They didn’t delay in their attack, nor did they hold anything back. The moment they arrived at the battlefield, they both unleashed powerful attacks. Blue fire streamed from Erik’s outstretched hands growing the farther it got from him, then twisting into two snake-like creatures with horns and long sinuous bodies. Their target noticed their presence immediately and reacted. The air around him hardened, then turned opaque as if a wall of thin ice just materialized, yet Ra’azel knew that it was far more than that. His eyes saw far more; it wasn’t just Air, it was Water within, it was Light, even Gravity, all of it suddenly stopped to become a wall that met Erik’s attack. Ra’azel didn’t just stand and watch, he took a step. His command over his body had increased tremendously, enough that he could control it at will. The air beneath him turned to a woodland path, a forest blurred around him, becoming streaks of green and brown, then he arrived. The moment he stepped out at a position behind his target, his body lurched out of the way. It surprised Ra’azel enough that he was startled, it was not an action triggered by his countermeasures, but his body’s natural reaction. He toggled his mental construct and his thoughts accelerated once more. He took in his surroundings, and saw a fist sized bundle of Essence. It pulsed in slow motion, though the actual event happened in less than a blink; he only perceived it as such. The pulse stopped everything in its immediate area, froze every piece of Essence solid. Frost appeared immediately after, then turned into ragged formations of ice that burst apart. Ra’azel had enough presence of mind to activate one of his defensive constructs and not waste an automatic one. A small cube appeared next to him then flashed, surrounding him in a cube of light. The ice broke on his shield as the cube construct whined, then died, forcing Ra’azel to dodge and avoid the last couple pieces of ice. He turned his head and watched as a dozen tendrils of blue fire moved toward the Sage, but the farther they got, the slower they moved. Until finally they stopped, freezing in the air short of reaching their target. Ra’azel pulled out four constructs, each a sphere. On the sides turned toward the Sage, a coin-size holes manifested as small windows dilated open, like an iris. Within, the cores of the four small Reaction Engines that he had been given by the empire shined with limitless potential for destruction. Ra’azel reached out to the runes he had carved into the shells surrounding the cores and triggered them. The cores erupted and his runes bent space forming a direct tunnel from his constructs down to the Sage. A white line of destructive Essence blazed across the space swallowing all the Essence in between, accelerated by the compressed and guided path created by his runes. Just before the attacks reached the Sage, it suddenly buckled, stopped, the trail of the Reaction Engine Essence coming behind hit the pieces that were frozen ahead. Ra’azel felt his runes shatter and his conduits break, the Reaction Engine explosions rippled outward expanding rapidly from their compressed form. Ra’azel’s eyes widened, and he stepped back, the world blurring around him in a flash of different scapes. He evaded the reaching grasp of the Reaction Engine and watched the explosions fizzle out as they consumed the Essence around them and spent their energy. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. On the other side of the Sage an aura of blue flames suddenly surrounded Erik, and he raised his hand. Another dozen tendrils of flame erupted out of him, then another, and another, until he looked like the center of a flaming flower unfurling a hundred petals. They flew at the Sage, and slowed, then stopped frozen. It was surreal to look at it, fire looking like a painting or a sculpture, just hanging there in the air. Ra’azel pulled out a construct, a large tubular device akin to a cannon. He hefted it with one hand and aimed then fired. A bright thread touched the Sage the moment Ra’azel fired, far thinner than the cannon’s muzzle. His construct didn’t need line of sight. A soul implant in his mind calculated the distance between him and the target. It entered the coordinates, and the construct prepared the payload. The thread was an illusion, a trick of the world created as his construct bent space and burrowed a hole through two points in it. While the Sage’s attention was focused on Erik, Ra’azel took advantage and fired. A payload moved entering the burrowed tunnel through space; the travel time was near instant. Then the moon above them pulsed. It was as if Ra’azel was suddenly washed over by shade. The world around him started moving faster, but he immediately realized the truth. It wasn’t faster, he was slower. His mind acceleration had taken a hit because his body and everything else had just been slowed. Ra’azel’s monitoring constructs immediately informed him that this was a continuous effect, that everything was slowing down. His attack passed through space, reaching the Sage, but he was no longer there. Instead, the Sage floated above until he loomed over everything with a pale moon as his background. Find the newest release on novel✶fire.net He was doing something, but Ra’azel couldn’t figure out what. His sensors were picking up readings that he didn’t understand. Then he felt it, pain. The scales on his body froze, the skin beneath it did the same. Not everywhere, just in places, as if he were being hit by an invisible rain that froze what it touched. Frostbite spread, and Ra’azel moved on instinct. The area around him flickered, and he was standing inside a volcano. The heat banished the cold for just a split second before the world was torn back to the desolate scape where only frost ruled. The Sage was injured, but blood didn’t seep from his wounds. Instead, droplets lay frozen on his skin, turned to crystals and kept his wounds closed. Ra’azel saw the danger and started pulling constructs from his inventory. He started firing, unleashing everything at the Sage. The moon pulsed, and the world slowed again, frost crawled over the land, over the frozen debris, and Ra’azel’s attacks. Rime seemed to be forming on the light itself, creating what looked like stalactites falling down from the sky. Then something happened. The world grew quiet for a moment. Then words announced it. —Burning Azure, Thine World To Cinders— The color bled out of the world turning it monochrome, white and azure. Everything had been bled of color, everything but the fires. Even those that were frozen in the air still retained their hue. Then they became even more vibrant, bright, and flickering even while frozen. Looking unreal, as if someone had taken a paintbrush and drew a stylized depiction of fire. The world was filled with silence, and then there was a crack. Frost breaking and the world lurching forward into motion. The flames moved as if they were guided by some unseen painter using the world for his canvas, as if they were alive. Whatever they touched turned to dust and ash. Ra’azel shook himself out of shock and reached for constructs, then joined his ally in the fight.