The Last [Mage] King - Chapter 33: - Echoes and Execution (Patreon)

“That’s the man,” Morozova said, voice harsh and rough. Exia had seen the soldier serious before, in fact he thought he’d never come across the Captain in a state of mind that could not accurately be described as a serious one. It seemed he was wrong however, because the Morozova he saw now made the one he knew seem a playful uncle by comparison.

It was night, they were masked in the shadows of Tsaryovohrad’s slums, and Morozova had hard eyes on a man who limped through the night by cane. The captain seemed primed for violence, like he wanted nothing more than to leap out of the shadows and eat the man right in front of them whole. But he resisted. “We’ll attack when he’s in. We want to get all of them at the same time,” he spat the words out as if they sounded bitter on his tongue.

It was a bitter thing for Exia to hear as well. It was finally his chance to do something cool with his Gifts and Spells as a Magnitude Twenty Mage—so far he’d only been able to rise by training feats, which were far less potent than feats of blood—and he was being told to wait.

Well, he waited.

He waited as the man limped through the streets, he waited as he knocked five times against the door, he waited as someone slid the peephole open, and he watched as they opened the door and let the target in.

“Can we go in now?!” he hissed, fingers twitching in anticipation.

Morozova did not answer for a long and grating moment; he just looked ahead at the building—small and squat thing it was, holding only two floors—and said nothing. Finally, he gave Exia an answer. “Seven targets. All to be terminated.”

“Seven targets, all to be terminated,” Exia repeated, nearly giggling with excitement. Today had started horribly yes—with the filthy eunuch, Dragomirov whom he would in fact be torturing to death one day—but it was about to end great.

Morozova reached over his shoulder and drew the heavy war axe strapped to his back. It was a long thing, with runes etched into not just the wood but the metal itself. Exia felt the air around him pop ever so slightly as the Warrior called on his gifts. And then he was moving.

Exia followed, gloves on, and body kept close to the ground.

There was only the sound of scurrying rodents and the insects of the night to mask their motion. It made each boot crunch against gravel sound like a cannon firing through the air, it made Exia’s breath sound like the roaring of wild winds, it made every moment stretch out into its own little reality.

And then they were against the side of the building. And Exia was joined by the sound of his targets.

They whispered conspiratorially, argued, laughed, all the while oblivious as to what was about to befall them. It took effort not to giggle. And a lot of it too.

Morozova straightened, took two steps back and dashed straight at the wall with such speed that Exia had more than a little trouble tracking him. Each step cracked the pavement beneath his boots, each motion made the air scream in torment at being pushed aside with such violence, and when his form crashed into the stone wall in front of him, it gave way, collapsing like a house of cards underneath an artillery shell. A Warrior, not a Mage. The sheer physicality, seen in someone of his Magnitude, was chilling.

Exia barely had time to wonder what it would be like to be that powerful one day before the sounds of violence knocked him out of his mind and into his gloves.

He dashed through the gash in the building’s side and emerged into a battlefield—Morozova’s battlefield. The Warrior carved through Mages like they were soft wood—gloved Mages. That meant they had their gloves on just in case they were ambushed—a risky move, and not one they could sustain for the entirety of the meeting, but one that paid off in the end, given that they were fighting right now and not dying. Though by the looks of things the latter would be coming soon as well.

Six Mages focused on Morozova in a dance of violence, palms spitting out magic while he chased them with bladed death. One had already lost an arm to the Captain’s edge and surprisingly still kept on spitting flames from his remaining hand even while his life's blood poured from the other limb like water from a faucet. Whatever they were fighting for, it certainly mattered very much to this lot. Not enough to bring them victory however.

Morozova slammed the butt of his axe into the face of one Mage and changed the structure of his skull and  course of his life; he drove the spike of his axe into another’s gut and got a face full of lightning in retaliation. That one hurt, Exia saw, it cut through Morozova’s skin and birthed blood across his cheek. And though it was clear today was going to be Morozova’s, Exia moved to get in on the fun.

Something stopped him though, a thought, an annoying truth in his brain that almost made him wish he was dumb enough to never have noticed. Seven targets, all to be eliminated… There were only six in view.

Exia cursed, headed up the stairs in search of the seventh. There was only one door here, which made things easy enough. He walked forwards, reached for the door handle and felt his world rock as something exploded against his face.

Exia collapsed to the floor in a groaning heap; his head was ringing, he felt blood run down his face, and his vision was swimming. 

He settled drifting eyes on the door, which now had a massive hole in it. Exia saw the doorknob twist, and the limping man emerge from it—cane replaced with a massive elephant gun.

Not many things could discombobulate a Mage of his calibre. A point blank elephant gun blast to the face was one of them.

The man pumped the fore-end with a sharp clack and pressed the smoking barrel against Exia’s face. The second shot might not kill him—but it would leave him vulnerable enough for the gloves to be stripped from his hands. After that, he’d be just a boy, facing a man with a gun. That would end horribly.

With labour and far too slowly, Exia raised a hand. The man looked down at Exia with a mix of rage and anguish in his eyes. He could fire before Exia could do a thing, but he hesitated. And Exia didn’t.

Hand of Zcigmagus!

A blue limb shot out of his palm and struck the man in the chest, lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing through the wooden door and falling into the room.

Exia groaned, rolled to his feet, stumbled backwards and grabbed onto the wall for balance. He didn’t know how long he stood there, waiting for the world to stop spinning, but it certainly felt like forever. With a sigh, a growl and burning rage in his heart, Exia began walking forwards and towards the room, each step less clumsy than the last.

###

Exia hated when people did not commit to their roles. Take the Captain Sasha Osin for example, currently posing as bait for the Angel, and not at all looking baitish. She was just standing there, in the middle of the woods, gloves off and eyes alert. Where was the frantic madness? Where was the screaming, where was the helpless flailing? Absent, all of it, absent. What, did she think being an actor was a joke, that the stage was her playground, that the audience her serfs? “Disgraceful,” he hissed.

“Has anything happened yet? Is the Fae attacking?” Captain Vetrova asked—she was tucked beneath a heap of branches and leaves with Exia, as good of a hiding place as any other.

“No,” Exia grumbled. “But I wish it would already—Captain Sasha Osin is absolutely humiliating herself out there.”

The woman suddenly turned to Exia, eyes narrowing. “So, you’re the King. And this is what you do, hunt Fae?”

Exia shook his head. “No. I mostly kill people. The Fae thing is more of a breaker between my state sanctioned murdering.”

“I see.” Her eyes darkened at that somewhat. “And do you ever feel bad about it?”

Exia snorted. “No. Why would I? Most of the people I kill deserve it, and they all tend to make funny faces when they die.”

“That’s…horrible,” Captain Vetrova said, genuine revulsion on her tongue. Exia saw the woman’s eyes darken further and he started to get the feeling that she did not value his honesty. Thankfully she turned away and did not subject him to any further questions.

There was only the waiting now, the sun dipping beneath the horizon, the darkness rising to take its place. Night was beginning to fall and the Angel was still nowhere to be seen. If they failed to lure it in today, then that would mean yet another day sleeping on the hard beds of Zimovskaya. Which, he supposed, compared to fighting an Angel was marginally better—there wasn’t even any satisfaction in the killing of them; they didn’t seem to have the same capacity for fear, anguish or panic that humans did. Damn bastards.

A soft crunching drew him out of his thoughts and back into the woods. Something was approaching, and approaching fast. Clearly the Captain heard it too because she was quickly sliding on her gloves.

Exia did the same as well—Angels were less likely to attack empowered targets unprovoked, but given that this creature seemed to have already begun the hunt, it was a chance worth taking, especially as the alternative was to risk instant death.

Exia’s gloves slipped on, the world slowed, and then the creature emerged from the woods behind the captain. It was a large thing, the size of two men stacked atop each other, and in the shape of a fox. In the place of skin was a stoney material with molten magma running through its cracks. Its eyes were orange bits of hell, its maw made of sharp black points and dripping with red. An angel of Gnev. As expected when this far south, and perhaps in the sixties based on its size.

Captain Vetrova’s eyes were wide, palm pressed against her mouth, body squirming with terror. Compared to Exia, Sasha and the Angel, she was for all intents and purposes a very squishy sack of blood, and one could make the argument that she should not have been here in the first place. And one would be correct, but the Captain had allowed it for reasons that Exia never thought to inquire about—but if he had to guess it would be that the Captain empathized with the woman’s trauma and wanted Captain Vetrova to see the creature that killed her friends die. 

Well now she would.

Captain Osin could handle the monster, but she didn’t attack just yet. She took a few cautious steps back, making it keep its eyes on her, and as a result fully turn its back to Exia. 

How he loved working with the competent.

Exia rolled out of the sticks and sprinted towards the monster. He tore through the air like a lance, stretched his hand forwards, and let hell loose. Breath of Zcigmagus: Stream. Blue death raced through the air and slammed into the creature. It ate away at the rock along its side, melting away at the stone that made up its form, and turning it into a drooping blue mess. The gash was deep, cold, and certainly fatal, but that did not mean the Fae was down just yet.

It rounded on Exia with a viciousness, as nimble as ever, as hostile as could be—Fae did not deal with pain like a human did. With its dying breaths, the creature, dashed at Exia, leapt to strike, and was dragged down to the ground as thin bright orange webs of fire wrapped around it.

The creature thrashed within the Captain’s flaming net, but the ethereal threads only stretched and warped without breaking. It snarled, hissed, and let out a roar that made the earth itself tremble beneath their feet, but still saw no exit.

Exia stepped forwards to end this thing, and that was when the Fae’s maw widened, and a torrent of fire leapt out of its mouth to bathe him.

Exia raised a hand, blocked the fire as it washed over him. It was not an incredibly painful sensation to be bathed in thousands of degrees of fire, but it was not an enjoyable one either. He decided to cease it. And he chose to do so with style.

Shadow of Zcigmagus: Echo…

The inky black smoke oozed out of Exia, and this time it was not to shroud him. No, this time it was to do something it had never before done. The smoke acted like a shield, not just pushing the flames away from Exia but doing something else entirely…It was eating them as well, cannibalising the magic that met it and absorbing it into itself.

Finally, after several seconds, the Fae’s stream of fire had ceased, and only smoke oozed out of its tired maw. It had ran out of Gnev’s hungry flames. But Exia had not.

Echo…

The orange flames burst out of the smoke in the very same fashion to which they had met it. As one concentrated stream. It slammed into the creature with a ferocity, eating away at the stone, the layers underneath and only stopping by the time a hissing melted stump of mulch lay where the head once did.

Exia decided, he liked his new spell.

“Do not ever stop using that,” the Captain said approvingly, panting as her net withered away into bright orange ashes.

Exia grinned. “Oh Captain, I don’t think you could stop me if you wanted me to.”

That wiped the approval off of her face, and Exia knew for a fact that he was about to be subjected to one of her lectures. Thankfully, the sound of several Fae approaching caught her attention.

Oh, wait, that’s not a good thing.