Apostate Lavenza

Archmage Halifox and Walser drifted down from the head of the observatory room. The chains around Lavenza squeezed her throat and wrists. It would be difficult to ask questions with the chains trying to crush the air out of her.

“Would you care to explain yourselves?” Lavenza murmured.

Walser glowered. Lavenza noticed the more the man’s fists clenched, the harder the chains pressed against her skin.

“When did you find out?” he asked. 

“The observatory room was too clean,” she answered. “There were no tools. There were no signs that anyone had ever even been there before. When did you build it, I wonder? Right when I arrived? Or long before? I suppose it doesn’t matter now.”

“You have no idea the amount of work that went into crafting that orb,” Archmage Halifox yelled. “You’ve undone months of work!”

“What work?” Lavenza laughed. “Care to explain why the Endire you’ve crafted is nothing more than a mirage? You’ve birthed something more useless than even a replica.”

Walser floated forth. He greeted Lavenza with a nonchalant smile while continuing to tighten the grip in his hands.

“Might I answer your question with a question?” he said. 

“You may.”

“If you could choose to die in fear or die at peace, what would you choose?” 

“ I suppose you expect me to answer that I’d rather die at peace.”

“I would,” Walser nodded. “As would our dear archmage here, as would any rational soul upon this world. If one’s death is predetermined, then only the manner in which we die remains.”

“What does this have to do with your elaborate illusion?”

“Everything,” Walser whispered. “When the last light of the Endire fades, the world will blacken. Everything will petrify before your eyes until you yourself turn to stone. The academy offers a solution.”

“An illusion?” Lavenza’s eyes widened. “Wait—”

“It’s not just an illusion. It’s offering what remains of our petty lives,” Walser said. “The orb will replace the dying sun at its last moments. Upon doing so, it will weave an incantation that stretches across all of Aparthia. An illusion that will make everyone believe that the world has been saved.”

“They’ll die in the very next moment, what’s the point?” Lavenza muttered.

“Hah!” Walser laughed. “Surely you must have noticed that this particular illusion warps one’s perception of time. Once powerful enough, it will to allow everyone in Aparthia to live the rest of their lives in blissful ignorance in the microsecond between my spell and petrification.”

“This is not what Her Royal Highness asked for,” Lavenza snarled.

“But it serves the same purpose!” Walser exclaimed. “And tell me, Apostate Lavenza. Did she really expect us to succeed?”

“She expected you to try,” she snapped.

“Is that why she launched ships from Centa Muis to The Opposing Shore?” Walser sneered. “Or why she commissioned the hero’s party to the east on a final quest? Does Empress Seline really believe this world can be saved? Or is she simply announcing these fruitless, facile efforts to calm her people?”

Walser cocked his head and grinned.

“I wonder what dying mission she has in store for you, Menuan?”

“I don’t understand,” Lavenza said. “If all was in vain, then you could have made for The Opposing Shore. The Empress has granted you passage by Royal Decree.”

“Ah yes,” Walser nodded. “The Opposing Shore, the world on the other side of The Great Sea. What do we know of it, Lavenza? What do you know of it? You’re deep in the empress’s counsel. What has she told you?”

“I know as much as you.”

“Lies!” Walser’s passivity dissolved into fury. “Magic is all a magician has, and a world without the Endire means a world without ley lines, without mana, without magic. To go to The Opposing Shore is akin to dying, dying of a different kind. If I am to die either way, I will choose the way that I die. And I choose to die in ignorance, apostate, not like you, who would deign to be petrified before the Endire’s demise!”

“This whole academy’s gone insane in my absence,” Lavenza turned to the old man beside Walser. “Archmage Halifox. You’ve been awfully silent. Am I to assume that you’ve endorsed this madman?”

A great sadness befell the archmage’s eyes.

“It is the only way that I can find peace,” the archmage would not look at Lavenza as he said it. “To witness the end of the Age of Magic as the archmage, knowing that there is nothing I can do to stop it. I cannot face that fate, and for that reason, I cannot allow you to leave here, Apostate Lavenza.”

Lavenza closed her eyes. 

“So be it,” she said. “I’ve heard enough. By the power vested in me by Her Royal Highness, Empress Seline of the Crystal Throne, I hereby announce the immediate closure of the Abish Royal Academy. Eco Severin.”

Walser spat out a cackle and held out his closed hands.

“How do you suppose you’ll do that, you Menuan bitch,” he snickered, “when I’ve got your entire body in my grasp?”

Apostate Lavenza sighed. The atmosphere in the room changed.

“This is the problem with you royal mages,” she said. “Have you even wondered, Walser, how in spite of all your fist clenching, I am still able to speak?”

Walser blinked. Within his vaunted microsecond, in between the flip of his eyelids, his ethereal chains holding Apostate Lavenza snapped apart. Grixys’s scarlet magic lay beneath the broken links. 

A blur streaked past Walser. The young man’s mouth and eyes trained on his target, a dozen lethal spells frothing forth from his mind. But the apostate before him shimmered like a mirage, while Lavenza herself reappeared behind the illusionist and rammed his back with her mana imbued leg. Walser tumbled out of the air and crashed into the floor below.

Lavenza raised an outstretched hand. Above the observatory room, there came echoes of something tunneling through the stone walls of the academy. The roof above the containment chamber collapsed and out flew Lavenza’s staff from the debris right into her hands.

“Archmage Halifox,” she announced. “You can either close the academy of your own volition or be forced to shut down.”

“Do not underestimate me,” the archmage growled. “I am still head of the academy.”

“No,” she replied. “Right now you are a terrified old man.”

“You aren’t a murderer, Lavenza,” he said. “Or do you intend to put the hundreds of mages in this academy out of their misery?”

“That will not be necessary,” Lavenza shook her head. “Once you are incapacitated, I will consume what remains of the Aphelion ley line. This academy cannot exist without it.”

Archmage Halifox narrowed his eyes and drew his staff.

“You were never here on the empress’s orders,” he said. “You were always after Aphelion.”

“There is no salvation in delusions, archmage,” Lavenza said. “When this is all over, face your people and the end of this age with the dignity that befits a man of your title.”

“Know your place, apostate!”

The room thundered with Archmage Halifox’s voice. A great golden aura manifested around him. Static bounced about his white beard and eyes. Above, where Lavenza’s staff had tore a gaping hole through the academy’s foundations, there was now a trembling field of storm clouds.

It started to rain.

Lightning streaked across the indoor sky and scorched the stone walls. A concentrated volley threw itself at Lavenza but scattered against a globe of translucent red mana that emerged around her. The deflected bolts crackled. With a twist of the archmage’s staff, the sparks remolded into golden javelins that hurled themselves back into Lavenza’s protective magic. 

Rain drops became icy razors. Rays of blissful blue mana cut through the storm and pummeled Lavenza’s shield. Stray beams zipped across the chamber. Magic tore brick from brick. Nothing in the chamber, not ceramics or metal or stone, nothing but the red aegis swirling about Lavenza, born from the dying whispers of Grixys, withstood such a burst of raw, unfiltered mana.

From the embers of the desiccated fake Endire, a fire was lit anew. It spiraled upwards carrying ash and shattered glass, until a vortex drew upon Lavenza, its infernal mouth gaping like the cavity of a monstrous worm. The blizzard and tempest collided with the fire storm. Arcs of gold surged through the wind with a cacophonous scream.

Archmage Halifox could not see Lavenza. His spells had made sure of that. He swerved his staff to and fro, layering fire upon water, one after the other. No matter the shield, a spell was only ever as powerful as the mana that supplied it, and the archmage sensed Lavenza’s strength crumbling before his own. For a moment, he was a young man again. He claimed mastery over the elements. He urged his fiery creation to burn brighter, whirl faster, to subjugate, to conquer.

But the chamber murmured with abrupt disquiet. From the depths of the twister, a deep, blood red energy carved a path out of the storm. Bold vermillion lines traced over the archmage’s magic like an artist painting over a rough draft. Blizzard became drizzle. Lightning vanished with no trace of thunder. And fire. Fire fell to the earth quenched and powerless.

At the center of it all rose the apostate Lavenza, expressionless, with not even a hem of her robe singed by flame. Her tattoos glowed an exuberant mauve, while mana flowed from her bodice like capillaries from her heart. Her magic twisted about Archmage Halifox, binding first his wrists then his feet then, just like her that morning, his neck, until all manner of struggle abated and Lavenza fell to her knees in the rubble laden chamber and folded her hands in prayer.

“You don’t know what you’re doing!” the archmage screeched. “You can’t do this to us! You cannot tell us to face despair!”

The pleas of a terrified old man faded to droplets amidst a hurricane. Lavenza began her chant.

“Asta sen. Nevos. Fela ten Aphelion asta vos. Eco Severin.”