Chapter Nineteen
Kyle sat up, coughing violently.
The shadow standing over him shot back, and Kyle craned his neck, one handing shielding the sun.
It was an old man, his white beard stretching halfway down his chest, his eyes a strange blue, flecked with gold. In his hand he held a wand, a dark redwood, with a small leaf bound around it.
Kyle laughed weakly, "Pyromancers. Everywhere I go."
The man winced, "How are you alive?"
Kyle forced himself to his feet, spotting the crumpled mass that was Candice with a wince. He crouched by her, "You tried to heal her... A... Binding spell?"
The man ground his teeth, "You were attacked by a foul creature. You need to leave."
Kyle nodded, "A Reaper... I wasn't close enough to use the magic I should have... Ah, here we go... There's the spark of life."
Candice coughed, dust erupting from around her face.
The man clenched a fist, flames bursting out across his skin, "You need to leave."
Kyle turned, "Black. You're the only Pyromancer I know of who doesn't have to chant, when not using their channel."
Headmaster Damien Black of the Professional Pyromantic College sneered, "And who are you, boy?"
"Kyle Kilroy, student of Aimimancy and Necromancy."
The Headmaster winced, "About time... But you're too late. I'm the last one."
Kyle cocked his head, "What happened? One Reaper couldn't do this, and I wiped out the majority of the Vampiric Armies."
Black sighed and shook his head, "There is an army of twenty thousand Reapers, not ten minutes from here. You need to run."
Kyle smiled grimly, and the Headmaster's face took on a look of fear as the sun began to dim, as if an eclipse were overtaking it.
"Headmaster, run. This is what I came for. The Portal to the Other Side, guarded by the army of Reapers."
"One Reaper nearly killed you!" Black shouted angrily, and Kyle laughed, "Until right now... I have used Necromancy a total of four times. Aimimancy alone has been my strength... I am ready for this."
Little Slate didn't have an understanding of fate.
He didn't know destiny, or the concept of the inevitable.
But he knew something felt different.
In the midst of heated battle, dwarvish hammers against trollish clubs, he had found a sense of destiny.
In front of him, with gleaming axe, was the creature he loathed more than any other.
The dwarf launched himself towards him, and Little Slate clumsily blocked the blow, and punched down, dazing the dwarf.
"Defiler-king!" He spat, swinging his club around, but too slowly. The dwarf rolled under it, and leaped up, his axe lodging in Little Slate's shoulder.
He ignored the pain and kicked as hard as he could, sending the dwarf and his considerable.girth tumbling.
The man was instantly on his feet again, "I am here to cleanse this.world of those akin to you, stupid, unhelpful and a stain on this world's history."
Little Slate didn't understand the words, but he knew an insult when he heard it.
He tore the axe free and threw it, hard.
The dwarf deftly danced out of the way, wobbling as he went, before launching a tiny steel bolt from his hand.
Little Slate yelled loudly as it went through one of his eyes, but he ignored it, grabbing his club with both hands and began to beat the ground where he thought the dwarf might be.
The man easily avoided his clumsy blows, before grabbing his axe and with a blow faster than Little Slate could realize, cut one of his hands off.
The club tumbled to the ground, and as it did, a dwarfish axe shattered his left leg. Not that he knew his left from his right.
Little Slate fell to the ground, the dwarvish leader of the Bloodbound Pact standing in front of him, "Are you ready to die, troll?"
Little Slate grinned and pushed himself, his whole bulk suddenly landing on top of the troll, his one hand came around, and grabbed the struggling dwarf's head.
He stopped struggling with a pop.
Little Slate rolled over, feeling the weak trying to overtake all in him.
Battle lost.
He dying.
But dwarf-king dead.
He sighed sadly, and closed his eyes.
The hard black stone that made up the ground cracked as Abigail's foot touched down.
She was home.
There was a pause as the vortex behind her fell apart, and the occupants of the Void looked at her, and she smiled softly.
They ran towards her.
This was the Clearing House, and she would clear it.
The scythe appeared in her hand, and she made an upwards cutting message. A swath of souls went down, shredded.
But there were more than enough to make things interesting for her.
She was Death, and they had died.
Their souls were hers.
She weaved deftly as a sword made of bone tried to tear, and it was more tear than cut, her throat.
Abigail toyed with the man, a dark elf, probably from before her memories as a ny.ph stretched back. She briefly wondered if she'd ever get her memories back.
There was a usurper to be punished.
Someone had done this to her.
The butt of her scythe hit the ground, the souls freezing in place.
She made a sweeping gesture, and the souls were torn apart, fading.
She was alone.
Bracken grinned as he ducked passed a falling stone and danced over some cracks in the floor.
He saw his target, as regal and sure as always, standing beside a circular crack, uttering some spell.
He laughed, "I can send you after her, Bellum. Wouldn't take much."
The half-dragon spun around with surprising grace, considering the building was falling apart.
Bracken shrugged, "Why did you leave me dead, Draco?"
The man sneered, "You were better off that way."
Bracken shook his head, "I tried to keep Kyle occupied. I tried to tutor him, protect him. You let him die, and created the monster that has led to this moment."
Draco shrugged, "A better monster than you."
Bracken drew and flicked his wand in a smooth motion, and Draco froze, rigid. The professor glared, "This is the spell I died for, Headmaster. The impossible, illegal one... Wouldn't it be fitting if I just left you here, let the College kill you?"
Bracken sighed heavily, "But then again... You're a half dragon. You wouldn't be killed. You'd survive, and that fiery passion would ruin every chance I've been given at a second chance."
Before he had a chance to gloat some more he felt his spell snap, and a dragon-scaled hand rammed up against his throat with a crushing grip. Bracken flicked his wand, sending them both flying.
He hit the ground tumbling, and then the ground beneath him shifted.
The whole school building had turned into little more than a child's wood block house.
He pushed himself upward, solidifying the air and stood there.
Not for long.
Draco was opposite him, both wings unfurled, his veins glowing a deep red through his scales, and his eyes had turned black.
He'd finally let the dragon out.
Bracken roared, flicking his wrist, a spell half formed in the air. But it wasn't enough, and it wasn't soon enough. The half-dragon slammed into him, claws biting into his shoulders as Draco roared, flames engulfing him.
The Aimimancer struggled for a moment, feeling his own pulse, his own blood, and tried to unleash it. Force some distance between the dragon and himself.
His spells were shattered by the energy screaming out from the figure holding him.
If it weren't for the sheer rage of the dragon he'd be dead already, and if he failed there would be no coming back.
A spell he'd only ever read about, and never dared to try and conjure entered his mind.
It was destructive, and focused on a genetic trait, causing many thousands to die... But there was only one like Draco.
He cast it.
It took more power than he expected, nearly burning him out, the magic sapping all he had.
He fell onto the rickety floor, as two feet solidly hit in front of him.
Bracken stared up at the dragon, bleeding from head to toe.
His tail was poised in the air, and struck hard, piercing straight through Bracken's abdomen and out his back.
He laughed, his wand twirling as his own injuries began to vanish, but he held tight to the tail as the dragon seemed dazed for a moment.
"Instinct can only get you so far, Bellum."
He stood tall, smiling, trying to forget it was chance alone that he hadn't died.
How the hell could a dragon take so much damage and keep standing? Even now, with what should have been death's doorway hanging over him, Draco seemed to be not much more than dizzy and surprised.
Bracken flicked his wrist, breaking the Headmaster's wand. That would have been annoying.
He held out his hand, blood pooling into a ball above it, and he looked up at the man who had always stood in his way. The man who had always threatened to destroy him, if he stepped a foot out of line. The man who had had the power to save him from the Clearing House, but had left him to die.
It was over now.
He knew how to kill a dragon.
Just use anything with overkill.
He had felt a yell rip un-bidden from his throat as he slammed the ball into Draco's chest, and it erupted outwards, a volcanic reaction.
He saw the school drifting below him, the pieces that had been the Headmaster scattered around the room, and he smiled.
Then he felt a twitch.
He looked down at the tail still embedded in his stomach, just in time for it to wrap around his throat and go taut.
As he began to fall, he knew it was too late.
Draco was a tough bastard.
The storm spun furiously above his head, as spells rained down.
Ilgun was focused, more than he had ever been in his long and varied career, and blocking out attackers whilst attempting something new was something of a specialty.
That being said, so far, he'd underestimated the power he'd needed almost a dozen times.
Kilroy had asserted that he'd need the potential energy from a universal collapse, but to be frank, it sounded ludicrous. Something short of that utter destruction should be possible.
It had to be.
A fireball broke through the barrier and hit the ground beside him with a puff of dirt and smoke.
That was a bad sign.
He just had to transport himself without touching Elvish soil. He'd already managed to convince his late Queen's spell that his house didn't really belong to the Kingdom. That had been easy. A little Aimimancy.
The minimum size of the portal had to be related to the energy required to generate it, not just the distance covered... Otherwise he'd have made the portal already... What was the math Kilroy had sketched out?
A boulder about ten times his body wait hit the ground and kept going.
Negative mass.
He'd assumed that magic could simply equate for that, cancel out the negative mass of the tunnel with a positive mass... But maybe not.
If it didn't cancel out, then you had to adjust the frequency of the fields employed until everything was positive, and physics would take over and create the negative... And rip open a tunnel that you could pass through.
Ilgun suddenly flung himself aside as his whole cloud turned into a churning fireball and hit the ground.
He swore loudly, no time to test his conjecture.
He tucked a strand of magic around his attacker's living file and flung it into the wall, and a circle appeared for a split second, and he dove through it.
The old dryad stared at the school as it fell apart.
How had this happened?
Abigail... Sweet little Abigail... Tore his soul out of his body, stripped him of magic, and bound him to watch the world waste away.
He'd been forced to watch as Bracken was sent back from the depths of Hades, and succeeded in his mission to kill Bellum Draco, one of the greatest men he had ever known.
Magic without reason... He'd always thought it worse than the mundane... But now he was one.
He was Broken.
His school was destroyed.
His friends were killed.
His last and only student, Kyle Kilroy, was on a suicide mission to take on Death herself, and Abigail thought she fit the role.
It would be a fight for the ages... But he couldn't help feeling Kyle would give his soul willingly, just so that one day, Abigail might just find herself again.
There was no way out of this, not this time.
The Other Side had finally one.
The old orders were dying, and the new were not yet ready.
Nations like New Rome couldn't hope to understand the dangers of what were about to come crashing down on their heads.
There would be no more guardians against creatures like the vampires.
Mages would spontaneously find their power, and use it to destroy everything, just to try and get what they don't deserve.
The living would join the dead.
Death's empire would be complete.
There was no hope to be found, no sliver of solace.
His life's work had been a failure, and now he would be forced to watch it play out to the end.
The nymph with black scales opened her eyes, springing to her feet.
The Clearing House may be empty, and endless, but magic had seen what her eyes had not.
There was a path from this place, to the next.
To the Palace, where her Court awaited her.
Where the traitor stood in her stead.
Her memories in one hand, and her mortality in the other.
She clenched a fist, all her scales standing on end as the wind began to whistle around her in a circle.
The storm began to amp up, and static electricity began to jump among her scales as thunder boomed in the Void.
She opened her hand and it all froze, until she tossed her hand forward, like throwing a ball.
The Void distorted, a piece of itself spinning inside out, from four dimensions to sixteen.
She ignored her eyes and walked towards it, spinning it again, shifting it to align with the physical dimensions her body was limited to, and she passed through.
She was going home, scythe in hand.
Candice ducked back from the ridge, glancing over at Kyle, his face set with a grim determination.
She shook her head, "You're insane. There's got to be twenty thousand. Maybe more. They're Reapers. We'll die."
Kyle shrugged, "Girl, I've already died."
Candice winced, "Yeah... Not sure if Necromancy counts as living."
Kyle laughed, "Can't argue with that... But I can do this, you don't need to be here."
Candice rolled her eyes, "You don't get it, do you? This is it, Kyle. There's nothing else. If I ran away, I'd have maybe a year to enjoy living. The dead are on the march. The Other Side is here to break everything, and kill everyone... And there's no one left to stop them. Run or don't run, it doesn't matter anymore... So I will be a Silvergate. I will fight."
He nodded slowly, a seriousness finally lighting in his eyes, and understanding of the stakes they were playing for.
The world was screwed.
She breathed deeply, hoping to hell that Kyle really could fix this all, and turned around, wanting another peep.
A silver blade slashed the air, and the world vanished around her.
She was in a Void, as a scythe swung towards her.
Candice seized the rage, the anger she'd been taught to cradle from a young age.
The injustice of a thousand years, forced from one generation to the next poured into her veins, and Abigail burst into flames, becoming the fire.
She punched forward blindly, seizing the scythe with all her strength.
The Reaper shook her off like a ragdoll, and the blade came crashing down again.