"[Severance]!"
The stroke hit Myrasyn's barrier and cut through the mana structure holding the spell together, the blade passing through the construct the way a knife passed through a stretched thread, and the two halves of the barrier fell away like cut silk. Alexios surged through the gap.
"[Luminous Tide]!" Myrasyn's staff flared and a wave of pressed light slammed into Alexios from the front. It hit him center mass and drove him back three steps, his boots grinding trenches into the scorched earth, but the Warrior King leaned into it and kept ing. His longsword rose through the wave and the next cut severed the spell itself, the light splitting apart around his blade as the mana sustaining it was carved in two.
Myrasyn's eyes sharpened. "[Prism Cage]!"
Walls of light erupted around Alexios from four directions, closing in to pin him in place. His blade moved in a single spinning arc that cut all four walls at once, the severed light dissolving into motes before they reached him, and he was through and swinging before the fragments hit the ground.
"[Repulse]!" A pulse of raw force exploded from Myrasyn's staff and hit Alexios point-blank. It threw him back five meters, bought her a moment of breathing room, and she spent it layering three barriers between them in rapid succession.
He cut through all three in two strokes.
At this range she was burning through mana just to survive. Every ward she raised lasted one swing. Every spell she cast to create distance, he closed before the echo faded.
That's not to speak about the serious lack of any sort of damage visible on Alexios.
But she couldn't give ground and fight from range, as she would prefer.
After all, Quinlan was behind her.
Every step she retreated was a step closer to the bleeding man she was protecting, and Alexios knew it. He pressed harder, cutting through barriers faster than she could raise them, and the gap between each severed spell and the next one forming was shrinking toward zero.
Myrasyn was the strongest mage on Elvardia's side, but a mage forced into melee range against a swordsman who could cut through her spells was a mage fighting on someone else's terms.
Then…
"Queen Myrasyn."
Quinlan's voice came from behind her.
"I appreciate the gesture but you don't need to babysit me."
Myrasyn caught the next stroke on a hastily formed barrier, using her magic like a melee weapon. She wasn't having a great time with it, wincing as the impact from Alexios's overwhelming strikes rattled through her arms.
As a woman who specialized in the Magic stat, she could not fight a physical battle against a man like Alexios, who was believed by Elvardia to be the most plete 'fighter' archetype alive today.
A simple punch from him would turn Myrasyn into an unrecognizable corpse, thus she had to keep casting her spells no matter how exhausting.
"And what exactly do you suggest, you reckless boy?"
"What else?"
Morgana's body lurched forward. The puppet queen was sent flying past Myrasyn, planted between Alexios and the elf queen with her empty eyes fixed on nothing. Her staff was gone, lost somewhere in the wreckage behind them.
Alexios stopped.
The longsword halted mid-swing. His blade trembled with the effort of holding it still.
"Quinlan Elysiar…" he growled while staring at his wife's perilous state. "You dare?"
Myrasyn's eyes widened for a moment before she let out a breath that was half laugh, half disbelief.
"How can one person be so shameless… Using the wife against the husband?!"
"…" Quinlan did not feel inclined to ment, instead turning toward the man who asked him a question.
"Of course I dare, old friend…" He rolled his neck and the ice-and-stone fingers of his prosthetic hands flexed at his sides. "I told you many times I'd deal with your wife if you didn't. You had every chance to put a leash on her but you didn't."
He tilted his head.
"So the duty fell to me."
The veins in Alexios's sword arm stood taut and the golden blade hummed with enough power to split the field beneath them, but his wife was three feet in front of him with a caved-in chest and empty eyes.
Quinlan's gaze shifted past Alexios. Past Myrasyn. Past all of them, to the healer kneeling in the dirt twenty meters away.
Her staff was dimming.
"Healer."
She flinched. The healing light flickered and the tissue knitting across Morgana's chest slowed.
"Did I stutter?" Quinlan's voice dropped. "Your queen is bleeding out in front of you and you're losing focus. What kind of oath did you take?"
"Gh!" Tears cut lines through the grime on her face. The woman she'd sworn to protect was standing in a pool of her own blood, breathing in shallow, rattling wheezes that sprayed pink mist with every exhale, and the enemy who'd turned her into a puppet was scolding the healer for not healing fast enough.
With gritted teeth, she poured more mana into the staff. The light steadied. The tissue resumed knitting.
And she was not alone in her anguish.
The Royal Guard stood where they were, behind Alexios, merely watching. Twelve men and women in enchanted plate stood frozen on the ruined field, weapons drawn, training screaming at them to fight.
But the Royal Guard did not serve the Vraven Kingdom, nor the crown. They did not answer to the king, nor to the military council, nor to any lord or duke or general who wore the kingdom's colors. Their oaths were older than most noble houses and more specific than any other military branch in existence.
The Royal Guard served the Queen of the nation.
Their fealty was to Morgana Ravenshade herself. They were hers. Every one of them had knelt before Morgana on the day of her crowning or when they were promoted to the guard, and sworn a blood oath to protect her life above all others.
Morgana was their only true mander. And Morgana was standing right there, alive, bleeding, and under the control of the Primordial Villain.
If they attacked Quinlan, Morgana was in the way.
If they attacked Morgana, they violated the oath that defined their existence.
If they did nothing, they watched their queen bleed and be used as a weapon while they stood in the dirt and held swords they couldn't swing.
The guard captain gripped his greatsword with both hands and the metal groaned under his fingers. His eyes darted between Quinlan and his queen, calculating angles, measuring distances, looking for a gap that didn't exist because the Primordial Villain had placed Morgana exactly where a gap would never form, and used his wind powers to shift her around as the situation demanded.
Quinlan spat more blood through his helmet.
He reached through [Subjugation] and into Morgana's channels.
His right hand rose. Ice crackled through the stone-and-ice fingers and a lance of frost formed in his grip, cold mana condensing into a projectile.
Morgana's hands rose at the same time.
"Let's see what centuries of marriage is actually worth."
Her broken mouth opened. Blood sprayed from her lips as the muscles contracted around words she hadn't chosen.
"[Molten Cascade]."
Magma erupted from between her palms. It boiled outward in a rolling tide of liquid rock that glowed white at its core, the heat warping the air above it into a shimmering haze, and it swept toward the Royal Guard and Alexios in a wave wide enough to swallow them all.
Both spells launched in the same heartbeat. Ice curved upward before screaming down toward their heads. Magma exploded toward the front, consuming everything in its path. Two attacks from two bodies, equally devastating.
Alexios Valorian planted his feet.
He looked at Quinlan through the ining attack.
And for the first time in a thousand years, the Warrior King's posure fully shattered.
He released a guttural scream.
"QUINLAN ELYSIAR! I'LL KILL YOU!"
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