Chương 25: 25 -Eye of the Emperor

Rain lashed down on Pondra Field, a veritable storm that was growing more intense by the second. Magicka was flooding the region, feeding into the clouds high above and giving power to them. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled behind the bolts. Lanten Basque flew high, rocketed along on a boulder positioned beneath his fight. His face was set in an angry grimace, thews straining beneath his robe. And behind him followed the Bloody Wight, his blazing claymore raised high.

At Lanten's command a fleet of rocks tore from their moorings in the mud, lashing toward the Wight at such speeds that the air caught fire around them. The Wight bellowed, a savage animal sound, swinging his blazing blade and cleaving three of the boulders apart. But two struck their mark, kicking up great echoing booms and sending tides of earth high into the air. The smoke cleared, the burning silhouette standing erect. Lanten moved fast, raising a great clod of earth that was roughly eight meters across.

Then, eyes blazing with the primordial energies of magicka, the floating clod of mud glowed bright as it was transmutated into a solid mass of iron. The boulder of iron rocketed through the air at his command, tenfold faster than a crossbow bolt, but the Wight was already stepping up to face it. Fire wreathed his claymore, shape changing from a blade to a great warhammer, and he swung it to meet the incoming boulder.

The great clang echoed across the wartorn field, red hot fissures splitting and opening across the boulder. It crumpled and exploded, a massive wound opening in the ground, and the Bloody Wight was flung a few meters back by the force of the magic blast. He flipped, deft and nimble despite his armoured bulk, and landed skidding on his heels. His cloak flapped behind him, the edges of it blazing with tongues of flame.

"Lanten," he said, his voice like the growling of some foul demon.

"You'll have to try harder than that."

"I'm just," Lanten huffed, the weight of exertion sucking the air from his lungs, "getting started." Another wave of flame wreathed the Wight's hammer, it's shape changing into a monster of a crossbow with a blazing bolt nocked inside it. The thwang of the bowstring echoed across the battlefield, and the bolt crossed the distance like a blazing comet. Earth moved at Lanten's command, coils of mud rising and then shifting into a mass of solid stone, becoming a dense block that met the bolt head on.

The impact kicked up a great explosion of flame, shattering the construct apart, and the wave of pressure in the air slammed into Lanten and sent him flying from his boulder perch. Lanten was quick, for his age, and a shelf of mud rose up to catch and embrace him. Or, at least, to slow his rapid descent. And already the Wight was bearing down on him, the blaze of chaos igniting every plate of his armour. He had the claymore in his grasp again, his preferred weapon of choice.

Its mere presence carried with it the stink of scorched ozone. The wizard was quick, frantic, and summoned up a hardened fist of soil and stone to erupt from the earth. It slammed into the Wight's side and launched him away. An instant later and his armoured bulk slammed into the hill that overlooked Pondra's Field, obliterating the entire landmass in a cataclysmic bang, kicking up a quake that could well have flattened a city.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Lanten rose shakily to his feet, his heart thudding and his muscles aching. How long had they been fighting? Hours? Days? Years? Sweat was pouring from his brow in great droplets. Magic was a costly thing, even for a man who had spent years honing and cultivating the art. He was no stranger to battles, there were times where he'd fought other wizards for hours at a time.

And yet this was far more strenuous. The Wight was as invincible as his peers feared him to be. At least with other battles he could sense his opponents tiring too, could feel his magic having effect on them. But the Wight did not slow, did not tire. Had he miscalculated his strength this severely? No... no, Lanten told himself. Nobody was invincible. No undead revenant was indestructible.

He straightened his posture and squared his shoulders, just as the burning madman came charging from the crater that had once been a hill. Lanten took a breath and willed the earth to rise. Twin tides of soil, meters high, slammed into the Wight on either side like clapping jaws. And then it sucked him under, a gurgling sinkhole that expanded outward, as thousands and thousands of tons of earth bore down on the Wight. The earth compacted, growing dense around him.

Mud became stone became iron, a crushing and dense coffin of it that surrounded the revenant from all sides. Lanten moved his palms together, as if rolling an invisible ball of clay. In his mind's eye he saw the expanding sphere of iron as it entombed the Wight more and more. Thirty meters and counting, then forty, veins of iron creeping out and claiming more and more soil to transmutate.

He poured his magicka into the soil, ignored that boiling hot ache in his muscles He could do this, he could best the- The earth roiled from another mighty tremor, suddenly splitting apart in an explosion of flame and molten rock. The iron ball shattered, along with the surrounding layers of stone and soil, and the column of fire shot so high skyward that it obliterated a great stretch of the rain clouds above. Lanten struggled, nearly bowled over, and he fought to stay erect.

The Wight leaped from the crater, flame pouring from every gap in his armoured plates. His roar was like that of a dragon, and Lanten could scarcely react as the blade fell in a smooth arc that cleaved him in twain from brow to groin. Emperor Novos opened his eyes slowly as the fugue state left him. He sighed, adjusting himself where he sat cross-legged on the floor. Around him sat concentric rings of flickering candles, the burning Ostani wax boosting his focus and the flow of his magicka.

"Another defeat." He had entered these Oculomantic trances eighteen times now over the past few days, and in each one Lanten Basque was defeated while the Wight remained mostly unharmed. It was a tricky form of magic, one that only a few people partook in, but it had its uses. If the caster had a firm understanding of what they were imagining, they could vividly and accurately simulate their subject in motion. Ordinarily he used it as a means to strategise for battles and sieges, allowing for insights.

He knew the Wight better than anyone, and he had seen Lanten in enough battles to have a good gauge of his abilities. There was, by Novos' estimation, simply no scenario in which Lanten could beat the Wight, let alone kill him. But... then what? Novos rose slowly to his feet and, with a gesture, snuffed the flames of the candles. The only light came from the domed glass roof directly above him. Had Lanten had some sort of unknown magical weapon?

Something that could have severed the connection between the Wight's soul and the magic core that had reanimated him. It was possible, in the same way it was possible for a large enough group of men to drink the ocean dry. And equally as implausible. The talent to create such a weapon was difficult to fathom. Even Novos doubted he could do it, and there were few things Novos ever doubted about himself. Had there been others aiding Lanten? It seemed unlikely.

His spies in the Holy Kingdom told him that the Rhondians spoke of Lanten as if he were a saint, Great Aum reincarnated, and Novos doubted any of the Kingdom's preening peacock wizards would be able to restrain themselves from basking in that adulation if they had a hand in the Wight's defeat. Had they taken him alive, put on a whole show to trick Novos? He rubbed his chin at the thought. No, that was doubtful too. They couldn't help but brag to high heaven about it And anyway, what kind of cell could house Tarion?

They'd tried sealing him in the past and he'd simply torn through the crystal they used to contain him. The emperor's face was marked by an uneasy frown as he strode to the double doors of his ritual room. Something about this whole situation stank. And even with the war still grinding on, he would get to the bottom of it.