Bairon Wykes
The heavy, scrutinising gaze of my father bearing down upon me as I fought was the most unbearable agony of it all; infinitely worse than the insolence of that wretched commoner and his beast.
My blood boiled with rage as I channelled every last ounce of my being into the crackling javelin of lightning taking shape in my grasp.
I would show this impudent brat the true, overwhelming might of a white core mage! I would carve the fate of all those who dared to stand against House Wykes directly into his charred flesh.
Lucas... the intrusive thought of my half-brother flashed through my mind.
The boy was a half-elf, a walking abomination, yet he still bore my family name. We shared the same father, the same noble blood. The mere image of him was a vile insult, but it acted as a crucible, sharpening my scattered fury into a razor-focused point of hatred.
This wretch was inexplicably wielding all four elements—a quadra-elemental mage like the Dragons themselves in our myths—and yet he still dared to confront me using the most pathetic, baseline element of them all: water.
The sheer audacity of it stoked the inferno in my chest.
He had the gall to accuse my House of treason. He dared to dictate where my allegiance should lie, and he had the sickening nerve to invoke the name of my half-brother as if Lucas were a fragile victim to be protected, rather than a Wykes!
I had endured enough of this humiliation! Even if the ensuing blast reduced my family's estate to a smoking crater, I would turn this wretch to absolute dust.
Arching my spine like a drawn bow, I hurled the javelin with all my physical and magical might, feeling the vast, blinding reserves of my core empty directly into the projectile.
A feral roar tore from my throat as the spell launched, the ambient electricity of the world itself crackling in violent symphony to echo my battle cry.
The wretch... my eyes widened, what? Why did he look like a dwarf?
He shot a single arrow from his crossbow and the next thing I saw was my javelin and the arrow passed past each other before everything went blac—
—
My elbow struck the bear beast's thick flank with the concussive force of a thunderbolt. I gritted my teeth, stubbornly forcing myself to push through the blinding agony of the wounds these two wretched intruders had already inflicted upon me.
I sensed the brat stepping into my blind spot, attempting to slice me open with that insulting green blade.
Wholly ignoring the tearing pain in my battered muscles, I spun, my free hand lashing out like a viper to seize the wretch directly by the throat.
A guttural battle cry tore from my lungs as I unleashed my wrath, discharging the absolute entirety of my lightning magic point-blank into the boy's body.
I poured out every last drop of my power, of my body and soul, determined to burn this insect from the face of the world!
The wretch shrieked in agony as the lethal voltage surged through him. In that exact moment, the Guardian Bear retaliated.
Her massive claws sheared through my armour, ripping my flesh to ribbons and snapping my ribs like dry twigs.
She roared with a deafening, savage fury that ruptured my eardrums and made them bleed, yet I refused to fall. I held my ground, stubbornly emptying the very last dregs of my white core just to ensure this child died with me.
Lucas...
My final thought, as the overwhelming darkness rose up to claim me, went to my half-brother.
—
Roaring with the absolute fury of a World Lion, I drove my spear downward again and again, calling forth a torrential rain of lightning to annihilate the wretch beneath me.
"Die!" I bellowed with every ounce of strength I had left. Thick, dark blood bubbled from my throat alongside the shout, mangling the word until it was entirely unintelligible.
I shattered spell after spell. His infuriating defensive fields buckled under my onslaught as I ground my boot furiously against the barriers.
I couldn't bear the delay; I needed them to collapse now so I could crush this boy's skull for daring to lay House Wykes low.
His monstrous bear had ripped my left arm from its socket, leaving a jagged, ruinous stump. The boy's magic had cleaved away half of my face.
Yet, I would win! I was a Wykes! I would never lose!
"Die! Die!" I roared endlessly, violently spraying blood with every syllable.
I had deliberately fried my own nervous system with raw electrical mana just to shut down the blinding agony. I knew I only had seconds left before my mangled body gave out entirely, but I refused to let this wretch outlive me.
He was battered and broken beneath me, but his eyes... he was far too damn calm! What was he plotting?! What was he—
"Unleash."
—
I had been patrolling the walls of Etitsin, the grand capital of Sapin, for most of the day. It was a tedious duty, but one that befitted my official public station as captain of the capital's garrison: an elaborate front for my true identity as Lance Thunderlord.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in bruised hues of violet and crimson, I decided it was finally time to return to the barracks.
My armoured boots clicked rhythmically against the stone walkway.
Glancing down over the parapets, I watched with mild disdain as a ragged party of Adventurers trudged through the city gates below.
Lucas was currently somewhere in the Beast Glades, crawling through dungeons to supposedly learn the art of combat. It would do the boy some good.
Perhaps he would finally learn to stop leaning so heavily upon the crutch of our House. Elixirs, private tutors, mana crystals, expensive artefacts, and forged weapons.
My half-brother would never be a true Wykes if he continued to rely solely upon our vast wealth.
He would only remain a festering taint upon our prestigious name.
Once he finished this farcical phase, he would attend Xyrus Academy, graduate, and be placed in a position of manufactured prestige within the Kingdom.
Unless, of course, Father had other, more useful plans for the half-breed.
"L-Lord Bairon! There is an urgent communication scroll from the House's ancestral villa!" A trembling voice called out.
I turned, my eyes narrowing at the fool daring to disrupt my patrol, only to see one of my family's pathetic servants cowering on the high walls, clutching a sealed scroll in his hands.
"Give it here," I snapped, snatching the parchment from his sweaty grip with undisguised contempt.
As I broke the seal and read the hastily scrawled words, my mana signature flared violently.
The sheer, suffocating pressure of my sudden rage made the very air around me paralysing, causing the frail servant to faint dead away on the cold stones.
The communication scroll read:
Under attack. Return. Orders from the Lord.
Without a second thought, I vaulted over the towering walls of Etitsin, igniting the sky with a trail of crackling electricity as I flew at maximum velocity towards my family's estate.
—
I angled my spear downward as my family's ancestral estate came into view. The source of the disturbance was immediately clear: a black-haired brat wielding a thin, green sword that looked more like the fragile cane-swords of those wretched elves than a true warrior's blade.
He moved to slash my father's throat, but I descended upon him before he could strike the lethal blow—or so I thought.
A crude orb of water shot toward me, the use of such a pathetic element an insult in itself. I maintained my dive, aiming my spear to skewer the spell as its tip crackled with deadly arcs of lightning.
Upon impact, the orb detonated into a thick cloud of obscuring vapour, blinding me.
Sneering, I expelled a burst of fire from my body to incinerate the gas, hovering just above the manicured lawn of the villa as my eyes swept the courtyard for the intruder.
"Bairon!" Father bellowed. "Get down here!"
I moved in a flash of electricity, touching down obediently at my father's side.
"Father, where is the intruder?" I demanded, my gaze darting left and right as I tried to lock onto his mana signature.
But there was nothing... save for the unconscious forms of the guards who had so utterly failed in their singular duty to protect the House's property.
"That's your damn job, boy!" Father snarled, his face twisting in fury. "A white core mage, and you can't track a single child?"
I bristled, wanting to demand the respect owed to my station, just as the man himself had taught me, but the intruder suddenly reappeared, manifesting out of thin air like some filthy elf wielding illusion magic.
"Father, stay behind me!" I shouted, instantly positioning myself as a shield in front of Lord Wykes just in time to parry a vicious strike aimed squarely at his neck.
"Bairon!" Father yelled again, but I ignored him, my focus entirely locked on the enemy.
The brat's blade hummed as my spear met it, resonating with a metallic vibration that sounded almost like a battle cry.
Raising my offhand, I unleashed a concussive shockwave of lightning at the boy, smoothly rotating my spear to strike him from his blind spot in the same fluid motion.
The wretch retreated, conjuring thick pillars of earth from the soil to shield himself and obstruct my path.
I stomped brutally onto the grass, electrocuting the very earth and sending a seismic shockwave reverberating through the ground.
I braced to impale him as the pillars crumbled, but once again, he was simply gone.
His physical frame, his mana signature—after casting so many spells, he should have been shining like a beacon to my heightened senses.
Yet there was absolute nothingness.
Then, a new threat entered the fray. To my right, the outer walls protecting the villa's grounds abruptly shattered as a massive bear mana beast breached the perimeter, searing flames dripping from its slavering jaws.
A mana beast? I thought, clicking my tongue in irritation. Bonded mages were notoriously tedious to fight, but to a Lance, it meant absolutely nothing.
The bear charged at me, tearing across the manicured turf of the villa with the sheer velocity of a galloping Sapinese Highcolt, propelled even faster by swirling currents of wind magic. Was this wretched beast a quadra-elemental as well?!
I anchored my stance and moved to intercept. The bear's claws crashed against my guard with the bone-jarring force of my most brutal instructors at Xyrus Academy, its natural weapons sharper than the finest forged steel in Etitsin's garrison.
I spun my spear in a blinding blur to deflect the beast's savage flurry of strikes, showering the darkened grass with violently bright sparks with every blow we traded.
Even as I fought, my eyes darted frantically left and right, sweeping the courtyard for that wretched brat. Then, his cold voice drifted from directly behind me.
"Bairon Wykes, Lance Thunderlord."
I violently shoved against the bear, discharging a burst of mana to break its grappling hold. Whipping my head around, I watched the boy materialise out of thin air, as if stepping effortlessly through an invisible membrane.
"By the will of Epheotus—you will die, traitor."
He lunged. Swept up by a ferocious gale of wind magic, his viridian blade pierced the air with the devastating speed of a ballista bolt.
Traitor? How dare he?! I seethed, my aristocratic pride boiling over.
Sweeping my spear in a wide, vicious arc, I erupted in a repelling field of pure lightning mana. The electrical shockwave battered both the boy and the bear, violently buying me the space I needed. Without missing a beat, I hurled a concentrated bolt of electricity directly at the wretch.
The brat barely managed to parry with his strange sword, the sheer kinetic impact sending him hurtling backwards into the shadows.
Pivoting instantly, I turned my wrath upon his beast, unleashing a rapid-fire volley of crackling lightning arcs to strike it down.
Incredibly, the bear held its ground. It swiped its massive paws to deflect the bolts, having rapidly encased its limbs in thick, insulating layers of earth magic to completely ground my paralysing voltage.
I cursed and snapped my gaze back toward the boy's trajectory to finish him off, but the courtyard was empty. He was gone again.
As soon as he vanished, the bear was upon me once more.
Their strategy was infuriatingly clear: the brat possessed some impossible method of masking his presence entirely, using his beast as a brutal distraction while he manoeuvred for a lethal, cowardly strike!
I refused to be played like this. Stomping brutally onto the earth, I discharged a relentless barrage of lightning across the once-beautiful lawn of my childhood home, violently transforming the courtyard into an electrified domain.
Then, I launched myself into the air, ascending towards the heavy clouds above.
"Berna! Launch me!" I heard the wretch bellow to his beast.
Tearing my gaze downward, I saw him drop his invisibility, rapidly morphing the terrain with earth magic to ground my electrical currents.
But the wretch had physically transformed.
Stout, dwarven features now warped his face. His long dark hair was drastically shorter, his skin had taken the colour of packed soil, and a thick bodysuit of stone and earth—glowing with strange, pulsing runes—encased his entire frame.
He leapt directly onto the bear's massive snout. With a monstrous heave, the beast threw him skyward, violent updrafts of wind magic surging to propel him even faster.
I thrust my arm down towards his ascending form, chanting the name of my signature spell:
"Thunder's Hand!"
Five distinct forks of lightning plunged towards the wretch, and to guarantee his death, I hurled my spear right behind them.
The lightning strikes hammered into his runic bodysuit, fracturing the stone armour exactly as I had anticipated. But just as my spear reached his face, poised to impale his skull, a repelling force violently deflected the blade.
The weapon bounced backward, leaving only a cloud of shattered green dust—the overloaded remnants of an artifact bracelet he wore—trailing in the wake of my attack.
Unfazed, the wretch continued his rapid ascent. Gripping his viridian sword with both hands, he called upon the wind. Yet, it was not merely wind that answered his summons.
A catastrophic vortex comprising all four fundamental elements of mana erupted, violently swirling with his blade as the eye of the storm.
My eyes widened in disbelief as I forced myself to fly higher, but the boy was ascending too rapidly—he was actively riding the elemental tempest!
I rained down bolt after bolt of lightning as I soared through the freezing sky. Now weaponless, I couldn't risk engaging him at close quarters.
Wait. Why was I cowering from a mere child?
My aristocratic pride flared. I was a Wykes! I met my enemies head-on!
Halting my ascent, I violently reversed my momentum and dived, fully prepared to plunge my bare hands through his raging storm to strangle the life out of him if necessary.
But the brat did something I never could have anticipated:
He simply cut off his magic and let himself fall back towards the earth, leaving me hurtling directly into the crushing teeth of his quadra-elemental storm.
Corvis Eralith
I fell from the sky.
I admired the Quadra-Storm—the name I had given to this new spell, one of the many I had meticulously crafted to combat Bairon Wykes across these endless loops—as it ravaged the Sapinese night sky in a sublime display of elemental fury.
Trucewater flooded my brain, and I depended on its cold clarity like an addict in the throes of withdrawal; it was the only thing keeping my fractured sanity intact after experiencing entire days' worth of this exact same battle.
How incredibly lucky I had been to defeat him in that very first loop.
The Lance was powerful, disgustingly so, and despite everything, I had grown to grudgingly respect his unyielding loyalty to his own House.
If only that loyalty was directed towards Dicathen... or even just Sapin. Things could have been different.
I wouldn't be on the verge of executing a Lance for Windsom Indrath.
I felt my magic waning as the ground rushed up to meet me, Berna's deep, rumbling growl echoing from far below as she positioned herself to catch my fall.
The only viable strategy to defeat Bairon was to use my Bubblespells to create pockets of invisibility, maintaining a relentless hit-and-run assault until the Thunderlord's monstrous stamina was finally depleted.
I had to impale him with Fiorwato and forcefully impose my will over his mana core. That was my single, desperate trump card against him.
Berna caught me flawlessly, depositing me gently back onto the scorched turf of the Wykes estate. My eyes immediately snapped skyward; the Quadra-Storm still raged, continuously fed by my mana from a distance thanks to the Articles of Freedom inscribed within every violent current.
The drain on my core was steep, but manageable.
Bairon had already thrown his spear in a desperate bid to impale me, and I had successfully nullified the lethal strike by sacrificing the jade bracelet at my wrist. He had no way to counter my spell.
I cast a fresh, cloaking Bubblespell over Berna and myself, waiting for the tempest to break and for Bairon to inevitably force his way out.
Just before the optical camouflage took hold, I met Otis Wykes's gaze. The ruined nobleman opened his mouth, attempting to spit some final curse or plea, but I was too damn exhausted to even entertain him.
I casually flicked my wrist, executing the Lord of House Wykes with a single, highly concentrated Bubblespell.
"Corvis, you have grown powerful for a lesser."
The blood in my veins turned to absolute ice.
Windsom's smooth, detached voice echoed from directly beside me. The Overseer of Dicathen had simply bypassed my physical defences, manifesting directly inside the Bubblespell through his aether arts.
"Lord Indrath shall be pleased to hear what you have done today."
Despite my battered body screaming in protest, I immediately sank to my knees.
"Lord Windsom! What an honour to have you witness my fight!" I exclaimed, forcing false reverence into my tone and keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the dirt.
"An honour indeed. No lesser has ever received the same amount of attention as you, Corvis," Windsom lied.
What about the Djinn? I would have loved to ask him.
"But your duty, I am sorry to say, is far from done," the Overseer continued.
"What do you mean, my Lord?" I asked carefully. And here it is. He's going to ask me to kill Bairon. I braced myself mentally; no matter how much agony Bairon had put me through, I still refused to fully villainise the man.
"Bairon Wykes still lives, albeit not for much longer," Windsom said, his ultimate reasoning for this execution still a mystery to me. "You shall be the blade that severs his head for having forsaken the Asuras."
"Bairon is still a Lance, Lord," I countered, ensuring I didn't sound too eager to please. In their eyes, Corvis Eralith was meant to be a useful, calculating pawn—not a mindless drone. "Why kill him?"
"Lances can be remade, Corvis," Windsom lied yet again. "Bairon Wykes is a traitor, and we do not suffer traitors to live."
As if Windsom had perfectly orchestrated the timing, Bairon plummeted from the sky and crashed onto the ruined grounds of his estate, bleeding profusely and on the absolute verge of collapse.
"Father!" he shouted, dragging his broken body toward his father's corpse. A sickening knot tightened in my stomach. "Father!"
"There the lesser is, Corvis," Windsom noted, utterly apathetic to Lance Thunderlord's devastating grief. The Asura casually handed me Fiorwato, retrieving the blade I had dropped upon my descent.
"Do your duty. To Elenoir. To Dicathen. To Everbosk."
You are terrible at manipulation, Windsom, I thought bitterly. You try too hard to act like the god you aren't.
I gripped Fiorwato and stepped beyond the threshold of my Bubblespell, actively ignoring Berna's low, sympathetic whine.
"You! Monster! Coward! Wretch!" Bairon screamed, his voice cracking. Gone was the imposing aura of Lance Thunderlord who had survived dozens of my lethal loops.
Kneeling in the dirt, he was just a broken man who had lost the father he loved—despite all of Otis's too many flaws.
Yet, with a final, desperate roar, Bairon launched himself at me. His will to fight burned just as fiercely as when this nightmare had started.
He drove his fist squarely into my jaw. The brutal impact shattered several of my teeth, sending them flying as a volatile surge of his remaining lightning magic coursed through my nervous system.
I immediately flooded my mind with Trucewater to forcefully silence my conscience, gripping Fiorwato with both hands.
With every last shred of strength remaining in my battered body, I swung the gemsteel.
The viridian blade cleaved cleanly through the Thunderlord, cutting Bairon Wykes in half.
A heavy, suffocating weight settled onto my shoulder:
The Dragon's hand.
"Good job, Corvis," Windsom praised softly. "You have served well; Epheotus shall not forget this."
My sword dropped from my trembling hands, and I collapsed to my knees, sobbing harder than I had in lifetimes.