Chapter 15: Verdict

  Air warped. That ball of light swelled, fed by the runes spiraling over the horse and the Knight’s armor, growing until it looked like a small sun trapped inside a fist.

  It pushed forward.

  Cole felt it in his teeth first, a pressure that made his jaw ache. The torches along the arena walls flickered in sympathy, their flames bending toward the oncoming blast.

  He gritted his teeth. He would not outrun that. He had one option.

  Ashen Aegis.

  And even as the thought formed, he knew his spell would not cut it. It would do something, sure. It would slow it. It might shave off the edge of the blow. But he was going to take a hit. He just had to hope he lived through it.

  Then Faelen was there.

  The elf moved quickly. Cole had seen it for hours now, but it still caught him off guard when Faelen decided to be fast. The shovel snapped up in both hands and spun. The dull metal head met the oncoming sphere.

  Cole rushed forward at the same time, He understood what Faelen was doing. He was trying to change the angle, to split the force, to give Cole half a heartbeat to matter.

  “Ashen Aegis!” Cole shouted.

  The spell wrapped around them, that subtle area that said, very simply, no.

  Light exploded.

  For one terrible moment, Cole thought he had done it. That the air had thickened enough. That the blast would stop at the edge of his Aegis and sputter out.

  He may as well have put up a straw wall.

  The light punched through. The Aegis held for a fraction, long enough for the blast to slow and spread, long enough for Cole’s skin to crawl with heat instead of peel off his bones.

  Then it hit.

  Cole’s vision snapped. He heard himself grunt, heard his boots scrape, felt his body shoved backward. His shoulders slammed into the invisible resistance of his own spell and the resistance gave, failing in slow motion.

  Faelen took the brunt of it.

  The elf was lifted off the ground. His body rolled through the air, limbs loose, hair whipping. He hit the stone hard.

  There was a sickening crunch that cut through everything, sharp enough to make Cole’s stomach flip.

  “Faelen!”

  Cole’s voice came out raw. It just ripped out of him.

  The Knight vanished the same way it had before, horse and rider blinking out in a flare of rune light. The space they had occupied snapped back into place.

  Cole’s Authority screamed at him.

  He moved without thinking, twisting his body just as the world split. The stone tore itself apart in a straight line that raced toward him, a jagged seam opening across the arena floor.

  Cole dove.

  The line ripped past where his legs had been and kept going, stone chips spraying into the air. The heat of it licked at his back. Dust filled his lungs. He rolled, came up on one knee, coughing.

  The horse reared in the distance the moment it appeared again, the Knight already pulling the spear free from the stone.

  Cole’s heart hammered. He had no room to be scared. It was all now.

  “Edict: Disarm!” he yelled.

  The spear shuddered, hummed, and fell from the Knight’s hands.

  Cole didn’t wait to see if it returned. He only wanted a moment.

  He sprinted, boots slipping slightly on dusted stone. The arena felt too big, too empty.

  He reached Faelen’s unmoving form and dropped hard beside him.

  “Faelen!” he cried again, hands hovering for a split second because he didn’t know where to touch without making it worse.

  Faelen was alive. Cole saw it in the shallow rise of his chest. He heard it in a wet, pained inhale.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The elf’s hand was clamped to his side. Under his fingers, one rib was distended beneath the skin in a way that made Cole’s own ribs ache in sympathy.

  “Stay with me,” Cole said, voice low. “Just stay with me.”

  He dug into his jacket pocket with shaking fingers. The glass vials clinked together. For a second he couldn’t find the right one, panic making his hands clumsy. Then his fingers closed on a vial of mend.

  Behind him, he heard the spear slap back into the Knight’s hand.

  Cole did not look back.

  He uncorked the vial with his teeth, spit the cork aside, and poured mend down Faelen’s throat.

  The elf coughed, swallowed, gagged once, then forced it down. His eyes fluttered, pupils tight with pain.

  Cole kept one hand on Faelen’s shoulder, anchoring him to the stone so he didn’t choke, so he didn’t roll and make the rib worse.

  Faelen’s breath hitched.

  Then, slowly, his body stopped thrashing. The tightness around his eyes eased a fraction.

  Cole exhaled through clenched teeth. He wanted to sit there and make sure Faelen was stable. He wanted to pour another vial in him until that rib was normal and Faelen could stand and laugh and call him ridiculous.

  The hoofbeats were coming.

  Cole rose, turning as the Knight galloped toward him. The horse moved relentlessly.

  Cole planted his feet between the charging boss and Faelen’s half-raised form.

  “Choir of Verdict,” he said.

  Wings of shadow flared behind his back, subtle and quiet.

  Judgment settled.

  The Knight, horse and all, crashed to its knees.

  Stone met stone with a jarring impact. The horse’s front legs buckled. Dust puffed from the cracks in the arena floor.

  The Knight looked up.

  Embers glowed behind its visor, sudden and fierce. Runes swirled over its armor and the horse’s neck, turning faster, tightening.

  Cole lifted his hand, eyes narrowing.

  “Edict: Null Hymn,” he said, focusing on a patch of those runes.

  The spell hummed, that faint choir-song of forgotten things, and the runes vanished where he targeted.

  For half a heartbeat, the Knight’s posture sagged.

  Then the other runes around it twisted, sliding, filling the empty patch. Covering the wound. Patching the hole Cole had made.

  So it could adapt.

  So it could keep coming.

  “Black Halo Lance!”

  Black light fired from Cole’s outstretched hand and smashed into that newly shifting space, right where the runes were trying to seal.

  The Knight was knocked off its horse.

  Armor cracked.

  Then ash began to creep across the metal, spreading from the impact point. Plates flaked. A shoulder pauldron crumbled.

  Dark, ancient, inhuman skin was underneath.

  The Knight stood anyway.

  It held out a hand.

  The spear slapped into its grip, runes blazing along the shaft,. The horse also stood, its stone legs resetting with grinding inevitability.

  Cole’s throat felt dry.

  So. That was the game. Breaking the runes. Breaking the tools. Denying the boss its tricks long enough to end it.

  A plan formed fast.

  He turned his attention to the horse. If he could take the horse, he could take the momentum. No more drive-by spear charges. No more stone-splitting lines. No more blinking behind them with hooves already moving.

  “Edict: Null Hymn,” he said, pointing at the horse’s leg.

  A patch of runes vanished.

  “Black Halo Lance.”

  The black light hit the empty patch, and the horse’s leg began to turn to ash. Enough for the stone body to lose its balance.

  The horse fell.

  It hit the arena with a crash that shook the torches. Dust rolled outward in a low wave.

  The Knight stepped off mid-collapse, boots landing with a heavy clank.

  It whirled its spear once, the sound of it cutting air sharp as a knife.

  Then it threw.

  The spear exploded through the space between them with tremendous force, the tip aimed right at Cole’s throat

  Cole’s body chilled.

  “Ashen Aegis, Edict: Disarm,” he strung the spells together, holding out a hand.

  A black halo blazed over his head.

  The spear slowed at the edge of his Aegis, trying to pierce. The tip crept closer. Cole felt the pressure against the invisible refusal, felt his spell buckling.

  Then the spear fell.

  It clattered to stone, still trembling.

  Cole rushed forward.

  “Edict: Null Hymn!” he roared.

  A forgotten melody played over the spear, erasing a patch of the runes along the shaft.

  “Black Halo Lance,” Cole snarled.

  Black light smashed into the empty patch where runes had been a moment before.

  Ash.

  The spear broke in half.

  The sound was satisfying. Metal snapped. Runes flickered and died. The two halves hit the floor and lay there.

  Cole barely had time to breathe before the Knight was suddenly there.

  No hoofbeats. No windup. Just a blink of rune light and then a huge armored foot came down toward him.

  Cole’s spine jolted with warning. His Authority screamed again, but there was nowhere to roll, with Faelen behind him and the Knight in his face.

  “Choir of Verdict,” Cole said.

  The foot stopped.

  It hung there, an inch from crushing him, frozen.

  The subtle black wings showed behind Cole’s back again.

  Cole wasn’t sure what was happening.

  The world paused.

  And in that pause, something in him went quiet.

  Calm settled over him. He felt attuned to the halo over his head. To his title. To the weight of the words he spoke.

  He saw it then.

  He had been casting like a man throwing rocks in the dark. Saying the words. Hoping the magic did what it was supposed to do.

  But it was more than words.

  It was decision.

  He lifted his hand, pointing at the foot.

  “Edict: Null Hymn,” he said, erasing a patch of runes.

  Then he cast again, but this time he focused on what he wanted the Lance to be.

  A precise thing that punished the weakness he had created.

  “Black Halo Lance.”

  The spell answered.

  A thin bar of black light hit the patch of armor on the foot. The metal turned to ash and peeled away, exposing another patch of dark skin beneath.

  The boss made a sound, a low, grinding noise.

  Then Cole’s spell dissipated and the Knight could move again.

  It blinked.

  A cloud of rune light swallowed it and it appeared some ways away, boots grinding as it landed, posture lower now.

  Cole’s breath came hard.

  His chest felt tight.

  From stress. From the fact that he was standing in front of something that could have ended him three different times already, and the only reason he was still alive was because he kept finding rules to exploit.

  The embers behind the visor regarded him.

  Cole could swear there was a new emotion in that glow now.

  Weariness.

  Somewhere behind Cole, Faelen drew in a shaky breath and tried to push himself upright again, stubborn as ever, refusing to stay down.

  The Knight’s runes brightened, gathering light along the broken edge of the spear’s blade, along the armor plates that remained, along the hollow spaces where Cole had erased.

  Cole tightened his grip on nothing, because he had no weapon, only words.

  “Come on,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Do it.”

  The Knight lifted its hand.

  And the air began to warp again.