated in complete awe of what he’d witnessed.
“Colin, what was that?” Erec said.
“I solved the problem you couldn’t, hero. My training had a purpose, and this is it. These eyes are the key I needed to step onto the stage of the greats finally,” Colin boasted, setting his hands on his hips and giving the smugest but most deserved smile Erec had ever seen across his face.
Then, a bolt of lightning appeared above and smashed into Colin, crashing him into the ground as it kept surging into the man—blow after blow hit, sparks flying and somehow, by the grace of the Goddess, not catching anything on fire.
Erec knew what he’d seen. The backlash of overextending on the use of his Soul and Talent—Similar to the early days of his using Fury and accessing the silver fire. Colin went too far and broke through some kind of barrier. But there was a price to pay for that.
The rest of the mist withdrew as Colin suffered.
Garin jumped to try to help Colin but was helpless as more bolts of electricity rained down from above—then, at once, began to shout for help from Morgana, from anyone, to try to stop this barrage of the heavens.
Erec struggled, feet bound by steel wire. Helpless. For the first time in a long while, he realized his well-being wasn’t the one in concern after a big, grueling fight. Actually, for this one, he’d managed little at all. A fact that tore at his heart, even as he watched a convulsing Colin get hit for the seventh time by an overwhelming streak of lightning.
Morgana rushed in, set him free, and they waited for the storm to cease above Colin.