He chose a church.
Of course he did.
I stood at the entrance for a mont — cold stone, narrow windows, a door left open just wide enough that walking through it felt like a choice rather than a trap — and adjusted my face to nothing and went in.
The nave was stripped bare. No pews, no cloth, just old stone and the kind of silence that settled into places people had stopped using for their original purpose. The stained glass was still intact. Morning light ca through it in fragnts — red, blue, amber — falling across the floor in broken pieces.
In the centre of all of it, the ritual circle.
I clocked it the mont I crossed the threshold and didn't stop walking. The outer ring had seven nested layers of inscription, carved rather than drawn — shallow channels in the stone filled with sothing dark that drank the coloured light instead of reflecting it. The inner configuration was a Blood-Mana Transfusion array more complex than anything I'd seen outside of theoretical texts. Load-bearing geotric structures ran outward from the centre like roots.
I had thirty seconds of walking to read all of it. I used them, noted everything, and kept my face empty.
Austin was already seated.
High-backed chair, small table to his right, a cup of tea still steaming. Older than I'd expected — not elderly, but the kind of seasoned that ca from decades of sustained precision rather than age. His cane leaned against the chair arm. His Arcane Matrix, even broken, pressed against the edge of my awareness like a furnace with the doors sealed — banked low, limited, still fundantally a furnace.
He looked at the way soone looked at a thing they'd been waiting a long ti to examine.
"Valerian Aísē," he said.
I said nothing. Blank eyes, slow breathing, present but not there. phistopheles had been specific — the eyes are everything, keep your focus turned inward and let them go completely passive, like a light with nobody standing behind it.
Austin studied , then nodded once, satisfied, and gestured toward the circle.
"Co. Stand inside."
I ca and stood inside the circle.
The array activated the mont my feet crossed the outer ring — a pull, gentle and precise, nothing violent. The channels ward and the dark substance in the carved lines caught the light differently as the first mana intake ran through the structure. I felt the array begin reading my blood through the conductive stone — cataloguing, separating, working through each bloodline signature in sequence.
Austin watched from his chair, calm and attentive, the expression of a man observing a process he designed and trusted completely.
Inside my chest, the catalyst stirred.
The resistance phistopheles had warned about — that pressure behind my sternum that had been building since the injection this morning — sharpened into sothing with edges as Austin's mana signature reached through the array and made contact with my blood. The live charge responding exactly as designed. Foreign signature detected. Absorption initiating.
I kept my face empty.
Any mont.
The outer ring pulsed once, twice, the transfusion drawing deeper — pulling more of the blood composition into the circuit, threading Austin's mana through the array in the slow, deliberate pattern of a ritual designed to maximise intake. I felt the catalyst fully wake inside the ridian Forge, felt it lock onto Austin's mana signature threading through my veins, felt the trigger sequence reach its final calculation —
It triggered.
I waited.
One second.
Two.
Five.
Austin reached for his tea.
The channels were still glowing and the pull was still running. He took a asured sip, set the cup down, and returned to watching with the sa expression he'd worn since I walked through the door.
Nothing had happened to him.
I held the performance and ran the calculation behind the blank eyes — fast, cold, looking for the conclusion the sequence of events actually supported.
The catalyst triggered. I felt it trigger — the absorption sequence initiated, Austin's mana reached in and the catalyst responded. Which ans it didn't detonate because the absorption didn't complete. He blocked the intake sohow. Not the catalyst — the transfusion itself. His circuits didn't actually take the blood in. The catalyst found a foreign signature and fired but the signature retreated before the threshold.
The plan failed at intake. He doesn't know the catalyst is still live. He doesn't know anything.
The array completed its cycle. The outer ring went dark and the pull stopped.
Austin set down the cup. "That will be all," he said pleasantly. "The arrangent is satisfied. You're free to go."
I held the blank expression for three more seconds. Then I looked at him directly.
"What did you just take from ," I said. Not a question. Not the performance.
Austin looked at with polite, mild surprise. "The transfusion is complete. I've chosen to exercise only that component of the arrangent — the remainder I waive." The careful warmth hadn't shifted. "You're free to go."
Sothing about that warmth was wrong. Not threatening, just — off. The way a room felt off when sothing in it had changed and you hadn't identified what yet.
"The catalyst should have detonated," I said.
"Should it?" Austin said. Quiet. Genuinely interested.
I moved.
....
....
The first spell left my lips before the distance between us had closed by half.
"Kettenblitz."
The incantation called the frawork through my Arcane Matrix — borrowed, not mine, a key in a lock I hadn't built — and the spell answered fast. A compression chain of electrical mana, aid not at Austin but at the ritual circle's central inscription. Shatter the load-bearing structure and the entire array collapsed with it, taking his prepared ground —
Austin's hand moved and his Domain — even crippled, even partial — caught the chain before it landed. Not destroyed. Redirected. Shunted sideways into the stone wall where it discharged in a sharp crack and a fall of old plaster.
He hadn't stood up.
I shifted to gravitation — silent, my own math, no incantation. Not aid at Austin. At the floor. The carved channels running outward from the circle's centre. Warp the gravitational vector underneath the physical array and the geotry distorts — Domain suppression couldn't override a change in actual physics —
Austin stepped one pace to the left and out of the field's radius, the practiced ease of soone who had fought enough mages to read a gravitational approach from its opening variables. I adjusted the radius mid-calculation to follow and he adjusted again. The field landed on empty stone. The channels in that section warped slightly, not enough. The load-bearing inscriptions were outside my reach and he'd made sure of it in two steps without changing his expression.
He still hadn't raised his voice. The cane was still against the chair.
"Aschewall."
Entropy field — broad application, less precise, designed to degrade mana saturation within its radius. If I couldn't shatter the circle directly I could decay its residual charge, reduce what Austin had to work with —
Austin spoke one word. Sothing old, Association thodology I didn't recognise. The Aschewall collapsed before it fully ford — not redirected, not absorbed. Corrected. Like my construction had contained a fundantal error and he'd simply pointed it out and the spell had agreed with him and unravelled accordingly.
The silence afterward was worse than a counterstrike would have been.
I pushed harder — gravity feint, deliberate, visible, slow enough for Austin to read and commit his counter — while "Steinbrechung" was already on my lips, the shattering formula aid at the outer ring while his attention went to the gravity —
He covered both simultaneously. One fluid adjustnt — Domain shifts to neutralise the feint, direct counter intercepts the Steinbrechung in the sa motion. Not two responses. One.
I landed the Steinbrechung anyway. Tried to. The Domain caught it four centitres from the outer ring and held it there — suspended, straining, my full output pressing against his suppression and going exactly nowhere. I could feel the resistance through my Arcane Matrix like a door that pushed back with more weight than I had available. Three seconds I held the pressure, then my mana ran thin and the spell dissolved.
My breathing was harder than it should have been after three exchanges.
The Forge. Even throttled —
The mont I reached for the ridian Forge the catalyst lurched. Hot, grinding, the sensation of sothing alive inside my sternum catching on a gear it was never ant to touch. I pushed slightly harder and the catalyst responded with a warning I felt in my back teeth.
I let go of the Forge imdiately.
Great!
I can't use either My Bloodlines or Lightning or the Flas...
Not even call out my Bow...
Now what...
'phistopheles you gotta have an explanation ready for the next ti I see you'
.....
..
I hope you enjoyed the chapter — leave a comnt if you have any thoughts!
Also I have been absent due to building up The Wiki of This novel now it's sowhat complete.
You can join the Discord for Participation as Wiki Helpers
User Comments
0 comments from readers