Magus Reborn 388. Protecting the ritual

In her life, Veridia had lived through more than enough to know there were different kinds of terrible days.

There were days when she woke up unsure whether she would live long enough to see the next one. Then there were days when survival itself did not feel like much comfort, because even if she made it through, she knew the mory of it would stay with her for the rest of her life.

This was one of those days.

Even now, part of her still did not fully understand why she had agreed to go through with Arzan’s plan. The mana oath mattered, yes, but that was not the whole truth. Sowhere beneath all her irritation and suspicion, she knew she owed him more than she liked admitting. He had given her magic back. More than that, he had pulled her away from a useless death on a bed, which was not sothing she had ever expected from anyone.

So she had gone with him.

Partly because she trusted him a little and partly because she had already crossed too many lines to stop now.

Still, nothing had prepared her for what ca after.

It was not as though she had expected things to be simple. In many ways, everything was unfolding the way Arzan had said it would. The plan had held together far better than she would have believed possible. The only true break in it had been the Elder Tree seeds not being where they had expected them to be.

But knowing sothing in the mind and watching it happen in front of you were very different things.

Seeing a fire giant from the Fire Realm with her own eyes had been one kind of shock. The thing was enormous, ugly, and terrifying in the way only sothing born for destruction could be. But at least she had not needed to fight it herself. Moving through the spirit king’s castle had been another matter, though even that had beco manageable in its own way.

Because for the first ti in decades, Veridia had not been the one leading the assault, she was only the support.

And strange as it felt, that made everything easier.

She still killed spirits, still moved through a place she should never have stepped foot in, still threw spells that have drawn fear from the spirits. But the pressure of deciding everything, of standing at the front and forcing the whole shape of battle to move around her, was not hers this ti. That burden belonged to Arzan.

And she had been glad for it more than once. Her heart had stayed relatively steady while the spirit king was away.

As long as the true ruler of the plane was occupied elsewhere, there was still room to breathe, still room to believe they might get out of this alive. But what Arzan did during that unsettled her far more than the danger itself.

Seeing him reach the sixth circle that quickly was sothing else entirely.

He had said he would be able to do it. He had said that once he did, it would give them the final burst of power they needed to survive even if the spirit king turned on them. Veridia had heard all of that but she hadn’t truly believed it.

Even after years of preparation, she could not say with confidence that she herself would survive an attempt at the sixth circle. So when Arzan spoke of doing it in the middle of all this, she had assud he would fail. Not die, perhaps—because he was too capable for that—but fail in a way that would force him to abandon the idea and focus instead on escaping the Earth Plane while they still had the chance.

But he had not failed.

He had succeeded.

And worse, he had done it so quickly that Veridia was still struggling to make sense of it. It had not dragged on. It had not looked like the kind of desperate, uncertain attempt she would have expected. Sohow, he had simply done it.

That alone was enough to confirm, yet again, that Arzan was not what he claid to be.

But confirmation no longer helped her much. Every impossible thing he accomplished only made her more uneasy around him.

And of everything that had happened today, of all the things she had seen and barely managed to accept, his ascent to the sixth circle have shocked her the most.

Then he made it worse.

Almost imdiately after succeeding, he cast a sixth-circle spell. Not a spell that she recognized either. Before she could even properly think through that, he had already used it on them and told the three of them to get back to the ritual circle while he went to search for the Elder Tree seeds himself.

Veridia had not even argued. There had been no ti.

He left almost the mont he finished speaking, and after that, all she could really do was force the other two to move as well, especially since both of them had looked ready to ignore him and follow anyway.

She still did not know what spell Arzan had used on them. All she knew was how it felt.

With those wind-ford wings at her back, she had felt almost draconic.

The three of them had flown through the castle so quickly that the whole escape beca a blur of broken corridors, open stone, and rushing air. They had crossed the distance in seconds.

With that speed, Veridia had honestly expected they would reach the ritual circle quickly enough, pray that Arzan made it back in ti, and leave this cursed plane behind without looking back.

But just as they escaped the castle, the fire giant died.

She saw it happen in pieces while flying—Spirit King Vaelthoros tearing up a huge tree and driving it down into the giant to finish it. Veridia had never seen anything killed that way before, but then again, normal rules did not seem to apply when creatures of that scale fought.

Even so, she did not let herself focus too much on it.

Her attention stayed on the path ahead and on Elias and Killian beside her. Unlike her, neither of them had ever flown before, and more than once one of them drifted too close to a tree or nearly cut through the edge of a burning patch before correcting. They managed to keep up, but only barely.

The truth was, even she was struggling more than she wanted to admit.

She could fly, yes, but never at this speed. The strain of it made everything feel slightly off-balance, as though the world were moving just a little too fast around her. Fortunately, she would not have to keep it up much longer. Soon enough, they entered a stretch of forest she recognized, and the mont she saw it, she knew they were close.

From here, it should not take even a minute to reach the ritual circle. But then a cold voice cut through the air.

The sound sent a chill straight down her spine.

Instinctively, Veridia slowed. She pushed more of her own mana into the wings to force them to decelerate, then turned around.

There, she saw Spirit King Vaelthoros.

It was moving toward a thick patch of trees, fury written clearly across its wooden face. Its vines had risen into the air around it, and its attention was fixed downward at sothing below.

No… soone. She knew that imdiately. Every instinct in her body told her it was Arzan.

She had not heard whatever Vaelthoros said before, not clearly, but she was almost certain one word had been there.

Human.

That could only an Arzan.

He had made it out of the castle, but now Spirit King Vaelthoros had turned its full attention on him, having clearly sensed exactly where he was. Veridia had no idea what would happen next, and for one brief mont she found herself hoping that he would sohow—

“Veridia. We need to move.”

Elias’s voice broke through her thoughts.

She turned. Both he and Killian were looking at her, having slowed just as she had when they heard the spirit king’s voice. When she glanced back once more toward Vaelthoros, Elias said, “If anyone can escape the spirit king, it’s Arzan. He’s at the sixth circle now. We need to get to the ritual circle so that the mont he arrives, we can leave.”

Even Killian, whom she might have expected to insist on turning back to help his lord, nodded. “Yes. Lord Arzan made it clear. We go there and wait for him.”

Veridia agreed. Not because she had actually been thinking of going back to help. She knew her limits far too well for that. If she stepped into a clash between Arzan and the spirit king, she would die in seconds. There was no illusion in her about that. It was just that seeing Vaelthoros facing him like that was not an image she wanted to turn away from.

But she did because her own life mattered more.

She loosened her mana feeding the wings just enough to shift her speed again and moved through the giant forest, with Elias and Killian remaining just ahead of her. She had not been flying for even ten seconds when explosions shook through the woods behind them. The sound ca faintly because of the distance, but she heard it clearly enough.

Veridia did not look back.

She kept flying low through the trees, careful not to expose herself too much in case the spirit king’s attention spread wider. The forest rushed past in a blur of trunks, vines, firelight, and drifting ash, and before long the ritual circle finally ca into view.

Claire and Elder Caelith stood near the center of it. Both looked exhausted. Veridia could see that clearly the mont she landed. The elf elder had a deep cut along his right arm, and Claire did not look much better, but the important thing was that the ritual circle itself remained mostly intact.

That had been the reason they stayed behind in the first place.

While the rest of them moved through the castle, those two had been left here to make sure nothing disrupted the circle in the middle of all the chaos. Looking at the spirits dead around them, Veridia had to admit they had done their job well.

The mont she, Elias, and Killian descended, the wind wings Arzan had given them broke apart into motes of light.

Claire’s eyes moved over the three of them imdiately, clearly looking for the person missing.

Killian spoke first. “Lord Arzan is coming, but it might take—”

He never finished his sentence.

Another explosion rolled through the plane, and all of them turned toward it at once. Through the burning forest, the smoke, and the shifting firelight, none of them could see what had caused it.

Then Elias reacted.

He ford a spell, and a platform of earth rose beside the ritual circle, far enough away not to interfere with it. All of them climbed onto it at once, and Elias kept pushing it upward until they rose high enough to see over the trees.

What Veridia saw then gave her yet another shock she had not needed that day.

High in the sky, Arzan was fighting Spirit King Vaelthoros.

A dragon made of fire burned around him, its shape coiling and flaring as explosions shook the air around the two of them. Veridia had already suspected as much when she first heard the blasts in the forest, but suspicion had done nothing to prepare her for the reality of it.

Seeing Arzan actually clash with the spirit king was sothing else entirely.

In the sky, the spirit king moved like a living storm of wood and vine.

Its body looked as though it had been shaped from ancient roots and hardened bark, yet it moved with terrifying speed. Vines lashed out from it again and again, cracking through the air like whips as they tried to snare or smash Arzan out of the sky. He kept slipping through them by the narrowest margins, fire trailing from his movents as he twisted, turned, and struck back.

Again and again, his flas hit Vaelthoros and they burned.

Parts of the spirit king’s body blackened under the attacks, and so of the smaller vines shriveled when the fire caught them properly. But it was not enough. Not truly enough. Compared to what the fire giant had brought down on the creature, Arzan’s flas were not on that scale. They could hurt the spirit king, yes, but not to the point of holding it back for long.

That was the simple truth of it.

Vaelthoros was at least a low grade-nine being. It had spent more than a century cultivating itself on the mana of young Elder Trees. A creature like that was never going to be easy to kill. The more Veridia watched, the more she understood just how fortunate they had been that the fire giant had managed to occupy it for so long in the first place.

Beside her, Claire let out a strained sound.

“What… do we do?”

Veridia kept her eyes on the battle. Above them, Arzan ford hundreds of flaming lances and sent them raining down in a blazing arc toward the spirit king.

“Nothing,” she said finally. Claire turned toward her, but Veridia went on before she could speak. “There’s nothing we can do. All we can hope for is that Arzan finds an opening—even a minute would be enough. If he can break away and make it back here, he can take all of us out of this plane.” Her jaw tightened as another vine the thickness of a tower whipped through the sky. “If we interfere in that fight, we die in seconds.”

Elias gave a slow, bitter nod. “Yes,” he said quietly. “So battles can only be watched.”

After that, no one spoke. They simply stood there, all of them staring upward as the clash above them grew more violent with every passing mont.

To Veridia’s surprise, Arzan was holding up far better than she had expected.

He was fast—far faster than he had any right to be. Even Vaelthoros seed to struggle to land a clean hit on him. Arzan kept moving through the sky in sharp bursts and sudden turns, never staying in one place long enough for the spirit king’s vines to fully box him in. And while he moved, he never stopped casting. Two spell structures seed to remain in motion around him almost constantly, shifting and rebuilding in his hands as he attacked over and over again.

One mont he was throwing out fire to force Vaelthoros back. The next, he was shaping magic ant to pin it, hinder it, or wound it however he could.

He was not overwhelming the spirit king.

But he was surviving.

And right then, survival was the only thing any of them could ask of him. But the more she stared at it, sothing beca obvious.

He was not trying to defeat the spirit king.

He was trying to bind it, slow it, or force even a brief opening—just enough to break away and escape. And in that, at least, he had one advantage. The fire giant had managed to damage Vaelthoros before dying. Not so much in the flesh, because from what Veridia had seen, the spirit king’s body regenerated at a ridiculous rate, faster than almost anything she had ever encountered. But the giant had definitely drained it. The amount of mana Vaelthoros had spent in that fight had not been small.

The problem was that she had no idea whether it was enough.

Every instinct in her told her the sa thing: run. Leave this place. Hide sowhere in the Earth Plane and wait for the chaos to settle, because Arzan was surely going to die up there. That was the sensible answer. But another part of her stayed rooted where she was, and the reason for that was simple enough.

She had already seen him do too many impossible things.

So maybe he would do another. Maybe he would sohow prove all of them wrong again. Maybe he would survive this too. Maybe, within the hour, they would be back in their own world and this entire nightmare would beco sothing she only had to endure in mory.

Those thoughts had barely finished passing through her mind when a shrill cry snapped her attention away.

Veridia turned at once, and her eyes widened.

Spirits had gotten close to the ritual circle.

She had no idea whether they had simply drifted back into the area now that the fire giant was dead, or whether Vaelthoros had sohow sensed the ritual circle and deliberately sent them. Either way, there was no ti to wonder about it.

They had to kill them all.

Several different kinds were closing in at once. Wolf spirits led the front, lean and fast, with root-like growths running along their backs and glowing eyes fixed on the circle. Behind them ca squat, bark-skinned things with too many arms, moving low and quick over the ground, while a handful of bird spirits wheeled above, shrieking sharply enough to set her teeth on edge. There were others too—odd, half-ford spirits made of twisted bark, moss, fang, or stone, the sort of things that looked as though the plane itself had grown them in bad moods.

Veridia reacted imdiately.

A spell structure ford before she even finished taking them in. Beside her, Killian drew his sword. The others were already gathering attacks of their own.

Then Veridia jumped down.

Shadows wrapped around her legs as she fell, and the mont she landed, she sent a crescent of dark force straight at one of the wolf spirits, splitting toward the pack as it rushed forward.

And while the fight began below, one thought stayed sharp in her head—By the ti they were done here, Arzan needed to have found so way to hold off the spirit king.

***

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