The bird dove straight at Clive. Lightning rays shot from its wings like artillery fire. Its speed caught Clive by surprise, and he could only leap to the right to dodge. A stray bolt caught his left arm. He felt an intense pain, and his fingers twitched uncontrollably. His whole left arm was numb and unable to move. Around him, the lightning bird crashed into the rubble, sending marble shrapnel in all directions.

  "Behold Quetzalcoatlus," Sayid spread his arms wide, "the ancient divine beast who ruled the sky. Your kind sought to wipe them out from history. We embraced them."

  The lightning bird reformed above, circling like a vulture. It dived again, sending fresh bolts earthward.

  Clive was ready this time. He swept his Black Hole blade horizontally. The volley of lightning curved mid-flight, sucked into the blade’s gravitational pull. The blade connected with Quetzalcoatlus, and the bird dissipated into whisps of sparks.

  Sayid clapped. “That's a nice sword you have there.” He raised both arms and electiricity flowed between them in a loop. His left hand glowed white-blue with positive charge while his right hand darkened with negative current. “But even mithril cannot escape the laws of magnetism.”

  The air between his hands warped. Iron filings from the surrounding rubble began to drift upward, aligning themselves along invisible field lines. The electricity… It was generating its own magnetic field. Every metal object in the courtyard started to vibrate. Nails worked themselves loose from wooden beams. Coins spilled from fallen purses, rolling toward Sayid.

  The pull started gentle. Clive's sword vibrated. Then the magnetic field intensified. The blade ripped from his grip, spinning through the air toward Sayid. The Vandiean caught it one-handed, examining the black energy still clinging to the steel.

  “Such a beautiful sword,” Sayid did a few practice swings with the sword. “Good balance. Fine steel. It would be wasted on a corpse.”

  "Thank you, I made it myself." Clive's left hand had stopped trembling from the electrical shock. His fingers found his palette, closed around his brush. He pulled red from the palette and mixed it with yellow. "Just like I'm about to make your tombstone."

  "With paint?" Sayid laughed. "What will you do, color me to—"

  [Mix: Brown Granite storm II]

  Chunks of granite the size of fists spiraled, creating a cyclone of stone that rose thirty feet high.

  Rock beats electric.

  Clive was grateful that years of playing Pokemon had ingrained this fact into him. If Sayid could rain down lightning, Clive would do one better. It was time to rock.

  The tornado of stone collapsed inwards, raining down on Sayid in a coordinated barrage.

  Sayid’s eyes widened. Lightning erupted from his palm. They struck the falling stone but dispersed harmlessly across the granite surface. A basketball-sized rock clipped his shoulder, spinning him sideways.

  “Clever—” Sayid’s body burst apart into electricity and zipped between the falling stone, before rematerializing twenty feet away. “But rocks are too slow to catch lightning.”

  With a wave of his hand, Quetzalcoatlus reformed above, larger than before, feeding on the ambient electrical charges in the air. Without his blade to absorb the attacks, Clive was back on pure defence.

  The bird dove again. Lightning crackled between its feathers, creating a net of electricity. Clive feinted left, then pivoted right, but Quetzalcoatlus adjusted instantly. Its wing swept down, cutting off his escape route with a wall of crackling energy that scorched the ground black.

  No way through. Only under or over.

  Clive dove forward, rolling beneath the electrical barrier. Heat washed over him. He came up painting and fired a granite boulder straight at the bird's center mass.

  Quetzalcoatlus exploded into sparks, scattering like startled fireflies. But that had been the feint. Clive saw it too late—Sayid hadn't retreated when his creature scattered. He'd moved closer, using the bird as a distraction.

  A whip of lightning caught Clive across the ribs, sending a shock across his whole body. His palette skittered across the floor as his brush rolled off his nerveless fingers.

  [You have been paralyzed]

  "First rule of battle," Sayid stood over him, Clive's own sword raised for the killing blow. "Never lose track of both opponents."

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  The stolen blade descended.

  Clive tried to move, to roll out of the way, but his body felt foreign to him. The residual current was still circulating in his body, disrupting his nervous system.

  So this is how it ends.

  Clive’s [Artist Eyes] tracked the mithril blade in a trajectory straight for his throat. Even as the blade fell, he couldn’t help but admire its beauty. At least he would die a talented artist.

  Fire erupted between them. A vertical wall of white-orange flames that roared into existence three feet in front of Clive's face. The temperature spiked so fast he felt his eyebrows singe. The sword's downward arc stopped mid-swing as Sayid jerked back from the sudden barrier.

  The Vandiean's head snapped toward the flames' source and broke out into maniacal laughter.

  "Finally!" Sayid's voice was giddy high. "The fish takes the bait."

  He released the sword, letting it clatter to the ground, and brought both hands to his face. His fingers dug into the twisted scar tissue that puckered his skin into valleys of discolored flesh.

  "I've been waiting, wondering what I have to do to get your attention. My scars still burn. Joshuaaaa!"

  Clive pushed himself up on his good arm, squinting through the heat shimmer. On the far side of the fire wall stood a figure in crimson robes. His hands were still raised from the casting, fingers splayed as he controlled the flames. It was the Archmage Joshua Blackfire.

  Sayid turned away from Clive, his whole focus locked on the archmage.

  "Sid." Joshua's voice cut through the fire's roar. In contrast to Sayid, it was flat and controlled, lacking any emotions. "Why have you returned?"

  "Why?" Sayid spread his arms wide, displaying himself. "You burned half my face off and you're asking why?"

  “It’s all in the past now, Sid. Why bring our squabbles to the new generation?”

  "Stop calling me Sid!"

  Electricity detonated around Sayid's body, exploding outward in a corona that made his hair stand on end. Small arcs jumped between his fingers, his shoulders, leaping across the gaps in his scarred tissue.

  "My name is Al Sayid." Each word came with another surge of power. The rubble around his feet began to vibrate, iron nails spinning in place. "And I will never forgive. Never forget. No matter how many generations it takes."

  Joshua nodded once. "I know."

  "You know." Sayid repeated it. "You know... Then you’ll know how much I imagined this moment. How I’d make you suffer the way I’ve suffered. How I’d burn your face and see how long you kept that calm expression.”

  Joshua's hands rose. Fire kindled in his palms. His robes rippled from the updraft. The temperature in the courtyard spiked high enough that Clive felt sweat evaporate off his skin.

  "Yes. I know."

  "Die!"

  Sayid's hands thrust forward. Quetzalcoatlus erupted into existence above him, twice the size it had been before, fed by the massive charge Sayid had built. It launched itself at Joshua like a spear thrown by a god.

  Fire answered.

  A phoenix materialized in the space between Joshua's raised palms. Crimson and gold, flames for feathers, heat shimmer for breath.

  The two divine constructs met mid-air.

  The impact made shockwaves that blew outward in a sphere, flattening everything in its radius. A crater marked where the two birds had collided. Electrical discharge and residual flames warred across its surface, neither able to claim dominance. Sparks spiraled upward in a column, mixing with embers, creating a pillar of elemental chaos that rose thirty feet before dissipating into the atmosphere.

  When the electrical flames cleared, both creatures were gone. Annihilated in mutual destruction.

  Sayid and Joshua stood on opposite sides of the crater, neither having moved. The fire wall between them had vanished, consumed in the blast. Now nothing separated them but scorched ground and twenty feet of superheated air.

  Sayid's hands came up first. Electricity coalesced between his palms, building toward another strike. Joshua's response was instant. Fire spiraled from his fingertips in twin helixes that merged into a lance of white heat.

  But before the two attacks could meet, a wall of air slammed between them.

  Sayid's lightning scattered sideways, while Joshua's fire lance bent, twisted, and snuffed out as the wind compressed it into smoke. Both mages stumbled back a step from the impact.

  The wind didn't dissipate. Instead, it formed a barrier between them. Then the whispers started.

  Voices in the wind. Multiple speakers, their words overlapping and fragmenting as the air carried them in spirals. Clive couldn't make out individual words at first, just the cadence of an argument playing out in hissed syllables.

  Sayid's head snapped to the side. "What— Screw the plan. Joshua is right here." He jabbed a finger through the wind barrier toward the archmage. "We could end this right here, right now."

  The whispers intensified. Sayid's hands curled into fists. The electrical aura around his body flared once, then subsided.

  "Argg." The sound tore from his throat, animal frustration given voice. "Fine. We'll follow your darn plan."

  He turned back to Joshua. "This isn't over."

  "And why—" Joshua glared back at him, "—do you think I'll let you escape?"

  Fire erupted around Sayid in a complete ring.

  "You killed dozens today, Sid. You won’t walk away from this."

  Sayid looked up. Through the flames. Directly at Joshua.

  He smiled.

  "I'll be back."

  His body transformed into a bolt of electricity that shot straight towards the sky. The bolt reached the clouds and vanished into their cover, leaving nothing behind but an afterimage.

  Without a target to trap, the fire cage collapsed back to nothing and the wind dispersed with a final whisper that might have been laughter.

  Joshua stood alone on his side of the crater. He turned his attention to Clive, who was still on the ground. “Are you alright?”

  Clive nodded. The numbness in his body was receding to pins and needles, and he was able to stand up, albeit clumsily.

  “Who was he?” Clive asked.

  “He was once the brightest star of the Arcanum. So great was his mastery over lightning, that we called him the Thunder God Sid.”

  They say lightning never strikes the same place twice. They're wrong. Lightning remembers. It calculates the path of least resistance, maps the conductive channels left behind by previous strikes, and returns to scar the same ground again and again. Some grudges aren't metaphors—they're physics.

  —Thunder God Sid