Chương 193: 188 — Book 4, Chapter 32 — The Black Vault, Pt 7

Cale allowed his features to curl into a wince at the jab. They had once known each other well enough that Valev knew exactly what to say to hurt him. Of course, things had changed since they had fought... but Valev didn't need to know that. Cale liked to keep his cards close to his chest. Well, no. Cale liked to flaunt his cards flagrantly. But he did that explicitly so that he could keep a few of them hidden behind his back, which was pretty much the same thing.

Valev-yetah, the Outer Lord, wasted no time in opening with a volley of spells that many other mages would have struggled to decipher, let alone block. From afar, it might have seemed almost playful: an array of colorful orbs of magic blazed into existence all along the edges of Valev's domain, then began to streak through the air toward Cale, one after the other. That was what it looked like from a distance. Cale knew better than to take them all at face value.

Valev had disguised them all as variations of the simple [Manabolt] spell, but each one was packed with destructive potential that didn't belong in such low-tier magic. And there were traps within traps, as Cale often encountered whenever he fought any experienced mage. For him, mages like these were more dangerous opponents than the gods. The gods, after all, were used to taking down an opponent with a spell or two.

Even when they fought seriously, they tended to default to casting one spell at a time, expecting to overwhelm their foe in a single expression of divine magic. But for a mage to reach such heights as Valev had—for them to acquire such vast amounts of cosmic power—they had to learn to be tricky. They had to outsmart opponents that were often better at magic than they were. So they learned to hide spells within their spells, to disguise their rituals in the pattern of their spellcasting.

Cale, in turn, had learned how to see through those traps. Just as Valev had said, for centuries, he'd had nothing to fight with but his barriers and his blasts. That meant he had to be far more observant than the average mage. He'd trained himself and his mana sense until he could spot almost any trap coming from him. Not only that, but he had refined his barrier over countless centuries, adjusting them so they could account for many of the dangers of the Great Realms by default.

Even then, Valev managed to force him on the defensive. The first array of spells was a feint. They were nothing more than a basic [Manabolt], attuned to different mana aspects. Cale counted an [Acid Bolt], a [Firebolt], and a [Glitterbolt] among their number, but he let them all splash harmlessly against his barrier, focusing his attention instead on the next wave of attacks. There were dangerous spells mixed in among the trivial ones, here.

Cale sensed a glimmer of errant mana within a blazing [Firebolt] and manifested a barrier to detonate it before it managed to get too close. It was a good thing he had, because cloaked by the fire mana of the first spell was a secondary [Riven's Rivets], a war spell modified from a simple carpentry spell designed specifically to pierce a barrier and pin it against its caster. Against any other mage, it would have been a trivial spell for Cale to block. Valev's domain, however, made things complicated.

He couldn't rely on the absolute nature of his mana to circumvent other absolute effects. When that [Riven's Rivets] detonated, it struck his barrier with a set of glowing rivets, and Cale felt it as the plane of mana left his field of control. It stayed as a single, solid construct, but rather than staying rooted to him it was flung across the void of the Black Vault and pinned to the ground. Cale ignored it, too busy dealing with all the other spells still headed his way.

There was a second [Riven's Rivets], this time with a targeting component made to slam his own barrier against him like a physical missile; Valev had included the first one only to try to catch him off guard, in the hopes that Cale would assume the second one could be dealt with the same way. Cale, of course, had made no such assumption. He waved a hand, and a second and third barrier manifested to deflect the trajectory of the first.

He'd caught the [Reinforcement] and [Escalation] imbuements planted in the spell, too. They were designed to reinforce the barrier the moment control of it was taken from him, then to accelerate it so that it struck him with enough force to blow him back and disorient him. Valev knew him well. His barriers were nigh-unbreakable, but he was still subject to physical force.

It had been his primary weakness when they fought so long ago, and it was the reason so many of Valev's spells could manipulate, target, or overwhelm the barriers of other mages. He had designed his kit to fight a barrier mage, after all. That brief interaction with [Riven's Rivets] was only one of a dozen different spells that Cale was forced to deal with simultaneously.

Barriers manifested in the air in layers, forcibly detonating spells that had to be disrupted while they were still far away while intentionally allowing through the ones that Valev wanted him to block. Half of them were war spells and forbidden magic. [Tsugen's Parasite], for example, a spell designed to eat into a sample of a mage's mana and transform it into a monstrous construct that would attack that mage.

Because the construct was formed of the mage's own mana, it could bypass their barriers and kill them outright. That one Cale didn't bother to block. He simply stepped to the side, allowing the spell to splatter harmlessly against the ground. He did the same for [Myugen's Parasite], which the dread mage Myugen had built off of his brother's work; instead of consuming and converting a single construct, it could instead burrow into a mage's mana core and take them over from within.

[Kinerith's Piercing Bolt] was a spell that increased in power by absorbing any impact it sustained. It was forbidden because the spell was an accumulator—unless it was dispelled, it would simply continue annihilating anything in its path. Cale stopped it by manifesting mana that was thick and dense enough to turn into a gel, slowing it down rather than giving it a hard surface to strike. And those were just the spells Valev cast to deal with his barriers.

There were others that were there simply to force him to deal with them. Illusory spells anchored within elemental spells that would disrupt his senses if he allowed them near him; spatial spells meant to disorient him by reconfiguring the space around him; alteration spells that transformed some of Valev's otherwise harmless feints into truly dangerous ones.

Cale caught a [Gray Bind] and a [Festering Blight] in both his hands, each one coated with a secondary barrier type he'd designed explicitly for dealing with spells that pretended to be healing and support magics. In fact he was, at this point, nearly fully armored in a set of barriers designed to deal with various types of magic. So far, he had dealt with every spell with a casual, almost contemptuous ease. Both he and Valev knew that wasn't exactly the case, however.

There was a reason he hadn't thrown any attacks of his own yet. All his attention had been occupied fending off just that onslaught of spells.

"I suppose you still have your skills, at least," Valev said as he lowered his hand at last, granting Cale a brief reprieve.

"Please," Cale said.

"We both know you're still just toying with me."

"Oh? And I suppose you would claim you are not doing the same?" Valev stalked closer. White ink spread across the void of the Black Vault as he moved, like he was staining it with his very presence.

"This is hardly the height of your strength."

"What, I'm supposed to just try and kill you in one blow?" Cale snorted, then without warning did exactly that. A blast of mana erupted from him, a lance of prismatic energy so bright it would have blinded him had he not tuned his barriers to filter that out long ago. When the light faded, Valev had caught it. Not with his hands, no—not even he was so foolish—but a piece of the ink spreading around him had come to life and moved, curling around the mana blast and stopping it in its tracks.

"Very good," Valev growled, a note of approval in his voice. His domain shifted and dropped the prismatic lance, where it clattered against the ground as though it was a solid object.

"But not nearly good enough. You have no angel prism to subvert my domain this time, Cale, and even if you did, I know now how to guard against it." He stalked closer—close enough now that he could whisper, and Cale could still hear him.

"How long has it been, I wonder?" he hissed, the words soft and intimate.

"How many centuries have passed since we last fought? No fraction of eternity could ever fill that hole you have in your heart, but you certainly loved to try. How much more death will you see, before you admit that I was right?" Cale had forgotten that Valev also loved to monologue. Unfortunately, he had only himself to blame. He was pretty sure Valev had acquired that habit entirely through him.

"This again," Cale said, exasperated.

"No amount of time is going to make me think you were right, Valev. You should have known how I was going to react." Valev went still. Then he loomed over Cale, meeting his eyes with a staggering intensity, and for a moment Cale saw in the reflection of those eyes the Outer Plane his old friend had bound. It was a desolate, empty place. Valev had been so proud of that—had described himself as kind when he spoke of binding it.

He'd looked at Cale, expecting praise for the fact that he had chosen to sacrifice one realm full of life instead of two. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I thought you would understand," Valev-yetah said. There was hurt in his voice.

"I thought you, of all people, would understand why I had to do it."

"If you thought that, then I don't think you ever knew me," Cale said simply. They stared at one another for a long moment. This was not, of course, the first time they'd had this conversation. Cale had once tried to convince Valev to stand down, to understand what he had done. He'd tried to get through to him across a dozen lives and a dozen deaths before he understood the truth.

"You did it all the time," Valev said, his eyes narrowing now; the glimpse of the Plane disappeared from his eyes, and they burned instead with his anger and hurt and disappointment.

"You told me yourself of the sacrifices you have made. The realms you were able to save only because one innocent soul lost their life in exchange. Is what I did so different? I did it for you." Well, this was new. They'd never arrived at this in all their previous conversations. Cale wondered briefly if Valev had acquired some sort of brain damage in the process of binding that Outer Plane to his soul, but he knew that wasn't the case. As nice as it was to think that the Valev he knew hadn't been a lie...

He would have been of sound mind in the moment he decided to slaughter a realm to fuel the binding ritual. Even if that process had damaged him or changed him, it wouldn't change the choice he'd made. That, he had chosen to do entirely on his own.

"Yes, someone sacrificing themselves to save a realm is different from you slaughtering a realm to fuel your ascension," Cale answered, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

"Are you—is that a real question?"

"How is it different?" Valev demanded. He really didn't seem to understand.

"First of all, those people chose to sacrifice themselves!" Cale snapped.

"And they wouldn't have had to do even that if I'd been—if I'd been better! Do you think I wanted any of those sacrifices? Do you think I wouldn't have done something else if there had been any other option?"

"There was no other option," Valev said, settling in front of Cale, his eyes glowing with ominous power. There was a certain flat finality to his words. The blotch of white beneath him began to spread farther as his magic began to take over more and more of the Black Vault.

"There was no other way."

"Aside from, you know, not doing it," Cale said sarcastically. A long time ago, he had been distraught by Valev's betrayal, but to hear it put into words—to realize that it had come from so absurd a belief—it angered him. It angered him so much it startled him, in fact. He thought he'd moved past this. Valev, rather predictably, ignored him.

"It must have been a while," he muttered, his eyes raking over Cale with a dark intensity. Cale could feel the prickle of his mana sense prodding through his barrier and the outer layers of his soul—his barrier would normally have filtered this sort of probe out, but the effect of Valev's domain took priority.

"Your core is as beautiful as ever, but its fire... you could burn down a realm yourself, if you wanted. You could not do that, when last we fought." The astral wisp cocked his head at Cale, and even without a mouth, Cale could tell he was smirking.

"Have you?" he asked.

"How does it feel, the weight of gods within you? And you would chide me for grasping at that power? I suppose I should not be surprised by the hypocrisy." Cale narrowed his eyes.

"I'm getting tired of the monologue," he snapped.

"If you're going to try to kill me, do it already. If not, I'd appreciate it if you just walked back into the Nothing."

"And if I wish to do neither?" Valev asked, his tone light and almost dangerously neutral.

"What if I simply wish to leave?"

"You know I can't let you do that." Cale knew full well what Valev was trying to do. He'd made this mistake before.

"Ah, yes, of course," Valev murmured.

"Because of what I am."

"Because of what you would do," Cale corrected.

"Are they not one and the same?" Valev smirked at him again.

"What I am is what I do. I would bring the Great Realms together again, unite them in a single plane as they were meant to be... but I can see in your face that you do not wish to rehash this conversation. Very well. It was a hypothetical, regardless. I would, of course, accept no outcome other than your death and the binding of your soul within me." Valev paused, then chuckled.

"Do you know, Cale, how I know that it has been an eternity since we last spoke?" he asked lightly.

"Why I am certain of that beyond a doubt, though we could never pin down how quickly your mana would grow between lives?"

"Nope," Cale said.

"Why don't you tell me?" Valev grinned.

"Because if our fight was recent, you would remember what I truly specialize in, and you would never have let me get this close." He raised a hand. This time, he was close enough that Cale could see the way drew a single stroke in the air, as if painting with an invisible brush. A staggering explosion of magic erupted from Valev. The splotches of white ink he'd stained the void with flashed into a more coherent shape, no longer the loose coils he had used to intercept Cale's earlier blast of mana.

Now it gathered into the form of a massive maw, filled with rows of endless teeth. Valev-yetah was a paint mage. Before his ascension to Outer Lord, he had been known as the Painter of Miracles, for his work with his magic was so precise and filled with so much emotion that he could bring his paintings to life. All paint mages could, to a certain degree, but only Valev had the skill to make them independent creatures, capable of living and thinking. Capable of killing, too.

Valev made a gesture with his hands, as though to mimic a jaw snapping shut. Around Cale, the painting of the maw did the same, moving to clamp shut around him. Paint magic was exceptionally lethal when applied to combat. A true paint mage did not operate by the laws of physics—they painted whatever they wanted on any two-dimensional surface they chose, and those paintings could interact with the world around them as though they were three-dimensional. All that was required was an observer from the right angle.

If that observer could see what looked like a jaw snapping shut around a person, then the wound would manifest into reality, no matter how far the painting was from its target. So when the jaw snapped shut around him, Cale cast a spell. It was a simple one—a third-tier spell he'd picked up while walking past the classroom for Magical Art just a day before his duel with Astiviya.

His upgraded draconic resonance meant he could hoard higher-tier spells just from being in their vicinity, and this spell had been cast by the professor. Thankfully, circumstances at the time had also pushed him into casting the spell (one particular student had been a little too experimental with her tattoo magic), or he wouldn't have had a version of it he could cast. The tier had stayed the same, but his use of it had granted it a few bonus effects. [Reset Magical Canvas, Level 1] [Sixth Tier, Active] [1. 0e27 Mana] Target and dispel a single creation of magical art. Applies to any non-standard definition of "canvas". Capable of disrupting the link between magical art and its artist, if targeted correctly. Cale had not, in fact, forgotten what type of mage Valev was. He had remembered enough to deliberate bait Valev into getting close. It put him in range of Valev's domain, yes, but it would be far more difficult to block or dispel paint magic if it was too far away from him.

Gray light washed out from him as he cast the spell. The painted maw dissolved back into harmless splotches of domain-ink, and Cale smiled pleasantly at Valev, whose eyes had widened.

"That was—" Valev-yetah's voice faltered, and he took a step back.

"That was a spell. You cannot... you cannot do that. You cannot cast spells."

"Well, it has been a while," Cale said. He flicked out a hand, then cast [Conjure Sword]. He didn't like swords, but he did like keeping his opponents guessing.

"You aren't the only one that's picked up a few new tricks. Let me show you what else I can do." If only he had access to the Gift, Cale mused to himself. Casting a spell in front of Valev was one thing. He could only imagine the reaction Valev would have if he evolved a spell in front of him. Ah well. That was not to be. They were in a divine void, after all, and the Gift wouldn't even be able to reconnect with him until they left.

"We have to do something," Irides said. He was staring at the fight between Cale and Valev-yetah, his runelines fluttering erratically.

"You're in charge of this place. Can't you do something?"" I cannot.

"Seer frowned, uncharacteristically grim." Valev-yetah's power exceeds that of the Black Vault. I did not anticipate this."

"How could you not anticipate the most obviously important factor?" Irides demanded, nearly crying out in frustration.

"There must be something we can do. During the battle against Astiviya, he was evolving new spells, but he doesn't have the Gift right now. Can't you do something about that? Turn off the divine void in here, or something?"" The divine void is an intrinsic property of the Black Vault,"Seer said, sounding offended." To turn it off would be to go against its nature."

"Temporarily!" Irides said, exasperated.

"Don't think I didn't notice you didn't say it was impossible.""... I could temporarily disable that feature,"Seer grumbled." But it would not help. The Black Vault is its own realm. For the influence of the Gift to return, the bond with Utelia would need to be re-established. On top of that, the Black Vault would require a divinity of its own."

"And?"" I cannot re-establish the bond to Utelia. Valev-yetah has sealed it.

"Seer sounded embarrassed by this." And there is no divinity here, due to the nature of the Vault."

"Divinity is just created by belief," Irides said.

"We could make a divinity right here, right now, if we wanted. And then we just have to figure out how to reconnect the Vault to Utelia."" I do not believe that is how that works."

"Shut up," Irides said.

"You're the closest thing there is to a god in this place. Turn off the divine void so I can worship you and we can see if you turn into a god."" I—what?" Seer sputtered. For the first time, he seemed actually thrown off balance.

"Gods are created by worship and belief," Irides said impatiently.

"So turn off the Realms-damned void and I'll do the whole worship and believing thing."" I do not—"Seer started, then faltered and gave up when Irides glared at him." Fine. Do not blame me if this does not work."