FIGHT!

  The Hunger surged, drawing in the surrounding mana like a physical force. A deep pressure in his chest, a thrumming in his teeth, as the air shimmered. His honeycomb barrier rose, tessellated hexagons flooding with energy. Darius’s mana swelled, a palpable wave washing over Kor even from across the arena.

  He’ll come to me. Darius wielded fire, a typical Solarian trait his friends had confirmed, but the specifics of his magic remained an enigma.

  Kor spread the seeds of his newly iterated fractal bombs. Their creation was more costly than ever, yet… the Hunger had warped them. He barely finished sowing the last before Darius flashed into view, emerging from the far, right side of the Voidshard. The prince’s robes glowed ominously under the dim light, chin lifted, lips curled in a sneer as he flew.

  Mana poured from Darius, an almost obscene abundance, a visible shimmer distorting the air, and Kor’s gaze sharpened. A dense shroud clung to the prince, power beyond any First-Year student, likely fuelled by some Solarian mana-boosting technique or… consumable. He’s cheated already?

  Darius’ outstretched hand formed a geyser of molten fire. Kor braced for impact.

  Gritting his teeth, Kor continued to fill his honeycomb barrier as the deluge of molten fire crashed against it. No way that was all his own mana. Kor’s barrier glowed yellow, the heat of the blast raising the temperature even through the protective magic, the air thick with the smell of burning stone.

  “A little taste, peasant,” Darius’ voice cut through the roar of the flames, “of Solarian supremacy!”

  A roar erupted from a section of the crowd, building to a rhythmic chant: “Darius! Solaria!”

  The flames died, revealing scant damage to Kor’s barrier. The prince tapped into his cloud of energy, glowing bright as three separate gouts of flame bubbled into existence around him. In that fleeting moment, as the spells primed, a subtle hint of something different in the in the spell... not just flame, but a gas!

  He jettisoned backwards, putting more distance between himself and Darius, retreating towards the left edge of the arena. His barrier easily capable of meeting the threat, but his mind raced. He needed distance to lure Darius closer to the scattered fractal bomb seeds.

  The three gouts of flame converged from above and on either side of the prince. They combined, forming one mighty torrent that streaked toward him with breathtaking speed. No choice but to counter. In the blink of an eye he formed the galaxy seed, conjuring it into his hand with a flex of energy.

  A miniature accretion disc spun around a heart of pure uncertainty, fractal patterns blooming outwards. The Hunger pulsed, a ravenous thrum. With a tight grin, he tossed the galaxy forward, its fractal expansion kicking into overdrive. Let’s see which is more powerful!

  The powers collided. A fiery supernova threatened to bloom, but the spinning galaxy violently intervened. It tore into the prince’s flames, not just pushing them aside, but actively consuming them. The incandescent fire, caught in the galaxy’s pull, was twisted and shredded into chaotic, swirling ribbons of light, drawn inexorably inwards. With a blinding flash, galaxy and flame imploded, releasing a concussive boom that shuddered through the arena. The sudden release unleashed a maelstrom of power, sending gouts of lashing fire whipping outwards to carve furrows in the sand and slam harmlessly against the Voidshard.

  Dashing further back, he cast more seeds, each veiled from sight.

  “A stalemate?” The commentator’s voice boomed. “Are these two titans of the year truly a match in power?”

  “Not bad, Lexican!” Darius’ voice boomed, shaking the stands. “But that was merely a warm-up!”

  I couldn’t agree more. Kor’s gaze narrowed. The arena was barren of ambient mana, starved by the Voidshard. His arm, his very body, continued to draw in the remaining wisps, a paltry recovery.

  Skidding to a halt, he turned to face Darius as the youth zoomed closer, passing completely around the Voidshard. The shroud of mana surrounding him was so thick, it was as if the prince were filled with a miniature mana-storm. A consumable of some kind, before the fight perhaps? There was no time for conjecture. Energy flared again, licking around Darius like a heat haze.

  A slew of magical emanations blossomed around the prince, swelling with devastating potential before consecutive, gaseous explosions ripped from the surrounding air, hurtling towards Kor.

  Strength for strength, then!

  Energy surged in his veins, pumping through his body. His mind conjured the culmination of all this week’s training, his time in the cultivation chamber, the pinnacle of his combined fractal and Hunger magics.

  The Seed of Genesis.

  The mana ripped from his body, detached with a kind of greed. Raw, unfettered power coalesced even as jets of flame scorched the air where he’d stood moments before. This... this is everything. A morphing seed bloomed in his mind, a whisper of eternity, imbued with equal measures of Hunger and fractal energy. Almost half his entire mana supply, the pain of its expenditure surreal as it tore into existence. A world of fractal objects materialised in a heartbeat.

  Ripping into reality with a devastating flow of mana, the arena darkened. A palpable density filled the air, flooding the sands. Fractals exploded into existence. Sharp-edged tetrahedrons spun, cutting lines in the air, a faint whistle accompanying their motion. From the sands, recursive trees erupted, branches groaning as they unfurled, mirroring themselves in miniature. Scattered amongst them, glimmering snowflakes, delicate yet sharp as glass, drifted like miniature ice sculptures. Great, plant-like ferns sprouted outward, their fronds unfurling to blanket the surrounding space. Countless fractals spun out in a domain of hungry growth.

  The paltry lights of Darius’s flames collided with one large snowflake in a destructive clash. Both shattered. Several more gouts of flame followed, only to meet the ever-expanding fractals. The branches of a warped, recursive tree, a massive, spiralling nautilus shell; a budding, spore-like broccoli floret; the spiralling tail of a monstrous crystalline scorpion. Each fractal form met Darius’s flame jets, a dozen in all, with explosive force. The explosive force shattered the fractals, only to be instantly replaced by a fresh tide of impossible geometries.

  A collective, sharp inhale punctuated the cataclysmic destruction, a susurrus of awe and disbelief as spell after spell battered against Kor’s countless creations.

  Standing amidst a wonderland of growing fractals, a voracious grin split Kor’s face. He saw the stunned prince hovering, his usual arrogance momentarily forgotten. “We’re only just getting started, Prince!”

  With a surge of intent, he cast out his will. The Seed of Genesis responded, unfolding further. Budding with untapped potential, the culmination of his technique drawing close.

  A towering fern flashed towards Darius, whipping with a leading edge of blade-like leaves. A crash of power reverberated as they tore into the prince’s barrier, spinning him back. Even as the prince attempted to counter, a pulse of raw power ripped up from the floor. A paradoxical bolt of fractal lightning, crackling with impossible angles, streaked from the ground to connect with the prince.

  The sharp, metallic tang of ozone filled the air. A large crack spiderwebbed across the prince’s shield, spinning him through the air.

  The Voidshard, so close to his burgeoning creations, practically quivered. Its hunger warred with Kor’s own, devouring his fractals even as the Seed of Genesis reached its zenith.

  Another form, the ultimate culmination of the seed’s development.

  The atmosphere of the arena darkened. The prince, even now, flooded his overflowing mana reserves into restoring the crack in his barrier. The sneer had completely vanished. Now, Darius’s jaw was clenched tight, a muscle ticking nervously in his cheek, his gaze darting around the arena. All around, the power seemed to coalesce, twisting reality into a nightmare of recursive objects. The air itself thickened, filled with their unending forms. It was a disorienting, almost intoxicating profusion of shapes, colours, and impossible perspectives.

  His Hunger warped the air into a descending vortex, a kaleidoscope of spiraling shadows and impossible angles that disoriented the eye. The air itself seemed to thin and stretch as the vortex spun faster, a visual distortion that made Darius stumble.

  The vortex of fractal magic tightened, the air around it shimmering and distorting. Kor focused, drawing the chaotic energy inwards, shaping it with his will. The world around Darius warped, perspectives shifting, the very air seeming to solidify into sharp, impossible angles—a fractal nightmare closing in.

  Like the calm before a storm, all went silent. All went dark.

  The prince’s eyes widened in alarm, shield shining with intense reinforcement.

  Convergence. Waves of crashing force spun into the prince, drilling, spinning, grinding against his defences. The Seed of Genesis, the culmination of fractal and Hunger-based magics, sought to devour the prince, to bury him in a deluge of fractal madness.

  Pressure built. Cracks tore across the prince’s barrier. The dense shroud of mana that clung to Darius, that overflowing abundance, flickered and dimmed, as if being sucked inward. A tremor ran through the prince’s frame, his teeth gritted, a visible strain tightening his features. The cracks in his barrier healed, a desperate repair against the onslaught. But the pressure continued to build, inexorable. More cracks. Wider cracks, spreading like a spiderweb across the failing shield.

  The air itself seemed to solidify, a suffocating density pressing outwards from the swirling vortex of his fractal magic. Strain contorted Darius’s face, the prince’s body seeming to shrink inwards as if under the entire weight of the ocean. Each impossible geometry, each razor-sharp edge, each burgeoning fractal form, focused into a single point aimed at the Solarian prince.

  Then, with a sound like shattering crystal, the pressure snapped. A deafening crack tore through the arena, followed instantly by a raw, explosive roar as the Seed of Genesis unleashed its full power. The force slammed outwards, like an invisible wave crashing over Darius.

  Darius, swatted from the sky as if by an invisible giant, plummeted. A blur of gold and fractured light, he hurtled towards the arena floor. The impact, when it came, was cataclysmic. Sand exploded outwards in a geyser, a deep, wide crater forming instantly where he struck. A shockwave rippled through the sands, kicking up dust and debris.

  Darius staggered, feet finding purchase in the cratered sand. His barrier, cracked porcelain held together by sheer will, wavered, then stubbornly reformed. Not broken then... Kor sucked in ragged breaths, lungs screaming for air, the mana expenditure a physical ache. Across the arena, Darius remained motionless for a heartbeat, his shroud of mana momentarily dimmed, a flicker of something in his gaze that wasn’t arrogance, before it solidified once more. He raised his chin, a gesture of defiance as much as pride. The power surrounding Darius intensified again, the glow almost painful to behold.

  Just what had the damned prince done? What had he taken? He’d never faced an opponent whose reserves eclipsed even his own by such an extent.

  The cracks in Darius’s barrier knit themselves closed, shimmering lines fading into seamless gold. The wildness in his eyes receded, the pupils contracting, refocusing with chilling intent. A slow smile stretched his lips, devoid of humour, full of something cold and certain.

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  Kor’s gut clenched, an icy dread spreading through him. His Seed of Genesis was collapsing, disintegrating under the relentless pressure of the Voidshard. Trees withered, their intricate branches crumbling to dust. Snowflakes evaporated. Ferns shrivelled, their vibrant green fading to brittle brown. My energy…

  Glancing at the ominous crystal, Kor’s fists clenched, his jaw tight with a surge of anger. That’s my energy... Under half mana now, with an arena practically devoid of stray energy. His gaze snapped back to Prince Darius, airborne again, looking down with infuriating condescension.

  The prince’s laughter echoed. “Not bad, peasant. Surrender, and you’ll serve as my retainer. I’ll even grant you the artifact—a token of my generosity.”

  The audience’s muttering rumbled, a low, confused hum.

  The commentator’s voice rang out, shaky and uncertain. “I don’t know what we just witnessed, folks, but this is not the power of First-Year students… this almost resembles a duel between third-year graduates...”

  “Well, what do you say?” A grin split Darius’ face, his barrier nearly fully repaired.

  Did he have the mana to continue?

  Hah. As if that mattered.

  “We’ve only just begun, Prince.” Kor emphasised the title, injecting a subtle note of disdain.

  Fire burned in the prince’s gaze. A new energy, different from anything he’d shown before, filled the air. He’d displayed some kind of gas before, and so much fire. Explosions… eruptions?

  With only moments to act, he raced across the sands. Bombs primed and ready, just waiting for the prince to misstep.

  A dark, ash-like gas spilled from Darius, thick as grave-soil, pouring onto the arena sands, spreading with unnatural speed.

  It lacked power, but the dense fog covered the ground in moments. Kor’s brow furrowed as it buried him in the cloying atmosphere. The Hunger pulsed through his arm, a gnawing emptiness amplified by his dwindling mana reserves.

  Darius continued to hover above, his form obscured by the thickening ash.

  The commentator’s voice again. “Darius is covering the field in ash? Those of you with poor magic sense aren’t going to enjoy this.”

  Was the ash flammable? No, that didn’t seem right… Volcano magic?

  Barely able to see more than a hand’s distance, a dry, hacking cough rasped from his throat. What! Another cough, more violent. His barrier should protect against harmful attacks.

  Darius had disappeared from his magical sight!

  A veil? The damned prince still had enough mana to fill the entire arena with ash, so much ash that the Voidshard barely seemed to effect it.

  A swell of power from the side. He ducked, rolling, narrowly avoiding a corridor of flame that punched through the smoke. He coughed again, harder, a burning sensation in his lungs. Another gout of flame, barely avoided. A third slammed into his barrier.

  He couldn’t keep this up.

  Fighting back a cough, he closed his eyes. Focusing on the swirls of mana, he knew the moment the prince attacked, his veil would drop…

  There! Snarling, Kor ripped out another galaxy fractal, focusing intently on Darius’s mana signature.

  A pillar of flame slammed down on Kor from above, even as the galaxy sped off to hunt down the prince. The fiery column tore a path through the smoke, cracks forming on Kor’s barrier, the yellow honeycomb fracturing. He’d pit his barrier against even a third year’s spells, but the drain on his reserves was the genuine concern.

  A satisfying crack as the air shuddered with power, his galaxy tearing into the prince somewhere in the distance. Another round of coughs bent him low, his body convulsing. His eyes watered, stinging. He snatched desperate breaths.

  Another swell of power… from below? From everywhere?

  Countless points of energy swelled all around him. The floor seemed to glow with the fiery promise of eruption. Pressing away, he inhaled another lungful of the choking ash and crashed to the ground, coughing violently, his body wracked with spasms.

  The world spun, his head swam as flames exploded upwards, a searing inferno. One punched into his stomach, launching him across the sands. He landed hard; the impact jarring his teeth, a grunt of pain escaping his lips. The world tilted, the ground a dizzying blur. Heavy molten fire filled the air, pouring down.

  Not like this… The smothering magma burned against his barrier, mana draining precipitously. His vision darkened.

  Got to… try something…

  A distant sound, a sensation of realised hunger, pulsed. A ripping, tearing explosion, followed by a shout of frustration from the prince. He’d triggered one of his bomb seeds.

  In that moment of reprieve, he coughed, his lungs burning, and formed the seed of something untested, something… unique.

  He couldn’t afford to think, to plan. He had to act. Now.

  A fractal cube. The seed spawned directly beneath his feet. He flooded it with what little power he could spare. Expanding outward and upward, it pressed him up, punching through the smothering magma, pushing him up through the thick, choking ash. Further and further it climbed, another hacking cough tearing from him, a raw, burning pain, before he finally broke free of the cloying atmosphere, magma sloughing off.

  Dozens of yards below, the sands were covered in a thick, grey blanket of ash, to his left, the Voidshard. Just how much damned mana did the prince have to spare, to have covered hundreds of square feet, all while resisting the Voidshard?

  Something shifted below. Eyes watering, he focused, expanding his shield wider to cover the exposed edge of his towering cube as another explosion of flame ripped against it. The entire edifice shook. There!

  Darius soared out of the ash as Kor wheeled to face him even as the Voidshard pulled from behind. The prince hovered dozens of paces away and still that shroud of mana enveloped him, glowing with unnatural vitality. By the stars, he could use some of that…

  Yes, he could! His arm quivered. The prince, raw with anger, swelled with barely contained force. Closer… he needed to be much closer to use it!

  The air quivered. The ash covering the ground stirred, swirling. Not from the Voidshard at the centre of the arena, but towards Prince Darius.

  “Time to feel Solarian Supremacy, Lexican!” The prince’s eyes shimmered, a dark fire filling them, as the ashen smoke tore towards him. All of it, somehow, disappearing into his body.

  Dangerous. Too dangerous. All of that gas sucked up into the prince’s lungs like a dragon inhaling before unleashing its terrible, fiery breath. Higher and higher the power swelled, a raging torrent of barely constrained energy.

  Even his barrier couldn’t withstand such force, not with his reserves so low. If the fight had been anywhere else, he would have recovered more than enough mana by now.

  Only moments to act. The prince hovered a dozen yards from the edge of his cube.

  Could he make it?

  Swallowing hard, Kor backed up, giving himself some space before sprinting towards the edge of the cube, his muscles coiling.

  Heart pounding, Hunger bubbling, he launched himself. No magic to guide his flight. There simply hadn’t been enough time to learn. A few yards was all he managed. But it was enough, just enough.

  At the apex of his jump, he reached out, his violet eye blazing to match the prince’s own fiery visage. For the briefest of moments, their gazes locked, the prince’s eyebrows raising in a flicker of surprise even as Kor’s right arm lashed out.

  “Devour!”

  Tangible, insatiable need ripped from his arm. Ghostly, spectral, a claw of violet Voidforce. Just in time to swipe through the aura of energy that permeated the prince, to press into his barrier, into the man himself, and Take!

  Mana flooded through the link, a torrent of raw power, even as Kor fell. His eyes alighted with overflowing energy. How did the prince contain so much? The question died, unformed, as the Solarian’s retort erupted.

  A breath of pure pyroclastic force slammed into Kor. In that fleeting instant, a moment of clarity: the prince’s personality, his arrogance, his magic… it all built towards this, a single, devastating Eruption!

  With a desperate command, he flooded his honeycomb barrier with the Devour’s stolen energy as he catapulted earthward at an oblique angle.

  The breath was punched from his lungs, his head whip-lashing back, something in his chest cracking. He hit the sand, punching a furrow as the pyroclastic flow carried him. Pain blurred his vision. Disoriented, he struggled to breathe even as the force hammered against his cracking barrier.

  Then he slammed against something hard, something hungry.

  The Voidshard! The pain of the collision overwhelmed, replaced by a hunger. Alien. It stole over him, snatching at his mana, sending ice through his veins.

  A primal cry of defiance tore from the Hunger that drove him, a sheer refutation of the pull. A bear cub against the mother lode. The Voidshard’s inexorable need pressed against him. Tendrils of influence, now that his back pressed against the dark crystal, sang out to the Void, a siren’s call. Terrible, utterly alien. It did not belong. He did not belong. All that mana he’d Devoured, what remained after Prince Darius’s attack, threatened to be ripped away.

  NO! His eyes blazed violet, even as the commentator’s voice, distant and muffled, called out, “What a stunning display from Prince Darius, slamming his junior into the Voidshard! What a way to end the duel!”

  NO! This was his energy, his power. Void damn it all!

  MINE! He wrenched, with every fibre of his strength, his will to succeed, to prove himself, to deliver Marcus’s future. He didn’t just push away, didn’t just fight off the insidious Hunger of the Void. The Void liked to take, did it? Well, it wasn’t the only one! A surge of vindictive retaliation sang through his veins.

  Perhaps the Hunger had warped his brain. Perhaps the concussive force of Darius’s blast had loosed something.

  But he didn’t care.

  With a snarl of inhuman defiance, his gloved hand slashed into the Voidshard. The fabric tore, revealing the blackened, void-touched flesh beneath. His clawed hand, fingers tipped with preternatural sharpness, cracked through the crystal as he wrenched himself away, gouging deep furrows into its alien surface.

  He stole from the Void realm, through the link of the Voidshard. A small piece of the incomprehensible world, its impossible causality. The pure essence of the Void, raw and untamed, found a home within his body.

  Immediately, a pulse of deepest violet ripped from the Voidshard, a burning, eldritch energy that coursed with chaos. Even as Kor pulled away, the Voidshard quivered with outrage, emitting an ominous glow that rippled across the arena, up to the stands and beyond. A beacon of bleeding force. It rent the very air with a deranged, high-pitched screech.

  A hot, coppery flood gushed from Kor’s ears, his eardrums ruptured with a sickening pop. His hearing was gone, replaced by a deafening roar. Despite that, power swelled from behind him.

  Turning, eyes blazing with violet fury, he settled on the prince, who, even despite the cacophony, channelled yet another powerful spell. Hovering above, the arrogant youth looked down on him.

  Peripherally, the audience buzzed like agitated ants, some even fleeing the stands. Terrak, a distant figure overhead, gesticulated wildly.

  Kor’s face split into a manic grin. The sounds of the crowd, the commentator, were lost, swallowed by the Voidshard’s scream. His hearing lost, half-crazed, he called up his old reliable: the galaxy fractal. Deep violet darkness pulsed through Kor, Void-essence singing in his veins, visually swirling around him like oil on water. Spinning the galaxy seed with manic speed, he funnelled every stolen scrap of mana, and more, into its heart, driving its growth to breaking point.

  The prince, too, had pulled out all the stops. The intense flames gathered around him, shifting from red to orange, finally settling on a bright, blinding yellow. It was as if a miniature sun, primed to unleash its fury, had formed around him.

  Delirious with pain and defiance, Kor reached out for something else. A fragment of what he’d stolen. A giddy sensation of danger washed over him as he poured but a sliver of the Void into his galaxy fractal, into the very heart of its uncertainty.

  The very air rocked. Reality rippled.

  Darius and he locked eyes. A moment of shared understanding, a glimpse beneath the surface. The veneer of civilisation stripped away, revealing the raw, hungry monsters lurking within. Gone were the prince and the Lexican; only predators remained, each scenting the kill.

  A moment of mirrored madness. They both unleashed.

  With the force of a pent-up volcano, the breath of a dragon, Prince Darius leveraged every drop of the unbridled energy he’d brought to the contest. Force beyond measure, beyond what any sane student could endure.

  But as it descended upon Kor, with all the might of Solaria, Kor released his Voidling Galaxy. A small piece of an alien reality, spun to life with dire need, with violet veracity. Terrible, incomprehensible, it spun out, a shining maw of the alien realm, spinning wider to consume. It met the prince’s sunspot explosion head-on, devouring it.

  Hungry and connected to the Void, its call ripped at the veil between dimensions, resonating with the Voidshard. A hole in reality. It tore through the prince’s efforts. The deep violet-dark galaxy visually ripped through the super-heated flames, punching through them.

  Alarm bells rang through his head, Lentus’s voice, a distant, unheard whisper – he’d been trying to communicate!

  An anguished cry ripped from the throat of the prince, so violent and shrill that even his bloodied ears felt the resonance.

  His barrier cracked and broke. His golden third-year badge flared, a last line of protection.

  Victory. But the Void Galaxy had just begun.

  Terrak flew down, a blur of motion, the force of his magic a tangible thing as he fought to extricate the prince from the greedy grasp of Kor’s galaxy. The student barrier shattered, utterly annihilated. The galaxy ripped into Darius, his flesh shredded by the Void’s touch, a terrible, keening wail escaping his lips as power overwhelming consumed him.

  A raw pulse of force, pure and unyielding, slammed into the galaxy, halting its advance for the barest of moments. Terrak’s face was a mask of strain, muscles bulging, sweat beading on his forehead as he poured every ounce of his power into holding back the monstrous creation.

  For a brief, heart-stopping moment, it was Terrak alone against the Void Galaxy, a desperate, unequal struggle. Then, a meteor of ungodly might, a figure wreathed in eldritch power, crashed into the galaxy, tearing it aside just long enough for Terrak to snatch the prince away.

  The First Magus, Corvus, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Terrak. The prince, missing half a leg, part of his hip, and one wrist sheared down to a bloody stump, bled profusely. But a protective bubble of shimmering energy enveloped Darius, stemming the flow, a desperate attempt at preservation.

  The Void Galaxy, shunted off course, now without a target, slammed into the darkened wall of the arena. Impossibly destructive, it gouged through the pitted, blackened stone, tearing into it, a hungry beast unleashed.

  The First Magus’ eyes locked with his own. A look of understanding beneath the cloak of power, a shared insanity. The man’s power swelling up as violet cracks in the air, the shaking of the Voidshard pulled their collective attention.

  Kor’s senses swam in a bubbling, fractious insanity. His body shook with pain, a symphony of agony, and the world around him shook in response to the unleashed power. Cracks, spiderwebs of deepest violet, pulsing with Void-like intensity, appeared in the very air, opening and closing at random, tears in reality. The very mana of the arena was a maelstrom of chaotic fluctuations. Up above, the crowd had fled, their screams swallowed by the roaring chaos. Even his galaxy punched further and further into the wall, with no sign of ending, an insatiable hunger driving it onward.

  What on Conflux had he done?