Mage Dissolution

by Christopher George

  Fire surrounded me. It washed over me and drew me into itself. I could see the power that it contained; it was almost beautiful. The flame engulfed my shield, I must have looked like a human-shaped torch. I felt the power of the attack through the shield, but none of the heat. My shield more than adequately protected me from the inferno. This wasn’t going to work that well for him.

  Flame had been a desperate ploy on his part. He must have assumed that my shield wouldn’t be finessed enough to absorb both direct assault and a more elemental strike. He had assumed that I was some mindless brute using mere force to exert my will, that my technical skills wouldn’t have been sufficient to absorb new types of attack. He had hoped that a sudden change in tactics would slip through my defences and allow him victory. He had hoped wrong.

  He must have known, when I kept approaching, that he was a dead man. He seemed almost resigned as my thread swept around and tore through his shield. The moment his shield fell the flames stopped. I glanced down at the crumpled figure at my feet. I could see the Mana leaving his body as his life fled him.

  Now that the immediate battle had ended a stunned silence settled over the immediate vicinity. I could hear the sound of Mage battles in the distance, but it seemed to be coming from a long way away. It almost sounds like they had moved into the CBD directly.

  That was the most stupid place they could have gone. The collateral damage would be extraordinary. I shook my head sadly as I realised that that was exactly the point. Marcus wanted the damage. He wanted to be seen by the norms. He wanted to bring our world into the light. Of course he would seek out the most heavily occupied area for the fight. The bastard wanted fatalities.

  I gritted my teeth as I thought about it. I no longer cared if he was right or wrong. I no longer cared if our kind remained in the shadows or came into the main stream. I no longer even cared what damage our emergence would have on the world. There was only one thing I sought now and he was in my city tearing it to pieces.

  I didn’t take the time to think about my next move. I was about to interfere with one of the largest Mage battles in our known history, seek out one of the most powerful combatants and kill him. It might have been better if I had stopped for a moment to consider my actions, but then again I had never been known for that. I was reckless and foolhardy and I paid for it.

  As I launched myself into the air and onto what remained of the building across the street I happened to glance down at the destruction that I had wrought. My eye kept picking out details that I didn’t want to see. I saw my fallen opponent lying where I had struck him down, but further down the street I saw several other bodies amongst the rubble. These buildings had been inhabited.

  I hadn’t heard any shouts or calls for help during the fight, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there. I was so focused in on my enemy it’s possible that I may have missed things as our strikes struck the surrounding buildings. I couldn’t imagine the fear they must have felt in their last moments. Peering from their windows at fight on the street and not understanding what was going on as a maelstrom of destruction and chaos overtook them.

  I wondered how many more were even now peering at me through closed curtains or huddled behind walls and doors. Simple luck had been all that had spared them from the fate that had taken down their neighbours. It didn’t seem fair.

  It didn’t take me too long to rationalise their deaths. The term – ‘for the greater good’ allows for all evil to be made acceptable. They were victims of Marcus and their sin had been nothing more than to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  This kind of slaughter happened all the time in third world countries with petty warlords and gangs shooting up the place. Why was this any different? Just because this was a first world city suddenly it wasn’t okay?

  There was nothing that could be done for these people, but I could make sure that their deaths counted for something. I was becoming a master of deception. The only problem was that the only one I was deceiving was myself.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It wasn’t hard to find the other Mages. All I simply had to do was to follow the path of destruction that they had left for me. The closer I got to the city, the worse the damage. From the look of it the battle was still escalating. Cars, trucks even buildings were gutted as the other Mages had passed by. It looked like a tornado had torn through the place.

  As I flew across the city I had grown up in, I realised that thousands of people must have been caught in their wake. This was one of the most populated parts of the city. There was no coming back from this. If Marcus had wanted to reveal himself to the world at large he could have chosen no greater feat with which to do so.

  No one sought to intercept me as I passed across the devastation that used to be a city block. Police officers, firemen and survivors stared up at me. They all had the same expressions on their face – shock and disbelief.

  It wasn’t horror, it wasn’t anger, it was simple disbelief. They simply couldn’t comprehend what they were seeing. It must have looked so confusing without the ability to see the Mana. As the battle raged, it would have looked like the city was tearing itself apart at the command of mere man. You couldn’t have done any more damage with a team of wrecking balls. My fellow Mages must have looked like Gods. At their gesture concrete and metal tore from their foundations and wreaked havoc. If I were capable of it, I would have pitied them. Their world was coming to an end and they couldn’t even see the cause of it.

  By the time I got into the CBD proper it looked like a war zone. It didn’t take me long to find Victor. He was at the centre of a vortex of magical fury, both directed at him and from him. I was surprised that four Mages were now standing against him. I had thought that Victor had killed two of them in the initial assault, but that obviously wasn’t the case. The one had he had knocked from the roof had obviously survived his fall.

  It took me several seconds before I was able to understand what the hell was going on. Victor wasn’t attempting to attack them directly, he was skirting away from them. He couldn’t teleport out from the fight without making himself vulnerable and he obviously knew that he couldn’t take them all on directly. His plan appeared to be attempting to keep the buildings between them all so that all four couldn’t assault him at once. This didn’t look good for Victor, eventually they would corner him.

  I could tell that some serious power had already been expended in the fight. All five of the Mages’ shields looked like they had taken some serious damage. However the damage done to their shields was nothing compared to the surrounding buildings. In their fury they weren’t even trying to contain the collateral damage to each other. When Gods fight it is the mortals who suffer.

  It looked like several Mages had gone through the skyscraper that Victor was perched on in an effort to get to him. Smashed glass and rubble fell from the sky like rain. This was a heavily inhabited area. The death toll must have been in the thousands from fallen debris alone. The city streets below looked like a wasteland of fallen masonry, glass and twisted metal. This was no longer a city street. This place was now nothing more than a battleground.

  It seemed almost blasphemous as these people tore my city apart. I had memories of walking across that street as a child. There was nothing I could do about it though. If I interfered now I would only risk being drawn further into the conflict and that wasn’t the plan.

  As I watched as one of the Mages took out an entire corner of a skyscraper. The whole building shuddered from the impact and huge columns of concrete hit the ground. It threatened to topple, but it eventually stopped crumbling, leaving a gaping whole about half way up its length. This obviously wasn’t the intended outcome as another swipe quickly finished the job, sending the top half of the building plummeting towards Victor.

  The noise was terrifying as twenty stories of building tumbled down into the cityscape. It reverberated through the air and the very sound hit me like a shockwave. The building collected another skyscraper on the
way down and sent more shards of concrete and shrapnel across the city. Victor only had one way to go to get out of the trap that they had set. He had no choice. He would have to attempt to make his way past the two Mages who were waiting for him.

  They might have gotten him too, had I not chosen to intervene from below. I launched a thread upwards and wrapped around one of the Mages as he attempted to sweep in behind Victor. The thread impacted with a snap and sparks that were visible from here. It wouldn’t have done much damage against his shield, but that wasn’t the point. With a sharp tug I freed the Mage from the threads holding him in the air and sent him plummeting downwards. I could hear his shout of outrage as the threads holding him in place were torn free. Several large chunks of concrete were torn free with him.

  He sought in vain to attach a thread to secure himself, but I quickly knocked his attempts loose. It didn’t take him long to reach terminal velocity. Once that happened I doubted he would have enough strength to secure himself with a thread. He certainly wouldn’t be able to pull himself out of his fall while projecting such a powerful shield around himself. I knew from experience just how much power was required for that in my own free fall above Germany several weeks ago. He would have to either teleport or lower his shield, and to teleport he would need to lower his shield anyway. He had no choice – he had to lower the shield. As soon as his shield was lowered I hit him with a disrupt spell. I watched impassively as his Mana aura went berserk and he fell to his death.

  His death went all but unnoticed to the melee above, except for providing Victor with an escape route. I didn’t care much for saving Victor, but I needed Victor alive to provide a necessary distraction while I pursued my real goal. I caught glimpses of Marcus through the now shattered top of the building and pulled myself up the sheer surface to meet him.

  Marcus still hadn’t noticed the death of another of his party by the time I reached the top of the building. I crouched on the side of a concrete column that had been sheered in two as I sought the Arch Mage. Victor had taken the opportunity to engage the now three-to-one battle in an attempt to even the odds a little further.

  It wasn’t going to work. There were still simply too many for him to handle. Fortunately for Victor he wouldn’t have to struggle for long. I had lost sight of Marcus in the fighting and didn’t get a visual again until the fighting had already resumed. This wasn’t a bad thing, I didn’t want to get caught in that brawl. If I was lucky I could get to Marcus and take him down without anyone being the wiser.

  With an explosive burst of shattered glass and concrete the Marcus slammed another thread into the shield surrounding Victor. The impact sent shockwaves across Victor’s shield and I could see it beginning to buckle. It wouldn’t be able to take much more like that. I had to intervene and I had to do it now.

  Marcus had leapt backward to avoid Victor’s counter attack and he obviously hadn’t noticed me crouching below him. He was in the process of getting back into position to launch another attack against Victor when I struck.

  I waited just until he launched himself free from the building to swoop down onto Victor. I struck with everything I had and grimaced in satisfaction as my strike caught him by surprise and sent him careening back into the office block. I wasn’t aiming to knock the Arch Mage out of the sky like his companion. No, that wouldn’t do for Marcus. I needed to look him in the eyes as I ended him. He needed to know that I was the one who brought about his death.

  The fury of my attack must have stunned him as he wasn’t moving. I knew he wasn’t out of it yet, as his shield was still intact. My attack had alerted the other two Mages to my presence but I wasn’t concerned about them. They would be too busy fending off a very angry Victor now that I had evened the odds.

  I grimaced slightly as I looked down upon the inert figure of the Arch Mage. This was too easy. He was definitely baiting me. There was no way I was going to enter the building. That was obviously what he was waiting for.

  Fortunately I had other options. I launched everything I had at the building and watched with awe as my thread swept through, glass, concrete, metal and through the front side of the office. Another building toppling down in this mess of a city wasn’t going to make much of a difference now. As I had suspected Marcus quickly regained his footing as the roof collapsed down upon him. I was pretty sure that this wouldn’t kill him. Surely he had reinforced his shield enough to protect him from such a mundane attack.

  A wave of debris and dust washed over me as I smashed my way into the building. The damage I had done previously had torn a large chunk from several levels of the building. I smashed my way through a large shelf of concrete that had fallen down onto the Arch Mage. As I had presumed Marcus was uninjured from the assault but had retreated further into the building. I sent several large chunks of concrete at him as I launched my attack, but wasn’t surprised when he easily blocked them. That hadn’t been the point. The point had been to force him deeper into the building.

  I swept out the support columns holding up the far side of the building. My thread easily smashed through internal walls, cubicles and the hard concrete shell supporting the building. There was a horrendous crunching noise as the building began to collapse in on itself.

  Adrenaline rushed through my veins as the building toppled over. It was like the gloves had finally come off. There was no need to remain hidden in the shadows. After today the world would see us as we were. When I had battled previously against others of my kind I had never completely restrained myself in the application of my powers. In that, the Primea was right to have judged me, but I had never intentionally sought out destruction for destruction’s sake. I had never done anything like this before. This was different. This was new. It was exciting and terrifying all at once. Before me lay the golden apple and I was going to take that apple and bite it. It was as if I had finally thrown off that last nagging constraint and felt a freedom that can only come when you’re doing something that you know you shouldn’t be doing, but with the acceptance that whilst it may be a bad decision, it’s your decision. Consequences be damned.

  I was sure that I wasn’t the only Mage that day to feel the same way. There was no other explanation for the carnage that surrounded me. It was as if as a people we had decided that we would no longer hide from the world any longer. Let them see us, let them see what we can do. It was intoxicating.

  My threads pierced the brittle shell of the office block and centred in on Marcus. They tore through his defence and pinned him in place. I was a God, nothing could stand against me now. Marcus struggled to break free as my threads tightened further around him. Given enough time he could eventually smash through my threads, but I wasn’t going to give him that time. I needed to keep him focusing on his shield so that he couldn’t bring his powers to bear. With the majority of the concrete support structures taken out the building began an ominous rumbling noise. Concrete pillars exploded under the pressure of the floors above.

  I threw Marcus against another pillar. The impact smashed it into shrapnel as the Arch Mage barrelled through it. His shield was weakened, but it wasn’t weak enough yet. Perhaps dropping the building on him would do the trick. It wasn’t the way that I had wanted this to happen, but perhaps it was for the best.

  I had just thrown him through the second pillar when the building finally came down. The level that I was standing on and the two above it had already been opened to the air. I wasn’t going to get caught in the fall. I wasn’t in any danger or at least I had assumed that there wasn’t. I was wrong.

  The weight of the building as it collapsed sheered through both levels as gravity took hold of the structure. The gap that I had been standing in disintegrated into chunks of falling concrete and rubble. My last vision before the dust consumed me was a large sheet of concrete flooring from the level above bearing down onto me. I threw everything I had into my shield and struck upwards in an attempt to save my life. There was no way my shield would survive being hit with a dozen stori
es of building. I was a dead man. My only solace was that I would take Marcus with me.

  I was amazed once the dust had settled to find that the building had sheared off to one side. It had slammed into one of its neighbours and now was resting at a precarious angle, hovering over the city. Rubble and debris from its interior rained down on the streets below. I hadn’t known that the force directed by my thread, and presumably Marcus’s, would alter the course of the building, yet the evidence seemed irrefutable. It seemed unlikely that two threads however powerful would have been able to move that much mass, yet they had. Truly I was a power to be feared.

  I could see Marcus across the other side of the building through a vortex of dust and ash. He seemed to be yelling something at me, but I couldn’t hear him over the grinding noise of concrete from the building bearing down on its neighbour, the sound of water gushing from broken water pipes and the hiss of sparking electrics. Not that it mattered, whatever he had to say I wouldn’t listen anyway.

  I launched my attack before he had finished, sending shards of concrete flying at my foe as I leapt towards him. Marcus easily deflected the projectiles and moved to block my attack. Our threads collided with staggering force as I moved closer to my target. The brief respite he’d had, had been enough for him to focus his powers and bring them to bear on me. Without the element of surprise this wasn’t going to be an easy fight. In some ways though, perhaps that was better. I hadn’t liked the idea of killing him by dropping a building on him. No, I needed something more personal. He needed to know that I was the one who had killed him. He needed to look into my eyes as he finally accepted the folly of his actions.

  “This is stupid Devon!” Marcus yelled over the crescendo of noises that surrounded us.