He was sure he could outlast her, outthink her, outwait her. He'd persuaded himself he'd seen through her strategy. This was a contest of reserves and wits—and after so many years of existence, his composure dwarfed hers. He settled in, utterly at ease.
Magical shields offered nothing against her arrows, so he stopped wasting magic on them—useless anyway. Every time a shot came for him, he stepped behind the sea beast. When he couldn't dodge, he deflected the arrow with the staff. He'd see who ran dry first.
Thea noticed the change and blinked. He's cooperating. She didn't think much of it. She kept her rhythm, arrow after arrow, steady as a heartbeat.
The mage felt he had the upper hand—his staff spinning like a windmill as he batted arrow after arrow aside, left and right, while cold eyes watched her from beneath his hood, filled with mockery. Look at her, so certain of herself. What a novel opponent. Something nagged at him, but he pushed it away. Stay defensive. No matter what she's planning, I can't be beaten as long as I hold out.
He committed to a war of attrition and batted away another arrow.
His hand felt light.
He looked at it. The staff was gone.
In his hand was a gemstone.
He stared at it, seized it with his focus, and pushed his mage's perception through it. In his years of experience, another mage's enchantment was an open book—he understood the gem's working at a glance.
But how had this ended up in his hand? And where was the staff?
Thea allowed herself a small smile. She'd exchanged a gemstone containing thirty years of human lifespan for a battered old staff. And he'd come out ahead, all things considered—for a mage approaching the end of his road, life was priceless.
She ran her perception across the staff. Crude construction. Its value barely exceeded that of the Dead King's old staff—and its only function was to maintain the mental link with the sea beast. To prevent that link from dragging him into the timestream directly, the mage had externalized that entire portion of his psychic presence into the staff. The beast's temporal saturation had in turn degraded the staff itself, which was why its control had always been so imprecise.
"No wonder the accuracy is so poor," Thea muttered. She didn't immediately erase his psychic imprint from it. If she did, the beast would go fully feral—and even she would have a rough time with that.
Fortunately, she had it in hand before the critical moment. If she'd pushed him to desperation and he'd done it himself, that would've been a bad joke.
"I'll keep it safe for you!" she called out, slipping the staff into her spatial ring as the mage's furious roar echoed through the ruins.
"I'll take you down with me!" He threw the gemstone away and abandoned any pretense of economy. Like a dam breaking, he flung his arms wide and sent a tidal wave of churning seawater surging toward her.
"You think I'm scared of you?" Thea dismissed the sea beast with a gesture—its corrupted mind followed the basic directive—and flicked her fingers. One by one, brilliant silver-white firebirds took shape around her, vivid and alive, crackling with dense magical energy.
She sent them forward. They swooped and soared like creatures born of pure spirit, gleeful and blazing, and swept into the oncoming tide.
The mage's technique was extraordinary. Buried in the churning seawater were flickers of concentrated light—and a single pass of that light unraveled the firebirds back into raw energy, which the water then swallowed and reclaimed.
"Impressive." Thea nodded, and meant it. Attack and defense in one motion, with the side effect of absorbing her own magical output back into his reserves. The man's understanding of magic was close to its limit.
But she wasn't afraid. Another mage would have no answer for it. She wasn't another mage—she was a deity. The divine seat might be out of reach for the clone, but her knowledge still applied.
She let a single, complex syllable fall from her lips. The mage's seawater reversed. The tide turned against its own master, walls of churning dark water folding back in on him.
He checked his own spell instantly—every step had been correct. It had to be her doing. He made a snap decision, severed the corrupted portion, and reformed the remaining mass into a massive sea serpent. The creature was over three hundred feet long—its ink-dark head swinging toward Thea, jaws opening to swallow her whole.
"Boring." No Holy Sword in the clone's possession, but the Highfather's short blade would serve. She gripped it, leveled it at the serpent's head, and let loose a blazing arc of light—a crescent-shaped strike that carved the air in half.
If I shouted something dramatic right now, I'd never hear the end of it from myself.
The serpent's head was severed cleanly. The mage didn't flinch—magical constructs regenerated. He focused, and nothing happened. He looked again.
The severed cross-section was mirror-smooth. Pale silver flames burned quietly in the green water at the stump.
He tried to smother them. Every layer of magic he poured in made them burn brighter.
Another divine artifact? He was starting to look genuinely rattled. The divine bow and now the divine blade—were relics just scattered around everywhere these days?
Thea didn't care what he thought. She killed the serpent and extended her left hand toward the mage. Time to end this.
A long string of intricate incantations fell from her lips. Her eyes ignited—stars burning behind them—the outward sign of mental energy pushed to its peak. The mage wasn't going to stand there and let her finish.
The serpent's remains broke apart into seawater, thick and ink-black, saturated with his magic. A stomach-turning stench rolled off it. The air itself seemed to turn a sickly green as a tsunami of toxic mist came crashing toward her.
Thea didn't try to tank it. Each time the fog drew near, she blinked away—thirty-one times in ten seconds, barely a pause between them.
The mage watched her in growing desperation. She didn't stop.
At last, her spell was ready.
A quiet crack.
Every one of the mage's layered magical barriers shattered like thin glass.
A thread, fine as silk and almost invisible, stretched between them. The mage felt his consciousness begin to blur at the edges.