Chương 231: 5.29 Spat

The command was unlike anything Irwyn had ever experienced. It was not magic, or at least it did not feel like the magic he knew. There was no mana or spell that he could feel, only the iron vice of something absolute. Not like words, but like a law of nature. Fighting against it was like trying to overcome gravity and take flight without any magic or limbs. Like opting to walk through a solid wall. An obviously impossible task. And still, Irwyn fought. There was a sadistic slowness to it.

The command did not take him over in an instant. Instead, it gradually seeped into him with a precise sluggishness, just fast enough so that he could struggle in futility and experience the sheer terror of what was happening to him. From the edges first, where his body numbed and left his own control, most of his brain turning traitor with just enough left to comprehend the self betrayal. Then deeper, seeping into his very essence.

It did not care for the bubble around his Soul, or perhaps just didn't expect it to be there at all, quickly piercing through its delicate balance as it delved further. Step by step, into the furthest reaches of his Soul. And there, it found something that the Lich never could have expected. A Name. Like a beast awoken, it lashed back at the foulness. At first dazedly, then with increasing urgency, eventually with burning hot rage. Just like the undead despised the living, Ignis Lumen despised the undead.

As soon as it understood what was happening, it required no further input on whether to wipe the intrusion out. To encourage that process, Irwyn blurred the line between himself and his previous life. Though still trapped, the Lich had seen no point in restricting the equivalent of a second tongue, leaving him with just enough leeway for that. For Becoming more of that great being and, in doing so, letting the Name become more of him, thus sharing increasingly deeply the memories and understanding of the situation.

It was still a struggle. A Name was something great and practically incorruptible, but Irwyn's mostly mortal self was far from that. Moreover, Irwyn had frankly no idea how to wield a power like that, even at the very center of his essence. He had to rely on pure instinct and half-incomprehensible memories from his Dreams to do any conscious directing at all. But thankfully, it became quickly apparent that the Lich's command was just as ill-prepared.

After all, even the most prodigious Conception mage could not have possibly hoped to overcome its power, leaving it bereft of countermeasures. Whatever strength had been infused into it, there was no matching a Name. So, with what felt like tremendous effort, the commandment was gradually shattered and wiped from existence. Even though Irwyn perceived all that at length, only a few moments had passed. And no sooner had one clash ended when another began.

In fact, were it not for the desperate battle over his very Soul, he would have noticed it far sooner. The eggshell around Irwyn's Soul, as he had come to call it, had already been faltering under the pressure beneath it. The outside power so carelessly piercing through had unraveled that last mote of balance. Irwyn felt the power erupt from within him in turn, enveloping his body—reforging it. Though the process was far less gentle than when he had partaken in dragon flesh or a Fragment.

It was closer to sandpaper being dragged through every patch of skin, blood vessel, or organ until they bled, followed by a dose of salt that would humble most preserved meat. Desperate to loosen the agony, Irwyn tried to grab hold of it and direct it as he would magic. After a moment of dazed flailing, it surprisingly worked. He grabbed the absolute cluster of agony around his heart and tried directing it with purpose. Instantly, all the pain in the region cut out, leaving Irwyn baffled.

A moment later, he realized the cause. It had to be the faen blessing he had obtained from Bhaak, so early into Conception. The ability to not feel the pain of self-alteration. Apparently, his direction was what made the distinction. This realization also caused just enough distraction to make him lose said grasp on the changes. Not that the pain was particularly more debilitating because that small portion of it had returned. It made it almost impossible to think, only that brief relief had even offered a window.

So Irwyn quickly decided he would not. Just like what he had practiced for his first Carving, he would delve deeper into his magic. So far that there would not be enough of his consciousness left to experience the agony. All he had the time to outline was something that would come naturally even without thoughts. So Irwyn decided to try and further empower the parts of him that had already been changed by the draconic feast. During that process, Irwyn lost all sense of time.

There was no will left to truly feel the metamorphosis, nor observe the overt alterations. Just a will of magic, guiding the change of flesh to best fit itself. From beneath the splintered shell arose the Domain, the immortal form that had been forced to feign humanity, and, still stirred from the earlier battle, a Name. Unbeknownst to the owner, each left their mark upon the body. When his eyes finally opened again, there was only Light.

At first, Irwyn's just awakening consciousness almost panicked, thinking himself to be blind. He quickly realised that it was merely an attack. A cage formed of LIGHT surrounded his form, tendrils trying to scoop out chunks of his flesh and even pierce through his eyes. Irwyn reached forward on half instinct and the magic shattered. He blinked. Not to get out any spots, but out of surprise. That had been a Domain spell, he was sure of that. Yet it might as well have been snow under midsummer sun.

At that point, he noted that his hand was burning. In fact, his entire body was. Golden flames not only rose above his flesh, they were merged with his physical body. Had become an extension. Though it felt unfamiliar and strange, they were as if part of his skin. Unwilling to explore that sensation at the moment, Irwyn chose to pull them back, his arms quickly returning to normal, though a low smoldering still clung to him.

Another attack came: A barrage of distilled brilliance congealed into sharpened chains, but Light could not harm Irwyn any more than Flame. The Ravener still tried. Irwyn willed it, and the spell stopped. Already, it felt as if it had been moving in slow motion. Constellation of will had clearly undergone a vast change as it adapted to STARFIRE, and that was before Irwyn had the time to manually optimise it.

The spells of a Domain mage that had only recently been barely possible to react to seemed pathetically slow. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it As Irwyn glanced at the undead woman not far from him, he reiterated to himself that it was perhaps not the time to be lost in thought. Besides not wanting her to actually figure out a way to cause him harm, the overall situation was still unknown to him.

A Temporal Beacon had just been destroyed, and Irwyn wasn't sure if seconds, minutes, or perhaps even hours had passed since then during his transformation. So he experimentally tapped into STARFIRE and manifested an orb of magic overhead. It came so easily to him to let it fall upon the Ravener. The former woman from the Duchy of Yellow did not so much as react as she was incinerated, body and Soul. The speed, the power… it amazed Irwyn.

He could feel what Dervish—a pang of grief struck, but Irwyn quickly suppressed it—had spoken about in relation to Domains. Mastery. Parts of the vast power that he truly understood. Well, wielding raw Starfire and shaping it into falling stars came surprisingly easy for his first attempt, but he had no way to gauge how close that was to the full potential. He glanced towards where Elizabeth had previously stood, finding only a hovering black spot. It was minuscule, just a single dot hovering at chest height.

Yet at the same time, it was all-consuming. He could feel the surrounding light twisting around it as if it were a sinkhole. It was not hard to guess where such a pathway led. Remembering their previous circumstances, Irwyn began re-establishing his barriers as quickly as he could, channeling STARFIRE through them. He could not be sure whether Elizabeth had broken out of the command as he had.

While he hoped so, it was likely that whatever special protections she had, they were not meant to tussle with a Truth-bearing Lich. He was just about to start coming up with a plan when he got his answer. Elizabeth appeared inside his barriers and nearly took off his head with a claw of pure Void magic. It was only because he had been expecting some kind of attack that he had been able to react at all.

He improvised something akin to a parry with a surge of barely controlled magic while simultaneously interposing a barrier between himself and the attack. Elizabeth had naturally seen that panicked reaction coming and tried to Voidstep right behind him for a follow-up assault. Thankfully, Irwyn managed to fix his stupid mistake before that could come to fruition. After all, he had still made his barrier with that extremely specific loophole that allowed Elizabeth to enter freely.

Something that he had gotten so used to that it was basically muscle memory whenever forming any defenses. Even during their spars, Elizabeth had simply opted to not exploit it out of good sportsmanship. That way there was no need to fight against the habit. They had naively never even conceptualised a situation like the current one. At least removing that loophole was not difficult. His barriers already inherently rejected any teleportation or other means of bypassing their edges.

By fixing the problem, Elizabeth ended up unable to re-enter the world where she had wanted. If Irwyn had more time, he possibly could have set up a trap inside the loophole instead of just closing it, but the situation had already been too close for comfort. She instead appeared outside those defenses, facing him. Her appearance had changed significantly. Though still recognisable from her silhouette, Elizabeth had become a shuddering black specter.

More than just a shadow, she was the all-consuming blackness of the Void, but distinct from any such manifestations Irwyn had glimpsed in the past. There was a distinct flickering at the edges of her shape, almost like the dancing of flames. More importantly, Irwyn felt the fire was feeding on the very light around her. Dragging it down to fan themselves. There were only a few features with some contrast against the monotone blackness, allowing them to be told apart from just the vague shape.

For one, her veins, bulging from under that midnight skin with distinct intensity that made them magically noticeable, if not visually. Likely Elvenkind, Elizabeth's old favourite spell, suddenly elevated by a suitable Domain. It used to make her faster and stronger in both body and magic, though more esoteric effects had already been shaping up with only Concepts, it would likely empower her in other ways as well. The other notable feature were her eyes.

They were burning at a far greater intensity than the rest of her body. With outright Gluttony and Greed, a will to consume everything they beheld, making no exceptions. It was only through deep personal understanding that Irwyn could at all read her expression through those abyssal eyes. And she was terrified.

"Please tell me you are better off than me," she begged, those inhuman eyes wide. Conscious, able to talk, just not in charge of her body and magic.

"Yes," Irwyn slowly nodded, not going into details. Those could wait for after the crisis.

"Try to fight it."

"Why do you think you didn't just die?" She said, voice cracking.

"I managed to pull back the slice by a fraction of a second. Please, don't scare me like that again." As she talked, Irwyn noticed tiny needles trying to worm their way out of the Void within his innermost barrier. Normally, his defenses should prevent any such incursion, but both of them were new to fighting with Domains, which meant there would be plenty of loopholes applied both ways. Except Irwyn had to restrain himself from lethal methods. He needed a plan, or at least a hint of a way out.

"Any idea how fast the Federation will respond?" He asked. Elizabeth began flailing against his outermost barriers. The anathemic relationship between Void and Light applied to Temzdaflame and Starfire only partially, but it still made offense favoured. Which was why Irwyn had long since learned to make reactive barriers that exploded against attacks to neutralise them proactively rather than trying to withstand those directly. It quickly became apparent that they would be stalemated in that match.

"Hard to say," she explained in the meanwhile.

"This cannot be an isolated attack. Anyone who could interfere will be busy elsewhere.

"Aren't there any other Domain mages in Spireholm?" Irwyn questioned.

"The two in the inner city are dead now," she said, pausing as brief pain flickered over her expression when speaking of Dervish. But her body continued moving, so she could not linger on the emotion.

"Two more are stationed in the outer city, an Inquisitor and a seven Domain Time mage. The issue is, communications are probably still obstructed, not to mention that, again, this couldn't have been the only attack. I don't believe the Rot would destroy just one Beacon. The entire Federation is probably embroiled in pitched battles. Even if they spot two Domain mages fighting here, we are away from any intact infrastructure or living people, so…"

"They won't be able to tell who is on the Federation's side," Irwyn realised.

"Especially since we both technically appeared out of nowhere," she confirmed.

"They will let us fight this out until the crisis passes, which could be hours. Afterwards, whoever can be spared will carefully approach, ideally… after there is a clear victor."

"Which means I will most likely have to restrain you myself," he concluded. A monumental task, as they both knew. There was a reason they were mostly even in who won their duels.

"I believe in you, Irwyn. If anyone can put me down, it's you," she said, still so deathly afraid.

"Sabotaging myself like this is hard, but I will try." She was not one to falter in battle, but the current situation had shaken her. Yet Irwyn stopped himself from offering any further words of comfort. As much as he didn't want to admit it, it was probably to their benefit. The more distraught Elizabeth became, the more mistakes would be made. But Irwyn hated it. Despised to see her like that, perhaps more than anything before in his life.

And even more so, he cursed the one responsible, swearing vengeance in the back of his head. But that was for later. First, he had to find a way out for both of them.