Wizard Tournament: Chapter 118 (Patreon)

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          “Nᴏᴛ ᴀɢᴀɪɴ!” Draevin roared. “I ᴡᴏɴ’ᴛ ʟᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ!” He refused, refused, to be a witness again. He strained against the spell holding him in place. His power couldn’t seem to breach it… but he still controlled the pile of ice on the ground! He directed his power towards it and it responded to his will. He formed it into a great maw full of frozen fangs and engulfed Maeve. He put every ounce of his fiery rage into the attack. Crush! Destroy! Eviscerate! He would have his revenge for Hephian!

          Maeve held up her arms in a defensive gesture as the ice swallowed her. Draevin’s ice formed the crushing maw of the sandworm he remembered from his fight with Anise, with teeth on every side. It started to bite its way through her defenses. The ice was churned into snow as it grated against Maeve’s barrier. Draevin formed a circular rotation with the ice forming the sandworm’s teeth, recycling the powder of the destroyed teeth into new ones with wicked sharp edges in a continuous flow. Her sonic barrier held, but Draevin’s ice was literally worming its way closer. He was getting through!

          Pain. Draevin’s vision flashed white as a sudden pressure on his skull threatened to burst his head. Maeve looked directly at him. “Don’t make me do this!” she hissed at him. He watched her squeeze her hand into a fist and felt the barrier surrounding him respond in kind. One of his ribs cracked. Then another. He felt his heart flutter dangerously in response to the pressure. He wouldn’t be the one to yield first! If he pressed his attack she’d have to focus on her defenses. He wouldn’t lose to this murderer!

          “That is enough—” Maeve started to say in a condescending tone. She didn’t sound like she was straining for her life, but she had also paused in the middle of her sentence. Draevin could see the tension around her eyes. It had to be an act. Maeve reached a breaking point and dug her heels into the dirt. She pushed away from Draevin’s ice like she had fled from Istven’s crown earlier. She took to the air as effortless as a bird. As she flew—too fast for Draevin’s ice to catch her—he felt a surge of pressure around his body.

          It was too much. He couldn’t take it anymore. Draevin didn’t even notice when his spell collapsed. All he knew was blood and pain. His vision narrowed, then turned red as blood spilled into—or erupted from—his eyes: he could no longer tell the difference. The world fell out of focus.

          “Nᴏ!” a voice shouted in impotent rage. It wasn’t a magically-enhanced voice but it carried a strength of its own.

          It was Alex. The human was back. He strolled through the great golden doors and past the restrained forms of Sylnya, Wix and the other humans. There was blood caked to the side of his head but he didn’t seem to notice. He threw the empty bottle of a mana potion on the ground where it shattered. His eyes… Draevin recognized the look in his eyes: it was the same look he’d seen in Peter’s when the two of them had been surrounded by assassins. Stubborn defiance. There was no questioning that they were family.

          Maeve looked at Alex and only slightly lessened the pressure on Draevin. He still couldn’t do much more than roll his eyes, but at least he wasn’t actively dying. She arched a perfectly-sculpted eyebrow. “Another expendable human?” she asked. “Don’t make me laugh.” She snapped her finger in Alex’s direction. The air rippled, then a wave of dark energy washed over the human. That was… different. Other than a slight breeze in his face Alex looked untouched by her magic and continued to stalk closer.

          “You tell us what to do, what to eat, where to go, who to fuck!” Alex shouted in icy-cold anger as he walked closer. There was none of the pudgy human’s usual jovial attitude. “No,” he vowed. “No more.” He kept stalking forward. Maeve sent a blast of energy at him strong enough to warp the very air. It evaporated before him, swallowed by a shimmer of darkness that had formed around him. “You think we are below your notice? That ends today!”

          “What is this?” Maeve demanded. “What are you doing?” She took a step backwards and cocked her head to the side. “Wait… I’ve seen your face before…”

          “I doubt that,” Alex answered.

          Maeve shook her head. “No, it was…” Maeve’s eyes suddenly widened. “Berthold Caloman!” she gasped. Draevin had no idea why a name like that would be important.

          Alex just cackled like a madman. “Well maybe you do recognize me,” he said.

          Maeve’s mouth fell open in shock. “No! It can’t be!”

          A wave of strange darkness expanded out from Alex’s body. When it reached Draevin all the color was sucked out of the room. He could only see in shades of grey. The pit in his stomach where he normally felt his mana waiting for him instead felt like a sucking void. Maeve’s sonic attack started to fade away. He could feel it pulse weakly as the energy of the spell dissipated. Soon it wouldn’t have the strength to hold him. The Guild guards stopped where they were and looked around. They could feel it too, the lack of magic. Maeve waved her hands at Alex to no avail.

          “That’s not going to work anymore,” Alex told her in a deathly grim voice. He gritted his teeth like he was carrying a heavy weight. His eyes were black voids. Darkness swirled in the hands at his side. “No. More. Magic.”

          “Lunamancy!” Maeve hissed. “Kill him. Stab him with your swords!” she shouted at the nearby guards. Alex’s spell seemed to have broken the eldrin announcer’s normally-cool demeanor. She actually looked frightened. Her shouted orders snapped the Guild guards back to attention. They moved forward in a half-circle to surround Alex, though they still seemed somewhat hesitant to approach him.

          Alex turned his head and whistled. “Get ‘em, boys!” he shouted.

          The humans he’d brought with him stumbled to their feet—some using their heavy clubs and axes as support. It looked like they were outnumbered two-to-one by the Guild guards. Draevin found that he could move freely as well, but without his magic he felt useless. He heard a strange flapping sound and looked to find Grrbraa shaking himself off as he settled to his feet as well. The sound came from his ears smacking the sides of his head. When he was done, the werebeast howled and the men on both sides seemed to take that as a signal.

          “Oooooowwwwuuuu!” It was a haunting moan that tickled some deep place in Draevin’s mind. It reminded him of the war, but he shook it off. The werebeast was on his side this time.

          The Guild guards rushed forward to attack Alex, while Grrbraa and the human thugs rushed forward to defend him. At first it seemed the guards would reach Alex before his men could get to him, but then Grrbraa crashed into their ranks and broke their line. The werebeast was all teeth and claws as he single-handedly held the guards back long enough for the other humans to join in.

          Without magic the humans looked like they might actually have the advantage: they were used to fighting without it. Draevin saw some of the guards instinctively raise their hands in the thick of the fight to throw one spell or another: none worked. One dwarf didn’t even bother blocking a blow to the head—likely expecting his missing force field to block the attack—the human wielding the axe had to step on the man’s forehead to wrench his blade out.

          Though nobody had touched him, Alex fell to one knee. He was panting hard. How long could he keep a spell like this up? Draevin didn’t rightly know; he’d never seen anything quite like it. It was lunamancy though, he was sure about that. He could chastise the human for going back on his word and studying the forbidden magic later. Or not at all... for the moment, it had saved them.

          Draevin decided he’d be better off focusing on the more existential threat of Maeve. If the humans lost their fight against the guards and stopped Alex’s spell she could turn them all into paste in a moment. Maeve hadn’t joined the fight. In fact, it looked like she planned to use the distraction to leave the room through some back exit. Her eyes were wide with terror as she turned to rush towards the engraved golden door in the back of the room. Though he was bloodied, Draevin hobbled after her at the fastest sprint he could manage. He was closer to her than the others. She pulled out the glass orb from her pocket as she fled. So close, Draevin was finally able to identify it as Tel’Andrid: the City of Magi. That certainly explained where all the mana for her spells had been coming from. When Draevin got close he heard her frantically saying, “…to get me out of here! These Outsiders are insa—”

          Draevin threw all his weight into her and brought them both to the ground. He tried to grab her arm and twist it behind her back, but she just used it to elbow him in the temple. His vision flashed white for the second time and he felt a sharp pain between his legs, followed by a fiery pulsing in his lower abdomen as his testicles tried to recede back inside him and hide. He knew she was getting away, but for the moment all he could do was grip his stomach and try not to puke. With an effort he managed to squint up and was pleasantly surprised by what he saw.

          “You’re not goin’ anywhere,” Sylnya said. She was crouched on Maeve’s back with her legs wrapped around the larger woman’s torso. One of Sylnya’s arms had one of Maeve’s pinned behind her back; the other had a dagger at her throat.

          “That’s what I was trying to do,” Draevin moaned. He eased himself to his knees, though the pain was still throbbing through him.

          “Well it looked like all you did was get kicked in the balls,” Sylnya said with a slight chuckle. “Lucky I was here.”

          “What are you doing? You have to let me go!” Maeve howled. “We all have to run!”

          “We don’t have to do anything,” Sylnya told her. “We’re just going to sit here, nice and calm, while our werebeast mops up your men.”

          “Do you want to die? Don’t you know who that man is?”

          “Who, Alex?” Draevin asked.

          “No!” Maeve shouted indignantly. “That’s the Draenlin Skinner! And he knows lunamancy now!”

          “The who?” Sylnya asked.

          A chill ran down the length of Draevin’s spine, but he chose to ignore it. Alex was on their side. They could trust him at least as much as Istven. “The Draenlin Skinner…” he said. “He was a notorious Caldenian serial killer who stalked the streets of Draenlin a few decades ago. He was known for skinning his victims and keeping them alive for as long as possible.”

          “It’s him!” Maeve insisted. “He’s going to kill me. You have to let me escape! I won’t return to the Outside for a thousand years. You have my solemn promise!”

          “No,” a voice said. It was Istven. He looked no worse for wear after his battle with Maeve. His crown was returned to the chain around his neck. “Nobody is killing her,” Istven said. “We need information out of her.”

          “He’s right,” Draevin agreed. “We didn’t come here to pick a fight. We came here to find Peter.”

          “You’re too late,” Maeve said. “He’s Inside now. Even I can’t get him out.”

          Alex himself staggered over, and with him the color returned to the world. Everywhere except around Maeve. She remained as shades of black and white. “She’s right,” Alex said. “I used to be the Draenlin Skinner.” He leaned down and met eyes with Maeve. “And I am very, very good at breaking people.” Draevin suspected Maeve had never actually been seriously injured before. She wouldn’t hold up well to torture. “I’ll share a secret with you,” Alex said in a dark tone. “I never actually killed anyone.”

          “Umm,” Draevin said. “I thought you said you were the Draenlin Skinner. He killed over—”

          “No, no, no,” Alex said. He smiled wickedly at Maeve. “I tortured them. I didn’t kill them. They killed themselves.” Maeve’s eldrin eyes darted around the room, desperately. The light in them was already starting to fade, sucked into the pool of darkness emanating from Alex’s hand.

          “You can’t let him do this! You can’t!”

          “Yes,” Istven said in a flat monotone, “we can.” He looked up at Alex. “Would you like me to restrain her?”

          Alex nodded. “By all means. Now…” He pulled a wickedly-sharp knife from a holster on his belt. “I’ve got one question I need you to answer for me, Maeve. And you will tell me the answer. Where. The. Fuck's. My. Nephew.”

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Those who still haven't read I Hate You, might be interested in doing so now. Some of the events in that story were referenced in this one. It's not important though and I'd understand if someone isn't interested in that sort of story.