The Forsaken Hero

”What’s the situation?” I asked, running to R’lissea.

She gestured at the battle raging between Korra, Gayron, and the eighth-level mage, grumbling, ”I was doing just fine by myself against the mage, but as soon as we made it here, they told me to stay out of it. I’m just holding back his summons and the city guards.”

I nodded, giving the entire cathedral an appraising look. The upper half of the once beautiful building was gone, and what remained was left in ruins. Corpses littered the rubble, ranging from priests to adventurers to soldiers. R’lissea’s life elementals and animated plants formed a living wall around the perimeter of the shard. A large cluster of trees had enveloped a third of the room, so thick that my eyes couldn’t penetrate it.

”The reinforcements?” I asked, nodding at it.

”The first wave. The second’s over there,” she said, pointing on the opposite side of the shard. An entire squad of armored men and women hung suspended in the air, impaled by long, thorny vines. Their bodies slowly slid down the plants, blood staining the rigid tendrils red. Some of the soldiers still twitched. I shivered at the gory sight and quickly averted my eyes.

”Should we help them? Fable can probably take that mage on his own,” I said, looking back at Korra and Gayron.

The mage had found a gap in their assault and retreated to the far side of the cathedral courtyard. A few cracks remained in the bubble of water magic protecting him, yet he was on the offensive. Korra and Gayron zipped about him, diving and weaving, but unable to make headway through the literal storm of spells at his disposal.

”Korra, I might have enough mana to link Adaptive Resistance. You could ignore all those spells and go right for him,” I said through the mind link.

”No! Don’t! I’m so close!” she shouted back.

I winced as her voice rang through my skull.

”You don’t have to shout,” R’lissea muttered, touching her temple.

Korra jerked the side, barely avoiding a fifth-level ice lance, but came right into the path of a second one. Her eyes widened slightly, and she doubled back, crossing her forearms and releasing a burst of mana. It was crude, barely even qualifying as a magical technique.

A concussive wave exploded from the impact of the lance against her forearms, the air around her cracking like a whip. The ice shattered into splinters, each shard biting her skin with long, shallow cuts that bled crimson. The force slammed her backward, sending her careening into a building on the other side of the wall. It groaned, then shuddered apart in a choking cloud of dust and splintered wood, burying her completely.

”Korra!” Gayron’s shout was ragged, torn from him.

He lunged forward, eyes blazing with fury. The mage barely flicked a finger, a lazy, dismissive gesture. Four more fifth-circle spells resolved behind him, coalescing into razor-thin streams of highly compressed water. The jets whistled through the air like blades, converging instantly to catch one of Gayron’s flickers in a crossfire. The clone screamed, a sound abruptly cut short as the water sliced him into ribbons of bloody flesh. The pieces dissolved into ash before they even hit the ground.

As his remaining two flickers launched themselves at the mage, Gayron adjusted the direction of his charge, circling the mage. The mage narrowed his eyes, letting Gayron’s main body escape as he diverted his jets against the two approaching threats.

”Your resistance is futile,” the mage taunted, swatting one from the air. ”You’re too naive and inexperienced. Even if I weren’t a level stronger, you wouldn’t stand a chance.”

He waved his hand, and the jets converged, forming a net around the final flicker. He made a fist, and the jets collapsed inward, obliterating the clone. At the same time, he launched several ice lances at Gayron, forcing him back a hundred feet. The apostle launched several more fireballs at the mage, but all went wide. The ensuing explosions formed a ring of fire around the water mage.

More silhouettes appeared in the raging fires, but he snorted in derision. He dismissed the water jets, redirecting his mana into his hands. He drew his hands apart, conjuring a magic circle that rapidly expanded. More appeared, forming a seventh-circle spell.

”Summon as many fires as you want. I’ll douse them all!”

The magic circles merged, forming a ring above the semicircle of Gayrons. Before they could fully form, it collapsed downward, exploding upward and outward like waves breaking against sheer cliffs. The water was laced with mana, directly attacking the source of the apostle’s fires. Massive pillars of steam erupted as his clones hissed and dissipated, deprived of the source of their creation.

”This is bad,” R’lissea said, getting to her feet. ”He’s already figured both of them out. And he uses ice against Korra so she can’t manipulate it, and water against Gayron to interfere with his ability. Combined with the difference in their power, I’m not sure they stand a chance of beating him. His spells trade so efficiently against their efforts that they’re going to run out of mana long before he does.”

I glanced at her, lips pursed. Why did it matter what attribute he was using? Sure, Korra was the water hero, but none of her abilities gave her immunity to water any more than they did ice, right? But putting that aside, R’lissea was right.

”They’re used to fighting together, but he’s kept them separated from the beginning. Every spell pushes them apart.” I swallowed hard, swallowing a rising sense of fear. ”And I’m worried about Korra. She should have escaped by now.”

”Gayron, I’m joining the fight. Don’t try and stop me,” R’lissea said, stepping forward.

”Don’t bother. All part of the plan.” Gayron said, bursting out of the steam and gaining a few hundred feet of altitude. Blood streamed in crimson ribbons from his arm, where one of the water jets had cut him earlier, but his expression was filled with defiance. ”Korra, now!”

I strained my eyes against the dust, my stomach knotting. Nothing. Just a fresh pile of rubble. Then something glinted in the sky, a distant, impossible sparkle. My breath caught as I recognized Korra’s mana, a faint, shimmering blue against the twisting towers of steam, smoke, and fire roaring in the sky. She wasn’t buried. She was rising, shining like a blue star.

A massive, serpentine dragon coiled around her, becoming more substantial as she poured her mana into it. Her soul shuddered dangerously, but she continued to force more mana into the art.

The mage folded his hands behind his back, smirking at Gayron. ”All that effort just to end up farther away than you started. You really should roll over and die, filthblood.”

I held my breath as the mage started to cast another spell, but his wand was pointed at Gayron. Hadn’t he seen Korra? Why wasn’t he sensing the absurd power radiating from her art?

”The steam,” R’lissea gasped.

I looked, my tail going rigid with shock. The clouds of steam had yet to disperse, billowing thick around the mage. Gayron’s original spell had crafted a semicircle around the mage, but he himself hovered in the open part, in full view. Korra, while visible from our perspective, would be just out of sight. His own spells, designed to break apart Gayron’s ability, still laced the steam, interfering with his senses. He was hiding under a blanket of his own design.

Eight magic circles concentrate on the tip of the water mage’s wand. I recognized the spell from an old record I’d once read in the Divine Throne. Waterspout, a large-scale destruction spell capable of drowning an entire city.

As the mage’s spell hastened to completion, the flow of mana from Korra to her art slowed, then faded. She wobbled in mid-air, swooning with exhaustion, before turning her gaze to the mage below. Her chest heaved as she started to move, mustering what had to be the last of her strength.

Korra vanished, drawing an arc across the sky as fast and fleeting as a shooting star. The dragon reared its head and dove after her, slithering through the sky like a snake chasing a firefly. They tore through the towering pillars of mist, not slicing them, but shredding them. A concussive wave ripped through the air, boiling the very skies themselves. It pushed the thick clouds of steam and smoke away in a massive, expanding ring. For a heartbeat, the sky above the mage was stark and clear, a perfect circle of blue carved out by Korra’s blurring speed.

The mage faltered as the shockwave slammed into his wards, turning his face upwards. His smirk vanished as his eyes widened as he looked into the now clear sky, the blood draining from his face. The dragon approached rapidly, closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye. A thousand feet, eight hundred, then five.

The mage’s knuckles whitened as he wrestled with his rapidly resolving spell, frantically adjusting the intended scope and direction he’d coded into the runes of the spell. The magic circles shuddered, struggling to survive the hasty adaptations of some of its most primary runes, but in the end, it held. The mage’s shoulder sagged as he thrust his wand up, hoarsely shouting the name of the spell.

”Waterspout!”

A roar thundered through the air, but it wasn’t the dragon. From the tip of the mage’s wand, a torrent of water erupted, twisting into a spiraling column that filled the sky. It blotted out the sun, an entire ocean’s worth of water condensed into a single whirlpool of frothing fury.

The funnel left the mage’s wand, touching the ground like a tornado. It twisted and turned as if it were alive, consuming an entire city block as it continued to grow, the head rearing toward Korra and her descending dragon. Rubble spun up the swirling currents, forming deadly projectiles strong and fast enough to smash through castle walls.

My heart leaped in my throat as Korra refused to alter course. Before I could react, before I could call to her through the mind link, or offer her any sort of aid, she punched into the roaring tornado, taking her dragon with her. They vanished into the frothing waves, swallowed like mice down a dragon’s gullet.

Too late did my scream leave my throat. ”Korra!”