With a subtle flick of his fingers, glowing mands of arcane power began inscribing themselves around the balcony. Reemush straightened, calling forth invisible strands of elemental forces as his lips started giving shape to the first buzzings of an incantation.


    Down below, Drasus could only stare in dumbstruck horror as the battle took a new, even darker turn into nes of mystical warfare few dared even contemte. He prayed to whatever cruel gods were listening, saying that they had not just unchained an even more terrifying blight upon this realm.


    *


    A flickering aura began manifesting around Jaegar''s right hand, quickly coalescing into a smouldering orb of earth-red me. The young wizard slowly rotated his wrist, studying the eldritch fire with an inscrutable expression as it cast dancing shadows across his chiselled features.


    Reemush watched this development with narrowed eyes, his brow furrowing. "What manner of congration is that?" he demanded, unable to mask the undercurrent of disquiet in his tone. "I''ve never encountered pyromancies with such...aberrant properties."


    Rather than respond directly, Jaegar''s lips merely quirked in a faint smirk. Then, with an almostzy flicking motion, heunched the searing sphere straight towards the mage''s chest.


    Reemush had only an instant to react, his hands blurring through the artictions of a hasty defensive weave.


    Just before impact, a shimmering azure barrier burst into existence, interposing itself between the arcanist and the onrushing fireball. The two mystic forces collided with a resonant boom, the red mes sttering and swirling furiously against the shield''s repelling surface.


    BOOOM!!


    "Hah! Using such underhanded tricks?" Reemush snapped, his voice strained slightly from the effort of maintaining the barrier against Jaegar''s onught. "I should have expected no less from some untrained dog barely worthy of the term ''arcanist''."


    Jaegar didn''t deign to respond with words. With a subtle twitch of his fingers, the whirling torrent of red me altered trajectory, diverting around the edges of Reemush''s protective sphere. The mage gasped, instinctively attempting to reinforce his defences, only to have the fiery deluge surge in from multiple angles at once.


    It slipped through the cracks of his bardic weave with liquid ease, rebounding off the stones at his feet to cut off any chance of escape or evasion.


    In moments, Reemush found himself encapsted in a burning red me cyclone, theshing mes hungering ever closer to his trapped form. Snarling a guttural arcane litany, he thrust both arms outward, generating a shockwave of disruptive force that momentarily banished the inferno.


    When the smoke finally cleared, Reemush stood panting heavily, his borate robes scorched and tattered in ces.


    Shooting Jaegar a look of profound menace, he straightened to his full height.


    "Evidently, you are no mere fighter after all," he growled in a low, deadly tone. "Those profane pyromancies and your very aura...they reek of the forbidden paths."


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    Taking a measured step forward, Reemush''s eyes bore straight into Jaegar''s. "So tell me, young man, who, or what, are you? Where did your kind attain such sacrilegious might?"


    Rather than appear cowed or threatened by the mage''s demanding tone, Jaegar''s impassive mask didn''t so much as flicker. "A dead man doesn''t need to know my origins," he responded his words as calloused and hard-edged as the diator''s granite-hewn physique.


    Reemush regarded him in stretching silence, the weight of his re nearly palpable. When he finally spoke, his voice came as a grant hiss of outrage. "Very well, wretch. If you insist upon keeping your tongue so discourteous, I''ll have the answers I crave after severing your limbs from your body!"


    With a sweeping gesture, a maelstrom of magical force exploded outward in a punishing shockwave. Jaegar simply lifted an arm, allowing the mystical hurricane to crash against an invisible bulwark and dissipate around him in ravaged eddies. When the young wizard lowered his limb once more, Reemush was already rapidly weaving a new torrent of power.


    Scintitingnces of viridian energyshed out in rapid session, only to be intercepted and absorbed against some unseen forcefield as Jaegar stalked forward with imcable momentum. A psychic battering ram of pure telekic force impacted against his chest, arcing around him to splinter the very masonry of Stoneguard''s battlements.


    But still, Jaegar kept advancing, seemingly immune to Reemush''s magical onught.


    A vein began pulsing in the mage''s forehead as his attacks continued, failing to gain any purchase against this unstoppable nemesis. How could any mere mortal entity, however profanely trained, contain power enough to shake the natural bnces sopletely out of equilibrium?


    Teeth grinding in futile outrage, Reemush funnelled the remnants of his magic into one devastatingly overcharged bolt of pure entropic force. It rocketed from his syed fingertips,ncing straight and true to Jaegar''s chest--


    Only to detonate against an invisible, metaphysical barrier with the resounding boom of God''s own thunderp. The shockwave swept over Reemush in a deafening, concussive wall, sting him from his feet to smash in a boneless slump against the balcony''s far parapet.


    Jaegar has a natural affinity for lightning, and unaware of such a trait, Reemush poured so much into thest attack.


    For several moments, the only audible sound was the mage''sboured, wheezing gasps. Finally, he managed to pry his eyes open, craning his abused neck to fix Jaegar with a look of genuine bewilderment drenched in stark horror.


    "...What are you?"


    Jaegar finally came to a halt mere paces away from Reemush''s sprawled form. He regarded the mage coolly, the crimson mes burning in his outstretched palm casting an eldritch, pulsing glow across his granite-hewn visage.


    "You wanted to indulge in sharing my esoterica, mage," he answered, his deep bass voice reverberating with portentous menace. "Simply knowing that you have faced but a minuscule fraction of what I can truly unleash. The rest will be held in abeyance for now."


    And just when Jaegar was about to end him, Reemush sped his hands and his lips so fast that Jaegar couldn''tprehend what he was doing.


    He was chanting a ratherplex incantation, and within seconds, Jaegar could sense something happening around the man, so he quickly retreated.