Draven was forcing everything into this attack, the giant ball of fire in font of him looked to form a miniature sun. The flames that Draven was producing which previously began to be on par with a normal sized house now began to expand and expand as Draven continued to pour more mana into this spell. Then the flames around him stopped spreading outward and instead started collapsing inward, like something heavy was crushing them into a single point. The air around him got thicker instantly, harder to breathe in, like the whole world was being squeezed. The skin on his hands cracked and blackened as the heat stopped being something he controlled and started becoming something that was tearing through him instead.
Soren could see it clearly now
'Dangerous! I need to stop him!'
The fire kept tightening, shrinking, getting denser instead of bigger. Orange turned to white, then shifted into a deep, unstable blue that looked wrong in the middle of the jungle. The ground under Draven's feet started burning away just from proximity. Grass disappeared. Dirt turned glassy. Even the air around him seemed to ripple like it was struggling to exist
Soren thought, 'This guy is actually insane'
Then, closer to panic than calculation, another thought cut in
'He's going to kill me. He's actually going to kill me and himself with that'
Draven's voice came out rough
"You killed them!"
He was angry and he shouted out every word he spoke at Soren in rage
The fireball kept compressing
''Ill kill you and I will avenge them! I'll fucking kill you!''
Soren could feel it in his chest now, that pressure building in the spell
'Shit, if that hits me directly, my whole body will turn to ashes'
Soren forced himself to move. Blood shifted at his blown apart hands before he even fully decided what to do. Not shaped yet, just responding. His body already knew there was no time left for hesitation
'I'll match that idiot's firepower I'll put everything I can into this attack'
Soren pulled what remained of his mana together and forced it into a single point. Blood rose again from his wounds and the ground beneath him. The railgun at his hands started draining litres of blood from his body and the size of it started to expand and thicken and Soren's arms were shaking from the pressure of even trying to condense what he was trying to fire. One small mistake and he would just blow himself up
'Not good enough. It won't work. I'll die. I'll die. I'll die. I'll die'
The blue fireball above Draven's hands had become something monstrous. Even while being compressed, it still dwarfed Soren's attack in sheer presence. The heat alone was enough to warp the air between them, burning the forest down in silent collapse. Draven's hands were gone past recognition now, skin melted away entirely, but he kept forcing mana into the spell like pain meant nothing anymore
But Soren now started to feel anger rise in him
''I refuse''
Something inside his mind snapped open as he said them
Like something that had always been sitting at the edge of his thoughts finally stepped forward and took control. His perception expanded, not in power, but in clarity. He saw the structure of Draven's spell differently now. Not as fire, not as destruction, but as layers. Compression points. Instability zones
Everything clicked into place at once
Soren's eyes widened
'So that's it'
He didn't try to overpower it anymore. He didn't try to match it
He rebuilt his railgun in real time
Soren's mind began working faster than it had ever before, he was now inventing something in real time. Instead of trying to match Draven's firepower the power of his railgun softened and he started reprogramming the mana particles in his spell modifying it beyond to point of recognition. He began muttering things under his breath, whilst manipulating the spell and he started to inject his raw mana into it. He began compressing the railgun more and more the now ball of blood began to shrink smaller and smaller, but it started to vibrate faster until Soren fired it
The spell changed
It stopped being a simple railgun
It became something else
The blood now fired rapidly from his ruined tips of his arms
''Blood Resonance''
Across from him, Draven finally released his attack and the blue fireball collapsed forward like a falling sun. The two spells collided mid-air and at first, it looked like another clash of force, but then Soren's attack entered the structure. It didn't stop at the surface. His mana threaded into the fireball itself, seeping into its compressed layers. The moment it made contact with Draven's internal structure, everything changed
The fire flickered
Just once
But it was enough
The perfect compression of Draven's spell began to fracture internally. Not explode outward, not immediately, but destabilize. The blue core wavered as Soren's mana disrupted the balance holding it together. Heat output dropped unevenly and the pressure collapsed in sections
The fireball still hit
It still hit hard
But it wasn't what it was meant to be
The explosion ripped outward in a chaotic, uneven blast instead of a focused annihilation. Soren was thrown back violently, blood tearing from his body as he skidded across the ground, but he was still alive when it ended
Barely
Draven wasn't as fortunate
The backlash hit him immediately
The collapse of his own spell fed directly back into his body, tearing through what little remained of his mana control. His arms gave out entirely. He dropped to one knee, then the other, trembling under the weight of his own failed attack
His breathing was gone in short, broken bursts
Soren forced himself up through the smoke
He was still standing. Barely. The left side of his body was now shredded apart, covered in horrible blackened burns the mere aura of the fireball already charred his skin before it hit
Draven didn't fall completely
His knees hit the ground, but something in him refused to accept it. His body trembled violently, every muscle screaming under the backlash of his own collapsed spell. The remains of his mana burned through what was left of his system in short, unstable flickers, like dying embers refusing to go out
Soren stood through the smoke, barely upright himself, watching
Draven's breathing was broken. Each inhale sounded like it scraped through something already shattered inside his chest. His arms hung useless at first, skin gone, nerves burned past recognition. For a moment it looked like he had finally reached the limit
Then his fingers twitched
Not mana
Not fire
Will
Draven forced himself upward
His body didn't follow cleanly. It dragged behind the motion, refusing each step like it no longer belonged to him. But he kept going anyway, teeth clenched so hard blood ran down his jaw
Soren felt it immediately and then he shouted
''Stubborn bastard just die! Die so I can live!''
Draven's voice came out low, broken, but sharp enough to cut through the smoke
''You killed them. My friends and for them I will kill you. I will avenge them! I didn't listen then, so this is least I can do for them!''
He took another step forward
Then another
Each one heavier than the last
Soren tried to shift his stance, but his legs didn't respond cleanly anymore. The earlier explosion had done more damage than he wanted to admit. His body was still running on forced function, not strength
Draven lifted his head
There was no fire left in his hands
No spell forming
Just him
"I should have listened…" Draven muttered, almost to himself. Then his expression twisted again, rage forcing itself back through the cracks. "I should have listened to him"
His legs shook with every step, uneven and heavy, like they no longer belonged to him. His burned hands twitched at his sides, but he still reached down and gripped what remained of his sword. The hilt was cracked, the blade barely intact, but he held it like it still meant something
Soren tried to move, but his body didn't respond fast enough
Too slow
Draven was already coming
He ran, if it could even be called running, staggering forward in broken, desperate steps, dragging himself through pain that should have ended him minutes ago
Soren's mind flashed
'Move, move. I need to move!'
Draven lifted the sword
It came down hard
Soren raised his forearm at the last moment
The blade hit bone and blood-hardened flesh with a wet, violent impact. It sank in deep, cutting through the partial defence, forcing blood to spill instantly across Draven's hand and Soren's arm. Pain flared sharp and immediate, but Soren didn't fall
For a split second, they were locked together, blade embedded, both of them trembling under the weight of exhaustion and rage
Draven's eyes were shaking
"You-"
Soren didn't let him finish
Blood surged violently along the inside of the blade where it was stuck in his arm. Not outward. Inward
Then he detonated it