Chapter 44: Acquire

Toren Daen

I looked down at my chest, feeling a childlike sort of wonder as the pulsing fire stared back. It was red as blood and engulfed my heart, the flames licking at my ribcage. It thumped in rhythm with my heartbeat, flaring and retreating with the flow. Through the lens of my Phoenix Will, I saw things I would never have thought possible.

I felt aware of the world in a way I never experienced before. Every sound had so much more to them than just vibrations through the air. They had shape and character, charting paths through the world around them with a story all of their own. Fire wasn't just a chemical reaction, spurred on by heat causing a change. Fire... fire was emotion in its rawest, unfiltered form, without a care for the surroundings or who it might burn. My Will whispered all of this through my ear, allowing my mind to expand to new heights.

I looked at Lawris at my feet. He was crying as he clutched a wound on his thigh. The shrapnel from breaking my metal shackles had launched a piece into his leg, and a quick overview told me it might've severed the femoral artery. It was bleeding extensively, a shimmer of red pooling underneath.

I watched with a mix of muted fascination and horror as the red fire over the boy's heart slowly withered, growing smaller and smaller as his blood spilled onto the floor. I could see tiny, wisplike embers simmering from the pool of red liquid.

I shook my head, pulling myself from my reverie. I focused on my telekinesis rune, and my journal–which had been clutched in one of Lawris' hands–drifted from his grasping fingers. It floated over to me, allowing me to pluck it out of the air.

"This belongs to me," I said lowly. The fire in Lawris' chest gave one, final heave, then winked out. He stilled at the same time, his struggling and whimpering ceasing. The embers in his blood evaporated.

I felt a distant sort of pity for the boy. His death was meaningless; accomplishing nothing. For so many years to pass by, only to culminate in such an indignant end? It felt like a waste, even for someone I hated.

The death of his son spurred Lawrent out of his stupor, making him rush toward me with a roar. Lightning coalesced in a ball in his hand, which he threw with the speed of an arrow.

A flare of telekinesis met it, causing it to burst midair. Lawrent began to conjure a dozen more orbs of lightning, each crackling with the power of a storm. At the edge of the room, I met Dornar's eyes.

He inched to the side, aiming for the door. I slammed it shut with a mental push, locking the man inside with me.

I took a step forward just as Lawrent yelled, his pudgy body already matted with sweat. His attacks flew at me all in unison. I stared them down, the second presence in my head a breath of air in my lungs. I tucked my journal into the waistband of my pants, ensuring it would remain safe against the coming battle.

Before, I would've struggled to counter this spell. In such close quarters, with so many attacks screaming toward me, I would've been overwhelmed. I could only throw out so many fireballs; so many telekinetic pushes.

But now, what felt like a burden was light as rain. A flurry of telekinetic pushes flared in front of me, meeting each and every sphere of lightning in a raucous crash. Tendrils of electricity arced and sputtered around, cutting smoking furrows in the floorboards and causing the building to creak.

Two constructs of fire jumped at me from my flanks, their feline features snarling viciously. I snapped my hands out to the side, focusing on the nimbus of power in my sternum. Sound and fire mana gathered in my palms, then meshed together.

With this new strength, I could see how they danced. Sound wasn't just atoms vibrating through the air; it was the essence of molecules' movement through all matter. I took that and applied it to fire mana, which encompassed heat. Heat was the rapid movement of atoms; generic thermal energy.

And if sound mana could intensify that rapid movement; push that fire to further heights?

Twin beams of red plasma fired from my palms, striking the fire constructs mid-leap. They seared straight through the bodies without resistance, then continued on through the walls. One of the beams–its heat scorching even to me–seared through several walls without resistance, continuing downward. The other cut a hole into the night outside.

I could hear screams throughout the building, my enhanced hearing picking them out. Some were of alarm and confusion, but more were of pain.

I felt a smile stretch across my face. Smoke rose from the wood I'd seared through, slightly obscuring the view through the holes. " You understand ," Lady Dawn's voice feathered across my thoughts. " Do not let them recover. "

I moved to act, taking a step toward the frozen mages. My display of power had stunned them again, and Lawrent was heaving for breath from his previous attack. He didn't fight much, did he?

A searing pain lanced through my mana core. I stumbled, the pain in my leg and sudden heat making my concentration flash. The glowing tattoo on my arm flickered, the glow cutting out momentarily.

"You don't have much time," Lady Dawn's voice said. "End it. End it quickly."

I quickly checked inward, noting how low my mana was. I'd been fighting for a long time, and Lady Dawn's feather wasn't outputting mana as it usually did. My focus was kept on maintaining the Will that blazed out of my core.

A few mages barreled through the door, looking frantic at the fight. Two were wearing matching plate armor emblazoned with the sigil of Blood Joan. Another wore conventional battlerobes, but I could see the uncertainty on his pockmarked face. Mana swirled around them as they leveled their weapons.

Capitalizing on my distraction, Dornar launched two more constructs at me. They bounded around Lawris, who focused on creating a spear of lightning. Simultaneously, the two armored mages charged me, moving in deadly sync.

I focused on my telekinesis spellform and tried something different, almost instinctively. My crest had become an emblem, allowing me true control over objects in my range. But what happened when I tried to control myself? The rune seemed to whisper the basics of its features to me.

I applied its new function to my body and felt my mana shroud react, the spells twisting and meshing in an unexpected synergy. 

I punched the first beast, feeling bolstered by my new power. Though the speed was slightly faster than normal, the impact was that of a train. Whatever my telekinesis did, it multiplied the strength I could output severalfold.

The fiery beast evaporated, obliterated by my punch. One of the armored mages swung down at me with a heavy sword, aiming for my bloody forehead. My view of his sword warped strangely, mana coalescing along it in a manner I didn't recognize.

I shifted to the side, pulling on the nearby wall to aid the movement. The blade sheared past me with an audible hum, the striker's augmented magic cutting deep into the floor. The red flame of his heart flared wildly from adrenaline.

I grabbed onto the blade as it stuck into the ground. I immediately felt a shift in pressure, my hand suddenly struck with a manyfold increase in weight. A gravity spell, I quickly realized. It multiplied the weight of anything around it.

I didn't have time to act. Another fire construct leapt at me, glowing brightly for a moment. The fire mana within it–so easy to sense now–bulged outward.

Realizing what it was about to do, I focused on my telekinesis rune. I pushed at the leaping beast, sending it careening to the side. Instead of feeling an equal pushback as expected, the force splashed against my telekinetic shroud.

The fiery feline collided with the other striker, who barely raised his blade in time to try and ward off the blow. The summon predictably detonated, blowing the armored mage through a nearby wall with a deafening bang and a nimbus of fire.

All of this happened in barely a second. Refocusing on the other striker, I sent targeted blows of telekinesis against his wrists. He screamed as they twisted at unnatural angles, causing him to drop his sword.

I didn't have attention to waste, however. A lance of thin stone impacted the side of my chest, sending me tumbling back as it splintered my telekinetic shroud and made me bleed.

I felt my time limit as I stabilized myself with telekinesis, looking at the red fire of the caster in battlerobes. He was panting after throwing that spell, and a significant portion of his mana expended.

I grit my teeth, seeing through the film of red over my vision. Using a flurry of telekinetic punches, I sent blow after blow against the striker's armor. I felt my spells impacting a mana barrier, but with an effort of will they tunneled through. My target shook and blew back like a ragdoll, a dozen dents in his high-quality steel plate sending him into the wall.

Using the new function of my telekinesis rune, I sent my will toward the sword I had wrenched from the striker's hands. It slowly lifted into the air, hovering as if held by a phantom hand. I felt a pinprick of fire in my core as I did so, but ignored it as I lined up my sights.

Then I launched it, aiming at Lawrent Joan. He had a massive lightning spear manifesting in his hands, drawing an insane amount of mana. If I let that hit me, it didn't matter how strong my telekinetic barrier was. I noted absently that the place it had been dented hadn't mended itself automatically as my mana shroud did. There were white, crystalline cracks shining on my side.

The sword flew forward as if possessed by a ghost, a streak of haunting steel. It tracked a beeline to the head of Blood Joan, but I was foiled too soon.

Dornar grabbed the caster in battlerobes by the hem of his robes, then bodily threw him toward my attack. The man screamed as he was shredded by the steel, tumbling to the floor as he bled out.

I snarled, feeling my drop in mana reserves.

Lawrent Joan was almost done with his spell. I was barely stalled for a few seconds by the fiery beasts and mages. But I wouldn't be deterred.

I raised my hand, aiming a finger at the mage. The red fire in his chest was quivering violently, showing me how much his heartrate had spiked. I concentrated fire and sound mana on the tip of my finger, but another searing pain from my mana core made me stumble.

A thin beam of red plasma fired in a straight line from my fingertip, but my aim had been disrupted. It pierced through Lawrent's shoulder instead of his heart, the beam exiting the other side of his body and dissipating before it could hit the wall.

Dornar couldn't save him this time.

Lawrent Joan reeled backward, screaming as he fell. The wound didn't bleed, having instantly been cauterized by my attack. His lightning spear shot through the ceiling, breaking through panels of wood and stone into the sky and exploding overhead with a boom that must've been heard for miles.

Evidently, his expensive clothes didn't protect him any better than normal cloth.

I lurched forward, my control and Will wavering. The red fire around my heart flickered in and out, my ability to perceive it slipping from my grasp like sand in an hourglass. The chains on my arm began to dim. 

No, I said, clamping down with force. Not yet.

A fire construct tackled me to the floor, then another joined it. They tried to tear at my arms and legs, and with my wavering mana, I felt them crunch into my barrier. The explosions had started again, rocking through the structure with powerful rumbles.

More constructs piled onto me, then started increasing their heat. I couldn't see anything but their flaming bodies, and as the temperature around me increased, I realized what they were going to do. If they succeeded, I'd die, Will or no Will.

Looking inward, I focused on the mana I had left. It was less than ten percent of my maximum from when I was light orange core.

It would have to do. I grit my teeth, sweat coursing down my face. Come on!

I lashed outward with the largest telekinetic wave I had yet tried. It took all my concentration, focusing every ounce of my new power into a single push.

It rolled out of me like an explosion, launching the fiery felines away. As expected, an equal power pushed back down on me, but my telekinetic barrier reduced some of the impact. The breath was driven from my lungs, though.

Not a second later, the fire constructs all self-destructed, blowing away the room in a nimbus of fire. My new telekinetic shroud shuddered from the heat, but I redoubled my effort to endure the attack. Though I felt no burns from the fire, my mana core seared.

When the heat cleared, the roof of the building had been blown away. Most of the walls were obliterated by the flame, exposing us to the outside world and the crumbling walls of the estate. My telekinetic shroud was flickering weakly, finally fading away after the abuse I had put it through. It seemed to melt around me, sloughing away in a white sheen.

Sparing a glance outside, I recognized my surroundings as the Joans' estate. The same long lawn and border of trees surrounded us, keeping me cut off from the outside world.

The moon smiled down on me from above, bathing me in its light.

"What are you?!" Lawrent Joan cried hysterically, a hand clutching at his shoulder. His eyes bulged out of his sockets, staring at me like I had grown horns. His pupils were tiny pinpricks of grey in a sea of bloodshot white. "By the Vritra, what are you?! "

I felt Lady Dawn brush against the edges of my mind, another reassuring wave rolling through me.

I slowly pulled myself to my feet, keeping an iron grip on the Will. "You will never know," I whispered, but the magic suffusing me carried it eerily. "You will die here."

Dornar rushed me. I turned to him lethargically, my body responding slower. I lashed out with a telekinetic punch, the blow impacting him with a crack. He flew across the room, tumbling toward one of the broken walls. I hoped he was out of the fight.

Lawrent tried to pull himself up, using what was left of his desk as support. I stepped forward as the man lobbed another bolt of lightning at me. I batted the ball upward, sending it soaring into the open night sky. New waves of pain ran up my arm as my protective shroud had finally dropped, but I ignored it.

Using the new feature of my telekinesis rune, I latched onto a nearby shard of wood. It was less than a foot long and very thin.

And very, very sharp.

It hovered in the air under my control. I felt another searing pain from my mana core as the Will began to retreat, but I grit my teeth. Sweat dewed on my forehead, stinging my eyes as it mixed with the crimson blood. I sent the spike forward with force.

It struck Lawrent in the sternum, burying into his chest. As my mana faltered, I wasn't able to drive it all the way through his body.

But it did its job. The splinter of wood dug into Lawrent's ribcage, piercing his mana core. The man's legs gave out under him as his lavish red and yellow tunic–already coated in dust, torn in multiple places, and sporting a dozen burns–began to be coated red.

The man rolled over, trying to pull himself to the opening in the wall. Reaching out with my telekinesis, I pulled on his foot. He screamed as he was dragged back to me, kicking and thrashing his pudgy body.

Lawrent grabbed the syringe of blithe as he slid past it, holding it like a dagger as he was pulled closer to his doom.

"No more of that," I whispered. "Never that again."

The syringe was wrenched from his hands by my telekinesis, hovering midair. I clenched my teeth, and the syringe crumpled in my extended grip. It splashed its nightmarish contents over the floor, spraying glowing green fluid everywhere. I mentally tossed the shattered syringe away. 

"No!" the fat man called, blubbering as his last defense was crushed in front of his eyes. "No, please!"

Soon, Lawrent Joan was forced before me on his knees. "Please," he begged as his struggles finally ceased and he collapsed. "Don't kill me, please! I can give you anything you want!"

I rolled the words around in my mind for a moment. "What could you ever give me?" I asked, watching him like an asura watches a man.

He looked up at me, perhaps seeing a glimmer of hope. He had so quickly gone from domineering tyrant to whipped dog. "M-money," he said. "Food, glory! Anything you could want! I can do it for you!" he blubbered, picking up speed. "Yes, do you want blithe? Your group… It was scouting out the warehouses, weren't they?"

I stared down at him for a long moment. "Can you give me my brother back?" I asked at last.

The hope winked out from his eyes. He began to thrash again, cursing my name under every Sovereign and crying for justice. It was unfair, he said. He had fought and bled to reach his station. But I raised a single finger to his forehead. Fire and sound mana gathered at its tip, then I exhaled.

A thin beam of solid plasma punched through his skull, searing away his life and burning a hole in the floor. His whimpering ceased as the red flame in his chest extinguished, telling me he was dead.

I saw a short trail of blood from where I had struck Dornar. Had he fled?

I turned to the side, watching as a few mages crowded through one of the hallways. I recognized each and every one of them, causing a slight grin to stretch across my face.

They surveyed the wreckage of my battle with visible shock, the smoking and sparking ruins telling their own tale. One of the strikers, who I had embedded into the wall, tumbled out limply, his dented armor ruined beyond repair.

Naereni looked at the corpse kneeling at my feet, then back to me. I saw a myriad of emotions there: awe, relief… and more than a little fear.

"You're a bit late," I said conversationally.

Then the Will finally gave out, retreating into the depths of my core. My tattoo faded from a vibrant glow to the dull red of ink, seeming to leak light. The red fire in every mage's chest winked out as I pitched back, my exhaustion finally catching up with me. I felt backlash pressing through every mana channel in my body as the abuse I put it through finally rebounded.

Darkness encroached around the edges of my vision as I fell.

"Rest, Toren Daen," Lady Dawn's voice whispered through my mind. "You have earned it."