The Restored: Chapter Thirty-Three

The world around me started to grow fuzzy under the choking grasp of the Arenamaster’s claws. I couldn’t even breathe now. My soul was being assaulted by demonic power on all sides. 

I was going to die. 

I didn’t know how. Maybe I’d choke out and die that way, maybe I’d lose my free will and humanity and become a demon in service to Alyphize. 

But one way or another, I was going to die. 

I shouldn’t have gone into this fight. For all that I talked about the number of arch-stars a person have not being a reliable indicator for a person’s power, there were some fights that one simply needed to be an archmage in order to beat. 

Maybe this northern enchanter could use his barbarian magic to keep up for a time, and as an enchanter, he’d likely prepared a thousand tricks just in case. Maybe Hadiya, in her office, with its endless trinkets and tools would have been able to repel an attack from an archmage. I knew that Jessica in her home, criss-crossed with her endless wards, could repel an attack like this. She’d fallen only when someone prepared to take on one of the Sundered Thrones themselves had entered the fray. 

But all of them were witches. Their power was in preparation and ritual magic. They could hit as hard as they liked, given enough time, resources, and information. It didn’t matter if they lacked Mage Sight or Aura Storage or Perfect Recall, or any other arch-star. Those things helped them, but they weren’t needed. They weren’t core to the powers of a witch. 

I was a sorcerer, and for all my talk, my power was bound in my own hands. I traded flexibility for speed and power. 

I needed Aura Storage to give me enough power to keep going. I needed my Split Mind to build multiple spells at once. I needed my Trickle Recharge to power my spells. I needed my Aura Hiding for rather unique reasons, given how rare Infusion was, but they were still important ones. 

My power was my own, and my power simply hadn’t been enough. 

I wasn’t an archmage. 

Except… I had created a simulacrum. 

That was a spell that was often considered to be a feat worthy of an archmage. I had done it, and done it well enough to trick someone who would become the Throne of Sacrifice. I had defeated the replacement for myself so thoroughly that she had betrayed the person who had helped make her into the brainwashed child she was when I’d met her. 

I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that if I died here, the city would be doomed, or even that the life of Jin and Kelly would necessarily end. For all the power of the Throne of Sacrifice, it didn’t belong in this world, it belonged in the Fallen Void. It would eventually be forced to return there. More than that, the forces of Elderglass were rallying, and even if Archmage Davalier had stolen credit, she was actively facing down another one of the remaining Thrones in the city. 

If I died, even if I became a fourth throne, the city would eventually pull itself back together. Having another Throne running around, or even being down a powerful, four-star metal mage would make things worse, certainly, but it wouldn’t be the loss that destroyed the entire city. 

No, the loss would be far more personal than that. 

Kelly had dropped out of his education to work, but I wanted him to be able to return and finish, to get an education and expand his prodigal talent as a mind mage. 

Jin had so much of the world outside of violence and death that she hadn’t seen, and I wanted to be able to help someone like me in a way that I wish I’d been able to have when I’d gone through similar circumstances to her. 

Rhys…

There were a lot of things with Rhys. He was sweet, intelligent, passionate, and interesting. He was attractive, even if he was on the larger side, and had helped me take Kelly and Jin under my wing without protest or complaint. 

And he was strong, too, so much stronger than he gave himself credit for. He’d lost his father, but he’d still stuck around for the absurdity that had happened in the wake of that event, even after we found out who it was. He didn’t need to do that, but he knew it was the right thing to do, so he had done it. 

If I died here, I’d never have the chance to tell him that. To see if maybe, when things calmed down, we could become more than just friends. 

And Odril. If I died here, I’d fail her. My first true friend, the one who had helped try to guide me towards a better place, even if she’d had issues with it herself. I’d repaid her by getting her sealed away for two decades, then dying. 

There were others too. Jessica. Hadiya. Even a few friends from college I’d never get a chance to reconnect with. 

If I died here, each and every one of those would remain unfinished. The city would be worse, and more people would die, as a new Throne rose, or else due to me being unable to help stop the demonic threat. 

No, I wouldn’t die. Not yet. I didn’t want to be immortal, but I did want to see good come from my life, and I wasn’t there yet. I wasn’t done yet. 

I was not going to – could not let myself – die. 

The Arenamaster had said anything she had given me she was able to take away, but that was at least partially a lie. I could still feel my aura, still feel my Rune Bonds, and still feel my connection to Odril. They were suppressed with as much power as what the constables used to contain a prisoner, and demonic magic was swirling inside of my body, but they were still there. 

She couldn’t take it away, but she wanted me to think that she could. The obvious reason why was so that I wouldn’t push back. 

I focused every bit of my will as my eyes closed, focusing on the magic that was keeping me suppressed, and I fought back. The tendrils of demonic magic reaching inside of me, trying to get deeper into my soul made this harder, made it nearly impossible, but I wouldn’t let myself die. Not here, not now. 

I screamed. 

My aura sparked to life, forced back under my control. 

Aura began to surge into me. My eyes snapped open and I stared into the eyes of the Arenamaster, who looked confused for a second, before recognition dawned in her eyes. 

Odril’s recharge was a strange one, one that was largely useless to me in everyday life. My aura was restored whenever my aura underwent a large advancement. Throughout my life, I’d only had it happen a few times: when I’d mastered a particularly complex aura shaping exercise, when I’d gotten my rune bonds, when I’d initially formed the bond with her.

And when I’d formed an arch-star.

A fifth arch-star bloomed to life over my head, the complete set of five connecting together, glowing like a crown of light over my head. 

I forced the demonic magic away from me, funneling the mass of soulstuff out of my own soul, and to the being within me that was capable of consuming it without harm. 

The seal in the back of my mind, holding on by a thread through the causal magic of the Djinn, snapped. 

Throughout the fight, I’d been receiving impulses from her, helping give me instructions on where to go and how to move. But now, I heard Odril’s voice echo in my head fully, just like it used to. 

“Finally!” Odril shouted into my mind, her voice triumphant. “We’ve got to move!” 

I activated my fifth arch-star, the one I’d just formed, even as Odril’s recharge tapered off. It didn’t matter, my power was full, and I’d even managed to siphon some into my aura storage. 

All of a sudden, it wasn't just me in the driver’s seat of my body and mind. Odril took up a share of it, almost like when I split my mind, but instead of both sections being under my command, one was under hers. 

As a part of most demonic familiar compacts, demons would automatically consume some of the excess soulstuff that humans naturally produced through parts of our soul that were slowly shed away. Normally, the demons burned this for power, but Odril had been stuck in limbo for nearly twenty years. 

Just like my Aura Storage arch-star had been a massive stockpile of over a decade’s worth of constant powering, Odril was now sitting atop a close-on two decade stockpile of my excess soulstuff. Through the power of the Familiar Fusion arch-star, she was able to alter my body and use her magic in a much more free way than a familiar ever could. 

“No!” the Arenamaster screamed, reaching out to try and suppress our magic again, but I was already moving.

Red light raced up and down my body Odril began to cast. 

All demons could use their innate command over soulstuff to enhance and move their bodies in addition to the magic they were spawned into being with. Odril was a demon from a Throne of Battle originally, and her magic of war was especially well suited to physical enhancement. 

I had undergone rigorous physical modifications that improved my soul’s connection to my body via my lifeline, far more deeply than a normal human.

Odril’s bond had been strengthened by the Contractor’s magic, to the point even destroying her form didn’t sever the bond. 

And I’d just fused Odril’s purely spiritual form with my own physical form. 

All of the powers stacked together, and together, we moved.

We whipped our hand up, snatching the hand that the Arenamaster had around our throat and yanked. Her arm tore off at the shoulder, soulstuff spilling out of it like blood would from a human, but the Soulwitch had earned that title well. The soulstuff turned into tendrils that connected to the arm and pulled it back to her, and more began to surge into the demons around us, amplifying their magic and their bodies, but Odril had more than enough power to spare. 

We ducked under a slash at a speed my body had never been able to manage before, and punched right through the chest of another demon, spun and kicked one’s head off, and then brought an elbow down on the spine of the other as we launched towards the Arenamaster. At the same time, we spun blades of copper, enhanced with metal and mass magic into deadly instruments, then empowered with the glowing red light of Odril’s magical specialization: weapon magic. 

The blades shredded apart demons like a field of wheat falling before an industrial harvesting enchantment, and we raised my gun in our hand. Odril’s red light raced out, and the gun was suddenly swirling into a much larger form. It continued to grow and writhe, until suddenly we were holding a revolver, encased in a massive anti-airship gun made of red light. While Odril’s weapon magic went to work, mine did the same, adding spellwork that would make the bullet massless for the time to pass through the force wards, then add enough artificial mass to the bullet to make it more like an automobile than a bit of lead, layering spells to accelerate the bullet, and infusing two arch-stars into it at once. 

Two? That was new. Was it because of the Familiar Fusion, or had Odril’s familiar gift advanced. 

It didn’t matter for right this moment, though, as both my third arch-star for recharging and my fourth arch-star for slipping through detection went into the mess of connected spellwork.

Then we pulled the trigger, and the world was lit in red and gray aura.