Game Eleven - Part Three

Ganya began reciting once more.

To those unfamiliar with the tongue of dragons, she uttered a series of sharp, rasping invocations—staccato bursts that rose and fell without discernible rhythm. When she spoke in the dragon language, her voice turned cold and abrasive, as if it belonged not to herself, but to another being—perhaps not even a human one.

As she chanted, she opened her right hand, conjuring a spear of lightning that hovered at her side. Then, with a deft twist of her wrist, she drew a second spear from the void. Again and again she repeated the motion, each time faster than the last, until the air above her head shimmered with five spears of crackling thunder.

Outside the protective barrier, the onlookers fell into stunned silence. Ganya’s prodigious skill and vast magical reserves left them speechless. The cruel disparity between mage and mage was laid bare for all to see: to conjure even a single weapon of this caliber was already remarkable—but five, one after another, with no pause for rest?

It was almost absurd. No wonder the mages of the Oxini family had once been the vanguard in the cataclysmic wars, human weapons in their own right.

And as for Arlo, who managed to withstand such an onslaught with a mere invention—who could dare underestimate a true Archmage?

After the initial shock, some in the crowd began to exchange uneasy glances, sensing something amiss. The force and pressure of even a single thunder spear was enough to warp the very air; if five were unleashed at once, could Arlo truly defend himself with the simplest of protective spells?

There was another point of doubt as well: when Arlo had previously demonstrated his inventions, he had never resorted to such extremes. Today, in front of his own guards, what prompted him to take such a risk? Who was he trying to prove himself to?

The feud between Arlo and the Oxini family was an open secret, and many present could not help but connect the dots. A strange tension quickly spread through the crowd.

Ganya and Arlo, however, remained oblivious to the shifting mood outside the barrier.

Once in combat, Ganya’s focus widened and narrowed all at once: she saw only her opponent. Even the subtlest shift of air caused by movement did not escape her, while all other details faded from her consciousness and vision.

Initially, she had only intended to conjure three spears. But Arlo, smiling as she chanted, his relaxed stance and sparkling eyes, provoked her—encouraged her, even—to push further, to test her limits in full view of all. The most infuriating part was that she could detect not a trace of malice in him.

There was only pure curiosity. He genuinely wished to know the extent of her power, as if he were an old friend eager to learn what she had become after all these years.

Beneath that seemingly harmless curiosity, however, lay a vast confidence—he was utterly certain she could not truly injure him.

In a flash, a sharp intent surged within Ganya. She would humble him, prove him wrong, make him know shock and fear—she wanted to see him destroyed, erased.

There might have been other, more subtle solutions to this impasse, but Ganya chose the direct approach. Only by overwhelming Arlo with sheer force could she prove that his vaunted title of Archmage meant nothing.

So she conjured the fourth and fifth spears.

Maintaining five thunder spears at once was the very edge of her ability, yet it was enough to level an entire outpost.

Arlo straightened, his expression unchanged, but the atmosphere around him shifted dramatically. He had sensed her murderous intent.

Seeing this, Ganya laughed with delight and brought her arm down in a fierce arc.

A shrill hum split the air as the spears, forged from magical energy, shot forth from five directions, all converging on Arlo.

The five spears struck the barrier almost simultaneously. The protective shield, activated by his device, responded as it had before, bowing inward and catching the spearheads in its grip.

But one spear did not stabilize. Lightning danced along its length, the shaft trembling violently as it struggled to press forward, threatening to pierce the shield and tear a gash through it.

A gasp swept through the crowd; some leapt to their feet, others covered their mouths or closed their eyes, unable to watch further.

Ganya curled her fingers inward in a phantom grasp.

One gesture from her would end the spell, making all the spears vanish instantly.

Was she truly about to kill someone—about to kill Arlo here, now, before so many witnesses?

The pendulum of decision had yet to fall. Her magical core continued to operate at full force, pouring out reserves of power, drawing essence from earth and air to sustain the spears.

Flowing through her, together with that surging magic, was a familiar yet alien, cold and violent urge for destruction.

She blinked, slowly.

At once, the trembling spear exploded with searing lightning, flooding the dueling ground in blinding light.

In the glare, her opponent was reduced to a mere shadow.

There was no sound when the spearhead pierced the shield, but a part of Ganya’s awareness was bound to the weapon; she felt the resilient barrier yield and tear as the spear pressed through.

Yet there was no solid impact, no sense of a javelin striking home.

Suddenly, resistance slammed into the spear from the side—the shield had regenerated just before the lightning struck Arlo, sealing the breach, bowing inward, and shunting the spear’s trajectory aside.

The spear scraped past Arlo and shot backward, toward the tower behind him.

A collective cry swept away the silence in the arena.

Ganya froze, realizing that the shield had been breached—a spear had torn a hole through the hemisphere. She clenched her fist, ceasing the spell, but the rogue spear had already struck the tower behind Arlo.

A thunderous boom.

The gray stone tower, as precarious as a multi-layered celebratory cake, split in two and collapsed, shedding debris as it fell.

In one blow, the topmost floor vanished. The fourth floor split at an angle, the structure collapsing as huge stones rained down, threatening to crush the spectators at the courtyard’s edge before they could flee.

“Blow, Horn of the Wind!” Arlo’s voice cut through the clamor, though his face was ashen and his incantation faltered at the end.

Ganya had no time to think; she echoed the same phrase in Elvish. At the very first syllable, her expression changed, and she had to clench her fists to finish the spell clearly.

Twin gales, summoned by Arlo and Ganya, roared on either side of the courtyard, catching the falling stones and suspending them in midair, tossing them about as if they were weightless feathers.

Most of the guards were mages themselves; the brief reprieve was enough for them to scatter to safety.

A moment later, the heavy stones crashed to earth, a rolling thunder of impacts.

Ganya’s breath came fast and ragged, her ears ringing incessantly. Casting without the aid of a staff or focus was a severe test of one’s condition and magical reserves. The six spears she had conjured had nearly exhausted her—summoning the wind afterward was a feat of sheer will. She desperately needed to rest and recover her magic.

She staggered forward, legs stiff and unresponsive, as though they belonged to someone else.

“Ganya!!”

She turned toward the voice, slow to respond, and caught only a fleeting blur. The speaker was already at her side, moving too quickly for her to make out his features.

But she knew it was Arlo.

A flood of information surged through her mind, and time seemed to slow. She realized Arlo was looking past her, his expression twisted with a strange mix of fear and dazed calm. Instinctively, she looked back.

She saw the tower, roaring as it disintegrated; the third and fourth floors, already tottering, finally lost their balance and collapsed together.

Something—a pillar or perhaps a piece of the facade—came crashing toward them. The shadow of the falling mass swelled, about to engulf them.

There was barely time to think in fragments: She had no strength left to cast a spell. Nor did Arlo. Smashing or holding back the stone was impossible. She was going to die here, in the most absurd and senseless of ways.

She blinked, then wondered: Why had Arlo come back for her?

She had no time to answer. Arlo’s arm encircled her, shielding her as they dove to the ground.

The impact of her back hitting the earth jolted her from her stupor; she instinctively reached up along Arlo’s arm and found something cold and heavy—the bracelet. Without hesitation, she poured every last drop of magic she had left into it.

A burst of blinding light.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

The ground shook again, tremors crawling up her skin into her bones until every joint ached faintly. She forced her eyes open, but saw only darkness—whether from blindness or total absence of light, she could not tell.

“Arlo?” Her ears rang so loudly she couldn’t even hear her own voice.

She tried to lift her hand, but suddenly her body seemed to vanish—she felt nothing at all.

Was she… dead? Had she died, inexplicably, here with Arlo?

“Sorry to disappoint you—we’re both alive, for now.” The aggravatingly familiar voice was close, so close it drowned out all the noise in her head.

Then her vision returned, or rather, Arlo shifted enough for light to reach her eyes.

Sensation returned to her body, slowly, as if air seeped in through the numbness. The courtyard’s stone floor was cold and hard, and dust choked the air, making her cough.

She must have spoken her thoughts aloud, for Arlo had replied in kind.

No matter. Her head throbbed so fiercely she could not think at all—her thoughts scattered in disarray, the signs of magical exhaustion.

Ganya turned her head and saw shattered stone—more, and finer, than before, as if some brute force had ground the blocks to gravel. The ground looked as though a stony beach had sprung up in the midst of the garrison, lacking only the waves and tide.

She felt something wet drip onto her face, then slide down her neck—sticky, warm liquid.

She numbly craned her neck upward to find its source.

Arlo’s face—noticeably different from usual—came into focus, though her vision wavered and darkened repeatedly. Nearly overwhelmed by fatigue, she forced herself to breathe deeply and pinpoint the oddity:

A dark stain covered his temple, blood streaming down the side of his face.

He was bleeding.

“Are you going to die?” she asked, voicing the first thought that came to her.

Arlo hesitated before answering, “Probably not… thanks to you activating the bracelet.”

His tone and expression were both strange, but she was too exhausted to care; her temples felt ready to burst, and she could not muster the energy to analyze his reaction.

“So, does that mean I won the duel?” she asked again.

Arlo fell silent, his expression unreadable, as if words had finally failed him.

Ganya dimly felt there was something else—something important—she ought to ask, but her head hurt too much to recall it. In any case, whatever happened, it must have been Arlo’s fault.

“Bastard,” she croaked, and promptly lost consciousness.