Published at 24th of February 2024 10:33 am

Chapter 71

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I was not an expert swordsman, nor was my body conditioned for combat. I was wielding a rock I’d shaped into the shape of a sharp stick. It was an awkward, unbalanced weapon that I was only able to swing around because of the mana coursing through my muscles. Against anybody with some martial training, it would have been an attack doomed to fail.

I stabbed Ebalnat in the leg while he gawked at my approach. He cried out in surprise and tried to club me with his staff, but he didn’t have the coordination to strike across his body while simultaneously shifting his weight to flinch back from my strike, even though a mana shield flashed into existence just as the blade struck him.

It was easy to dodge his attack and now I was inside his shield ward. I could sense the mana flickering in the air behind me, looking for triggers to activate its full defensive potential. That ward was behind my back, and I could already tell that it hadn’t been designed with a melee brawl in mind. I swung my fake sword at Ebalnat again, mostly just to keep him off balance, and slapped my free hand onto his leg.

A basic mana shield was good for stopping kinetic strikes and not much else. It was an excellent defense against my haphazardly formed sword. It would even work against conjurations that created solid matter to throw at him. Stabbing or clubbing him was right out. But mana shield did almost nothing against anything that wasn’t some sort of physical attack.

Shocking touch sparked between my fingers and raced through his muscles. Ebalnat’s whole body arched as lightning raced through him and he cried out in pain. He staggered back and tried to put some space between us, but at this point, I was literally close enough to touch him. Any spell that took even a second to cast was fair game to be countered.

I saw him start to weave together a transmutation to reshape the ground, likely to form some sort of wall to split us apart, but I broke it apart before he could finish the spell. Ebalnat responded by lashing out with his staff, far too quickly for me to parry. My own shield ward flared to life and repelled the blow, causing him to stumble a few steps back.

I chased after him and put another shocking touch into his other leg. Things were getting messy now, our shield wards overlapping, his mana shield flickering as he tried to modify it on the fly to stop my spells, and us circling around each other in some odd game of tag, each trying to touch the other without being hit in return.

Melee brawling had never been a specialty of mine. Prior to my original ignition, I’d preferred to avoid fighting at all if possible, or to strike from an ambush and end a battle in a single decisive blow otherwise. An enemy who didn’t know he was in a fight did not do a good job of defending himself. Once I’d started using magic, I’d kept the same strategies, fighting only when I had to, and always from an advantageous position if I could.

This fight was too much of an uphill battle for me to do that. I had Ebalnat outclassed in skill, but he had me beat in raw mana reserves and his defenses were in place well before I’d laid eyes on him. He’d come to the village expecting a fight, one he had no plans on losing. I’d been forced to get in close in order to effectively use any of the spells that had a chance of working, and while he might not have expected that, getting into a fist fight with a grown adult when I didn’t even come up to his waist wasn’t a great strategy.

It seemed he’d figured out that he wasn’t going to get off a spell that took him longer than a single word to cast. He raised his staff, shouted, “Abratus! Abratus! Abratus,” and sent three bursts of flame at me. Each one exploded against my shield ward, but rather than dissipating, they lingered on, draining more and more mana from it.

I had a combination of spells that I was confident would get me through that mana shield, but they came with two downsides. First, they would be fatal. There would be no chance to capture Ebalnat and question him. Second, they’d tap me out for mana, so I’d only get one chance and I’d have almost nothing left to help the villagers or defend myself if the hunters turned on me.

The lethal attack I could live with. Considering the amount of damage Ebalnat had already done, I doubted anyone would hold it against me if I had to kill the mage. The other part, I wasn’t happy about. The easy solution might end up getting me killed in the long run if the hunters turned on me. My shield ward wouldn’t hold up to concentrated fire from five guys with bows, and I wasn’t keen on the idea of leaving my fate in the hands of Karad and his underlings.

Brute force was out, and spells like mind spike and shocking touch weren’t getting the job done. By the time I battered down Ebalnat’s mana shield, I’d be running on empty. I needed to do something else. Fortunately, I already knew what was going to bypass this shield.

I rushed forward, already weaving the spell in my mind. Ebalnat had grown wary of my touch and was quick to shove his staff between us. I dodged around the tip, trusting my own shield ward to keep me safe. Unlike the other mage’s belt, my ward’s trigger range started at my skin and radiated outward in every direction. It cost a bit more mana, but I made up for it with conservations in other parts of the spell.

I leaped upward and slapped a hand onto Ebalnat’s chest. He was quick to grab hold of me, but not quick enough to prevent me from discharging the transmutation spell I’d cast into his body. The ring in his finger came to life, and now that I was up close, I recognized the spell it contained as a mana drain. It was horrendously inefficient, but that wasn’t the point. Ebalnat wouldn’t gain any mana from the attack, but draining me completely dry would leave me defenseless.

It would have, if I hadn’t just transmuted his heart from living organ tissue to a lump of granite. Ebalnat grunted, gave me a puzzled look and staggered a single step forward. His staff fell out of grasp and drifted off to the side, where it floated in the air. The mage grabbed at his chest for just a moment, then his eyes rolled upwards and he collapsed to the ground.

I missed the finer details of his death while I was busy fighting off his ring’s mana drain attack. By the time I’d pried myself loose from his grasp, the only thing keeping him from lying face down in the dirt was my own grip on his wrist. I let go and took a step back, letting him finish his descent to the ground. He’d be dead in seconds, and he was already unconscious.

There was no point in wasting the mana, and since I had a few seconds still, I threw out a mana drain of my own to help replenish my own reserves. I didn’t get much out of him, no surprise there. Most of his mana was held in his staff’s mana crystals, the same as my own structure. But it was a slight gain, and the mana otherwise would have been wasted upon his death.

It would have been nice to stop right there, but unfortunately, Ebalnat’s death did not mean my troubles were over. I still had a field burning behind me, one which I needed to save as much as possible of if I wanted the village to have food in the coming months. There were also still five other hostile men attacking us. Even if I had forgotten that fact, one of them reminded me a moment later when an arrow deflected off my shield ward.

I didn’t know exactly how many more hits I could block before the ward ran out of mana, and I wasn’t eager to find out. Sadly for them, with Ebalnat defeated, there was no one to distract me and no one to protect them. I sent out a round of mind spikes as the quickest way to incapacitate them, and almost as one, four of them collapsed. The last one, the man I had pegged as their leader, had some sort of defensive talisman that allowed him to resist the spell, but without the rest of his crew to back him up, he was quickly overpowered by the village defenders.

“Leave the others alive for questioning,” I yelled over at the men before turning my attention to the field itself.

There were thirty or forty fires already spreading, and it would have been worse if I hadn’t already worked to mitigate the damage. Elemental manipulation wasn’t terribly expensive as far as channeled spells went, but it did take me almost two minutes to finish snuffing out the fires. Someone else would have to go through and assess how much was salvageable.

By the time I’d turned my attention back from the field, Ebalnat had finished dying of a heart literally turned to stone and the village defenders had killed three of the five hunters. I was guessing the last two had surrendered and it was only Karad or some other person with a cool head who’d managed to get everyone else calmed down enough to accept it.

There were four bodies on the ground that I recognized. Two were Garrison, two were Barrier Wardens. I couldn’t tell from over here if they were dead, but on the off chance that it was possible to save someone, I hurried over. My mana was near empty, but I could probably triage a stab wound or three and maybe save someone’s life.

I gave Ebalnat’s corpse one last glance as I rushed past. His staff, its connection broken with its owner, was laying in the dirt. Later, when I had time, I’d collect the various magical trinkets and study them to see if anything was worth refurbishing. I somehow doubted the mana crystals would be high-quality enough to make it worth claiming the staff as my own, not to mention it would look ridiculous to walk around with a staff that was three feet taller than I was. Maybe if he’d had a nice cane…

By the time I’d reached the hill, both of the enemy hunters who’d surrendered had their hands bound behind their backs using a pair of belts donated by two Garrison men. Each was holding the top of his pants with one hand, a sight that should have looked ridiculous, but the grim looks and the amount of blood everyone had on them killed any amusement I might have had.

Only one of the four from our side who were down needed help, and he probably would have made it without my assistance. He’d taken an arrow on his hip, and when he’d fallen, he’d landed in a bad way that had jammed it through the bone. Extracting it was a work of magic by itself, and while healing the wound wasn’t beyond my abilities, it was beyond my means. The man had to settle for a spell to numb the pain and stop the bleeding for now, along with my promise to help him get back on his feet once I had some more mana to work with.

“I think we’re done here,” Karad said to me soon after I finished working.

I glanced at the two prisoners, already being led back to the village to be placed in the jail. “Somehow, I think we’ve got a lot more work ahead of us.”

“Yes, but not right now.”

“Are we safe?” he asked.

“For today, probably. What are you going to do with the bodies?”

“Burn them. They were enemies of the village, and I could see it causing issues putting them in the cemetery.”

Karad was adapting well to the political lifestyle. “Strip their gear before you burn them,” I said. “There are a few magical trinkets in there and every bit of information helps. Let me know if you find anything interesting on the corpses themselves. Tattoos, ritual scarring, anything like that.”

“…Yeah, sure.”

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