Staring

As his movement was restored, Rethys felt a wave of extreme heat and pain wash over his mind. Feeling true pain for the first time in what was weeks, he was stunned for a moment before he forced himself to focus again on his task.

He dashed forward, ignoring the powerful cultists to his sides while he lunged toward the one Sevi targeted.

He tried his best to dull his mind and focus, yet the glares of the rising cultists sent tremors through his soul. They were far beyond anything he could hope to face before, yet now he needed to slay eight of them and take down their much more powerful leader. He didn't doubt for a second Sevi's powers, yet they were still separate beings, and he once again felt in over his head.

They weren't yet mobile, yet his senses told him that a clash of magic was already happening, as spell met spell and they canceled each other. Explosions and shockwaves quickly began resounding as Sevi blocked everything that would impede Rethys' charge, all the while answering with her own spells that forced the cultists to defend themselves.

Projectiles of ice, fire, earth and wind flew towards him, only to be met with tendrils or bolts of glowing red flaring from seemingly random places.

It seemed that even in their lethargy they were still fearsome enough to be a threat. They were terrifyingly proficient at both magic and coordination, as some attacked, and others erected defenses. It seemed that they weren't at all pushovers, even for someone like Sevi.

But he quickly shook away his thoughts. He wasn't as weak as before. For though he couldn't use his Infusion magic, as it would impede Sevi's magic, his physical strength was more fearsome than ever.

Eventually he reached his target and drove his dagger through its chest. The Destruction-attuned high cultist shuddered body and soul from the forces running rampant through him. And as Rethys pulled out the crimson stake, he saw it shining with the power it absorbed from its victim. The slotted Origin etherstone meanwhile simply siphoned the energy it spent from its master, restoring its power.

'Next is Malice then the two Creation on the far side.' Sevi's voice echoed in his mind.

He didn't waste any time and instantly leaped to his next target, finishing it with a single strike. Blood mist then began hovering around him, reassuring him a little before the sight of all the remaining cultists fully awakening jolted him out of it.

All sorts of elemental effects then flared in the room as the cultists set up even greater protections on themselves and one another. And as Rethys approached his next target, the two Creation mages, projectiles began flying at him as the cultists began their counteroffensive.

Seeing the spectacle of magic, Rethys was stunned for a moment. Even hurried as he was, his senses still beheld and understood even the most complex of spells. At first this made him bemoan his own lack of knowledge, with the only real combat spells he could cast being different versions of Barrier and Enfeeble.

Snapping out of his reverie, he cast the densest version of his Barrier spell and did his best to sidestep any projectiles he sensed. He surprisingly managed to avoid a great deal of them, yet many more connected. Of those, three extremely sharp and thin metallic needles ignored his barrier and connected. The sharp projectiles perforated his gut and exited from the other side, inflicting grievous wounds.

Before his wounds could become an issue however, healing teal light shone on them as Sevi used one of the Restoration etherstones in his pouch.

All the while ether swirled violently around him, creating streams of golden air that flowed around him and impeded his movements immensely. This still couldn't impede his greatly enhanced strength, and he pushed through, plunging his dagger into the hand of the first Creation mage as it tried to block with its hand.

He then dashed backwards rapidly, sensing magic coming on his position from all angles. And just as he did, bursts of magic detonated before him, pushing him back.

'Kill the other one, fast!' Sevi urgently commanded.

Peering with his senses through the clouds of dust and ether, he saw the Creation cultist winding up in its hands a massive golden spear crackling with sparks of intense ether. He knew instantly that that spell was enough to kill him a hundred times over, the sheer amount of ethereal energy imbued in it so dense as to truly gain physical form.

Time slowed down in Rethys' eyes as the spear was unleashed from its caster's hands and flew towards him at a dizzying speed. And as it drew close, time itself seemed to come to a halt. He saw the spell flying towards him, and he did his best to swerve out of its way. His body moved slowly, painfully, yet his senses and Sevi's Quickthought spell guaranteed that he would narrowly escape doom.

The spear flew towards him, going through his barrier and passing uncomfortably close to his face, its sparks of energy arcing and connecting with Rethys' skin, inflicting extreme burns on it despite his magic resistance.

As the world regained its pace, he once again felt unimaginable heat and pain running through his brain.

He then heard the loudest sound he had heard in his life as the spear collided with a distant wall, after which his ears felt warm, and the world seemed to lose sound for a moment. His ears were damaged, he guessed.

Despite the extreme shocks, however, his mind remained sober and his thoughts lucid. There was only the fight now, pain and wounds were irrelevant.

He tensed his legs as hard as he could and leaped forward, embedding his dagger into the second Creation mage's chest. Another down, five to go.

Time decelerated again as Rethys' thoughts ran at unhealthily slow speeds, another cast of Quickthought. He was confused as to why Sevi used it, but his sense quickly made him realize the mess he was in. The cultist he had just killed had a second golden spear ready, and it wouldn't just vanish now that its owner had died. Not only that but he was also surrounded by a veritable storm of spells and effects that blocked his exit.

He wracked his mind for a solution. He couldn't stay, lest the unstable Creation spear reduce him to ash, and he couldn't escape as the assault from behind would make a mess of him. He thought of releasing a nova of his ether around him but feared its consequences. It was not a spell, and thus he couldn't know its energy cost and couldn't control it.

'Cast a nova and look for a way out.' The Blood mage's voice reverberated.

Free of doubt, he ignored the searing wave running through his head and released a nova of Origin as fast as he could, before leaping backwards. The direction of his retreat made him collide with many spells, but his body was already reinforced with enough magic to make things almost bearable.

As he was in the air, he saw the second golden spear in the cultist's hand detonate, blowing its corpse to pieces. Despite the grisly spectacle, however, he could tell that its soul was still there, completely and utterly refusing to let go.

'Crazy bastards.'

His senses also notified him of a concerning detail. Levantros, the cultist leader, still didn't make a single move. He was just standing there, leering at Rethys with a gaze that could almost bore holes into solid stone. He had to keep an eye, or rather a bit of his senses, on the enigmatic Purity mage.

He then collided violently with the wall of the platform before falling limply to the ground, his muscles screaming against his deafness to pain. He had put too much force into his jump, but it thankfully brought him far away enough to have a second to think.

Spells of all colors and stripes continued to collide where he had been just a moment ago, destroying tables and what seemed to be... shelves, utterly full of magical ingredients...

"Oh no!" The two said at the same time.

It seemed that Rethys' release of Origin ether there compromised the enchanted cabinets' enchantments, which then was swiftly followed by destructive spells. The now disenchanted lockers easily yielded under the spells' pressure, causing all their insides to spill forth. Materials, ingredients and tools of all sorts tumbled outwards, and Rethys could already see sparks flying between them.

The countless, extremely potent magical items had rapidly begun reacting with the loose magic in the air, threatening to blow the whole room and all in it to smithereens.

Rethys' could feel it coming, despite his senses being almost completely blinded at this point due to the maelstrom of magic taking place around him. Time once again slowed to a grind, and he could feel his whole being quivering as he sensed the small, repeated sparks of magical reaction begin rapidly intensifying.

Rethys feared something like this happening before, yet figured that this room was dedicated to safely experimenting, just like every single other room of this whole wing, and the wide, elevated platform only reinforced that idea.

This room, however, seemed to contain the mother of all magic stockpiles, in the form of only the most precious of ingredients and the most intricate of tools. All were things that would prove the greatest of risks, placed in the same room as they were, if not for the learned mages managing them. That was, until Rethys happened.

'We should've thought of this!' He bemoaned as he scrambled to find some safe spot, but to no avail.

There was no safe spot, those shelves lined the entire periphery of the circular room and seemingly were also interconnected, as his senses showed him the feedback slowly running across even the intact shelves to the sides and onward. Their contents too were going to react.

The whole room was about to be erased from the face of Tevohs.

'Damn it all to oblivion! Barrier! Now!!' Sevi's voice boomed.

And so, Rethys called upon the entirety of the energy he still had, trying something he never did before. He cast every version of Barrier he could, layering them on one another as best as he could in a rush. His understanding of his magic was still too basic, but his ability to coordinate spells could now shine.

Then it happened, all the materials detonated all at once in a glorious release of energy, yet the room wasn't overtaken by bursts and explosions.

No, the shelves instead held on, containing the explosions within before channeling them towards the disenchanted opening Rethys created earlier. And as pressure built up within the combined shelves, the colorful stream of raging ether exhausted outwards with mind-boggling force comparable to the breath of an Elder Dragon.

Anything caught in the crossfire was utterly annihilated, including spells, items, furniture, the floor, the stone beyond it, as well as a nearby Chaos-attuned cultist, who was vaporized to non-existence, soul and all. All of it was completely magically disintegrated.

Even Rethys, who was quite the distance away, was assaulted with forces that truly put his barrier setup to the test. If that wasn't enough, the aftereffects of Sevi's Quickthought came, and a blazing heat ran through his head so intensely he felt his brain was about to melt.

Regardless he had to ignore the pain and coordinate with Sevi to protect himself, with him renewing Barrier spells and her building barricades of solid bloodstone to weather the deluge of unbound magic. The torrent was ethereal in nature, but had such intensity that it affected all things, material or not. And even Origin magic, which was supposed to be effective against the ethereal, struggled extremely.

Eventually the flood of magic subsided, and the two could breathe a sigh of slight relief.

The room was in complete upheaval now, and nothing could be seen beyond the clouds of shimmering dust that covered the whole floor.

Rethys for his part was barely hanging on, having almost lost consciousness from fatigue overpowering any sensation his tortured body still had. He was struggling, yet not even that was enough to take him out. Even if unknown to him, he was a veritable juggernaut of magic resistance at this point.

And as the duo was struggling, he once again noticed that the cultist leader had not done anything. No, that wasn't true, he did move a bit to get a better view of the two, staring down at them from the elevated platform. He seemed content to keep staring.

"What's the cultist leader doing?" Rethys yelled to be heard above the noise all around him.

"Leave that to me. Conserve your energy from now on." Sevi responded.

His energy was almost spent at this point, and his body severely battered. He hoped Sevi would heal him, but it seemed that she too was conserving her energy. He was still slowly recovering though, and visibility in the room was all but gone, allowing him some breathing room.

He could see the cultists, but they couldn't see him, and they didn't seem too keen on firing magic haphazardly. Their intelligence seemed nothing like their lesser peers', and it appeared that the duo had made a mistake by rushing here like they did.

Still, Rethys believed that he could still escape if he needed, and so believed that Sevi wouldn't just keep them here for a losing fight.

But then, as abruptly as chaos and disorder settled in the room and obscured everything, the ether calmed, and visibility was restored in all capacities.

The magically-charged dust that obscured visibility lost its energy, fading away and restoring sight to all. The unnerving stillness of the ether also returned, and Rethys realized the source of this phenomenon to be the cultist leader himself.

His observations aside however, the high cultists once again had line of sight of him.

It was time for round two.