Sayid's hands erupted with another barrage of lightning, but it found no purchase.

  Clive just stood there, arms crossed. "Are you quite finished?"

  Sayid fired again.

  But still nothing. Not even a scorch mark on the Pictomancer's skin.

  "This is impossible," Sayid muttered, backing toward the copper bars. His shoulder blade touched the cage wall and he jerked forward as if burned. He was cornered now, trapped like a rat in a barrel. He searched for an opening, a weakness, anything. There was none. The cage was seamless, perfectly constructed.

  Sayid's mind raced, cycling through options with increasing desperation. Every tool in his arsenal, every technique he'd spent decades perfecting, had been systematically neutralized.

  By an artist. By someone who wasn't even a real mage.

  The humiliation burned hotter than any flame. Sayid was supposed to be the strongest. That's what everyone said. That's what he knew to be true. Raw power, they called it. Unmatched destructive force. The Thunder God's Chosen.

  But if he was the strongest, why couldn't he even touch this man?

  "I beat you. Yesterday, I beat you so easily you couldn't even stand. You were nothing." He thrust a finger at Clive accusingly. "You should be dead! You should have stayed down, gone back to whatever hovel you crawled from!"

  "But I didn't." Clive's voice was maddeningly calm. "I learned. I adapted. I prepared. That's your problem, Sayid. You thought winning once meant you'd won forever. You're so drunk on your own legend that you stayed in the past."

  "Don't lecture me!" Lightning crackled around Sayid's hands again, but it was weaker now, flickering like a dying candle. His mana reserves were depleting. He could feel the exhaustion creeping into his bones. "I am a First-Class Mage! I've studied for decades! I've mastered forces that would reduce you to atoms!"

  "And yet," Clive gestured around them, "here we are. You, caged. Me, unharmed. Funny how that worked out."

  The words hit harder than any blade could. Because they were true. Undeniably true. And the truth hurt. With a wordless roar, he rushed forward. If magic didn’t work, he would rip Clive apart with his bare hands.

  Clive stepped left.

  Sayid's fist whistled through empty air where Clive's head had been. The momentum carried him forward, off-balance. His boot caught on broken stone and he stumbled.

  Clive's sword came up, and the flat of his blade cracked against Sayid's temple with a hollow thunk.

  Sayid fell to the floor. He groaned, trying to push himself up, but his arms gave out. Blood trickled from his split lip where he'd bitten through it in the fall.

  Clive stood over him, sword still raised. "You know what I've learned since coming here? Mages are glass cannons. All of you. Devastating at range. But the moment someone gets past that..." He gestured at Sayid with his blade. "You fold like wet paper."

  Sayid spat blood, glaring up at him.

  "I've fought quite a few mages now?" Clive continued. "And every single one had the same fatal flaw. You spend decades mastering magic. But basic hand-to-hand combat? Footwork? How to throw a proper punch?" He shook his head. "Beneath you, apparently. That's why I never let anyone call me a mage. I'm a Pictomancer. I master the art of battle. All aspects of it, not just the physical or magical."

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Outside the cage, the battle between Joshua and Bernadette raged on.

  Wind blades screamed through the air. Cyclones formed and dispersed with each gesture of her hands.

  But her attention kept fracturing.

  Her eyes darted toward the copper cage every few seconds. She could hear the sounds of combat within, the crackle of lightning, Sayid's enraged shout. Each sound made her rhythm falter.

  "Bernadette." Joshua's voice cut through the howling wind. "Focus. Even at your best, you couldn't defeat me." He deflected another wind blade with a casual sweep of his staff, the attack dissipating into harmless breeze. "I don't think you have time to be worried about Sayid."

  "Shut up!" She thrust both hands forward. The air compressed into a battering ram of solid force, powerful enough to crumble castle walls.

  Joshua's staff traced a circular pattern. Fire erupted in a ring around him, disrupting the air.

  "You see?" Joshua advanced a step, his expression almost pitying. "You haven't learned anything. You're still fighting the same way you did back then."

  Bernadette's jaw clenched. Anxiety ate at her concentration like acid. Behind Joshua, through the gaps in the copper cage, she caught glimpses of Sayid backed against the wall, lightning flickering weakly around his hands.

  He was losing. She had to help him.

  "Tempestas Irae!" She poured everything into the spell, her most devastating technique. The winds around her coalesced into a massive vortex, a miniature hurricane with her at its eye. Debris, loose cobblestones, even pieces of the destroyed gate were sucked into the maelstrom, transforming into a whirling cloud of deadly projectiles.

  But Joshua wasn’t even fazed. He planted his staff and spoke a single word: "Ignis."

  The Phoenix's blessing flared to life. Blue-white flames erupted from the staff's tip in a sphere that expanded outward. Every particle of oxygen in the vortex ignited simultaneously.

  The hurricane exploded.

  The shockwave threw Bernadette backward. She hit the ground hard, her feathered dress scorched, her perfectly styled hair now a wild tangle. Smoke rose from a dozen small burns across her arms and face.

  She tried to rise, drawing on the wind to lift her. But Joshua was already there, his staff's tip hovering inches from her throat. Heat radiated from the wood, intense enough to make her skin prickle.

  "Yield," he said quietly.

  Bernadette's eyes blazed with defiance. "So you can throw me in a cell? So you can parade me through Marblehaven as a trophy?"

  "So you can live. I take no pleasure in this, Bernadette. We were colleagues once. Friends, even. Before the bitterness, before the exile, before you chose to follow Sayid's madness."

  "His vision—"

  "His delusion," Joshua corrected sharply. "Look at what you've become. Reduced to attacking defenseless towns to soothe the wounded pride of a man who never cared about you as anything more than a weapon."

  “Silence!” she yelled. “He was there for me when you weren’t. He said we'd prove them wrong. That we'd show the council, show everyone, that we didn't need their approval. That we were stronger without their chains."

  "And are you?" Joshua asked. "Stronger?"

  Bernadette looked down at her trembling hands, at her once-elegant dress that was now little more than singed rags. No, she wasn’t. But it didn’t matter. Sayid was there for her when she needed it, and ever since then, she swore she would be loyal to him.

  She faced Joshua with defiant eyes. “Do your worst.”

  Clive raised his sword, prepared to deliver the finishing blow. But the skies went dark, throwing his attention skywards. The moon appeared. It shouldn't have been possible. The sun had barely begun to set, but there it was—a full moon, dominating the suddenly night-dark sky like a silver eye.

  And descending from its face, a figure veiled in white.

  She moved with the slow inevitability of falling snow, each layer of silk flowing in the wind.

  "The Moon Mother," Sayid gasped.

  The copper cage that had trapped them began to vibrate. Then rays of pure moonlight lanced down from above. The cage broke, dissolving into motes of pale light that drifted upward.

  In seconds, Clive's carefully constructed cage was gone.

  The figure descended fully now, her bare feet finally touching the scorched cobblestones. She stood between Clive and Sayid, her face hidden behind layers of fabrics.

  "That is enough, Clive. we will retreat," she said.

  Her words blasted across the grounds. Guards stumbled backward. Joshua's staff flickered, its flames dimming involuntarily.

  But Clive barely noticed any of that.

  He knew that voice.

  His sword arm went numb. His blade slipped from his fingers, clattering on the stones. His knees threatened to give out.

  No. It can't be.

  He'd know it anywhere. Had heard it in a thousand conversations, a thousand arguments, a thousand quiet moments in the dark. The cadence, the subtle inflection on certain syllables,

  "Jill?"

  The lady didn’t respond. More rays of light beamed down from the moon, and then they were gone.

  …What was going on?

  The moon keeps her secrets well. But every veil must lift eventually.

  —Goddess of Stories