Chapter 28: Power of Failure of a Mage [2]
Kine’s patience ran out before his words did.
"You really don’t know when to shut your mouth."
He didn’t wait for a response. The flas coiled tight around his fists and he ca forward fast, the first strike arriving before the sentence had fully left the air. Fire t steel, sparks scattering, and then again, and again, rapid and relentless, each collision sending heat washing outward across the clearing.
Lucas held.
Not comfortably. Not cleanly. But he held, dual blades absorbing and redirecting, his footwork eating up the force where he couldn’t stop it, keeping the exchange alive through angles rather than raw strength. The numbers were wrong and he knew it. Kine’s stats sat above his in every column and he could feel exactly what that ant with every block that cost him more than it cost Kine.
He was slower. Only by a fraction.
In a fight like this, a fraction was everything.
Kine felt it too. He pressed harder, each punch heavier than the last, the aggression building on itself, and Lucas gave ground one step at a ti, blocking, deflecting, surviving the mont and buying the next one.
Then Kine pulled his arm back.
The flas surged up violently, brighter and denser, everything he had channeling into one strike, and he threw it, a straight punch with the full force of his mana behind it, aid to end the conversation permanently.
Lucas crossed both daggers in front of him.
The impact hit like a wall falling.
The shockwave that ca with it rolled outward in every direction, the ground cracking beneath them, and Lucas left the earth entirely for a second before it found him again, skidding backward across the forest floor for several ters, montum finally dying when his body ran out of ability to absorb it.
He lay there.
His chest felt like sothing had been rearranged inside it. He pressed his hand to the ground, trying to find his way back to upright, and tasted blood before he finished the thought. It dripped from his mouth and hit the dirt beneath him.
Kine rolled his shoulder. Looked down at him with the comfortable cruelty of soone returning to sothing familiar.
"What happened to all that big talk?" he said. "Wasn’t it ’I’ll get stronger no matter what’?" He let the mockery sit in the air. "Empty noise. In the end you’re still the sa useless trash who can’t back up a single word."
But behind the smirk, sothing moved across his thoughts that he kept off his face.
’Since when did he get this strong. Was he hiding it or did he actually—’
He killed the thought before it finished.
Talon let out a slow exhale from where he stood, shifting Sylvia’s weight in his arms with the bored efficiency of soone who has sowhere else to be. "This is getting tedious," he said. "I’m heading back." He turned and started walking without waiting for a response.
Ley glanced at his brother’s retreating back. "Go ahead," he called after Talon. "We’ll finish this and catch up before you notice we’re gone."
Lucas got one knee under him.
His mana display sat in the corner of his vision and he checked it without wanting to.
[Mana: 8/60]
Eight.
He looked at his hands. The blood from his arm had sared across both hilts. His chest was doing sothing that wasn’t going to feel better anyti soon. Kine and Ley were standing between him and Talon who was already moving deeper into the trees with Sylvia, and the gap between his stats and theirs hadn’t changed and wasn’t going to change in the next thirty seconds.
’I can’t beat them. Not like this. Not right now.’
His grip tightened on the daggers anyway.
’Nova. Gideon. Wherever you are, I need you.. I can’t do this alo—’
And then sothing arrived, a voice in his mory, cutting through the noise the way useful things do when you actually need them.
Starc’s voice.
’Focus. Feel your mana respond. Understand how it moves before you tell it what to be.’
Lucas’s eyes sharpened.
"Huh?" Kine’s brows pulled together, noticing sothing. "What the hell is that."
Ley’s attention snapped onto it imdiately, his tone shifting from contemptuous to alert in one sentence. "He can shape a mana sphere?" A pause. Then, harder: "Kine. No more playing around. Finish it now. We need to move."
"Got it." Kine’s flas roared back up, everything pointing toward one final strike.
Lucas exhaled.
Looked at the sphere in his palm, everything riding on the next three seconds.
"Here goes."
He slamd it into the ground.
The eruption was imdiate and complete, energy tearing through the earth in every direction, chunks of debris launching outward, dust and smoke swallowing the entire clearing in a thick cloud that turned visibility to nothing inside of two seconds.
Kine’s voice ca through the haze, sharp and baffled. "What the hell is wrong with this Idiot?! He hit the ground with his own attack? does he realize the amount of recoil that does to his hand?!"
Ley wasn’t interested in the question. "Forget understanding him," he said, scanning through the thinning smoke, eyes moving fast. "Just find him and—"
The smoke shifted.
Both of them saw the clearing at the sa ti.
Lucas was gone.
"Huh? where did he go—WAIT" Then realizing it Ley suddenly turned his head toward the trees. Toward the direction Talon had walked.
"That wasn’t an attack," he said, already moving. "That was a smoke screen. He used it to get past us — he’s going for Talon—"
Lucas was already there.
A few ters behind Talon, having covered the distance in the chaos of the explosion, positioned in the gap between all three of them with nothing between him and Sylvia except the arm currently holding her.
Talon felt him before he heard him and stopped walking.
Turned his head slightly.
Lucas was already pushing forward, every last thing he had left going into the motion, eyes locked on Sylvia, "almost there, almost—"
Sothing ca from above.
"Argh!" A crushing force slamd down onto his back and drove him straight into the ground face first, the impact punching the air from his lungs. Ley’s foot pressed down between his shoulder blades, pinning him with a weight that said this is over and ant it.
Lucas lay there. Cheek against the dirt. Arms still stretched forward toward a goal he hadn’t reached.
"Close," Ley said, and the relief in his exhale was genuine. "Very close." The foot pressed harder.
Talon turned fully now, looking down at the scene with sothing that might have been amusent and might have been actual respect. "Nicely done, Ley." He glanced at Lucas. "I’ll give you this much, little brother. You have a talent for surprises."
The heat gathered under Ley’s foot, faint and purposeful, his voice going flat. "Enough. Let’s end it."
Lucas smiled.
’Almost there.’
The dagger still in his hand caught the light as the glow built along its blade slow and visible, building, building—
"LEY." Kine’s voice from across the clearing, urgent. "LOOK—"
Ley’s eyes dropped.
"GO!"
Lucas threw it.
The blade left his hand with the last of everything he had, mana blazing along its length, cutting through the air on a straight line directly toward Sylvia—
Talon’s hand ca up.
Caught it.
The dagger sitting between his fingers, the glow still pulsing against his palm as he looked at it and then at Lucas with an expression caught between mockery and sothing that might genuinely have been impressed.
"Nice try," he said. "Channeling mana through the blade to wake her up." He tilted his head. "Clever. But obvious." The smirk settled. "You’re not dealing with amateurs, little brother."
Lucas’s smile didn’t leave.
It widened.
"You fool," he said quietly, face still against the dirt. "That dagger was the distraction."
Talon’s expression shifted.
One degree. Just one. But it shifted.
"I sent a mini mana sphere with it."
One second of silence. The kind that arrives before sothing you cannot stop.
Then Sylvia’s body erupted.
Blue lightning burst outward from her in a violent surge, crackling and tearing through the air in every direction,
"shit!" the force of it launching Talon backward before his grip could decide what to do.
Ley’s foot left Lucas’s back as he leapt away from the spreading electricity, the crackling energy chasing the space where they’d been standing.
And then, her eyes opened.
Lucas looked up at her from the dirt. Blood on his face. Smile still there.
"Welco back, Sylvia."
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