Wizard Trials: Chapter 154 (Patreon)

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          The demon horde stopped. All at once they ceased their pointless assault on the arena and turned to the South where a woman with long purple hair had just emerged from a hellrift. She held the severed head of Chaska’nal high and dropped it on the ground, howling in victory as she did so. The horde howled with her.

          “Is that it?” Draevin asked from behind her. “They are yours to command now?”

          “They are,” Caelnaste confirmed. “With Chaska’nal and her other generals dead, I am the only one left the compulsions on their mind will recognize.”

          “Good,” Draevin said, “now tell them to kill themselves.” Cool mist emanated from Draevin’s body and formed a halo of frost. Caelnaste’s eyes went wide at the command he’d given her. Likely when she agreed to serve him, she’d had other ideas about what that would entail. Draevin didn’t want a demon army. He didn’t need a demon army. That didn’t mean he wanted the foul creatures wandering around Eldira looking for people to eat, either. He raised a hand and tightened the band of ice he’d constructed around Caelnaste’s throat, reminding her of the power he had over her. “Is there a problem?” he demanded of her.

          “My… lord,” Caelnaste choked out. Draevin loosened the band of ice so she could talk. “That isn’t a command they would understand. They are simple creatures. They know how to hunt, how to rest, how to retreat and wait for the next chance to slaughter, but… kill themselves? Perhaps Chaska’nal herself could issue such a command. I fear it will be some time before my control over them is so unshakable.”

          “Silence,” Draevin intoned. He was wrapped in robes of ice. As he spoke, the ice around him resonated with his words, enhancing their volume and timbre. It happened almost automatically. Such techniques felt like they were barely scratching the surface of what he could now do with Chaska’nal’s godly essence pulsing inside him. “These are just excuses. Lies. You don’t want to lose your army. That’s all it is. You said you’d obey me. I should have known it was just another lie.” He held up his hand, causing frost to spread out from the band of ice that restrained her, threatening to consume her in the same way it had consumed Chaska’nal.

          “It is not a lie, I just need—”

          That was enough. Draevin tightened the band until she could no longer speak. She dropped to the ground, clawing uselessly at her throat. He wanted to just pop her manipulative head right off but restrained himself. She could still be useful to him. If he could just get her to stop trying to manipulate him, her ability to see the future might come in handy. “Speaking to me is a privilege, Caelnaste, as is being allowed to continue living,” he reminded her. “I am a god now. I can feel when you’re holding back information, like an itch in the back of my mind. Do it again and you will never speak again.” He loosened the band of ice around her throat.

          Caelnaste heaved in a strained breath, gasping like a fish at his feet. Her demons watched, wordlessly. Draevin wondered what they would do if he did kill her. Would they serve him? Even though he hadn’t gone through whatever initial rituals Caelnaste claimed were necessary? “I can tell them to slaughter each other,” Caelnaste offered. “It would take some time, but their numbers would reduce dramatically.”

          Draevin sighed, glancing up to the sky to see where the moon was. It was positioned right on the edge of the sun, just starting to overlap. He didn’t have time for this. “No,” Draevin said. “Order them to retreat back to Hell. Now. I want them out of Eldira before the Conflux gets here.”

          Caelnaste nodded. “As you… say,” she croaked. “I… live… to serve.” She staggered to her knees and flapped a hand at the demon horde in some kind of signal. They surged into the first motion Draevin had seen since he arrived, fleeing back through the fiery portals they’d come in from. It would take a few minutes for them to get out of Eldira, but by his estimate it seemed they’d be gone by the time the Conflux arrived. There were many dead demons surrounding the walls of the arena, which was no surprise. Draevin was only glad he’d arrived before the defenders had been overwhelmed.

          Draevin knew he didn’t have the time to wait around to make sure his order to Caelnaste was carried out. She had to know it, too. He invested several more layers of cryomancy enchantments over the ring of ice around her neck. “If you move from this spot before my order is carried out,” Draevin warned her, “the ice around your neck will kill you. Do you understand?”

          “I will follow your orders, master,” Caelnaste said.

          “Don’t call me that,” Draevin snapped at her. “We can talk about what to do with you later. While I’m gone, I suggest you not even think about betraying me. I’m serious. Investing will into an enchantment isn’t something I’ve ever tried before. I can’t guarantee it won’t get… jumpy.”

          “I know you won’t kill me, Draevin,” Caelnaste said, bowing her head in supplication. “I have seen it.”

          That piqued Draevin’s interest. He almost didn’t say anything, knowing she probably made the comment precisely to feed him a specific tidbit of information, but he didn’t sense any obfuscation or ill intent. “Have you seen anything else?” Draevin demanded of her. “Anything that could help me?”

          “Many things,” Caelnaste said evasively.

          “Anything to do with this coming Conflux?” Draevin specified.

          She nodded. “Only that if you trust anyone you will die.”

          “Trust… what? Explain yourself.”

          “The visions are not as clear as they once were,” Caelnaste admitted. “The power you call blood magic is not meant to power spells in this way.” That, at least, felt to Draevin like a truthful statement. “I saw a future where you decided to trust your friend Peter—”

          “That’s not going to happen,” Draevin interjected.

          Caelnaste nodded in agreement. “As you say,” she said. “I also saw a future where you vowed to trust Istven, or your dryad friend Sylnya, or the werebeast Grrbraa. All of them led you to your death just as certainly as the last. I counsel you to be wary, my lord.”

          “Be wary?” Draevin scoffed. “You just want to get under my skin. You think I don’t realize you’re just trying to get me to think a certain way so I’ll act the way you want? Just do your job and get these demons out of here. Let me worry about the Conflux.” Draevin blasted off into the air on thin jets of steam. The arena gates weren’t far. Surely he’d be welcomed back a savior, arriving just in time to banish the demon horde threatening them and showing up with the power of a god inside him. Since taking Chaska’nal’s power Draevin could draw on his staff as much as he wanted, with seemingly no cost. It didn’t strain him at all. He was still missing one of his arms, but the ice he’d replaced it with had stopped hurting and now felt like a part of him.

          Draevin flew low to the ground, skimming over the heads of the demons. He didn’t want the defenders to mistake him for an imp. Thrandian’first, he mentally projected through his staff, I am here now. It’s Draevin, the real Draevin. I’m flying in from the South. Let the others know so nobody accidentally attacks me.

          I will spread the word, Thrandian promised. Welcome back, Mystic Draevin. Be wary of the Soul Fire surrounding the walls.

          Soul Fire surrounding the walls was a very important detail. Draevin was glad he had thought to check in with the mystic leader and thanked him for the warning. He changed his mind about flying low and made sure to keep enough distance from the ground to be above any Soul Fire that might still be lingering on the battlefield. For some reason, his equilibrium seemed to be off though and he kept having to correct his trajectory. He put it down to new abilities and just tried to fly slowly and carefully. When he got close to the arena, Draevin could see armored soldiers posted along the tops of the walls. He held his position and gave them a wave. A few of them waved back excitedly, like they recognized him. A different figure emerged from their ranks, pushing soldiers aside frantically to get Draevin’s attention. It was a green-skinned dryad Draevin would recognize in his sleep.

          “Draevin!” she shouted urgently. “Come here! We need to talk!”

          Draevin slowly flew closer to her, curious. “Sylnya?” he called back. “Why are you green again?” The last time he’d talked to her she’d been black as night and sounding downright depressed about her place in the world.

          “Istven restored me,” Sylnya explained briefly. “He found a way use my old body to network into the Blackroot without needing to sacrifice me.” She beckoned him closer. “You have to come quickly,” she said. “We need you. Istven’s gone mad. He had one conversation with Grrbraa then decided to kill Peter. You have to talk some sense into him. Hurry!”

          “Peter is… dead?” Draevin asked. The news made him feel conflicted. Sure, Peter had deserved some kind of punishment for trying to kill him and plotting to betray Istven, but he’d somehow been hoping Istven would just restrain the crafty human until the Conflux was over. He should have realized how naïve that was. When he’d given the orcs the message to pass on, Draevin hadn’t allowed himself to consider what the consequences to Peter might be. Only when he heard that it’d resulted in his death did he realize that that wasn’t what he had wanted.

          “It sounds like Peter’s only the first of many,” Sylnya said. “He’s talking like he needs to just kill everyone and start over. He’s furious! If he goes into the Conflux like this, who knows what he’ll do!”

          “You’re right,” Draevin said. “Peter was worried something like this might…” Draevin trailed off as a realization came to him. Caelnaste’s warning echoed in his mind. He was about to trust Sylnya, something Caelnaste had specifically warned against without the slightest hint of malice emanating from her intentions. Draevin tried to use his new godly sense to feel if Sylnya was trying to deceive him. He felt nothing. Nothing, nothing. Not truth or lies! His gut screamed at him internally that something was wrong.

          Draevin responded the only way he knew how: with his ice. He waved a hand in front of him and spread out a thin mist of frozen vapor. He didn’t have a specific idea about what it might find, but he knew there were a lot of things he could sense through his ice and it stood to reason those senses may have expanded since gaining a divine seed. The mist passed right through Sylnya. He also felt the ground under her feet. Not the top of the arena’s battlements, but the actual ground. He spread his mist out around his body and realized he was hovering much closer to the ground than he’d realized. The ground also felt… lumpy.

          “You’re an illusion,” Draevin said to Sylnya.

          “What are you talking about?” Sylnya asked. She turned around and hurried back a few paces, beckoning Draevin forward. “Come on, we have to go. We don’t have time for your paranoia.”

          Draevin formed an Icicle Spear and blasted it through Sylnya’s chest. She evaporated on contact. Draevin closed his eyes and felt around with his mist, not focusing on what he could see, but what he could feel. What he felt were hundreds of bodies stacked up in a line very close to where he was flying just a hairsbreadth off the ground. He remembered the piles of dead demon bodies surrounding the arena when he’d first arrived, dead bodies which had been conspicuously absent when he’d flown in closer. He was now floating right above them. He realized it had to be the Soul Fire Thrandian had warned him about. “Still trying to kill me?” Draevin asked the open air in front of him.

          He opened his eyes and an illusion of Peter appeared in front of him. “You have no idea how close that just came to working,” he said flatly. “Who’s helping you? I know you’re not that clever, Draevin.”

          “As it turns out, almost getting killed by someone you thought was your friend tends to make you less trusting,” Draevin said. Peter dropped the illusion. The ground was suddenly several paces closer and a clear line of dead demons faded into view right before him. Very few of them had any visible injuries.

          “It’s too late to stop me,” the illusion of Peter said.

          “The fact that you say that tells me the opposite is probably true,” Draevin told him. “You can’t open your mouth without lies coming out. What is wrong with you? We were on the same side! Why bother rescuing me from Dwyra’s prison if you were just going to kill me?”

          “I was rescuing Istven, not you. You were useful only as long as you didn’t try to stop me. My plan is the only thing that matters! This Conflux is mine! If any one of you idiots try to take it from me, you’re just going to screw everything up.”

          “I’m not coming here to take the Conflux,” Draevin said. “That’s Istven’s job. He might be a cold bastard, but at least he doesn’t just kill people without good cause. He’s not perfect, but with the way you’ve been acting you’re just proving he was the right person to put my trust in.” Draevin waved a hand at Peter’s illusion and popped it with a puff of steam. Either Peter had gone insane right at the end, or he’d been insane the whole time. Either way, Draevin was done talking to him. It was time to act.

          Draevin flew up high, then down to the arena’s gardens, making absolutely sure he went over the wall of Soul Fire. There were no weird lurches in his perception this time, forcing him to readjust his trajectory. He saw a cleared section in the middle of the gardens at what had once been the center of the arena’s battleground. When Draevin had entered the Conflux on his past tournament victories the pillar of light coming down from the sky had centered on that point, so it was where he headed now. Draevin settled to the ground in a flurry of dust and snow next to a large open-top tent.

          Nobody looked particularly scared or upset at Draevin’s arrival. Istven was standing right in the center of the arena, glowing eyes staring straight up at the sky while mana coursed into him through glowing wires from the mana engine in the nearby tent. He didn’t acknowledge Draevin. Nor did Sylnya, whose black traut’ska roots were pushing deep into the dirt. She had a faraway look in her unreadable eyes, staring unblinking off into the middle distance. Grrbraa was also sitting close by. He was the only one that reacted to Draevin’s arrival by lifting his head to sniff the air. Peter was nowhere to be seen.

          “Stop!” Draevin shouted. Nobody reacted. “Hey! Istven!” Draevin shouted. “Where’s Peter? I know he’s here.” Still nothing. It was almost like… they couldn’t see or hear him.

          Grrbraa’s nose twitched. “Do you smell that?” he asked Istven. He sat up, tail wagging frantically. “It smells like friend-Draevin!” Istven glanced down at Grrbraa, looked around the garden, then went back to studying the sky. Draevin flapped his arms for him, but Istven’s eyes just passed right over him. That confirmed to him that they must not be able to see him.

          Draevin opened himself to the Elder Tree’s power, letting it fill him with an ocean of mana. The power flowed into him and filled him easily, and even though the staff grew hot, the mana itself no longer burnt or bothered him at all. He slammed the butt of his staff against the ground, releasing a powerful shockwave of steam in every direction. Peter’s illusions would have a hard time disguising that.

          Steam slammed into the tent, knocking it down. Dust kicked up. Sylnya’s vines shook. The fur on Grrbraa’s coat whipped back, shaking in the powerful breeze as the werebeast had to crouch low to steady himself. Draevin’s senses expanded with the steam he conjured. He could feel an extra person in the clearing, an invisible shape behind Istven, moving in his direction.

          Istven calmly turned in Draevin’s direction. “Draevin?” he said in a mildly curious tone.

          “Friend-Draevin!” Grrbraa shouted ecstatically.

          Draevin pointed his staff at the invisible figure and fired a large Icicle Spear. For an instant he realized Istven might mistakenly think the attack was meant for him, but he didn’t react as it passed right over his shoulder. His reaction speed was either too slow, or he knew it wasn’t meant for him. Draevin guessed it was the latter.

          Draevin’s ice struck flesh, knocking Peter to the ground with a groan. Istven calmly looked over at Peter’s fallen body, then back to Draevin. “I hope you have a good explanation for this,” he said.

          “Peter was planning to betray you,” Draevin said. “He wants the Conflux for himself. He admitted as much. He already tried to kill me twice just so I wouldn’t get in his way.”

          Grrbraa rushed to Peter’s side, whining, “Friend-Peter is hurt! Why did you hurt him?” He started licking the side of his face, not really able to do anything about the massive pillar of ice pinning him to the ground.

          “Why would Peter betray me?” Istven asked, silvery brows creasing together as he thought through that pronouncement. “It was his idea for me to take the Conflux.”

          “I don’t know,” Draevin told him, “but look in my eyes and tell me I’m lying to you.”

          Istven did. For a singular moment that seemed to stretch far longer than it had any right to, the two of them stared each other down. Istven’s eyes were glowing with all the power he’d absorbed from the PME. Draevin realized his probably were as well, with how much power was thundering through him from his staff. Draevin tried to impress his earnestness in that gaze, the hurt he’d felt at Peter’s betrayal.

          “You are telling the truth,” Istven said. They were the last words he spoke. As soon as they left his mouth, his jaw dropped open involuntarily. Behind him, Grrbraa’s furry form dissolved, being replaced by an image of Peter holding a shiny teardrop of metal, the pointy end sticking through Istven’s black armor and into his back. The light was sucked out of Istven’s eyes. Draevin screamed.

          Peter wasn’t just holding the teardrop-shaped soul separator the Tuan’diath had crafted specifically to stop Istven; his hand was sticking into the back of it. As the white light flowed out of Istven’s eyes, Peter’s began to shine in their place. Istven slumped to the ground, unmoving.

          Peter extracted his hand from the back of the metal artifact and tossed it aside, just one more thing he was done with as soon as it had served its purpose.

          “I told you it was too late to stop me,” Peter said coldly.

          A powerful beam of light shot down from the sky and slammed into the ground a few paces away. The Conflux had begun.

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