—

  The next morning was like any other in Srok. The Noble residents were filled with maids starting the kitchen work and cleaning after the evening festivities, day guards starting their shifts while the night guards left to nap, and coachmen cleaning their carriages and grooming their horses. In an abandoned corner of the noble quarters, a group of teenagers cheered.

  ‘So he finally figured it out,’ Levin chuckled to himself as he watched Marcus aiming his hands at a piece of wooden debris and an arcane force left his hand pushing the pieces over the window and into the compound.

  From the darkness in the alley, he watched as Clara and her group cheered, but even that would not be enough to fight against Thornan.

  And the fact that he was drawing the spells on the ground was quite useless. That’s why the nobles and their knights wore rings enchanted with spells. At this rate, the group would not survive Thornan if they kept playing at scholars.

  Levin watched as Clara put away the rings in her rags and later had the group follow behind her out of the manor’s compound leaving Ethne and Geneva behind to keep eyes on their manor.

  He followed them through the city and out to the war-torn ashy grounds beyond the last wall of the mountain cities.

  Levin watched them as they followed Clara and Marcus, one leading the way and the other looking out ahead, looking for something and pointing. Unlike other scavengers in the Ashfields, Levin watched as the group moved in the direction they had decided to dig up, and without wasting another moment, the group started digging.

  Curiously, they did not stop digging. One would think and hope that after a while, the group would move on after not finding anything, but they didn’t.

  He soon concluded that they were not merely digging in random patterns but were sure of what they were looking for, so he decided to wait. and wait. and wait.

  A week later, he watched the group pull something out of the hole they had been digging for over a week now. ‘Was that a leg?’ He strained his eyes, trying to make out what had Clara and her group so excited. The metal they had pulled out of the hole was a piece of armour, a leg piece. By the looks of it, it was similar to the rings they had somehow gotten.

  He moved closer to the group from a dark corner of the wall he had been. Perhaps this was the time he could test Marcus again. Old man Ivor wanted him to test the boy, so he would do that, and if he got his hands on the secret of how to locate the rings or the leg piece, he watched them dig up. well he wouldn't complain.

  “Is that like the magical rings you’ve been hiding?” Levin asked, stepping over a mound and dismissing his shadow's concealment magic.

  —

  Marcus had spent several days figuring out how the runic magic and the rings worked, and after all the copious amounts of work copying the runes on the floors. it took him observing the aether from the surroundings following the determined patterns of the runes with his arcane sight to break down the charcoal drawings, every day he checked on his runic drawings with his arcane sight. he watched as the aether was attracted to the different patterns of runic writings flowing through them until they were completely gone.

  Of the many times he had put together the runic drawings, he came to recognize the repeating patterns in their construction, which would have made for a good study, but not with a Veystrix out for their heads. It was something Marcus had to put to the side.

  With that sorted, Clara had Marcus preparing to fight Thornan alongside her, and she had the rest of the team looking for coin in any way possible, whether it was begging for coin, looking for scrap iron in the Ashfeilds or even bullying and pushing around other Filthings for their coin.

  And with what had recently happened to Agmak and his group not many were willing to go up against Clara and her group. This was all done as a backup plan in case Marcus, and she could not fight off Thornan.

  With the plan to fight alongside each other , Marcus and Clara had talked about other plans, and since they didn’t want to rely on the fact that they could win against Thornan as they were, they had decided to look for more enchanted armour pieces in the Ashfields that they could use against Thornan the Veystrix. With Clara’s plan to raise a Noble house, she could enable him to reach the library on the first wall or the magical school on the Third wall, where he could learn about the magic that brought him to this place.

  Together, Marcus, Clara, and Gabe stood in front of the hole they had dug out over the week and watched as Linus, Zek, and Nel pulled out the torn and twisted limb. it was more of a leg, dressed in enchanted armor that glowed to Marcus’s arcane sight with elemental aether of with blues.

  “So, is it enchanted,” Clara asked, hands on her waist, grimacing at the bony remains Zek held in his hands.

  "of course it is. we got our own treasure finder," Gabe said and nudged Marcus in the ribs.

  “Yes, Pull off the Greaves," Marcus started to say before he was interrupted by a voice he recognized and was beginning to hate.

  “Is that like the magical rings you’ve been hiding?” Levin asked, appearing out of thin air.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Did he send you? Have you come for the coin?” Clara asked, posturing, ready for a fight and standing ahead of everyone.

  Levin frowned, “Am no filthying. I don’t take orders from anyone.” He crossed his arms

  “I heard you attacked Marcus!”

  “Yes, I did.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, Marcus rushed past Clara, and his fist swung at Levin.

  Levin, for his part, twisted to the side and, with his palm out, pushed Marcus in the opposite direction and away from him. He thought it would be the easiest thing for him to do but he was not expecting the other boy to grab his jacket, causing both of them to stumble down the mound of ash, rock and earth.

  Unlike Marcus, Levin got to his feet in a flash, and a face of anger quickly came to his face, and a moment later passed as though it was never there.

  Levin waited and watched Marcus get to his feet, and before he knew it, Marcus was rushing towards him again, aiming to grapple him to the ground. The way the boy was aiming to fight was madness.

  As soon as Marcus barreled into Levin, the Veystrix dug his feet into the ground and halted all the momentum on his lower abdomen.

  The boy was not being serious. He was a half-human trying a contest of strength with a Goliath, or in this case a half-Goliath. Levin used his hands to grab Marcus’s tunic, pulled it up, and threw him to the side.

  Marcus stumbled back but was quick to get his feet under him. He focused on the other boy and moved, dashing forward and aiming to strike Levin.

  Two jabs and a cross.

  Then a jab, a cross and left hook.

  The other boy weaved, deflected and dodged every blow sent by Marcus and retaliated with a blow of his own.

  He had expected to hit the boy with the blow but Marcus had been prepared.

  Aiming to hit the boy squarely in the chest, he was caught off guard when the boy stumbled a few steps back, his forearms forward in a boxer's guard. In that split second , Levin raised an inquisitive eyebrow and threw out a fist again, making sure not to put all his strength behind it, giving Marcus enough time to guard against the blow.

  Marcus watched the blow coming and raised his hands in defence, blocking the punch aimed at his face, and felt a flare of pain rattling his forearms, bones, and joints, causing him to jump back.

  ‘This is not working,' he thought. As his mind raced through all his solutions. He had magic. He tried to remember the runic makeup of the Arcane push spell he had spent hours trying to memorize but he found he couldn't remember it.

  Innate magic it was then.

  the magic was so instinctual that even as he thought of it, Marcus felt it as the aether gathered around his fingertips ready to respond to his commands . Arcane sight would not be useful in this situation, so that left his Nova of the Shadow Of Sun spell. like his spell of Arcane Sight that needed seven to nine of his Arcane Affinity, the spell took two to three seconds to take form. As the Nova of the Shadow’s Sun started taking form.

  Marcus watched as Levin paused, frowned and dashed forward to strike.

  ---

  Levin watched as Marcus took a few steps back between them, and he hesitated to see what the boy would do next. Just then, he suddenly sensed the shadow aether around drift and stabilize, becoming static . Then, the shadow aether in his own spell started to be wrenched out of his control,

  Every spell form was made of layers, each stage meant to create the spell as a whole. Each written runic line in the spell formation had its role. In the case of his concealment spell, it was made of runic layers of his psychic Affinity and layers of his shadow affinity.

  The other boy was using that spell again, and his instinct from training with Ivor kicked in. If he did not know what the spell did, there was no need to take a risk to find out its possible effects. Levin had to stop it.

  Levin jumped forward, closing the distance in an instant. Then he punched out.

  He made sure that his strike was slow enough to be seen by the other boy and let him react, and as he had postulated, Marcus stepped back, let go of his spell and made to block his strike. Levin was not aiming for this; however, he grabbed Marcus’s arm, and as soon as the other boy realized the arm holding him, a vicious strike came, hurling towards his eye and causing him to let go.

  'Yeah, no... not this time.'

  At Least the boy had noticed that it was a bad idea letting a goliath get a hold in close combat.

  When Marcus felt a grab on his arm, he quickly responded. He swung his fist at Levin's face with all the force he could master. If he was going to hold onto him as he had done before, Marcus was not going to give him the chance to pummel him as he had done before. The blow missed, but Levin had also let go of him. As soon as Levin did, Marcus made to step back, but Levin was not willing to let him cast the spell again.

  A kick pushed Marcus back to the ground, and as he stared up, he watched Levin approaching him. Just as he was about to strike, a ball of fire came sailing down on the Veystrix. Marcus flinched and blinked. One moment, Levin was in front of him, and the next, he was gone. Just like that, he was gone. He looked around, and his eyes settled on Clara, her hand stretched out with the elemental Enchanted ring on her finger.

  ---

  Clara watched as Marcus blew past him and swung a fist towards Levin, who dodged. She did not know what happened next, but she watched as the two stumbled down the large mound. She watched as Levin got to his feet first and seemed to wait for Marcus to get to his feet.

  ‘why is he waiting?’

  Levin was half Goliath and half Aasimar. He was supposed to be faster and stronger, so why was he playing around?

  Clara watched Marcus run forward to burrow into the taller boy , and it took everything not to scream at him. Did he think he was going to win a contest of strength with the goliath breed? Where had he grown up to think that a human or Aasimar was capable of such a thing?

  Unlike the Aasimar or the humans, the goliath people were more in tune with their bloodline magic. This made their already intimidating physical presence that much more significant. It solidified their presence, and often, it had them moving faster than one could believe and stronger than they were supposed to be. Of course, this all depended on the aether weight of the Bloodline magic.

  “We should help him," Zek said.

  “No!” Clara shut him down, her eyes never leaving the two boys fighting.

  “I'm going to help him, " Nel said.

  “Yah, me too,” Linus said.

  “No, no one is going to interfere,” she turned on them, causing them to shrivel back on themselves.

  She turned back to the fight, unwrapped her rags and pulled out two rings. She placed two of them on her fingers and looked up at the fighting boys. She watched as the shadows began to pull together, and as soon as the spell began, Levin ran forward, interrupting Marcus and causing a close fight. She raised her hand and waited for the opportunity when the two were far enough apart. When Marcus was thrown to the ground, she aimed her hand at the Veystrix, and a ball of fire flew at the boy's back.

  The moment it seemed to strike Levin, the boy disappeared in a fog that left nothing where he had been.

  “Is he gone,” Gabe asked, looking around and behind him.

  Clara stumbled down the mound, She placed a hand on the boy, and the bruise slowly healed under the influence of the enchanted ring of Light magic.

  “He is gone,” Clara said, looking up at Gabe.

  ”Zek, grab the Graeves. Linus, help Marcus up, let's go back to the manor,” she ordered, getting to her feet and moving towards the city.

  —