Chapter 71 - Archon of Death.
Lucia closed on Aren at speed and drew the spear back for her attack, while he stayed where he was with his sword lowered.
The strike swept through in a wide, powerful arc that sent a wave of wind over the ground, and the wave carried all the way to the cadets and Eveline where they stood far off.
Lucia straightened and saw Aren land off to one side; he had sprung clear of her attack in time.
He slipped it, and he did not counter, she thought.
"I hope you're not planning to play catch with me?"
Aren gave no answer, and his face stayed serious. For a moment his thoughts about the fight lit up a piece of the past.
Eveline and Aren sat in the library, studying Pandorumology.
"Look, in Conductors the Pandorum is one of the most important organs, on a level with the brain and the heart. The Conductor's body develops on the basis of it, so that the whole physical structure of the organism is directly tied to it and depends on it," Eveline explained, running her finger along the text and the illustrations.
"I remember. That's why Exdurum can kill," Aren answered.
"Exactly. The Pandorum can change human biology at a fundamental level. Because of it, for instance, most Conductors in Helios have silvery skin, white hair and yellow eyes. And third-level Conductors, Archon of War Lucia for one, have unimaginable physical strength. Although in physical strength the active-type Conductors fall a long way short of the passive-type ones."
"Wait, what? What are active and passive types?"
"That's the next subject in the book, as it happens. Look. An active Pandorum can convert the Energy of the Unified Field into magic. A Conductor with a passive Pandorum can't use ordinary magic, and instead all of the magical energy goes into transforming the Conductor's own body. Enormous physical strength, incredibly sharp sight, hearing or other senses, an astonishing memory, for instance. These are only examples, of course, and in practice it can be far more interesting than that. But there are mixed-type Conductors too. They can have the properties of both."
"Mixed type..." Aren muttered thoughtfully.
"A lot of them can direct and concentrate energy inside their own bodies with great precision, which lets them get all sorts of different effects," Eveline added, her finger still moving along the page of the textbook.
Aren started along a wide arc with his sword down and his eyes on Lucia, while she took the opposite line.
A fine chance to test it... thought Aren, and then he sent energy into his head.
His magical sight came on, the one he had gained after absorbing Bjorg-Var's energy. He could see the energy circulating through Lucia's body and the photocytes at both ends of her long spear. Then the energy went further and filled his brain.
His eyes widened a little when he felt a sensation he knew. The same sensation he had felt in his very first fight, against the Aisengard lieutenant — Morgiana Schtance.
Lucia pushed off in a sharp burst, closed on Aren in an instant and swung her spear. He managed to parry the attack, but Lucia rolled the opposite point around, and Aren caught that on a magical shield.
The inertia of the blow bounced him back, but Lucia carried the sequence straight on and gave him no second to think. Aren caught every slightest movement of hers, memorized and analyzed all of it as he went, so that he dodged and defended against each attack with remarkable precision.
I see it... and I feel it... just like the fight with Schtance...
What the hell... HOW does he manage to defend and dodge at this speed?... Is he... Reading me?... thought Lucia.
They met her attack with another parry, and both sprang apart and caught their breath for a moment.
Now I'm starting to understand. None of this was ever chance. From the moment I woke up, most likely, my Pandorum was in a passive state that fed my brain with magic, which is how I was able to learn so fast in the middle of the fight with Schtance. It also explains why I never felt anything like it fighting anyone else. It seems that once I woke the active magic, the energy stopped going into my head of its own accord, thought Aren, as Lucia settled into an attacking stance again.
"Are you going to keep dodging and defending? Stop playing the fool and start fighting like a true warrior!" said Lucia.
Aren frowned slightly; Lucia only gave a disappointed smirk and came at him again.
Rapid attacks from multiple angles cut the air, and Aren still dodged and turned away every thrust.
"WHAT... A DISAPPOINTMENT... I EXPECTED A FIGHT... FOR A MOMENT I EVEN THOUGHT YOU... WOULD TURN OUT TO BE MORE OF A THREAT... 'BEAST-GOD KILLER'..."
On one of the attacks, which Aren blocked with his blade, Lucia at once drove a kick through with a turn of her whole body. The foot landed on the white-stone shell that materialized over his stomach, so that Aren slid several meters upright, and in that same second Lucia was already coming down on him with a vertical thrust of the spear.
Aren suddenly caught the spear right at the base of the photocyte. Lucia tried to tear it out of his hand, then froze for a moment at the sight of Aren's shining eyes rising to her.
"You want entertainment? Fine. In that case it's my turn."
He wrenched the spear toward himself hard enough that Lucia was dragged after it, and in the next instant a straight kick to the stomach bent her double and sent the Archon into the rock face.
The cadets and Eveline stood with their mouths open as Lucia came out of the crack in the rock with a deep snarl.
She pulled her torso aside in an instant and let her own spear pass her.
Lucia raised her eyes with aggression in them, spat blood off to the side and dropped into a stance.
"All right... let's dance."
Aren settled into a ready stance as well, gripped the blade harder, and a moment later both of them tore at each other with shockwaves.
Spear and sword met, and another shockwave broke around them, strong enough to throw rubble and dust tens of meters.
All three covered their faces with their forearms, and when they lifted their eyes they could not believe what they were seeing.
The whole space rang with the sound of blades striking, several times a second, though the sight of it was a blurred cloud of steel sweeping in arcs and of sparks off their collisions.
At one point Lucia broke out of the center, her feet sliding backward over the stone, and Aren was already closing after her forcing her to give ground and defend against his attacks.
Blade strikes gave way to kicks and to attempts to seize her with the free hand, yet Lucia pulled clear in time and fended off each of his attacks with difficulty.
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Aren saw and understood every attack in the moment it began, and the magical sight only sharpened the effect, since before each one he read the circulation of energy through every limb of the Archon.
The next attack came in horizontally, and Lucia went over it with a hard impulse jump off the photocytes in her soles, which threw her into the air in a roll.
In that maneuver she charged one of the spear's ends and swung it at range. The swing threw out an energy arc that flew straight at Aren.
The collision produced a powerful blast.
Lucia landed and straightened up.
Her eyebrows lowered when she saw the enormous melted magical wings Aren had wrapped completely around himself against her attack.
Lucia fed the photocytes in her soles again and rose into the air, while Aren pushed off the ground with one heavy beat and followed her.
Lucia went on attacking at range and sending energy arcs at him, and Aren maneuvered from side to side and closed on her by degrees.
Once she understood that she was not going to hit him this way, she stopped pushing off and holding herself in the air on the impulses under her feet, and simply went down in free fall.
Aren dived after her, accelerating and cutting the air.
Lucia suddenly turned to face him and began driving the spear in short stabs at lightning speed that sent out short, frequent energy projectiles.
Aren swerved from side to side and tried to get clear of her projectiles, though some of them still tore at his wings and grazed him, leaving burned cuts.
"THERE THEY ARE!" shouted Olen as two points fell out of the sky, trailing a wake of air.
Lucia twisted and went horizontal on a sharp impulse, and Aren hit the ground in a blast that threw up a high column of dust and flying stone.
She looked back and saw Aren break out of that column and come after her again.
Lucia gathered more energy into the point and let out a single, more powerful arc, which Aren slipped with a maneuver upward, and at that same moment a magical tentacle-tail of Doomhorn burst from his outstretched hand, stretched forward at speed and wound around the Archon's leg.
Aren jerked her down and drove her into the ground.
Lucia had not got up before a magical fist of Ursus came down on her, and she blocked it with the spear held over her head, down on one knee.
The fist bore on her from above with such force that her leg and knee were pressed deeper into the stone.
She set her teeth as she felt her arms and the ground itself shaking under her.
Little by little a deep guttural growl came from behind those clenched teeth, and then a roar.
She fed energy into the photocytes under her soles and broke the paw of Ursus apart with a magical impulse and a movement of the spear. And in that same second a powerful kick sent Aren several dozen meters away.
Aren stopped himself by driving the sword into the ground.
He breathed out and rose slowly, covered in dust and dirt, while the Archon's shirt was partly torn open and left her shoulder and collarbone bare, and her trousers were ripped at the knees and thighs.
Then she took the spear in both hands, and with a mechanical click it split in two, so that she now had two blades.
"Not bad. You've turned out far more interesting than I thought. You put on a fine show with that arsenal of yours and you even made me work. Credit where it's due. My day has gotten considerably better. However..." Lucia began.
"... I'm not one to hold anything back when the chance is there. What do you say?..."
Aren said nothing, and the corners of Lucia's mouth lifted.
"Good," she said, and then Aren caught the change.
The circulation of energy in Lucia's body grew stronger, and the air turned heavier.
"Are you... seeing this too?..." Eveline asked, and the cadets nodded without a word as the air around Lucia began to shake from the rising heat and the magical blades in both her hands shone harder, growing in size and turning denser.
Then a yellow aura began to cover her body, and when Aren raised his eyes he saw her golden irises shine brightly.
"Ugh... guys... let's all of us get farther back from this..." said Olen as he backed toward the fliers, and Artus and Eveline followed him.
One second, and an explosion of such force went out from the center of the field that the shockwave knocked them off their feet, and the fliers took to the air in a panic.
Eveline raised her head, covered in dust, and turned to see Aren and Lucia meet blade to blade. Yet Olen's sword had come apart in Aren's hand, and he raised his eyes in confusion.
Lucia carried on into a lightning-fast run of attacks, from which Aren dodged by giving ground and turning aside, though against two blades it proved far harder, and so he could no longer get clear of the next one. He formed Cortex claws on his hands and tried to parry the edges of her blades as they came at him, and they cut through and melted his claws with ease and left burns on his fingertips.
Aren sprang back, but Lucia rushed after him on a shockwave and left a melted crater behind her. She swung her blades crosswise and sent out an energy volley in the shape of a cross, which Aren avoided by taking to the air on his wings.
He charged the wings with electric arcs at once and struck at the Archon with discharges of lightning, from which she sprang backward.
After the last arc her head came up, and in that same moment she put up a guard of crossed blades and stopped the blow of Aren's massive white-stone fist.
He could feel the white-stone shell burning through under her blades, and so with a snarl he pulled the fist back and struck her in the side with his other hand, and the blow drove the air out through her nose.
Lucia swung both blades immediately, and Aren managed to spring away while he sent out the spiked tail of Doomhorn and drove its tip clean through her forearm.
She cut the tail off with a roar, and a paw of Ursus struck her the same instant, and she cut that apart with the blade in her other hand.
She had not brought the arm back after that attack when Aren closed at once and caught both her wrists, and he butted her nose first and then drove his knee into her stomach and doubled her over.
Lucia threw out a leg as she straightened and flung Aren off her.
He flew back, and managed to take the blade out of Lucia's wounded hand on the way, and stopped thirty meters off.
The Archon looked over her wounded and bleeding hand, and then brought her eyes back to him.
Aren looked over the weapon and saw how much energy was concentrated in the photocyte.
This photocyte... it can hold more energy than the one in Olen's sword... he thought, and then glanced at Lucia.
His eyes shone blue, and the weapon in his hand began to fill with his own energy, so that the magical edge turned blue and grew noticeably larger.
The Archon's eyes narrowed, and she set herself.
And he doesn't stop surprising me... she thought.
A moment of silence hung between them, and then their blades met and another explosion in shades of yellow and blue went out across the whole ground.
Their fight no longer looked like an exchange of blows and parries, but rather like a disaster in the middle of a canyon.
The people of Heliopolis gathered at the walls in a panic as explosion after explosion broke in the red canyon without stopping, and the rock faces melted one after another and took more and more gaping holes clean through them.
Eveline and the cadets watched in horror and could not follow Aren and Lucia, who raced through the whole canyon from one side to the other, like discharges of lightning that destroyed everything in their path.
"We need to get out of here or we'll catch it too!" shouted Olen, and Artus agreed with him, as Eveline went on watching in silence from behind his back.
Aren stopped thinking about caution and tried to reach the openings Lucia left, her head among them.
Their catastrophic fight moved from the ground into the sky, then back to the ground again, and made earthquakes strong enough that miners began pouring out of the shafts and the townspeople came out of their houses.
Then Lucia opened the distance, held her blade out in front of her and gathered a colossal charge for her strongest volley.
Aren let out his wings and the paws of Ursus, and between them he began gathering an enormous ball of lightning.
The air and the clouds around them began to spiral and form powerful currents, while the ground went on shaking.
They looked each other in the eye, shining blue and yellow.
"F... fuck..." Artus muttered.
The charges built, the tension thickened, the air grew heavy and twisted harder still, the ground shook, until at last Lucia let her attack go under a powerful roar.
Aren hurled the enormous ball of lightning in answer.
Both charges flew with monstrous force and left tracks of tearing and melting stone under them.
When the two met, in front of the townspeople, the cadets and Eveline, a flash burst in the canyon that blinded every one of them. Everything filled with white, so that people shut their eyes at once and turned their heads away.
Then they raised their heads and saw a column of smoke and fire rise in the middle of the canyon in the shape of an enormous mushroom.
For the first seconds it seemed as though everything around them had gone still. Yet they barely had time to feel the shockwave going out from the blast and passing through them, together with a deafening sonic strike. Those watching at the walls were knocked off their feet, and Eveline was thrown out of the saddle and went down with a cry, though Artus managed to catch her by the arm.
Once the smoke gradually cleared, there was nothing at the center of the battlefield but stone burned red, with the air shaking above it. An enormous crater had formed out in the desert where the red canyon had been.
"Artus..." Olen began, and got silence in answer.
"If Aren were an Archon... you know what I'd call him?..." he went on.
"... what?..." asked Artus.
"... the Archon of Death." Olen finished.
Both cadets, up on their fliers, with Eveline behind Artus and Rexy on her shoulder, were watching the same thing.
Amid all that ruin Aren walked slowly forward with a slight sway. The upper half of his body was bare, and his torn trousers barely held on his legs.
He stopped and looked at Lucia coming toward him, with not a scrap of cloth left on her. She stopped and raised her eyes to him.
Both of them breathed heavily, covered in dirt and grazes, bleeding from the mouth and the nose, from the damage and from the overload of the body alike.
Their sight swam, yet both of them stayed standing and fought to keep their feet.
Lucia looked around and understood that she had never seen anything like it.
She brought her eyes back to Aren and smirked.
"So this is what you are... god killer," she said, and then she dropped to the ground.
Aren looked down at her and went on breathing in broken snatches, and then his eyes rolled back and he dropped after her.