The Devil In White: An AA Online Novel

Lady Unfair slowly walked out from the side of a broken building wall. It was important to note that it had been mostly intact before she walked through it. Moments before she stepped out into the plaza it was an unremarkable slate wall that had somehow managed to stay relatively unblemished from the previous invasion and occupation as well as the current warfare. Moments later, this architectural miracle had slowly melted as if the material it had been made from had been glass that was slowly heated to the point of running. It pooled into the snow, sizzling and causing acrid smoke to climb into the sky. It was a fair assumption, at least most people thought so, that the expression hidden behind Lady Unfair's veil was probably one of extreme rage. Aidan had, after all, dropped her through a building. After claiming that he wouldn't hit a lady, even.

"That's what you get for trying to look cool." Aidan was unaffected by the mood and shrugged, moving into the plaza and placing himself between Hunter and the seething enemy mage. Now there was Grimgrieve and Forsythe, Hunter, and Aidan and Lady Unfair all in a strangely addled line in the middle of the courtyard.

"Is this something that I can leave to you?" Hunter asked slowly, drawing out the words. It wasn't exactly that she didn't trust Aidan but there was a lot going on and she was afraid to leave it to the man she'd never personally fought beside. It made her shift her feet around awkwardly because she was going to rely on him and she only really thought of him as 'technically' being in her guild.

As if sensing her thoughts Aidan turned slightly, amus.e.m.e.nt seeming to briefly flash across his expression. "I wouldn't trust me as far as I could throw me."

Hunter straightened her shoulders slightly and let out a brief laugh, somehow feeling better despite his lackl.u.s.ter response. "I'll be watching my back just in case something 'accidentally' gets through."

"That'd be for the best." Aidan agreed, his attention had returned to Lady Unfair.

Lady Unfair had her staff in one hand and was holding it like a giant club. Most wizards and spellcasters didn't favor physical attributes and wouldn't be capable of casually brandishing the heavy piece of wood with one hand while brushing building detritus and soot and snow from their clothes with the other. It made Aidan's eyes narrow slightly even though his grin only grew.

"You are really going to hate me before this over." He predicted, his words causing her veiled face to turn toward him.

"[Aeth - Helter]." Unfair swept her staff one-handed in a semi-circle in front of her and toward Aidan. A red glow started to form in a circle under Aidan, spreading out from the center where he was standing and extending across the ground for several meters.

Hunter, who had only just turned away, startled and turned around to start complaining that it had literally just been seconds since she had left it to him when she abruptly shut her mouth.

"[Mass Manipulation - Ice Floor]." Aidan waved his own hand with a bored motion and a circle of the same size that was blue briefly overlayed the red circle. Hissing steam erupted from the ground as the fire mass spell that Unfair had been casting was met with the ice spell that he had cast. While his had been inferior in quality, it had the d.e.s.i.r.ed effect of off-setting the flame that was supposed to occur by enough that instead of causing any damage to anyone within the circle, the end result was that steam had briefly erupted from the ground before dissipating harmlessly at knee-level.

Elias turned to Abhy in the control room, his eyes reflecting the monitor in front of them. "I thought Amelia had to sacrifice all her schools to counter spells?"

"I don't know that you can call that countering." Abhy frowned. "Like is met with like."

"What's that?" Elias asked, but then paused looking thoughtful. He remembered something he had heard about high-level mages dueling but truthfully it wasn't a program that they featured very often.

"[Aeth - Phesys]." Unfair had paused briefly to consider what Aidan had done but pointed her staff at him again, unperturbed. A burst of flame coalesced in front of her and leaped out toward him eagerly as if it were red roiling liquid.

"[One]." Aidan looked offended even as he waved his own white staff. A much smaller globule of flame appeared in front of him before flashing at a pathetically smaller pace toward the larger ball. They met each other in midair and exploded apart from one another, most of the blast directing toward Aidan but falling short of producing any tangible result. More than anything it just looked like a stiff breeze had hit his robes. Pieces of the two separate flame spells meteored in all directions, smashing into the buildings and burning through walls across the plaza. Several visage shrugged off the embers while a few of the Transients yelped and ducked out of the way.

"[Aeth - Ygdrsi]." A flaming circle appeared above Aidan and started to press down like an invisible hammer.

"[Fifteen]." Aidan pointed his staff at the ground and brought it around in an arc. A cascade of light flashed as an ice wall started at the ground and curved over his head. The fire circle met the ice and melted, hissing water hitting the top of his head and making his hair wet but doing little else.

Unfair slowed for a moment, and this time when she incanted there was definite rage and anger in her vocal inflection. "[Aeth - Ygdrsi], [Aeth - Helter], [Aeth - Phesys], [Infectus - Grimace]."

"Aeth, aeth, aeth." Aidan mocked her every time she incanted, swiftly waving his staff and counter-incanting, "[Fifteen], [Mass Manipulation - Ice Floor], [One]." As they had before all the spells canceled each other out, or, in the case of this second explosion, earned Aidan and Unfair the ire of everyone else, except maybe Grimgrieve, trying to fight in the courtyard as more explosive embers fell haphazardly around like shrapnel from a bomb. As Aidan waited expectantly for the last spell to make some sort of visual cue he frowned, watching Unfair's shoulders shake excitedly. She laughed roughly, a victorious sound in her throat that sounded vicious instead of joyful.

[INVINCIBLE] flashed in gold over Aidan's head. He briefly looked up as if he were looking at it(the reality was he was looking at his status log). Unfair stilled, trying to reconcile what had happened with her expectation. An expression of understanding flashed across Aidan's face as well as uncontrollable mirth and delight.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA. Did YOU TRY TO USE A FEAR ATTACK ON ME? HAHAHAHAHAH. MY TURN." Aidan burst out laughing loudly. The kind of uncontrolled and buoyant laughter that makes people uncomfortable. "MY TURN," he yelled again lifting his staff toward the sky ominously.

Unfair hunched over and started to get ready to cast again but Aidan wasn't waiting anymore and had started to shake his staff above his head as if it were tethered to something that wasn't yet in view. Even the visage mage stopped for a moment and cast an anxious glance upward.

"[In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. From this explosion, we realize that nothing is actually comprised of a great many somethings. These somethings traveled a great distance and would eventually form what is widely regarded to some as reality. So when talking of anything, you are talking of something, which of course means you are talking about, follow me here, nothing--" Aidan's voice echoed loudly and with a hint of insanity across the courtyard and boomed from the speakers in the control room.

At any other time, there would have been a bit of confusion about what was happening, or some laughter at his expense, but as everyone listened and watched a certain sense of expectation started to appear. The spell that he had renamed and first cast on Unfair earlier had been a white lightning strike that he had used to take her by surprise. Earlier he had demonstrated that by renaming spells with shorter incantations he could still cast them, and quicker, though they were far inferior to the original version of the incanted spell framework.

This was something else entirely different, however. As he droned on through what was obviously a renamed spell, space began to distort above a large portion of Blutonsi. The stars that had been shining in the mostly clear skies started to dim and then vanished altogether as if a great celestial object had appeared in the heavens. If there was something there, for the moment mortal eyes could not determine what it was.

"Uhh. So if you rename a spell you still have to say it perfectly right?" Fei Hong said after a moment. Aidan just kept talking and for the moment Unfair was still peering at the sky as if trying to sort through her own thoughts on the matter.

"You can just read it out of your spellbook," Philip said after a moment. "It's still a little--"

"No, you can't." Philip's face fell as Abhy interrupted him. She shook her head apologetically. "You can't. He wrote all of it, renamed the spell, and is reciting it from memory. If you mess up a single word the spell will just backfire or dissipate. It's not like he's the first one to think of boosting a spell by adding incantation time."

Silence reigned again as all the eyes turned toward the screen, a sort of weird anticipation filling the air. "Look at his mana." Fei Hong seemed to be in full spectator mode at this point. She was supposed to be watching the other monitors but had given up.

Elias couldn't even find the energy to chastise her at the moment. He looked up and noted that the bar under Aidan's hp was draining very slowly. He had been talking for about thirty seconds now and it was about 30% drained. That was weird in itself because wizards had truly prodigious mana pools so they could continue to keep pace with their stamina based warrior/archer/spiritual class counterparts. Amelia was an outlier when she cast her counter and reflection spells and almost went empty. Most wizards could cast dozens if not hundreds of times in a row. Seeing so much mana vanish in preparation for a spell was unsettling.

"Well. She just needs to interrupt him really." Philip finally said, earning a few disgruntled stares from those within the room. Just because he was right didn't make him popular.

"--the return to nothing cannot start with just anything, though. It must start with something. As the something enters an excited state, bonds begin to loosen and break down. The uncoupling of this something produces an incredible amount of energy, probably, or at least that's what I heard once. As this something begins to perform what I like to refer to as disintegration, then you are truly beginning to touch upon nothing--" Aidan continued to intone confidently, the grin on his face widening. Above all their heads the stars in the sky had vanished leaving only darkness in the sky. Suddenly a red-system line denoting targeting shot down and landed on Unfair.

Realizing she was unharmed, she experimentally moved a meter to the left. The line followed her like it was a string that was attached to her. She looked up once more and her body went entirely rigid. Her neck practically made a noise as her eyes moved from the sky to Aidan, and she started shrieking in a language and gesticulating at him for all she was worth to, seemingly, any of her allies that would listen.

"I bet it translates as this…" Abhy said slowly. "Kill that guy. He is casting the world's biggest meteor drop on the city."

"Ah," a few sounds of understanding started to travel around the control room as they realized that was exactly what the spell looked like. Meteor drop was a thematically pleasing wizard spell that tethered to a target. The damage was pretty good for what it was, which was a flaming rock appearing from the sky and smashing into your target. It had drawbacks of course. You could run into a building, shoot it down with magic, raise shields, and any number of other viable tactics to make it less destructive. It was also certainly not an instant-death spell so it wasn't widely popular.

"Didn't someone say earlier in one of the threads they felt like mages were weak?" Fei Hong asked, her eyes round as she continued to watch the mass of darkness cover the sky of Blutonsi.

"I suppose it won't hurt any of the Residents or Transients because they're friendly…" Elias drawled slowly.

Grimgrieve and Forsythe sprang apart as the shrill sound of Lady Unfair's tirade began, and Grimgrieve actually backed up further as he tilted his head and listened to Lady Unfair in their garbled language. Scarlet eyes turned immediately to Aidan and he took a step as if intending to head over there. Before he could follow through Forsythe was in front of him, back to Aidan and everything that was happening behind him as if it were none of his business.

Forsythe shook his head slowly from side to side. While it might have been a great time to smile or give an equally heroic expression, his eyes were dull and his expression extraordinarily grave.