Mana Mirror: Chapter Twenty One (Patreon)

Orykson was sitting in his personal library, sipping from a glass of whiskey on the rocks and tinkering with a spell design when a skeleton burst in.

This wasn’t particularly unusual, in and of itself. Almost all of his staff were either spirits of a sort, or skeletons – zombies were horribly messy, tended to leak, and lacked refinement. Flesh golems were better, if they were crafted well, but that was simply avoiding necromancy for no reason, so he’d never employed more than a few experimental models.

What was unusual was the particular skeleton that burst in. It was jet black, its bones interwoven with purge-jewels fetched from one of the Sepulchers. Spells ran through the entire body, powering it and making it a superb vessel for a projected soul.

In short, it was a powerful lich. And a lich he recognized.

“Vivian,” Orykson greeted, rising from his chair and smoothing a wrinkle from his lapel. “To what do I owe the… pleasure?”

Orykson’s territory was incredibly well defended, of course. He’d known she was coming. He simply hadn’t cared.

“It’s the Death Queen,” Vivian spat.

Orykson idly noted how impressive it was that she managed to spit with such vitriol without a true tongue. Her skeletal vessel was better than many liches could manage, but he still thought it would have been better for her to construct a full body, not just bones.

“No, it’s not,” was all that he said, however. “What do you want?”

“You can’t talk to me like that anymore, Analyst,” Vivian said. “I’m a Holded Magi, just like you. We’re equals.”

Orykson felt a flicker of annoyance at that, but didn’t let it show on his face. Instead, he stared at Vivian silently, waiting for her to speak.

“I need help,” she finally admitted.

“Of course you do,” Orykson said. He knew it would antagonize her, but he enjoyed it.

Her skull snapped up and the pinpricks of light in the skull glowed a brighter purple.

“What do you need?” Orykson asked, affecting a mild-mannered demeanor.

“There’s a group of… heroes, you could call them. They’re only nineteen, but they’re already Arcanists, and their leader is an Occultist. If it was just one of them… But.”

She shook her head.

“Orykson, their legacies... Heart of the Sun. Godchild. Converse Immunity. Unbreakable. Aura of Fellowship. Five of the rarest legacies I’ve ever even heard of, all born together in my territory, only a few days apart. All from the same village. All friends.”

“If they’re truly such a threat, what makes you think I can face them?” Orykson asked calmly. “A group of five operating with such powerful synergy would be a challenge for even a competent Occultist or a Magi. I assume that the Cataclysm and Headsman have both failed?”

“You know they have,” Vivian said. The vitriol was almost gone from her tone, just dejectedness left. “Of all the other Magi, you and the Storm King are the only ones who might help me. But you know the price he’d ask.”

“I don’t work for free,” Orykson said. “In fact, it would benefit Mossford and the surrounding nations under my control greatly if Nightflock and your other territories fell.”

Vivian’s head snapped up.

“You’d deny me? After everything that we went through? You owe me, Orykson. You destroyed me.”

As she spoke, ninth gate mana began to surge in her mana garden, erupted into a lunar spell.

The spell, if it had completed, would have caused the shadows in the room to boil and come alive, draining power from everything in the area and converting it into annihilating void energy. It would have destroyed his body, fed upon the power of the wards, and continued to grow until everything he’d built was destroyed.

Before the mana could emerge from her Mana Garden and take effect, however, Orykson had already cast a spell of his own. His death magic seized control of the connection from her soul to this body and shattered it. The skeleton fell to the floor uselessly, no longer connected to her soul.

He glanced down at the skeleton and shrugged, tearing open a portal in space to his storage room. Purge-jewels were an exceptionally rare material, and he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. It wasn’t as if he could enter the Sepulchers anymore.

A few moments later, the wards triggered again as a ninth gate power erupted into his room, Vivian attempting to shadowstep in from thousands of miles away.

He waved his hand and redirected the shadowstep to a spatial anchor he’d placed deep within the nearest ocean. Her power surged again, gathering into a massive meteor that would crash down on Mossford and destroy it.

Orykson teleported to the meteor before it could enter the atmosphere and thrust a hand out. Space rent around the meteor, folding the massive attack into a private extraspatial pocket.

He smiled faintly. He really ought to thank Vivian. It wasn’t often that he got a chance to seal away a spell with this much power for later use. Between this and the purge-jewels, today was turning out quite well.

Then, just to prove a point, he teleported into Vivian’s sanctum. She tried to redirect him with her mental mana, altering his focus to target somewhere else, but his knowledge spirit pushed through her attempt with contemptuous ease.

When he appeared inside her citadel of dark stone and blood, her newest body turned to him and its bones erupted into spikes. He used a spell to shatter them, then sent them echoing through her sanctum, destroying things. She took control back a moment later, and fell to her knees.

“Primes, Orykson,” she gasped, nonexistent lungs heaving for air. “How? We should be equal.”

That was true, if one judged only by the size of a Mana Garden, and the number of Gates they’d reached. But in truth?

The result of the sparring bout had never been in question.

She had more raw power than he did, but despite reaching ninth gate, she wielded it as a cudgel, rather than an elegant scalpel. Orykson hadn’t survived almost eight hundred years by being a fool, and he doubted Vivian would last long. He’d seen many of her type – Magi who relied on power their whole life, failing when they finally reached the pinnacle and had to face those who were equal.

Any of the other world powers, such as Tom or the Sun or Moon Queens would have been able to defeat her. Even some of those who stood beneath the world powers, such as Spider, Ikki, or the Amethyst Mask, would have been able to win, though their victory would have been less certain.

“You were sloppy,” he said instead. “Now, let’s talk terms.”

They spent almost an hour discussing the exact payment, and in the end, Orykson walked away quite satisfied. He tucked his hands into his pockets and smiled, then withdrew a pair of crystals from one of his extraspatial pockets and tossed it them the air.

The first one floated over his shoulder, and his second one emitted a holographic image of everything that the first crystal could ‘see’.

“Watch closely, Vivian. This is how you kill a hero.”

Orykson’s knowledge elemental scanned Nightflock and found them, and Orykson clicked the stopwatch button on his watch.

The five heroes were in one of the smaller taverns outside of Nightflock. Sarah, their abnegation Arcanist, had warded their rooms to block scrying and hide them from the agents of the Death Queen. The air inside the warded room thrummed with power, thanks to their five legacies.

Heart of the Sun caused the mana of the user to regenerate dozens, or even hundreds of times faster when in sunlight, made the power of the user’s solar spells to increase by an order or magnitude, and decreased the mana costs of solar spells to a tenth of their normal cost.

Godchild grew the user’s mana garden by a hundredfold, and made every spell cast much more efficient.

Converse Immunity made the user immune to spells of the converse mana types – lunar, tempest, death, spatial, mental, abnegation, and desolation – so long as the spell was of a gate that the user’s mana garden had achieved. Even against converse spells of a gate that the user’s mana garden hadn’t reached yet, it gave a powerful resistance.

Unbreakable gave the user an incredibly durable body, rendering them the next best thing to invincible.

And then were was Aura of Fellowship. On its own, it was the least dangerous. But with the others?

Aura of Fellowship created an aura around the user. Anyone within that aura that the user considered a friend would share their legacy with everyone else.

In essence, all of the heroes had massive mana regeneration, huge mana gardens, resistance or immunity to the converse mana types, and incredibly durable.

Orykson’s spatial mana tore through the resistance of their magic and their wards as he cast a True Teleport spell and appeared inside.

The leader, a powerful Occultist with solar mana, shouted and released a beam of golden light right where Orykson was standing. Orykson’s elemental whispered in his mind, and he took a step back and to the left, and the beam missed him by mere centimeters.

In the same instant that he dodged, Orykson was funneling power in his mana garden in a complex weave, activating multiple spells at once.

The others were slow to react, and that was what gave him the victory. His first spell sent out a pulse of purple-green magic that would destroy and cannibalize flesh it touched.

The leader reacted with commendable speed, purging the spell as soon as it approached him, and their abnegation mage reflected it back at Orykson.

A mistake, this had been nothing but a distraction. He caught his own power and spun it to throw at the one with the Godchild legacy. They used a physical barrier around them and released a blast of magical bolts.

At the same moment, the leader released six of the powerful golden beams, the abnegation aura user cast a spell to block teleportation spells, the Converse Immunity mage cast a lunar spell that summoned a moonlike construct that disrupted the water in his body, and the Unbreakable mage cast a gravity field to pin him in place.

The teleportation blocking spell was their mistake. Orykson didn’t release a teleportation spell. Instead, he twisted space around him.

All six beams, the power of the moon construct, the mana bolts, and the gravity field all slammed into the Aura user, their abnegation mage. The mage died before they could react.

And that was the game.

Orykson then released the other four spells that he’d woven. Two serpentine dragons, one forged from life mana and the other from death, erupted from him, as well as a life mana stag with tremendous antlers, and a single bone shard.

The life dragon tore their claws into the Unbreakable mage. Despite all her physical fortitude, her life energy was still vulnerable to attack from spells, and without the life energy to sustain her powerful body, she died.

The death dragon slammed into the Godchild, and began to feed on their soul. Their tremendous power worked against them, strengthening the dragon. Without their power, they were unable to defend themselves. They died.

The stag’s antlers gored into the Converse Immunity. All his powerful resistance to converse magic did nothing to stop the stag, which was a construct of pure life mana. Its horns were sharp, and they tore through his throat. He died.

And the single bone shard ripped through the leader’s throat, moving faster than he could react. He released a last series of beams at Orykson, who tucked them into an extraspatial pocket for later use. And then he died.

Orykson stopped the stopwatch in his pocket.

Three point two five seconds.

He smiled to himself and looked at the crystal transmitting his image to Vivian, nodded, then used a spatial spell to return it to its pocket, store the bodies of the heroes.

Then he teleported back to his sitting room. After a moment’s hesitation, he called for one of his butlers. He’d gotten a bit more exercise than intended today, and he was parched. He could do for a cup of tea, and perhaps a scone, while he went back to looking over his spell diagrams.