Ori ducked under the whistling swing of a mace, only to be rewarded by a knee to the face that smashed in his nose.

  Landing heavily, he blinked watery eyes as he stared at the face of his doom: a towering undead knight clad in blackened steel, raising its weapon in preparation for a killing blow. Inexplicably, its head exploded under the strike of a war pick, rotten gore spraying out between gaps in its crumbled helm.

  He stumbled to his feet, head down, shield up, one foot after another… A swing of a war hammer smashed into Ori’s shield, his body twisting off his feet with the force of the blow as the shield was ripped from nerveless fingers. Without thinking, Ori rolled just in time to avoid a follow-up strike before finally catching sight of his assailant: yet another undead knight, this one missing an arm. It jabbed the butt of the hammer far faster than Ori could react, the shins of his leg taking the blow. Meanwhile, Ori could feel an aura of dread and necrotic energies leeching the life from his limbs.

  ‘Ori!’ Sera warned, as he felt the cool presence of Beacon of Wisdom wash over him once more, and suddenly Mana was wrenched from the air as Ori cast Purifying Light from his shaking hand.

  The knight was blinded and seemingly dazed, skin from its face singed and flaking off in layers. However, beyond the superficial damage, the spell had been far less effective than Ori had hoped. Still standing, the monster shook its head to clear itself as Ori stumbled away, unable to regain proper footing in the sucking mud. Blind and now enraged, the undead elite swung wild horizontal strikes Ori could barely dodge in the crush of individual melees happening all around him. Just as Ori ran out of room, Baker came to his aid again, his war pick blocking a fatal swing, then smashing into the side of the monster once, before reversing to bring the weapon down on top of the abomination’s skull.

  Before Ori could shout, “Look out!”, a hulking bone knight smashed Baker dozens of feet into the air, his body cartwheeling out of sight. A yellow dome rang like a bell, the newest horror so focused on pounding at it to reach him that it didn’t notice the danger until a liquid inferno bathed it and the shield dome in fire.

  Ori squinted against the blinding light. A mix of awe and dread gripped him as he feared the collapse of Cordelia’s dome amid the cacophony of fire, louder than any jet engine. Once the deafening roar subsided, Ori cautiously opened his eyes to a circle of charred earth and ash. Behind him stood Cordelia, alongside the newly revived Terresa. For a few surreal moments, the clamour of battle seemed strangely distant, despite their recent clash with Eltitus’s main army and the breach of their infantry line by a relentless tide of enemy champions, clearly bent on one specific mission.

  Ori struggled to stand, his footing unstable on the mud-covered ground. A stumble revealed a patch of skin beneath the mud: fingers, a palm, a wrist. He glanced at it, recognising the human remnants, then looked away, too numb to think about it any further.

  He staggered back, gathered Mana, and cast Lesser Restoration on himself, straightening his nose, fixing his shattered arm, and dulling the pain of several bruises. He looked up to see the two B-rankers share an unreadable glance before Terresa shot off in loping strides, far faster than any human had a right to run. Just as he was about to follow, a hand on his shoulder held him back.

  “Hold, Specialist. They’ve made contact with Eltitus’s honour guard,” Baker said, his presence startling in its suddenness. Ori turned to look towards where the fighting was most concentrated. He could see Captain Craig’s blue flashes of fire, while Lady Jasmine hung back, no doubt casting protective and support magics. Meanwhile, the black steel-clad Grace Knight calmly waded into the melee after brutally beheading an undead elite.

  Ori stood and watched, heard and felt the battle waged around him.

  Aurora danced over the sky, the stars and the celestial horizon, doing little to mask the death and dying before them. Exhausted and relieved that his part in this conflict was coming to an end, a knot of dread grew as he waited for events beyond his control to play out. Here, he desperately wished he had the power to make more of a difference, that he could just smite Eltitus from a distance, ending the threat without all the death and nonsense.

  Terresa had joined the fray. Her napalm fire was brutally effective against the bone giants that made up the honour guard. They swung swords that were more like blunt slabs of iron in wild cleaving slashes, even as their extremities charred or bubbled like hot wax under the coating of magical fire.

  ‘That fire is terrifying,’ Sera said.

  ‘Yeah. What affinity is it? It’s doing work on these undead. And is it stronger than the blue fire?’

  ‘Emberlux, a Greater-ranked fire affinity, I believe she’s mastered to initial comprehension. As it is, it’s very effective against multiple opponents, but Captain Craig is a prodigy. He’d just risen to Sovereign without Grace, and although his blue fire is of a lesser rank, it’s been mastered to a much higher level of comprehension. Despite the age and level difference, now that Terresa and Craig are Red MagI at the same rank, I’m unsure who would win in a duel,’ Sera added as Ori watched the battle unfold. He saw the two Red Mag breach the elite bone giants, pushing them back before flanking around them to keep the tide of lesser undead at bay.

  As the wall of twelve-foot armoured skeletons briefly parted, Ori caught his first sight of Eltitus.

  He sat on an armoured war horse far larger than any horse had a right to be, made even more imposing by layers of grey plated steel. Eltitus matched Bartholomew’s steady advance as he calmly dismounted from his steed, a grey, tattered cape drifting behind him. A tall, gaunt figure dressed in battered links of mail, he rested the head of a massive double-headed axe on the ground. Even from a distance of no less than sixty yards, there was a tangible gravity to his presence, a pull that could be felt from dozens of yards away. As his eyes, as dark as pitch, cast their gaze over all creation, the surrounding desolation looked like a natural extension of his will.

  In that moment, Ori was reminded of the Spear King within the Maker’s dreamscape: jagged and gaunt, dismissive and cruel, willing to use any tool and commit any act in service to its ultimate goal, the subjugation of all and the annihilation of any who resisted.

  While the battlefield’s many clashes continued, with fire and light suppressing the tides of lesser and elite undead, the world seemed to hold its breath as the Grace Knight and High Black Mage met the White Lich. As they moved, Ori caught energies beyond Mana: swirls of concentrated Grace drawn from far away into a spiral that centred upon and empowered the knight. With every breath Eltitus took, another power curled up from the ground in opposition to the energies gathering in his opponent. Meanwhile, auras unfurled, their strengths and ranges strangely muted, as if suppressed by the Astral sky overhead.

  It was at that moment that Eltitus fixed Ori with a stare. Despite the distance and the lack of any words or expression, Ori felt Eltitus’s malevolence and the lethal promise contained within.

  In a blur that reminded Ori of the giant he’d had the misfortune to meet in the last trial, the Grace Knight moved. Covering dozens of metres in a step, his greatsword swung a horizontal slash that was casually parried. Through Mana sight, swirls of magic were cast seemingly simultaneously, each spell clashing, dispelling, cursing, or protecting against the other. In a single breath, a dozen physical exchanges had taken place while the swirls of paracausal energies built. Each blow condensed water vapour from the air in concussive shockwaves that echoed their tightly controlled movements within the makeshift arena. The ground trembled, and mud danced to the hard thuds of each impact.

  Meanwhile, more of the giants melted and burned under Craig and Terresa’s fire, the rest of Eltitus’s host unable to brave the conditions beneath Ori’s aura or the attentions of the few thousand troops remaining. He wanted to ask Cordelia and Baker why they couldn’t join in and help turn the tide. Surely three on one would give them better odds. But then Ori realised that if he was left alone, even the distance wouldn’t protect him from a single one of Eltitus’s spells.

  “Can you tell who’s winning?” Ori asked aloud. Neither Baker nor Cordelia responded, their expressions tight, their gazes locked on the battle ahead. Ori tightened his grip on Seraphine, seeking reassurance in its heft.

  ‘It doesn’t look good, does it?’ Ori asked internally.

  Sera’s tone was pensive. ‘No, it does not. As a mage, Eltitus should be weaker than he appears in a physical conflict. As it is, it seems he can match the Lord of West Arragat head to head.’

  ‘And that means what exactly? He’s stronger than you all thought he’d be?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sera replied.

  ‘Fuck’sake.’

  The battle between Eltitus and Bartholomew intensified as Lady Jasmine provided additional support from a distance. Ori could almost see the multiple layers of silent, deadly conflict and realised why Lord Bartholomew was likely the only Sovereign Rank combatant who could go head to head against the Lich. The competing aspects of Mana, aligned into spells before clashing and exhausting themselves; the swirls of corrupted Lifeforce and Breath versus the never-ending tide of Grace; and beneath it all, a spreading sensation that seemed to unfurl as the duel progressed, one Ori could barely pick up on and might not have been able to sense had this duel occurred the day before his run in with the Maker Saint Donna.

  Unlike the other unseen forces, however, this one progressed uncontested.

  ‘Do you see that?’ Ori asked, gesturing at the soul stuff rising from the ground.

  ‘Ori, we s-should… should go. I don’t think…’ Sera said hesitantly. The admission hit Ori harder than expected and, for a long moment, he found it hard to think, let alone form a meaningful reply. While he felt despair, a deeper sorrow came from watching his friend’s courage abandon them just as they needed it the most. Not that he could blame her.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Ori asked, torn between wanting to cut his losses and run, versus the awful consequences of abandoning her mother and sister to their fates. Ultimately, it was the thought of needing to go through with Sera’s ‘plan B’ that edged him closer to abandoning Astoria.

  ‘I… don’t think we can win, and you, you are special, Ori, and shouldn’t die here.’

  In the battle before them, things started to change. The cadence of combat shifted; blows came slower, landed heavier. The air seemed to burn with Mana so much so that, even without Mana sight, a heat haze temporarily warped the scene. The sensation of creeping power crystallised into something solid, and simultaneously, the two sisters gasped.

  ‘Domain,’ Sera whispered in horror.

  “How!?” Cordelia hissed as Baker’s expression grew grave.

  Metaphysical chains sprang up from the ground, snaring everyone within the circumference of the duel. The Grace Knight strained against the bindings just as Lady Jasmine decisively hacked off her left foot before leaping clear of the Domain that sprang out from Eltitus in a spherical radius of at least twenty yards.

  Captain Craig and Lady Terresa weren’t so lucky.

  With a glance, their flesh withered away into desiccated husks before what was once skin, muscle, and bone blew away as grey ash in the wind.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Get him out of here, back to Astor. I’ll do what I can to hold him back,” Baker said, before turning towards the rest of the army and shouting, “Full retreat!”

  Baker strode out beyond the projection of the dome, his steady pace at odds with the chaotic disengagement of the Astorian troops, who were now in a state of total rout.

  “Come on!” Ori felt Cordelia’s grip around his chest and knew that even if he wanted to go somewhere else, that was no longer an option.

  Looking back with Mana Sight, Ori saw the moment Eltitus reached the Grace Knight, his iron grip crushing around Lord Bartholomew’s throat as a storm of competing magics clashed for an instant, before another Sovereign-ranker’s body turned to dust.

  Terror swallowed Ori’s heart as he realised that not only were their bodies consumed, including all the paracausal energies within, but somehow Eltitus was shredding, then feasting on their souls. It was in that creeping sensation from just before things went wrong. He’d felt something similar ever since his soul-crafting, that second skin or sense of touch beyond his mundane senses. It was his awareness of his own soul that allowed him to sense it faintly in others, and now, as an entire Domain aspected with a soul-like affinity sprang up, a chilling understanding dawned.

  Except it was too late, far too late.

  The protective shield dome shattered and, before Ori knew what was happening, he found himself spinning through the air before landing heavily in the mud.

  ‘Ori! You must banish yourself from this realm.’

  ‘Already tried, can’t,’ Ori said, lifting himself to his feet. He felt Eltitus’s Domain settle over him, freezing his movements with the same invisible shackles that rose from the ground. Ahead, he saw a raised axe.

  ‘No!’ Sera gasped.

  Ori acted. Despite being unable to move, and with all unaligned Mana within the uncontested Domain under Eltitus’s control, latent Mana within his own body and the steady trickle from his wand still responded to his will. It was enough to cast one last-ditch spell.

  Death Ward, technically a spell from the school of necromancy, created an anchor between one’s soul and body, allowing the target’s soul to remain intact and on the same plane of existence as their corpse for a duration that varied with the amount of Mana channelled into the spell and the caster’s talent.

  Unable to prevent Eltitus from burying his axe into Cordelia’s chest, Ori could only hope someone was left to revive her, if they could survive what was to come.

  Unsurprisingly, that modest piece of spellcraft did not go unnoticed by Eltitus. Still unable to move, Ori’s arms wobbled under the physical strain of holding himself up for what felt like an eternity.

  ‘What can we do? Do you think my Domain will work?’ Ori growled internally.

  A chilling silence settled over their bond. At first, Ori feared it was Eltitus’s Domain, but then he could sense Sera’s presence: her fear, her despondency, her defeat.

  ‘Hey, Sera. It’s okay. I… I’m happy to have known you. I’m glad we tried.’

  ‘Harumph! An apprentice shouldn’t be comforting their master. Ready yourself and wait for my command.’

  ‘Plan B?’

  ‘Yes, as you call it, it’s time for plan B.’

  “A summons, a mortal at that. And yet…” a slow, cold, raspy voice murmured. Ori was lifted effortlessly; a rock-hard grip, combined with the intangible shackles binding him, made movement beyond breathing impossible. He was held so that his feet dangled a foot off the ground, his face nose to nose with the architect of this war. Eltitus’s black pupils seemed to swallow reality. He had an aged, unremarkable face with a goatee of long, wispy hair. His voice was oddly cultured, but his eyes were like blowtorches cutting into Ori’s soul despite their utter blackness. “That they sent you instead of a celestial… what secrets does your soul possess, I wonder?”

  ‘Ori, now!’ Sera shouted, and then reality slowed to a crawl.

  Resonance of Battle Harmony linked their minds; this time, Ori felt a deeper connection. Her scattered thoughts and emotions, the intensity of her will, even the precursor to her actions, appeared to him as cresting waves of intent. He swam within the emotional tide, Sera’s fear and disappointment churning with pride, love, and a righteous determination that seemed to outshine all other emotions combined. Sera drew upon the artefact’s Mana before the familiar pulse of Beacon of Wisdom settled over Ori’s mind.

  A brief change crossed Eltitus’s eyes in the distorted runtime of Ori’s enhanced perceptions, but before he could take further action, Ori attempted to unfurl his Domain.

  ‘Ah, it all becomes clearer now.’

  There was a moment of confusion after Ori’s awareness had been drawn into another featureless void, out of step with reality. Like the time he had soul-bonded Seraphine, here he had no physical presence, no sensory information beyond the knowledge of another presence. This time, it was the newly introduced voice. He could hear his antagonist’s quiet exasperation and the spike of danger that was Eltitus’s nascent attack pressing into his soul. Intermittently, he felt a pressure trying to break free, like a child’s hand attempting to wriggle out of a closed fist. The fear and anxiety over what was to come should have been overwhelming, and yet Ori was momentarily distracted.

  It was like when a boy first learns that he has strength and discovers that reserve of power over himself, his environment, or another. Through the trials, Ori had often wondered how another, more qualified person from Earth would have fared. Would a special forces soldier trained in combat and survival be in a better position right now? What about an Olympic athlete who had trained all their life to be the physical and mental elite of humanity? Weren’t their strengths greater than his own? Were not the very strongest, fastest, smartest, bravest people from his world more worthy than he was?

  While he could not answer those questions now, his understanding of the scale of his strength became startlingly apparent.

  ‘Like a fly to shit, it seems I’ve been inexorably drawn to a trap Fate designed specifically for me. Knowledge, its seeking is my strength, to know what is, what could be, to learn from the very souls of those I devour…’

  For despite all of Eltitus’s experiences, the breadth and scale of his talents, knowledge, and countless other traits… in this battle of wills, only one of the things that made up what a person was was relevant.

  It was because of these factors that, for the first time, Ori could truly assess how one of his advantages measured up against someone who had risen far above most. In this context, Ori finally understood how he broke free from Mel’s paralysis and almost escaped. He could finally accept Freya’s wisdom on the nature of wills. He could comprehend Crucible’s and the Maker’s assessment of his talents, how Sera’s life was valued against the potential of his own, or how, even against someone whose power could otherwise turn him to dust with a glance, there was one narrow path to survival.

  ‘With that knowledge, I prepared contingencies against Celestials and Seraphs, against the unlikely interference of Elven Arch Magi, Immortals, and even the descent of Divine avatars from higher realms. What I could not conceive of, what no one could, was an aberration of Fate: a mortal with a will that defies all common sense and runs amok over the confines of imagination.’

  While Eltitus’s presence within this space was significant, it was like comparing a bath to an Olympic-sized swimming pool when set against Ori’s own. The voice grunted under strain as Ori lightly flexed his metaphysical fist, his awareness only now focusing on the cool, calculating dissertation of his adversary.

  ‘And so Fate sought to humble me by using an unknown summons, torn from the furthest reaches of providence, as the nemesis I could not foresee, before pitting us against each other in precisely the only challenge I could not counter.’

  The reality of the situation returned to Ori with a cold surge of dread. Despite his mysterious affinity and an Iron Will that granted him a chance to fight for survival, Ori was still set to pay a cost far too steep. He lingered in this sub-reality, ostensibly to glean more from his foe’s ramblings, while a not-too-small part of himself came to terms with premeditatively killing another living human being for the first time. As he stalled, Ori noticed Eltitus’s demeanour shift, his voice growing sharper, colder, and more menacing.

  ‘But what happens next, I wonder? Do you really think a Domain wielded by a mere whelp can harm me? Do you really believe all of Fate’s conspiracies enough to end me?

  ‘Did you know, even here, I can feel them? Your bonds. I will reach them, and before I deal with you, I’ll rip their souls from their shells and make you watch while I devour them.’

  A laugh tore into the darkness.

  Though tinged with a hint of mania, this was no cackle from a scheming psychopath. While Ori found the villain’s monologue hilarious, it also delivered a surge of purpose, one his soul sensed as the birth of a newly emerging trait. Through careless words, Eltitus had launched a signal flare over a lake of gasoline, and with it Ori’s rage turned incandescent.

  ‘You stupid dickhead.’ Ori laughed, and with a flex of will, the void turned white.

  Backlash from the collapse of Eltitus’s Domain left the once penetrating eyes unfocused and dazed. With Battle Harmony still active, Ori wasted little time summoning Seraphine before plunging its tip into Eltitus’s left eye with all the force he could muster.

  Ori roared as he used everything he had to drive the wand deeper, as he truly came to terms with the insane constitution of a Sovereign-rank mage. His left hand wrapped around Eltitus’s head in a gesture that might have seemed intimate in another context. He used his grip to improve his leverage as he wrenched the wand free of the eye socket and reared back to jab again. He roared, driving the crystal shiv again and again. Meanwhile, light and Mana coalesced into the wand through his Domain in preparation for Sera’s final spell. It glowed white, amber subsurface light visible through flesh as the tip broke past the orbital bone and sank deeper into the Lich’s skull. Any normal mortal would have died at this moment, but on the cusp of immortality and with extensive knowledge of the soul, Ori suspected it would be no trouble for Eltitus to remove the artefact and heal himself, even with a debilitating brain injury.

  A surge of emotions flooded Ori through his bond with Sera: fear, acceptance, resolve, fury, and also a pride and belief in Ori, one that made him feel how certain she was that he’d handle whatever came next.

  And then Lady Seraphine of House Serilian’s soul detonated, exploding Eltitus’s skull, propelling Ori through the air. He landed in a heap, his face covered in milky gore. Due to the blast and the way he landed, he was too winded to spit out fragments of brain and skull. Like before, he could feel the flood of Peritia, but this time, instead of his wand being the prime recipient, most of it rushed towards a gaping hole where his bond should have been.

  Before the shattered fragments of Eltitus’s soul could disperse or return to its phylactery, Ori held it, along with all the Mana escaping Eltitus’s corpse, with the power contained in the final moments of his Domain. His Soulcraft affinity now aspected the nearby battlefield under a shattered sky, as rage and vengeance aspected his mind. He tore at the soul of his enemy just as Eltitus had taunted he would do to him. He imagined the Maker’s blast furnace vaporising what was left, and while he did not have the affinities to call upon flame within his faltering Domain, his failing awareness was enough to pull in Astral and Celestial light, empowering a Purifying Light far beyond the bounds of the spell.

  For several moments, a second sun dawned on the battlefield, vapourising cloud and annihilating the presence of death and corruption in a radius of two miles. Those who were sick or corrupted were now hale, while undead souls enslaved by the Lich’s magic were freed from their profane existences.

  The soul of Eltitus the Ravager, White Lich and scourge of Astoria, sizzled until only particles of memory and lesser essences remained. They floated in the air like tiny stars over a silent grave. Here drifted an entire existence four ranks greater, and almost ten thousand times more powerful than a single mortal man, refined into solitary motes of light.

  It was only Sera’s lingering belief in him that forced him to unclench trembling fists and will those soul fragments into himself. Despite the distaste, Ori would not refuse the power. He would need all that he could get for the days to come, if he had any chance of accomplishing what he now knew he must.

  He could feel his soul change once again as he absorbed them, but was unable to examine the phenomenon as the backlash of his collapsing Domain forced him into a dreamless sleep.

  Ori woke with a start.

  Looming over him were the concerned gazes of Lady Jasmine and Lady Cordelia. He sat up in a gasp, fighting well-meaning protests to lie down and be calm as he scanned his environment.

  He turned to see a distant forest, fewer than a thousand men camped in a grassy clearing, and no undead in sight. He should have been relieved, but all he could feel was the hole in his soul.

  “Specialist, you’re safe—Ori!” Cordelia said as she fought to hold Ori’s scattered attention. “What happened?”

  “Baker?” Ori croaked, asking after the man who had saved his life multiple times.

  Lady Jasmine shook her head. “After the undead fell, I could only revive Cordelia. I found you several yards from Eltitus’s corpse. I didn’t get to see what happened beyond the light. Just how in Seraph’s name did you defeat Eltitus?”

  Ori ignored her as he summoned the shattered remains of Seraphine onto his palm.

  “What happened?” Cordelia repeated, this time more softly, as Ori’s gaze remained fixed on the broken shards of crystal. He looked at her then, scanning every feature of her face, as if it would help him fix the hole in his soul.

  Driven by spite and grief, Ori’s gaze hardened. He refused to let them keep their ignorance of who their salvation was owed to. “Get home and save your mother. I need to go save your sister’s soul.” He lingered long enough to see her emotions transition from confusion to doubt, then incredulity, before finally settling on horror.

  Ori sighed, then left for the final trial.