‘We can’t just Blink away.’ Quylla said via the mind link. ‘Friya is too far to coordinate with us and if we leave her alone, she will get easily captured. On top of that, she must have a good reason for not Blinking behind the enemy leader and ending the fight before it started.’
‘Agreed.’ Nalrond replied. ‘I’ve spent enough time around Awakened to know that glowing eyes are always bad news.’
He extended his arms, generating a dome of light that stopped the lightning net.
‘This should buy us a few seconds, but we need at least a minute. I can’t bring the two of you out of here at the same time. We would all die. Either we kill them all or we need some move crazy enough to stun them.’ He thought.
Alas, the same barrier that protected Nalrond and the girls also kept them from striking back. Suddenly, another volley of arrows struck at the construct, piercing halfway through it.
‘Since when is Light Mastery this brittle?’ Quylla asked in shock.
Before Nalrond could answer, a second and a third volley came, filling the dome with cracks that spread along its structure and compromised its stability. Elves had the ability to infuse their equipment with the power of the elements without the need for any enchantment.
In the past, humans mistook them for demi-gods because even a tree branch would become as sharp as a razor if infused with air magic, just like a simple wooden shield could withstand a charging bull after being infused with earth and fire.
Nalrond realized that one more volley of arrows would be enough to destroy the barrier and then the lightning net would do the rest.
Instead of trying to repair the dome, he had it explode outwards.
The resulting shockwave deflected the incoming arrows and pushed the net away at the same time. On top of that, the razor-sharp fragments of hard-light caught the elves by surprise, wounding the first row of archers and damaging their bowstrings.
Nalrond’s trick gave Friya the time to complete her Dimensional Ruler spell and the opening she needed to start the counter-attack. With a golden aura now surrounding her, Friya started to chant Full Guard while Blinking non-stop throughout the battlefield.
Once again, the elves could see thanks to Soul Vision where she would appear and even what kind of spell she was preparing, yet they were unable to understand her tactic until it was too late.
Friya didn’t Blink to their backs nor tried to attack the enemy leaders Kimo and M’Rael. Her exit points appeared right in the middle of the enemy formations so that any attempt to stab or hit her with a spell would affect the elves as well.
They reacted almost instantly, surrounding the exit point from every side while aiming their attacks to avoid her vitals. Yet all they hit was each other before a powerful explosion sent them flying in pieces.
Friya had Blinked away a split second after her arrival, but not before using the perfect spatial awareness that Full Guard granted her to position the sparkles of golden light so that they would Warp the incoming attacks through her as if she was a ghost.
After she had left, the exit point and the new entry point she had just created collapsed on each other in a burst of flames with the destructive power of a tier four spell.
Dimensional Ruler was a tier five dimensional magic spell that used Friya’s great mana perception and her talent for space manipulation to open countless small Warp Steps all around her.
Those small Warp Steps allowed her to redirect both energy and matter against her enemies.
Dimensional Ruler also granted Friya the ability to perceive anyone Warping near her and to make the space unstable at will. Friya could also use it as a means of attack or defense, but only within a short range.
It was the reason why she Warped among rather than behind the enemy lines. Each time she Blinked she also generated an unstable dimensional fissure that turned the elves’ ability to predict her movement and surround them into a deadly trap.
Quylla exploited the ensuing chaos to unleash all the spells she kept stored in her rings. Yet aside from those who gave her the back, the elves came out unscathed. Soul Vision allowed them to recognize the elemental energy and react accordingly.
They would dodge darkness and earth, Blink to avoid lightning and fire, and intercept ice darts with their shields. Quylla moved her fingers from the index to the pinkie as if she was playing the piano and with each spell that she unleashed, the light of one of her rings disappeared.
The closest elves charged forward, aiming to take her and the Rezar down first. Quylla never stopped moving her fingers and the spells never stopped raining. The elves expected to be hit by chore magic so they just activated the defensive abilities of their equipment and didn’t stop their advance.
Only when the barrage of tier two true spells knocked them off their feet did they realize their mistake. M’Rael couldn’t believe his own eyes and so did Nalrond. Yet while Quylla’s surprise had ruined the plans of the former, it created the opening that the latter needed.
Quylla was now chanting a fake magic spell, but the relentless waves of her attacks had broken the elves’ focus, making them lose the spells they had at the ready and keeping them from casting new ones.
Quylla had devised such a strategy after watching Solus mix fake and true magic to assist Lith from the tower while he battled the undead army outside the Feymar mines.
Until that moment, she had always believed that beast and human magic didn’t mix, like water and oil.
Yet after learning from Faluel about the differences between fake, true, and Awakened magic, Quylla had realized that even a normal human like her could learn true magic.
After all, magical beasts, Emperor Beasts, plant folk, and Werepeople all could use true magic without being Awakened. The practice of such discipline only required learning the proper runes and to have a powerful body capable to withstand its effects.
Quylla had started researching how to project mana from her core at will after Faluel’s lessons about Spirit Magic, to try and use her wand to mix her mana with the other elements like the Awakened did.
Faluel’s physical training had allowed her to reinforce her body enough to wield much more energy than before, but she had always failed to solve the main issue of her revolutionary plan.
She knew first magic, she knew fake magic, but she had no idea how to convert fake into true magic.
Asking Lith, Nalrond, and even Morok for guidance had been pointless. They were all born with such skills and couldn’t explain to her how they did it more than a sighted person could explain colors to a blind man.
Asking Tista and Phloria had proved to be useless as well. After Awakening, they had naturally learned how to weave true magic as if it had always been second nature to them.
There was a reason why no fake mage had ever learned true magic. It wasn’t a matter of talent, hard work, or even of how many colored streaks one had in their hair.Â
