CHAPTER 35 — Balance in Madness
The fourth day did not arrive with dawn.
It arrived like a verdict.
Somewhere beyond the ancient canopy, beyond the breathing bark and silver-veined moss, the rules of the Wister War shifted. The early killings had been loud, theatrical—mages testing one another, terrain rebelling under excessive ether, the sky bruised by misfired fractures. But now the land itself seemed to exhale. The murderous terrain quieted, as though sated for a moment, as though listening.
Because this was the day the victims would be released.
Mana madness.
The phrase carried a particular weight, like a hymn sung backward. It was what happened when ether flooded a vessel not built to contain it. When a mind tried to grasp the blueprint of creation and instead tore at its own seams. When sorcery ceased to be an art and became an infection.
Abbie walked beneath the cathedral of trees with her mana drive warm against her hip, its metal casing nicked and dimmed from battle. The ancient woods did not resemble any forest she had known. The trunks were too tall, too smooth, like columns carved by a patient god. The leaves were broad and translucent, catching faint glimmers of a sun that looked as if it had been dipped in ash. Somewhere far above, silver birds circled in perfect geometric patterns, their wings leaving brief afterimages in the air.
She rolled one of her remaining mana disks between her fingers.
Two of them were cracked.
R9 had done that.
The memory flashed in her mind—the grinding shriek of metal flesh, the resurrection of a body that refused to stay dead, the surge of power that had torn through her creative and destructive drives alike. Her creative disk had splintered at the rim. Her destructive disk flickered unpredictably, like a dying star.
She clicked her tongue.
"Annoying."
Her duck hovered at shoulder height, its small round body bobbing in the air as though tethered by invisible thread. Its eyes, bright and unsettlingly knowing, tracked the pulse of ether in the forest.
"You should be more concerned," the duck said mildly. "Fourth day protocol is explicit. Mana madness victims are released at sunrise."
"Is it sunrise?" Abbie muttered. The sky here had no patience for clocks.
"In a manner of speaking."
They walked.
Roots twisted like petrified serpents across the ground. Ether threaded through everything—the bark, the soil, the distant rivers. It was visible to her now, faintly luminous, like veins beneath skin.
"Tell me again," she said, not because she needed the information but because she needed the rhythm of words. "About ether."
The duck rotated midair. "Ether is a form of energy born from the thoughts of living beings. It is the residue of the collapse and expansion you call the Big Bang—the memory of creation itself. It is the blueprint upon which reality writes."
Abbie smirked faintly. "So dramatic."
"It is accurate."
She kicked a pebble, sending it skittering across a patch of moss that glowed briefly in response.
"This means," the duck continued, "ether is the blueprint of the universe. Sorcery is the act of altering that blueprint."
"Simple," she said.
"Not remotely."
Her mana drive vibrated faintly, responding to the ambient current in the air. The small metallic device was deceptively plain, no larger than a clenched fist. Its slots—two in her case—were etched with faint concentric sigils that glimmered when fed with a disk.
Five types existed. Base. Elite. Sovereign. Supreme. Absolute.
The type determined the number of disks one could wield. Two slots for base. Three for elite. Four for sovereign. Five for supreme. Six for absolute.
She had a base drive.
Two slots.
And two damaged disks.
A laugh threatened to rise in her throat, but she swallowed it.
"The disks store sorcery knowledge," the duck said, as if lecturing a classroom of ghosts. "Because sorcery is not naturally accessible to most. To shape ether requires either rare innate alignment—what you might call cosmic importance within the larger scale of the Distantverse—or external assistance."
"Meaning unless you're born special, you're useless."
"In blunt terms, yes."
Abbie had been born into a sorcery family. With an ancient crest that marked her lineage and to most she was gifted but nothing special. Whatever cosmic importance she possessed had been dragged into existence through clawed hands and stubborn will.
She tapped the cracked creative disk.
There were four primary categories recorded within the disks.
Creative ether.
Destructive ether.
Elemental releases.
Fractures.
Creative and destructive ether formed the foundation. The twin breaths of shaping and undoing.
Creative ether granted healing, projection, and conjuring.
Destructive ether granted telekinesis, flight, and energy release.
Elemental release allowed a mage to transmute their ether into forms of fire, water, stone, wind—whatever element their wills could conjure.
Fractures were different.
Fractures were not merely techniques. They were inheritances. Advanced sorceries bound to race and blood, each with a base ability and three further releases.
[Shard] — Old Earth humans.
[Leak] — Hornblest.
[Cress] — Droidmen/Mechari.
[Reach] — Godsons.
[Whispers] — Vallenians.
Six fractures existed.
Only five were known.
The sixth was guarded in silence by the Golden Moon.
Abbie had never met a member of the Golden Moon who did not look at her as though she were a problem to be solved.
Disks could be purchased. Legally, through military channels. Illegally, through back alleys that smelled of burnt ozone and old fear.
Or taken from corpses.
She flexed her fingers.
Her creative disk flickered weakly in its slot. Healing would be unstable. Projection unreliable. Conjuring—dangerous.
Her destructive disk felt worse. Telekinesis lagged half a heartbeat behind her intent. Flight would stutter. Energy release might tear her arm off if it misaligned.
"Well," she sighed. "At least that means I get to revel in battle a little longer."
The duck stared at her.
"You interpret structural disadvantage as entertainment."
"It keeps things interesting."
The forest stilled.
Not gradually.
Not subtly.
It stopped.
The wind withdrew like a tide sucked violently from shore. The silver birds above froze mid-pattern, wings rigid. Even the glow within the moss dimmed, as though swallowed.
Then came the sound.
A vicious shredding, not of fabric but of something thicker. Trees did not fall—they parted. Trunks bent sideways with splintering groans as though forced apart by hands too large to comprehend.
Snarls rolled through the air.
Not animal.
Not human.
Something in between, stretched beyond both.
Abbie's heartbeat slammed against her ribs.
"Shit," she breathed. "Shit. Shit."
Ether spiked violently ahead of her, flaring like a wound torn open in reality's skin.
The first tree snapped in half.
From the ruptured corridor of splintered wood stepped something tall and impossibly slender.
It moved wrong.
Limbs too long. Joints bending with elastic fluidity. Its body was composed of deep blue and red flames, yet the fire did not burn outward—it folded inward, devouring itself in endless cycles. Shadow clung to it like a second skeleton. Ether coursed visibly across its form, veins of white-hot script flashing and fading.
Its head tilted.
Eyes opened.
They were not eyes so much as concentrations of pressure—points where reality seemed thinner.
Mana madness.
A victim.
Once, perhaps, a mage.
Now an overfilled vessel, mind shredded by the weight of too much blueprint.
It inhaled.
The forest screamed.
Not audibly, but in the way bark peeled back and leaves blackened at the edges.
Behind it, more shapes stirred. Heavy footfalls. Clawed scraping. The fourth day had begun.
Abbie stepped back, boots grinding against root and stone.
"Assessment?" she asked.
"Power output inconsistent but extreme," the duck replied. "Instability may be exploited. Prolonged engagement inadvisable."
"Inadvisable," she echoed faintly.
The creature's arm extended.
Flames of red and blue twisted together into a spiraling lance.
It moved before the sound reached her.
Abbie threw herself sideways. The lance carved through where she had stood, vaporizing earth in a clean, molten trench. Heat washed across her back, biting through fabric.
She rolled, came up on one knee, and forced destructive ether through her damaged disk.
Telekinesis answered sluggishly.
She yanked.
A boulder the size of her torso tore free from the ground and hurtled toward the creature's chest.
The impact exploded into sparks.
The beast staggered one step.
One.
Then it laughed.
The sound was wet and fractured, as though multiple throats were trying to speak through one mouth.
It flickered.
For a fraction of a second, Abbie saw something inside the flames—a face. Human. Eyes wide with endless, wordless terror.
Her stomach twisted.
"Don't hesitate," the duck warned sharply.
The creature blurred.
It reappeared above her.
A clawed limb slashed downward, trailing a ribbon of destructive ether so dense it warped the air.
Abbie forced flight.
The disk sputtered.
She rose only half a meter before gravity reclaimed her. The claw grazed her shoulder, slicing through cloth and skin in a searing line of light.
She bit back a scream.
Energy release.
Now.
She thrust her palm upward and unleashed a compressed burst of destructive ether.
The blast detonated against the creature's torso, flinging it backward through three trees in a storm of splinters.
For a heartbeat, silence returned.
Then the trees began to burn with cold blue fire.
The creature emerged from the wreckage, body already reforming where her attack had torn it apart.
"Of course," she muttered.
Mana madness victims were not cleanly bound by ordinary limitations. They were saturated. Overwritten. Their forms were less flesh and more script.
Behind her, another roar.
A second figure crashed through the undergrowth—a bulkier shape, quadrupedal, plated in jagged obsidian growths that pulsed with sickly green light.
They were hunting.
She felt it now—not personal malice, but instinct. They sought density. They sought minds still intact, vessels not yet shattered.
Balance in madness.
The war had rules.
The land demanded compensation.
Early slaughter was answered with unleashed catastrophe.
Abbie straightened slowly, blood running warm down her arm.
Her disks were damaged.
Her drive was base.
Her options were thin.
But she was still standing.
She pressed her thumb against the cracked edge of her creative disk and forced healing ether inward. The response was uneven, stitching her shoulder in painful bursts instead of smooth restoration.
"Stability at forty percent," the duck said.
"Good enough."
The tall flame-creature lunged again, weaving left in an erratic pattern. The quadruped circled to her right, claws carving trenches as it built momentum.
She exhaled.
If ether was the blueprint—
Then she would write in the margins.
Telekinesis flared.
Instead of hurling objects, she grabbed the air itself—the suspended ash, the splintered bark, the fragments of molten earth—and compressed them into a dense rotating halo around her body.
The flame-creature struck.
Its claw met a spinning wall of debris accelerated by destructive ether. Sparks erupted in a violent halo. The impact forced her back several steps, boots gouging lines into soil.
The quadruped charged.
At the last second she dropped her barrier and pivoted, redirecting all stored force sideways.
The two creatures collided.
The forest exploded in blue and green conflagration.
Abbie staggered, vision ringing white.
They disentangled with shrieks of distorted fury, ether flaring wildly where their forms overlapped.
Unstable.
Exploit instability.
She grinned despite herself.
"Alright," she whispered, breath ragged. "Damn. Well. Let's get this started."
The fourth day roared its approval.