The Third Step: Chapter Fifty-Nine

In response to the question, I flung a hand out, as if offering a handshake. That probably had been a mistake, as the summoner tensed, fingers crackling with lightning, before he relaxed. 

“My name’s Mal, what’s yours?” 

“Dario,” the summoner responded. 

“Any relation to the Amethyst Mask?” I asked, which caused him to tilt his head to the side. The golden mouse on his shoulder, whose mana seemed to pulse with a mix of knowledge, mental, telluric, and creation mana tilted its head in a near identical copy of its master, while the gemstone fish swimming around his head placidly. 

That was all we had time for, though, as a familiar presence blanketed us, large and powerful. I felt a few other presences flee from where they’d been making their way to the stone disk, driven off by the prospect of finding easier prey to eliminate elsewhere, and looked up to see Kamal approaching us. He was absolutely burning with raw magical power, the sheer amount of mana he had greater than Dario, his familiars, Dusk, and my own gardens put together, and he was letting that fact be known as he hovered over us, his bright red wings flapping lazily. 

“If you all want to give up the disk, summoner, I’d be happy to let you leave without a fight,” Kamal said. “The fox seems to think I’m only here because of privilege, and I intend to disabuse him of that notion. Preferably through elimination. ” 

A sour look crossed Dario’s face, and he kept his position of floating just a few inches over the stone disk, but flicked two fingers out. Lightning shot from his fingertips, forming the powerful electrical whip that he seemed to use freely. 

“I never liked bullies,” he said sourly. “Go fight someone else.” 

Kamal frowned and flared his wings. Dozens of bright red feathers exploded from him, each one burning brightly. This looked like a meta spell, as it kept them dancing in a sphere all around him, conjuring new ones, setting current ones to spinning, then breaking them down into nothing. There was a pattern to it, and Dusk let out a laugh as she whirled, fluttering between them as if it were a dance. I teleported back, leaving illusions for the feathers to cut through as I quickly flipped through mental battle plans. I didn’t know enough about Dario’s capabilities – or at least, whatever capabilities he was willing to show in the first round – to make any sort of solid plan. But I knew Kamal, better than most would. 

“I’ve done some spy– my research on my competitors,” I shouted to Dario, letting the word spy slip out in order to taunt Kamal and set him off balance, as well as to misdirect the truth of how I actually knew. “He’s got two full-gate spells: permanent force armor and phoenix regeneration.” 

I Foxstepped out of the way of another stream of feathers, then began my imitation of Cloudwalking again, Foxstepping out of the way of the odd blast of feathers. Given that this simple first gate spell was all he was using to attack, I was betting he was also holding some cards close to his chest. 

Then, in what I felt was a very fox-like move, I cast a quick Combat Echo. My echo leapt to the left, while I leapt to the right, and as a wave of red washed over the entire ara as Kamal attempted to cut off both the ‘real’ and ‘illusionary’ me. Instead, I Foxstepped into a gap in the feathers behind him, making it look like neither of the copies had actually been me.

I raised my hand and flung a ball of Foxfyre down at his back. It slammed into the forged plates of physical mana that made up his permanent force armor, burning away at the mana as the spell was meant to… before it petered out. The fire was excellent at burning through forged mana, but Kamal had simply grown his full-gate spells so much that it didn’t matter. Again, I considered if maybe Ikki had a point about the advantages of non-growth spells. 

I didn’t have long to contemplate that, however, as Kamal’s palm turned toward me, and magic ripped through the air. It looked like the Force Pulse spell, which was a common enough third gate pick for combat mages with physical mana, but the sheer amount of power that Kama’s massive mana reserves and natural treasures packed into the blow was enough to set my senses screaming danger. I Foxstepped out of the way, leaving a Combat Echo in my place, only for the memories of the echo to integrate, causing me to wince. That hurt! It had ripped through the echo’s body like the force of a boxer punching through wet tissue paper.

But I’d succeeded in distracting him, at least for a moment. Long enough for Dusk and Dario to set up their own counter attack: Seven sparrows, each one now shrouded in fire, rather than lightning, flew through the protective sphere of whirling feathers. Even as I flung Foxfyre and the sparrows harried at his head, Dusk struck. 

She had woven her way through the feathers while I’d been distracting Kamal, until she was almost directly underneath him, before she thrust her hand into the sky and cast a half-dozen Sandstorm Lances. Given that I used Mantle Dragonfyre, it was easy for me to forget just how potent simple attack spells can be. Sandstorm Lance might not have the incredible power and cyclical charging of my spell, but it fired faster than a single cycle Mantle Dragonfyre and hit about as hard, and Dusk had just unleashed six of them.

The first lance was repelled by the armor, as was the second. The third began to crack it, as the damage started to outpace the armor’s self-repair function, and the fourth caused those hairline fractures to rush across the entire suit of forged mana. 

That was when I swept my hand out, flourishing it dramatically like I was a street magician performing a trick of magicless legerdemain. All of the balls of Foxfyre that had struck Kamal’s armor and puttered out suddenly roared back to life, purple magic flaring as my Magical Echoes re-emerged. Kamal’s armor, already strained by the pounding Sandstorm Lances, shattered. It would reform, but not instantly. 

Dusk’s last two lances struck Kamal hard enough to leave small, but deep stab wounds on his torso, but Kamal’s body had taken a Lushloam seed. That made it at least as tough as my own was, probably more so, and combined with his regeneration, the wounds were already beginning to close. His armor was beginning to reform, and I felt a spark of irritation at keeping myself limited to this false-Kitsune build. A part of me was tempted to throw caution to the wind, and reveal everything now. If I used my Fungal Armor, Briarthreads, and Ivy cloak to defend against his attacks, boxed him in with blademoss, Kludde’s Weight, and Fungal Lock, then unleashed a soul mana infused Mantle Dragonbreath, he’d go down, I was sure of it. 

But that would be stupid. I had to make it to the top sixteen if I wanted to keep getting mentored by Orykson and Ikki. I wanted to make it even further. If I revealed everything in the first round, I might pass with flying colors, but I’d sharply diminish my odds in future rounds. 

Thankfully, I wasn’t fighting alone. The lightning whip slammed through the partially-reformed armor and into Kamal’s chest, leaving long burns, but again, the wounds began to heal. Each of the birds began to peck at the reforming armor, sharp flashes of fire forcing it to repair itself in the spots where their beaks landed. Dusk’s hands spread, and a massive snowstorm enveloped Kamal, slowing his hands and further worsening the armor. I teleported upward and slammed both hands into his back, smacking him with two more balls of Foxfyre as I did. Again his armor dissolved, and we all launched a round of attacks. 

I thrust my hand between his wings and cast Foxthorn, prepared to unleash the wave of multi-aspected mana into his spirit. Dario cupped both his hands together and thrust them out, sparkling fingers making way for the Lightning Bolt spell. Dusk unleashed a flurry of shockwaves alongside a trio of Sandstorm Lances.

But Kamal hadn’t been doing nothing while we’d shattered his armor. His own mana surged as he cast a sphere of force around himself, the bubble nearly a foot thick and slightly wavy, like warped glass. Our attacks all pounded against it and did nothing, not even cracking the surface of the dome. There was a chime like a bell being struck, and suddenly each of the red feathers that had been dancing around us exploded with sharp, shredding waves of force. 

They tore outward at Dario, who had been at the edge of the feather dome, supposedly free from their influence, and I saw green armor around him appear, before it shattered. Cuts opened across his skin, then the fish dove down. A swarm of multicolored lights spun out of it, and it unleashed a spell that precisely targeted each aspect of the swarming force and feathers – Gemstone Dragon’s Breath! What exactly was that fish? 

I didn’t have long to take that in though, as my perception flickered to dusk. The force  shredded through the area where she was, tearing into her cloud and at her body, forcing her to pull herself into her own realm to avoid being torn to nothing. She didn’t use a portal this time, simply slipping directly into her realm. Through our link, I could feel her working to repair the cloud, pouring mana in from across the skies of her realm. The natural treasure turned growth item was resilient, and it would repair itself in time, but she might wind up being grounded for the rest of the fight with Kamal. 

Even as my mana senses were taking all of that in, I was dealing with the same slashes of force striking at me. I felt long, bloody gashes tearing open on my skin. If not for my full-gate spells, I’d have been eliminated then and there. I considered forging my armor, but… no, that was tipping my hand too much. Instead, I went for a power that had a few different options. First, I teleported a healing potion directly into my mouth. As it was a fourth gate one that I’d crafted myself, it fell within the parameters of the rules. As its magic surged through me, I poured life and a tiny trickle of soul mana into Starfish’s Regeneration.  My wounds actually began to shimmer and shine a sea green-blue color as they rapidly healed, the skin knitting itself back together faster than the force could rip it apart.

It was painful, so I quickly used the ungated spell to mute my pain receptors, wondering if I’d made the right choice. It was the best way I could think of to weather the attack without revealing too much. Revealing a self-healing effect was a bit risky, since Kitsune mana didn’t really have much skill at healing, but there were enough ways to create a self-heal that most would explain it away without jumping to the conclusion that I was effectively hiding multiple human gates and a full suite of powers. Primes, they might even assume that the healing was an illusion, hiding the fact I wasn’t even in the field of effect. 

Stepping into Dusk’s realm or teleporting out of the way could have worked, but I’d already been pushing it with how much I’d abused Foxstep. Using a spatial effect now would have absolutely tipped my hand as being a spatial mage. Maybe that would have been better – people could assume I was a half-human spatial mage, half kitsune. But ah, well. I’d made a snap choice in battle, and I’d have to live with the consequences.

I did take a small amount of solace in knowing that I’d just forced him to expose not one, but two tricks that he’d clearly been intended to hold back. Force Bubble, or some variant therein, was a common enough fourth gate spell, but the sheer density and thickness wouldn’t have been expected by most competitors. Then there were the resonating force spikes emerging from the feathers – certainly not a trick I’d have expected at all. 

Then the resonating blades of force finally faded, revealing Kamal floating in the air over us. When he saw that Dario and I were still standing there, his jaw dropped, and he thrust his hand into the sky, howling a curse.