Chase

With a tremendous shove, the ship rocketed forward, buffeting through the wind, stretching the faces of the poor gyro crew. In his quick thinking, David had built some blocks into the floor to brace his feet, anticipating the G-forces involved. This time, without the drag of water, it was truly moving at breakneck pace. He dares not look behind him. The strain on him is enormous, it’s taking all he can muster to accelerate, further, faster, they must keep going.

Above the Slug’s Island floats a menacing figure, hundreds of feet in the air. Clad in black robes, with shoulderpads made of ice, this pale demonic mage is trembling with anger. He’d received a report of the island jailbreak. A top secret project by Ios, the poison Slime, it was known to no living beings except the Slimes and their trusted henchmen. His pointy, pale ears are vibrating with rage.

His face is half-covered by a solid tattoo; his mouth bent into a rueful frown. Bit by bit, he’s casting a capture grid, following the trail of mana imbued in the water. It reaches land, where the mana is imbued in the desert sands. Each grid takes a tremendous effort; these are typically only deployed once, he’s doing it repeatedly, getting angrier and angrier as it saps his energy. Finally, the grids reach the end of the desert. A special feature of this grid is that it measures latent mana. His frown disappears. His head snaps to the direction of the most recent grid.

A massive mana expenditure. It absolutely painted the ground, greater than anything he’d ever seen. If it were viewed on an IR camera, the ground would be white hot, an incredible blast of mana extending for miles in each direction. Bingo. With a flash, he teleports to the point of interest. The trail continues, but in a fine line, stretching straight ahead, towards the mountains. He peers into the distance, clenching his fists. He can’t see them. He cancels his previous grids, his glowing red eyes fuming with anger, almost tearing up. Instantaneously, he sends a line of hundreds of grids following exactly the course drawn onto the earth, causing a tremendous chain of shockwaves, kicking up his white, frizzled hair.

David, suspecting the situation, had altered their course by 10 degrees at random increments throughout their flight. Old man Montgomery was holding on for dear life, but also keeping watch. He shouts at the top of his lungs, but before the words reach him, the grids catch up to their boat. They rocket past, barely missing them, with a deafening blast, stretching far onto the horizon. He decides to veer the boat 45 degrees starboard, away from the grids, and picks up the pace even further. The mountains are quickly approaching. He’s going to have to pull a coordinated maneuver with the gyro crew, or else they’ll smash right into them.

Their pursuer notices the course change immediately. As the ground spikes closer and closer, it’s painting mana residuals with even greater intensity. He teleports again, to the veering point.

He sees them. A wooden ship, with strange pylons jutting below, uneven, missing one of three, tearing through the sky, fleeing. He tracks it with his eyes. Instead of a capture grid, he decides to slice it in half. With a tremendous explosion of mana, the pursuer sends out a razor-thin beam of purple magic towards the ship. Pinpoint, focused, it almost instantaneously reaches its mark.

David had been looking behind them at certain intervals since the near miss. By chance, he happened to look behind as this beam was cast. A bright, purple flash. Without saying a word, he angled his propulsion upwards, sending the ship careening towards the earth, scaring the pants off of the gyro crewmember responsible for lift.

The beam sliced neatly through the central mast midway up. Half of it rocketed backwards, barely missing Monty and David on the stern deck. David immediately reversed course and shot the ship up into the air, losing some speed. He veered left, then right.

The distance was too great for a kill shot. Their elven mage pursuer decides to teleport right on top of the ship and try again. David’s looking forwards now, darting the ship through a vast mountain valley. For a split second, he spots the black, robed blur as it sails overhead, stationary.

“SHIELD!”, he shouts. A small, green circle of light appears in the air behind him, tracking the angle of his foe, perfectly. Another purple, razor-thin beam smashes against it, aimed directly at his head. As it pops and spits against the shield, little fragments of it shoot off in different directions, slicing up the rocky ground below and carving grooves in it, sending rocks tumbling down into the valley.

It’s too much to keep the ship flying and defend against something like this, he thinks to himself. We can’t outrun him. We’re going to have to fight.

“BRACE FOR HALT!”, David shouts.

In an instant, this multi-ton wooden sailing ship stops on a dime. Those who didn’t hear the warning are thrown forward to the bow, skidding along the floor, caught by their fellow villagers.

The elven pursuer teleports right onto the stern deck. He’s staring directly at David. Without saying a word, he fires off 7 beams, all converged on David’s chest. They pierce him directly through the heart. Old man Montgomery cries out in anger, as David slumps to his knees, then falls face first onto the stern deck, blood pouring out all around him.

David grins, face down against the deck.

With a tremendous, screeching slice of air, he separates the intruder’s torso from his legs, which falls to the deck with a wet thud. David’s bloods pours back into his body in reverse, and he hauls himself upright. Montgomery has turned white from fright.

“Lower the ship down to the ground. Whatever you do, protect the villagers and Sara. I’ll be back.”, David commands him.

With a flash, both David and the pursuer had vanished. A tremendous explosion rends the air. The top of a far-off mountain had been vaporized. He’d teleported them both to an impromptu arena.

With a sickening slurping noise, the intruder’s body reconnected itself, healing instantly. He speaks, or rather, seethes.

“What is your name, worm?”

“David.”

“You will pay for this humiliation. I, Karaokami, servant of His Eminence Uragas, will see to it personally that you suffer in your death.”

The two of them engaged in a lightning quick exchange of spells. Purple beams, fiery blasts, rending pockets of purple-black void, lightning, shards of earth and metal. All the while, David is smiling. Finally, an opportunity to test out all his ideas. Those hours spent straining, mind-numbingly pushing the ship forward today had paid off.

Suddenly, Karaokami switched to melee combat, wielding a blade of ice which sent massive slices throughout the air, crashing into the mountainside. David fired back with a combination of forcefields and ranged magic. One out of every 7 of these ranged attacks appeared to miss, arcing high into the air out of sight. 30 seconds pass, and he’s got at least twenty errant shots hanging up in the air. He’s fighting for his life.

As Karaokami pushes David back towards the edge of the flattened mountaintop, he pulls a trick of his own. Multiple assassination beams pop up behind another mountain, tracking David perfectly. In anticipation, he protects himself with a barely-visible forcefield around his stomach. David spots this, as well as sensing his lack of concentration, and decides to play along.

Silently, he casts a form of magic he’d been imagining during the journey. “Warp”. It bends space around a point of one’s choosing. The unfortunate side effect is that anything within it stretches to the confines of its pocket in space. His errant airstrike spells careened back towards the target.

Karoakami’s beams slice through the mountain, puncturing boiling holes in the rock, and hit David squarely in the back. Instead of punching through him, they arc neatly around him and bypass Karaokami’s forcefield, slicing him clean in half through the midsection into chunks. Blood fills David’s mouth, and he gags it up, with a rueful smile.

The surprise on this elven mage’s face is palpable. He’d shot himself. Once again, he collapses to the ground in pieces, writhing in agony, screaming, cursing. He grabs David’s leg in desperation. He, too, falls to the ground.

It’s now or never. Seeing that the previous bisection failed to kill him, David aimed all of his incoming airborne green-blue spell shards at Karaokami’s head. They thudded into him one by one, splitting it apart like a watermelon. The last few embedded themselves for a moment before exploding. His hand releases his deathly grip upon David’s ankle.

Quickly working to heal himself, he stands over his foe’s crumpled, bisected corpse, clutching his stomach. It’s not over yet. He casts the same type of magic he used on the Slimes.

“Demoliri.”

A miniaturized version of the white-hot, nuclear explosion subsumes Karaokami’s limp body, blasting away the mountaintop even further. The air flashes and ignites, and a tremendous mushroom cloud forms. As it clears away, David is floating mid-air, enveloped in the broiling steam of his coup-de-grace, and the disintegrating remnants of a personal shield. He glances over to the tiny speck of his ship. They’d survived. He teleports himself back onto the stern deck, and collapses into unconsciousness. Sara runs to him and sobs, clutching his chest.