Chapter 440 - A Glimpse of the Future

Such a fun sequence to write. This is why wizards are the coolest. Hope you like the chapter! May be slightly rough, I haven't had time to proofread it.

Bud fought, sword in hand, encased in the pale shimmer of Ice Armour. His breath turned the air to a frosty mist as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Emilia. Dylan’s vines whipped back and forth, dealing with the alchemist. The man no longer thew his explosives into their mix after Dylan had tossed a couple back into the enemy ranks. At their centre, Lorissa did her best to keep out of the way, but it seemed her blessings were ill-suited for combat. The road was chaotic—shouts, clashing steel, and the crack of spells—but together, they held off their attackers.

These enemies were no amateurs. The assassins were fast, aggressive, and coordinated. They didn’t fight one-on-one, always moving to flank, always attacking in pairs. But for all their skill and strategy, they were no Chosen. Skilled martials, sure, though far from Hump and Emilia.

A hiss of water drew Bud’s attention away from the fight and upward. The real threat loomed on the rooftops—one of the enemy wizards. She raised her hands high, wand gripped in both and pointed down at them, essence swirling around her like a whirlpool. Rain poured onto the street, sharp against Bud’s skin, turned to hail by his Heart of Frostfire. Water pooled above her, shaping itself into flickering forms—strange spirit creatures in the shape of bubbles that shimmered and pulsed as they took flight.

Three of them floated overhead. Their bodies elongated, spikes forming quickly before bursting free of them. A barrage of water spears followed. Emilia danced aside, dodging or parrying them with easy. Bud raised a hand, calling upon Aegis of Sanctuary to form a wall of ice to block their path. They splattered over its surface, freezing almost immediately and forming uneven crystals across the ice.

“I’ll handle them,” Bud said. “Can you keep the others off me?”

Emilia slipped him a grin. “As if you need to ask.”

Bud closed his fist, shattering his blessing while swinging his sword with his other hand. He poured Frostfire into the blade until a violent flame blazed through the night. With a roar, he heaved it at the wizard. Frostfire poured from his sword in a wave, surging toward the closest sphere. It struck head on, its body freezing instantly and crashing to the ground, shattering like glass. He swung again, aiming at the next spirit sphere. The wizard waved her wand, trying to get them to dodge but Bud’s attack was relentless. One by one, the sphere’s fell, and then she was his target.

Suddenly, the whirlpool of water overhead descended like the tide, pouring straight toward him. Bud gripped his sword in two hands, calling upon another Blade of Judgement. Frostfire blazed, rising high into the sky, touching the heavens. Just as the wave was about to strike, Bud swung at it.

Crackling filled the air as the entire whirlpool froze in place like a waterfall turned to ice.

“I’ll go,” Dylan said, Aspect of the Ape manifesting over his head before he launched himself up the ice with his staff and quickly climbed to the roof to confront the wizard.

To the left, Emilia rushed forward. Bud realised her target was another of the explosive flasks the alchemist had thrown, hissing at their feet. She reached it and tossed it back at the assassins.

“Watch out, Bud!” Lorissa shouted.

Movement caught Bud’s eye and he turned as an assassin with a short sword rushed in to try to catch him off guard. Bud leaned his shoulder toward him, positioning his armour to take the incoming blow. It glanced off his pauldron, a burst of ice crystalising over the man’s blaze and causing him to stagger under its weight. Bud responded in kind, slamming his blade into the ribs who stepped in too confidently. The edge tore through leather, but the man dashed back just in time to avoid a fatal wound. Still, Frostfire burned at his skin and armour, crystal forming over his flesh.

The man gasped in pain. “You’re quick for a big fellow,” the man wheezed, trying to laugh through it.

Bud didn’t smile. He met the man’s eyes and shook his head. “I’m not quick.” Emilia darted forward in a red blur, her rapier plunging through the man’s throat. “She is.”

The man went down hard, weapon falling from limp fingers, hands clutching at the wound as he choked on his own blood. His eyes flicked to Bud, terrified, but Bud simply turned away to the next foe. They had dared to test the might of Kelisia’s Chosen, and now he would dish out her judgement.

Bud advanced at the front, forcing back the assassins. Already he could feel their enthusiasm wavering. They had lost half their members now. Numbers no longer favoured them. They glanced at the rooftop and Bud followed their eyes just as Dylan caught the water wizard by the ankle with one of her vines and tugged. She tumbled from the rooftop, slammed against the edge on the way down, and hit the cobblestones hard. Her staff clattered beside her. She didn’t get up.

They looked at each other nervously, then started to back up. Then as one, they turned and fled, broken.

Dylan knelt by the unconscious wizard, checking her pulse. “She’s alive.”

“Keep her that way,” Emilia said. “I’ll find Celaine. Bud, help Hump.”

Bud turned his eyes back to the roof, heart still pounding. The duel seemed to have taken a turn for the worse.

“Lorissa,” Bud called. “Can you open a portal to that roof?”

“What?” Lorissa asked, her eyes wide and panicked.

“The roof. Can you open a portal?”

She followed his eyes then gave quick nod. “Yes… The roof. Yes I can do it. Just give me a minute.” She waved her wand again, only for them both to stop when light came from above.

All eyes turned to a sudden wave of essence as it swept over the street. The night was no longer dark. A ball of white fire blazed above—White Flame, unmistakable in its brilliance. It flared like a second sun, so intense the shadows recoiled from it. Bud raised an arm to shield his eyes. The heat washed over him, even from so far away. A prickling sensation crawled across his skin—essence. Usually, Bud struggled to sense it, but in its presence even he could feel it.

Bud shielded his eyes with a hand and stared. Even from the street, he felt the heat on his skin. The prickle of essence in the air—a sensation he rarely felt.

And there, above him—flames lighting the sky—stood Hump.

Even after Bud’s recent advancement, this was more than he was capable of. Bud had seen Hump cast this spell before. He’d felt it.

Yet seeing it now… it was something greater. Something that sent a pang of fear through even him.

That fear wasn’t of Hump, but what he represented. And what he so often spoke of.

Wizards weren’t supposed to possess such power. It wasn’t the way of the world—at least, not the one Bud was raised to believe in. Yet here, before his eyes, he witnessed the kind of power that only the Chosen of the gods should possess. Power to turn night to day.

Such destructive force was something Bud had only witnessed from the greatest warriors of Alveron—his uncle before he died, Count Daston and General Korteg in the Battle of the Infernal Halls. Perhaps Hump did not rival them yet, but in that moment, Bud caught a glimpse of what the future might hold. A future where a wizard might surpass even the mightiest of Chosen.

A future that should not be possible, for if mortals could master such power, why did they need to gods to grant them the strength to protect themselves?

***

White Flame exploded forth in a blast of raging heat. It seared against Hump’s skin, roared in his ears, whipped his clothes and hair like a storm, and it ripped through the air like a lance, so bright it banished the night in an instant until nothing but blinding white light remained. Essence surged from the Book of Infinite Pages in streaks of essence, arching between book, staff, and soul. Each part resonated with the other, amplifying the strength of the spell. And Hump held nothing back.

These bastards had come to kill. They poisoned his friends. They wanted his book and his dragon. They wanted him dead.

And they would burn for it.

Above, Nisha veered up to avoid the inferno, wings beating hard as she climbed into the sky, circling like a hawk preparing to strike.

The Master reacted next. Golden essence flared to life as he conjured a hasty shield, but it was too late. His barrier was incomplete, and White Flame tore through it with ease, the sheer force of the spell slamming into him and sending cracks rippling across his stone form. He roared in pain, his body scorched, parts of his flesh exposed beneath cracked armour, though it resisted better than Hump expected.

Air wasn’t so fortunate.

The apprentice raised his wand, trying to twist the spell away with a torrent of wind, but it wasn’t enough. The heat hit him full on, blistering his skin, burning through his clothes. Then came of the full force of it, roaring into him. He screamed—a raw, animal sound—and staggered backward, his figure silhouetted in the fire before collapsing.

From the flames, a voice echoed—feral, enraged. “That book is mine!”

The Master stepped through the dying blaze, robes scorched to tatters, his stone flesh crumbling, streaks of red and raw muscle showing beneath. The veil over his face was shattered. His hair was patchy, burnt. His face was warped, consumed by madness. His eyes filled with pale green light, and that same essence rose in faint streams from across the open wounds across his body.

A cold sensation filled Hump. One he had only encountered a few times before. It was weak, but this was the essence of death.

A lich? Or perhaps a necromancer?

The Master raised his staff and punched it forward before Hump could think further. A golden bolt of force blasted from the tip and struck Hump square in the chest before he could recover his essence enough to raise a defence.

Hump flew back, crashing into a raised section of the rooftop. The breath was knocked from his lungs. Pain exploded in his ribs.

The Master leapt down after him, landing with a thud that cracked tiles.

Hump scrambled upright, raising his staff. “Blas—”

Another golden bolt came faster. Hump instinctively threw up a Parry Shield, just in time to catch it. His spell shattered on impact—the Master’s spell too powerful at such close range—a sending his arm flying back, barely holding not his staff.

This wasn’t good.

Nisha descended from above. A roar split the air as she plummeted from above, wings spread wide and fire trailing in her wake. She struck like a bolt of living fury, claws tearing into the air around her, hunger for vengeance blazing in her eyes. She didn’t hesitate, but she wasn’t going to make it.

At the same moment, something else flashed from the darkness.

A glint of silver—a streaking blur—an arrow.

It shot from the shadows, and the Master didn’t have time to dodge. He turned partway, caught between surprise and defence, but too slow. The arrow slammed into his right shoulder, piercing through his stone armour and out the other side in a splatter of blood.

He gasped, clutching at the wound. His hand flared with magic, golden light pulsing between his fingers—some sort of emergency healing spell, or perhaps an artifact. It didn’t matter. He was off balance now, wounded, and his control over the battlefield was broken.

“Focused Beam,” Hump barked, taking aim with his staff.

The spell struck him square in the chest, blasting him back into the roof he’d jumped down from. He struck with a crash, landing in a heap. The Master’s eyes flicked to Air, then his other apprentice, Water, who Bud and the others had finished off. Then to Hump.

The Master’s lips moved, and Hump caught the whispered words. “Smoke Step.”

“No!” Hump shouted, already casting. “Blast!”

But it was too late. The Master’s form shimmered. His body warped, becoming hazy, and then all at once he transformed into a plume of blaze smoke, hurtling across the rooftop like ash on the wind.

The blast struck the rooftop where he’d been a heartbeat earlier, shattering tiles and bricks. A second arrow flew, but it passed through air, piercing the rooftop right where Hump had struck.

Farther down the rooftops, Hump saw the vapour reform into the warlock’s wounded figure.

“Follow him, Nisha, but keep your distance,” Hump said. Then aloud he called for Celaine. “Celaine, he’s getting away!”

She was there an instant later, appearing on the rooftop like a ghost. Blood stained her chest and arm, and her movements were sluggish. One ear dripped blood. Her eyes shimmered strangely, her essence unstable.

“I’ll get him,” she said, breathlessly. She went to pursue. Hump reached to stop her, but missed.

“Wait,” Hump shouted after her. “You go after him like this and you might die.”

“I’m fine,” she called back, giving chase.

“Shit,” Hump snapped. If she’d waited, he could have used the Silver Sprig to heal her.

Celaine darted across the rooftops in pursuit. He watched as she dashed across the rooftops before descending out of sight. Hump stood over the scorched tiles, chest heaving, his staff humming softly with spent power. Beside him, embedded into the roof, was the Master’s bloodied arrow.

“What do you see?” Hump asked his dragon.

An image of empty rooftops returned to him. Both Celaine and the Master had vanished from her sight.

Hump sighed. He leaned over the edge of the rooftop to look at the battle below. Bud and the others had won. Bud, Dylan, and Lorissa stood amidst the wreckage. Water—bloodied and unconscious—was bound in place by a web of Dylan’s vines. The thugs were either dead or gone gone. The threat was ended.

Hump gave them a wave. “Everyone okay?”

“We’re fine,” Bud said. “Are you?”

“I’ve been better but good enough. Mind helping me down, Dylan?”

A vine extended toward him and wrapped around his waist, easily carrying him back to the road. Some minutes later, Celaine returned. Her boots were silent as she approached, limping slightly, her breath shallow.

“I lost him,” she said, her voice tight with frustration.

“I lost him,” she said, frustration in her voice.

“That’s unlike you,” Dylan replied.

“My ears are ringing,” she snapped. “My vision’s still blurred. That explosion was not good for me.”

“If you’d have waited, I could have healed you,” Hump said.

She glared at him. “Wouldn’t have mattered. He was gone.”

Hump sighed. Hump bent down and plucked the arrow from the stone, holding it up. The head was still stained red.

“Well,” he said, eyes narrowing with thought. “We have his blood now.”

Celaine raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“I have access to hundreds of spells in the Book of Infinite Pages.” He smiled, the spellbook in his hand, pages fluttering open with eagerness. “We’ll find him.”

“It’ll have to wait,” Celaine said grimly. “We stirred up the city with this. Reinforcements have almost arrived and I expect they will want an explanation.”