Wizard Trials: Chapter 156 (Patreon)

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          Draevin was almost entirely sure that Istven had been dead. For Peter to have dropped his guard, he had to have believed the same thing. Draevin’s enhanced senses were still telling him Istven’s body only had the faintest glimmer of life left. Apparently, nobody had bothered to tell Istven that it was time to stop living, because he’d somehow managed to bide his time for a final strike against the person that had put him in that state. Peter flopped on the ground, still grabbing his throat. Draevin could still feel Peter’s life force, and even trying to comprehend it was like looking at the sun. There was no doubt in Draevin’s mind that having his throat ripped out, as bad as it looked, would only be an inconvenience to Peter.

          Alex tried to crawl over to where Peter was laying. Not that there was anything he could do even if he reached him.

          Istven was the one who really needed help. The last flame of his life was on the verge of snuffing out. Draevin was pretty sure only his stubbornness was keeping him alive at this point. He ran over to him. “I’m sorry, Istven!” Draevin told him as he leaned over the black prince. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t see this coming.” He laid his hands on Istven to heal him, before realizing he didn’t know how. More power than he’d ever had was at his fingertips, and he didn’t know what to do with it. The irony of it was that Istven had mastered his god powers to the point that he’d be able to heal Draevin if their roles were reversed. All Draevin’s touch did was spread frost across Istven’s forehead.

          “Take it… back,” Istven muttered in a weak voice. His dark eyes were flickering in and out of focus. He pointed weakly with the same hand still covered in Peter’s blood. Draevin’s tracked the trail and spotted the discarded soul separator that Peter had used on Istven. Of course! That was the answer. Even on the verge of death, Istven had a firmer grasp of the situation than Draevin did. He had waited until Peter was within his reach to strike. He’d probably planned to grab the soul separator before Peter recovered but ran out of strength. If Istven couldn’t do it, Draevin would.

          There was no time to think. Draevin launched himself on a jet of steam across the intervening space. He didn’t have to think about it. Thinking would mean slowing down. Slowing down would mean giving Peter the time he needed to recover. Draevin leaned down and scooped up the teardrop-shaped piece of metal and turned back to Peter. His throat had already stopped bleeding. New flesh and muscle fibers were growing back into place.

          In another blink, Draevin was on him. He brought his fist down like a hammer and stabbed the pointed end of the soul separator right in the center of Peter’s chest.

          He waited for something to happen.

          “Sorry,” Peter said in a hoarse voice. He reached up and slowly wrapped his hand around the device. “That thing is all used up.” Without any apparent effort, Peter pulled it out of himself, overpowering Draevin’s most fervent attempts to stop him.

          “No!” Draevin said. “No! It’s not f—”

          Peter jammed his palm in Draevin’s chest. A shockwave of air emanated from his hand at the gesture. Draevin was blasted away, feeling like he’d just ran into a wall at full speed. He busted through the leaves and branches that remained of the arena’s garden and came to rest against the inside of the arena’s walls. Wide-eyed soldiers looked at him in awe as he just stood up from such a powerful blow. Peter’s strength was terrifying.

          “If you want to live,” Draevin said to the soldiers, getting back to his feet, “leave this place. Now!” He launched himself into the sky, sucking in a torrent of mana from the Elder Tree through his staff as he launched a hail of ice and snow at the center of the gardens where Peter still was. He didn’t hold back. He imbued more mana into each crystal of ice than his entire body used to be able to contain.

          Before Draevin’s attack reached him, Peter returned to his feet, his body igniting with the pure white light of the Conflux itself. He screamed out his defiance in a voice that shook the very ground around him and completely vaporized Draevin’s incoming attack. Draevin had to turn his head to stop from getting blinded again. Waves of intense heat buffeted his body, so that he was forced to encapsulate himself in a cocoon of ice to stop from burning. When it finally stopped there was an almost oppressive silence.

          Draevin lowered his icy barrier. He saw only devastation: the lush gardens of the arena were ash; the soldiers Draevin had tried to warn off were smudges of soot against the arena’s walls; Istven, Alex, and Sylnya’s remains were gone. At the epicenter of Peter’s attack, the dirt itself glowed with heat.

          Peter stood on the hot ground, his bare feet sizzling as he blinked and looked around. His confusion soon turned to panic. “I-I didn’t mean to!” he shouted. “Where is he?”

          Draevin flew closer on jets of steam, careful to avoid contact with the ground. “You killed them!” he accused. “You killed everyone! What is wrong with you?”

          Peter’s wandering gaze settled on Draevin in the sky above. “YOU!” he shouted, pointing at Draevin. The ground, the air; creation itself vibrated with Peter’s rage, making him impossibly loud. “YOU ATTACKED ME! THIS IS YOUR FAULT!”

          Draevin sneered at him. “I thought you said you could fix everything,” he said, gesturing vaguely around at the devastation. “Is this what you had in mind?”

          “No no, I can—” Peter closed his eyes. He held his hands out in front of him. Ashes from the ground swirled in the air in front of him, beginning to take the shape of a man. It held its shape for just a second before collapsing back down into a heap. “I just… I need to practice,” Peter said. He started again, legs slowly building up from the ground.

          Draevin just hung in the air, watching. “Not so cut and dry is it? Did you ever even stop to consider the possibility of failure?”

          “SHUT UP!” Peter roared. The ashes he was working on exploded from the shockwave of his scream. “This is your fault,” he said, pointing an accusatory finger at Draevin. “I knew—I knew this would happen! You messed up everything. You stole too much of the power I was supposed to have. I should be able to move mountains! Now I can’t even fix one person.”

          “You’re really going to blame me?” Draevin asked. “The Conflux has always been notoriously difficult to master. Just look at what happened the last time you tried to use it! You’re lucky your wish didn’t turn you into another Everstorm.”

          “No,” Peter said emphatically. He had the ashes swirling into a small cloud again. “Luck has nothing to do with it. I always knew Istven had what it took to master the Conflux, I just didn’t consider it would be possible to take it from him until you gave me the soul separator. Making Istven a god would have been the worst mistake in the history of mistakes.”

          “Wasn’t he technically always a god?” Draevin pointed out.

          Peter shook his head. “Having the potential isn’t enough. He would have needed to—I got it!” Peter pulled his hands back and the swirl of ash he was working with coalesced into Alex’s body, fully clothed. As soon as the body formed, it flopped onto the ground. Not dead exactly; just never alive in the first place.

          “You won’t even be able to tell the difference!” Draevin mocked derisively. He shook his head in disgust. “Is this how you were planning to restore me after you murdered me?”

          Peter looked up at Draevin. He narrowed his eyes. “I think I know what the problem is,” he said.

          “No soul?” Draevin guessed.

          “Not enough power,” Peter replied coldly. He disappeared from sight.

          Draevin launched himself away as soon as it happened, not knowing what Peter was doing, but recognizing it would most likely be bad. He reached out with his godly powers to the connection to all things living. Through that lens, Peter was a beacon too bright to mask with petty illusions. Peter was somehow flying through the air straight at him. Draevin darted to the left and flung a bolt of ice through his staff. He was still dumping mana into his body as fast as it would come. Even as a god he was awed by the Elder Tree’s power. Draevin sensed Peter’s body dodge around the bolt of ice, continuing on forward through the air. He was faster than Draevin. Outrunning him wasn’t an option. Instead, Draevin released a torrent of snow in every direction. Tiny crystals of ice sharpened to razors. Too many for Peter to dodge.

          Peter didn’t dodge; he plowed right through Draevin’s attack like it wasn’t even there, shrugging ice crystals aside like they were just a bit of harmless rain. He became fully visible again as he closed with Draevin and clamped a hand around his throat. Draevin felt cartilage squishing, vertebrae in his neck popping as Peter opened his mouth over his face and inhaled.

          Draevin could feel his life force being sucked out of him, to say nothing of his constricted airway. Even with the help of his staff, the difference in their power levels was too much to overcome. Peter had spent three or four times as long in the Conflux and it showed. Draevin’s last thoughts were of everyone he’d lost: Istven and Sylnya snuffed out in an instant, Grrbraa likely having suffered a similar fate before he arrived. He imagined Peter sitting around a table, playing at a child’s tea party with all his dead friends as guests. The thought made him… sad. He felt sorry for Peter. He thought he could fix the world, but all he did was destroy what was left of it. Now here he was… killing the only friend he had left in the whole world so he could get just a little bit more power. Nothing was ever enough for him. He wasn’t learning from his mistakes, just making the same ones in increasingly dramatic fashion.

          It was insanity, pure insanity.

          Something cracked inside Draevin. “Ha. Ha ha ha. Hahahahahahaha!” he laughed in Peter’s face, spitting up blood as he did. He didn’t care, he was dead anyway. Peter jerked his head back, his features shifting from confusion, to curiosity, to fear.

          “What’s going on?” Peter asked. “Your life force just—”

          “Break it to fix it,” Draevin said. “Fix it to break it. They’re all dead. Dead, dead, dead. And now I’m dead too. Is this what you wanted?”

          “You’re scaring me,” Peter said. He let go of Draevin’s throat. “Something’s wrong with you.”

          “IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED!” Draevin screamed. The world echoed his words.

          Crack.

          “ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?”

          “How are you—”

          “I’M NOT!”

          Crack.

          Peter plummeted to the ground below, like a lodestone snapping to metal. He tried to get back on his feet. Tried to rise up and fly again. Draevin didn’t let him. He was done. Done with all of it. Done with letting Peter bend reality to his will, done with feeling powerless. So Peter had absorbed all that power from the Conflux. So what? He could barely control it. Peter gathered light into his hands for an attack. Draevin slashed the air and Peter’s hands were ripped off.

          “I’m not happy,” Draevin said. Peter opened his mouth to try to object. Draevin twisted Peter’s body into a pretzel—breaking every bone in the process. Peter was an indignant child, barely learning to walk and already trying to tell others how to live. “I’m not happy at all,” Draevin continued. He settled to the ground next to Peter. “Give it back. Give back what it cost you.”

          A swirl of black ash appeared next to Peter. It formed into a new body: Peter’s body. Draevin felt Peter’s essence transfer to the new body in a snap. “NO!” Draevin said. He seized the ground beneath Peter’s feet and formed it into rocky teeth. A mouth opened at Draevin’s command and started gnawing on Peter’s legs. Before he even opened his eyes in his new body his feet were already swallowed up and his knees were quick to follow. Peter reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a black dagger. He slashed the air with it and a rift of hellfire appeared. He pulled himself through it, minus his legs.

          “Where are you going?” Draevin asked him. “We aren’t done yet!” He followed Peter through the hellrift, only to find a world that did not bend to his will like Eldira.

          Peter was digging into the red dirt of Hell with his bare hands. “You’re insane!” he howled.

          “No, I think you’ll find that it’s the world that’s insane. I’ve never felt more sane.” Peter had wronged the world itself. Now the world was getting its revenge on him. That was just how things worked. That was how it had to work.

          The ground Peter was digging in revealed a thick black root. Peter gestured towards it and produced a ring of metal around the root. Silvery wires crisscrossed into the root and out again, forming a web between the ring.

          Peter grabbed the ring with both hands. “I don’t care what kind of power you unlocked,” he said. “Compared to this, you’re nothing.”

          “No,” Draevin replied. “You’re nothing!”

          Draevin pointed his staff at Peter and directed a beam of pure, white destruction at him. Peter threw up one hand to defend, producing an equally threatening cloud of darkness. Draevin screamed. Peter screamed. Dark met light. Draevin could feel his own power tracing back to its source. A great and shining tree at the center of everything. He could feel it wrapping its roots around him, moving through him, feeding him power. Through his staff, through Draevin himself, it joined with its smaller child. The roots of both trees entangled themselves in Draevin’s soul and reached out to crush Peter under their combined weight.

          Peter’s stolen power struggled just to hold back the expanding flame of Draevin’s light. His darkness faded dimmer, dimmer…

          Right at the moment of Peter’s destruction, the connection cut out. Everything went black.

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