The air around Vaeris trembled as mana surged outward in tightening spirals. The ground beneath her boots vibrated faintly, answering the call of a will that had bent worlds long before.

  Helena Voss stood perfectly still as the attack came. Her form shimmered, molecules spreading apart until she became ghostlike. The volcanic debris passed harmlessly through her transparent silhouette.

  Right behind the initial volley, Vaeris’ wand flashed. A jagged stream of lightning struck Helena's chest, forcing matter back into place. Her body, suddenly substantial again, hurled backward through the air.

  Coming from her right flank, Nymara Hale raised one hand.

  The first kinetic lance cracked across the battlefield like a breaking whip and the air itself seemed to tear.

  Vaeris moved.

  Her body blurred into a burst of motion, leaving a faint afterimage where she had stood a heartbeat earlier.

  The projectile detonated in the ground behind her. Stone fragments blasted outward in a violent spray that peppered the surrounding flats.

  Hale fired again. Repeatedly, not giving Vaeris a moment's respite.

  Invisible rounds of compressed force slammed into the battlefield with artillery violence, each impact throwing shards of volcanic rock high into the ash-thick air.

  Vaeris did not stop moving. She couldn't.

  Each acceleration carried her thirty meters away.

  Another spear of force tore through the air, inches from her face as she twisted. Its passing whipped strands of hair across her eyes.

  Molten stone surged upward, hardening into a shield between Vaeris and her attacker.

  Hale's response came instantly—the makeshift barrier exploding into deadly shrapnel.

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  But where Vaeris had stood was now only settling dust.

  She reappeared atop a rising column of basalt that surged from the earth beneath her feet like the spine of some waking beast.

  Hale tracked her and sent a triple burst of force lances that struck the pillar.

  The column disintegrated.

  Vaeris stepped off the collapsing stone and landed lightly on another slab that slid sideways across the battlefield like a drifting raft of black rock.

  For several seconds the battlefield became a violent storm of motion.

  Hale advanced, firing in controlled sequences.

  Vaeris riding the earth itself.

  Platforms rose, slid, shattered, and reformed beneath her feet as the archmage shaped the terrain faster than Hale could destroy it.

  Stone spikes erupted around the combat caster in sudden bursts meant to impale or trap.

  Hale shattered them all.

  Fragments of stone rained across the flats.

  A few hundred meters away, Helena Voss had dug herself out of the hole she made. She had managed to switch her density just in time.

  The violence around her did not seem to concern her in the slightest.

  Hale changed tactics.

  Instead of targeting Vaeris directly, she fired into the ground.

  Stone shrapnel burst upward beneath the archmage’s moving platforms, destabilizing her footing.

  Vaeris adjusted instantly, never letting her concentration waver, and returned the low strike with one of her own.

  The ground behind Hale softened and liquefied. A pocket of molten lava burst upward in a violent surge.

  Hale launched herself sideways, propelled by a shockwave cast beneath her boots.

  She cleared the eruption easily.

  But Vaeris had never intended to strike her there.

  The archmage’s wand moved again.

  The ground beneath Hale’s landing point split open, and a jagged spear erupted upward from the ground.

  The spike punched cleanly through Hale’s abdomen, out her back, and dangled her half a meter off the ground.

  For a moment, the only sound was the distant roar of the lava river.

  Electric tension rippled through the air as Hale’s kinetic field spasmed violently around the impaling spike.

  She gritted her teeth but didn't scream.

  Vaeris lowered her wand slightly, her breathing steady.

  Before Helena Voss could close the distance to attack, she stopped.

  The faintest crease appeared between her brows.

  Vaeris met her gaze across the shattered battlefield.

  “Leave now,” the archmage said calmly.

  Her voice carried easily through the drifting ash.

  “And you might still save her.”

  For a long moment neither woman moved.

  Voss looked from Vaeris to Hale, who hung impaled on the basalt spear, blood darkening the black stone beneath her boots.

  Calculations flickered behind the auditor’s pale blue eyes.

  Nymara Hale, her old mentor, gurgled hot blood out of her mouth.

  Vaeris waited.

  The wand remained steady in her hand.

  For the first time since the battle began, it seemed possible the violence might end.

  Vaeris allowed herself a single breath of relief.

  Then something metallic clinked softly between the two.