“Oh? So you have an infinite supply of mana? I doubt that. We all have our limits.” Derek tilted his head downward. “And I think you’re dangerously close to hitting yours.”
I managed to cast a glance to the other side of the room, toward Elora.
She had collapsed against a wall and fallen to the ground. I wasn’t sure if she was even conscious.
She clearly already had been low on mana before she’d thrown that incredible spell. Whatever she’d cast had taken what she’d had left, and probably more.
I couldn’t move more than a hair. I’d burned nearly all of my mana just trying to get free from Saffron’s compulsion.
It was down to Derek now.
And Derek was, from the looks of it, pretty badly injured himself.
Saffron moved.
It was the slightest thing, just a hint of a step forward.
Derek took the bait, swinging at Saffron’s outstretched hand.
Saffron side-stepped the blow and caught Ceris’ blade.
Then he slammed a palm into Derek’s jaw, knocking him back.
And tearing Ceris free from his grip.
“Tavare,” Derek said, coughing as he stumbled backward.
“Your summoned monsters are useless,” Saffron said as he hurled the sword into a nearby wall. Ceris pierced through the stone, embedded to the hilt.
“I call you.”
A slight variation in phrasing, I realized.
No elemental appeared at his side.
Instead, a gleaming sword flew down the stairs and toward Derek’s outstretched hand.
Saffron turned and grabbed for the hilt.
The sword shifted mid-air and moved out of the way.
Then Derek was armed.
“Much better.” Derek stepped forward, swinging at a diagonal, and projected a wave of cutting force.
Saffron side-stepped the shockwave, but Derek twitched a hand and the energy followed Saffron’s path.
Saffron raised his hands just in time to block the impact. It left long gouges along his arms.
“Just as I expected. You can’t absorb kinetic energy.” He swung his sword again, horizontally this time. Another shockwave flew out, but this one stretched then split apart, each one flying to hit Saffron from a different angle.
“You have become an irritation.” Saffron pronounced. “I don’t like to do this, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to resort to taking this a fraction more seriously.”
Saffron clapped his hands. “A shame, really. I’d like to—”
Derek blurred forward and slashed Saffron across the throat.
Saffron flickered as the sword passed though him, and I realized what that meant at the same moment that Derek must have.
Illusion.
Another Saffron appeared behind Derek a moment later, and then slammed a fist into his back.
Derek stumbled and fell to his knees.
“As I was saying, I try not to use magic actively, because it spoils the thrill of the hunt. But you’re exceptional, for a human. Even if the other humans did wear me down a bit first.”
Derek spun around, bringing the sword upward in a rising slash.
Saffron caught the sword between his palms, then shoved backward.
Derek stumbled, running into something—
A second Saffron, who spun him around and punched him in the face.
Derek fell to his knees again, lips bloody.
“Illusions. Simulacra.” Derek spat blood, shaking his head. “Can’t fight me with just one of you?”
Saffron smiled. “I could, of course. But you’re getting special treatment since you’ve done so very well!”
One Saffron threw a punch, which Derek side-stepped and responded to with a series of rapid slashes.
The other Saffron folded his hands together. They began to glow red.
My ribs were still burning.
My hand was still barely functional from all the mana I’d used.
But I could not just lie here and watch Derek get beaten to death.
I couldn’t stand, but resh it, I could crawl.
I slowly began to pull myself across the floor toward the wall where Ceris had impacted. I didn’t think I had any chance of doing much with it, but maybe I could get it back to Derek. He was trained at fighting with two swords.
Another Saffron appeared in front of me.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
He reached down and lifted me by the throat. “You managed to do me considerable harm earlier, young man.” Saffron shook his head. “That was uncalled for. I think it’s time I return the favor, hmm?”
For the second time in a day, I charged transference mana into my forehead and slammed it into someone.
It was considerably more effective than I expected.
In fact, it erased a good portion of the false Saffron’s face.
He dropped me, falling back and reaching upward toward the eyes that had just been evaporated.
As tough as the original Saffron was, simulacra were made of mana. Enhancement mana, or a derivative of it.
And transference mana, my very favorite for attacking, was the exact opposite.
I fell to the floor, rolled to avoid the simulacrum stomping a foot on me, and drew the transference sword straight into a swing.
I cut his legs off at the knees.
The Saffron simulacrum fell to the ground, and I rolled on top of him, jamming the sword into his back.
The simulacrum vanished.
I turned my head back toward the other fight. Derek was falling back, being attacked by three different copies of Saffron striking him from different sides.
I pointed my sword at the nearest Saffron, focused the energy in the tip of my sword, and pushed.
It blasted a hole right through the simulacrum’s back.
Incredulous, it turned toward me. Derek swept his sword through its neck a moment later.
We can do this, I told myself. I just need to—
Another Saffron appeared next to me.
I slashed at him out of reflex.
He caught the sword in his hand, lifting it. “Interesting.”
Then he snapped it in half.
Oh.
Saffron — the actual Saffron — leaned down, with half a broken sword in his hands.
I heard a noise toward the entrance, briefly turning my eyes in that direction.
Saffron placed the sword against the center of my chest. The broken blade’s edge began to glow with white light, brighter and brighter. “I think it’s only fair that I do to you what you did to me. Symmetry is important.” He nodded to himself. “Any last words?”
I managed a slight smile. “Keras Selyrian is right behind you.”
Saffron went still, then laughed. “As far as last words go—”
A hand landed on Saffron’s shoulder, then spun him around.
“…Oh.”
The punch that followed carried Saffron across the room, into the mansion wall, and then through that same stone wall.
I looked up at Keras, coughed, and then smiled. “Hey.”
Keras reached down and pulled me to my feet, then turned toward where a very-much alive Saffron was walking back through the hole in the wall.
“I’ll take things from here.”
Saffron clapped his hands together. An aura of white flame began to swirl around him.
“What was it again?”
Oh, no.
The flames intensified, swirling around Saffron in a nexus of fire. “Ah, yes.” He pointed his hand at Keras. “Rage of the God Phoenix.”