“You have hidden in plain sight for what—forty years? Remarkably clever. But technology has changed, and I can track you down. By the time I’m finished, I will know everything about you.”
His voice is infuriatingly calm.
“I’ll discover who your master is, who forged you, and who you were. Creating a sentient object the size of a house would have demanded extraordinary magic, and there are few mages of that calibre. Within hours I’ll know your identity, your family, your origins—and precisely what makes you tick. There is nowhere left for you to hide.”
And that is when I know, after one hundred and sixty-one years of peace, it is over.
“You need to drop your wards, Abomination. Otherwise you are not going to like what happens next.”
He waits around sixty seconds for my response.
Without warning, his hand dips into his pocket; the wand, his focus, is already in his grip. His wrist flicks towards me.
I brace my wards, pouring extra power into them.
Black streaks of his magic strike?—
and itburns.
Oh my gosh, it burns.
Pain—real pain—lashes through me. I have not felt anything like it for a very long time; I had not thought I still could. Whatever he is doing, it hurts, though I cannot tell how.
If my ward were ordinary, he would have torn it apart.
Spiky black meets a lilac glow that sparks on contact—lilac, then indigo, blue, green—until the air fizzes white with smoke.
And for an instant, the current runs both ways, my power through him and his through me, completing a single circuit. The contact feels almost… right, like two halves of a pattern seeking to lock together—then it twists, forced into opposition, and the wrongness makes me want to scream.
Something in me strains towards that connection even as I wrench free.
He tilts his head, watching the display, and nods as though I have confirmed something for him.
He knows nothing. I have existed a very long time. I have read more books than he can imagine, studying every form of magic within reach. And he thinks he can prod and poke me into a mistake?
Not a chance.
I do not attack. I hold my calm and study him back.
I try to analyse the spell, but it keeps shifting. One moment he attacks; the next he withdraws and changes tactics entirely.
He does everything he can to provoke me.
Then the magic shifts again. It feels as though he issiphoning my power into himself, only to hurl it back at me with twice the force.
My own magicrecogniseshis, and without attacking, I absorb what I can, but he continues. His pale eyes blaze with blinding white light, his pupils gone.
His assault is relentless.
And then—finally—he stops.
For a wild moment, I think he must feel this twisted link too—but if he does, his face gives nothing away.
He nods once, like a man ticking off a conclusion in a notebook.
Then he does something I do not expect.
He steps back.
