The Last Stand of Ralensa

Hanel was struggling with all his might. In front of him, the storm resumed.

Flame thundered in bursts, controlled and sequenced, each one a chained reaction of force directed at the wards Hanel had put around him. They buckled, the impacts crashing like a smith’s hammer, a new crack forming on the amber gold shield. Hanel has never seen a red Marked use this much raw force without tiring.

"You call this protection? Duty?" Barkel's voice cut through the roar, calm despite him using an insane amount of energy. His body a whirlwind of fire that painted the courtyard red. “Keeping them behind gates, hiding them from the world? You waste their gifts.”

Hanel crouched down, fingers splayed against the stone ground. Another ripple of sigils burst outward, small power was all he could spare right now, most of his magic was keeping the shield up. His sigil sank into the structure beneath him. It was an anchoring sigil, it flared bright, lines coming to life and drawing some of the heat and energy from Barkel’s attacks away, channeling flame into the earth. Hanel breathed easier then.

“They’re not gifts for you to claim,” he ground out. His voice hoarse from pain. “They’re children. They deserve more than war.”

Barkel didn’t pause. He whipped his arm sideways, flame cracking like thunder. He gathered all his power in a one huge attack, red light spiked through the anchor-sigil, snapping the spell in half.

Then came the next strike, direct and brutal, slamming into Hanel’s shield. Sparks skittered through the air.

"Children grow into waste if no one teaches them to fight," Barkel snapped. “In Ralensa, there is no wall to hide behind. No Towers to sell safety to the highest bidder. We survive because we demand service.”

There was no hate in his tone, only conviction. An edge of steel forged in certainty.

Hanel staggered. His wards fractured into shards of golden light. Still, he saw Ayen's grin, wild and unguarded. Bilia’s hand, small and warm in his, tugging at his sleeve with giggles in her voice. Memories that lived and warmed that old spot behind his ribs.

"You call it service," Hanel hissed, dragging another glyph into the air. The lines flared, locking into hexagonal plates that assembled into a dome around him, shield magic, advanced and beautifully complex, but taking too much from him to perform. “But you’d strip them from their homes, their families, and mold them into weapons. What life would be left for them?”

Barkel advanced, and with every step the temperature rose. His face remained unmoved, neither cruel nor angry. Just... resolute.

“Better a weapon than wasted! The Others don’t care about your notions of family. They don’t pause for childhood. Power exists only to serve.”

His flame blurred, a cyclone of red fire laced with runes. Each surge faster, heavier. Hanel felt himself driven back, boots sliding, wards shrieking under pressure. Every plate of gold hissed, warped, struggled to hold.

But still… he stood.

His voice rose harshly. “And what does the world owe us, Barkel? We bleed, we burn, we die, and still it demands more. Are we never more than the moon’s broken children, thrown again and again into battle?”

Magic surged in answer. His golden rings spun faster now, nested arrays of defense and absorption. For a moment, the world was made of red fire against gold geometry, a visual clash of belief, of shape and flame.

Barkel’s jaw clenched. “The world owes us nothing. We were born with power. That is our burden and duty. To refuse it is to betray every soul who cannot fight.”

Hanel stepped forward through the inferno, the light bending around him. His voice became thunder in its own right.

“No. Power isn’t a debt to be collected. It’s a chance to choose, to protect, and to live. And I’ll die before I let you take that from those children."

Magic collided.

The courtyard exploded in brilliance, gold and red surging together in a storm that ripped stone from its moorings. The ground split. Sigils shattered into fragments. Flames roared high into the air.

And in that light, two visions of the world clashed, neither willing to yield.

****

Barkel did not stop.

The words… chains, stolen children, no life left for them… hit like stones against his armor of belief.

But they left no cracks.
Because there was no cruelty in what he had done. Only justice.

“I didn’t steal them,” he growled, and the fire around him burned brighter. Red magic coiled at his limbs like living serpents. “I saved them. They will be like me, forged into an unyielding weapon. Not like you. Not like Lunavin. Soft. Blind. Cowards hiding behind walls while the world burns.”

His flame lashed forward, chains of it, snapping with violent precision. The golden wards shattered, one by one, torn apart under the weight of his will.

Hanel staggered. Blood painted his mouth. And yet… his eyes. That pity. That understanding.

It stabbed deeper than any spell.

"You believe you shouldn't have a life because that is what you were told," Hanel said, voice calm despite everything. “You weren’t given a choice. You were shaped into this as a child, when you weren’t even from Ralensa to begin with.”

Barkel’s breath faltered.

And the past rose.

****

His mother’s voice. Screaming his name.
Boots. Chains. Firelight in the night.
Four children. Shackled in a camp. Magic cuffs that burned if they did not obey.

Sleep never peaceful. Hunger a constant.

Mind-freedom sessions… the old Flame of Grace sorcerer, face a porcelain mask of care. His words rewriting his mind. His hands always cold.

Consent beaten into him… not earned.

Later: four too young soldiers, facing an army. Terrified. Alone.

Then… the Marked from Lunavin.
Graceful. Powerful.

They came. They conquered the Others.

They laughed. And left.

When the enemy returned the next day, no one came back.

****

The memories smoldered under his skin.

Barkel crushed them.

Softness was weakness. Regret was poison. He had burned that out long ago.

Ralensa had no power of its own. No children marked by a Goddess’ blood.

Unless he built them.

Unless he took them.

He was not a thief.

He was a fire meant to save a dying world.

His rage crystallized into resolve. Magic erupted from him in huge surges, raw red energy that tore the ground, cracked the walls, drowned the courtyard in heat.

“There are two of us left!” he roared, and his voice became a beacon of fury. “Two! If I fail… if I don’t bring these children, then Ralensa has nothing. Nothing! We will not kneel to Lunavin’s mercy again. We will not die while you hoard strength!”

He made the Lunavin sorcerer bleed.

His wards flickered. He fought with everything left, but every motion cost him now. The tide shifted.

Barkel struck harder.

But because if the man was right… if this was cruelty, not justice…

Then everything Barkel had done…

Every child he had taken…
Every soul he had broken…

had been for nothing.

And Barkel would burn the world to ash before he believed that.

****

Hanel hit the flagstones hard, the taste of iron flooding his mouth. His wards lay in golden shards around him, each sigil unraveling like smoke torn apart by wind. Barkel’s surge had gutted the field, nothing left to anchor to but broken ground and trembling walls.

Barkel strode through the wreckage, red sparks licking his shoulders, the scar at his throat twisting with each word.

“You can’t win this. I’ll grind you down until nothing’s left but your bones.”

Hanel forced himself upright, ribs burning where Barkel’s surge had torn past his defenses. His hand pressed to the earth, fingers trembling, searching for magic. Stone was fractured, but stone remembered. Always.

“You are not getting them as long as I am still breathing,” he muttered, and drew a single sigil in the dirt.

Barkel lunged, red afterimages splitting his frame into a dozen blurs. Hanel pressed his palm down, and the flagstones around him hardened, veins glowing gold. Another anchoring sigil. The instant Barkel’s boots crossed the line, the man’s speed stuttered, his feet stuck against earth that refused to yield.

Hanel twisted aside. Barkel’s fist clipped his shoulder instead of his chest, enough to send fire down his arm but not break him.

He hissed through teeth and traced another glyph in the air, small, deliberate. A golden ring snapped around Barkel’s vambrace. Another small locking sigil. Vibrations rattled through the man’s gauntlet, throwing his precision off. His next strike went wide, shattering stone instead of Hanel.

Barkel growled, shaking his arm until the sigil sputtered out. “More cheap tricks. More locks. You can’t cage me!”

Hanel’s breaths came slower now, each one dragging against bruised ribs. He didn’t answer, words cost strength.

Barkel’s eyes darkened, and he attacked again, faster, harder, ground splitting everywhere. Hanel’s new wards snapped up just in time, thin shields, smaller hexes, woven like overlapping scales. They cracked and bent under the barrage, each blow breaking them, and Hanel kept snapping a new one just in time.

Hanel shifted tactics after a minute. Instead of bracing, he pressed a trembling hand to the archway behind him, slipping sigils into the stone. Golden light sank into mortar. He didn’t reinforce it, it would never hold against Barkel’s strikes, but tuned it brittle, fragile as spun glass.

Barkel charged again, storm breaking upon him, fists like anvils. Hanel yielded space, let the strikes drive him back.

Then… he slipped sideways.

Barkel’s final blow landed against the pillar, red magic colliding with stone weakened to glass. The entire arch shuddered and collapsed, rubble crashing down in a cascade.

The weight crashed across Barkel’s head and shoulders. For the first time in the fight, he staggered. The scarred soldier dropped to his knees, coughing dust, a line of blood running down his temple where a jagged rock had split skin.

Hanel straightened, swaying but upright, one hand pressed to his side, the other sketching sigils into the night air. His wards flickered like guttering lanterns… but they were there. If only barely.

Barkel bared his teeth, forcing himself to rise, but his legs trembled. He fell face first. Unmoving.

And then…

Across the yard, the girl in Ralensa’s uniform glowed silver with magic. She lifted her palms and light spilled from them like liquid. It poured across the battlefield in a steady wave, threading itself around Barkel.

Hanel’s green eyes widened.

The glow sank into his skin. Torn flesh knitted together under the threads of silver light. The pain ebbed. His breath steadied. When he straightened again, it was without hesitation, his body whole, his stance renewed.

Barkel said: “Good work Doravis.”

Doravis lowered her hands, chest heaving, her eyes darting to him like a child relieved by the approval. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Her cropped hair stuck damp to her forehead, her hands clenched so tightly the veins showed. Her uniform looked too stiff on her slight frame.

Barkel did not look at her. He only stepped forward, the dust scattering around his boots, red sparks reigniting in violent arcs across his body. His will magic clean and sharp once more.

Hanel clenched his jaw. He could read the truth in that glow. If she keeps him standing… I won’t last another attack.

Barkel rolled his shoulders, his voice carried across the ruined courtyard, hard as iron:
“You fight well for a Lunavin Marked, but this ends now. You…” he jabbed a finger, crimson afterimages stuttering around the gesture, “... you can’t stop Ralensa from gaining the power it needs to fight back.”

Hanel drew a ward between them, a weak one, sparks trembling at the edges. He did not have much magic to spare.

The red flared brighter, wrapping him like a mantle of flame.

And then…

“That isn’t very fair.”

The voice cut across the yard, lilting, familiar.

Hanel’s heart stuttered. His head whipped around, scanning for her.

Ayen…

The yard shifted, subtly at first. Dust curled against itself. Broken wall-shadows stretched too far. The air thickened with a fog that engulfed Barkel.

From everywhere and nowhere at once, Ayen’s voice rang, bright and mocking:
“You bring healers to cheat the fight, and I’m supposed to just watch?”

Barkel’s brows knitted as the ground swayed under him, an illusion? He had never experienced the Flame of Grace illusion power before.

Drovais, even though a sorcerer with the Flame of Grace, had no talent for much aside from healing.

Was this what Lunavin’s Marked was like?

For the briefest second, he thought the sky had inverted above them, the shattered arch still whole, standing tall. Then it blinked away, and he was back in the dust.

Barkel snarled and braced, his red flame cracking outward as he tried to burn through the deception. But his pulse hammered irregularly. The edges of reality wavered like heat-haze.

And Hanel, he wasn’t even looking at Barkel. His green eyes searched the mist, jaw clenched so tight the veins showed in his temple.

“Ayen,” he muttered under his breath. “Is everyone safe?”

“Yes, father. Now let me have some fun.”

Her laugh danced through the dark, closer this time, carrying the sharp edge of challenge.