The City of Mages
The City of Mages
The twin shortswords wreathed in crimson flame were Fay's signature.
Neither too long nor too short—each about as thick as a girl's forearm and as long as her arm—these blades had journeyed with her through every trial.
They were enchanted weapons Aslan had pulled from the bandit hideout ruins the day he saved her.
That day, the girl first gripped a sword and became a warrior Elf. Barely half a year later, she was the Master of the Sword.
Half a year. Absurdly brief for any being to claim mastery, yet she had done it, and after parting ways with Aslan she threw herself into battle after battle.
Seven years.
Across that long war, the monsters and humans she had slain numbered in the hundreds.
The two swords that had fought beside her through it all—Twilight and Dawn—now howled through the air, trailing streamers of ghastly blood-colored flame.
She didn't simply swing them. The girl's reach was short. The blades were short by nature, and her arms were short as well.
So she dropped her stance low. She felt the superhuman sight of the priests tracking her, three pairs of eyes clinging to her every motion. Fay leaped.
A light tap as she left the ground. She twisted her body, planted her feet on the ceiling, and vanished from the priests' vision only to reappear above them.
"What?!"
The sudden emergence froze the priests for a heartbeat, and Fay struck. She kicked off the ceiling and dove, her two swords slicing like a beast's fangs or foreclaws.
A shriek of red light—wind tearing in its wake. The foremost priest barely had time to widen his eyes, much less raise his axe.
Tatak!
His comrade lunging from behind saved his life. The haft of a polearm met the twin shortswords, cold vapor seeping from the steel.
Two meters long, the blade was modeled after some creature's fang—a glaive.
Though the haft was wood, Fay's razor edge failed to split it. The parry stopped her cold. She twisted on her planted blades and sprang back.
White death filled the space where she had stood. Instinct screamed that touching it meant annihilation. Fay crossed her swords before her and leaped again.
Kagagang!
The clash rang out. She ricocheted off walls, floor, ceiling, kicking off surfaces and hurtling through the room. The priests fought back with sweat beading on their foreheads, barely turning her aside.
Their counterblows carried an unnatural chill, and once again Fay's instincts warned her away.
So she chose the strategy of a single strike, then withdrawal. She reversed her descending shortsword and spun.
Spinning, she swung. Crimson arcs carved two fierce circles, and the falchion aimed at her skull was knocked wide.
"Gah, what kind of strength...!"
A priest's muttered curse. This wasn't brute force—but techniques that defied reason were beyond the understanding of men who relied on raw strength alone.
Fay understood her advantages precisely.
A small frame that nonetheless overpowered grown men, agility that transcended human limits, swordsmanship honed to the absolute peak.
She held even more edges against these priests.
Her delicate appearance. The confined space. Enemies bunched together. And their long, unwieldy weapons.
The chill bleeding from the priests and their weapons was troublesome, but she could endure it.
Fay saw the descending axe through the gap left by her parry and raised her sword.
Kagagagak!
Cold mist met crimson flame, scattering steam. She twisted the blade as though tracing an X, and the axe slid harmlessly aside.
As its force sank downward, Fay pivoted on her foot and launched herself into the air.
Puh-eok!
A rising knee strike. It caught the priest square under the jaw. Even a priest couldn't ignore impact to the brain; the man staggered. Fay stepped on his shoulder and vaulted higher.
Jjeo-eok!
The glaive plunged into the spot she had vacated, splintering the wooden floor, scattering shards. She was already gone.
"Damn it—catch her!"
Flustered voices overlapped. Fay flowed between them, wielding her swords with unhurried calm. She angled a blade against the falchion rushing toward her, deflected it with redirection rather than force, and thrust the sword in her left hand short and sharp.
"Gkh—agh!"
A clawed-out eye socket. Fay flipped her body and landed on the floor as one priest clutched his ruined face and fixed her with a murderous glare.
"You little rat..."
The dripping blood scattered into wisps of cold. Fay stared back, both shortswords hanging at her sides.
Each priest now carried at least one shallow wound. Fay stood untouched.
The imbalance plainly galled them. They ground their teeth, swapped glances.
Hostility thickened in those shared looks, and then they charged as one. The floorboards cratered under the force of their rush. Raised weapons scattered white death in violent arcs.
"Kill her!"
Weapons surged with the roar. Fay stood among them, eyes blinking slowly in her blue-violet irises. A thin ripple of killing intent stirred there.
The glaive came first. Fay sidestepped and struck the shaft upward. Deflected, the blade buried itself deep in the wall.
Buuuuung!
Leaving the priest pinned, Fay lunged forward with her effortless footwork.
Her sword carved a leg mid-stride. As the priest's knee buckled, she launched herself up and drove her foot into his chin.
Jjeok!
A sharp, powerful back-kick, heavy with acceleration and body weight.
She lacked Aslan's omnicompetence with every weapon and martial art, but Fay commanded her own form of unarmed combat alongside her perfected swordsmanship.
Without Aslan, the title of Master of Combat would have fallen to her.
She pressed the priests relentlessly, wielding an Elf's spring-steel body that never tired. The priest reeling from the back-kick was her first victim.
She laid both shortswords across his neck.
Crisscrossing blades like a pair of shears. The other priests realized their companion's danger and screamed in horror.
Seogeok!
The crossed edges scissored through flesh. The severed head bobbed up, then rolled across the floor. Two voices split the air with ringing screams. Fay cocked her ear and idly covered it.
"No, Roden!"
"You damned bitch! I'll tear you apart!"
One wept. The other's glare smoldered. They came at her with the glaive torn free of the wall and the axe raised high.
Fay lifted her weapons to meet them.
Giiiiiiik...
A sound like scraped metal keened through the air.
Before she could place it, catastrophe erupted.
Kwaaaaaaaang!
An eruption of cold swallowed the space. The headless priest's corpse detonated.
The chill sprayed outward—white death that filled creation, the terminus of all living things.
Death scattered, carrying impossible pressure and mass. It was as though the cosmos itself had hardened and struck her. Fay choked back a scream. The shock battered her consciousness out for an instant, and she was hurled backward.
Kurrrr, kwah-ang!
The Elf girl slammed into the wreckage of the ruined study, dust heaving skyward.
Inside the cloud, Fay lay with a long frostbite wound running from her left eye down to her left hand.
She had even lost one of her swords. The other remained in her grip, but the frozen arm barely obeyed her.
An unforeseen blow. The possibility of a suicide attack had never occurred to the young Elf. She staggered upright, clutching her remaining sword.
"Ah, Roden... for our sake...!"
"We will avenge you! Wait for us in Her compassionate embrace!"
The priests roared their fury at the bedraggled Elf who rose from the debris. Fay had no interest in their theater. She closed her mouth, leveled her sword, and behind her, Anna—who had been seated watching all of it—felt horror and confusion collide.
The chill cast by the Veil of Compassion was not simple cold. Only an Elf could have survived it. Ordinary humans would have died the instant it touched them.
It must have been agony, yet the girl aimed her blade without a single cry.
Elves were blessed by nature, able to heal as long as their feet touched the ground. The wound was grave, but not beyond recovery.
Just not recovery in the middle of a battle.
The wound was still mortal.
Fighting three priests in a confined space and holding out this long was remarkable, but that injury would deny her any opening to heal.
Still the girl did not retreat.
Anna stared at the figure standing firm, sword leveled at the priests, and a thought crystallized.
This girl was terrifyingly empty of emotion.
She could simply run. The truth was plain.
Fay had no reason to protect Anna.
What they wanted was clearly Anna's daughter. Fay had no stake in defending that.
Yet Fay was risking her life in a fight that was not her own. The Elf—who never tired, who never even drew breath heavily—exhaled ragged, unsteady breaths and held her sword steady. Anna's eyes trembled as she watched that back.
"Why... why are you fighting?"
The priests tightened their wary encirclement. They had seen what Fay could do. Her left arm, left eye, and the left side of her face were frozen, but her prized footwork remained intact.
They closed in methodically, hunting.
Fay gazed at them with a distant expression.
As if she were looking at something beyond.
She adjusted her grip on the sword and thought of someone.
A face rose in her mind.
Teal-green eyes, black hair, a face often lost in weary contemplation.
Then his habitual words followed.
Recalling them, she let out a soft sigh.
Who could fight here, in this moment?
Who could defeat these priests?
Who could fulfill the charge Aslan had left?
Who was Aslan's sword, his first companion?
There was only one answer to everything.
She held the sword angled before her, body turned sideways, blade tips marking the priests. Despite the frost, her blue-violet eyes blazed fiercely.
"Because I'm the only one who can."
It didn't quite answer the question. But speaking it seemed to settle something within her. Fay lifted the corner of her mouth.
An expression that mocked death itself as it came for her.
Anna felt Fay's resolve in that look.
And she realized that Fay might die here.
Two priests remained. Not just any priests—priests of the Veil of Compassion.
Killing priests of the Veil required the aid of an exceptional mage.
Conventional weapons could barely scratch them.
The chill they radiated froze flesh and stole life.
Only the power of an Ancient God, or magic cast by one, could resist that force.
Anna's fist closed over the nape of her neck, where until recently a pendant had hung.
This Elf girl—who looked barely fourteen—was willing to fight.
Anna, by contrast, had lacked even the will.
Because if her daughter's soul was damaged, it could never be undone.
But deep inside, Anna had known.
She had known for a hundred years.
There would be no resurrection for her daughter. Just as she herself had broken, so had her child.
Two centuries of decay and twisting had not touched only her.
Otherwise, the priests' obsession with her daughter's soul made no sense.
A soul that belonged to the daughter of the most magically gifted woman in imperial history—an empty, untouched soul—was worth seizing. In the hands of a priest, it would yield a terrifying vessel wielding both mana and divine power.
That understanding forced a possibility she had long refused to face.
That her daughter had already been swayed by an Evil God.
Evil Gods could not approach the bodiless, but a daughter whose soul was sealed within a pseudo-body pendant was reachable.
Anna's child was no longer the infant she remembered.
The hardest thing was letting go.
At last Anna confronted the truth she had averted her eyes from, and tears slid down her face.
The priests advanced, their attention fixed solely on Fay. Anna did not even register in their eyes.
Fay smiled, ready to thrust her sword into them at any instant.
Watching that slight profile, the woman gathered her mana.
Slowly, as though still reluctant. She sifted through two hundred years of memory and wished for a miracle.
No miracle came.
She knew well that miracles were no convenient savior. She closed her eyes, mana rising.
Pajijik!
She opened them with a sphere of lightning crackling in her hand.
Emerald light blazed from her eyes, washing the surroundings. The lightning boiling in her palm shimmered into flame as it churned.
The mana was immense. The output rivaled siege weaponry.
The flow of all magic in the vicinity warped. The priests who had been about to fall on Fay went rigid.
They turned toward the woman they had ignored.
She was floating above the ground.
A shifting orb of fire and lightning blazed in her hand.
As that colossal mana swept the chamber, the pendant wrapped around Fay's sword hilt shivered faintly. An unspeakable scream drummed against the girl's ears. The woman wept, feeling her daughter's soul gutter and fade.
"I'm sorry, little one."
A teardrop evaporated before it touched the floor. The rotating sphere of fire swelled and then hurled forward.
Kwauuuuuk!
The flame devoured every trace of oxygen in its path, so condensed it bore true mass. It slammed into the paralyzed priests.
The cold seething within their bodies spurted thick vapor for only a moment before the fire swallowed them.
Kwaaaaaaaaang!
The blast shook the very earth. Two priests hurtled backward, shattering floor and wall alike.
As they hacked and clawed their way upright, the woman made her declaration.
"...I am Anna Heleminus. Mayor of the City of Mages, and teacher to the two hundred mages who dwell here."
The priests fought to their feet, clutching their weapons. The woman turned her palm downward and gathered mana into it.
A new form kindled there: a bolt of lightning.
She cradled it in her left hand and spoke.
"This city is our land. It lies within the jurisdiction of we mages."
The lightning writhed in her grip, spitting electric blue arcs. The priests grimaced or spat blood, glaring.
"You have trespassed upon our jurisdiction with your muddy feet. You have harmed our people. You have sought to destroy this city. For these crimes—"
Pajik!
The blue flash coalesced into a perfect sphere. The woman's voice dropped, heavy with grief.
"I pronounce upon you, in the name of this city, the sentence of death."
She extended her hand. From within the sphere, a howling, raging bolt ripped forth.
Kwarururururung!
In the searing white aftermath, the only discernible shapes were the shredded remains of the priests.