MAGUS INFINITE

I moved from battlefield to battlefield, striking like lightning, killing Conclave mages wherever I found them. I did not stop to rest or think, and the fox did not participate in this slaughter; she just remained by my side.

I just kept moving and killing, feeding the cold thing in my chest, and if not for the warmth of the fox on my shoulder, I feared by now I would be ice.

By the fourth battlefield I had stopped roughly counting the dead, and started counting the towns. The mages I was killing were men and women, both the young and old... I could see their faces, could hear their hearts stop beating, and their soul leaving their bodies, but whatever this should have made me feel was buried under the coldness I could feel from the burning continent.

The mages I was killing had become a rate, a thing that happened at a known speed when I arrived, roughly two minutes per battlefield regardless of how many were in it.

What I counted now was districts cleared. I had the map of the continent in my head, and all of it was painted red, and the portion I had touched was too small.

However, I could see the spread of the blue across the map, a coast road here, a town there... one by one, I was going to turn everything blue.

I told myself the counting-of-towns was progress. I think it was also a mercy I was doing myself... I mean, a town is a number you can hold in your head without it screaming.

∞

The word went ahead of me, exactly as I had hoped, as the Conclave lines were already prepared and watching the sky; they were not the prey I was looking for, but I guess I may need more bait to draw the big fishes from the sky.

Already I could feel that I was drawing attention, but somehow I was not being given the importance that should be due to me; was I being too slow or too merciful?

Anyways, the Conclave forces on the ground were now looking for me, and this did not help them; still, it meant that with more focus being placed on me, I was not arriving at battles, but mages waiting to die.

Instead of empty towns and children being torn open from throat to stomach, I was being given prey, yeah... I would take this exchange.

∞

I found a Conclave encampment, a temporary fortress, ringed with wards and guarded by dozens of mages. They had dug in and were waiting for me. I knew that soon I would be seeing more of these encampments as the frightened mages began to gather in order to effectively resist me.

I descended, and the hunting began. The wards were strong, but they were a rushed job, and I found the seams in their defenses, where the wards overlapped and left gaps, and I slipped through them like smoke. I could have used Stormstep, but I craved the challenge.

The mages did not see me coming. I moved through the tents and any gathering I could find, and my threads passed through throats and hearts, and I did not stop until the camp was silent.

I found the commander’s tent at the center of the encampment. He was an Adept who should be at the threshold of Arcanist, as I could feel the crystallization of his Anima; it may take him years or months from now to complete this process.

I stepped through the tent flap, and he rose to his feet; his staff was already in his hand, and a spell was already forming at its tip.

”You,” he growled. ”Are going to suffer for breaking the rules of the battlefield.”

I paused. ”You speak of rules when you are allied with demons and burning a continent? How...”

The spell struck me before I could finish the sentence, a lance of dark energy that should have pierced my chest and torn my soul apart. It shattered against my Domain, and I walked through the fragments of it.

He tried again, and again, and again. His spells were strong, and the tent shattered around us from the shockwaves of the spells slamming into me, but I kept walking, and when I reached him, I did not pause; I only raised my hand and lifted his head from his neck, showing a clean slice.

The commander had died a few seconds ago, but his body needed to be reminded to stay dead.

I stood over his body, and I felt nothing. The cold thing in my chest had grown heavier, but it had not changed.

I turned and walked out; the camp was silent, and the sky was dark. I looked up at the flashes of Sovereign power, and I felt the weight of the war pressing down on the world.

∞

I stopped at the tenth field; I had just finished clearing it, and was about to withdraw my threads, when I found the boy.

He was an Acolyte, wearing the Conclave’s black and crimson robes. I paused, because the fact that he was alive was well... a damned miracle. My mind retraced the slaughter I had just done in startling clarity, and I saw that he was alive by a fluke.

He was very small and had gone down under a heavier body early and stayed there, and the thread that should have sliced him in seven places had missed him by a hair due to how small he was under the robes, and now he was looking up at me from under a dead man’s arm with an expression I was becoming all too familiar with.

The boy should be maybe thirteen. Conclave mages are registered from birth; I knew that from a file I had read a lifetime ago about the continent that trained them, the cold northern place where a child’s talent is the property of an institution before the child can walk.

I had naturally grown into my powers, giving me a chance to have a childhood, but this boy had not chosen the black-and-crimson. I squeezed my fist, and the body lying on the boy was squeezed into a small ball of meat and bone, and I tossed it aside.

Everything my threads had touched would contain Lightning Essence, and with Lightning Edict, an Adept body was clay for me to mould as I pleased.

The boy slowly stood up; he was shaking, and he looked around and could not find his staff, and so he pulled out the small belt knife he had and pointed it at me, holding it in both hands.

I cocked my head to the side as I looked at the child.

”Please,” he said.