The Mage's Limits: Mages of Martir Book #2 (31 page)

As soon as the Magical Superior said that, Darek felt control of his ice wall leave him, as though someone had forcibly taken it from his hands. The minute he lost control of the wall, it evaporated into mist, showing the charred and burned remains of the Magical Superior's study, and Jakuuth, who kicked aside the ashes of what might have been a book at one point as he approached the three of them.

“Enough of this,” said Jakuuth with a snarl. His hands were glowing now. “I wish I didn't have to do this, but it looks like I have no choice. If I am to get the revenge I deserve, then I will need to go all-out, as I should have done from the start.”

He jerked his gavel up. His gavel glowed as brilliantly and brightly as the sun, but it wasn't just his gavel that glowed. His whole body glowed; no, not glowed, burned, like he was on fire. His skin rapidly burned away, revealing muscle and bone that glowed like his gavel. Heat radiated from his body, like that of a volcanic crater, making the air harder to breathe.

“What are you doing?” Darek asked, raising his voice to be heard over the flames that crackled around Jakuuth's skin. “Jakuuth!”

The Magical Superior, who sweat so profusely now that his auburn robes were as wet as if he had been dunked in the Crystal Sea, stepped back in horror. “Oh no. He's going to perform a full Divine Burst.”

“A what?” said Darek, whipping his head to look at the Superior. “What is a Divine Burst?”

“It's when a mage uses all of their magical power at once in one big explosion,” Mom explained quickly. “It usually results in the death of the mage who casts it.”

“But Jakuuth is a Limitless mage,” said Darek. “What will
his
Divine Burst look like?”

“I don't want to know,” said Mom. She turned toward the exit. “We've got to get out of here before—”

“It's no use!” Jakuuth roared, his voice distorted by the flames that now enveloped him. “When I explode, I will destroy not only the Arcanium, but every building and being on North Academy! There's no way you can save everyone, not even yourselves!”

Darek almost said that that was a lie, but when he sensed Jakuuth's magical energy levels rapidly rising—rising far faster than even a Limitless's power should, going well past the Magical Superior's power level—he realized that there might be some truth to that claim. More truth than he'd like to admit.

“But you'll kill yourself, too!” Darek yelled. “How will you enjoy your revenge if you're dead?”

“I won't die,” Jakuuth's voice rumbled like the flames that enveloped his form. “I am the Son of Grinf. Fire cannot kill me. Fire is my servant.”

Darek looked at the Magical Superior and Mom. “What do we do? We can't evacuate the entire school in time, not when there's this huge battle going on below right now.”

“We figure out how to stop him,” said Mom. “That's the only option we have left.”

“But how?” said Darek. He gestured at the blazing Jakuuth, who was now laughing like a maniac. “We can't even touch him. Even if all three of us combined our powers to summon a river of ice cold water, it won't be near enough to put out his flames.”

Mom bit her lower lip. “Then what do you suggest we do? If we can't put out his fire, and we can't limit his magic, then are we all going to die?”

The Magical Superior had been rather quiet through the entire conversation. His old eyes were thoughtful, but hurried, as if he was thinking quickly and deeply about how to get out of this situation. Darek wasn't sure how useful that was, however, because he doubted even the Magical Superior could do anything about Jakuuth.

“We have to leave,” said Mom, shaking her head as the ever-rising temperature caused more sweat to roll down her face. “We don't have much time left. We'll tell as many students and teachers about the evacuation plan as possible, but I doubt we'll save everyone. Better to save a few than to save no one at all, in my opinion.”

“There is one option we could use,” said the Magical Superior. “But I doubt either of you will like it.”

“Really?” said Darek, looking at the Magical Superior with hope in his eyes. “What is it?”

The light from Jakuuth's flames threw the age lines of the Magical Superior's face into sharp relief, making him look even older than he was. He stood as tall as he could in his old age, as if he was a soldier preparing to go to war.

“There are only a few minutes left,” said the Magical Superior, “but I can tell you this: In order for me to save North Academy and everyone who lives within it, I must make the ultimate sacrifice.”

“The ultimate—?” Mom gasped. “No, Magical Superior, don't.”

“I have no choice,” said the Magical Superior, shaking his head. “Jakuuth is right. With the speed at which his power is rapidly building, the explosion that will result will be beyond catastrophic. It will kill every man and woman here, no matter whether they're a student or one of his soldiers. It is the only way.”

The Magical Superior stepped toward Jakuuth, but Mom grabbed his arm and jerked on it, causing him to look at her in surprise.

There were actually tears in Mom's eyes, which surprised Darek, as he had never seen Mom cry like this before. “Please, Magical Superior, don't. The teachers and students still need you. Even if it works, who will be the next Magical Superior? You don't have a pupil to turn the title over to.”

“That is why I am granting you the temporary title of Magical Superior of North Academy, Jenur,” said the Magical Superior “Out of all of the teachers at this school, I trust that you will know how best to lead it in my absence. At the very least, I know you will look toward the gods for guidance in determining who my official successor should be.”

The tears were mixing with the sweat on Mom's face now, which made it impossible to tell where one began and where the other ended. But she didn't resist as the Magical Superior gently tugged his arm out of her grasp.

Then he looked at Darek and said, “Keep your mother and everyone else safe. And whatever else the future may bring, know this: As long as you trust in the gods—and yourself—you should be able to handle whatever comes, no matter how hard it may be.”

Darek opened his mouth to say something (though what, he didn't know, as he was too grief-stricken to think rationally), but then the Magical Superior ran toward the flaming Jakuuth. Darek reached for the Superior, but his fingers only just brushed against the ends of the Superior's robes as they flowed out behind him.

Jakuuth was still laughing, laughing as loudly as a madman. He didn't even let up when the Magical Superior fired some kind of strange yellow energy chain at him, which wrapped around Jakuuth's flaming body like a cobra around a mouse.

“What are you going to do, O great Magical Superior?” Jakuuth asked, his mocking voice barely distinguishable from the roaring flames around him. “Hold me down? That will just make it so much easier for me to kill everyone and everything in the area! Even the mighty Walls will evaporate instantly upon being exposed to the heat of my Divine Burst.”

The Magical Superior's clothes and even skin were starting to burn away from the sheer heat of Jakuuth's fire. Nonetheless, he stood proud and tall, almost like a god, and said, “Good bye, Jakuuth. May we both find peace in the beyond.”

As soon as those words left his mouth, the Magical Superior and Jakuuth disappeared instantly. The temperature in the room abruptly dropped, allowing Darek to breathe normally again. A cold wind blew in from the hole in the wall from the boulder that the Magical Superior had redirected, causing Darek to shiver as it passed through the burned holes in his robes that he had not noticed until just now.

“Where did they go?” Mom asked, looking around the burned-out study in alarm. “They couldn't have possibly gone very—”

A loud explosion, like a volcano erupting, cut off Mom. Darek looked up through the hole in the ceiling from Jakuuth's earlier fire blast and saw, far up in the sky, a massive fire ball—much bigger than anything Darek had seen in his life—floating above the Arcanium. It was a perfect sphere, looking almost like a second sun in the sky, and it burned as hotly as any star, its heat noticeable even from where Darek stood, though it could also have been the heat from the burnt study that he felt instead.

“Why …” Darek glanced at Mom. “Why is it so perfectly round like that?”

“The Magical Superior,” said Mom. “He must have used the last of his magic to hold Jakuuth's explosion in one place. He probably didn't want the explosion to so much as touch the school.”

“So that's why he sacrificed himself,” said Darek, his eyes locked on the explosion that seemed to rage on forever against the transparent magical sphere holding it together. “He knew he couldn't teleport Jakuuth away before he exploded. The only way he could ensure the safety of the school was to contain the explosion as best as he could.”

But even as Darek said that, grief rose in his heart unlike any he had felt before, worse than any mere sadness he had ever felt in his life. He now understood why Mom was crying … because he was now, too.

Chapter Twenty-One

D
urima sidled against the side of one of the many skyscrapers of World's End, doing her best not to look down, because she was currently over one hundred feet above the streets and knew that if she looked down even once, she would lose her cool and probably fall to her death.

Of course, I might just fall to my death anyway,
Durima thought, wincing as the windows of a nearby building exploded outwards and rained glass onto her, though thankfully none of it stuck in her body.
Maybe it will be one of the gods fighting a half-god, or maybe one of those Limitless soldiers will spot me and try to kill me, or maybe I'll get caught in the middle of Skimif and Uron's conflict. I just hope I can survive long enough for my plan to work.

Actually finding Skimif and Uron had not been difficult. After sending off Gujak and the Mysterious One to the ethereal to carry out their part of the plan, Durima had taken the ethereal herself to enter World's End quickly. When she landed, she simply followed the obvious trail of destruction and debris that led from the southern end of the city all the way to its center, near the Temple of the Gods, which as far as Durima could tell was one of the few buildings in the city not to be wrecked or damaged in some way.

Along the way, Durima had spotted more than a few disturbing sights. One street she walked along had been strewn with the corpses of her fellow katabans, along with a handful of humans who she assumed to be the Limitless soldiers that the Mysterious One had told her about. It had looked like a massacre, as if the Limitless had been murdering any katabans they could get their hands on. They had even killed the children. While Durima was not much of a fan of children herself, it had unsettled her deeply to see the corpses of so many young ones either burned black or torn to shreds by some unknown spell.

She had also spotted about a dozen Soldiers of the Gods trying to kill one of the half-gods, a monster that had vaguely resembled a giant dragon made out of water. She had left before seeing if they won, but based on the fact that the water dragon half-god had killed one half of the Soldiers in one blow, she didn't think they would succeed.

Then she almost got caught in a battle between the Tusked God and a boar-headed half-god with a poorly-chiseled stone body. Last Durima saw, the Tusked God ran his tusks straight through the half-god's body, although the half-god in question had been about to crush the Tusked God's skull in with a chunk of the street he had picked up.

Now Durima was here, having climbed the side of a skyscraper to get a better view of Skimif and Uron's battle. The two were standing on the rooftop of one of the lower buildings, close enough that Durima could jump onto it if she wanted to, but not close enough that she was in danger of being harmed or noticed by either of them. They circled each other like rival lightning tigers, which meant that soon they would be at each other's throats again.

My part of the plan is probably the easy part,
Durima thought.
Just keep Uron in my sight, and when Gujak and the Mysterious One return, attack.

The plan was simple. Gujak was supposed to enter the ethereal and tell all of the katabans traveling on it to exit the ethereal and stay on whatever islands they happened to find themselves on. If none of them listened to Gujak, the Mysterious One would order them to do it instead, seeing as he was a god, which meant that all katabans had to listen to him no matter what.

Once Gujak and the Mysterious One were sure that the ethereal was empty, they would return to World's End and inform Durima about that. Durima would then trap Uron in the ethereal, which he shouldn't be able to escape from, seeing as only the gods and katabans could enter or exit the ethereal on their own.

The plan relied on quite a few assumptions, such as that all of the katabans would evacuate the ethereal when the Mysterious One ordered them to, and that Uron would not have some way of escaping the ethereal. That second part in particular was hard to prove, as Durima still didn't know what the full extent of Uron's powers were.

For all I know, trapping Uron in the ethereal might just make him stronger,
Durima thought.
But we don't have any other choice. Skimif can't beat Uron on his own, at least while Uron has the God-killer. At least banishing Uron into the ethereal might give us time to figure out a more permanent solution for dealing with him, anyway.

On the next building, Skimif fired a huge lava ball at Uron. Uron deflected it as easily as if it were a toy, and then stomped on the roof of the building, causing it to crack open like an egg. Skimif, however, jumped across the crack to avoid tripping over it, and the two ultimate beings stopped circling each other. They stood directly apart from each other now, which would have been the perfect opportunity for Durima to banish Uron into the ethereal, but with no sign of Gujak or the Mysterious One anywhere, she would just have to wait.

The sound of huge flapping wings nearby caused her head to whip to the right. She groaned when she recognized the Mican crystal claws and the pretty boy face of Commander Erich, Commander of the Soldiers of the Gods.